Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with promotion and business

Now that I have my red nose, how do I get paid to wear it?!

iliketolaughalot — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 15:25:52 -0800

After a year and a half of teaching myself to do balloon art, I bit the bullet and went to clown school! It was a ton of fun, and I am now officially a clown! The problem is that now I have to book some gigs! I have a website, a Twitter account, aFacebook page, and business cards on the way. Still, I don't really know how to market myself effectively. It's a competitive market (NYC) so I'm wondering what I can do to get the word out! I've posted on Craigslist, but I'm competing with big companies that have hordes of clowns and other entertainers. While I'm new to clowning, I have been working with kids forever and have tons of experience in that. I've also been a pre-clown for some time, working at birthday parties of friends' kids, which I can use on my resume.

While I have applied for some jobs with existing companies, they pay really poorly compared to what I could make on y own. Of course, in order to make that money on my own, I'd have to get some jobs.

I joined the NY Clown Alley to try to network, but it hasn't gotten me very far.

Help me clown around! Will provide silly jokes in response to your suggestions of course!

Help me promote my baby!

mhp — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 15:42:53 -0800

We have a great opportunity to promote our fledgling video production company with a booth at a large concert. But we're not sure exactly what to do with it. We don't have much footage to show at this point, but we have a short film written, and a full length in development. We were trying to think of ideas in order to promote it.

The main problem we have is that we'll actually not really be able to hang around the booth, because we will have our hands full with actually filming the concert. We are filming a documentary documenting the project, from execution to promotion, so anything we do will have to speak on it's own.

We have a short spoken word audio piece that we were considering leaving looping with headphones on, with a little bit of info on it for people to read, along with a link to the website.

Some other ideas we were considering include:
Setting up a photobooth, complete with email capabilities, and an option to set up to subscribe to our newsletter. Our concern at this point is mainly getting awareness out there, so the fact that it doesn't directly relate to video is not such a huge problem.

Another option would be something along the lines of You Move You Interact, an interactive video piece developed using Processing. Basically, just a little something to catch people's eye, and get our name into their head.

But most of our ideas we really cannot execute properly because we won't be able to be physically present. So that, in essence, is my question: How can we best promote ourselves without being physically present in a memorable and relevant way?

Any ideas would be very much appreciated, but keep in mind we're trying to keep it relatively low budget, say $250 max

Thank you very much

A Business Plan for Promotion?

thankyoumuchly — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 18:28:44 -0800

Help an IT consultant write a business case for promotion. My company holds an annual review for all employees based on their level. I started my job as an IT consultant a few years ago straight out of college. I am one of about a dozen consultants in my office who I will be reviewed against for promotion, and roughly a fourth of us will make the cut. We don't all work on the same projects so our promotion is based on us writing a self assessment of our performance in more general terms, and I wanted to add to this by writing a business case about how if I am promoted, I will benefit our clients, company and co-workers. I am turning to the hive mind for suggestions about how to write a business case for promotion.

Thank you in advance!

TYM

The Economics of Financial Domination

divabat — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 21:18:21 -0800

How do financial dominatrices make their money? A comment on AskMefi some time ago talked about financial dominatrices, and I've been fascinated by their business ever since. From what I could gather, all they have to do is put up a website saying "You worship me! Give me money and stuff because I know you want to!" - and it works. One site had her Internet bills paid off. Many ask for regular tithes and offerings, and have application processes.

How does this work? From what I could tell, the buyers don't actually get anything back for their cash - it's up to the dominatrix if she wants to give them something or not. (Usually they don't bother.) It's not like she's selling pictures or anything (though I did see one with videos) - it pretty much seems like they're paying money because it gets them off.

How does one get established in the financial dominatrix business? Is there some sort of Financial Dominatrix Directory where they get listed and people just scroll through to see who they like? How do they get attention, and how do they get people to pay? Are there any male dominators, or any women that would pay for such "services"? How would you keep your identity secret to collect cash (and avoid a situation like this mess - link NSFW)?

If you would like to comment anonymously, send me an email at dominatrix.economics@gmail.com.

Biz travel: little time, big splash?

diastematic — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 16:00:13 -0800

How should we make the most of our business trip? Two partners and I are visiting NY next week for a client meeting. (We're normally in London and US West Coast.) We may have a spare couple of days, and I'd like to make those as productive as possible from a networking perspective. Suggestions? (More inside.) We already have a healthy dose of dinners, lunches, etc. scheduled with our contacts, but we may still have some gaps in our calendar. Should we...host a cocktail hour at a bar and see who drops in? Invite distant contacts to a salon-style group dinner?

We're also quite visible online for our small industry and have a healthy email list for friends, clients, associates. We can put this to work for us in making any announcements for whatever events we can whip up.

Ideas appreciated. Thanks!

How can a local business just starting out effectively advertise?

ShawnStruck — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 11:59:05 -0800

My wife recently took her home-based and internet-based candle/incense/etc business into the bricks-and-mortar stage. We have a good idea on what to do for internet advertising, but need suggestions for effective local business promotion. The store (link to the site and more about the store is in my lone Projects posting) is located in Arlington, TX, down the road from a well-trafficked shopping center with a Tom Thumb (grocery store chain), Starbucks, Blockbuster video, etc-- in a smaller shopping center that is also fairly active.

The shopping center the actual candle store is located in a moderately well-traveled, and is two stores down from a few other fairly-well-trafficked stores (a Chinese restaurant, a barbershop, pizzeria, etc). Business has been ranging from slow-to-okay-to nil. She's set up an ad with the Yellow Pages, and will have a coupon for the store in an Arlington Memorial flyer given out at the hospital that suggest local businesses to go to for gifts. She's dropped off some promo cards at the businesses in her immediate shopping center. But we're at a loss as to how we can more effectively advertise and get the word out to get people into the store.

Any ideas?

How do I get my mitts on good, local, legal email lists?

By The Grace of God — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 13:19:49 -0800

I'm trying to market cool events happening at my (reputable) workplace to families with young children, and some other cool events to young professionals. We have a lovely and responsibly kept email list here of our own constituents, but we want to expand into new territory to promote events. This is a sort of a marketing experiment. We've discovered that our email marketing has a better response rate than our dead tree marketing, plus it gives us better information (clickthru and open rates, etc.) so we'd like to try marketing this brand new thing to some brand new people in the area. Are there reputable, localized list buyers or traders out there whose opt-in lists really are opt-in? Should I stick with trading lists with other reputable businesses? For list trading is there any particular procedure or method that is best?