Target marketing

[lust1kiddo]

I am starting to do some target marketing in my area sending out postcards with sales and discounts. I used Vista print to make them because they were cheapo and I am broko..lol. I also am thinking of buying the lists from the post office..I hope they are good. Anyone have any idea of roughly what the returns are on post card mailings? I am having issues with my marketing in general..or maybe its just my patience. I have ads in local papers, fliers, and I go door to door with my business cards to get some commercial biz. I understand that this is the slow part of the season..but any advice would help. I also have my website but have to work on getting traffic there. I wont quit though..

 

[alazo1]

I also have my website but have to work on getting traffic there. I wont quit though..

This will pay off and it's free if you have the time.

I don't know what the return on postcards is but I would think it's all over the board. I'm on the second mail out to a specific area like you, we'll see how it does. The first postcard did ok. I really wasn't expecting much though.

Have a special on other services now since it's cold rainy and people are not too interested in having their carpet cleaned now. I noticed the last week Coit is pushing their duct cleaning.

Albert

 

[Executivecleaning]

Check out salesgenie.com I have a friend that uses it. He swears by it and I am tying it soon. January 1st he sent out 2000 post cards. By the 15th he had 38 calls and booked 15 jobs. I am not sure what was printed on the cards. I know it must be attractive.

 

[FLYERMAN]

Flyers are my first choice and cold calling is a distant second.

If your flyers aren't working your message sucks. Call me I'll help you with the message.

Ken Raddon.

 

[Ron Werner]

Your message will make or break it.

Sometimes its hit and miss in a neighbourhood. I've sent flyers etc to a couple "nice" areas, not one call.
Almost better to take a drive around, find an area you want to work in, then buy that area list from the postoffice.

 

[SFC]

I was doing some research on marketing. Calling every ad sales guy to see what they have to offer.

Get the web site up to the top of your local search engine

We found a couple of small local radio stations. Ads costs were 8 bucks an ad. Reach is right into my demographic. Over 40, light rock, disposible income, and about 30,000 listeners. Now these are usually not for profit and will bend over backwards. We are definitely going for that.

Have you thought of a trade show? We didn't do too bad last year converting a weekend into 10 good paying clients.

Networking is a great way to get going. But don't just join one. Visit a few. There are BNI's everywhere. But if you can join facebook and get people on these groups to message you, it is just a matter of stopping in between calls. They are cheap & fun. Good break from the day.

If you have a local paper that has a Homes section that goes out every month, you might want to give that a shot as well. Once again you are targeting an audience that is interested in their homes.

I also checked out a small call center to do my cold calling. I am not real big on that but I am meeting with them next week. I would use that for business to business only.

 

[randy]

Are you in Manhattan ? If so are you using portables ? Specifically what equipment are you running now? What area do you cover ?That is the first thing to figure out who to market to. With a decent portable set up you should be able to do well in the city.

 

[truckmount girl]

let's see some of your stuff. we can tear it apart and build you up something (hopefully) better.

Also, I chose an area i wanted to work in, looked at the for sale signs, picked the top listing agents and visited them personally. This worked great. AND IT'S FREE!

Take care,
Lisa

 

[Steve Toburen]

let's see some of your stuff. we can tear it apart and build you up something (hopefully) better.

Also, I chose an area i wanted to work in, looked at the for sale signs, picked the top listing agents and visited them personally. This worked great. AND IT'S FREE!

Take care,
Lisa

Wow, Lisa. That is a really good idea. Seriously. You have hidden depths.

Island Boy
www.StrategiesforSuccess.com

PS However, I gotta tell you that Yeadon says if the RE agents are wimmens you should take a teddy bear or photos of your kids when they were babies with you. What is your opinion about "Emotional Marketing to Women", Lisa?

 

[renegade_cowboy]

I am starting to do some target marketing in my area sending out postcards with sales and discounts. I used Vista print to make them because they were cheapo and I am broko..lol. I also am thinking of buying the lists from the post office..I hope they are good. Anyone have any idea of roughly what the returns are on post card mailings? I am having issues with my marketing in general..or maybe its just my patience. I have ads in local papers, fliers, and I go door to door with my business cards to get some commercial biz. I understand that this is the slow part of the season..but any advice would help. I also have my website but have to work on getting traffic there. I wont quit though..

What you are really doing is selling yourself and sometimes it takes time. I have been in business full time since June of last year and I am shocked how busy i am right now.

Now my personal life has taken many set backs over the last year and just havent had alot of time to build my business the way I wanted to, but its growing very well.

Everything I do revolves around my customers and not me. I take very good care of them and in return they become my cheerleaders. I listen to my customers over the years and a focus group I held to find out what THEY really want and went with it. I have a very simple company, that is easy to use and with the image I have created it really sells itself.

Your image and how you sell yourself is the most important thing to your business. You would be suprised what your customers really wants to see in an ad or what colors they respond to.

You can go fishing all you want, but if you dont have anything that the fish want to bite on, they wont choose your hook and just go with someone elses bait. So you really have to know who you are selling to and what they want to see.

I highly suggest setting up a focus group of your target market and just listen. I post a craigslist ad and in mid Aug to mid Sept I got 22 jobs from that outlet alone. 95% of them were good jobs and there was only a couple that wasnt worth it. You can PM me and I can share with you some of the things I have done with little effort to help make the phone ring.

If you want I will give you a Squid Marketing CD that I bought years ago.

 

[truckmount girl]

http://www.StrategiesforSuccess.com[/url]

PS However, I gotta tell you that Yeadon says if the RE agents are wimmens you should take a teddy bear or photos of your kids when they were babies with you. What is your opinion about "Emotional Marketing to Women", Lisa?[/quote:1o3uy9th]


LOL...Love ya man! Tell Bill most women are mothers and we get sick of seeing kids all the time! We've had to change far too many diapers! You'd so better to put palm trees and a Mai Tai in your ad!

Take care,
Lisa

 

[Royal Man]

I market to almost any local group with a membership.

Could be a health club, recreational group, neighborhood association,country clubs
civic club, business group, almost any group that has a monthly contact with their members.

Basically I found a way to have the group provide advertising about my business every month to all their members for free.

(Beats walking Flyers any day)

They are sent by the group's e-mail or newsletter.

Simple, Easy, Free to execute.

 

[FB7777]

This post is not meant to be seen as an advertisement factually or sublimally any similarity is purely coincidental.

good grief Yankum, your signature line reads like one of those bottom feeder telemarketers that starts their phone speel with " I'm not calling to sell you anything" :roll:


28 years as a one man wonder with a miracle marketing system to sell that can't get manage to get you off the truck yet

 

[Greg Cole]

I am starting to do some target marketing in my area sending out postcards with sales and discounts. I used Vista print to make them because they were cheapo and I am broko..lol. I also am thinking of buying the lists from the post office..I hope they are good. Anyone have any idea of roughly what the returns are on post card mailings? I am having issues with my marketing in general..or maybe its just my patience. I have ads in local papers, fliers, and I go door to door with my business cards to get some commercial biz. I understand that this is the slow part of the season..but any advice would help. I also have my website but have to work on getting traffic there. I wont quit though..

DON'T DO THE POSTCARD in the winter! Go buy a beer instead- you will get more out of the beer!

 

[sweendogg]

 

[lust1kiddo]

I am going to work on getting my post card posted up here..then you guys can help me out. All of your advice sounds fantastic its like i almost dont know where to start first. I will find more info on some of the stuff and try and implement it and keep everyone posted.

 

[lust1kiddo]

btw..i tried cragslist. It didnt work for me.

 

[renegade_cowboy]

btw..i tried cragslist. It didnt work for me.

Same here, I have used Craigslist (not consistant) for a couple of years and your right it never really worked. Maybe one or 2 jobs a month.

In July I think, I change direction with my ad and made it more about me and what they get with a cleaning. Out of everyone in my area that uses craigslist my ad has the most content and I think that is why it works so well for me and why I have such a high close rate when they call.

In reality with the fresh jobs I get of craigslist and the referrals that came from those jobs it has been my biggest source of new clients. Plus one might think that those craigslist jobs are minimum charge trashed jobs, they really arent. I have gathered alot of good clients and referrals from those jobs.

Of course when it comes to buying stuff on craigslist that is another story, there are so many flakes on there, but the service part has been very good to me.

You really can make it work for you.

 

[Greg Cole]

btw..i tried cragslist. It didnt work for me.

Same here, I have used Craigslist (not consistant) for a couple of years and your right it never really worked. Maybe one or 2 jobs a month.

In July I think, I change direction with my ad and made it more about me and what they get with a cleaning. Out of everyone in my area that uses craigslist my ad has the most content and I think that is why it works so well for me and why I have such a high close rate when they call.

In reality with the fresh jobs I get of craigslist and the referrals that came from those jobs it has been my biggest source of new clients. Plus one might think that those craigslist jobs are minimum charge trashed jobs, they really arent. I have gathered alot of good clients and referrals from those jobs.

Of course when it comes to buying stuff on craigslist that is another story, there are so many flakes on there, but the service part has been very good to me.

You really can make it work for you.

It is good to run the occasional craigslist ad toincrease organic relevancy to search enginess.

 

[Fred Homan]

Target a local dry cleaners.....Like I am in the process of doing from my BNI chapter. I believe it has great potential. Give them a % of the job.....10-15-20%.
Another added on service they can offer.

 

[Royal Man]

Fred's post is one of the few that addresses the subject of this post.

TARGET marketing.

Select a target for your marketing.(don't market with a shotgun)

Then select the method, Such as flyers, direct mail.

Dry cleaners are a target.

They can be a good place to form a relationship with to pick up their oriental rugs.

Anyone else want to select a TARGET.?

 

[hogjowl]

Understand that my experience is 20 years old, and times have changed, so some of what I am about to tell you may no longer be useful.

When I first started out in business, I hit the ground running ... I mean flat out sprinting! I had so much drive and ambition that I was trying everything. I hit on postcards to grow, and done the right way, they will work wonders for your business. Well, at least back in the 80's, anyway.

You see, the one thing that can make postcards work is telemarketing behind them. That may be the problem today. I don't know how profitable telemarketing is today.

What I hit on that worked so well was to target 500 customers that fit my demographic profile and I would mail three postcards advertising different services I offered. I would send one postcard each week. Two days after they received their third postcard, my telemarketer would call. I got a return of between 7 and 8% using this method. I would target a different 500 people each week so that every week my telemarketers (had two working full time) would have a fresh batch to contact every week.

Without a telemarketing call back, my return on postcards was only 1 to 1.5%. I know this because I tried to avoid telemarketing for awhile before finally relenting and doing it.

This worked back then, and probably would work today, but you really have to be prepared for the growth or it will cause your life to be hell.

 

[joeynbgky]

btw..i tried cragslist. It didnt work for me.

your going to need to remove your picture from your profile....... my girlfriend said your hot. Guess where shes at now? on the sofa for the night!

 

[Fred Homan]

Target like she is going to put a banner on her front window that says....Carpet Cleaning Residential/Commercial. AND she knows a few other dry cleaners that come to her when they have problems. Real upscale.... She is a sweet heart....

 

[lust1kiddo]

btw..i tried cragslist. It didnt work for me.

your going to need to remove your picture from your profile....... my girlfriend said your hot. Guess where shes at now? on the sofa for the night!

That is pretty funny..reality is I dont even know how it got up there. I'm not cpu savy enough to do that so someone here did it as a joke. I would be much hotter with a 3-4 joba day biz..which is where i'm trying to get.

 

[Jim Williams]

If you have a website, signing up for pay per click ads with Google and Yahoo will help move it to the top. You don't have to bid high either, as long as you are on the first page, then pretty soon you will be coming up on top in the natural search results as long as your site is optimized right. Be sure the words carpet cleaning and the areas you serve are in the title at the top tag of the home page.

My second best return was postcards mailed to nice areas, but like Greg said, this time of the year you are better off with the beer. During the busy season i would get around 5:1 return on my$$$$ with postcards. All other forms of advertising I only broke even on. I always picked nice areas and hit the whole mail route. I found a local mailing company that would do it using thier bulk rate permit.

Good luck!

 

[handdi]

does marty have a fever
a useful post?
swine flu?

 

[Royal Man]

Jim,

The consensus is that adwords does NOT improve your organic ranking.

Although, You can use adwords to tailor your keywords, mega tags and copy that can help your organic ranking.


Remember that SEO is changing.

Keywords, copy etc.. is not enough.

You now need to build LOCAL web cred.

Referrals, citations and local directories/memberships carry a lot of weight now days.

You could wait untill the new Goole Local flat fee advertising comes out.

Dave Yoakum-

 

[Jim Williams]

Dave, it may have been a coincidence, but my site sure shot to the top of the charts when I started doing pay per click. It may have had something to do with the number of clicks I was getting moving it up.

 

[daniel@procarpet]

This thread is about target marketing and so far I have not read one post about target marketing. Pay per click,
postcards, door hangers, yp, etc are not targeted marketing. Targeting one specific area is kind of targeted I guess. I was hoping Mr. Cermak would chime in on doing email templates to send to your target audience. I hope this is covered in Nashville.