Clean It Up
UK Floor Cleaning Forum => Carpet Cleaning Forum => Topic started by: Barry Livingstone on February 21, 2012, 05:26:16 pm
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Ok Say you had £1000 to spend on Marketing (NOW) and in these Hard times what would you spend it on?
a. What would give the best RIO
b. Method of Delivery?
Leaving out the fact you have a website already, this is purely marketing cash!
Answers on a postcard please :P
Barry
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My First Buy would be Own Label spotters..
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they are all methods that your comp are already doing , so think out of the box a little and there some brill ways to expand your client list.
Just look at it from the clients eyes , what would somebody be able to put to you to have your whaT ever cleaned and do it sooner rather than later.
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Barry, is this for new customers or existing?
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!) tele-sales girl for a month, make sure she is experianced..... i made the mistake of give an inexperianced girl a job Oct-Dec last year and wasted a lot of money.
2) leaflets
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lets go for New Customers, Letters to old Customers should be the norm.
How did the Tele sales go Mike? you still doing it?
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I had her ring up business' and offer to send some information of our cleaning services and whose name to put on the letter, she then sent them a letter and 4 days later rang them and ask if the wanted a free quote.
she also recorded the details to create a mailing list of local businesses who we could constantly mail to.
this was a tried & tested method for a telesales campaign
but she was useless and did it all wrong..... I should have sacked her in the first 2 weeks but she was a nice girl and i wanted to give her a chance.... then it got close to Xmas and how heartless do you have to be to sack someone just before Xmas :-\ :-\
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If i could guarantee delivery probably leaflets or spotter bottles with company logo for customers after a clean.
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I would buy the data for whatever market place I was wanting to target.
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I would use it to subsidise earnings for a while. Then go out on the " knocker " to local business, tell them what I do and offer a free demo clean.The old saying that seeing is believing still rings true.In my opinion leaflets, telesales etc. are to distant/cold.Just my opinion.
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The best thing I ever did was buy a book on google Adwords, study it so I understood every word and then implement it to the letter,
I spend around £80 a month on adwords now and it brings in a constant stream of work every week.
Whats interesting is that I get more work through my Adwords ad than the maps or natural listings, I always imagined it would be the other way round, but not so in my case.
I wouldnt attempt to do it if you don't know how to get decent cost per click.
You could throw a lot of money down the drain.
Regards
Steve
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We have finally dropped yellow pages for the forth coming year, and decided to do something a bit different.
We have a monthly local magazine come out with a 20000 ciculation and growing.
It is also connected to a website and a yearly publication, also to start this year ia a community radio station
For £1200 pound we are in the classifieds each month, have booked also 7 1/4 page ads for different services, gone on the web and the yearly publication which customer is ment to keep, and 5 radio ads per day for the year.
The magazine is proving popular with businesses getting full page editorials, and talking to customers, it seems very popular.
We have had a busier start to the year than normal and we are taking on 3 extra staff.
It will take the full year to see if it works, it is cheap in my opinion and is so because it is run for the community as a non profit making company.
Other than this we have a website and do a lineage advert in our weekly paper.
Andrew
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The best thing I ever did was buy a book on google Adwords, study it so I understood every word and then implement it to the letter,
I spend around £80 a month on adwords now and it brings in a constant stream of work every week.
Whats interesting is that I get more work through my Adwords ad than the maps or natural listings, I always imagined it would be the other way round, but not so in my case.
I wouldnt attempt to do it if you don't know how to get decent cost per click.
You could throw a lot of money down the drain.
Regards
Steve
Hi Steve
Whats the book called?
Cheers
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The best thing I ever did was buy a book on google Adwords, study it so I understood every word and then implement it to the letter,
I spend around £80 a month on adwords now and it brings in a constant stream of work every week.
Whats interesting is that I get more work through my Adwords ad than the maps or natural listings, I always imagined it would be the other way round, but not so in my case.
I wouldnt attempt to do it if you don't know how to get decent cost per click.
You could throw a lot of money down the drain.
Regards
Steve
Perry Marshall is your man for this.
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you stole my thunder Russ ;)
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I knew that question would be asked, ;)
one was 'Adwords Secrets Revelaed' by Larry Johnson
And another was 'top 37 Adwords pay-per-click secrets' by Roger C Hall
Theres probably loads of others available now as these are a few years old and i bought them when starting another business unrelated to carpet cleaning and then subsequently used what id learnt for my cleaning business.
They help you understand the concept of adwords and how to make it work without chucking loads of money away, and its not as easy as what you think but takes a bit of time and dedication.
Once you understand how they really work, (and google doesnt really make this clear), then you can use the know how for any business.
One common mistake is to have one ad and then stuff it full of all the keywords related to carpet cleaning and then hope someone clicks on it !
This is probably what google wants you to do as it makes them a lot of money, What you really should do is mentioned in the book ;D
Regards
Steve
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Give it to your favourite local charity. Then milk it for all its worth. Everybody wins. 8)
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Give it to your favourite local charity. Then milk it for all its worth. Everybody wins. 8)
That is not as cynical as it first seems.
Every now and then we do a "free" clean for a charity shop, and we get loads of paid work straight after....
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mate of mine started a carpet cleaning company in the late nineties, did 250k in his first year, all off the door.
Dave
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Good old fashioned leaflets.
By my reckoning, to print and distribute 5000 leaflets costs around £279, so £1,116 gets you 20,000 leaflets printed.
If you play it smart with the leaflet - have a strong headline offer with a deadline of say 2 to 3 months ahead, you will average 4 jobs per thousand, so that is 80 jobs. 80 jobs at your average job price packed into a 2 to 3 month time window is a very good turnover - who would like an additional 6 jobs per week in the areas of your choice? Me please!!!
You then do the same again in the same areas with some of the proceeds from your leafleting success in one month time and then again in another month's time. This time next year, you could in theory be doing an extra 6 jobs a week, every week at your average job price.
That's how I would spend it. Now, where did I put that spare grand?...
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In my experience you cannot spend your way out of a quite spell, or downturn, so your money is best kept in the bank to support your business. £1000 spent now would not bring the same return as it would when the market is more buoyant. It would be better to spend your time, rather than your money on developing new prospects through tele-sales, (you don't need someone to do this for you) you can develop email lists of prospects and design an attractive e-leaflet to send out, all for free.
The trick is to recognise quite spells and rather than spend more to try to maintain sales, cut your overheads and ride it out. This is a 'make hay while the sun shines business,' you can't make the sun shine, but you can make sure that when it does you're in the best possible position to make the most of it.
Simon
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own label spotters are no good! you got to have the customers to give them to, if you havent got the customers then you've wasted your money, networking is the way forward, adwords, local parish type A5 mags and leaflets.
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For me I think Mike's already mentioned it, get a telesales lady in and hammer the database, that also cleans your database too.
You could start with a mailshot or email and follow that up. That's how we do things, mail or email first then telesales follow those up. The conversion rate on a followed up mailing is far above the cold call rate, as the telesales isn't a sales call, its a "Hi this is Sam from XYZ the carpet cleaners, Allan sent you a letter with a special offer a couple of weeks ago and we just wanted to make sure you got that." SHUT UP and wait for response. Then Say "Was there anything you'd considered having done on the offer?" SHUT UP! Always remember the person who speaks first after the close 'loses'.
You can pay someone to work from home part time to do telesales, we used to use a customer who was on maternity leave from her full time job. OR you could get an Apprentice in to run things for you, cheap as chips, and keen as mustard most of them, the benefit is they can do some of your other admin and telephone answering too.
Al.
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Always remember the person who speaks first after the close 'loses'.
This is not how sales should be...
#There should not be any losers....
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Alan,
Top post.
Simon
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Hi Hector, which is why i put 'loses' in commas as thery're not loseRs. The "phrase" is one taught on any sales course you go on and i've never liked the idea someone loses. It's obvious the sale has to be win/win, or you get just a one off sale only and the client feels cheated. We're after repeat clients as they are the cheapest to market to and 'persuade' (being careful with my choice of word) to have something done again or something else done. We've been around 23 years with a 65/70% repeat referral volume and still growing the businesses. I started when I was 18 and we're now working for the second generation, ie the kids of clients we went to in the early days when they were kids and I was cleaning there.
Apologies if it looked like i was advocating a hard sell, it wasn't meant to be, I simply meant you ask an opening prime desire statement, then shut up and wait, sorry.
Thanks Simon
Al.
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I'd never of thought of telesales, I thought it had died a death. Do you guys get good results from it then?
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Hi Wynne
It's the most effective way to follow up a mailshot. It took me a long time to have faith to try a follow up mailshot, three weeks after the first mailing saying, in effect, i wrote to you and havent heard, I bet youve forgotten, most people do.the response to the follow up mailing is often as good as the initial mailing. It took me longer to have faith to send the third letter another three weeks later, and find there is about 60-70% of the response of the second mailing. Telesales seems to squeeze it all out in the one call, and the avaerage job avalue appears tobe higher if you have the right person prepositioning the offer.
Al.
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Hi Hector, which is why i put 'loses' in commas as thery're not loseRs. The "phrase" is one taught on any sales course you go on and i've never liked the idea someone loses. It's obvious the sale has to be win/win, or you get just a one off sale only and the client feels cheated. We're after repeat clients as they are the cheapest to market to and 'persuade' (being careful with my choice of word) to have something done again or something else done. We've been around 23 years with a 65/70% repeat referral volume and still growing the businesses. I started when I was 18 and we're now working for the second generation, ie the kids of clients we went to in the early days when they were kids and I was cleaning there.
Apologies if it looked like i was advocating a hard sell, it wasn't meant to be, I simply meant you ask an opening prime desire statement, then shut up and wait, sorry.
Thanks Simon
Al.
Sorry Allan you caught me on a bad day.....
I know all about sales courses, having had more of them than hot dinners......
I sold Timeshare for 4 years and then blankets etc to tourists in Tenerife....
This is the reason that I dislike the hard sell so much...............
I much prefer the reverse psychology sell that Rog (Dr Carpet) mentioned in another thread....
bIggest of all though is DO NOT SELL TO THE CUSTOMER - LET THEM BUY IT OFF YOU........
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Let them buy off you is a great way to sum it up Hector. This is what we can do for you, which do you prefer? Clients choice and the way we try to do things.
Al.
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Allen
Do you cold call or just call past customers
Jim
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Hi Jim
Just past customers for domestic. Never liked the cold telephone calling domestic idea, I hate it at home and I'm sure most people do too.
Commercial we do do a telesales follow up on the anniversary, or sooner if we know they have done more frequent. We also always make a call to commercial the day after the job to make sure everything dries okay, no stains lifted as dried etc, you know the stuff.
Commercial, we will cold call but only after having sent an intro letter saying we'll be calling. Commercial are very different.
Allan.