Advertising: Pro's and Con's of Various Media

Shonuff · Jan 29, 2013

I already posted my strats for 2013 in the Adventures of Thread. Commercial for us goes with the economy, realtors call us when people are buying homes and construction companies are building. Residential is still virtually untapped because we've limited geographies and the large number of corporate people here with large plots of land.

checkyeah_sl · Jan 29, 2013

I got ya. I'd be interested to know the results of a door to door campaign similar to what I stated earlier.

Shonuff · Jan 30, 2013

checkyeah_sl said:
I got ya. I'd be interested to know the results of a door to door campaign similar to what I stated earlier.

The problem with door to door is getting someone that will reliably drop them off. At times, when we are slower, we drop door hangers in targeted neighborhoods. But that's just too much maintenance and manpower involved doing this full time. I have toyed with the idea of doing direct mailpieces though, but there is literally a science to that (at least if you want to earn your ROI). That is for later.

opiate82 · Jan 30, 2013

When I did door hangers distributed by my employees, I did a contest where the person with the most coupons returned got a cash prize. The employees used their own rubber stamps to mark the back to track redemptions. I didn't get the results I was hoping for out of the promotion but at least I knew my employees weren't throwing stacks of door hangers into the dumpster.

If you are interested in direct mailing, I have a meeting next week with the company that I do all of my mailing buys through. I could inquire as to if they service your area and/or would be able to help you put together a program. Obviously you'd have to PM me some details and I know you aren't very comfortable handing out details, but I figure I could throw the offer out there.

Shonuff · Jan 30, 2013

opiate82_sl said:
When I did door hangers distributed by my employees, I did a contest where the person with the most coupons returned got a cash prize. The employees used their own rubber stamps to mark the back to track redemptions. I didn't get the results I was hoping for out of the promotion but at least I knew my employees weren't throwing stacks of door hangers into the dumpster.

If you are interested in direct mailing, I have a meeting next week with the company that I do all of my mailing buys through. I could inquire as to if they service your area and/or would be able to help you put together a program. Obviously you'd have to PM me some details and I know you aren't very comfortable handing out details, but I figure I could throw the offer out there.

I'll do my own mailers. Between computers and Zillow, I can target homes just as well as they can. It used to be that you'd have to pay companies to do that, but nowadays, pretty much anyone with a brain and some time can do them. Thanks though.

opiate82 · Jan 30, 2013

Just some more fuel for thought, last round of targeted magnet mailers I did (targeted neighborhoods and eliminated all my current customers from the mailing list) cost me $0.38 a piece total (including full color printing). Considering postage alone is $0.45 a stamp, it is hard to beat that price.

Also got into 20,000 homes at $0.04 a piece using Red Plum. While not as targeted, you can blanket an entire town for very cheap that way and they still give you a map that allows you to pick-and-choose specific areas of town to drop.

Shonuff · Jan 30, 2013

opiate82_sl said:
Just some more fuel for thought, last round of targeted magnet mailers I did (targeted neighborhoods and eliminated all my current customers from the mailing list) cost me $0.38 a piece total (including full color printing). Considering postage alone is $0.45 a stamp, it is hard to beat that price.

Also got into 20,000 homes at $0.04 a piece using Red Plum. While not as targeted, you can blanket an entire town for very cheap that way and they still give you a map that allows you to pick-and-choose specific areas of town to drop.

Based on those prices, I'd definitely love more info.

Disp_sl · Feb 5, 2013

Can you send me the info. too Opiate? We primarily do direct mail, and am always searching for good vendors. Have any of you tried EDDM through the PO? We gave it a shot in November because it was insanely cheap, but didn't get good results because it's not targeted other than by carrier routes. The prospects who called were actually very high quality leads, but we just couldn't get them a competitive rate.

Kais · Feb 5, 2013

Opiate, any chance you can PM the info to me as well? I'm becoming more involved in a family business that could really benefit from better targeting for our mailers.

opiate82 · Feb 6, 2013

I am going to be out of town till next Tuesday (2/12), but I will try to get some PM's out when I get back.

Tmac · Feb 15, 2013

opiate82_sl said:
I am going to be out of town till next Tuesday (2/12), but I will try to get some PM's out when I get back.

Hit me up. I currently print/envelope/stamp my own stuff at home and it costs me like $40 just in stamps for every 100 letters I send out... Would be very interested in more info.

Julian The Apostate · Feb 21, 2013

Id love to get out of the yellowpages, but as someone (lyrical?) said earlier in the thread, too many of our customers still use it to look up our number after hearing our radio ad. Our yearly negotiations with our yellow book rep have to be one of the most frustrating things. Especially since all they are trying to do now is sell SEO and banner ads on their shitty web pages that no one fucking uses. They see the writing on the wall and are way too late/horrible at the internet game. Cant wait till they go down.

We are currently focusing on getting more referrals as our close rate for referrals(60%) is about double that of yellow book/internet leads(30%). Our referral program right now is $100 dollars of job to existing customer that refers us, $100 to new customer that got referred. Im a little underwhelmed with that program but haven't thought of a better solution.

I've also been kicking around an idea on direct mailings. We are a roofing company so the work we do is very visible in the neighborhood. After we get a job in the neighborhood but before any work is started we would send a direct mail postcard to everyone in the neighborhood that says basically, "hey were going to be doing a job in the neighborhood at XXX address soon. come check it out" and a little info on our company. Then after the job is complete sending them another postcard saying " we finished the job at XXX address. come look how nice it looks."

We are also thinking about having the salesman go out to the job the morning the job starts, knocking on the doors of all the neighbors, introduce themselves and say something like, "We are starting a job at your neighbors, I apologize for all the noise, if any debris happens to blow into your yard or any other inconvenience please give a call at XXX" and hand them a business card. Get your foot in the door for when they need a roof.

Shonuff · Feb 21, 2013

A few thoughts:

- Yes, the yellow page sales reps suck. Every year, I get a new mouth breather demanding a 5% increase in price. And we all know that as a % of ad mix, yellow pages has dropped.

- I've thought about giving a money on referrals also. I'd be a little bit concerned about giving $100 off on both sides, it would seem as though that would hurt you on small jobs. I've toyed around with giving a % off to both parties. Our close rate, like yours, is double on referrals. And we typically don't lose customers once they've signed on with us. So you take the hit now, but when they call again and again, it adds up. This is an idea worth pursuing for me, thanks.

- The problem with salesman knocking is that they are short sighted. They want to make a sale now. You have to put someone out there that you trust to do it. I know business owners that want people to lay down door hangers in every neighborhood they work, but in reality, that's the first thing the guys throw by the wayside. They'll find something else to do, whether it's farting around with the equipment. They might even rather get up on the roof and help out then canvass the neighborhood. No one wants to be a Door-to-Door Salesman. That's a tough life.

Tmac · Feb 21, 2013

Julian the Apostate_sl said:
I've also been kicking around an idea on direct mailings. We are a roofing company so the work we do is very visible in the neighborhood. After we get a job in the neighborhood but before any work is started we would send a direct mail postcard to everyone in the neighborhood that says basically, "hey were going to be doing a job in the neighborhood at XXX address soon. come check it out" and a little info on our company. Then after the job is complete sending them another postcard saying " we finished the job at XXX address. come look how nice it looks."

Do you have a sales team? Using door hangars and going door-to-door on Saturday morning/afternoon would be incredibly effective. Canvasing neighborhoods you're already working in is valuable.

I know a roofer that does millions in revenue and he has software that alerts him to hail storms around the U.S. He'll send out his sales team (of like 3-4 people) and they'll hit up the neighborhoods and offer free evaluations of hail damage. They get on the roof, do all the "insurance stuff" and hand them all the documentation they need to make a claim with their insurance company.

Once they have one house, they use that as a reference and continue canvasing the neighborhood. Profit.

Shonuff · Feb 21, 2013

Or you can put down a sign in the yard after you are done. I've seen roofers do this.

We do none of this, but once we do work in a neighborhood, we end up getting called back there by a neighbor a week later. When people's neighbors are doing the selling, that's better than any salesman doing it.

Tmac · Feb 21, 2013

Lyrical_sl said:
Or you can put down a sign in the yard after you are done. I've seen roofers do this.

We do none of this, but once we do work in a neighborhood, we end up getting called back there by a neighbor a week later. When people's neighbors are doing the selling, that's better than any salesman doing it.

Maybe, but there's nothing wrong with being aggressive. Name dropping that neighbor gives them incentive to talk with that neighbor about the job. Something that might not have otherwise occurred.

Shonuff · Feb 21, 2013

Tmac47_sl said:
Maybe, but there's nothing wrong with being aggressive. Name dropping that neighbor gives them incentive to talk with that neighbor about the job. Something that might not have otherwise occurred.

I'll have my Manager door knock maybe five hours a week. But for us, we literally have to knock on 150 doors to get one job, versus my close rate of 50% of customers that call in. I'd rather keep my Manager busy with customers intending to buy. It's pull versus push. Push is much more inefficient.

Anyway, I'm going to start with some TV commercials starting the second week in March. I figure why not? This will be the first Winter the company hasn't lost money in ten years (filtering out emergency work). I'm playing with house money at this point. So I've got nothing to lose. Staffing wise, I've got five really good employees now, and I'm going to get a Crew Leader coming back off of visiting family next week, so I'll be at six. I'd like to be at eight in 30 days. That is max capacity with the equipment I have.

So I'm looking at TV schedules and meeting with creative. That's new, but hey, new things are what we live for. I need to find another sweet spot, advertising wise, that will bring in two to three grand a week. Newspaper, Internet, Yellow Pages, Billboard and NPR radio all have been very good to me.

Julian The Apostate · Feb 21, 2013

-To be more clear on our referral program we do $100 to both on roof replacements and $10 to both on roof repairs. Our average ticket on roof replacements is around $9,000 and average ticket on repairs is around $800. Both parties only get money if we get the job. I look at it as paying $200/$20 for a great high % referral lead and would do that all day everyday. We do have something about a minimum job size but I usually don't worry about it unless its a really small job.

-The part about salesmen being short sighted is very true. But I kinda like the idea because its not trying to sell anything directly. We are showing concern for them, their neighborhood and property which hopefully will resonate with people. I think with the right salesmen and the right explanation to those salesmen and also making sure they get the leads from that area I might be able to make it work.

-We do tell our techs to "clover leaf" neighbors with door hanger but im about 99.9% they do it for about a week after we get on their shit about it then stop. As with all training its something I need to go over with them more.

-We did have a couple college kids doing general canvasing but we never saw a great return from it so we stopped. Not to day it dosn't work but that way we were doing it and the material we left behind wasn't effective.

- We dont do much with storm chasing. I have no desire to go to different areas to follow storms, just dosn't fit with our company well. We do defiantly drop down yard signs.

We've been looking about how we track leads/marketing dollars. Right now we do a lot of radio advertising but people hear our radio ad and then either look us up online or find us in the yellow pages. Right now we only ask "where did you get our number from" which makes radio advertising look very weak on a marketing cost analysis. What we really need is to ask "how did you hear about us" and "where did you get our number from" but we cant because our CRM software only allows one lead source. They are both equally important. We almost got out of the yellow pages until we found out that a lot of people still used that as a reference to find our number. No one ever catches the number in a radio ad. Also "how did you hear about us" can get a little fuzzy because if you're marketing right they should be hearing about you from several different sources.

Also we do have a 1-800-"our business name" number that people would probably remember from a radio ad but were talked out of using it by our radio guy in favor of using a random 1-800 number that we can track. But of course no one remembers that number so no one call it. Whats the fucking point then? I think im going to have him change it to out "1-800-"our business name" number.

Julian The Apostate · Feb 21, 2013

We never did TV because I always thought local company ads with local company budgets look like shit beside the multi million dollar Coke ad that runs before and after it. I know another roofing contractor in the area that did TV for a year and wasn't happy with the results. Sorry man, I really don't mean to shit on something you're excited about but that's just my thoughts on it. I sure it can work if done properly.

Shonuff · Feb 21, 2013

Julian the Apostate_sl said:
-To be more clear on our referral program we do $100 to both on roof replacements and $10 to both on roof repairs. Our average ticket on roof replacements is around $9,000 and average ticket on repairs is around $800. Both parties only get money if we get the job. I look at it as paying $200/$20 for a great high % referral lead and would do that all day everyday. We do have something about a minimum job size but I usually don't worry about it unless its a really small job.

I'm thinking that a flat % might be better. We keep our bids competitive, so taking 10% off is a big deal to a lot of customers. I may do 5-10% on both sides eventually.

Julian the Apostate_sl said:
-We did have a couplecollege kidsdoing general canvasing but we never saw a great return from it so we stopped. Not to day it dosn't work but that way we were doing it and the material we left behind wasn't effective.

Unless you can pay some sort of commission to them, a lot of people just aren't motivated for door to door stuff. Like I said, over the years, I moved away from ringing the doorbell, unless they call me. I've upped my ad budget so much that in the Winter, 95% of the time they call us for an estimate. In other Winters, we spent 75% of our time canvassing neighborhoods. From March until November, we don't need to do any canvassing. Hell, last year in our peak time, we couldn't even run an estimate without a two week wait.

Julian the Apostate_sl said:
- We dont do much with storm chasing. I have no desire to go to different areas to follow storms, just dosn't fit with our company well.

Our businesses are similar in that weather can skew them. We'll agree, storm chasing is for losers. Some of competitors will drive 1,500 miles to chase a storm, and neglect their customers locally. They get back, and their customers went with a different company that was more responsive. Storm chasing is easy money, insurance companies will pay me $200 per man hour, and I can put ten guys out there. But when you get home and no one is calling, it's because you went after the easy money, rather than take care of your clientele. A lot of the companies in my area go into a death spiral in their local business, and after awhile, the only thing left is to drive all around the country looking for work. No thanks.

Julian the Apostate_sl said:
We've been looking about how we track leads/marketing dollars. Right now we do a lot of radio advertising but people hear our radio ad and then either look us up online or find us in the yellow pages. Right now we only ask "where did you get our number from" which makes radio advertising look very weak on a marketing cost analysis. What we really need is to ask "how did you hear about us" and "where did you get our number from" but we cant because our CRM software only allows one lead source. They are both equally important. We almost got out of the yellow pages until we found out that a lot of people still used that as a reference to find our number. No one ever catches the number in a radio ad. Also "how did you hear about us" can get a little fuzzy because if you're marketing right they should be hearing about you from several different sources.

I've found that to get to the truth of where people heard about you, you have to interrogate them like Hans Landa. But you are right, if you are doing it right, people will tell you they've seen you numerous places.

Advertising: Pro's and Con's of Various Media

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