So other than word-of-mouth, what kind of advertising could someone like Lyrical do to get your attention?TheCutlery said:
Adventures with lyrical - buying a business
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Cutlery
Kill All the White People
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For my generation, google is huge. I don"t even have a phone book in my house. If I need something, the top 3 guys on google are going to be the ones to get my attention. I don"t know if that"s typical of high end landscaping, however.opiate82 said:
If I was putting money into something, I"d definitely be looking towards the future, not the past. The internet is the future of advertising, make it work for you.
Definitely not disagreeing with you, having an internet presence is huge, but you do realize companies pay advertising agencies huge amount of dollars to game the Google search results? Depending on the size of area Lyrical serves, it can be tough to get in that "top 3." (btw my top 3 results for landscaping in my town where all phone book links).
I also hear what you are saying about door hangers. But take pizza for example, if it"s your favorite pizza place putting a hanger on your door and it includes a very nice discount, you eat there already anyways, your really throwing that away?
My franchise, in an effort to boost sales has started cold-calling customers trying to get them to order pizza. They are all excited because they claim "1 in 5 people order pizza!" We keep asking them, well ya, but what about the other 4 you are pissing off by calling them? So I can definitely see where unsolicited things are a slippery slope.
I think you are being overly dramatic when it comes to door hangers however, and your opinion of them does not represent a majority of people. I personally might keep ones that I might need or have coupons for places I frequent, but otherwise just toss them. I don"t rage and go "OMG YOU LITTERED IN MY YARD I"LL NEVER SHOP FROM YOU!" I probably wouldn"t even remember who it was that dropped the hanger off the next day if I just tossed it.
I also hear what you are saying about door hangers. But take pizza for example, if it"s your favorite pizza place putting a hanger on your door and it includes a very nice discount, you eat there already anyways, your really throwing that away?
My franchise, in an effort to boost sales has started cold-calling customers trying to get them to order pizza. They are all excited because they claim "1 in 5 people order pizza!" We keep asking them, well ya, but what about the other 4 you are pissing off by calling them? So I can definitely see where unsolicited things are a slippery slope.
I think you are being overly dramatic when it comes to door hangers however, and your opinion of them does not represent a majority of people. I personally might keep ones that I might need or have coupons for places I frequent, but otherwise just toss them. I don"t rage and go "OMG YOU LITTERED IN MY YARD I"LL NEVER SHOP FROM YOU!" I probably wouldn"t even remember who it was that dropped the hanger off the next day if I just tossed it.
Shonuff
Mr. Poopybutthole
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I"m on google, and on the front page in most of the areas we serve (sometimes google moves you for no apparent reason). What bothers me about google is that I charged clicks and get no calls in the slow times. For instance, in the Winter, I could run a $500 a month budget, but get no calls. In the Spring, that all changes. I don"t want to sound paranoid, but its like google is screwing me on my clicks.TheCutlery said:
I don"t think hangers are a total waste.
Sure, most of the time, it will go right into the trash. It"s all about timing for a hanger. If I happen to be looking for something and a hanger about that something pops, I"ll take the time to read it and give it a call if it sounds good.
Of course, it first needs to get my attention. If I"m looking for a pizza, I need to see a pizza (or a magic keyword) when I pick the hanger up, otherwise, it won"t even get to my attention and be discarded right away.
Sure, most of the time, it will go right into the trash. It"s all about timing for a hanger. If I happen to be looking for something and a hanger about that something pops, I"ll take the time to read it and give it a call if it sounds good.
Of course, it first needs to get my attention. If I"m looking for a pizza, I need to see a pizza (or a magic keyword) when I pick the hanger up, otherwise, it won"t even get to my attention and be discarded right away.
Shonuff
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Last time we did door hangers was in the dead of Winter, so thats not a good time to measure things. We generated about $400 a week in that time. I"d be willing to bet that since demand goes up 7x in the Spring, Summer and Fall, that we"d generate 3k a week. I"ll order 2500 door hangers from doorhangers.com to test it next month (I"m sending a mailer to all my customers in April, its not cheap).opiate82 said:
Door hangers also work great for this business, because when we work on one neighbor"s house, we tend to pick up work in that same neighborhood from referrals. The same holds true, we piss off a customer, we"ve pissed off the whole block, they all talk about work done in that neighborhood. We have great penetration in some of the more affluent neighborhoods, but every week, I drive by some areas we don"t do much work in. We drove past three or four affluent neighborhoods I didn"t even know existed, we"ll put down hangers in them when I get new ones.
So we"ll test it in May, if we aren"t already at max capacity for that month also.
Cutlery
Kill All the White People
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Well, like I said, what I need I google for, but if your main source of new business is word of mouth, work with it rather than against it. No point in dropping shitloads of money and billboards and internet space when you can just as easily get an entire neighborhood worth of work from word of mouth. Contractors are a bit different than pizza. I know what I like for pizza, I order from the same places all the time. I"m very much unlikely to go with a contractor based upon a door hanger, I"m much more likely to go with who my friends/family have used in the past. There"s just far too much risk involved with taking a chance on someone doing that kind of work.Lyrical said:
Absolutely, but I"m also of the mindset that the more people are on your property, the more chance you have of crime being committed. Most crimes aren"t random "I"m gonna head on over to the 8700 block and see what I can grab tonight," they"re from people who are on your property for extended periods of time looking at your shit. And it might not even be the people that are on there, a lot of times it"s friends of friends or whatever that hear "Oh yeah, you hear about that guy with the pool that backs up to the lake? He"s got a 30k truck in the driveway and some nice shit in the garage." Fuck that, I don"t need it. Some fucks came by last summer trying to sell cleaning products or some shit to my wife, and I stood at the bottom of the stairs outta sight for awhile until she started telling them she needed to get going because she was going out for dinner. Hey, great fucking idea babe, let everyone know we"re not going to be here. I went out there and shuffled them along and then damned near beat her ass for being so fucking retarded. The first year I was here, I took the kid out trick or treating at the same time as some people across the street came over to meet us, and the guy basically told me the life story of everyone that lived on that block. That"s the fucking danger of letting people know more than they need to, that shit spreads like wildfire, and people will talk to anyone they just met 10 seconds before about anything without giving any thought to it. I"ve got a lot of low hanging fruit in my neighborhood, with like 1 out of every 12 people leaving their garage doors open for extended periods of time when they"re not around, and I"d like to keep the criminal element over there instead of near my place. I don"t want people poking around, riling up the dogs, and leaving trash in my yard, and I know for a fact that I"m not alone in that regard because the guy next door to me has a sign on his door that pretty much tells people "Don"t bother knocking, I"m not answering the door." Nice guy, keeps to himself. Might butcher hookers, but he stays outta my shit, and that"s all I want.opiate82 said:
Long story short, if word of mouth is working for you, keep on using it. Target door hangers in neighborhoods you work, but don"t blanket them across entire counties. If your business isn"t going to pull internet traffic, then don"t use it, and I can see contractors fitting into that mold.
For your mailers, have you thought about doing the opposite? Rather than mailing all your customers, exclude your customers from your mailing. We do that with our mailers, doesn"t make much sense to send a coupon to someone who is ordering from us anyways so we only send them to addresses not in our data-base (or haven"t ordered from us in the last 6 months).Lyrical said:
Also this might seem a little cut-throat, but you could try poaching some business as well. I don"t do this often but I"ve been driving through town, saw a competitor"s delivery driver dropping off pizzas at a business, looked at the clock and saw it was 12:10ish and thought to myself "I bet those pizzas were supposed to be there at noon." Stepped in really quick and said "Saw Pizza Hut dropping pizzas off, if they aren"t doing a good job give us a call, here"s a call and a couple of free pizza passes." I"ve done that maybe 1/2 dozen times total, but it"s worked every time.
I also had a buddy trying to start a fence building business. He just strolled through some neighborhoods on a sunny day, and if he saw someone working in their yard that wasn"t fenced he just started a quick conversation and said "hey, I could build a really nice fence for you." He actually drummed up some business that way surprisingly enough. At the very least he usually got his business card in someones hand.
Cutlery
Kill All the White People
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Man, I don"t get people at all. When people do that shit to me I tell them to take a fucking hike. I don"t think social networking is gonna be the downfall of people"s dumbassery, I think they"ve been doing it themselves for years.opiate82 said:
Clearly I"m in the minority for not wanting people sticking their nose in my business, but am I really wrong for it?
Some more marketing stuff here: I run an insurance agency, so the marketing is obviously different than what you guys do. We primarily market to commercial accounts, and use almost strictly direct mail.
A great resource for leads believe it or not is your local library. If you have a library card you should be able to go onto their website, enter your card number, and access their free ReferenceUSA directory. It gets you access to businesses and consumers, and you can filter the leads however you want. For individuals you can sort by radius around an address, median income, etc.. For businesses you can get TONS of info; owners name, fax, SIC, gross sales, number of employees, and tons more.
We do a targeted mailing to the specific demographic we want to focus on, include the owner or business name on the flyer, and send it in a goldenrod envelope with goldenrod paper. The campaign costs more than if we just sent out a generic white envelope flyer, but the goldenrod gets noticed, and inputting their info. directly on the piece draws them in further. For example, I found a real sweet spot for rates with one of our companies, where our closing rate was also high and nailed down that specific client base. It was auto repair shops, 5-19 employees, in a 4 county area. On my piece I put that specific information so they read the mailer and say "hey, that"s me". We"ve run up to a 4:1 ROI with it, but it"s slowed down a bit recently so we need to make some tweaks.
Anyone doing any Facebook marketing that could share a couple tips or resources? I don"t even really know where to start with it.
A great resource for leads believe it or not is your local library. If you have a library card you should be able to go onto their website, enter your card number, and access their free ReferenceUSA directory. It gets you access to businesses and consumers, and you can filter the leads however you want. For individuals you can sort by radius around an address, median income, etc.. For businesses you can get TONS of info; owners name, fax, SIC, gross sales, number of employees, and tons more.
We do a targeted mailing to the specific demographic we want to focus on, include the owner or business name on the flyer, and send it in a goldenrod envelope with goldenrod paper. The campaign costs more than if we just sent out a generic white envelope flyer, but the goldenrod gets noticed, and inputting their info. directly on the piece draws them in further. For example, I found a real sweet spot for rates with one of our companies, where our closing rate was also high and nailed down that specific client base. It was auto repair shops, 5-19 employees, in a 4 county area. On my piece I put that specific information so they read the mailer and say "hey, that"s me". We"ve run up to a 4:1 ROI with it, but it"s slowed down a bit recently so we need to make some tweaks.
Anyone doing any Facebook marketing that could share a couple tips or resources? I don"t even really know where to start with it.
In the wrong, no, a little crotchety, maybe. But I hear ya though. We have these idiots come around selling windows once a month. They drive me crazy and I started putting a note on my door that says "no soliciting" when I see them walking around my neighborhood. But when the girl-scouts come around with their cookies, I"m all in!TheCutlery said:
For every one of you though there is one of my father-in-law. If Lyrical saw him outside working on his yard and struck up a conversation about landscaping, Lyrical be stuck there for the next couple hours and eventually wouldhaveto take a ride in his truck (because everyone has to ride in his truck).
Our franchise did Google (paid search results I believe) and Facebook ads to help promote online ordering. They both had identical offers and during a week we had 56 redemptions from Google and 4 from Facebook. Don"t know if that answers your question other than saying we haven"t had much success with their paid adds anyways.Disp said:
For Facebook I"m more interested in building "likes" on my page and using it to promote events and such (e.g. a wine-tasting) but I don"t know how interested people would be in "liking" an insurance companies Facebook page.
Does your site show up in the actual search listings for relevant local search terms or are you just relying on google ads? I realize that there are loads of people out there who don"t seem to know the difference between the two (and they are probably much closer to your target market than anyone here), but since this now seems to be about what kind of marketing doesn"t work on us, I imagine that you"ll never sell landscaping to anyone reading this thread via a google ad. If I need landscaping and I search for [mycity] landscaping and you"re the top result, you"re getting serious consideration unless your site is shitty. If you"re the top google ad, I wouldn"t even notice.Lyrical said:
Shonuff
Mr. Poopybutthole
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So...no billboard for me, the only ones available are in lower income areas, or the super high end ones near the corporate HQ"s running $1,500 a month.
We just picked up a big commercial job and are now booked until mid-June (one month out). Its not good for a service business to say we can"t do your job for a month. You start getting complaints from customers about being too slow, or worse, they are switching to another company who can get there faster. I"m going to have to hire one more person, which I don"t like doing in this economy. I don"t want to hire someone for a short spike in business, just to lay them off in 60 days. Sad thing is, gas prices have risen so much, that its eating what I could pay a floater. I like to have a floater just in case. But I"ve literally spent $300 a day on diesel, moving trucks and equipment from job-to-job.
I"ve also heard rumblings that the Nature museum we do business just had its budget increased, and is going to be doing some major work additions (like adding in a trail). It might be a 100k job or more. Sounds great, but if it takes 60 days to complete, and 60 days to pay, I"ve incurred alot of upfront expenses. With large commercial jobs making a comeback, I may need to go to the bank and borrow aganst my line of credit until I get paid.
Its like they teach you in rudimentary business classes in HS, sometimes managing cash flow is more important than anything else. You can show a profit and go out of business, if you don"t watch it. You have to know how cash starts in your ops, and ends in your ops. My customers are notorious for waiting 60-90 days to pay, and they expect those terms or they"ll go to someone else. If you are in a situation like this, you need to make sure your bank will back you up with working capital. A trite statement or not, but working cap is the lifeblood of any business.
So now I get to make phone calls today, politicking with the bank, bleh.
We just picked up a big commercial job and are now booked until mid-June (one month out). Its not good for a service business to say we can"t do your job for a month. You start getting complaints from customers about being too slow, or worse, they are switching to another company who can get there faster. I"m going to have to hire one more person, which I don"t like doing in this economy. I don"t want to hire someone for a short spike in business, just to lay them off in 60 days. Sad thing is, gas prices have risen so much, that its eating what I could pay a floater. I like to have a floater just in case. But I"ve literally spent $300 a day on diesel, moving trucks and equipment from job-to-job.
I"ve also heard rumblings that the Nature museum we do business just had its budget increased, and is going to be doing some major work additions (like adding in a trail). It might be a 100k job or more. Sounds great, but if it takes 60 days to complete, and 60 days to pay, I"ve incurred alot of upfront expenses. With large commercial jobs making a comeback, I may need to go to the bank and borrow aganst my line of credit until I get paid.
Its like they teach you in rudimentary business classes in HS, sometimes managing cash flow is more important than anything else. You can show a profit and go out of business, if you don"t watch it. You have to know how cash starts in your ops, and ends in your ops. My customers are notorious for waiting 60-90 days to pay, and they expect those terms or they"ll go to someone else. If you are in a situation like this, you need to make sure your bank will back you up with working capital. A trite statement or not, but working cap is the lifeblood of any business.
So now I get to make phone calls today, politicking with the bank, bleh.
Hey Lyrical this is a dumb question as I have zero business experience but I"ve never understood why big business always just float debt for a month or three. It makes absolutely no sense to me, but it seems like that"s kind of standard practice.
I worked a shitty job for a few months as a manager for a print shop and that"s exactly what they did. The paper was delivered and the invoice would be due in 90 days with no interest. Why is that normal?
I worked a shitty job for a few months as a manager for a print shop and that"s exactly what they did. The paper was delivered and the invoice would be due in 90 days with no interest. Why is that normal?
It might be for different reasons in other businesses, but in retail the idea is you can sell a good chunk of your order to pay for the order.
You could always offer a discount for paying earlier than the initial 90 days. That way you won"t have so much cash tied up. Something like 2/10 or whatever the standard rate is in your industry.Lyrical said: