Simple Effective Ways to Promote Your Coin Laundry

Everybody that is in the coin laundry business knows that it is smart to do promotions from time to time, and yet most operators never promote their business except when it first opens. A Grand Opening is about the only time a typical coin laundry is -advertised or promoted to bring in new laundry business. "It''s hard. It doesn''t work. It''s too expensive. It takes too much time." People who talk like that just don''t like making money. That''s a pretty sad -commentary on the business moxie of many that think of the coin laundry industry as their business home. The purpose of this article is to have readers read suggestions for simple, inexpensive but effective promotional ideas that have worked in other small to medium sized coin laundries. The emphasis is on low cost simplicity. Sometimes all it takes is a little luck and imagination to put your laundry''s name out there in front of the public. An owner of an unattended coin laundry had a quantity of good quality ballpoint pens made with the name and address of his laundry on them. When he is at his laundry and sees someone new, he introduces himself, thanks them for using the -laundry and offers them a pen. People seem to appreciate that gesture, and they keep coming back to do laundry. He also gives out these pens in place of his -business card and invites all the people he meets to use the laundry. He spent less than $100 for 250 pens, or about forty cents each. He has now had to reorder pens a number of times, and swears that it is the very best advertising dollars he has ever spent. He feels that at least half of his -customers have come from this simple and inexpensive promotional idea. A local church was having a clothing drive and there was a fire. A lot of smoke, but little damage. However, they had to get the smoke smell out from the clothing they had collected. A nearby laundry owner heard about the fire and called the church to make them this offer: Come in on Wednesday, bring your own soap and use the washers for free. You only pay for the dryers Things that need to be dry cleaned, we''ll send it in for one fourth off. It sounded like a generous offer, but it was one that cost the laundry owner little. His cost was the electricity and hot water for the machines used. With them paying for drying, he felt he was breaking even. For the dry cleaning, he gets a fifty percent discount, so he was actually making one fourth profit. Plus, it was all done on his slowest day of the week.Now everyone who goes to that church knows about his coin laundry and that they do drop off dry cleaning. On the appointed day, the church''s pastor was there with a number of his parishioners and it was all written up in a local newspaper. A number of women from the church had been doing their wash at other coin laundries, but not any more. The coin laundry owner also was given a nice plaque from the local ministerial association, and that too was written up in the local paper. Recognizing their need and sensing that it could do his business some good made this a profitable promotional idea for this coin laundry owner. He and his laundry are still receiving benefits from it some three years later. Youth baseball is a big deal to the kids and parents participating, and boy do the uniforms get dirty. One operator''s son was one of those excited kids and the laundry owner became assistant coach for his son''s team. At the end of the year it was time to collect uniforms. They were to be washed and folded to be handed out the following year, but what a disaster. Many uniforms were badly washed. Some, maybe not at all. The laundry owner offered the use of his machines to clean this all up if the team mothers would come and do the work. He would donate the quarters used back to the league. So it was on one normally slow evening that there were dozens of little league parents at the coin laundry, half washing and half partying. They got the job done and all had a good time doing it. Many of the people there used other coin laundries. Now they were firmly committed to using this laundry. This didn''t make the laundry owner rich, but his business increased and he made many friends from the simple gesture of offering the use of his coin laundry to the little league. It has now become an annual event. It must have been good public relations because he was elected to their board of directors the next year and league president a year later. Parts of Texas and Louisiana can get very hot and humid in the summer. To help his clientele feel more comfortable, one laundry owner got some cheap hand fans from an advertising supply company. These were literally stiff paper fans on a stick. He had them printed with the name of his laundry. These were placed on the counter of his attendant station with a sign that said ''Use One''. The purpose of the fans was to make his customers feel more comfortable while doing their wash. He thought they would use them and leave them, but he was at least partly wrong. They took the fans with them on leaving. Soon the owner began to see his fans flapping at outdoor summer activities around town. He then realized they were a pretty good advertising tool that was inexpensive enough for his laundry''s budget. So he bought more and donated fans to any group holding summertime events in the area. Strangely enough his business began to show real growth, and instead of business dropping off in the summer, it was holding steady and going up when the cooler weather hit. He jokingly said, ''It''s cheaper than air conditioning, and puts our name out there in front of potential customers''. Having a computer and having a little free time is the key for one very profitable laundry operator. Using his computer, he creates double-sided handbills that either he or his attendants place under the windshield wipers of every car parked in their business area. They do this at least once a month. The handbills have a detailed map showing his laundry''s location and tells of a promotion price on some of their services. For an example, in the fall the handbills tell of specials on blankets, comforters and winter clothing. In the spring the bills tell of the same specials but they emphasize that these items will be in a sealed plastic bag for storage. This is a laundry with drop off cleaning and a fluff and fold service. The sealing is done with simple masking tape over the openings in the plastic wrap. Does it work? You bet! Each series of flyers creates a quick, temporary 5% jump in laundry income, and most of that falls to the bottom line. He is sure that some of this temporary bump becomes permanent, he just doesn''t know how much. His printing is done from artwork created on his computer, and is done at a local printer. Cost is about two cents per copy to print. That cost is more than recovered in the first few days the flyers are placed on the cars.