Be A Farmer

Say you don’t have money to hire an advertising agency and you’re not a marketing genius who can come up with clever art and copy at the drop of a hat. There’s still plenty of opportunity to market yourself and your company’s image. Try this: Select a neighborhood in your market area where the population demographics and the age of the houses match your customer type. I’m not talking about thousands of people but hundreds. Develop a series of mailers and begin mailing to those addresses. Let them know what you do, why you’re good, and why they should do business with you.

Now take that same list and hire a canvasser to knock on their doors. They may or may not recognize your company, but it’s better than going in cold. Hire someone aged 18 to 22 who is assertive, and pay him or her an hourly rate and a spiff per lead. Have the canvasser leave a door hanger if no one is home. Keep mailing and canvassing that neighborhood and, over time, you’ll get a steady supply of leads as people become familiar with your company.

Patience and Diligence

Of course, everyone in the home improvement industry wants to spend their marketing money on something that gets a bigger payday. They’re hunting for the big kill. But you get a lot further being a farmer than a hunter. Patience and diligence pay off.

Take, for instance, your demos/no sales. You got the lead but they didn’t buy. In boom times, many companies ignored these leads. Today you’d be crazy to. Say you close 30% of 100 leads. Say half of the remaining 70 prospects bought from someone else or opted out of the market. You have 35 people left. Keep trying. Circumstances are constantly changing. Plus, you’ve already paid for that lead. If 10% of them buy, you have three or four sales you wouldn’t have otherwise had.

Many people in the home improvement industry are looking for a marketing magic bullet. At the moment, they think that bullet is the Internet. That’s where the eyeballs are. But let me leave you with this thought: If your advertising isn’t getting people to call you, what makes you think your website will?

? Author and marketing expert Rich Harshaw is the founder and CEO of Monopolize Your Marketplace, in the Dallas suburb of Grapevine, Texas. Reach him at 817.416.4333 or info@MYM-Essentials.com.