Need ideas on getting more business

I have been face painting about 2 years..I do festivals in the summer and 2 restraunts...but would like to do more birthday parties... I have done a few but not getting any parties off the ones I have done' I have painted at the mall for free just for a parenting mag..the were lookin for a kid for the cover..she put my flyers in 100 bags...but no calls.. any ideas ladies...thanks for all the help and support to each and everyone of you on the forum

thanks barb

Barb are you keeping a mailing/email list you are following up on?

Someone here mentioned they actually get the birthday date of the child and proactively call rather than wait for the phone to ring. Even if you don't call you could drop a reminder a month before in the mail or by email. Or just keep your name out in front of your past clients by sending out something regular. Maybe try suggesting theme parties to help put ideas in people's heads?

If you don't have one I've found mailchimp.com is a very good email service with nice templates and is free for small accounts.

Perhaps you're doing this already but..

Always have buisness cards on you when you are painting at the restraunts n' stuff.

Sniff out any festivals or events in your area and see can you get in there.

Use the Charities you paint for as an opportunity to market yourself.

Basically, the more you're seen, the more exposure you have, the more contacts you make. Folk like to see who they're hiring so use your facepainting to get to know the parents you meet.

When working I have a notebook to take down peoples contact info. I have them write their info in the book & then follow up. I'm also on tons of free online party companies & have a free website that I link to these companies. Just type "face painter, your city, your state" in google & see what party companies come up. Sign up to them. Have a website 1st so you can link it. I was an occasional face painter for almost 4 years. I'd get 1-2 jobs a month. I got a website last year, signed up with all the free listings & now I'm usually booked out every weekend. I also continually market through facebook by posting when I'm painting for the public & I'm always posting new faces I've painted.

I was also going to suggest Facebook. Also newspaper ads and flyers in resturants, offices, and daycares.

Don't get discouraged because no one called you, yet. They may be saving the flyer till their kids birthday party 6 months from now

i have done most of these.. but I like the idea of a face book pg,
I also have a free webpage, i use the free listing services..and i pass out flyers to the kids i paint in the restraunts.. i have numerous festivals i do in the summer.. my summer is usually pretty full..just would like to get some birth day parties to carry me thru the winter monthes.. I do have mardi gras in Jan.. 2 events in March..and still every other Tuesdays at Fazoli's restraunt... may its just taking time... I have done about 4 birthday parties. but would like to do more

Marketing, marketing, marketing! We do a mailing twice a year - once in the summer for fall festivals and once in the winter for spring festivals. These go to all of the churches and schools in our metro. I paid a local company less than $100 for a list of over 1000 current addresses, but if you are in a small city, you can find almost all of them online or in your local phonebook. I market to churches and schools because we offer a 20% discount for non-profits as our way to give back to our community. I can comfortably say that we have received enough business (private parties to corporate events) from those events to make up for any money that is discounted, and we have always gotten back our investment in the postcard printings and the postage and then some.

Website: When you type in "face painting (insert your city here)", are you on the front page? If not, you need to revamp your website for SEO (search engine optimization). A very large amount of my business is from people who found me on google. I have two businesses, my face painting and our inflatables where I also advertise our face painting, and I come up twice on the front page, and four or five times with other keyword searches. If you are not on that first page, your chances of getting called go wayyyyy down. Someone else threw out the idea of searching for the directories and signing up -- LINK to these directory listings on your website. When you enter the link, make sure the text has YOUR BUSINESS name with Face Painting AND the city you do business in that link -- so say I want mine to say Omaha Masquerade Face Painting Omaha NE. If the link is www.whatever.com, I would set it up like this (delete the spaces after and before the "<" and ">" symbols):
< a href="http://www.whatever.com >Find Omaha Masquerade Face Painting in the Whatever.com Directory for Omaha, NE< /a >
The text in the link is AS important as linking itself =). This tells the search engine spiders that your site is relevant to the key words, and important to have been linked to multiple other relevant sites, and gives it a higher ranking over other companies websites. The words found in and around your website is important as well. The more times you use your key words in your site (it has to be logical - actual sentences with correct usage, and not just a list of random keywords) the higher ranking you will get - again, relevance=higher listing.

If you need more info on the website, send me a PM and I will be happy to help =).

yeah my website is the biggest puller.
A godd website with good listing is a face painters best friend.
When I was starting out I put lamenated signs up at the park... and in my local butchers and childrens store, deli, bakery etc
It worked a charm as people like to hire local.
What helped me with google was putting myself on the google map.
Than you come up first page.

Dumb question... How do I put myself on the google map?

Just search for face painters or whatever... when th map comes up click on it.... or just go to google maps at the top of the page.
On the google map page ( i think it's at the bottom) look for " add my business" - it will ask you to fill in some details....make sure you put
"facepainting in whever" in the search part - or in the name of your business.... I put 'Face painting in Sydney - Face Art by Tash'
Then A little balloon will come up where you live, and then you will appear on the google map and on the front page of google! yay!

Tash- I cant seem to find the link to add mine. I did a google search for Idaho face painters. Then up on the top left I clicked "map" by web and images. I got it to map and I had 3 pages of results but dont see an add my business link anywhere. Did I do something wrong?

ok try this...

https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=lbc&passive=1209600&continue=http://www.google.com/local/add/businessCenter?service%3Dlbc%26utm_campaign%3Den%26utm_source%3Den-ha-apac-au-google%26utm_medium%3Dha%26utm_term%3Dadd%2Bmy%2Bbusiness%2Bto%2Bgoogle%2Bmaps&followup=http://www.google.com/local/add/businessCenter?service%3Dlbc%26utm_campaign%3Den%26utm_source%3Den-ha-apac-au-google%26utm_medium%3Dha%26utm_term%3Dadd%2Bmy%2Bbusiness%2Bto%2Bgoogle%2Bmaps
you need to be a google member to do it.
Sorry I know it's a stupidly long link but it will take you where you need to go.

Yay, thank you so much for finding that. Im now on the map!

Whoo! Just finishing up my listing right now - thanks Tash! For some reason it hadn't occurred to me that I could put my own listing up on Google Maps...haha. Yay! FYI: http://maps.google.ca/maps/place?hl=en&georestrict=input_srcid:ba488413c0ed9a68

I just figured they went off of some yellow pages directory or something.

Nope, you have to add your listing to Google maps. BUT that does mean that the address you put (like your home address) is available for anyone to see and map to. That's why I put my PO Box address.

It wouldn't let me do my PO box so I did my box number and the post office address. Hehehe. Tricky Google

Yay! I am officially listed on google maps too! Thanks for the great idea!

In addition to all the wonderful things that have already been mentioned, having a google adwords advertisement running has really helped my google rating. You can set it up so that it only shows up for people in your service area and it will show up in the sponsored ads sections on any site that shows google ads (like youtube). You can set how much per day you are willing to spend on ads... I think I have mine set at $2.50 and I usually get 2 or 3 clicks a day for that.... impressions vary.

Woohoo! I'm signed up! Thanks Tash!

Jumpers,
I read what you wrote about upping your listing for your website. I just don't get it
I don't understand much about HTML code, etc or how to accomplish that. I get seen pretty well through secondary sites like Merchant Circle, Party Pop, etc, but would love to get my actual site on the 1st page.

jumpers i read what you wrote,, i really would like my actual site on the 1st page..like psalmbook im with merchnts circle party pop.party planner and gigsalid
i also went to the the part on my web page and put in what you said.. i guess i didn't do it right

Great idea Tash! Thanks for sharing! I linked up! & made a coupon for events booked during the month of January (New Year Special)

If you go on merchant circle & tag all your pics with face painter or face painting & your city, state(location) they will show up under google images if you google your area.

Hang up a posting at all party stores, bounce houses, send to church organizers, preschools, etc. - be sure to post on craigslist under gigs & also if you have any nurses or hospital staff be sure to get them to post on their units bulletin boards in their break rooms etc. Ive had several gigs come from that alone. Whatever you do stay away from newspaper ads (subscriptions are at all time lows) and never place overly costly listings in phonebooks (they are almost obsolete for many reasons). Stay on top of grand-openings, festivals and any other activity where you are that has a good draw of people. Hope this helps

Sorry! I've had family over AND my laptop crashed, so I haven't been on for a few days.

I'm not sure which part you are unclear on, so I'll hit a few:

Try to search SEO for dummies (something similar) on the web and you'll get more info than I can give you on how to move your site up the ranks.

If you have made changes to your website, it takes several days (maybe weeks, not sure how far google waits between spidering sites for keywords) to actually notice a difference. So don't give up! Depending on what you use as a site builder, it gives you an option to select how often the content on your page changes. Usually it is defaulted to 30 days. I change mine to 1 day so if/when I make changes, it triggers the search engines to spider the site more frequently (I think).

With regards to website content -- if your target keyword phrase is "Face Painting XYZ City", you want to make sure that the exact phrase is used several times on each page of your site - but it needs to be substantive, and not just words. So for instance, I might put : "Omaha Masquerade offers Professional Face Painting in Omaha, Papillion and surrounding metro.".. then in another paragraph it might say "not only do our amazing artists provide professional face painting in Omaha, but they also do free-hand Henna tattoos!" Then on another page, maybe the contact us page, I'll again put the first sentence, etc. Then let's say you want the keyword phrase "Omaha Face Painting" -- this I might put in the page title of each page (PAGE TITLES are important!!!). Yes, these are essentially the same wording, just switched around, but try it - the page ranks will be different just by moving the city to the front of the phrase.

Same thing goes for the other party websites that you have links in - making sure you get that keyword in the text of the link. So you are listed with Merchant Circle, Party Pop, My Party Planner, etc. Provide a link at the bottom of each page of your website to YOUR listing on each of these sites. You do not have to have extensive (or even a little) HTML knowledge to link the sites - you just have to know how to edit your pages. If you PM me with the link to your listing, I'll give you the HTML to copy/paste. I added spaces around the < > signs to my original posting because otherwise it would have just shown you the link, and not the code to see HOW to get the link. But seriously - just PM me and I'll send you the code. You can see my website http://www.jumpers4you.com at the bottom where we have linked back to directories for an example.

I hope this helps!! If not, please let me know. My next gig is mid-January, and as our businesses are all I do, I have lots of time on my hands.. *sigh*