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Alright. Let’s talk about ways to increase your response rate in your marketing. And I’ve talked about at least one of these before, but I will to talk about a much larger number of them in this particular list. So let’s get started. First thing: in order to be able to improve your response rate, you have to be measuring your response rate. That is a key component to direct response marketing. You need to be measuring how many calls you’re getting on the marketing you’re putting out there, and a lot of times that’s going to require you to track certain things. One of the ways that I recommend tracking things is, on the web it’s a little bit easier often, because you can actually go into your analytics, which we are going to talk about when we get to section on setting up your website. You will be able to use analytics to determine where people came from and if they ultimately bought. What becomes a little bit more tricky is using the telephone. There are couple of ways to deal with tracking your responses trough the telephone. One way is to use telephone extensions. You can order a 24-hour recorded information line and have all of your calls be routed through that 24-hour recorded information line, and use different extension for each type of marketing you have. So when someone calls up it will say, “Thanks for calling ABC handyman service, please enter the extension you found with this telephone number now, and we will direct you to the correct person.”

And basically every single marketing piece you put out has a unique three-digit or four-digit extension on it, or two-digit extension, whatever you decide to use. And then they will be able to go ahead and put that extension in, and then maybe that call goes to a recorded message, where it’s a 30-minute, 5-minute, or 10-minute message, talking about the particular thing they are inquiring about. Because maybe you’re doing an ad for a bathroom remodeling and you’ll say, “Thank you for calling about our bathroom remodeling service. When you are ready to do your bathroom there are four things you need to know, and we’ll rush you a special report showing you the four things you need to know. Definitely leave your name, telephone number, and your address for mailing the report to you after the tone, and we’ll get that out to you. Of course if you would like to talk to someone live you can press zero at any time right now.” And then you’ll be either be able to either talk to them live, or if they just want to request a special report from you, they can do that on the 24-hour recorded information line. And when you get back to your office, it will be in your email box as a voicemail message. You just had it done, or hire your high school kid to take that address and add it to your list and send out the report out to them. So that is one of the ways to test it, by using different extensions on your telephone line, because then you will be able to see which person called in and which report or which person called on which ad. And then you’ll be able to know what’s working, how many calls you’re getting for that, and then you’ll be able to run some numbers.

So once you have your numbers, then you want to start doing what I refer to as “horse race testing.” So you know your one horse is the winner for your last race. You take him and you race him against an unknown horse, and you find out which one of those two is going to be the winner. And the horse can be testing different headlines, sub-headlines, irresistible offers, calls to action, photos and images, credibility things, testimonies; you can test all these different things in head-to-head horse races. So let’s talk a little bit about each one.

The first thing I would recommend you test if you’re not sure what you need to test is headlines. Headlines are critically important to your marketing, and they’re usually going to have the biggest impact in your results. Running a generic headline like the name of your business, versus having a headline that really outlines an important benefit to your prospect, can make a huge difference to your marketing response. Thinking you have the most important benefit in your headline, and then discovering that there is another benefit that is much bigger for your target audience, is a big discovery; and that’s one thing you can test with headlines to. You may be talking about saving money doing your bathroom remodeling, and people may be much more concerned about getting quality or time issues. So you need to find out what the biggest benefit is to your particular clients that you’re focusing on in your particular market, and test different headlines to see which works better. Right underneath the headline, a lot of times we’ll use a sub-headline. And a very similar thing for you to test is testing different sub-headlines to find out which one of those improves your response. What you’re actually offering. Are you offering a special report? Are you offering a free bid? Are you offering a quotes? Are you offering a coupon? Whatever it is that you’re offering can be changed and tested. We call that testing the irresistible offers, a part of your marketing. So you can test those different ones and see which one of those pulls better in your marketing.

You can test your call to action. Sometimes you’ll say, “call us direct now” or you could say “call to listen to a 24-hour recorded message” or “visit our website for more information.” All these different ways of testing a call to action can affect your marketing too. So you’re going to want to go in there and test those, and find out which one of those is going to be best for you. If you’re using photos in your marketing piece or any type of images, maybe you got a logo, well test your marketing with a logo and without and see which one actually has an improved response. You may find that your logo improves response. You may find out that your logo decreases response, so you don’t want to necessarily assume that your logo is going to be best, or not best. You don’t necessarily want to include your logo if it’s not going to impact your response. You may find it’s not really affecting it at all. You may find no difference in response or small difference in response that could be just a normal variation. But you want to go and test those different things. Maybe the photo of repair job that you did, or before and after photos or repair need to be tested to see which one makes the biggest impact. Test those different things and move forward. And realize guys, you’re not going to be testing these things in such a way that a you’re going to be testing one thing and then you’re done. This is an ongoing process to constantly improve. This is why if you do this from the very beginning, a year from now, your business is going to be so much better that someone who is just coming in to the market. Because you’re going to have all of this internal knowledge of what worked and what didn’t work for you, and be able to move forward. But you’ve got to go through the process of continually testing. If you run the same ad, and just because it works you don’t test it, you’re running into problems. Because you could be getting three times the response for you. And it just takes a little bit of extra time and a little effort to go through and to do this testing.

Okay, so where was I? Let’s talk about some ways to improve response rate — improving your credibility. Join your local association. Join your chamber of commerce. Join the Better Business Bureau. Different things you can do to improve credibility. Put down testimonials from people. Try testing different testimonials. Does the testimonial with the picture of the person make a better impact? Does the testimonial with the name and address and telephone number have an impact? Does the testimonial talking about one thing have a better impact than another thing? You can test a lot of different things with testimonials, but testimonials, in general, will boost response. The more testimonies you put in there, the more boost in response you’re typically going to get, but go ahead and test me on that. Do testimonials in your own marketing and make sure that you’ve got good ones. And be improving on it. If you’ve got a better testimonial, now try that one in your new marketing piece and see if that improves response.

Another thing to add to improve your response rate is a complete risk reversal. So “100% money back guarantee” or “we’ll do a free consultation and if you don’t like it, we’ll do something else for you. We’ll give you a free coupon,” or “free discount on something else, or “we’ll give you a $10 gift card if we come out there and you don’t agree that we’re the best people for the job.” Whatever it is that you can do to reverse the risk of having someone inquire about your ad, and improve the response rate. If you compare your numbers of what it would cost you to offer that type of risk reversal, versus how many more clients you’d get, more often then not you will find that the risk-reversal is worth it. So definitely take that into account when you are doing your ads, and adding some response-improving things to them, like risk reversal.

Another thing is urgency. You can add urgency by putting a deadline there. So, “For the next 10 days we’re offering a special, where we are giving people a free upgrade on the appliances when they do a full kitchen remodel with us.” Or, “We’ll do a free upgrade for diagonal tile flooring, free when you do your next tile job with us.” So anything like that you can do, where you can create urgency by putting a deadline on it, is going to typically boost response rates and improve your ability to market and get more prospects. So you can use that.

You can also use the concept of scarcity. Scarcity could be, “I have created 10 audio CDs talking about the 15 ways to sell your house faster from somebody who’s helped people sell houses by repairing properties and getting them ready to sell.” That could be your little niche, and if you say there are only 10 CDs, improving that scarcity is going to get people to inquire more so than if you say “unlimited supply,” or you don’t mention any supply issues. So you can do the scarcity thing. Or, “For the next three people, we’re going to do a 20% discount off (whatever the job is that you are promoting at that particular time).” You can add scarcity to your marketing in order to do that. Be sure to use legitimate scarcity, so if you really have 500 of these things, don’t say you’ve got 10. If you are only going to use 10, say “we’re only doing 10 for free, we’re thinking about selling these afterward,” and use scarcity like that. So be honest in your advertising, but scarcity is a marketing tool that you can use in order to increase response as well.

Until my next post,

James

P.S. Learn what marketing to use and how to improve it to maximize your return on investment and massively improve profitability with “The World’s Greatest Handyman Marketing Course”.

Alright, so we just talked a little bit about these marketing widgets. You can market your core product, your service. Be very specific. Don’t just say “handyman.” You are going to want to say the very specific product or service that you are offering. For instance, you paint the outside of houses, you do concrete work, maybe you do a variety of things. Be very, very specific in what you are offering and target that particular audience. You can go after multiple markets and target those guys, but you need to do very specific ones there. Special reports, we’ve talked about that a little bit. “Seven ways to save money on your next kitchen remodel,” or, “five ways to make your house sell faster by doing these repairs,” or, “sell your house quicker for a higher dollar amount by doing these five simple repairs.” You can talk about the repairs you would recommend they do on their house in order to get ready to sell.

Audio, you can do an audio versus a special report. Or you can do a video over a special report. You can have these as downloads, you can create packages of video and audio in a special report and a free consultation, and sell that for $19.95, where they get all the information plus they can have a consultation with you. You can make money on the lead generation part of it, maybe you’d do it for free, maybe you’d charge for it -– it’s totally up to you. You can do coupons, you can do memberships. One of things we talked about at the beginning of the webinar today was this concept of creating memberships and continuity. And so you can market your continuity program and tell people, “This is what you get with our continuity package: you get access to me, whenever you have a tenant that’s going to call, they will call me directly. I will handle all the things for you. I’ll bill you 30 days net, I’ll do all this for you. And you get a discount on a rate, and it’ll only cost you $25 per month per property to do that. And you’ll more than make that up in the year from the savings you’d have on your properties, and you don’t have to deal with the calls anymore.” That could be a membership that you charge to a real estate inventors, or you can do something similar with real estate agents. Or you can do something similar with another group that you have affinity with.

You can also create discount cards. You can sell the discount cards, $29.95 discount card, it’s good for a year and it gives you 10% off all our services for a year. So you could sell that in advance, or you can sell it at the point of sale and say, “Look, you don’t have our discount card, do you? Well I’m going to charge you X number of dollars to do this project, and if you buy this $29.95 discount card, it’s going to get you 10% off this particular project too. But then you’ll have this for the rest of the year if you have any other projects that you need done. You’re going to get 10% off on those too. Why don’t you pay the $29.95 for the card today. You’ll save more that on the discount on this particular deal.” But now you’ve created an affinity toward you, where if they have another project to do, who are they going to call? They already got a discount card for you –- they’re going to call you. So you build in this likeliness that they’re going to call you back for more projects, even if you are conceding a small price today by doing a discount card.

Until my next post,

James

P.S. Want to learn specific strategies for using unique selling propositions in your handyman business to generate more clients? Check out “The World’s Greatest Handyman Marketing Course” for more information.

Alright, let’s talk about some different website software. In my opinion, you’re going to want to have a blog. And a blog is — the difference in a blog and a website, in my opinion, is that a blog is more of a dynamic, changing entity that you’re constantly updating, and adding things to, and improving on; whereas the website is more like a static, unchanging online presence that you put up once, and you forget about. So you are going to want to have a blog, which is going to make it really easy for you to go in and update your articles, put new offers on there, show pictures of recently completed jobs, make testimonials available, talk about some things you’ve got going on personally and socially, things of that nature. And you want to make it really easy to do. So you going to want to have  blog software, in my opinion, for doing that. The nice advantage of doing blog software is that they are really well-liked by search engines, and by visitors. Visitors tend to like to see content that is constantly refreshed, they like to see change, they like to see that you’re in business and updating things, and that you’ve got things going on. And so that really is encouraging the visitors. And search engines love new content, and they love the format, and the way that blogs are structured as well. So it’s going to give you a benefit in your search engine results, which we’ll talk about later, by using a blog format. So I recommend using a blog.

The other thing you are going to need is software basically to manage the content of your website. You’re going to use a blog software. You’re also going to need a website hosting account. The website hosting account is the technology company that keeps your website available on the web. So when you go to a web browser, you type in the domain name in order to get to your website, you will need to have a company that keeps your website up for you. There are some free services out there; I’m going to tell you why I don’t recommend them when we get to that point. There are some very low-cost, high-quality services out there. I will tell you which ones I do recommend, I’ll probably ask you to do a special report in case it changes, because sometimes these guys, they’re doing great for long period of time, and then their customer support just goes away. So I want to be able to make sure you get the most up-to-date information. So I’ll have you request a special report online for that. But you’ll need that web hosting account in order to do that. And then the last thing I am going to recommend, specifically for your blog software I’m going to recommend WordPress, and it is located at www.wordpress.org, not www.wordpress.com. Wordpress.com is the web-based, free version. I don’t recommend that you do it there. I do recommend that you get your own domain name and have it hosted somewhere else, and that you use www.wordpress.org. I will talk little bit more about that later, so let’s move on.

Until my next post,

James

P.S. Want to learn specific strategies for using unique selling propositions in your handyman business to generate more clients? Check out “The World’s Greatest Handyman Marketing Course” for more information.

Alright, let’s talk about what to market. In your handyman business, probably the first thing that comes to mind is your particular service. However, there are ways to take services and create them into products, take services in products and turn them into information products, take information and services and products and turn them into packages, and basically what you get are what I call “marketing widgets.” Any time you create any product, service, or information package, any time you put that together, it’s what I refer to as a “marketing widget” because you are marketing that widget. There are certain things where, there are different places where advertising a service is the way to go. For instance, if you’re going to advertise directly in a service type of publication (like a list of people that provide services), you could go ahead and list your service in there.

If you happen to be listing something that’s more of a product, you can create your service and package it into a three-hour package, or a specific job that’s done and you know that every time you do this job, it’s always going to be between thee and four hours, so I will price it so that if I have to do four hours, it’s going to be great. And I will package it together and sell that as a product, more so than a specific service. You can also do information: – how to do your own tile floor, how to do your own kitchen upgrade, how to replace a sink, how to hang a door frame, how to do all these different things that you’re doing in your business. You can go ahead and do those, and create packages for those and information on how to do them, to get more prospects inquiring about them. So create information products to give prospects who are thinking about doing it themselves, get them on your prospect list, and then follow up with them to make sure that they have not decided to hire someone else to do it for them. It is a really good way for you to get inquires about something, and then get them on your contact list, have them know they can trust with you with the information you provide, which is good valuable information. If they decide to do it on their own, great. Now you’ve got someone on your list that may be available for another project in the future, or maybe be available for referral if someone is not going to do it themselves. But you are able to get them that information, and a certain percentage of them will actually use you to do the project, even though they initially intended to do it themselves. So those are some ideas of what to actually market your in business.

Until my next post,

James

P.S. Want to learn specific strategies for using unique selling propositions in your handyman business to generate more clients? Check out “The World’s Greatest Handyman Marketing Course” for more information.

Let’s get into some specifics about marketing messages for handyman businesses. The first thing I want to talk about is the concept of unique selling proposition. A selling proposition is a marketing concept that a lot of marketing experts talk about. And I am going to try to present it related to the handyman business specifically.

Basically, what is big picture though is… it is the marketing promise that you make that if somebody buys your product or service you get this specific benefit. And ideally it is one that neither the competition nor other people can offer in their particular one. So it is something unique to you.

It might change based on what market you are targeting so your unique selling proposition that we are talking about, going and targeting the real estate agents, trying to get sellers to a preparation for their home sales, or real estate investors or people that are doing home remodeling, is going to be different than the one you’ve used from the other ones.

Another good way to think about unique selling proposition is that it could be used as a headline in your classified ad. And just using the unique selling proposition alone, with a call to action, like “call my telephone number”, people would actually respond to that. So a good way to make sure that you got a unique selling proposition is that it is formatted correctly is that if you could use that as a headline for you classified ad and that you gave a telephone number so that people would actually call that telephone number.

So what would be a unique sing proposition for a handyman business? Well one of the things you could use in your unique selling proposition is you could say – as an example of targeting real estate agents, would be – $500 dollars spent now could result in ten thousand dollars increase sale price of your property. Or trade a thousand dollars in preparation or trade a thousand dollars in a handyman work for ten thousand dollars of increase value of your price property. If you can make a fact based proposition, a unique selling proposition, that would be highly effective. If it would be something that your competition is not directly promising or directly offering and you could use that.

If are focusing on working with real estate investors you could create a unique selling proposition specific for them. You could make specific one for people looking to do their basements, for people looking to do their flooring for people looking to do remodeling of their bathroom or kitchen. Whatever it is that you need to focus on, you can make a unique selling proposition focused on that in your offer to your particular market.

Until my next post,

James

P.S. Want to learn specific strategies for using unique selling propositions in your handyman business to generate more clients? Check out “The World’s Greatest Handyman Marketing Course” for more information.