Torn, if you are in the biz for 10 years you should have a good customer base. You probably also have a targeted "farm", like real estate agents do. So you are more than halfway there, as you know who your customers are and where your prospects live.
Develop a Reminder post card, regular size, nothing fancy. Just remind clients that their carpets are due for their regular cleaning so that they will look better and last longer. You can offer a free bottle of spotter with every job, but you probably do that already. If you can't figure out how to do it, tap someone on this bb and ask them for help.
Next, develop a Seasonal set of cards (Back To School, Winter Holidays, Spring Clean Up, Summer Soltice, whatever). Note there should be 4 different cards, with your logo (don't have one? Get one - very important).
Here's a HUGE tip - have them printed by uprinting.com Lowest prices, fine quality, excellent service. ($146.83 for 3,000 + shipping = $ 0.05 ea). This is for full color on the front, back black ink on the back. If your proof doesn't look right to you or them, for FREE they help you arrange it. I have tried EVERYONE, and I find them the best. But I digress.
Here's another tip. On the back of the post card, where you are going to put the address label, have them print
CURRENT RESIDENT OR
right above where the label will go. Since you are going to be sending these out First Class ($ 0.28 each), if the people have moved, they MUST deliver it to whoever lives there. Be sure to put a return address on them (I didn't in the past - oops), because one lazy post man can ruin a mailing by bouncing back all the people who moved post cards. What to do with them when they come back? Bring them to your post office, meet with the big cheese, hand him/her the cards and demand that they re-deliver them. We just had 300 re-delivered (at no extra charge) and got responses!
OK, back to work. Now, contact several list companies and BUY a list, by zip code, of 3,000 (minimum order, probably around $250, one-time cost) names and addresses. Don't bother with phone numbers. We have a spec of the homes worth in excess of $1MM (we are in stone restoration, you pick your price range). This is a one-time investment, as you will continually be mailing these to these same people. They will come to know you and even if the trash the card several times, eventually they will realize you are the man locally for them.
Get this list on CD or downloaded to your confuser.
So, you get 3,000 cards printed and its FOOTBALL SEASON!!!!! Hooray!
Go to Costco and buy their Avery 5160 labels ($24.99 for 4,200) and print out your list, keeping the pages in order (very important).
Buy 3,000 28 cent stamps (or just 1,000 if cash is tight right now, no big deal), and you are ready for football!
While the games are on (Monday Night is my favorite), you sit in front of the tube and apply stamps and address labels during the game! So it really doesn't appear to be work. It also doesn't take away time from your day-to-day activities. Clump them in piles of 50, keeping them in order (still very important), and rubber band each pile.
Next morning, on the way out to work, take off a rubber band and put the first 50 in the mailbox. Do this every day, 6 days a week, and in 10 weeks everyone on the list will have gotten a card. Simple, easy, sweet and most important, IT WORKS!
So, you now have 40 weeks a year covered by these cards. All you have to do is figure out when you won't be sending out cards to prospects (middle of Dec to ???, slow season, or whatever).
It is important to sequence them properly so that someone doesn't get one card right on top of the other,that's why you keep them in arranged order.
If you have the normal 1 1/2% response rate, that means that around 4 to 5 people a week will be calling in on these cards. It may be a little lower in the beginning and a little higher later on, but it levels out at about the rate.
Now, 3 times a year you send out Reminder cards. Same drill with applying them. Send out also 50 at a time. Why? So you don't break the bank. Also, if you are in biz for 10 years, you don't "need" too much additional business, just enough to fill in the blanks. If you do need to generate more, then put 100 cards to prospects out each day and you will generate 9-10 calls a week. If we did that, we couldn't begin to handle to the work, as most of our jobs last 3-10 days each.
So, let's recap costs.
List - $250 (one time)
Daily costs
cards - $ 0.05 x 50 = $2.50
postage $ 0.28 x 50 = $14.00
Times six days = $99 a week!
This will give you so much more cluck for your buck than some dorky marketing company, YP or anything else that you will be shocked.
BUT, don't give up if you don't get response right away. Think about yourself and how YOU sort your mail by the trash can! Now you know what your customers are doing, for the most part, with your card. LANDFILL! But you only need a few customers to make this pay off big time. And of course you have the advantage over us that people clean their carpets much more frequently than they restore their stone. So your customer base will increase and therefore your repeat customer base will also increase.
Finally, unlike YP or coupon books with 3 or more cc'ers, these calls are buyers, NOT shoppers. They looked at your card, liked what they saw and read, realized they needed the service and now are calling the order. Use your assumtive close and your close rate will be close to 100% (versus "I'll have to check with my husband").
Good luck, and if you use this program, let me and others know, as I believe it is what has made us successful for almost 24 years now.
