[johnisimpson]

I'm curious as to what marketing ideas others have tried and found to be less than stellar generators of leads. only 6 years of experience for myself with this business but one thing i try to remember now is that i need to be very careful where i spend my marketing dollars. i've tried lots of different services, ideas, etc and try to throw my money at the ones that have the best return but here are a few that i feel i wasted money on....

1) the coupons on the back of your grocery store receipt. 3 months - 0 calls
2) contractor partnership with Crye-Leike realtors (largest realty firm in TN) 0 calls. they charged a monthly fee + 10% of job
3) 6 weeks of 3 a day radio spots. (bartered with the owner of the station so it felt worth the risk) but only 1 call, an employee of the radio station who turned out to be a pita.
4)senior yellowpages. still doing this one but i don't feel i've gotten much response from it.

plenty of others as well but lets hear what you've tried.

john

 

[seversonspainting]

It all depends how much money you want to spend on advertising.

I haven't tried to many things yet, but I am not willing to advertise. I am more word of mouth and referrals.

 

[tsunamicontract]

I haven't tried to many things yet, but I am not willing to advertise. I am more word of mouth and referrals.

YES!!! Sev gets even better.

 

[timhag]

The strong arm methods doesn't appear to work very well.

 

[NEPS.US]

I'm curious as to what marketing ideas others have tried and found to be less than stellar generators of leads. only 6 years of experience for myself with this business but one thing i try to remember now is that i need to be very careful where i spend my marketing dollars. i've tried lots of different services, ideas, etc and try to throw my money at the ones that have the best return but here are a few that i feel i wasted money on....

1) the coupons on the back of your grocery store receipt. 3 months - 0 calls
2) contractor partnership with Crye-Leike realtors (largest realty firm in TN) 0 calls. they charged a monthly fee + 10% of job
3) 6 weeks of 3 a day radio spots. (bartered with the owner of the station so it felt worth the risk) but only 1 call, an employee of the radio station who turned out to be a pita.
4)senior yellowpages. still doing this one but i don't feel i've gotten much response from it.

plenty of others as well but lets hear what you've tried.

john

John,
It depends on the market your trying to attract. I spent 12k a year on a yellow pages ad for three years and never booked a job. The major newspapers are a waste of time too.

 

[NEPS.US]

It all depends how much money you want to spend on advertising.

I haven't tried to many things yet, but I am not willing to advertise. I am more word of mouth and referrals.

If you have nothing to contribute ....then dont.

 

[vermontpainter]

If you have nothing to contribute ....then dont.

He's proposing a new business model. The paint company that is unwilling to advertise. Fortunately, his quality craftsmanship and charm will carry him far. He's a new school painter.

 

[Dave Mac]

well we do flyers and lots of them, and they just are not working like they used to. Ive been pretty laid back about my marketing the last few years and haven't really cared to take it to the next level as long as I had a certain amount leads comming in. Well that just aint been happening here lately, so I can tell Im gonna have to get the blood flowing again, and get some passion back for the paint buis, because I have taken a little to much for granted.


So to answere your question, flyers used to work, and they dont seem to be now.

 

[bikerboy]

Cards on the bulletin boards at the paint store, or any bulletin board.

 

[fcsoldier]

Nothing works inless you make it work..

 

[Ken S.]

Possible Low budget program for those starting out:
Park lettered vehicles and enclosed trailers in full view, at parking lots of well traveled areas of major intersections and "super stores" when not in use(esp. week-ends).
Put your business flyer print offs on windshields of cars parked in shopping centers, and wait to be run off(better to hire teen agers to do).

 

[plainpainter]

yellow page ads - only 1 call this year, didn't get job.

Joined up with service that sent out a tiny 'magazine' insert into a coupon newspaper - went out to over 60,000 households - several jobs, booked 1 gutter cleaning.

Classifieds listing in the service section - yeah it's a bottom feeder venue for advertizing, but it's booked 90% of my business so far. But still not enough to put food on the table.

Have printed 5,000 flyers - having them folded and my address list that I purchased printed on them - will be mailing 1,000 at a time - we'll see.

My thoughts on advertizing: Nothing really seems to be working, but so called word of mouth has fallen off into some chasm. I think there is a fair share of commercial work out there, as I get requests for it all the time. But the amount of difficulty in getting a crew together and figuring out how to bid commercial work has made me shy away from it. So I have to keep pushing on with the advertizing. Something that I have noticed, the amount of difficulty and time spent with clients in giving estimates is no different whether you are bidding on a job worth $300 or $30,000. Yet the latter will keep you busy for quite some time if you get the job. There's something to think about.

 

[tsunamicontract]

I used to get calls from the classifieds. Havn't gotten any in pretty near a month now though.

 

[vermontpainter]

I think part of the answer is to be advertising for the future. It would be a tough position to be in if you run an ad for work that you need to book for august. No advertising format seems to produce consistently in the short term to be booking so close to the present. When we do print ads it takes 6 months to start to see much of any response. One tactic that works well is in the fall and late fall especially is to be fielding all the exterior calls that you can and getting them on the schedule for spring. At that point their options are few. It seems to be just about impossible to book work in the 4 week out timeframe.

 

[vermontpainter]

Has anyone taken more action to be in touch with existing customers? There are always customers from last summer and fall who are approaching the anniversary of service mark. Thats always a great way to get back in touch and see whats happening. Maybe they need something done or know someone who does. When we are busy we dont always have time to get in touch, but when we are slow there is no excuse. Just a thought.

 

[HomeGuardPaints]

my door to door sponsored flaming bag of dog poo campaign failed miserably

 

[vermontpainter]

I have an emergency service where I drive around with a fire extinguisher and a pooper scooper, its been busy this year.

 

[bikerboy]

I have an emergency service where I drive around with a fire extinguisher and a pooper scooper, its been busy this year.

Just think of the money you'd save if you could harness the energy of methane! (burning poo)

 

[MAK-Deco]

Has anyone taken more action to be in touch with existing customers? There are always customers from last summer and fall who are approaching the anniversary of service mark. Thats always a great way to get back in touch and see whats happening. Maybe they need something done or know someone who does. When we are busy we dont always have time to get in touch, but when we are slow there is no excuse. Just a thought.

The last postcard mailing I did was to a target area that I have done a lot of work in, I had a few cards left over so I went thru my contact list of past clients and sent out some cards to those people, and low and behold that was my best response from the cards. I ended up getting more jobs that way then the actual mailing to the target area... go figure..

 

[johnisimpson]

biker,
i've heard that scientists and farmers are getting together now to do just that, harvest the methane from cow %$&#.
It's interesting to me that most of you feel that the yellowpages aren't working for you because they are pretty much my main source of calls besides referrals. However, i'm mainly in the pressure washing and staining side of things, only began formally advertising and offering painting last year, so maybe the difference in service type has some effect.
Door hangers have worked ok for me too and they're what i turn to when things do get slow but they really tend to bring in smaller jobs for me (less than $500 typically).
I need to be doing a lot more with retaining past customers and be proactive in generating more business from them, but major changes in that direction will have to wait until things slow down in the winter.
Coupon mailers and classified section listings haven't generated anything for me in the past but I may try the classifieds again.

john