Winning Strategies For Business And Life: Issue 6

It is early summer, and you should be very busy. But now is also a great time to refine your selling and marketing tactics. In general, before we go too far, I think you need to have a basic understanding of what marketing is. Marketing is the process of communicating your message and offer to potential buyers of your products and services. Effective marketing persuades prospects to not only call you but to actually buy from you as well. After all, it is relatively easy to get the phone to ring. This can be accomplished by making an irresistible offer to your audience. Lawn care companies could do this by advertising on the radio for "FREE LAWN CARE."

The problem with this is everybody will call, and in that "everybody" are plenty of consumers you don’t want as clients. So before you communicate a message, decide who you want your clients to be. Once you’ve decided whom you want as clients, send your offer directly to them. You must find the locations or media that these clients frequent or exist in.

TARGETING YOUR COMMUNICATIONS. Let me give you an example of what a lawn care or landscaping company might do. If the clients you want are professionals who live in upper class neighborhoods and drive nice cars, then you need to find ways to reach them. The first thing I would do is get one or two clients in those neighborhoods. Service those two to death by calling frequently to make sure they’re happy, give them coupons to give to their friends and neighbors and, most importantly, have nice, clean job site signs up in the yards of those properties. Job site signs are still the best form of advertising you can use - plus they’re cheap.

Nothing advertises your service better than your work. Once these steps are taken, do a mailer to the addresses of the houses you want as clients. This is not the lazy man’s way to marketing, but it works. Max Rhoads, an industry professional from Nebraska, drove the streets of the neighborhoods he wanted to penetrate and then mailed to those houses. For larger operations you can find the addresses from various direct mail companies. See one near you and ask about their capabilities.

In conjunction with a letter like this, you should be doing a newsletter. You can do a nice, simple one like mine at Grunder Landscaping or an even simpler yet very effective one like Chip McClintock’s from Green & White Outdoors. McClintock’s newsletter is professional in appearance, is consistent with his other marketing vehicles and gets his company’s information out effectively and inexpensively.

WHERE DO YOU MARKET? A combination of happy clients in the neighborhoods you want to work in with a simple, deliberate message is the best way to attract new clients. Some warning - do NOT do the following if you are a landscaper:

1. Advertise on TV. Why? There is a poor return on investment, and because the message is heard by many who aren’t your clients, it brings many poor leads.



2. Advertise on radio. Why? There is also a poor return on investment and an influx of poor leads.



3. Advertise on bus benches, phone book covers, Web sites or buses. Why? No one sees or pays much attention to these, so they are also a poor return on investment.

The aforementioned are bad because you can’t control where your message is being heard, and you will then have to spend valuable time pursuing bad leads. A strategy where one tries being everything to everyone rarely works. Consider this: You would never consider marching into the city with a loaded gun looking for deer, right? Why? There are no deer in the city. Deer are in the woods. Marketing is no different. Shoot your message at your target. Once you see how well this works, you’ll never market on the radio, TV, park bench or side of a bus.

Effective marketing is as much an issue of learning what not to do as what to do. Once you decide who you want your clients to be, communicate to them where they are.

Lawn care companies can effectively use ValPaks, coupons, yellow pages, etc. to draw business. Commercial maintenance contractors can use building owners’ associations, commercial real estate associations and Chamber of Commerce functions to attract business. Upscale landscape and hardscape contractors can use direct mail, event sponsorships and garden shows to attract business.

But everyone, regardless of their type of business, should do the following:

• Newsletter;
• Referral program;
• Job site signs or name plates; and
• Most importantly, take care of your current clients first! When you do that, WOM (word-of-mouth) happens! And WOM advertising is the best kind of marketing. Why? It is very effective and very cheap. No one has any excuse not to take advantage of WOM.