Josh_Cronin
New member
Ron...What would your Top 5 "ways to waste your marketing money be"? Actually anyone here. I would love to get your opinions. What has most defiantly NOT worked for you?
The Mole and Jersey Show Episode I
- Thread starter Ron Musgraves
- Start date
Tony Shelton
BS Detector, Esquire
Hello Josh, If you don't mind my jumping in here, I'd first like to say that the show is entertaining. It's not my style, but that's probably because I'm an old geezer.
I believe the answer to your question depends entirely on what kind of cleaning you are doing and what kind of target you have.
When I owned the dry clean delivery business it was "effective" to put flyers on door knobs. Whenever I needed an influx of new customers to meet monthly goals it was easy to send out guys with door hangers and pick up 10-20 new customers in no time. But those were not my top targets. My top targets were entire corporations where, when done properly, I could arrange a presentation at a company meeting and pick up 30 or more new customers in one day. I could pick garments up from ONE designated spot within the building, sometimes doubling or tripling the profit over individual home deliveries.
When Shelly had the DMV business it was "effective" for her to advertise in the yellow pages. She averaged about 20 new customers a month from that. But it was much more effective for her to spend $40 over and over again on cookies, snacks, lunches, etc that she could take to the car dealerships to woo the managers where just one contract with a dealership would mean up to 400 new customers per month!
For me, a home delivery meant more fuel, more time, and even with a higher gross, meant less profit. For her, she gave the dealerships discounted prices up to 50% and STILL made more profit.
In the end we pulled both yellow pages ads and quit marketing to any individual accounts, preferring bulk accounts.
The same thing applies in this industry.
When I started my air filter service it was residential only. My charges were as much as 8 times what I charge for commercial accounts now and I was still barely profitable. Having to deal with hundreds of different personalities, billing accounts and all the fuel costs made the entire process tedious and barely profitable. Flyers, mailers, door hangers, phone calls, yellow page ads, newspaper ads, and all that stuff certainly brought in customers, but it didn't bring in that much cash flow.
Moving on to individual accounts within shopping centers, etc, while discounted more than individual services was my next move. Flyers, radio ads, personal sales calls, and other such methods brought in customers, but the cost to bring in new customers was high.
From there I made a minimum account size goal, paring the target down to customers who had the number of buildings to produce a minimum of 10,000 filters/yr. That narrowed my marketing down to less than 200 targets with a core "premium" target group of less than 50. These respond to lunches, dinner meetings, sports tickets, dinner passes, and personal emails and letters among other things. These take time. I've worked on some as long as 4 years before I got anything from them.
My son, Chris started off taking anything he could get from house washes to driveways to parking garages. Now his target market is similar to mine and he won't even take residential calls at all. His marketing includes many of the methods we use and he has dropped the flyers and other methods that bring in customers he doesn't want.
My nephew does residential only. Flyers, a well marked truck, advertisements, and all the other things that get the attention of residential customers works for him.
The answer to you question varies depending on the target. There is no "top 5 ways to waste your money" that fits all contractors here.
If you want to discover the top five ways to waste your money on commercial concrete cleaning, there are few who have the years of experience that Ron has to answer that question.
If you want to uncover the top five ways to waste money on marketing to government accounts then Phil or Scott Stone are great sources for that.
If you want to find out the top five ways to waste money on marketing coil cleaning and air filter cleaning, I doubt you would find anyone who has made more mistakes and wasted more money than I have.
On the residential end there are numerous guys who can make that list. I'm sure, as long as he has been in business Everett Abrams can tell a new person a lot of ways to waste money on wood marketing.
I believe the answer to your question depends entirely on what kind of cleaning you are doing and what kind of target you have.
When I owned the dry clean delivery business it was "effective" to put flyers on door knobs. Whenever I needed an influx of new customers to meet monthly goals it was easy to send out guys with door hangers and pick up 10-20 new customers in no time. But those were not my top targets. My top targets were entire corporations where, when done properly, I could arrange a presentation at a company meeting and pick up 30 or more new customers in one day. I could pick garments up from ONE designated spot within the building, sometimes doubling or tripling the profit over individual home deliveries.
When Shelly had the DMV business it was "effective" for her to advertise in the yellow pages. She averaged about 20 new customers a month from that. But it was much more effective for her to spend $40 over and over again on cookies, snacks, lunches, etc that she could take to the car dealerships to woo the managers where just one contract with a dealership would mean up to 400 new customers per month!
For me, a home delivery meant more fuel, more time, and even with a higher gross, meant less profit. For her, she gave the dealerships discounted prices up to 50% and STILL made more profit.
In the end we pulled both yellow pages ads and quit marketing to any individual accounts, preferring bulk accounts.
The same thing applies in this industry.
When I started my air filter service it was residential only. My charges were as much as 8 times what I charge for commercial accounts now and I was still barely profitable. Having to deal with hundreds of different personalities, billing accounts and all the fuel costs made the entire process tedious and barely profitable. Flyers, mailers, door hangers, phone calls, yellow page ads, newspaper ads, and all that stuff certainly brought in customers, but it didn't bring in that much cash flow.
Moving on to individual accounts within shopping centers, etc, while discounted more than individual services was my next move. Flyers, radio ads, personal sales calls, and other such methods brought in customers, but the cost to bring in new customers was high.
From there I made a minimum account size goal, paring the target down to customers who had the number of buildings to produce a minimum of 10,000 filters/yr. That narrowed my marketing down to less than 200 targets with a core "premium" target group of less than 50. These respond to lunches, dinner meetings, sports tickets, dinner passes, and personal emails and letters among other things. These take time. I've worked on some as long as 4 years before I got anything from them.
My son, Chris started off taking anything he could get from house washes to driveways to parking garages. Now his target market is similar to mine and he won't even take residential calls at all. His marketing includes many of the methods we use and he has dropped the flyers and other methods that bring in customers he doesn't want.
My nephew does residential only. Flyers, a well marked truck, advertisements, and all the other things that get the attention of residential customers works for him.
The answer to you question varies depending on the target. There is no "top 5 ways to waste your money" that fits all contractors here.
If you want to discover the top five ways to waste your money on commercial concrete cleaning, there are few who have the years of experience that Ron has to answer that question.
If you want to uncover the top five ways to waste money on marketing to government accounts then Phil or Scott Stone are great sources for that.
If you want to find out the top five ways to waste money on marketing coil cleaning and air filter cleaning, I doubt you would find anyone who has made more mistakes and wasted more money than I have.
On the residential end there are numerous guys who can make that list. I'm sure, as long as he has been in business Everett Abrams can tell a new person a lot of ways to waste money on wood marketing.
Josh_Cronin
New member
Awesome Tony! I completely agree with what you said. Every industry and type of client focus has different pluses and minuses. It's hard to put a blanketed answer together! I love the thought you put into it!
Tony Shelton
BS Detector, Esquire
Lol, not much thought in my answer, just recounting past mistakes and passing them on.
michaelmole
New member
Good thoughts. Glad you found the show entertaining. I didn't notice where you said "sponsor a softball team" in your post as something that had worked for you... So at least we agreed on that one!
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Tony Shelton
BS Detector, Esquire
Good thoughts. Glad you found the show entertaining. I didn't notice where you said "sponsor a softball team" in your post as something that had worked for you... So at least we agreed on that one!
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
When I played Little League I played for First National Bank. That was over 40 years ago and I still remember it. One of my team mates is now president of that bank. My first bank account when I became an adult was there.
So there must be something to it.
But it is something I never tried in business. At 115 degrees baseball and softball are not big crowd attractors here like they were in Tennessee
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FCPWLLC
Senior Moderator
Money wasters......
Residential....
Billboards would be bad ROI.
Spots team stuff comes out of personal salary as there very rarely anyone calling saying that they saw my name on a banner in left field.
Yellow pages worked so, so about 6 years ago. Today we had a goose egg for calls in 2013 for our phonebook ad.
Groupon/living social were wastes of our time and money. Bad ROI and worse customers.
Post cards WITH a price on them were horrible for us. On the flip, postcards with no price on them showed a 4:1 return. (still expensive)
Commercial....
Almost any "Marketing" is bad ROI
Landing commercial, in my opinion isn't gotten via Marketing per se, in the traditional definition of Marketing.
It is more of a networking, cold calling SALES pitch constantly. Tony and Ron and most will tell you that you gotta knock on their door. Marketing is getting folks to knock on yours.
So a uniform sponsorship might be considered marketing if it is what gets you to a team meeting and another parent is a CEO of a commercial account and you strike up convo. But reality is, it is networking and cold-calling that lands commercial most of the time. I get commercial accounts via website but far and few between.
If I had to pick any form for Commercial, it would be direct mailers to direct list. Even then, I think those would only softly introduce before a cold call was made versus producing a solid lead.
I personally leave tons of money on the table because I practically puke in my mouth at the thought of making a cold call. Have yet to find a commission only sales person to do it for me and won't take on ANY service company middleman work that rapes the contractor.
So, I keep making residential customers call/email me. It works and I still do what I want. Wash in the morning, ride the Harley all afternoon while still earning what most do working 80 hrs/wk. Can't really say my marketing is best or worst.
Residential....
Billboards would be bad ROI.
Spots team stuff comes out of personal salary as there very rarely anyone calling saying that they saw my name on a banner in left field.
Yellow pages worked so, so about 6 years ago. Today we had a goose egg for calls in 2013 for our phonebook ad.
Groupon/living social were wastes of our time and money. Bad ROI and worse customers.
Post cards WITH a price on them were horrible for us. On the flip, postcards with no price on them showed a 4:1 return. (still expensive)
Commercial....
Almost any "Marketing" is bad ROI
Landing commercial, in my opinion isn't gotten via Marketing per se, in the traditional definition of Marketing.
It is more of a networking, cold calling SALES pitch constantly. Tony and Ron and most will tell you that you gotta knock on their door. Marketing is getting folks to knock on yours.
So a uniform sponsorship might be considered marketing if it is what gets you to a team meeting and another parent is a CEO of a commercial account and you strike up convo. But reality is, it is networking and cold-calling that lands commercial most of the time. I get commercial accounts via website but far and few between.
If I had to pick any form for Commercial, it would be direct mailers to direct list. Even then, I think those would only softly introduce before a cold call was made versus producing a solid lead.
I personally leave tons of money on the table because I practically puke in my mouth at the thought of making a cold call. Have yet to find a commission only sales person to do it for me and won't take on ANY service company middleman work that rapes the contractor.
So, I keep making residential customers call/email me. It works and I still do what I want. Wash in the morning, ride the Harley all afternoon while still earning what most do working 80 hrs/wk. Can't really say my marketing is best or worst.
Josh_Cronin
New member
WOW Great Re-visited Michael!!!