How Much Do You Spend on Marketing?

[Brian R]

I don't need specifics...maybe %?

Anyway, I canceled almost all my paid ads.
I'm running these "ads"

Angieslist....$35.00/month to be put up first but I still have to keep my good rating.
Service Monster....7 step program...by far the most expensive yet most producing
Constant Contact $15.00/month....send out as many emails a month that I want
Letip ....$79.00/month averaged...but really that is mostly paying for meals so you get the idea.
Google Adwords...around $30.00/month just to keep track of keywords etc.


Every other thing I do is just computer work and sometimes phone work. I don't even do that much cold calling...if I'm out on a Letip day I will usually hit a couple of places. I'm usually promoting Letip so the Carpet Cleaning part isn't threatening.

I email every customer after every job with an invoice copy and to let them know what else we can do. I also put a link to my website with a "specials" heading and a forwarding option. Get's them back to the site and maybe their friends (SEO baby)
I have a menu of services for the techs to hand to the customer ( I email the tech, they print it out)

I will call any customer I haven't heard from in a while...I just pick one day to do it.
I just put in "Roseville" or another city into Service Monster and look at the date and amount of last invoice...
6 months or longer with an invoice of $150.00 or more..I give a quick call.

I was big on AT&T ads...and they worked well...but I could do the same thing with some time. So I dropped them.

 

[Bruce Humphrey]

What percent is that ?

I put 10% away for marketing , but I find it very hard to spend the 10% every month.

have you tried face book ads yet? I'm going to be starting mine back up this week , only this time around I'm going to drive them to my company facebook page instead of my website, just to see how that works.

 

[Brian R]

What percent is that ?

I put 10% away for marketing , but I find it very hard to spend the 10% every month.

have you tried face book ads yet? I'm going to be starting mine back up this week , only this time around I'm going to drive them to my company facebook page instead of my website, just to see how that works.

Oops...forgot facebook...I only throw about $6.00 per week to FB just for impressions.

I send them to my FB page to get more fans
Wanna become a fan?
http://www.facebook.com/pages/DallasSac ... ?ref=share

Thanks for the reminder.

 

[CDRX]

Didn't see any mention of a newsletter to your past customers. This is by far the most profitable marketing expense I have and average an 11 to 1 return on investment. I've been sending it out monthly for about 10 years now, money well spent.

Was spending about $2000/mo. on Yellow pages a couple years ago and dropped them all this year as the ROI dropped to a little more than the cost and I got tired of doing a ton of work each month just to pay for ads.

Member of BNI and that returns very well but involves a lot of time. Total cost averages out to $68/mo.

 

[XTREME1]

Over the last 18 months I would say I spent between $1500 and 2,000

 

[Royal Man]

I mail postcards to 1000 past clients each month.
One or 2 jobs pay for the entire mailing.

Top ranking for website and google maps. !4 bucks a month.

But, Most of my income comes from my referral systems to employees, associations, health clubs and other groups. Zero costs.

Less than $300 per month total.

Some of the best marketing has little or no costs.

 

[Mountain View Carpet Care]

$30 a month.

 

[CDRX]

Dave, I saw you're Google map listing is coming up number one with 16 reviews (searching "carpet cleaning Lincoln"). Do the number of reviews help you get that number one spot?

Also, your site does rank number one in organic results, do you spend a lot of time on optimization? Or what would you attribute that to?

Thanks,
Jonathan

 

[rhino1]

$1200 to $2000 monthly, some months a 5 to 1 return, others a 10 to 1

I don't get much biz from the website, couple of jobs a week - I would really like to do wayyy better in that category but print still rules here I guess and is a fast track to credibility. The ultra conservatives here are suspicious of anyone new and consider it a gamble to try us out.

 

[Ken Snow]

7-9.5% depending on Division/Division sub department or about $745,000 this year for On-Location & Rug Care Divisions

 

[Brian R]

7-9.5% depending on Division/Division sub department or about $745,000 this year for On-Location & Rug Care Divisions

This should teach us all something.

 

[Brian R]

Didn't see any mention of a newsletter to your past customers. This is by far the most profitable marketing expense I have and average an 11 to 1 return on investment. I've been sending it out monthly for about 10 years now, money well spent.

Constant Contact has a few templates for sending newsletters...but of course not many have ALL or even MOST of their client's email address'

You did mean snail mail version right?

I'm going to talk to Service Monster about this and see what they think for starting one.

 

[Brian R]

Dave, I saw you're Google map listing is coming up number one with 16 reviews (searching "carpet cleaning Lincoln"). Do the number of reviews help you get that number one spot?

Also, your site does rank number one in organic results, do you spend a lot of time on optimization? Or what would you attribute that to?

Thanks,
Jonathan

The reviews do help...along with everything else...the closer you get to doing 100% of everything you need to be doing will get you closer to number 1.
Look in this thread

http://mikeysboard.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=39670

 

[Royal Man]

Dave, I saw you're Google map listing is coming up number one with 16 reviews (searching "carpet cleaning Lincoln"). Do the number of reviews help you get that number one spot?

Also, your site does rank number one in organic results, do you spend a lot of time on optimization? Or what would you attribute that to?

Thanks,
Jonathan

A growing factor for ranking on Google is local web cred.

Tesimonals are one factor. Local links that are indexed by Google also helps.
Then it is just some of the old school SEO: keywords, meta tags ect...

 

[Desk Jockey]

under 3% of sales

 

[juniorc82]

Networking group 20 mo.
phone book....... 400 bucks

mailouts sometimes almost 500 - 600