Seminars. Choose a broad topic such as preventing ice dams, how to have a successful remodel, or energy savings. You can hold talks at a library, where space is often free to use. “Invite business groups,” Alpert suggests. “They’re all homeowners.” Keep the seminar focused on the topic and not on your particular company — talks should be more advertorial than advertising. Pass out seminar information that includes your phone numbers or Web site URL.
Harrell Remodeling in Mountain View, Calif., has had great success with seminars and consumer classes. (See “Does It Work?” opposite.)
Jobsite marketing letters. Develop a good set of letters, and mail them regularly to homes around jobsites. Two thousand dollars would be enough for a company to have a template created for these letters — “We’re working for one of your neighbors and we specialize in …”
“Use in-house staff to stuff envelopes and do several mailings for a couple of jobsites. Send them to 200 or 300 homes per jobsite, multiple times,” Alpert says. “Most of the expense will be postage.”
Newsletters. “It’s hard to get a good one written for under $2,000,” Alpert says, “but if you do one yourself it might not be written well enough.” Print newsletters are more expensive because of paper and postage costs, but e-newsletters are worth doing regularly. For print, hold down costs by keeping a library of information that can be reprinted.
Steve Gray, owner of Steve Gray Renovations, sends a monthly e-newsletter to 4,000 recipients whose names he has gathered through networking. The e-newsletter is visually arresting with 1950s-style graphics, project-update stories, and general information; and it also often has a video section. Gray, whose Indianapolis company does about $1.8 million in volume, says the newsletter cost about $1,200 to create and about $200 a month to maintain. Extras, such as Flash video, raise the investment level. To keep costs down, Gray Renovations often provides the content. “The nice part of this newsletter,” Gray says, “is that whatever we do also goes onto our Web site, so we’re getting quite a bit more for our money.”
Kleber agrees: “[When you] can link it to your Web site, you can find out what readers are interested in by the pages or articles they [look at].” With that information, you could conceivably “feed them personalized content and market to them one-on-one, customizing materials to their habits. This can be done subtly.”
Yard signs and vehicle graphics. You can easily come up with nice pieces for less than $2,000 if you don’t have that many trucks to cover.
Though it was a $4,000 investment — including designing, printing, and installation — Excel Interior Concepts & Construction in Lemoyne, Pa., bought a vehicle wraparound, which makes its truck a moving billboard. The wrap can last five years if properly cared for and can be removed without damaging the vehicle’s surface.
Thank-yous and gifts. Alpert doesn’t recommend a referral rewards program. “Often people feel that giving a referral they’re paid for isn’t an honest referral and compromises their integrity,” he says. But, he adds, “Thank-you notes are gold. Send them to clients, architects, vendors, and to anyone who does you a favor or sends a referral.”
The Internet. “Grab your part of the gold rush on the Web,” Kleber says. “The younger audience — Gen X and Gen Y — do have economic influence. If you close your eyes to the next generation or [various] portals on the Web, you’ll get lost. Stake your claim now.”
He suggests setting up online destinations or brochures on Web sites such as Facebook and MySpace. “It’s not just about social marketing for personal use,” he says. “More and more it’s a place for businesses to post, and it’s free.”