marketing

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tonyou812 said:
I beileve that I said I was going to contiue with my plan regardless of the work that just came it, and the fact that 75 percent of the people here said I was either breaking some law or wasting my time. And as far as having a plan ERIC my plan started 6 years ago.
You see Eric I like to set goals for myself. Some of them are more immediate and some are long term goals. And to date I have been doing a decent job of that. So keep your sarchasim to your self, smarty pants. Its like a second lanuage to me.
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my sarcasm is like no other...

as romexking said, and i happened to agree, it's neither illegal, nor a waste of time, if properly planned and executed...my gut feeling is that you haven't really planned your marketing strategy...other than the spaghetti method...throw it against the wall to see if it's done right....

maybe i'm wrong, and I hope i am...but i wouldn't bet against me on this one...

when we did residential work, we had several direct mailers that we could pretty much guarantee the # of calls we would get from them...so, we were able to look forward 2-3 weeks and send out specific mailers with the required volume to get the phone to ring...

but for years before that, we gave things "a shot"....amazingly, nothing ever seemed to work consistently or efficiently...

good luck. I am positive that Foremost Services and the others like them in your area are more than happy if your marketing plan is based on "giving it a shot"

sorry to sound harsh...but you aren't an employee anymore, and now you are playing with your money, not your bosses...make it work for you...
 
tonyou812 said:
I dont disagree Eric. I got a little gitty when the work came in, I didnt mean to be a dikk
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it wasn't taken that way...don't worry...reread romexkings posts...there is more information in his few posts here, than most guys will learn in years of being in business...if you have any specific questions shoot me a pm...good luck...
 
romexking said:
The response rates vary dependant upon the quality of your mailing list. As I noted in a previous post, for direct mail using USPS the response could be .5% to 1%. Lets say you mail 3000 pieces a month. 3000 x .55 (postage, envelope, printing)= $1650. A .5% response rate would = 15 new calls. If you close 90% of your calls, that would be 13 completed calls. Now you can visualize why even with this low response rate it is a good thing to do. Your cost to aquire that new customer is $137.50. That is a little high, but not unreasonable. If you can manage a $400 average invoice, your revenue would be $5200. That is a 3 times ROI. Again that is not great, but it's better than sitting on your butt waiting for the phone to ring.

Keep in mind that direct mail is a PART of a marketing plan, not the entire plan, but now you can estimate how many new calls you will be receiving that month. Need more calls? Send out 6000 letters.

If you want to find out a more accurate response rate in your area, call a direct mail marketer near you, they are in every community.
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I am very curious to see what my response rate will be.
 
I can assure you that you would not have wanted to be in the same school of economics as I attended. Tuition was very expensive and you wouldn't want to hang the degree on the wall. But if you want to go there, you can enroll at a satellite campus by getting your Master Electrician's license and opening shop without business plan. It's that easy, you are now a student at the School of Hard Knocks!
 
School of Hard Knocks

School of Hard Knocks

I read a book once that was dedicated to all the people that had cheated the author.
He said the price he paid was tuition for the lesson he learned, and that was a bargain.
 
langjahr@comcast.net said:
I read a book once that was dedicated to all the people that had cheated the author.
He said the price he paid was tuition for the lesson he learned, and that was a bargain.
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that's all well and good for him, but wouldn't it be better to learn by example and not by mistake? I'm certain it would be even more of a bargain, and it would keep your mental health in a much better state.
 
Big

Big

I can assure you that you would not have wanted to be in the same school of economics as I attended. Tuition was very expensive and you wouldn't want to hang the degree on the wall. But if you want to go there, you can enroll at a satellite campus by getting your Master Electrician's license and opening shop without business plan. It's that easy, you are now a student at the School of Hard Knocks!
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Come on now, Romexking. your just talking about old laundry, right ?
Surely that's not the CASE now, seems you have presented yourself very
convincingly on many major threads here.

I believe that this vocation can surely do a lot to things, for a lot of people.

I also believe, let anyone put on some tools, work with there hands, it makes and breaks people everyday...
There?s a lot of ways to do things smart, then there?s just a lot of other ways.

Sounds to me like your are pretty shape, worldly and wise.
I pay attention to your statements, I'm sure other relish them as well.
Oh and congrates on HKU ! :rolleyes:
 
romexking said:
that's all well and good for him, but wouldn't it be better to learn by example and not by mistake? I'm certain it would be even more of a bargain, and it would keep your mental health in a much better state.
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The cheapest experience you can get is someone elses.
 
cadpoint said:
Come on now, Romexking. your just talking about old laundry, right ?
Surely that's not the CASE now, seems you have presented yourself very
convincingly on many major threads here.

I believe that this vocation can surely do a lot to things, for a lot of people.

I also believe, let anyone put on some tools, work with there hands, it makes and breaks people everyday...
There’s a lot of ways to do things smart, then there’s just a lot of other ways.

Sounds to me like your are pretty shape, worldly and wise.
I pay attention to your statements, I'm sure other relish them as well.
Oh and congrates on HKU ! :rolleyes:
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thank you for the compliments. I am still a work in progress. Just when things were looking good, a medical emergency in the family has cost us nearly $100k in lost revenue but the expenses didn't stop. But I am fortunate enough that my company will recover, not because I had that much cash, but because I had a plan. Yes the plan needs to be revised, but it's better than starting from scratch.

And just to explain my committment to being better than most contractors, during the last 90 days (wife in hospital, unsure if she would survive) I de-hired my two technicians, not because of lack of work, but because of lack of quality and a disregard for my standards. I would rather provide great service to the fewer customers that I can get to personally than allow a customer to receive less than exceptional service. If I can't get to new client at the present time, at least I haven't soured them on my company, and may have a chance to get to them again. If you provide lousy service, you will not get a second chance.

If you have a vision of what your company should be, do not compromise those standards for anyone, anytime.

And as emahler and others have said, enroll in a couple of business and marketing classes at the community college. Each of us has taken years to hone the technical aspect of our craft, but few had suspected the need to learn the business portion. If you haven't taken a few classes yet, do so at your earliest opportunity. Your family will thank you, your employees (should) will thank you, and your customers will thank you for running a more professional operation. And best of all, you will thank yourself. When you are running a profitable, professional organization, it won't seem like work anymore. You will become excited to go to the office, try out new marketing ideas, network with other contractors, involve you and your company in community activites, and generally be happier. Although I am not rolling in piles of money, I can honestly say that in the last 3 years, I have only been angry at work 3 times, one of which was when a single tech wrecked the truck for the second time in 3 weeks. :mad:
 
When a contractor truely understands how much marketing is needed to drive necessary call volume to his/her phone lines, the marketing becomes more of a game than work. For instance, my latest hairbrained idea was put in motion today. I am having a mascot suit made and when it comes in, I will be standing on various corners of my town's main drags, waving at all who will look. The idea is raise awareness of the character to the point that kids and adults alike will be asking "where is the light bulb today?" There is no need for them to know who or why just yet. After several weeks, print advertising and possibly a billboard will tie the mascot to our company name. After that no one in this town will be able to forget my company's name or logo. Now this is going to be really fun! ( I hope it works)

The idea was not conceived without research. Again this is fun crunching the numbers to determine if it is a cost effective plan. I have found the the two main intersecting roads carry 27K and 30K vehicles per day respectively. So on any given day, I could have almost 30K impressions of my logo. But at a cost of $2500 for the mascot, plus time in the suit, each impression will cost over $11. Thats a lot of money for each impression. But this done 10 times a month initially, and then once a week after than really lowers the cost per impression. It will only take an average 20 new customers the first month to pay for the suit, plus my labor. That is a needed response rate of .0005%. I think that is obtainable :grin: Plus unlike direct mail, the drivers almost have to see me. They don't have to open a junk mail envelope, or flip pages in a magazine with a hundred other business vying for attention. I'm getting giddy just talking about it!

When you do execute a marketing campaign, whether it be direct mail, door hangers, or joing a networking group, the key is to track your results so you can direct your future advertising $$ to the campaigns that work the best.
 
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