Hello again. Jim DuBois here with WindowCleaningBusinessCoach.com.
Put your marketing face on and use this anticipated downtime and focus now on getting your business ready to forge through for the approaching winter season. Either way, it’s coming, and a slowdown is looming.
Welcome to winter. It’s officially almost here and cold weather, sluggish sales, out of office replies, waning customer engagement, more voice mail messages than ever – all leads to a strained bank account.
It doesn’t have to be that way. It may be fall, but that does not mean we wait until winter. So, let’s talk about what we can do right now, to get the phones ringing, the email box flowing! Let’s make this our best winter on record.
Credit: Phebe Van Der Meer
This is not the time for you to sit on your hands, stare at your computer while your competitors are finding ways to add customers and generate solid revenues, taking market share. Whether you’re looking to bring customers in over the next couple months, or just finding ways to come back strong once the winter is over, there are things you can do to jump-start this season.
Perhaps your prospective audience is not thinking about window cleaning or pressure washing right now. Give them a reason to think about! Relevant, authoritative information with offers will help them make an informed decision to call you today.
When marketing – plan, don’t wait. Typically, by October we are already ramped up in anticipation of the traditionally slower January and February months.
Here are a few marketing tactics to ramp up and consider using during the cold winter months:
Residential
- Have a database? Let’s say you have 3,000. Put a dryer vent cleaning service together and offer it only in January and February. Make the message VERY compelling: “Dryer Lint Causes Home Fires!” If 10% of your customer base signs on annually, that’s 300 sales x $125.00 or $37,500!! See? Just get creative.
- Create aggressive Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotions to your existing customer base. Here’s the strategy: Your promotions are only good in January and February! We do this every year with fantastic results. It’s always easier to generate more revenue from existing customers than it is trying to acquire new customers.
- Add or offer more services to your existing customer base and each new estimate you give. Maybe it’s snow plowing, roof snow removal, etc. We do this through our email blasts, in-bound phone marketing, and in-person estimates. Make the announcement and push the upsells.
- Add Christmas Lighting services and you can push your season into January. More so, hire up and add a ton of revenue during this time. Our first year, we added $180,000 in winter sales on top of our other services.
- Increase your flyer/door hanger delivery. Let’s face it; 2, 3, 4 thousand flyers is not going to be enough. If done in-house, hire an outside company. We don’t stop flyer delivery because it slows down. Sure, we may not have as high an ROI as the spring or fall seasons, but my guys stay busy and yes, we do profit… How many flyers does my company distribute during this time? 30,000 per month! Just monitor your results…
Plan and promote each upcoming holiday during January and February and reach out to your customers with a special offer or ‘feature’. I have lots of strategies like these with systems built out for each one.
Commercial
Don’t do commercial? Start building a commercial storefront route this fall. Each of our routes (manned by one technician each) average $7,000 per month revenue each. Create some residual income that comes in year ‘round and keep your winter months ‘alive’.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. There’s a number of things you can do with your business when it comes to marketing. The point is to be creative to keep your team working.
It’s also a great time to increase your learning to increase your earning. The slower winter months is a great time to educate yourself on whatever it is you need to know to take your business to the next level.
Until next time
P.S. I can find your business another $100,000 to $250,000 without you spending an extra dime on advertising. I just need 45 minutes. You can make that money as fast as you can make it. It’s just one of the many strategies I teach. Go to WindowWashingWealth.com to learn more and opt in for my free 24-page business building report.
Jim DuBois is founder of WindowWashingWealth.com. a high-level, window cleaning business coaching company. I can be reached at [email protected] or call 704-451-0409.