Personal Contact Still, there’s no single template for targeting minorities, at least among the handful of contractors who report some success with it. Southern Siding & Windows is serving an Augusta, Ga., market that is mostly African-American, where 40% of the houses are mobile homes, and where 60% of the business Southern Siding writes is financed by customers whose incomes range from the upper $30,000s to the lower $40,000s. Charles Gorse, Southern Siding’s general manager, says that although his company doesn’t differentiate among prospects, it often uses testimonials on its TV ads that come from black customers. His company, which spends 15% of its collectible sales, or $90,000 per month, on marketing, generates leads by participating in local shows and events — “anything we can get into,” Gorse says, which includes watermelon and peach festivals and lobster races. Southern Siding’s ads also include incentives to get customers to call, such as a $10 gift card for Wal-Mart with a free in-house estimate.
Gorse says that his company has a 75% market share and closes 40% of the prospects it pitches, even though it is generally considered to be the highest-priced provider in Augusta. What worries him now, though, is that some competitors have followed Southern Siding’s marketing strategy and are starting to promote their products more aggressively.
Reaching Out Tri-State Home Improvement in Milford, Conn., installs windows, siding, sunrooms, and gutter protection and does $10 million in annual sales in a market with a sizable Hispanic population. The company does no media advertising, and its owner, Brad Pompilli, says he prefers “one-on-one marketing” at events such as the local Latino Expo and Puerto Rico Expo, as well as through telemarketing and canvassing (one of his canvassers speaks Spanish). Personal contact with customers has been vital in Tri-State’s efforts to sell projects to the recent influx of Russians and Poles in Connecticut. “I’ve sold jobs myself that were explained half in sign language,” he says, laughing. These customers wouldn’t respond to a print ad they couldn’t understand, but are receptive to a sales pitch “if you can get them in front of their house.”
In Fullerton, Calif., outside Los Angeles (where Asians account for 16% of the population), Four Seasons Ambiance Additions is always looking for inexpensive ways to reach new customers. “We’d blow our entire ad budget on a 30-second TV ad in L.A.,” owner David Donnelly says. So for the past five years, like clockwork twice a week, Ambiance Additions has placed a quarter-page ad in the Chinese Daily News, a local Chinese-language newspaper. Donnelly says that the reception among Asian-Americans to those ads has been “great,” in part because “there’s not a lot of service in this sector.” In March of this year, leads from those ads were 13% of his company’s total. (In January and February, the ads generated 5% and 7%, respectively, of the company’s leads, a little below historical averages.)
Donnelly says his company is converting about 18% of its Chinese leads this year into sales, which is a bit higher than in previous years but lower than the conversion rates for non-Chinese prospects. He admits that an impediment to sales continues to be the language barrier, as his company has no Chinese-speaking employees. “It’s a hurdle you have to overcome,” he says. But Donnelly has found that Chinese customers usually come to his sales office with someone in tow, typically a family member, who has some English-language proficiency and can serve as an interpreter.
Although he doesn’t expect leads from the Chinese newspaper ads to ever account for a major portion of his company’s business, Donnelly says he will continue to use this medium because the business it produces “is something that I can rely on, year in and year out.” —John Caulfield is a freelance writer and editor based in New Jersey.