This is for everyone that says "they do not have the time" to put into Social Media to have it work for them. Now granted this 10 minutes is only after you have done the initial set up work and yes that does take a little time, but you can spend 10-15 minutes once a day for a first week or two to be set up to follow all these short steps. I will give you the list then show you where to go to set each one up.
2 minutes: Check Twitter to listen about your company and products.
1.5 minutes: Scan Google Alerts for your company name, products or executives names.
1 minutes: Check Facebook stats at your Companies Page
3 minutes: Look for questions and answer at least one a day
2.5 minutes: Use Google Reeder to check other sites like Flicker, Digg and others.
Total 10 minutes a day.
Now the longer you spend at some, like with Q&A's, that will be to your advantage. You may have days where you find more than one or two questions that would be good for you to answer so realistically you may spend 20-30 minutes on these five items on some days. Or you may only do 4 for the 5 like I do most of the time.
1. Checking Twitter. Well first you have to have a Twitter account. And that is easy and free by going to http://www.twitter.com/. Once you are set up you can then use one of two tools; TweetDeck or Twitter Search.
For TweetDeck you must go to their web site http://www.tweekdeck.com/ and sign up, it's free and then set up your scan board. I like this because once it is turned on at the beginning of the day every time a new item is posted to any of the categories you have it set to show, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter etc. the posts will flash up in the top right corner of your screen and ping you. If you are at your computer you can glance up to see if it is a post you would like to comment on. Remember sites like Facebook are about relationships not selling so just making comments keeps you relevant to your FB friends.
Now Twitter Search is much easier and you can use it as much or as little as you want each day. Just go to the Home Page and up in the search bar put in your companies name. Be sure to place quotation marks around it or you will get posts that contain all the words themselves not just in the order of your business name. For example Joe's Pressure Washing will return "Joe's" "pressure" "washing" and "pressure washing" instead of the "Joe's Pressure Washing" that you want. Or you can go to the advanced search and enter it there before saving. You might also want to chose some that are close, that your customers might enter instead and incorrectly, like "Joe's Power Washing" "Joe's Power Wash" and remember capitalization does not matter. You can also list product names if your business has them, like ours does. After each search you can click at the top on the "Save this Search" button if you where happy with the results. Once it is saved when you come back each day. Look just above the posts and click on the "Searches" tab. A scrolled down menu will appear with all the searches you have saved. Click on which ever one you want to check at that time. You can also keep up to date with temporary items and delete them once they are over.
2. Scan Google Alerts. This is very similar to the Twitter searches we just discussed. You go to www.google.com/alerts to set them up. You list what you want to know about that is coming out on the web and then set it as to how often to send the results to your email account. I have it set for as it happens but I have over 10 alerts, and I might check it a few times during the day. You may only have a few you will need to set for, so once a day or even once a week may be fine. But remember the longer you wait the longer your response time will be to react to anything negative. You will need to have your business name as well as your own name. For those I would set it for all results. But for topics you might want to set it for Only the best results like I do for "restaurant fire", "power washing", "pressure washing", "graffiti removal" and again do not forget the quote marks. You can also set it for whole phrases as well like "fleet truck washing". You can also use a special email account just for these alerts so you do not clutter up your regular account or have your email filters set so that any email coming from Google Alerts goes into a separate folder so it is easy to open and scan them. This is what I do. I also have alerts set for topic phrases to gather information for my blogs.
3. Check Facebook Stats. Go to your company page on Facebook. On the top right hand under the bar, click on the Edit page button, when this comes up on the left side there is a list and near the bottom of the list is a bar graph called Insights. This will give you a lot of valuable information about who is coming and using your site. It can tell you how many daily, weekly and monthly users are using your site. It also shows what posts got interactions. Enabling you to go back to the post and continue the conversation.
4. Search for questions to answer. You need to put your self out there as an authority in your business or just to interact. For this you can use sites like Ask.com at http://www.ask.com/answers/ and click on the Ask People tab, at Facebook Questions http://www.facebook.com/questions/ see what your friends are asking and answer or ask your own question with poll options. With Yahoo answers you can get out into the www audience not just the people you know and this can bring even more people to you. This is the one I use the most. Go to http://answers.yahoo.com/ and set your account up. and then to browse categories. Most of you will find questions to answer in the Home and Garden section. Found one asking about paint colors, if bleach hurts vinyl siding, what size pressure washer to buy to start up in the business and how much should an average pressure washing job cost. All these and more would have been great for many of you to answer. You make your comments and then you are able to link to web pages to back up your answers. You can link to your own website but do not use it all the time or as the sole link. Anyone can click on your avatar with the answer and find your information that you set up when you joined and this is where you need to list your web site and company information. Also if you have good answers, the person that asked the questions chooses the best answer, then you get a better ranking and more people will listen to what you have to say. You can also create a network and gain fans.
5. Google Reader found at https://www.google.com/reader/ this is good if you already have a Google e-mail account or want to get one just to have your Google alerts sent to it and to use the reader. You can link your web site , your competitors sites, Youtube, Flicker any site you want to visit to check on what is new.
Showing posts with label Marketing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Marketing. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Thursday, June 2, 2011
How to use QuickBooks for Customer Marketing
One of my Facebook group members asked a question that made me think that the answer should be a blog post.
He wanted to know if most pressure washing professionals are using QuickBooks (QB) for their book keeping. Well QB is the #1 seller for a reason. But we use QB for so much more and since I have friends that work with Intuit in QB design and debugging, I have learned how QB can also help small business owners with their marketing.
And since June is National Entrepreneur Do-it-Yourself Marketing Month this would be a great time to show everyone some tricks and hand out tips.
First if you are not using QB you should really consider it. And if you are not fully using the report features, you are missing out on a major portion of what QB can do for you.
Did you know you can use features in QB to segment your customers in to specific groups to use later for marketing?
Go to your QB and pull up the Customer Center. Once there click on any customer you want. There you will see just under the Customer name a field called “Customer Type” This was designed to be used to indicate almost anything about your customer that you want, but it can be used for marketing by creating reports. It has been reported in surveys to QB that over 60% of QB users do not use the "customer type" function which is a terrible waste. To get to this field click on the “Edit Customer” button, top right. Once there click on the “Additional Information” tab. Now you can access the drop down menu and use the “Add New” feature. I would suggest using this to segment your customers buy type of work you do. For example if you do only a limited type of work like only house or window washing you might want to list the types but Square foot size ranges or type of house or building. Ex: Under 1000, 1500-2000, Two story, split level, ranch, strip mall etc.
But most of you have a range of work you perform like house wash, roof wash, and flat work (such as driveways or side walks). Then your list could look like this: House wash <1000sq, House wash/gutters, Gutter clean only, deck wash only, deck wash/strip & stain, etc. I have not found a limit to the number that you can use and no # is given in QB help.
Some might want to use the “Job Type” under the “Job” tab in this way instead which would also be fine, but if you have already been using QB for a while and have never used the Job function it is not possible to go back and convert past invoices so this may not be where you want to segment. But you can use it moving forward as a great tool to separate invoices for the different jobs you do for customers. But you must be consistent in naming your types of jobs to make reporting easier later. But with the “Customer Type” area you can go back and modify all or as many customer records as you would like.
Once you are using the “Type” area you can create reports that give you details to make e-mail or direct mail campaigns work.
You can also use Custom fields to help you even further. For instance you could set one of these fields to be called “last date of service” then every time you have finished invoicing a customer you go here and enter in the date the job was completed. Later when you need to find customers to fill your schedule in a specific location or area you could create a custom report asking it to give you all house wash only, house/gutter and house wash/roof cleaning customers that you have not serviced yet this year to be listed. This list could further be sorted by adding other criteria like city or zip code and then be exported to an excel file where an e-mail list is made to send out a targeted e-mail offer, for example saying that you will be in that area next week and that you have three slots open and if they call and book an appointment by Friday they will get a free gutter cleaning (Or any other added service benefit you may want to offer)
Using the date of service you can also make your lists for thank you cards for the past month, find customers that have missed their normal yearly cleaning time or even for sending out customer Birthday cards if you have made a field for that.
Other things to look for when researching customer files: Review their invoices. Are they a once a year house washing customer that you have been washing for the last 5 years? You could send out a customer appreciation or referral offer. Is there a pattern of when they call or schedule their service with you? If you are slow in June you could possibly pre sell past July customers early with a phone call or an offer. Have you ever done any extra side work during one of these visits but not every time or have you ever noted there was other work available at this home that you have not done or that some one else is doing? Send them an offer like; “With any house wash every 100 square feet of flat work cleaned, you get 10 feet free.” to help get work you have not had in the past but know is available.
Make use of the notes section! Take notes on the job in a note book or on the quote form and transfer these notes into QB for a future gold mine of marketing information. Like “Customer just put in a pool, add quote for pool deck next year.”
In the newest QB version 11 they have a great new feature that allows you to attach additional documents to the file as a whole or to each invoice, estimate or sales order. You can use this feature to attach photos of the job, either at the time of the job quote, or B & A photos of the job after you are done. Then next time you can pull up what the property looked like to remind you of certain things you may have forgot to include in your costs or to notice changes when you visit that have been made since that last job that might change the price. Such as added planter boxes to the deck railings. You can also use this to attach copies of supply lists or invoices so you can remember how many cans of stain, the exact color and price you paid last time. This way you can find out the current pricing for these items ahead of time and adjust your billing or estimate accordingly. You can go back and attach new documents to old invoices with out a problem so even if you have supply lists, invoices and photos 10 years old you can still add them now to your current customer records. Once you have made and attached the copies, you may be able to get rid of the old paper work altogether. Clutter saving alert!
If you have different crews or employees doing work for you be sure to use the “Rep” drop down menu for this. This can help you track who did the quote? How many hours some one worked or the number of jobs done when paying your employees or if a customer has a praise or complaint you can easily tell who was last at that job. Or if a customer asks for the same tech you will know who to schedule. Even if changed to a new Rep at the next job visit or quote, the older invoice will still retain the past information. Great feature to use.
Now one feature I wish they would change is in the wording of the drop down menu in the “Job Info” tab. Right now it lists: None, Pending, Awarded, In Progress, Closed, and Not Awarded. I would like this to also allow you to add to these ones like: Quoted, Scheduled, Do Not Accept Job, etc.
But even leaving it this way you could still do a search for all pending sales orders to find customers that you quoted for a job (pending) that never called you back, to allow you to make a call or mailing list for follow up contact. You can also get pretty long with your job description with about 100 characters. The “Job Type” names must be shorter, at about 20 characters and this is where you can segment your customers by the work done, if you did not want to use the first location I discussed earlier "Customer Type".
Another really cool new feature in QB 11 is the map and directions feature. Not sure if a booked customer lives near one that is calling to schedule? Just click on the word “map” in blue under the customers address and the location will come up in Google Maps. It can also give you directions between addresses. It also gives you a space to enter notes if you have to remember things like “Gate will be locked, combo is 5-23-16 and must close gate behind or dogs will get out.” But this only works for the main address for the customer, so if you have a commercial customer with one mailing address and multiple locations knowing where their post office box or corporate office is may not be as helpful.
There are so many ways you can use the custom fields for marketing there is no way to list them all and I am sure you might think of ways I have not heard of yet. Only realize that in the older versions there are only 7 slots that can be used for custom field entry and once they have been made and used they can not be changed unless you make one inactive. Once you make it inactive it will not be searchable. The newer QB11 and maybe even QB10 will let you have more than 7. This has allowed us to add things like Facebook Friend and Newsletter subscriber as custom fields to our current customer accounts.
Well I hope this has helped you QB users and any that may be trying to decide if QB is a smart investment. But no matter what computer book keeping system you use, be sure to continuously make back up copies. We back up our QB files to readable/writable disks each week and once a month run a complete drive copy of our data to alternating portable hard drives. This way we can never lose more than a single week of QB data or a whole month of most of our other data to fire or theft. Another way is to pay for off site down loading, which is becoming very convenient and more affordable than ever before.
He wanted to know if most pressure washing professionals are using QuickBooks (QB) for their book keeping. Well QB is the #1 seller for a reason. But we use QB for so much more and since I have friends that work with Intuit in QB design and debugging, I have learned how QB can also help small business owners with their marketing.
And since June is National Entrepreneur Do-it-Yourself Marketing Month this would be a great time to show everyone some tricks and hand out tips.
First if you are not using QB you should really consider it. And if you are not fully using the report features, you are missing out on a major portion of what QB can do for you.
Did you know you can use features in QB to segment your customers in to specific groups to use later for marketing?
Go to your QB and pull up the Customer Center. Once there click on any customer you want. There you will see just under the Customer name a field called “Customer Type” This was designed to be used to indicate almost anything about your customer that you want, but it can be used for marketing by creating reports. It has been reported in surveys to QB that over 60% of QB users do not use the "customer type" function which is a terrible waste. To get to this field click on the “Edit Customer” button, top right. Once there click on the “Additional Information” tab. Now you can access the drop down menu and use the “Add New” feature. I would suggest using this to segment your customers buy type of work you do. For example if you do only a limited type of work like only house or window washing you might want to list the types but Square foot size ranges or type of house or building. Ex: Under 1000, 1500-2000, Two story, split level, ranch, strip mall etc.
But most of you have a range of work you perform like house wash, roof wash, and flat work (such as driveways or side walks). Then your list could look like this: House wash <1000sq, House wash/gutters, Gutter clean only, deck wash only, deck wash/strip & stain, etc. I have not found a limit to the number that you can use and no # is given in QB help.
Some might want to use the “Job Type” under the “Job” tab in this way instead which would also be fine, but if you have already been using QB for a while and have never used the Job function it is not possible to go back and convert past invoices so this may not be where you want to segment. But you can use it moving forward as a great tool to separate invoices for the different jobs you do for customers. But you must be consistent in naming your types of jobs to make reporting easier later. But with the “Customer Type” area you can go back and modify all or as many customer records as you would like.
Once you are using the “Type” area you can create reports that give you details to make e-mail or direct mail campaigns work.
You can also use Custom fields to help you even further. For instance you could set one of these fields to be called “last date of service” then every time you have finished invoicing a customer you go here and enter in the date the job was completed. Later when you need to find customers to fill your schedule in a specific location or area you could create a custom report asking it to give you all house wash only, house/gutter and house wash/roof cleaning customers that you have not serviced yet this year to be listed. This list could further be sorted by adding other criteria like city or zip code and then be exported to an excel file where an e-mail list is made to send out a targeted e-mail offer, for example saying that you will be in that area next week and that you have three slots open and if they call and book an appointment by Friday they will get a free gutter cleaning (Or any other added service benefit you may want to offer)
Using the date of service you can also make your lists for thank you cards for the past month, find customers that have missed their normal yearly cleaning time or even for sending out customer Birthday cards if you have made a field for that.
Other things to look for when researching customer files: Review their invoices. Are they a once a year house washing customer that you have been washing for the last 5 years? You could send out a customer appreciation or referral offer. Is there a pattern of when they call or schedule their service with you? If you are slow in June you could possibly pre sell past July customers early with a phone call or an offer. Have you ever done any extra side work during one of these visits but not every time or have you ever noted there was other work available at this home that you have not done or that some one else is doing? Send them an offer like; “With any house wash every 100 square feet of flat work cleaned, you get 10 feet free.” to help get work you have not had in the past but know is available.
Make use of the notes section! Take notes on the job in a note book or on the quote form and transfer these notes into QB for a future gold mine of marketing information. Like “Customer just put in a pool, add quote for pool deck next year.”
In the newest QB version 11 they have a great new feature that allows you to attach additional documents to the file as a whole or to each invoice, estimate or sales order. You can use this feature to attach photos of the job, either at the time of the job quote, or B & A photos of the job after you are done. Then next time you can pull up what the property looked like to remind you of certain things you may have forgot to include in your costs or to notice changes when you visit that have been made since that last job that might change the price. Such as added planter boxes to the deck railings. You can also use this to attach copies of supply lists or invoices so you can remember how many cans of stain, the exact color and price you paid last time. This way you can find out the current pricing for these items ahead of time and adjust your billing or estimate accordingly. You can go back and attach new documents to old invoices with out a problem so even if you have supply lists, invoices and photos 10 years old you can still add them now to your current customer records. Once you have made and attached the copies, you may be able to get rid of the old paper work altogether. Clutter saving alert!
If you have different crews or employees doing work for you be sure to use the “Rep” drop down menu for this. This can help you track who did the quote? How many hours some one worked or the number of jobs done when paying your employees or if a customer has a praise or complaint you can easily tell who was last at that job. Or if a customer asks for the same tech you will know who to schedule. Even if changed to a new Rep at the next job visit or quote, the older invoice will still retain the past information. Great feature to use.
Now one feature I wish they would change is in the wording of the drop down menu in the “Job Info” tab. Right now it lists: None, Pending, Awarded, In Progress, Closed, and Not Awarded. I would like this to also allow you to add to these ones like: Quoted, Scheduled, Do Not Accept Job, etc.
But even leaving it this way you could still do a search for all pending sales orders to find customers that you quoted for a job (pending) that never called you back, to allow you to make a call or mailing list for follow up contact. You can also get pretty long with your job description with about 100 characters. The “Job Type” names must be shorter, at about 20 characters and this is where you can segment your customers by the work done, if you did not want to use the first location I discussed earlier "Customer Type".
Another really cool new feature in QB 11 is the map and directions feature. Not sure if a booked customer lives near one that is calling to schedule? Just click on the word “map” in blue under the customers address and the location will come up in Google Maps. It can also give you directions between addresses. It also gives you a space to enter notes if you have to remember things like “Gate will be locked, combo is 5-23-16 and must close gate behind or dogs will get out.” But this only works for the main address for the customer, so if you have a commercial customer with one mailing address and multiple locations knowing where their post office box or corporate office is may not be as helpful.
There are so many ways you can use the custom fields for marketing there is no way to list them all and I am sure you might think of ways I have not heard of yet. Only realize that in the older versions there are only 7 slots that can be used for custom field entry and once they have been made and used they can not be changed unless you make one inactive. Once you make it inactive it will not be searchable. The newer QB11 and maybe even QB10 will let you have more than 7. This has allowed us to add things like Facebook Friend and Newsletter subscriber as custom fields to our current customer accounts.
Well I hope this has helped you QB users and any that may be trying to decide if QB is a smart investment. But no matter what computer book keeping system you use, be sure to continuously make back up copies. We back up our QB files to readable/writable disks each week and once a month run a complete drive copy of our data to alternating portable hard drives. This way we can never lose more than a single week of QB data or a whole month of most of our other data to fire or theft. Another way is to pay for off site down loading, which is becoming very convenient and more affordable than ever before.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Inbound Marketing with Social Media
Finding new ways to market your business with out breaking the bank is one goal almost every small business owner wants to find.
During this month I plan to give you some suggestions, links to resources and hard facts to try and help you reach this goal.
Social Media is the new way to reach old and potentially new customers. Inbound Marketing is the future of small business. Outbound marketing may become all but extinct in the next 10 years. It is necessary to have more than a web site these days and to try and find customers via direct mail, e-mail and other media campaigns. Customers are tuning out and avoiding traditional methods business use to use to sell their products and services. New prospects want to find you when they need you, not you find them and interupt their day. They want real value and information even before they are willing to contact you about a service you could provide for them.
As we know most web surfers will make a decision to stay on your site in less than 3 seconds and many web analyst’s are saying that it has moved down now to less than 2 seconds.
So how can you make your web site be the one a service surfer will find and then stop and take a look at?
I will give you a list of 5 key elements here and then elaborate a little for you under the list.
Your business name that corresponds with the work you do: Bill’s Pressure Washing and House Cleaning. You can even use multiple names and have multiple sites if your work is strongly divided, such as All Kitchen Hood Cleaning and Bill’s Pressure Washing. You can still use one phone, just have two separate numbers that are forwarded to a single phone, most phones now will let you know where the number was forwarded from so you will know how to answer the call.
Or you may need to have multiple landing pages added to your web site, designed toward each part of work that you cover. It no longer smart to have just one main page of your web site listing everything you do. You must have that plus a page for your deck cleaning and repair, roof washing and gutter cleaning, house washing, concrete cleaning, Christmas light decorating... any job you do can have its own page which in turn can all link back to one contact entry page.
And with so many new searchers using their phones, iPads and other smaller screen devices you will need to revise your pages to give those viewers information in the way they will see it, only the left top 1/3 of the page.
Ok on to point #2. Now that your surfer has stopped you need to grab them with an offer and call to action. Do you offer same day free estimates? Free gutter cleaning with new roof cleaning? 20 sq ft free concrete cleaning with each 100 ft cleaned?
What ever the offer is, make it stand out, be clear and then have an obvious button to click on for them to take action with. I could write a complete blog just about how to do this, and I will, but for now just know this is what needs to happen to get the contact.
Point #3, to be able to give examples of how you can solve their problem, you first need to know what that problem is! This is where creating pages within your web site with Meta tags and key words to specific words and long tail phrases people to search are become very important. You want some one that searches for “lowest priced house washing in Fulton county” to find your page on house washing, not to be taken to someone else’s page or even to your web site to a page about deck washing or roof cleaning, even though you may do all three, that surfer will have clicked off your site before you can blink. I will expand on this in a future blog post.
#4 - visuals. Visuals are becoming more and more important to surfers; they don’t want to have to read everything they want to know, they want to see it. Pictures tell the story many times much easier and faster than words can. The brain can process pictures over 10 times faster than when reading information that the picture is showing. For example:
These Before and After photos of removing rust from a concrete patio is understood much faster than reading the statements. “We can clean your concrete patio, walk way or drive way from rust, dirt, oil, and tire marks.” or “We can remove rust caused by patio furniture, so on and so forth.” Not that you should not still make the statement, but understand that people scan information, especially text and photos catch the eye. Videos are even better. You can improve the time spent on your site tremendously, sometimes by more than 20% with video. For example if your average page view is currently 6 seconds and you add even one 1 minute video, when it is watched you have increased your view time over 10%. Have multiple videos available that are shorter like 20-30 seconds and you will increase the number of videos a single person will be willing to watch and you can reach view rates of 20-40% higher than your starting 6% rate. Be sure to state near the video how long each one is to increase the chance of even the first view. People will not click on videos they feel are too evolved or will abandon one once it starts if it is moving too slowly or does not start to answer their problem or question.
Lastly give your surfer the option to learn more and engage with you in the future. Offer them newsletters, future discounts if they leave you their email, links to other information they may want to learn about, etc. These are opportunities to be able to contact these people in the future even if they did not click over and fill out your free estimate or contact form. They may just be price shopping and would like the opportunity to try you later if you sent them a discount offer and would be willing to just leave you their email address but not their name, so don’t require it.
I know this has been a little long but I hope you will come back and view the follow up posts that we will have. To be sure you are included, you can join our e-mail list by going to our web site www.soapwarehouse.biz then you will receive newsletters or you can go and like our Facebook page's or subscribe to this blog and you will know when new posts are added. You can even follow us on Twitter.
Thanks for reading.
During this month I plan to give you some suggestions, links to resources and hard facts to try and help you reach this goal.
Social Media is the new way to reach old and potentially new customers. Inbound Marketing is the future of small business. Outbound marketing may become all but extinct in the next 10 years. It is necessary to have more than a web site these days and to try and find customers via direct mail, e-mail and other media campaigns. Customers are tuning out and avoiding traditional methods business use to use to sell their products and services. New prospects want to find you when they need you, not you find them and interupt their day. They want real value and information even before they are willing to contact you about a service you could provide for them.
As we know most web surfers will make a decision to stay on your site in less than 3 seconds and many web analyst’s are saying that it has moved down now to less than 2 seconds.
So how can you make your web site be the one a service surfer will find and then stop and take a look at?
I will give you a list of 5 key elements here and then elaborate a little for you under the list.
- Quality information above the fold and on the left 1/3 of the web page.
- An obvious offer and call to action.
- Examples of how to solve their problems (the reason they have searched)
- Include visuals (especially video)
- Ways to continue to be educated or engage if they want too.
Your business name that corresponds with the work you do: Bill’s Pressure Washing and House Cleaning. You can even use multiple names and have multiple sites if your work is strongly divided, such as All Kitchen Hood Cleaning and Bill’s Pressure Washing. You can still use one phone, just have two separate numbers that are forwarded to a single phone, most phones now will let you know where the number was forwarded from so you will know how to answer the call.
Or you may need to have multiple landing pages added to your web site, designed toward each part of work that you cover. It no longer smart to have just one main page of your web site listing everything you do. You must have that plus a page for your deck cleaning and repair, roof washing and gutter cleaning, house washing, concrete cleaning, Christmas light decorating... any job you do can have its own page which in turn can all link back to one contact entry page.
And with so many new searchers using their phones, iPads and other smaller screen devices you will need to revise your pages to give those viewers information in the way they will see it, only the left top 1/3 of the page.
Ok on to point #2. Now that your surfer has stopped you need to grab them with an offer and call to action. Do you offer same day free estimates? Free gutter cleaning with new roof cleaning? 20 sq ft free concrete cleaning with each 100 ft cleaned?
What ever the offer is, make it stand out, be clear and then have an obvious button to click on for them to take action with. I could write a complete blog just about how to do this, and I will, but for now just know this is what needs to happen to get the contact.
Point #3, to be able to give examples of how you can solve their problem, you first need to know what that problem is! This is where creating pages within your web site with Meta tags and key words to specific words and long tail phrases people to search are become very important. You want some one that searches for “lowest priced house washing in Fulton county” to find your page on house washing, not to be taken to someone else’s page or even to your web site to a page about deck washing or roof cleaning, even though you may do all three, that surfer will have clicked off your site before you can blink. I will expand on this in a future blog post.
#4 - visuals. Visuals are becoming more and more important to surfers; they don’t want to have to read everything they want to know, they want to see it. Pictures tell the story many times much easier and faster than words can. The brain can process pictures over 10 times faster than when reading information that the picture is showing. For example:
These Before and After photos of removing rust from a concrete patio is understood much faster than reading the statements. “We can clean your concrete patio, walk way or drive way from rust, dirt, oil, and tire marks.” or “We can remove rust caused by patio furniture, so on and so forth.” Not that you should not still make the statement, but understand that people scan information, especially text and photos catch the eye. Videos are even better. You can improve the time spent on your site tremendously, sometimes by more than 20% with video. For example if your average page view is currently 6 seconds and you add even one 1 minute video, when it is watched you have increased your view time over 10%. Have multiple videos available that are shorter like 20-30 seconds and you will increase the number of videos a single person will be willing to watch and you can reach view rates of 20-40% higher than your starting 6% rate. Be sure to state near the video how long each one is to increase the chance of even the first view. People will not click on videos they feel are too evolved or will abandon one once it starts if it is moving too slowly or does not start to answer their problem or question.
Lastly give your surfer the option to learn more and engage with you in the future. Offer them newsletters, future discounts if they leave you their email, links to other information they may want to learn about, etc. These are opportunities to be able to contact these people in the future even if they did not click over and fill out your free estimate or contact form. They may just be price shopping and would like the opportunity to try you later if you sent them a discount offer and would be willing to just leave you their email address but not their name, so don’t require it.
I know this has been a little long but I hope you will come back and view the follow up posts that we will have. To be sure you are included, you can join our e-mail list by going to our web site www.soapwarehouse.biz then you will receive newsletters or you can go and like our Facebook page's or subscribe to this blog and you will know when new posts are added. You can even follow us on Twitter.
Thanks for reading.
Monday, May 24, 2010
What to consider when making a business brochure?
Besides a business card the next most usable customer marketing item you should always have available is a business brochure.
I have been approached a lot, so far this year, about this topic so I thought this would be a great subject to go ahead and discuss.
I will focus on what should be in a general business brochure rather then the physical parts of a brochure such as; type of fold, paper weight, gloss vs. matte, B and W vs. single or multi color. Those items can all be addressed once the content is hammered out and the budget is established. So lets get into the backbone of your brochure, the information and the call to action.
You want your brochure to be an extension of your business, a continuation of the branding you have already established with your business card, web site, etc. Try to make it so your brochure is easily recognizable that it came from you and your business. Your logo, phone number, web site address, location coverage area, type of work you perform, should all be easily seen and spelled out briefly and clearly. A brochure should be just a snap shot not a photo album, a few paragraphs about a few main topics not a novel.
Leave the longer in depth information to be found on your web site, or in an individual product and job phamplet that you give to your bookable customers when discussing a job, but not in your general business brochure given out to the broad general prospect population.
Make sure any brochure piece that you make or have made is multi market usable; such as a mailer, handout at a home show, or a customer referral piece. No exact pricing should be mentioned here so the brochure doesn't become obsolete and you waste printing costs. This way you can save on being able to produce more pieces for less money.
For your call to action you should use phrases like "Call for our current special" or offer" besides the typical call us for a quote. Might have something like "Contact us for a quote using this code." (leaving a space blank you can fill in) This will help with tracking a special event, or location placement, or to track when a mailing was sent out.
Your extra offers should ALWAYS be perceived value items and not a % discount off the cost. For every 10% you give away it takes 10 more of the same job with out the discount to make it up. Offers can many times be small normal up sell items. You could say, "Call now to receive one free service with your cleaning." or booking" (the service does not have to be explained until they call). This way you can change it is as you need.
It is good to have several offers available for you to use, tiered according to the work the customer wants, once you are speaking to them. For example: Roof wash - free gutter cleaning, House wash - free window cleaning, Driveway flat work or Deck cleaning (if you charge by the square foot)- free 10-20 ft of an additional walkway, or door stoop. Never use the offer to take away from the original work to be done. For example; giving 20 square feet free off of the driveway they called you to clean. You do not want to give the perception that the work they called you for is not worth the full asking price.
Plus if you give a dollar off discount to a customer, they will end up only remembering the price they paid,
which included the discount, not the original price. So when they call again or tell others what they paid they could think you have gone up or are not giving them the same deal and possibly go else where.
Your brochure should show a few good, clear, before and after shots of your work, and put in testimonials. I know they take up space but it is important potential clients feel you have satisfied similar customers like them for the work they need done.
You can have a small logo, address and phone number section that is easy to tear off (inside back lower corner of a tri-fold) with a code number added as a referral piece. But be sure to still have the same information included else where (like the front cover) so the initial customer still retains your contact info.
You can have a section (like a back panel or inside fold) stating the date and service that was done, if any other work was recommended or date when work should be repeated. But what can be even better is to have this actually put on a peel off sticker (instead of printed in the brochure) that you can attach in the blank or used address mailer space of the brochure, this you then leave with the customer after completion of the job, it becomes a reminder as well as a referral piece for future contact.
I hope this information was helpful next time you go to create your business brochure.
I have been approached a lot, so far this year, about this topic so I thought this would be a great subject to go ahead and discuss.
I will focus on what should be in a general business brochure rather then the physical parts of a brochure such as; type of fold, paper weight, gloss vs. matte, B and W vs. single or multi color. Those items can all be addressed once the content is hammered out and the budget is established. So lets get into the backbone of your brochure, the information and the call to action.
You want your brochure to be an extension of your business, a continuation of the branding you have already established with your business card, web site, etc. Try to make it so your brochure is easily recognizable that it came from you and your business. Your logo, phone number, web site address, location coverage area, type of work you perform, should all be easily seen and spelled out briefly and clearly. A brochure should be just a snap shot not a photo album, a few paragraphs about a few main topics not a novel.
Leave the longer in depth information to be found on your web site, or in an individual product and job phamplet that you give to your bookable customers when discussing a job, but not in your general business brochure given out to the broad general prospect population.
Make sure any brochure piece that you make or have made is multi market usable; such as a mailer, handout at a home show, or a customer referral piece. No exact pricing should be mentioned here so the brochure doesn't become obsolete and you waste printing costs. This way you can save on being able to produce more pieces for less money.
For your call to action you should use phrases like "Call for our current special" or offer" besides the typical call us for a quote. Might have something like "Contact us for a quote using this code." (leaving a space blank you can fill in) This will help with tracking a special event, or location placement, or to track when a mailing was sent out.
Your extra offers should ALWAYS be perceived value items and not a % discount off the cost. For every 10% you give away it takes 10 more of the same job with out the discount to make it up. Offers can many times be small normal up sell items. You could say, "Call now to receive one free service with your cleaning." or booking" (the service does not have to be explained until they call). This way you can change it is as you need.
It is good to have several offers available for you to use, tiered according to the work the customer wants, once you are speaking to them. For example: Roof wash - free gutter cleaning, House wash - free window cleaning, Driveway flat work or Deck cleaning (if you charge by the square foot)- free 10-20 ft of an additional walkway, or door stoop. Never use the offer to take away from the original work to be done. For example; giving 20 square feet free off of the driveway they called you to clean. You do not want to give the perception that the work they called you for is not worth the full asking price.
Plus if you give a dollar off discount to a customer, they will end up only remembering the price they paid,
which included the discount, not the original price. So when they call again or tell others what they paid they could think you have gone up or are not giving them the same deal and possibly go else where.
Your brochure should show a few good, clear, before and after shots of your work, and put in testimonials. I know they take up space but it is important potential clients feel you have satisfied similar customers like them for the work they need done.
You can have a small logo, address and phone number section that is easy to tear off (inside back lower corner of a tri-fold) with a code number added as a referral piece. But be sure to still have the same information included else where (like the front cover) so the initial customer still retains your contact info.
You can have a section (like a back panel or inside fold) stating the date and service that was done, if any other work was recommended or date when work should be repeated. But what can be even better is to have this actually put on a peel off sticker (instead of printed in the brochure) that you can attach in the blank or used address mailer space of the brochure, this you then leave with the customer after completion of the job, it becomes a reminder as well as a referral piece for future contact.
I hope this information was helpful next time you go to create your business brochure.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Are you part of the new digital age?
I hate to text, I even have texting blocked from my phone. I never saw the need to twitter, yet I just got us signed up before going to Texas and have sent out some tweets, but I do have a personal facebook page besides our business one and business listings on Linkedin.com and MerchantCircle.com. But there are some new social networking ideas that I think every business person should atempt even if they are not a big player in this new digital wave.
I spoke before about a company Bookfresh.com, and they just asked me to join their group on MerchantCircle.com. A business to business only site not unlike facebook.com and very close to Linkedin.com. Merchant Circle puts you in touch with other local business that might use your service or that could help you network to find new customers. Bookfresh is doing something like what I had mentioned in a previous blog about getting a virtual office to take calls and make appointments for you and your business.
They also use the social network feature of linking you into facebook that allows new customers to find you and book jobs right from thier facebook page. How cool it that. You do not even have to pay for the marketing to find these new customers, your freinds and their freinds on facebook does it all for you! And if you still have not made yourself a website like I have written about in other blogs, they have a simple single web page for you that you can customize or if you already have a web site (good for you) that you can link to, increasing your exposure for SEO.
Another great new thing that just came out late October is an 'app' to Valpak.com. Here is an article that tells about it. http://blog.kudzu.com/?p=1775. Many of you might already use or know about Valpak, a national company that sends out local coupon sheets in a blue envelope to homeowners in the zip codes you want to market too. Well they have recently added an on line version and are giving out this free app to link phones and hand helds to Valpack on line to instantly get their users coupons. Go here to see it or get it. www.itunes.com/appstore/. What a great way to be on top of the list when a customer deceides that they need their house washed, deck, driveway or roof cleaned, or maybe even help with holiday light instalations (if you offer that) here is how to contact them http://www.valpak.com/advertise/index.jsp.
Also you do not have to be using the local Valpac blue envelope program to use the on line one. You can do them separatly or together.
Here's to you, your business and better marketing the digital way in the new year.
I spoke before about a company Bookfresh.com, and they just asked me to join their group on MerchantCircle.com. A business to business only site not unlike facebook.com and very close to Linkedin.com. Merchant Circle puts you in touch with other local business that might use your service or that could help you network to find new customers. Bookfresh is doing something like what I had mentioned in a previous blog about getting a virtual office to take calls and make appointments for you and your business.
They also use the social network feature of linking you into facebook that allows new customers to find you and book jobs right from thier facebook page. How cool it that. You do not even have to pay for the marketing to find these new customers, your freinds and their freinds on facebook does it all for you! And if you still have not made yourself a website like I have written about in other blogs, they have a simple single web page for you that you can customize or if you already have a web site (good for you) that you can link to, increasing your exposure for SEO.
Another great new thing that just came out late October is an 'app' to Valpak.com. Here is an article that tells about it. http://blog.kudzu.com/?p=1775. Many of you might already use or know about Valpak, a national company that sends out local coupon sheets in a blue envelope to homeowners in the zip codes you want to market too. Well they have recently added an on line version and are giving out this free app to link phones and hand helds to Valpack on line to instantly get their users coupons. Go here to see it or get it. www.itunes.com/appstore/. What a great way to be on top of the list when a customer deceides that they need their house washed, deck, driveway or roof cleaned, or maybe even help with holiday light instalations (if you offer that) here is how to contact them http://www.valpak.com/advertise/index.jsp.
Also you do not have to be using the local Valpac blue envelope program to use the on line one. You can do them separatly or together.
Here's to you, your business and better marketing the digital way in the new year.
Monday, November 9, 2009
How to forcast marketing, Tea leaves, crystal balls, or data?
This problem is one that I am working on here at Soap Warehouse and one that I am sure most of you have to deal with at least a few times a year if not monthly. Where do I spend the money I have on advertising? How to I figure out what is working and what new to try?
I read this short article yesterday that got me to thinking of a plan of action.
BUSINESS MARKETING: Tea leaves, crystal balls, or data?
Maybe it can help you as it hopefully will help us here at Soap Warehouse.
This along with a program I love FreeMind, these I hope will help keep our marketing fluid, impactful and as cost effective as possible.
With the FreeMind application I will enter in all the options we have found this year for marketing. I will put in all the dates (when I have to have work orders in or closing dates) and costs of all the opportunities we might want to try this year. Even if I doubt we will be able to afford a few of them. At least they will be on the radar as ideas to shoot for later.
Then as the year progresses and results are measured with each marketing program I will be able to see if something worked and we need to continue on this path, that will cause us to negate other programs, or if we will stop one method or avenue, leaving open the time and money to try another tack on our marketing course.
This way I can start out this year with a set budget but not a definite place where all the resources will go so that we can make changes during the year or even each month as things change.
I hope these can help you as well.
I read this short article yesterday that got me to thinking of a plan of action.
BUSINESS MARKETING: Tea leaves, crystal balls, or data?
Maybe it can help you as it hopefully will help us here at Soap Warehouse.
This along with a program I love FreeMind, these I hope will help keep our marketing fluid, impactful and as cost effective as possible.
With the FreeMind application I will enter in all the options we have found this year for marketing. I will put in all the dates (when I have to have work orders in or closing dates) and costs of all the opportunities we might want to try this year. Even if I doubt we will be able to afford a few of them. At least they will be on the radar as ideas to shoot for later.
Then as the year progresses and results are measured with each marketing program I will be able to see if something worked and we need to continue on this path, that will cause us to negate other programs, or if we will stop one method or avenue, leaving open the time and money to try another tack on our marketing course.
This way I can start out this year with a set budget but not a definite place where all the resources will go so that we can make changes during the year or even each month as things change.
I hope these can help you as well.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Be Just 1% Better!
I just read some very interesting but true advice I would like to pass on to you.
It is better to be just 1% better for 100 reasons than to be 100% better for only 1.
If you take that philosophy with your business you will see that even little changes make a big difference.
For example if your biggest competitor is always giving a 10% discount to new or referral customers and makes a big point of it in their advertising, then you offer 11%.
Now sometimes you can not out do someone or something by even 1%, take "available by phone 24 hours as day" for an example. But you can offer a faster response time either for a call back or actual booked appointment. But you must be able to follow through on your claims so chose carefully. You could offer a superior brand of stain for deck work instead of the run of the mill that everyone else carries, this does not mean that you do not charge for it, just that you carry and market it as the best in the industry. You can offer discounted window cleaning with a house wash or complementary gutter cleaning with a roof cleaning. Anything that the customer perceives as you giving that extra 1% over and over during your job for them will make you stand out, get you referrals and more jobs.
Always leave the owners property better then you found it, and I do not just mean on the job you are being paid to do. I mean make sure you pick up all of your trash or even their trash that your cleaning uncovers, within reason. If your service included furniture removal and replacement for a deck or patio cleaning be sure it is put back correctly or better than you found it. It may cost you only a few extra pennies to rinse off those plastic planters, deck chairs or cushions to make them look better. Of course you can always offer side services for a complete through cleaning job on these items first. And you must be willing to do these sort of small jobs that take up extra time before you offer them to the customer. It does you no good to advertise that you offer these services and have to later, while on the job, refuse to do them because you have booked your time so tight that you can not accommodate them. No matter how much pre-planning you do or questions you ask something else will always come up.
But if you do that extra 1 % for the customer over and over it will pay off 100 times over.
It is better to be just 1% better for 100 reasons than to be 100% better for only 1.
If you take that philosophy with your business you will see that even little changes make a big difference.
For example if your biggest competitor is always giving a 10% discount to new or referral customers and makes a big point of it in their advertising, then you offer 11%.
Now sometimes you can not out do someone or something by even 1%, take "available by phone 24 hours as day" for an example. But you can offer a faster response time either for a call back or actual booked appointment. But you must be able to follow through on your claims so chose carefully. You could offer a superior brand of stain for deck work instead of the run of the mill that everyone else carries, this does not mean that you do not charge for it, just that you carry and market it as the best in the industry. You can offer discounted window cleaning with a house wash or complementary gutter cleaning with a roof cleaning. Anything that the customer perceives as you giving that extra 1% over and over during your job for them will make you stand out, get you referrals and more jobs.
Always leave the owners property better then you found it, and I do not just mean on the job you are being paid to do. I mean make sure you pick up all of your trash or even their trash that your cleaning uncovers, within reason. If your service included furniture removal and replacement for a deck or patio cleaning be sure it is put back correctly or better than you found it. It may cost you only a few extra pennies to rinse off those plastic planters, deck chairs or cushions to make them look better. Of course you can always offer side services for a complete through cleaning job on these items first. And you must be willing to do these sort of small jobs that take up extra time before you offer them to the customer. It does you no good to advertise that you offer these services and have to later, while on the job, refuse to do them because you have booked your time so tight that you can not accommodate them. No matter how much pre-planning you do or questions you ask something else will always come up.
But if you do that extra 1 % for the customer over and over it will pay off 100 times over.
Monday, November 3, 2008
Getting the right business exposure.
This is a list I got from Entrepreneur magazine a while ago.
Top 11 things to get exposure for your business:
#11. Be reachable - Have a clear and concise business card. Have a press contact listed on your web site that can answer questions and be reached on the first call.
#10. Get on-line. As I had in a previous entry this is a #1 need in today's market. Add articles even if just links, showing that your company is in the news as a leader.
#9. Perfect your elevator pitch. You should always be able to tell anyone in just a sentence or two what you and your company does, and have a business card ready as a follow up.
#8. Show your face. Have a press folio made up and photo's available to be used for any print article. Also good to use the same ones on line to let the contact know on site they have the correct company they are looking for or saw info on.
#7. Establish yourself as an expert. Speak at meetings (even if just the Rotary Club), become a media contact.
#6. Do not send sloppy copy. Have a pre created standard press release about you and your company, even if just the same as on line that can be used by anyone in the media.
#5. Know your audience. Make sure where the press release is going is where you want your future customers coming from.
#4. Tell the whole story. Think as if you had to write a headline and two paragraphs about your company. What would it say. Be complete, brief and concise with your info.
#3. Plan ahead. Check with publications you read or would want to see your story in. Find out what their upcoming issues will be covering and see if you can write a story or give info that they may want to use and quote you on.
#2. Distribution channels: These are ones that the media go to when looking for information. PRWeb, Business Wire, PRNewswire, Market Wire. If you can get your business story on one or more of these it will work for you.
And #1. Respond Promptly. Most writers are on a time line and will move on to their next contact if you are not immediately available for comment or with a story.
Good luck.
Top 11 things to get exposure for your business:
#11. Be reachable - Have a clear and concise business card. Have a press contact listed on your web site that can answer questions and be reached on the first call.
#10. Get on-line. As I had in a previous entry this is a #1 need in today's market. Add articles even if just links, showing that your company is in the news as a leader.
#9. Perfect your elevator pitch. You should always be able to tell anyone in just a sentence or two what you and your company does, and have a business card ready as a follow up.
#8. Show your face. Have a press folio made up and photo's available to be used for any print article. Also good to use the same ones on line to let the contact know on site they have the correct company they are looking for or saw info on.
#7. Establish yourself as an expert. Speak at meetings (even if just the Rotary Club), become a media contact.
#6. Do not send sloppy copy. Have a pre created standard press release about you and your company, even if just the same as on line that can be used by anyone in the media.
#5. Know your audience. Make sure where the press release is going is where you want your future customers coming from.
#4. Tell the whole story. Think as if you had to write a headline and two paragraphs about your company. What would it say. Be complete, brief and concise with your info.
#3. Plan ahead. Check with publications you read or would want to see your story in. Find out what their upcoming issues will be covering and see if you can write a story or give info that they may want to use and quote you on.
#2. Distribution channels: These are ones that the media go to when looking for information. PRWeb, Business Wire, PRNewswire, Market Wire. If you can get your business story on one or more of these it will work for you.
And #1. Respond Promptly. Most writers are on a time line and will move on to their next contact if you are not immediately available for comment or with a story.
Good luck.
Friday, August 8, 2008
5 Reasons to Have a Web Presence Now.
This is a good article from Entrepreneur.com and if you have never looked at thier site it is one that you should book mark. You should always take some time to look at what is working for others to find what can help you and your business.
http://www.entrepreneur.com/microsites/microsoftofficelive/article192174.html
Follow this link or cut and paste it in your browser to get there.
But in short these are the main points:
1. Visibility: With more and more consumers logging onto the Web to research products and services, if they are going to find your business, your business needs to be on the Web. If a potential customer Google’s your city name and your service would they find your website listed or just your competitors? Try this today and see who is out there where you should be too.
2. Reach: With a Web site, you are no longer limited to a local customer base. Of course with most of you proximity is a major factor but on the web you are able to reach many more prospective customers this way even in your local area. You can hand out only so many business cards. Even if your name has been mentioned and no card given could this person looking for you find you?
3. Customer service: When customers can log onto your Web site and easily find the information they want—when they want it—their satisfaction increases. Having ways on the web site that customers can contact you besides reaching you on the phone is key. Have an e-mail address or form to fill out saving them time for a question or quote.
4. Competition: A professional looking Web site can level the playing field for smaller companies trying to compete against larger enterprises. It’s also a way to stay in the game; even if people can’t find you on the Web chances are they can find your competitors.
5. Credibility: When you can point customers, partners, even potential employees or investors to a Web site, it tells them you are a serious business. Use lines like doing business for over 10 years. Satisfying customers in the Tri-area since 2001. Even if you have just started you can use lines like “Only use top quality products.” And list them if they have name recognition with your customer. List what groups you are affiliated with for example the local BBB or PWNA.
And remember once you have your site up send us the link and we will put you in the customer link area on our web site to help more people find you.
http://www.entrepreneur.com/microsites/microsoftofficelive/article192174.html
Follow this link or cut and paste it in your browser to get there.
But in short these are the main points:
1. Visibility: With more and more consumers logging onto the Web to research products and services, if they are going to find your business, your business needs to be on the Web. If a potential customer Google’s your city name and your service would they find your website listed or just your competitors? Try this today and see who is out there where you should be too.
2. Reach: With a Web site, you are no longer limited to a local customer base. Of course with most of you proximity is a major factor but on the web you are able to reach many more prospective customers this way even in your local area. You can hand out only so many business cards. Even if your name has been mentioned and no card given could this person looking for you find you?
3. Customer service: When customers can log onto your Web site and easily find the information they want—when they want it—their satisfaction increases. Having ways on the web site that customers can contact you besides reaching you on the phone is key. Have an e-mail address or form to fill out saving them time for a question or quote.
4. Competition: A professional looking Web site can level the playing field for smaller companies trying to compete against larger enterprises. It’s also a way to stay in the game; even if people can’t find you on the Web chances are they can find your competitors.
5. Credibility: When you can point customers, partners, even potential employees or investors to a Web site, it tells them you are a serious business. Use lines like doing business for over 10 years. Satisfying customers in the Tri-area since 2001. Even if you have just started you can use lines like “Only use top quality products.” And list them if they have name recognition with your customer. List what groups you are affiliated with for example the local BBB or PWNA.
And remember once you have your site up send us the link and we will put you in the customer link area on our web site to help more people find you.
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Post cards
Next to business cards post cards can be money well spent it just depends on how you use them.
Spending hundreds on bulk mailings in mailers or on post cards can be great for the large companies that are building and maintaining name recognition, but for the little guy this kind of marketing expenditure is just out of reach.
But don’t give up on post cards yet. One thing they are great for is repeat customer business and customer loyalty.
Say you have a customer that gives you a referral, but you do not have a referral business card program in place like I spoke of yesterday. You can use a post card as a thank you for sending you business and list an offer on it as your thank you, such as $20 off your next visit. You would be surprised to know most people like to see a concrete figure instead of a percentage, even when the percentage off may have been greater in the long run. For example you offer $20 off of your next service instead of 10% off, which they perceive as less value, and their next service call costs $300. You have saved $10 but they are happy they got the $20 off.
Post cards are also great for recouping lost business. Say you see that a loyal customer that calls every year has not called you yet. First send a kindly reminder card that their service is due, it may have just slipped their mind or they have been busy and have been meaning to call you. Remind them your days fill up fast this time of year and to call soon, they need a reason to call you. Then if still no call you may want to extend an incentive offer to them. Always make a definite offer with a definite dead line. Like you have an opening during such an such week and can do it for X amount but only if they call by a certain date. Also never offer more than 10 or so percentage of what you are making for the job depending on your expenses and mark up rate. You are trying to get back business you lost not give it away just to have a job to do.
One more important thing is for your card to have your customers name on it. Do not use the standard Dear loyal customer. Your customer needs to feel like they are important to you not just a number. That salutation may be fine for a general card you are sending to all of your customers to make an announcement but not when you are trying to win back a customer.
Good Luck
Spending hundreds on bulk mailings in mailers or on post cards can be great for the large companies that are building and maintaining name recognition, but for the little guy this kind of marketing expenditure is just out of reach.
But don’t give up on post cards yet. One thing they are great for is repeat customer business and customer loyalty.
Say you have a customer that gives you a referral, but you do not have a referral business card program in place like I spoke of yesterday. You can use a post card as a thank you for sending you business and list an offer on it as your thank you, such as $20 off your next visit. You would be surprised to know most people like to see a concrete figure instead of a percentage, even when the percentage off may have been greater in the long run. For example you offer $20 off of your next service instead of 10% off, which they perceive as less value, and their next service call costs $300. You have saved $10 but they are happy they got the $20 off.
Post cards are also great for recouping lost business. Say you see that a loyal customer that calls every year has not called you yet. First send a kindly reminder card that their service is due, it may have just slipped their mind or they have been busy and have been meaning to call you. Remind them your days fill up fast this time of year and to call soon, they need a reason to call you. Then if still no call you may want to extend an incentive offer to them. Always make a definite offer with a definite dead line. Like you have an opening during such an such week and can do it for X amount but only if they call by a certain date. Also never offer more than 10 or so percentage of what you are making for the job depending on your expenses and mark up rate. You are trying to get back business you lost not give it away just to have a job to do.
One more important thing is for your card to have your customers name on it. Do not use the standard Dear loyal customer. Your customer needs to feel like they are important to you not just a number. That salutation may be fine for a general card you are sending to all of your customers to make an announcement but not when you are trying to win back a customer.
Good Luck
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Business cards
One item that is your best spent money for the dollar is your business cards. They are the least expensive way to get your name out and get jobs. Make it a goal to hand out at least 10 cards a day to people you meet. True many will just get tossed out in the nearest garbage can but you never know when someone will need your service and dig out that card that guy gave them. Or when they will hand your card over to someone else that mentions to them they need to find someone to wash their house. You can expect only 10% of any type of advertising including business cards to generate a call. Then it is up to you to land the business.
It is a known fact that people need 3-5 contacts from someone before they may buy. Also it takes someone to hear or read something at least 3 times before it sinks in. And the number one way to get business is by referrals. So how do you get those referrals? Leave your customers at least 10 cards with their name on the back and ask them if they liked your service to hand them out to their friends. Also make an offer to them: like you will give 10% off or $25 off the next job for them or even send them a gift card worth $25. And that if their friend calls and uses their name that you will also give the new customer the same offer. Make it what ever you want but keep it the same so you will remember what your offer is all the time. You will find that if you change offers, one person will talk to another and may not be happy to hear the offer was not the same for them, a sure fire way to loose business. That is why referrals work, people talk! And remember one satisfied customer will normally tell two friends while an unsatisfied customer will tell at least 10 people they may not even know so increase the number of good referrals and work extra hard never to have the bad ones.
Since exposure is the key to generate new business. Post your cards everywhere you can. On subdivision notice boards, dry cleaners, the corner pub, just about anywhere in areas you like or want to work. Do not put them in locations where the type of customer you want probably does not go, like a Laundromat. If a client does not have $300 to buy a washer to wash his clothes why would he hire you to wash his house? But drive out of your way and post on the club house bulletin board in a upscale subdivision where you want to work, where you know the disposable income level is high and esthetics are important to the potential customer.
Good Luck and keep passing out those cards.
It is a known fact that people need 3-5 contacts from someone before they may buy. Also it takes someone to hear or read something at least 3 times before it sinks in. And the number one way to get business is by referrals. So how do you get those referrals? Leave your customers at least 10 cards with their name on the back and ask them if they liked your service to hand them out to their friends. Also make an offer to them: like you will give 10% off or $25 off the next job for them or even send them a gift card worth $25. And that if their friend calls and uses their name that you will also give the new customer the same offer. Make it what ever you want but keep it the same so you will remember what your offer is all the time. You will find that if you change offers, one person will talk to another and may not be happy to hear the offer was not the same for them, a sure fire way to loose business. That is why referrals work, people talk! And remember one satisfied customer will normally tell two friends while an unsatisfied customer will tell at least 10 people they may not even know so increase the number of good referrals and work extra hard never to have the bad ones.
Since exposure is the key to generate new business. Post your cards everywhere you can. On subdivision notice boards, dry cleaners, the corner pub, just about anywhere in areas you like or want to work. Do not put them in locations where the type of customer you want probably does not go, like a Laundromat. If a client does not have $300 to buy a washer to wash his clothes why would he hire you to wash his house? But drive out of your way and post on the club house bulletin board in a upscale subdivision where you want to work, where you know the disposable income level is high and esthetics are important to the potential customer.
Good Luck and keep passing out those cards.
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