finding clientele

hang in there. they will come. be carfull what you ask for. word of mouth is good.best advertiesment there is. if you do good work it will get out. so will the bad work. i take some cards and go to wally world,meijers,dunhams & stores like them and pass them out. helped me a lot.

 

I pay someone annually for a website. If someone Googles taxidermy and Mississippi, my name pops up. Attend all wildlife banquets...Ducks Unlimited, Whitetails Unlimited, NWTF, to name a few. Set up a display if possible. Have something to show besides deer. A mounted possum will attract more attention than a 200" whitetail. Buy some cheap pens with your name and phone number on them. My wife hands pens and a card to everyone passing. If desperate times call for desperate measures, have a couple of attractive young ladies handing out cards and pens for you. Guys will flock to your booth! When someone comes in your shop, you must have something to show. Archie Phillips said "You can't sell anything off an empty wagon". Have printed photos in an album of specimens you have done..not digital pics on your damn cell phone. I'm old fashioned, set in my ways, and not that good a taxidermist, but I have plenty of work, and make a little money along the way! I promise, all this will bring you more work than you will ever want.

 

I'm not a taxidermist but have attended medical industry shows.
The only advise I could offer is Dont be afraid to approach people.
Say hi, smile, introduce yourself. Try to engage people in a short conversation. Try not to let anyone pass without at least saying hello.
The last show I was at the couple directly across from us was a competitor. They offered identical services as us and I'm pretty confident our rates were higher than theirs.
We had a great show and scored some nice work. They were totally unapproachable. They sat there with their noses in their phones. Didn't engage with anyone and people passed right by them to stop and speak with us. In the end they left the show early disappointed.
We were after contacts and leads so we offered 2 drawings. Winner got a $50 Gift card. To get in the drawing you had to drop your business card in the fishbowl. That stopped a lot of people and gave us a chance to talk. Not sure that would apply to a taxidermy situation.

 

EA...very good point. Put your cell phone in a box and forget about it. Your interaction with other people is your ticket to success. Sitting there with your eyes on a cell phone is a guaranteed recipe for failure. BTW, when I have a client in my shop, and my cell phone rings, I silence it and deal with the caller after my customer has left.

 

What I did was have business cards, brochures, and game care pamphlets printed and took them around to outdoor stores and saw shops etc. Got a ton of work from those. I also got a ton of work from an ad in our local paper. Each customer I received, was one that would send out word of mouth and it snowballed.

 

I never got much business from newspaper ads. At one time Yellow Pages were the thing, but now, that's just money tossed up a rats a$$

 

About one third of my business came from my newspaper ad and the word of mouth generated by the folks that came to me because of the ad. More came from the business cards at the stores linked to outdoor activity and maybe twenty customers in ten years from my google spot, which makes no sense to me, however, it was the case.

 

IMO w/o question a good website and posting your url online amap will be your best bang for your buck. You're looking for a website that separates you from the rest. Everybody has a FB page now. FB is nice, but as far as generating new work it limits you to your friends and family and won't come up high in searches if at all. I link my FB page to my real website. All those other things cannot hurt either. Yellow Pages is a dinosaur. For me the Sport Shows were more to get out of the shop vs. rustering up much work. I didn't even recover my booth fee of a grand on one supposedly great, 4 day show in the Chicago area. But, people already know about me. For somebody new though it is probably one of the better ways to expose your business locally, quickly. But, ultimately they all go to your website. It doesn't matter if you do great work or not. W/O a good/great website for them to check you out thoroughly it'll be an uphill battle for most. Of course your location matters a lot too. If you're in an area saturated with other, established taxidermists it may be tough going. If not much competition, business may escalate quickly. Again,. JMO!

 

We pay a lot for web presence. Too much IMO. About $140.00/mo for the site, traffic booster, Manta, etc.
I get a report every week of how many hits, from where, etc. We average 300/week and the high was 1188 hits in 7 days. How many are bots, who knows. I get calls out the wazoo from India wanting us to outsource our work. Most of the hits are probably those jokers.

In 6yrs we have signed exactly 1 physician/client who found us on the web.
However, that 1 Dr brought us a counselor. That counselor brought us 3 others. Those 3 others brought us 5 others for a total of 1Dr and 9 Counselors indirectly from that one web hit.
If you consider that, the website has paid for itself a thousand times over. If you factor it any other way, the success rate of 1 client in 6yrs sucks.
You can't beat word of mouth. We all know that.
Its a crap shoot on how you initially locate those people tho.
Cover all your bases to the extent you can afford.

 

Since I've moved a year ago it's like starting over again for me. Except, I stopped taking in original skin mounts and no restorations either. I have gone 100% replica only myself. And, I do not advertise. So, everything has come in off of my website this year. In fact i have not taken anything in locally and all is mail order/out of state. Which I have no problem with! Not outstanding numbers. But a testament to what a good website with fairly high hits can do. I've turned down quite a bit of restoration and original skin mount work and have referred those potentials to other taxidermists working with me...

 

I agree with Joey and some of the others. Also, leave business cards in local butcher shops that process game animals. As far as websites go I have a webpage and get a report every so often. Not much traffic. However, because of my keywords and my webpage I am the first name that comes up when doing a search in my area and I have many customers who come from 6-8 hours away because they found me online. Not necessarily through my webpage, but because of my webpage, through google.

 

I believe it takes five years to get established. After that, getting work is no problem, but be sure to have your prices correct by then.

 

Not much to be said for yellow pages, but 2 things.
1. Be there
2. List your website. & address
Do not do an ad, be sure you’re listed.

Google & yelp get some of their info from the newest phone book, because they update their info every year.
It may take a couple years, but google is best, (some fb) but you do need a website. Doesn’t have to be fancy or expensive, but hunters want to see pics of stuff. & update it every year or two.
Bob

 

I've had more success with placing signs at every intersection around. I've had luck with business cards as well. Slowest route is word if mouth, but in the long run probably the best.

 

Same here... I pay google about $100 month (they charge on a "per hits" basis). In So Calif you google Taxidermist you will get my me. I get all my new customers this way.

 

This is off into the future but I seen a taxidermist around here take a boot space at the county fair. Those fairs come in August which is when a lot of guys are starting to think about there plans for hunting for the year. It worked for him. Will it work for you? Maybe, maybe not. Just a thought!

 

I have no website and only use FB, Instagram and word of mouth. I 1.5 years since I started I have been able to quit my full time job as a dental tech and am only doing fish taxidermy now. Websites IMO are a waste of money. Learn to use social media. Shot I can track photos I put up and if shared to right right groups and by others you can have tens of thousands see your work in a matter of hours.

 

I am also starting up again after a five year break. Was in the business for about 15 years before. I do have a website, I work social media, word of mouth and thankfully having a good reputation from before.

Whenever I am in Lowe's or Tractor Supply buying supplies I chat up the staff and it has brought me business. I have left them my cards and have had several hits from that. I also offer a $50 discount on a child's first mount and do one free mount a year for Dream Hunts or one of the Wounded Vet organizations. People remember that stuff. That kind of thing really helped build my business the first time.