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The Blame Game, Part 2

Instead of Complaining When Marketing Doesn’t Work, Find A Solution!

Instead of Complaining When Marketing Doesn’t Work, Find A Solution!

Who’s Fault Is It When Your Marketing Doesn’t Work?

You Still Probably Won’t Like The Answer.

By Rich Harshaw

Last week I told you how my wife hates losing her car keys, and how it’s human nature to blame others when we make mistakes. I covered five marketing mistakes, and the true source of the problems.

Today we continue with five more contractor marketing mistakes… and where to look to solve them (spoiler: the mirror).

What You Think Went Wrong: (New Marketing Idea) Is Too Hard To Execute (or Won’t Work)
The Truth: You’re Too Lazy
Explanation: Immutable law in life: everyone, including you, will always try to take the path of least resistance. Okay, maybe not EVERY single time, but darn near it. And that’s a shame in construction marketing because a lot of the things that will probably work the best for you are a little bit off the beaten path. Which is good because that means your competitors probably won’t be trying these things.

One of my clients sells sunrooms, and his most successful marketing activity is holding “sunroom tours” where he gathers 100 prospects, divides them into groups of four or five, and then has employees guide them on a tour of several of his customers’ homes for snacks, drinks, and a chance to see his handiwork. The tours take a tremendous amount of preparation—cleaning the sunrooms, arranging the food & beverages, organizing a starting place, using marketing to find the 100 people, etc. But it always works to bring in twenty-five to forty appointments and a high closing ratio. Guess how many other sunroom companies I’ve worked with (and there are a lot) who are willing to put that kind of effort into a tour? Yea, zero. It’s too hard, and it won’t work anyway, they tell me.

Then there’s Derrek Holland, owner of The Closet Doctor in Sacramento. He’s done a lot of the “easy” stuff for the last few years—money mailers, Val-Packs, etc. and was looking for ideas of how to expand his lead base. I’ll give it to Derrek… he’s willing to hustle and has a can-do attitude. Here are a couple of the hard-to-do-but-worth-it things he’s done: A video of his entire process start to finish, a joint venture with his local dry cleaner, a mailing program to an area called Sun City, a plan to take before and after photos of every job (and post on his website), and a door-knocking program to complement his new move-in mailing program. This is all very aggressive, and not everything was a grand-slam home run. But you know what? Half the time just getting the HECK OUT THERE and doing stuff is 98% of the battle.

What You Think Went Wrong: We Can’t Generate Enough Leads
The Truth: You’re Not Spending Enough Money To Buy Your Leads
Explanation: We worked with a company that sold a business service to companies that helped improve their cash flow by lending them money against their receivables. Sort of like factoring, but WAY more cost effective. When we showed up on the scene, they were using telemarketing to generate leads, and were frustrated with their inability to get enough leads to keep their salespeople busy. Upon closer inspection, it turned out that they were having their salespeople COLD CALL to generate their own leads—and therefore were spending about 85% of their time prospecting and only 15% following up and closing.

Simple solution—get out the checkbook. We started running national radio campaigns and hired an outside telemarketing company to do the grunt work for them. Within a couple of weeks they had enough lead flow to keep all the salespeople busy… which allowed them to discover that about HALF of their salespeople were lousy anyway! But what started as a “we don’t have enough leads” problem actually turned out to be a “you’re not spending enough money to get enough leads problem.”

The most important tool in your marketing toolkit is your calculator—bar none. Have you sat down and figured out how much it’s going to cost to generate the home improvement leads you need to convert to the number of sales you need to hit your goals? Sometimes the solution is as easy as getting out the checkbook and getting to work.

What You Think Went Wrong: My Website Isn’t Generating Any Business For Me
The Truth: Your Website Has Boring, Worthless Content
Explanation: I’ll tell you one reason I’m loving this whole “Social Media” revolution that’s happening right now: because it’s highlighting the fact that to truly connect with prospects and customers, you’ve got to have REAL, WORTHWHILE content that’s important and relevant to your target. If you don’t believe me, try sending out five tweets in a row telling people about your next sale and see how many people quit following you. Up until now, 90% of companies have assumed that their home improvement website existed to “tell people about the stuff we sell,” when in reality, the entire time, the website has existed to help prospects become convinced that they can trust you, that you understand their needs, and that you’re interested in a lot more than just getting your grubby little hands on their cash.

The symptoms of this miscalculation in thinking is a generation of sucky contractor websites that simply list stuff that you have and/or do. With the expectation that after people read said have/do lists they will give you their money. Very transactional. Not very relational. Think about your company and your website, and see if your PASSION comes through. Cause if it doesn’t, you’re dead meat. Sorry.

What You Think Went Wrong: My Website Isn’t Generating Any Business For Me (part 2)
The Truth: Nobody Even Knows The Dumb Thing Exists
Explanation: Okay so your website has passion and relevance and makes John Smith believe that he can trust you with his family, his money, and his secrets. Wonderful. Is anyone looking at this great website? If not, what a shame.

If you aren’t implementing an SEO campaign, now is the time to repent. Let the world beat a path to your door (ahem, website) with Google leading the charge. You should be writing articles or blog entries at least once or twice a week (see previous section about good content)—Google eats blogs and articles like I eat Good N’ Plenty—like it’s going out of style. If you need some work on your SEO services, don’t hesitate to give us a call. And if that sounded like a sales pitch, it’s only because I love you. Really. Repent!

Then immediately start a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign. You probably need to be spending a minimum of $3,000 a month on PPC—if you don’t, then the home improvement leads that you SHOULD be getting are simply going to go to a competitor. There’s no other way to have this discussion if you’re a contractor. PPC is not optional. Send people to your website!!

What You Think Went Wrong: This Mailing Campaign Isn’t Working
The Truth: You Only Sent The Darn Mailer Out Once!
Explanation: I knew a guy once who was selling a very niche computer repair service to Fortune 500 companies. He was an unknown player competing against Goliath vendors like IBM who were wrought with inefficiencies. His company was innovative and extremely capable—and could save his clients literally hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, maybe more. He had broken into his niche by knowing somebody at a major corporation who gave him a shot. He performed so well that he became the “IT vendor of the year” for that company, and managed to snag several other major accounts by way of referral.

Then he decided to get proactive and do some marketing to get some new clients. Because of the nature of the situation, we decided the best strategy would be to “wear ‘em down” with a drip marketing campaign that would consist of 6” x 11” postcards to be sent to a hand-picked list of 1,500 C-level executives at targeted companies. The first batch of mailers went out, then the second and the third. No calls. Then the fourth, fifth, and sixth mailers went out—no calls. Somewhere in the middle of that progression, the owner lost his nerve and decided to quit. Nine thousand postcards and ZERO calls was unacceptable to him—the program simply wasn’t working.

Or was it?

Given the fact that the average account was worth about $1 million a year (literally), there are few things you have to realize: 1) Big companies (and littler ones for that matter) don’t switch to an unknown vendor just because they received a few postcards, and 2) Big companies (and littler ones, for that matter), rarely switch vendors FOR ANYTHING unless the current relationship is SO BAD that they just can’t stand it anymore. So to arrogantly think that your unbelievable inside reality (having something good to say) and your masterful set of postcards (saying it well) are going to break down a ginormous wall after a couple months is preposterous. Think how silly that is. It’s like thinking that your little .22 caliber rifle is going to feel like anything more than a gnat on King Kong’s butt.

Here’s the truth: “Saying it often” is an extremely important part of winning in marketing, especially if you’re an unknown company, if you’re selling to huge customers, and if you want to succeed long term. The remedy is to figure out your ROI and spend money accordingly. Let’s say his 1,500 mailers are going to 500 different companies (owing to multiple contacts per company), and the average contract is worth $500,000 in GROSS profits per year. If the mailers were to cost $750 per send, it would cost about $60,000 a year to send one postcard per WEEK. Assuming the postcards were good, they would definitely be effective after a while—but only IF the cards actually kept going out. Don’t be so quick to quit—hang in there a bit!


So how did you stack up in the BLAME GAME? Still making too many excuses?

Here’s a solution: Click on this page to request our FREE Lead Generation Audit and see how you can improve!

© 2015 – 2016, Rich Harshaw. All rights reserved.

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