How much $$$ do you spend monthly on....

[Walrus Gumboot]

How much $$$ do you spend monthly on.... marketing? Including website.

Owner operators and small outfits only.
Include the value of the free demos and charitable work you do as well.

 

[Mountain View Carpet Care]

How much $$$ do you spend monthly on.... marketing? Including website.

Owner operators and small outfits only.
Include the value of the free demos and charitable work you do as well.

$50 and my spotter bottles.

 

[XTREME1]

$25-50

 

[Greg Cole]

How much $$$ do you spend monthly on.... marketing? Including website.

Owner operators and small outfits only.
Include the value of the free demos and charitable work you do as well.

As I am not a small outfit I am unable to answer this question. However: shouldn't the question actually be : "What percentage of your gross receipts do you spend on marketing?"

Furthermore, are they including truck wrap, uniforms, business cards, etc in that answer?

 

[ACE]

I am spending $400-500 am mo on advertising most of that is YP. I don’t think the YP is the best ROI but finding something better like direct mail or a really good web site takes time. In addition to that I pay a sales rep on a commission basis.

 

[Walrus Gumboot]

How much $$$ do you spend monthly on.... marketing? Including website.

Owner operators and small outfits only.
Include the value of the free demos and charitable work you do as well.

As I am not a small outfit I am unable to answer this question. However: shouldn't the question actually be : "What percentage of your gross receipts do you spend on marketing?"

Furthermore, are they including truck wrap, uniforms, business cards, etc in that answer?

I'm not interested in % of gross receipts.
I may be wrong (simpleton here) but I view things like wraps and uniforms as being more like another necessary tool,rather than monthly marketing that I expect a return on.

The average Joe Blow carpet cleaner doesn't have a $3000 van wrap that produces consistent walk-ups. I don't.

I'm looking for advertising dollars for things like brochures,websites,postcards,newspaper ads,Newsletters,YP ads,sales reps,business cards(okay),Flyers etc. Guru's and marketing educational materials as well.

If you are only spending $25-$50 per month, I must assume that you are;
A- Established and working mostly from referrals and your website.
B- Broke and can't afford any more than that.
C- Full of shit

 

[Ron Lippold]

with all the bells and whistles in the range of 1700-2000 cutting back a little this next year.

 

[davep105]

I'm spending about 200-300 per month on internet marketing and marketing to my customer base.

 

[Royal Man]

I spend about $300 per month for internet, mailing to past clients and a small YP ad.

Those that say they spending less should at least spend money for some sort of regular contact with their past clients. This will help to increase referrals, shorten their buying cycle and keep clients from jumping the ship.

My most productive marketing however costs zero.

 

[Ken Snow]

Steve- I know you wanted to here from OO's but like Greg I would argue that vehile lettering, van wraps etc as well as uniforms are certainly marketing. There is no other reason to have the vehicle marked, lettered, wrapped etc. unless there is belief of getting marketing return on it. This does not need to be walk ups but can be just as effective if creating market awareness so that when a need comes up your name is in their mind. As for uniforms this is a little more subtle and I agree part of a professional packag, and this professionalism is part of the marketing package. Why else pay for employees to be dressed a certain way?

Also your question about $ can give you an unrealistic view. Some OO's do less than 50k a year on probably a couple grand a year or less in advertising, while others may be doing 300k and still only spending that or they may be spending 25-30k. The only equalizer imo is % of sales whether they are small or a large company.

Ken

 

[ACE]

with all the bells and whistles in the range of 1700-2000 cutting back a little this next year.

Wow, where is that going Ron?

 

[Ron Lippold]

post card
ypages 2 books
internet
seo
uniforms
small town news paper
i might be missing something

 

[Jim Martin]

$0

 

[Walrus Gumboot]

Jim, do you have a website?

 

[Jim Martin]

yes sir......... but it does not cost Beyond Clean anything ...Tia has it tied into some other crap she has set up.......

 

[XTREME1]

Those that say they spending less should at least spend money for some sort of regular contact with their past clients. This will help to increase referrals, shorten their buying cycle and keep clients from jumping the ship.

My most productive marketing however costs zero.

so you are encouraging people to waste their money? I shoot my customers a almost due email cost $0

 

[Walrus Gumboot]

Those that say they spending less should at least spend money for some sort of regular contact with their past clients. This will help to increase referrals, shorten their buying cycle and keep clients from jumping the ship.

My most productive marketing however costs zero.

so you are encouraging people to waste their money? I shoot my customers a almost due email cost $0

Are 100% of your customers online?

 

[XTREME1]

no, but the bulk are. The bulk of my marketing is referals and my emails and website and that is what I concentrate on. If I had other avenues garnering more I would concentrate on my best and most money generating and not waste my time and money with others. I was just going by what he said if most of his business is from his zero sector he should expand his zero instead of teaching people to waste money instead of targeting their market

 

[Greg Cole]

A tip for newbies: You need to be spending 10-17% on marketing. Especially in an economy like this. Most of your competitors have or are going under. Gobble up all the market share you can.

As Ken and I both agree: Everything you do that is image or lead generating based is a marketing expense. It should be planned and beudgeted for even BEFORE you save to buy that new truckmount you want. In my opinion: Your Marketing budget is the MOST important tool you will ever own. It's much more vital to the survival of your business than anything you can buy at JonDon.
People that say they do oveer $100k a year and only spend a few hundred dollars on marketing are either VERY lucky or completly full of shit!

-g

 

[Jim Martin]

A tip for newbies: You need to be spending 10-17% on marketing. Especially in an economy like this. Most of your competitors have or are going under. Gobble up all the market share you can.

As Ken and I both agree: Everything you do that is image or lead generating based is a marketing expense. It should be planned and beudgeted for even BEFORE you save to buy that new truckmount you want. In my opinion: Your Marketing budget is the MOST important tool you will ever own. It's much more vital to the survival of your business than anything you can buy at JonDon.
People that say they do oveer $100k a year and only spend a few hundred dollars on marketing are either VERY lucky or completly full of shit!

-g

or maybe just know what they are doing........

 

[Guest]

just lower my prices and hit them up of the extra soap and deep cleans

 

[Walrus Gumboot]

Greg, you're right. Spending the money to get all dressed up doesn't mean anything if you have nowhere to go.

Jim, I know that you have done alot of marketing in the past. And, you're lucky that your wife has a flair for developing great advertising pieces.
How long did you actively market to get where you are now?
Also, what percentage of your business is commercial?


Not writing a book,just curious.

 

[XTREME1]

or maybe just know what they are doing........

amen Jim

Greg you are right. I spent a hell of alot more than 17% out of the gate. My first year full-time $26,000 and now next to nothing and I can't keep up. Great work, good price and repeat customers

 

[Jim Martin]

Greg, you're right. Spending the money to get all dressed up doesn't mean anything if you have nowhere to go.

Jim, I know that you have done alot of marketing in the past. And, you're lucky that your wife has a flair for developing great advertising pieces.
How long did you actively market to get where you are now?
Also, what percentage of your business is commercial?


Not writing a book,just curious.

this is true..we did do a lot of marketing in the past..tried just about everything we could think of and lost so much money it was not even funny......To be honest I don't think that every thing that we put out was the best idea or the best quality stuff...but never the less we were flooding the market trying to make a name for ourselves...we were probably active in the marketing for about 3 years...(.not counting some stupid stuff we tossed out a few years ago just for shits and grins)...or long enough that I could of spent all that money and bought another Vortex...(which ever came first).......I can not think of one thing that we did that I can honestly say help us in the marketing area.....there were a few things that went well and did what we wanted them to do but they were not long term.....as of now I would say that this company does about 10% of commercial work....I don't do apartments..and I don't do night work...

 

[Art Kelley]

[Great work, good price and repeat customers

That's me in a nut shell. Unlike Greg Cole, I don't have a 26% customer retention rate, it's closer to 100%.

 

[handdi]

steve call me sometime we do alot of advertising
2000 a month
just up the road from ya
randy 864-617-4504
i can tell ya what works for us and what i peed a bunch away on

 

[Walrus Gumboot]

Anderson. Been thru there a million times (I-85). Paid just about that much in speeding tickets there as well.
What is the population there? I'm thinking it is similar to Athens(100,000 -200,000 if you go out in a 20 mile radius).

 

[rhino1]

Owner/operator in a new area and I spend about $1200 per month on ads & internet. I will probably spend at least 2K/month next year when I add another truck.

 

[Doug Cox]

I have only 1 small YP ad for about 130 a month. I have never done any marketing other than YP ads. I won't have any YP ads after this winter.

 

[Luis Gomez]

People that say they do oveer $100k a year and only spend a few hundred dollars on marketing are either VERY lucky or completly full of shit!


Since I know that I am not full of shit, I must be very lucky. The last time I bought business cards was about 3 years ago. But I have expanded the number of services that I offer; carpet and upholstery cleaning, carpet sales, repair and installs, tile, stone, area rug cleaning, fire clean up etc, . I have scrubbed some nasty toilet when the price was right and I even installed crown molding once ( $1000 profit in 5 hrs.). But my advertisement is $0.00
But It did take me more than 16 yrs to get to this point, I worked as a sub to many companies for many years making only a 30 to 50% of the total ticket.