Business Cards, Website Creation, and Customer Cards

Due to the need for discretion during the early planning stages, Vicki requested that we wait on posting her first few weeks of blog posts until now. Vicki wrote this one on March 11. Don't worry; we'll be caught up to the present day soon!--NAILS Eds.

I spent my entire Saturday creating our business card and marketing postcard on VistaPrint.com, which is the best deal for online marketing stuff. It’s easy and I have used them for years.

On Sunday I designed the website on GoDaddy.com. My butt was killing me sitting at my desk for two days straight! (I did have the Nascar race on though.) The domain name was less than $11 for the year and GoDaddy hosts and has templates to create our website, which I figure will be less than $125 per year. I added several photos of my work and some I got from the Internet to jazz everything up. I also have to get logos from the companies whose products we plan to use and add them to the website. So now all I have to do is add a few things and get everyone in the world to proof it. The plan is to go live April 15, after we tell our salon owner that we're moving on. Then I will tackle Facebook and create a salon page to which we can all upload photos.

I have also created a customer card so we can fill them out with client information and keep them on file. I'll take each new client and add him or her to our database in Constant Contact, an e-mail marketing program I highly recommend and have used before. I firmly believe that all this marketing needs to be in place prior to opening or it will never get done! Constant Contact will allow us to create attractive e-mails for announcements, monthly specials, invitation to the grand opening, etc.

--Vicki, Polish Salon, Brea, Calif.