Hello. Jim DuBois here again from WindowCleaningBusinessCoach.com. The year is already halfway over. How does that happen so fast? We were entering a pandemic, and now as we depart from one, unfortunately, business owners enter into another. Pandemic 2: trying to find people to work. Who knew? In my 25 years in this business, I have never seen anything like this, ever. We have been hit these last few months TWO WAYS:
- The government is paying people to stay home, making it very difficult to hire and grow our companies.
- And as a by-product, you may have a fight on your hands KEEPING good help with dangling “Quit your job and make money” carrots in front of our existing employees.
It’s all challenging, no doubt. Well, now we’re all in this together, and we will come out of this together stronger, leaner, and more profitable in the end. Just hang in there and keep pushing forward. We small business owners will prevail in the long run.
So, what does all this mean?
It means we make our marketing dollars work better – whether recruiting employees OR retaining and finding new customers!
Marketing is a step-by-step science, and part of that science – just like real estate is location, marketing is Testing, Testing, Testing.
What are we testing? Many things, like…
- subject lines
- open rates
- click-throughs
- headlines on postcards, social media
- headlines and copy in direct mail letters
- pricing
- offers
- deadlines
- and the list goes on…
This testing leads to decision making, like – is this marketing medium working. Or which version of this marketing piece is working better, and so on.
For example, it took me a while to find a winning flyer. We deliver 30,000 flyers per month and averaged 5 to 7 times return on investment (ROI) for years. The ROI is waning, so we are testing another version of the flyer to bring our ROI back to those higher levels. So, we are trying. Testing headlines, then offers, then colors, and then even flyer paper thickness.
See, when you test, you get information. And this information helps you make decisions, like the ROI from each flyer version. These marketing decisions, from testing the above bullet points, for example, find winning formulas. And this ultimately turns marketing dollars into more revenue as you find the winning formulas.
So, imagine 30,000 flyers being delivered. And a .25% to .375% response increase is determined. The yield of 30,000 flyers with an 80% conversion turns 60 jobs into 90 jobs from these responses. We average $541 per customer job. What does this mean? Well, in terms of revenue, it means an increase of $16,230 per month. Not bad from testing a different headline.
So, let’s take a step back and talk about getting the prospect’s attention…
The Marketing Equation
- Interrupt
- Engage
- Educate
- The Offer
Interrupt
It starts with the headline. Headlines must be full of hot buttons that will interrupt the prospect. Use hot buttons based on problems, annoyances, or fears your prospects have about the services you offer. There’s a myriad of things you can list when you start brainstorming. By using these hot buttons, triggers an emotional response and prepares the prospect to become engaged.
TIP: Headlines should be used in all marketing pieces, not just advertisements. Even your brochures, email blasts, websites, signs, and follow-up pieces should contain hot button-loaded headlines.
Engage
Will people really read all that text? They will if they are human beings whose nature demands that they always make the best decision possible. They will if you have the right hot buttons that keep them engaged. And when engaged, they start choosing… perhaps, your company!
Now that the prospect has been successfully interrupted and engaged, your job as a marketer is to become the facilitator of information – where your knowledge flows convincing the prospect to use you versus anyone else.
Educate
What? You say. How am I supposed to do that? Simple. When you are at a prospective customers’ house giving an estimate, what do you say that gets the job? How do you explain your services, your company? What are you saying that makes you unique that wins the job? THAT is what you put into words in your marketing.
In other words, the more you educate the prospect on what he needs to know and look for, the more jobs you’re going to sell.
The Offer
Most marketing pieces only appeal to NOW buyers. The problem is that those who are ready to buy NOW only account for 1% to 5% of all prospects. By putting a low-risk offer in your ad that allows the prospect to get more information–-become more educated–-you can capture a much larger portion of prospective buyers.
Prospects from all points of the Educational Spectrum will respond to your offer, instantly increasing your ad’s “pull” by 2 to 50 times. And the best part is that you can now control those prospects by pro-actively nurturing them along via a follow-up system… and capture more sales in the process.
The Marketing Equation: End Result
When all of the components come together, not only is it a thing of beauty, but you also make a lot more money! Remember, human nature demands that people always want to make the best decision possible. Marketing’s job is to facilitate that decision-making process. As long as you have each of the 4 components of the marketing equation in place, your ads will work every time.
Jim DuBois is the founder of Squeegee Pros, Inc. out of Mooresville, NC, and is the creator of WindowWashingWealth.com. Visit the site for a FREE MARKETING REPORT, FREE BUSINESS CONSULT, and BUSINESS BUILDING MANUAL. Window Washing Wealth is a high-level business coaching program specializing in aggressive marketing tactics, systems implementation, and growth trajectory execution – all leading to market domination on autopilot. I can be reached at [email protected] or call 704-451-0409. © Copyright 2021 Jim DuBois