Marketing Return Question

[renegade_cowboy]

I have read that for most O/O $100 an hour is a bench mark.

Is there a bench mark for marketing dollars. For example if I spend $1,000 on marketing what is the *minimum* money bench mark return for it to be successful. Is there a rule of thumb that it should be doubled of what you originally spent.

Do you have an average return for all your marketing?


Thanks

 

[Royal Man]

To find that number you'll have to find out what your real break even point. If you spend $1000 you may likely have to make $2000 to just break even.

Often times it will depend on the form of marketing. With yellow pages, direct mail and other traditional marketing you may barely break even or loose money depending on your message and your market.

That is why many cleaners are going to internet marketing and yellow pages are going the way of the dinosaur.

Marketing is simply building relationships. A smart marketer will find the easiest and most cost effective way to do this.

When relationships are built they can continue forever, with very little effort or money. That way you don't have to spend tons of money just to shotgun out marketing every month.

My favorite method gives me over 500/1 return. In fact it's even better that that. After it is set up it will return new customers for absolutely NO money or effort.


Think out of the box and don't pick an advertising method just because every other cleaner in your area does it that way.

So stop advertising and start building relationships for the best return.

 

[SFC]

That is a tough determination. But the math is simple.

Add the total cost of your advertising including your time.

Take your gross sales from the jobs you got from advertising. Divide the cost by the return and you have your cost per campaign. If you distribute flyers or postcards use cost divided by household divided by your gross income from the ads. That will give a cost per household.

You could also use a response rate. Some ads work great. So use the same numbers but instead of finding out who much find out how many. Then determine your cost per call.

By breaking down the numbers you will get a better understanding of what really works.

By the way, training your phone reps to ask the right questions will increase your returns even more. So don't just look at these numbers. What is your conversion rate? Who sets up more appointments? What are they doing right? etc etc etc

I don't know if the attached file will work but I have used in the past.

 

[JCoviello]

Hmmm, well IMO that depends on a what you are trying to get out of your advertising campaign.

Are you looking to build a client base, or just trying to be a Stanley [Cleveland] Steemer (Someone will get it. :mrgreen: ) and turn and burn with maximum return per 1 time out?

I'm spending about $3700 per month on advertising and it's bringing in about 100 new customers a month and about 16K gross. I hope to retain about 50% of the clients for future work. In a couple years, I would hope to have my "good client" base up to the point I don't have to spend much on attracting new customers. IOW it's an investment as much as it's a "return" type thing.