Can I promote the business before the grand opening?

[my yahoo answers]

He opened an off-road shop and we have someone working there already on several vehicles. We created a facebook page and a website. We have not had the grand opening. I do not see why I should not tell everyone before the grand opening right? even thought the website is still under construction and we have not finished setting up the place.

[imisidro]

OF COURSE

Even on the Web, some websites are already up just to announce that the business is coming soon. Look at examples of coming soon pages - you may get some ideas and put it up while the site is still being designed and created

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/11/...oon-pages/

In the meantime, you can already start your social marketing to drum up excitement about the business.

As for the shop itself, I suppose that you have banners announcing the opening of the new business. Start checking the rates of your local newspapers and see if you want to get ads to announce the opening.

You can do a lot of local marketing. On the Web, create your Google Places page already http://www.google.com/places . Check the source below for more local marketing tips

[Jake]

You might have a concentrated pre grand opening Facebook like getting campaign. There are apps that help you setup a like to access special area on your Fan page, as well as sweepstakes with a prize incentive for people to like. When the grand opening comes along your wall posts appear in all of your fans walls. Facebook paid ads sending people to a sweepstake page can be dirt cheap, start bidding a little under the low end recommended click cost, when they measure a high click through rate the click costs drop to as little as 5 cents a click. The Facebook demographics is unbeatable, you can target single, 18 - 28, Males only, within 10 mile of your city to get the most for your ad bucks.

To be legit you should have a Fan Page, not a personal page, BYW a link on the right lets you be logged in under the Fanpage name, so any wall posts you leave go back to the Fan page.

One kinda pricey suit of apps for promotion is by northsocial.com you could get a sweepstake done in their free trial period.

If you believe in Branding, in which some studies show a name has to be seen 7 times by some consumers before they truest it, you could run Google adwords or Facebook ads in a 10 mile radius of the shop, with CPM pricing, in which you pay for impressions of the ad and don't care of they click it. You can place Banner ads on Google ad network sites based on keywords or with hand picked URLs for the ads to show.