PetStockBoys

I don’t know perhaps it’s us but we do get a lot of phone calls from people trying to flog us stuff and they can be a bit rude and pushy. We know that people have a job to do but sometimes when you say no, that should be it.

When we’ve had enough we can get a bit peeved and this is what we say..

‘What part of no don’t you understand?’

‘I’m sorry but I’ve lost the will to live’

‘I’ll have to go there’s someone at the fridge’

‘My three o-clock horse is here’

If they revert to asking for the person that deals with marketing/advertising/the website etc

We sometimes reply…

‘I’m sorry she’s melted’

‘Do you speak Polish?’

‘Did they ask you to call?’

‘Why not give me your number and I’ll phone you at a completely inopportune moment’

‘He can’t talk he’s sucking a big gobstopper - it could be days before we get another word out of him’

‘He’s on a three year sabbatical’

‘He’s on remand’

Failing that (and if it’s a Friday) we sometimes take it in turns, to call like a dolphin down the phone (the extra keen add in their own flapping & splashing noises.)

There seems to be quite a few people who are keen for small businesses to spend money with them in internet advertising, especially in so called directories. Please be very careful.

For any web ‘directory’ to be of use it should have useful info on it, the kind of info that makes you want to revisit time and time again. If there’s no useful info on it, why would anyone use the site? If they don’t use it, they won’t find your ad, it’s as simple as that.

Regarding one such directory site, I was told that advertisers are checked on every few months, to make sure that all was ticketyboo. All the existing advertisers I rang had received no follow-ups and worse still, absolutely no enquiries and these are all small businesses that didn’t really have a few hundred pounds to spare.

If you want to spend money on internet promotion use it on search engine marketing - it can get results and you can see what’s working and what’s not.

PSB is doing search engine stuff at the mo and it’s all very exciting, we’ve already seen it work on our sister site and for a small business it really gets you focussed.

Oh and if ever someone suggests that they can get you on the first page of Google…don’t get me started on that one….

It seems like silly season as we’ve had yet another unsolicited letter from an internet directory, we had one sent from a company near Manchester and it wreaked of smoked haddock, if you know what I mean. Today we had one from Germany but at least it mentioned that if you were daft enough to go for a listing it would cost over £600 a year for three years. The bit at the bottom where you had to sign that stated ‘legally binding signature’ kind of gave the game away. I was thinking of signing it as  Bernard the Turkey and enclosing a bit of straw but the kettle boiled and I decided to have  a mug of tea instead.

Well as we haven’t done brilliantly in the publicity dept so we thought we’d do what a lot of small businesses do and enter a few awards. This  seemed like an inexpensive route to take but we quickly found that it isn’t! Entry fees range from £100 to £50 a go and then if we’re ‘lucky’ enough to be shortlisted - do we go to the actual awards do? It would be nice to sit down to a meal that doesn’t involved baked beans & jacket de potatoe but if it’s oop North we’ll have to cough up for train travel and a b&b. It requires careful consideration…. hmmmm.

If you have aread of our Latest News, you’ll see that we’ve just licensed some images to a few business directories - the amazing this is that they’re in Russia! We’ve only been going 5 minutes and we’re already global. You may have a few bad things to say about the internet - I for one and fed up with offers from attractive college students, free High School Diplomas, enlarging things, shrinking things and African Chiefs who may have stacks of spondoolies in frozen bank accounts but who can’t spell for toffee but when you can flog stuff to Russians thousands of miles away, well it can’t be a bad thing. Vladi good.

Well we tried our best and I think we’re going to be mentioned in Adline which is great, tried Creative Review but could not get through for love nor money, perhaps we should have tried muffins. Spoke to a very nice American chap call Jim from Advertising Age - we still get excited when we ring overseas (bless) but nothing concrete. The bods from the Mac mags sounded keen but then they’re always on the phone to us trying to flog ads… Should anything materialise dear reader we shall pop it over in the press info  bit. But we will not be holding our breath..blue doesn’t suit us.

Well we did a small email to the creative mags and got a resounding dull thud of apathy. Only BJP - British Journal of Photography has so far printed a bit about us and they said ‘any excuse to print a stupid animal picture.’ Harsh. Oh the joys of trying to launch a small business, I wouldn’t mind but we’re constantly being phoned by Creative Review and the Mac mags to advertise. As you can see we created a very special shot of Clyde the tortoise - he wasn’t harmed by the way, it’s one of the few shots that we actually comped on the Mac. Fear not dear reader I shall call next week and see if I can nag them into submission. In fact I shall go all out and create a category called PRESS CLIPPINGS. The furry gauntlet has been thrown.