As you work to grow your lawn care business or landscaping business, one of the most dangerous blunders you could ever make is relying on one single method of marketing your business. No matter how well you’ve got your systems down, when you rely on one single method of marketing and growing your business you’re setting yourself up for disaster.
You see, when you rely on just one method, what happens to your business if something were to happen to that method? Where would your business be without it’s steady flow of new leads and prospects?
So what does this mean for your business? It basically means you need to diversify your marketing so you’re getting new prospects and customers from a variety of different sources.
A good list of marketing metods and resources includes:
- Direct mail (sales letters, postcards, etc.)
- Flyers or doorhangers
- Signs (truck signs, yard signs, etc.)
- Existing customers (word of mouth referrals)
- Yellow pages
- Newspaper ads
- Magazine ads
- Ads in community newsletters
- Tele-marketing
- Online marketing which could include:
- Organic searches
- Paid searches (Google AdWords)
- Email marketing
- Ezine advertising
- Banner Ads
- Text link ads
In these troubled economic times, you definitely want to be have as many lines in the water as possible to ensure you’re able to add enough prospects to your sales funnel. That way, if any one method were to become ineffective you’d be able to continue growing your business.
Filed under Attract Attention, Customer Prospecting, Direct Mail, Email Marketing, Lawn Care Marketing, Leave Behinds, Marketing Programs, Marketing Systems, Public Relations, Small Biz Advice, Telephone Directories, Websites, Word-of-Mouth by Chestin
There’s been a discussion going on over at the GopherForum regarding telephone advertisements. Jody, one of the members there was mentioning that an ad rep came across their ad in Craig’s List, liked the fact they donate 10% of their revenue to local charities, and called up to say she wanted to put them on the cover of the book.
A discussion ensued regarding what their ad show say and look like. As is usually the case, most of the suggestions reflected a lot of the ‘me-too’ style marketing that happens in the yellow pages. As a result, everyone ends up saying the same thing and there’s really nothing that sets one service provider apart from the others.
Ultimately, the customer doesn’t know who to call so they end up playing ‘eenie, meenie, mienie, moe” to decide.
This is a HUGE shame because close to 60% of all visitors to the phone book can be swayed to call one service provider over the next IF given compelling reasons to do so.
Anyway, here’s a sample ad I put together for Jody to show what a killer directory ad should look like. As you’ll notice, it includes the same elements that ANY good marketing piece should have:
- Attention grabbing headline
- Benefits the customer will receive
- A killer offer to motivate them to act, in this case, there are 2 such offers (free 1st visit, free soil/lawn analysis)
- A strong, direct call to action - Call Today!
- Risk reversal elements, in this case the satisfaction guarantee
- Third party proof, here it’s the testimonial
- Elements of social proof, in this case the credit card logos
Here’s the ad:
Now, if you were to compare this ad to almost any other ad you’d see in the phone book, it looks considerably different. But that’s a good thing!
Anyway, feel free to use this as an example of what a good directory ad should look like and let me know how your results are!
