[jasonl]

A carpet cleaner posted on his facebook this morning , I will let him identify himself if he wants to ..........

What, if anything, puts you off having your carpets professionally cleaned?


He got 3 straight answers , from what looks like 3 middle of the road customers , not high end , not cheap skates , the answers were .....

The fact that the Uni Lad ("Fridge Mouse") will probably knock a whole pint of coke all over it 10 mins after you leave .

 i think people need to know about how much its going to cost as its embarrassing if they ask then cant afford it, so think giving a ballpark figure on here may help some

Moving everything to get to the carpet


So the obvious way would be to meet these needs ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, an ad or site that says we move all furniture . Include one interim spot removal visit within 6 weeks and the price per room is £xx would be a winner ?


Discuss

[Helen]

A carpet cleaner posted on his facebook this morning , I will let him identify himself if he wants to ..........

What, if anything, puts you off having your carpets professionally cleaned?


He got 3 straight answers , from what looks like 3 middle of the road customers , not high end , not cheap skates , the answers were .....

The fact that the Uni Lad ("Fridge Mouse") will probably knock a whole pint of coke all over it 10 mins after you leave .
Before we finshed packing up was one custies sons record, muddy wellies all through the hallway on a cream carpet
We always say to people, that if you have any spills they are likely to be in the next 48 hours, so let us know blah blah bla
 i think people need to know about how much its going to cost as its embarrassing if they ask then cant afford it, so think giving a ballpark figure on here may help some
I am finding that a lot of people are asking for a guide price, which I can give, but stipulate it is subject to seeing the goods........you can tell who thinks the guide price is too high I still don't think advertising prices is good
Moving everything to get to the carpet
Always explained if over the phone and in writing on the quotation.

So the obvious way would be to meet these needs ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, an ad or site that says we move all furniture . Include one interim spot removal visit within 6 weeks and the price per room is £xx would be a winner ?


Discuss

[Mike Halliday]

so our customers have small kids, are skint & have untidy homes

this is the problem with trying to answer all questions with our marketing..... we can't be everything to everybody so we need to make our market as broad spectrum as possible if it's aimed at a large un-targeted market.

[jasonl]

On a bell curve , I think the catch most area is clearly the skint with kids, pets and stuff in their homes .


My biggest sticking point , is prices on leaflets/web sites , where does the no prices theory come from , more to the point when does it come from?   

I think an experiment is overdue .

[Ricky M]

mm mm very interesting J.

[Jamie Pearson]

so our customers have small kids, are skint & have untidy homes

Sounds like my house.

I just cant be ars@d cleaning my carpets as it means having to load all the kit into the van and move all the kids toys and furniture etc etc.

[Mike Halliday]

you could argue the initial question was loaded.

why won't you have your carpets cleaned?

he should have asked......

why would you have your carpets cleaned?

[Paul H]

Save yourself a spot interim removal visit - sell them some of your magic own label spotter bottles or incorperate it into the price of the clean and give it them for FREE..

On the price thing i agree .. punters want to see somekind of guide IMO.. but also if you are advertising prices you need to know your demographics / house size / room size etc.. of the area you are targetting otherwise you may just dip out and sell yourself short.


Jason - i did experiment  in some marketing.. from my marketing investment my return ( after recouping the marketing costs) has been 140% to date...

Personally im not sure if the buy 2 get 1 free and all them other draws works as i havent tried them as thats what everyone else seems to do... people will / may look and think im not really getting the 3rd free as the free clean will be in with the cost of the other 2 being paid for.... so maybe i should experiment with this and see what the return is or offer no deals or incentives just advertise my services and see the return on that..

maybe some others can share if the above works or not

Its all ifs and buts and whys and what fors... but all i know is you wont know until you try something.

[Neil Williams]

Is there a definitive answer? Really is there?
Mike has come closet as far as I'm concerned, but here are a few examples from my own recent experiences.
On our leaflets we have "Quote buy 2 get one free" on them. I can't remember the last time someone called  us having received a leaflet and quoted that. So when I go around to quote I price up without mentioning it and NO ONE has picked me up on it yet.
As for prices on leaflets we don't, but yesterday someone (when I was quoting) showed one from someone else that had their prices on it. You know the type 'Whole house £50 etc.' Her words to me when I showed her a quote for £120 (HSLd, living, small bedroom) was I wouldn't trust the other one because that seems too good to be true. I later went to explain how those people work.
Then there's websites. A job yesterday was done because he compared our website with a few others. Whilst mine is nothing special it was in his words simple enough with enough detail, not like some which go for pages and pages.

The thing is we aren't going to appeal to everyone so stop trying to. Pick your target audience and aim at them.

Surveys are great for being able to take out of them what you want. Even the negatives like the examples given can be turned to positives, like why not for a bit more have carpet protector applied, just incase Joey spills his coke, and not just for that one occassion but it will protect the carpet for the next 10 spillages.

[james roffey]

What makes customers tick, well its pointless because i imagine every forum on every trade discusses this and all go round in circles with theories.
I have a friend who lives in an affluent area him and his wife both have new BMW's not on finance either. he works in a local estate agents one of the biggest in the town and i saw him as a good way of gaining some end of tenancy work.
He wanted his house done, had hired a machine before but resoiled really quick, i quoted him such a cheap price, think it was about £100 for a large 4 bed house. he never booked and later told me he hired a machine and spent the weekend doing it himself, little old lady wants her tiny lounge cleaned £45 wants to give me a £20 tip which i refused telling her that i was happy with what she had paid, none so strange as folk    

[cannon]

I used to advertise 2 rooms get one free and found very few people asked about it.

[Paul H]

intersting - anyone not put any special offers or draws on leafllets or marketting material?.. and if so whats the response? ... all those in the marketting game say you need a call to action or a draw..or that bollox

[Doctor Carpet (Ret'd)]

intersting - anyone not put any special offers or draws on leafllets or marketting material?.. and if so whats the response? ... all those in the marketting game say you need a call to action or a draw..or that bollox

Me!

Just have YP and a web site. No special offers, no day rates, just pricing things up one room at a time, no discount for whole houses-you pay for each room.

I get plenty of new enquiries. If its email only then I convert about 10%. If I can speak to the person conversion is about 65-70%.

Most work though is repeat/recommend.

Possibly being very good on the phone and being confident/not desperate to close the sale may make a huge difference to how the potential client views me. Perhaps "reverse psychology"-almost pushing the "have a think about it and come back to me when you're ready" style of marketing stands out from everybody else's marketing.

Rog

[JandS]

A good job at a reasonable price most of time.
Nothing more or less.

John

[Neil Williams]

A good job at a reasonable price most of time.
Nothing more or less.

Spot on. Perhaps we would need to canvass someone to write a university paper on the subject but I'm starting to believe that people are moving away from 'gimmicks' and instead 'buying' a decent service at a decent price.
I mean and let's face it, as it stands there are 81 people about to be disappointed in the Birmingham area on the back of the groupon deal mentioned on another topic, who if they have any brain cells left won't be falling for that sort of thing again.