Thu, 26 March 2015
Stop Your Competition from Stealing Your Customers Contractor Marketing episode 61
If my customers don’t remember who I’m then it’s my fault because I’m not keeping in touch with them. So, your customer got stolen from you because you didn’t use the proper tools to actually keep in touch with them and build that relationship. The newsletter actually builds a relationship with your customer, and if designed properly they will even read the whole thing, and may even pass it on to a friend or a family member. I’ve actually done business this way. I’ve gone to an appointment and I my newsletter is on the refrigerator .
Out of all the forms of marketing, the monthly newsletter to me is the most valuable piece of marketing tool that is available. Don’t get me wrong I’m not giving up on any of my marketing strategies, but if someone came up to me and put a gun to my head and said, “You have to give up all of your marketing but you can only keep one. The answer would be my newsletter would win hands down. I ran the numbers from tracking the newsletter, 32% of my business in 2014 I attribute to my customers actually receiving my newsletter and here is the wild factor. For every dollar spent on sending out my newsletter, I receive 21.37 cents in return. That’s an excellent return on investment. Will everyone receive that kind of return? Probably not, maybe yes, maybe no, maybe more. If you’re not building a relationship with your customers then you are not going to be able to be that ‘go to person,’ you’re not going to be that ‘expert’ because you’re just another guy. I think if you’ve listened to our podcast, we talk a lot about not being a commodity, be a value to your customers. When you keep in touch with them on a regular basis then you’re being a value to them because you’re doing something that no one else does. Why is that? Every month you don’t communicate with your customers the relationship that you’re having built decreases. Here is a very interesting thing as far as building that relationship is concerned. It needs to be done on a monthly basis. Proven fact that if it’s done every 90 days, then you might as well not even send one out, because there are going to forget about you. The consistency of doing the monthly is key. Five ways newsletters will grow and profit your business. 1. Increase the length of time your customer does business with you ,in turn increasing your profits and builds the lifetime vale.
2. Stay on top of mind. You engage them each month and they remember who you are. 3. It’s far easier to sell more to existing customers than it is to find new customers. 4. Build your celebrity status, and who you are because nobody else is doing that, and of course this builds your relationship with the people. 5. Newsletters have a pass around value.
E-mail versus regular mail Newsletters. Just about everyone has an email address, guaranteed everyone has a mailing address with today’s email and the way everyone uses email your open rate is close to 15%. Sure I know people who have 50 plus percent open rates. But they are proficient at writing catchy subject lines. When the newsletter is delivered to the house it has a 100% open rate. Because it’s designed like a flyer with news articles on it. So its in your face .How do I know because like you I bring the mall in the house and separate I into two piles and one pile gets opened and one gets thrown away. , Every month they are getting something from me that’s keeping me in front of them and remembering who I’m, and what I do.
Let’s talk about what makes a bad newsletter. Mistakes most people make when they publish their newsletter. I see a lot of newsletters that are just down right ‘boring’ it’s just the biggest waste of money. I’ve seen one from a dentist who tells you all about teeth and gums and everything about the mouth. I don’t really want to know about that.Must keep the newsletter from being BORING.
What you’re trying to achieve is again to build that relationship. It’s the relationship that builds long lasting businesses. If there’s no relationship then there’s no business. Another mistake allowing people to advertise in your newsletter and advertising specials fo your business. I think this is a big mistake. I think that it can be done occasionally but for the most part, it’s not a good thing because the newsletter is being thought in your customers mind as a non-threatening instrument to read. It’s a publication, it’s not an advertising publication so be careful.
If you are going to run a special or want to advertise a business or businesses or even specials I must be on an insert its strange but the insert breaks the barrier if the advertisement. The personals interaction keeps balance. It’s a great way to reactivate old customers, if you haven’t been consistent or do not at this point do a newsletter, and then it’s a great way to reactivate former customers. Most people stop doing business with you because they feel like you didn’t care about them, and this is statistics from the Rockefeller Corporation. Sixty-eight percent of consumers’ leave because they think that a business doesn’t care about them. That’s crazy, right? No, it’s not crazy because that’s what happens, people don’t feel like you care about them.
Let’s get started today, let’s start the process. Hopefully, we’ve given you the basics of everything you need to do to start your own newsletter. I’m sure that we gave you enough information on the importance of doing a newsletter, or why you want to do it. It’s because you want more profit, you want your customers to stay with you for as long as humanely possible, because you’ve built a long lasting relationship with them. I want you to be more profitable and not lose any more customers so Im offering my newsletter on a subscription basis. A done for you contractor marketing newsletter so you can build a long lasting relationship with your customers. Click her to find out more about the done for your monthly newsletter subscription
Direct download: Stop20Your20Competition20From20Stealing20Your20Customers20Contractor20Marketing20episode2061.mp3
Category:pod cast -- posted at: 2:28am EDT
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Thu, 19 March 2015
So this week we start off with a simple easy way to grow your contracting business by 40%. Your probably thinking that I'm crazy and any other instance I probably would be but follow along let's go, I know you think I'm crazy but if you had told me that I had to grow my business by 40% this coming year, I would say you're crazy so let’s start looking at all the things that I would have to do in order to make that happen, I’d take a look at last year's revenues Last year’s marketing I would need to beef up. I’d think about all the other things that would have to come into play what I need to do this what else would I need to do better. It would pretty much drive me crazy but there really is a simple way to do it.
When I saw this simple way it actually blew me away. A few weeks ago episode I think it was 54 I interviewed Brian Kaskavalciyan and we talked about a seminar he was doing with my friend the roofer Arry well I got the opportunity to go to the seminar and went through the seven key profit indicators in your business there is one in particular that just caught my eye and when we went through it ,it just really just blew my mind. You know there are lots of things that you know you know there are things you think you know especially the contracting business but I look at this profit indicator which we will call asset management look at it and it just made so much crazy sense to me. I was doing it in my own very limited way but once the we went through the numbers and went through the reasoning behind it I just knew that this was the easiest way for me to grow my revenue in one area by 40%. So let me explain okay were just going to talk about marketing and leads today only just leads and marketing and the way we normally do things. As I sat down and we talked about in the seminar how we get leads and that we've got them So here we go lets keep the numbers simple, just taking on a small-scale you have 100 people you've sold to you have created leads to get these sales for these hundred people you sold . The average sale let's say is $1000 you've done $100,000 in business. Most people in the contracting business close 30% on a generated lead. So what happens to the 70% who for whatever reason did not say yes or no? Most of the time we forget about them we just write them off because they are not ready to buy now. When I sat down and listen to what Brian had to say it just opened up a whole new avenue for revenue. So what does 70% of people do that you paid for the leads do. If you close 30% that means you paid for 330 leads to close 100 so what happened to the other 230 leads that dropped off did we forget about them? I know that I normally just send out one follow up when I heard the statistics on how many people actually buy within the next year of those 70% I was astonished. 65% of that 70% actually buy within the first year so why get some of them to buy form you . So here's the numbers you got 230 people that haven't said yes or no they haven't bought from you 65 % who will buy with in the year leaves you 161 that will purchase within one year .What if we set the goal to only get 25% of these people to buy for you of those 161. That’s 40 new sales at an average sale of 1000 dollars that’s 40,000 dollars of increased revenue you have just increased your business by 40% not by adding new marketing campaign not by putting in new ads in a magazine TV or radio or whatever . All you have done is either created a follow up system or added to the follow up system you already have. What I've done is I've taken and I've added to my follow-up system to keep in contact with those prospects to buy from me so here's what I do what I've implemented. After my original estimates I send them a thank you card for just give me the opportunity to do business to give them an estimate you would be surprised at how many people will do business with you just because of that because they feel like you want to do business with them and I've gotten many comments just form that, now I send out another card within seven days and then another card 10 days after that and then they go on my newsletter mailing and if you're a person who likes the phone then I would throw in a phone call to just check on them and then within four months I'll send them another card to see if they have moved on their project. I know you couldn’t be at the seminar but you can get Brian’s book at Amazon here is the link to get your copy the information in the book will transform your business only if you implement it. How to Double Your Profits in 6 Months or Less-Brian Kaskavalciyan
Direct download: A20Simple20Way20to20Grow20your20Contracting20Business20by204020Episode2060.mp3
Category:pod cast -- posted at: 7:00am EDT
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Wed, 11 March 2015
Today we are going to talk about being purposeful about asking for referrals in a couple of different ways. Your customers really like hearing from you. Any way you can keep in contact with them is a non-threating way you correspondence is welcome. So what is threatening correspondence? Any correspondence that ALWAYS is asking them to buy. That is why the way we do maintenance marketing is non-threatening. We ae giving not asking them to buy. As you will see by the letter we send out with the post card the link below we are including them in one of our programs our referral rewards program where we thank them for doing business with us and ask them to help us spread the word about our company and in the process we make them members of the team. Including them in our marketing and also offering them the same discount we are offering to their friends and family. NEWS FLASH no customer likes to see discounts given to their friends and family or attracting new customers without being included it’s just plain rude on the business owners part.
Another great way to implement an active campaign for referrals is to implement it into your newsletter by adding a separate page to the regular newsletter. It come s off as non-threatening because it is an extra page it’s one of those weird things it’s perceived as an addition to the newsletter and not actually the newsletter.
Also you can adapt the whole thing to your social media Facebook actual post a thank you to your customers offering them to take part in a new program with a link to a landing page that that captures their email and is a rendition of the letter and post card. Finally for this post but not the end of your imagination. Take post cards with you and at the end of the job ask Mrs. Jones if she would like an opportunity to receive 75.00 have her fill out 3 post cards right them and you mail them. Really the opportunities to purposefully get referrals are limitless and really more profitable than the traditional marketing for new business.
Direct download: Purposefully20Getting20Referrals20and20More20Business20Using20Maintenance20Marketing.20Episode2059.mp3.mp3
Category:pod cast -- posted at: 11:25pm EDT
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Thu, 5 March 2015
Maintenance Marketing Creating a Solid Platform for Growth and Stability
I know that growth is paramount to any business and with growth coming primarily from most of our businesses from referrals. I want to talk about maintenance marketing I want to take this topic for the next few weeks and hit hot and heavy. Why because your past customers, present customers and future customers will help you grow a solid profitable business if you handle them correctly in the future. If you're in the marketplace providing value you always get be able to charge a higher price if you're competing on price and there is no value proposition to what you're doing. Just stop it. I want you to be different. So what does maintenance marketing look like for you to set up you company to do maintenance you are going to have to raise prices to set up the systems to keep in touch with your customers on a regular basis. See that's how maintenance works you do something on a regular basis so you don't have to spend a fortune to get it fixed later is that why you maintain your car, your pool why you maintain your house so that later there's no huge expense to making things right later. You're going to have to figure out how to charge more knowing that you will give more and your customer will get a better service for what you're charging. Why do you want to do this because it always comes back if you can raise your prices knowing that your profit is there you can afford to do the little extra things that will wow your customers they make better referrals . In the event that you do make a mistake and something has to be fixed there’s profit there to fix it. So what is it look like giving extra doing more than you charge for.Today I cleaned aroof let's use this as an example of value added I cleaned the driveway and sidewalk also no charge to the customer I had the time because I had enough profit built into the overall time I was going to spend there, Why did I do this I told the customer that I cleaned his drive and walk to make his house look better his response can I pay you for the extra ,absolutely not I said we like to do things extra for our customers so we can just as a bonus say thank you for doing business with us. What does that do; number one it wows the customer someone actually thought more about me than the dollar. They go on our mailing list they get our monthly newsletter they get a card next year same time because the drive is going to have to be cleaned again reminding them that it was cleaned and that we will do it and put them on will put them on the schedule they just have to call and say no.They refer us to likeminded people let me repeat that they refer us to likeminded people. So for the next couple we will go through setting up the system of maintenance marketing to grow your business to have a solid profitable future. Over the next few weeks we are to go over how to set this up a newsletter how to use it effectively what should be in it which shouldn't be in it how to market to your customers so they keep the newsletter for a time .How to take the newsletter and use it to dominate an area that you want to service by farming . We will talk about send out cards in the near future how to put together a system will use my system as a template sort of and we'll see how we work referrals new prospects and customers what gifts that we give, we send out cards it's from the holidays and you want to be different than the other people out in the marketplace. I’ll take you and behind one of our mailings that I do each year to help attract new referrals. Did I mentioned that I like referrals thy come trusting you your closing ratios better than normal everyday marketing which I still do but I still like referral the best. I’ll show you how to use anniversary dates to create future business and set it up on automatic pilot so that you will have gravy coming in. So my real goal is I really want to help you get in the customers mind so you can think like consumer first then acted like a business owner to service your customers needs wants and desires because you are going to handle it from WI FM what's in it for me asked the consumer so you going to be thinking about consumer stay tuned for our series on maintenance and marketing.
Direct download: Maintenance20Marketing20Creating20a20Solid20Platform20for20Growth20and20Stability20episode2058.mp3
Category:pod cast -- posted at: 7:05am EDT
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