June 28, 2007

Dog Days of Summer

The mad rush at the start of the season has ended and I’m sure by now you’re into a groove.  You probably have your routes and schedules down pat and are getting comfortable with the flow of it all.

If this IS the case, that’s great.  However, don’t rest on your laurels and get complacent about working to grow your business.  As I’ve said numerous times before, you should ALWAYS be marketing your business.  You should ALWAYS be working to increase your customer base, or upsell existing customers, or reactivate old customers.  It’s ALWAYS a good time to be in marketing mode.

That being said, many business owners struggle with what to say or do in order to keep your marketing ‘fresh’ and ‘exciting’ and that’s certainly a valid concern.  However, there are enough ways to ‘liven’ things up such that that can’t be an excuse for long.

Even though we find ourselves entering the ‘dog days of summer’, there are still plenty of ways to create marketing that gets results.  Here are just a few suggestions:

  • Create a special promotion or offer each month for your prospects and customers
  • Use upcoming holidays as an excuse to run a promotion of special offer
    • July 4th is next week, but there are some little holidays coming up within the next few months
  • Now’s the time everyone takes family vacations so remind customers to tell their friends and neighbors that you can take care of things while they’re gone
  • As the summer progresses, a lot of gung-ho do-it-yourselfers that wanted to do it all initially will start losing steam as the weeks pass and the temperature rises so there will be plenty of opportunities to pick up some 1/2 season contracts
  • Now that you’re in a groove, spend a little time working on marketing programs you’ll be able to use year round such as a website, a monthly newsletter, or other oft overlooked yet powerful marketing systems

Again, just because the dog days of summer are upon us doesn’t mean you should let these opportunities pass you by.  Keep your marketing machine moving forward and your bottom line will thank you in no time.

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Filed under Direct Mail, Lawn Care Marketing, Leave Behinds, Websites by Chestin

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June 27, 2007

Internet 2nd Most Essential Medium, But #1 in Coolness

If you’ve been hanging on the sidelines with respect to getting a website for your business, this should help motivate you to get into the game.

You can no longer expect to succeed in business and sit passively by online.
clipped from publications.mediapost.com
THE INTERNET HAS PASSED RADIO to become Americans’ second “most essential” medium and swapped places with TV as the “most cool and exciting medium” since the subjects were last studied five years ago, reported Edison Media Research.


Edison’s “Internet and Multimedia 2007″ study, conducted this past winter with Arbitron, reported that 36% of consumers age 12 and over chose TV as the “most essential” medium in their lives, followed by 33% choosing the Internet, 17% radio, and 10% newspapers.
  blog it

Filed under Lawn Care Marketing by Chestin

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June 25, 2007

Your Highest Leverage Activity

Do you know what the most valuable activity is when it comes to growing your business?

Yes, it’s important to learn new skills and techniques.  Yes, you need to become a better manager.  And yes, you need to get a handle on all the aspects of managing the finances of your business.

However, the most important activity you can be involved with and should be doing each and every day is that of marketing your business.  You see, when you’re not actively trying to get new customers and retain the ones you have, there’s no way your business will be able to grow.

So, if you aren’t already working on improving your marketing knowledge, resolve to spend some time doing just that.

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Filed under Lawn Care Marketing by Chestin

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June 22, 2007

How Long Should Your Sales Copy Be?

Here’s a great article by Bob Bly, reprinted from a daily email newsletter I look forward to every day called Early To Rise.  If you haven’t checked it out  before, I highly encourage you to.

Today’s article talks about the great debate between short copy and long copy sales letters.  I’ll post a few thoughts about how it relates to running a lawn care or landscaping business at the end.

How Long Should Your Sales Copy Be?, Part 1

By Bob Bly

Since time immemorial - or at least for the quarter century I’ve been in direct marketing - people have vigorously debated the merits of long vs. short sales copy.

I don’t pretend that I can settle the debate once and for all, but I’ve found that there are two major factors determining whether long or short copy will work best for a particular sales promotion: emotion and involvement.

Emotion refers to the degree to which the purchase is emotional. Buying a diamond engagement ring is highly emotional; buying paper clips is not.

Involvement refers to the amount of time, effort, and consideration that goes into the purchase. As with most large purchases, a lot of time, effort, and consideration goes into the selection and purchase of a diamond engagement ring. But most of us grab the first box of paper clips on the shelf of the stationery store, without giving it a second thought.

To use these two criteria to get a rough guideline for determining copy length, rate them as high or low.

For instance, the purchase of a diamond engagement ring is highly emotional and it’s something your customer is going to give a lot of thought to. So you’d need a lot of copy to do a good job of selling it. On the other hand, paper clips are more of an impulse purchase. When you need them, you go to the store and pick up a box. No emotion and very little thought goes into this purchase - and a long, passionate sales letter probably wouldn’t sell more of them.

[Ed. Note: Master copywriter and best-selling author Bob Bly is the editor of ETR’s Direct Marketing Masters Edition a program to help you start your own successful direct-mail business. Sign up for Bob’s e-zine, The Direct Response Letter and get more than $100 in free bonuses.]

So, which one should you employ?  Well, if you consider Bob’s advice about the amount of emotion involved in a purchase, I’d suggest there is definitely some emotion involved in purchasing your service.  However, depending on the service you’re trying to sell, the amount of emotion will vary.

If you’re selling a lawn care maintenance plan, the amount of emotion is probably a medium level because the price isn’t too unreasonable.  On the other hand, if you’re selling a large scale landscaping project, there’s more emotion involved because of the typically higher price tag.

So before you go off and put together your next advertisement, give some thought to the amount of emotion that goes into your customer’s buying decision and adjust the length of your sales copy accordingly. 

Filed under Lawn Care Marketing by Chestin

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