In business there are a lot of different ways that you can advertise. The point of advertising is just getting peoples attention. Certain things will trigger a response more or less than others.
But there’s one thing that everybody wants to do. And it is doing what the neighbors are doing.
Sure you can sell by pain point, pleasure, or instant gratification. But there’s just something about everybody wanting to keep up with the Joneses.
Credit: Paul Castaneda
Early on in my business I noticed that customers were always asking who else I had as customers. They would say something like “ oh do you service Mary up the street? She seems to get everything done by professionals.” I haven’t started to notice that people were taking more phone calls while we were there. I would hear people say daily “oh nothing I just have the window cleaners here”. And then I started to do a little more research.
No having customers want to be the trend setters of the neighborhood, or even having neighbors think they’re doing pretty well financially, seems to be pretty important people. Of course this isn’t everybody, but there are enough people that it became a staple in our advertising. First off we started doing our five ups with a template from WCR that said “pardon our glare, we just cleaned your neighbors house so it may be extra sunny”. The funny thing was, we will get people more often than not, saying “I just wanted to find out who’s house you did.” They took the time to call us from the door hanger, it was an easy sell.
If you’re not doing five up in five down, you’re really missing the boat on this one. What we do is we get door hangers and as soon as you guys are done cleaning the windows, or washing the house, the tech gets to work. We always have door hangers kept in our trucks. The tech would grab five of them and he would drop it off at the neighbor directly to the left, directly to the right, and the three across the street. That is a five up. You got to think, if the crew chief is talking to the homeowner, the tech is done cleaning up. He would just be waiting in the truck anyway. This way were doing advertising at every house.
This is a crazy easy way to do a little advertising, and make a big impact. If we are in a neighborhood, there’s a big chance that we were going to do more work in that neighborhood. And this just get your name out, and get some thing for people to keep with your name on it.
The second thing we did was starting to post shared pictures on our Facebook page. We would always ask of course if we could take a picture of their house, and most of the time they would say of course. We would post a picture saying how awesome it turned out and something great about their house or family. Their friends and neighbors and see this on Facebook and we get so many calls it was crazy.
This also gave people a chance to talk us up to their friends. They would always say something like “these guys were amazing, or I’m a customer for life”. Something like that.
It was a win-win.
If someone’s friend or somebody’s family member likes you, and they refer you to them, there is an instant sense of trust. Is somebody that you trust, trust somebody else, then so will you. Building trust with a customer is always the hardest part. If you can do it with somebody, that is the biggest hurdle. This is turning customers into fans.
The third thing was using yard signs after cleaning. We would always offer the homeowner an extra $20 off the service if we could put a yard sign up for just a couple days. We would let them know that it really helped us out booking people and such a great neighborhood. But what I did was get people Excited when They drove by. They let people know that they had services done, and it worked surprisingly well.
The biggest thing you possibly have is your truck, and that does a great job while you’re there at the home. But that’s only when you’re there. Make sure your truck always looks awesome! It’s the biggest billboard you could get. It’s worth having it cleaned up once a week and looking rad.
When we put small business advertising together we’re always trying to think of a hook, an angle. Something to get peoples attention. Something to break through the noise. People are inundated with thousands of advertisements day. You have to be better than that.
You have to connect with people, no matter what your advertising is.
People sometimes focus too much on how it looks. But you need to focus on buying triggers. Keeping up with the Joneses is a great way.
Next time you’re putting something together for a neighborhood, maybe think about how you can implement this into it. I’m telling you, you’re gonna get some really good results from this. Break through the noise, and be epic.
~Jersey
WCR Nation. A window cleaning podcast
