On Tuesday evening, Jassen and I recorded the “How To Market Your Home Inspection Business” webinar covering a variety of marketing topics on how any home inspector can drastically improve their ability to get more clients, more easily than ever before using some very basic, easy to implement, highly effective marketing strategies.
If you are a home inspector and follow these simple marketing tips, you will see real results in your bank account.
I just added the webinar that we did as a free audio download on the Home Inspector Downloads page. Just go there and download the audio file (it is just over an hour long) and learn about a variety of strategies that you can start using to improve your home inspection business… yes, even in this tough real estate economy.
Until my next post,
James
P.S. If you have not looked at “The World’s Greatest Home Inspector Marketing Course”, I’d also encourage you to do that as well.
Now let’s talk about newspaper marketing for your effectively marketing your handyman business. Newspaper marketing is marketing through the newspaper, any type of display ad, classified ad, those types of things, we’re going to talk about that the next slide here.
They are usually going to be two-step marketing because it’s very expensive to get your entire message out in the newspaper cost-effectively, especially classified ads. Although you can do inserts with flyers and stuff like that and get it done, but a lot of times it’s going two-step.
How to get it done? You call your newspaper up and they’ll walk you through the process. Sometimes they’ll do the printing of the insert for you. Most of the time they’re going to do the printing because it’s going to be a classified ad or display ad.
Cost to get it done depends on your paper. My local paper – I’ve done a lot of testing in my local paper with classified ads and with display ads – and I have had a hard time making the numbers work to be competitive with a lot of the other marketing methods I was using. I mean it worked, but the cost per lead generated was a bit on the high side, and so that did not make my cut-off, usually, to continue with it for a long period of time. But I have done quite a bit of newspaper marketing. A lot of classified ads and a lot of throw-away newspapers like the Weekly, Thrifty Nickel, and American Classifieds, those type of things, that worked really well for me. Your business, a handyman business, it will probably work very well for as well. I would look in there and do some testing. It’s dirt-cheap in order to do testing in the classifieds. So I would use that as part of my marketing mix to get some ads out.
As far as your local daily newspaper, test and see what’s going to work for you and try to do that. There are some more creative ways to do some newspaper marketing and I’ll talk about that in the next page, about press releases and getting article written about you, which can be highly effective especially if your newspaper is looking for human-interest, local-business-support, community type of articles.
So newspapers can be relatively scalable if you want to do additional ads. I mean they’re limited to a certain degree, but they can be relatively scalable. And they have not been super-effective for me except in those weekly throw-away papers, and I think I mentioned that before.
Things and concerns to be aware of – I’ve realized that newspaper circulation and advertising is now in decline. More and more people are moving online to both get their news and also to search classifieds and see classified ad things. So just be aware that, this is a declining type of media. It doesn’t mean you can’t use it, but it is declining.
Until my next post,
James
P.S. Want to know how newspaper marketing can generate clients for your handyman business? Check out “The World’s Greatest Handyman Marketing Course” for more information.
Alright let’s talk about door-to-door marketing and using it to market your handyman business. Door-to-door marketing is when you have flyers, post-it notes which are sticky notes, door hangers, anything that like that you’re trying to get out door to door.
They can be one-step or two-step, depending on the actual piece you’re putting out. They’re usually two-step if you’re using something that’s small like the post-it note. Some door hangers are probably going to be two-step. Flyers are going to usually be one step unless you can’t get your entire message out on there. But basically you can use those things in order to get your additional marketing message from a telephone or website if you need to.
How to get it done? We talked about this before. Hire someone to do your flyers, have the things printed up. A printer can do door hangers. Printers can do sticky notes. And the printer can also print up flyers, although flyers you can probably get printed up at most office supply stores, stationery stores, Kinko’s, Office Max, Office Depot, Staples, any of those guys.
Cost to get it done – flyers are relatively cheep to print, and they are relatively cheap to get out, a bit cheaper than direct mail. Although there are some issues with no-soliciting areas, and signs, and people thinking that it’s a little bit invasive to have a flyer on their door than to have a piece of mail in their mailbox. So just be concerned about that.
As far as scalability, I like door-to-door marketing for scalability. I think that you can scale it to a certain degree. It’s easier to scale direct mail, in my opinion, but it’s still pretty scalable and it is pretty effective. You do get response from door-to-door marketing, especially marketing specific parts of your handyman business. If you are trying to market certain types of things for certain neighborhoods or certain times of year, it could be a very effective means for you to get that message out very quickly. And if you don’t have business one day, if you happen to get caught in a situation where the last paying client has ended, and you’ve got some time to do some marketing, it’s a great way to get out on an afternoon or morning and get some marketing out, and be able to generate business within a few days. So, something to think about doing if you get to that point where there’s not enough business for you anymore, to do some hands-on, really low cost marketing. So all you have to do is print out the cost of the flyers and if you’re doing it yourself, there’s no cost for delivery.
Types of door-to-door marketing, we’ve talked about this. Door knocking, which I didn’t mentioned on the other page, door hangers, flyers, sticky notes, and again that cooperative advertising which is the free flyer method where you have multiple people contributing to a flyer and then you do door-to-door delivery of it.
Until my next post,
James
P.S. Want to know which specific marketing strategies will help your handyman business generate more clients? Check out “The World’s Greatest Handyman Marketing Course” for more information.
Alright let’s talk about social media on how you might use it market your handyman business. Social media is a big buzzword now. Lots and lots of people talking about it, you see it on the news all the time, you hear people talking about using Twitter and Facebook and Linked In and things like that. Really in a lot of ways, social media is forming a social connection with your clients, and then occasionally throwing in a marketing message. That’s how it’s supposed to be used. Some business, like me, do not do any of the social aspect at all. They only do the business aspect, and so it is not nearly as effective the way that I’m doing it. It was a conscious decision, I do know how to use social media correctly, I have done it before correctly. I am choosing in my current business model not to do it for very specific reasons right now. That may change in the future, but right now I’m opting not to do the social side of social media.
It’s usually two-step marketing, because you’re usually just doing little bits of information and then you’re sending people to your website or to an audio download or having them call you for additional information. Basically the idea is you join social media websites like Twitter and Facebook. You connect with your clients, your prospects, people who know you, people who like you, people who trust you. You share personal information about what you’ve got going on during that. In every 9 to 10, 9 to 20 pieces of personal information you give out, occasionally you talk about something you’re doing in business, so it’s kind of a ratio of personal-to-business that you want to kind of keep a balance there.
It’s almost free to do. I mean you could buy some tools in order to help automate some of this stuff and make the process easier. But to get a Twitter account is free, to get a Facebook account is free, in order to sign up for Linked In is free. So you can use all those things in order to get on there and start building your network. It’s a big time-sucker, so unless you really like doing that, realize you’re going to probably invest considerable time just trying to keep up with what people are saying and be on there. It’s not something I’m focusing on right now, although it can highly be effective. It can be a great way for you to continue to have top-of-mind awareness for your client base. Another way for you to stay in contact with them between newsletters, between emails and those types of things. So it can be a great way for you to become connected to your client base and then build up know, like, and trust, so that you can then, when they have a need for your product or service, they can then sign up for that and get that from you. So in that way it can become effective, there is a time investment to it.
As far as scalability goes, yeah, there’s some scaling involved. The more people that are on your list following you, the more scalable it is. Sometimes they’ll have – the people looking at their stuff will see your stuff and there’s kind of like a viral component to it. So, just something to think about. If you want to use social media, you definitely can just sign up some of those websites that I mentioned, and you should be able to do it.
One of the concerns, again, is it tends to be less overtly commercial, it tends to be much more of a social aspect. And these are the major social media websites: Facebook, Twitter, and Linked In. Twitter is not nearly as popular with the younger crowd. Facebook is gaining popularity very rapidly, especially with the older crowd. And Linked In tends to be a business-networking type of website, where you find people that you’ve done business with before and it’s much more about making new connections, and business-oriented. So of the three, Linked In is more business-oriented, and Facebook and Twitter are much more social. of all of them, Twitter is the one I like least as far as a marketing tool, although it’s pretty popular. So just consider those.
Until my next post,
James
P.S. To find out how to incorporate cutting-edge social media into your handyman business marketing strategy, check out “The World’s Greatest Handyman Marketing Course” for more information.
Alright let’s talk about bandit signs. Bandit signs are those signs you see on the street corners, driving down the street, like “need handyman work?” or “need something repaired?” Or there’s a lot of them for multi-level marketing companies that are trying to recruit. A lot of times there are “we buy houses” type ads. They can be extremely effective. I will tell you what to think to be considering about from the very beginning is, and that is local laws. There are lots of local ordinances against those types of signs in many markets. Some of them are enforced, some of them are not. If you tend to see a lot of sings up in your market already, you’re probably more likely to be able to do it than in some markets where you don’t see any. Don’t think you’re the first person to think about it if you’re in a market. They probably tried it before and either had the signs taken down, and/or been fined for doing it. So definitely check your local ordinances about doing it, they can be very effective.
They are usually two-step marketing. Usually you go buy a bunch online, have them put up by someone else, you don’t want to go put them up yourself. And they are relatively expensive. I think they’re like a couple of bucks each in order to have printed up. But they are effective, I mean they’ll generate phone calls for you. They’re not very scalable, there’s only so many you can do, but they will get calls. I would just watch out for some of the local laws. There are much more, there are better things you could do if you haven’t done other things before, before you go to bandit signs. So, just something to think about.
Until my next post,
James
P.S. To learn whether bandit signs are right for your handyman business marketing strategy, check out “The World’s Greatest Handyman Marketing Course” for more information.
Yellow pages – I will let you know that I know a little bit about Yellow Pages, but I have never done a yellow page ad. Handyman businesses will probably want to do a yellow page ad. I have not done them because of the time commitment; usually you need to sign up for a year at a time, and I wasn’t ever sure that I wanted to test at that rate for that period of time. I’ve always used other marketing campaigns that were effective for doing that. So Yellow Pages is not a strong area of experience for me. However, most handyman businesses are going to want to do it. They want to be listed in their Yellow Pages. Although, it’s my understanding that the effectiveness of yellow page advertising is on the decline. More people are using on the Internet, less people are using Yellow Pages in order to find telephone numbers, with mobile phones having Internet access and access to Google search engines, in order to find all these listings. Fewer and fewer people are using them. So, something consider.
Look in your local Yellow Pages to find out if other handyman businesses are actually using Yellow Pages in order to advertise their business and start there. One thing I will tell you is, definitely use a headline instead of your business name in the Yellow Pages ad. You want it to be a benefits-laden type of marketing, unique-selling-proposition type stuff, where you’re making a very specific offer. And always use some type of measuring device to find out if it is effective. So you don’t want to commit to a $300-per-month Yellow Pages ad, only to find out that you don’t know how many calls you generated in second year when your about to do your renewal. You want to be able to say, “Oh, I’m going to look back at my statistics on my telephone or my website,” whatever it is, or both, and then determine exactly how many calls, and determine if that number of calls for the cost you paid is going to be a good cost-per-inquiry or cost-per-client for you to do. So I would definitely look at those things.
Most of the time, Yellow Pages are going to be a two-step marketing campaign so you’re not going to be able to get your full marketing message out in the Yellow Pages, and you’d have your Yellow Pages rep work with you on that. Most Yellow Pages reps are not marketing experts, just so you know. They are sales people. So just be aware that. If they give you a recommendation, analyze for yourself whether that’s a sales position, that they’re trying to increase their commission or increase something for themselves, or if it is really trying to be helpful to you. And some of them will use data like, “Bold gets you X response increase,” or whatever it is, be wary.
Cost to get it done – Yellow Pages, when I price it out, it was expensive compared to what I expected to get from it, compared to the other types of marketing that I was doing. I’m very sensitive to my cost per inquiry and cost per client and thanks of that nature, because we are doing this on such a large scale. So for me, Yellow Pages didn’t made a lot of sense when I looked at how much it would cost me to do it. Even for some local businesses I’ve run, I still didn’t do Yellow Pages ads. So, just take that into account.
As far as scalability goes, yeah, sure you can do Yellow Pages, you could do Yellow Pages in lots of different areas if you were trying to scale up, but otherwise there’s only a few Yellow Pages in most major areas that are competing. So it’s not like you can do five or six. You could do a larger ads, you know there’s a question as to how much more effective a half-page ad is, compared to a quarter-page ad or something like that. You need to test those in order to find out. It’s really hard to test effectively doing that. So, just some things to think about.
As far as effectiveness goes, from what I understand its on the decline. But from what I do understand too, is that it is effective for people that are listed in there, they do get calls. There are a certain number of people, and a certain demographic of people that tend to use the Yellow Pages more. That happens to be the population or the target market you’re after. It may be worthwhile to put your ad in there. So, something to consider. One of things I wanted to point out too, is the commitment. A lot of people don’t realize that they are committed for the year when they do Yellow Pages advertising. And that monthly price you’re paying is, if you find out it doesn’t work after for five months, you’re really annoyed to continue paying that for eight more months. So, something to think about.
Until my next post,
James
P.S. To find out whether Yellow Pages marketing can help your handyman business generate more clients, check out “The World’s Greatest Handyman Marketing Course” for more information.
