CleanCraft's Business Growth Series
Marketing
You can be the best carpet cleaner on the planet, but if word doesn’t get out, nobody will know it! Marketing is a vital component to your business growth. I am going to be honest, most small businesses fail here. Sure, a business can survive and even grow with terrible marketing; however, a strategic marketing plan can do wonders for any small business. Many small business owners get to a point where they are “content” with the way things are going, and believe their business marketing is good enough with word of mouth type marketing. Yes, “Word of mouth” is great, and it cost basically nothing. However, relying on this type of marketing is one of the slowest ways to grow your business. This should only be one small aspect of your marketing. Every small business should also incorporate many other types of marketing to grow. Below, we list multiple types of marketing that have worked for us over the years. Plus, as you see, we incorporate strategies to make multiple marketing methods work together synergistically. A key aspect to remember is to be consistent with marketing. Marketing should be a long term strategy to will continue to build upon itself year after year.
Let’s take a look at some marketing products &
strategies:
PRINT Advertising Yes, everything is not digital. Print advertising still works today. With the right strategies there are many forms of print advertising that can really boost your business. Here are a few…
Business Cards: Let’s start with something simple. Every professional carpet cleaner should have
business cards on them at all times.
Whether you are handing them to customers or whether you meet someone at
the store, passing out business cards is an easy way to get your company name
out there. CleanCraft has made it easy
for you to have your own professional looking business cards. We even incorporate a coupon on the
back. Check out our
Business Card offering.
Referral Cards: Even “Word of Mouth” type advertising needs
some helpful tools. The purpose of Referral
Cards are to use your customers as your sounding board. Simply hand your customers Referral Cards to
pass to their friends & family.
CleanCraft’s Referral Cards were designed to offer incentive for your
customers to pass out the cards. The
cards include a coupon that can be used by the customer’s friends &
family. The customer is actually doing
their friends & family a favor by passing out the cards. CleanCraft has multiple Referral Cards to
choose from. See CleanCraft’s
Referral Card Offering.
Door Hangers: Something as simple as a nicely done flyer hanging on a potential customer’s door can bring in business. However, most people do not get good results with door hangers. This is because 99% of small business owners use door hangers incorrectly. Most people take a Saturday and walk door-to-door hanging a few hundred door hangers. On a beautiful day, this isn’t so bad. However, when calls don’t come in, small business owners quickly put an end to this. Unfortunately, this was a lost opportunity. The proper way to use Door Hangers is to only pass out a few, but consistently pass them out every day. If you pass tons out at once, what is the odds that all these people need carpets cleaned right now? Pretty low. So, it is better to spread out the distribution of door hangers. How do you do this? Simple, after each job, pass out door hangers to 10 neighbor’s homes. Not 5, not 15, but 10. We chose this number, because it only takes about 30 seconds to pass out a door hanger. A technician can spend 5 minutes passing out door hangers after each job. By consistently doing this, the numbers add up. Plus, you are spacing out your marketing efforts. Over time, the calls will start rolling in. CleanCraft has beautifully designed door hangers that can be customized with your company information. See our Door Hanger Offering.
Reminder Postcards: Time flies, and customers forget how long it
has been since their last cleaning.
Plus, no matter how good of a job you did, customers sometimes forget
the company they used for carpet cleaning.
Don’t put your customers in a position where they suddenly realize that
they need to call for carpet cleaning, and they end up calling another
company. Reminder Postcards are a simple
way to be proactive with your customers.
Plus, no high tech computers are needed for tracking. You can do this the old fashion way! Get 12 boxes or buckets. Mark each box with a month (ie. January,
February, March, etc.). Now, after each
day of work, fill out a Reminder Card for each customer you did that day. Then, drop the Reminder Card in the
appropriate month box (Example: Today is
Mar 12
th. Drop the Reminder
Card in the March box). At the end of
February of next year, you will dump out the “March” box of Reminder Cards and
mail them out. This mailing will capture
all the customers you did last March. A
year reminder is a perfect time frame for a Reminder Postcard! CleanCraft has amazing pricing on these
simple, yet effective cards… Check out our
Reminder Postcards.
ONLINE Advertising
Marketing online is a little more technical and usually
requires some computer skills. However,
CleanCraft has developed a couple online tools to help you market without
knowing much about online marketing activities. Here are a few:
Company Website: Every professional carpet cleaning business
should have a website! A website is like
a 24/7 voice for your company. At the
very least, your Print Advertising should list your website for your potential
customers to go to for more information.
Print Advertising will draw attention, but in many cases, your website
will close the deal. Most likely, your
website will also be a tool to attract potential customers when doing a web
search. Let’s face it, if you currently
don’t have a website, you are not being found online. With a website, you now have a chance every
time that homeowner asks his/her phone for a carpet cleaner in your area! Now they can link into your website for
information about your company, special offers, etc. Don’t know how to build a website? No problem, CleanCraft offers website
building and hosting. These website are
not only beautiful, but extremely affordable.
This will probably be one of the most effective forms of marketing you
can do. Plus, you don’t need to know
anything about building a website.
CleanCraft does it for you!
CleanCraft also builds websites that are “Responsive” and “SEO Friendly”
to help you be found by your customers. Check
out our
Website Building & Hosting page for more info.
Business Email: Gmail, Hotmail, Ymail, etc are nice, free
forms of email. However, these types of
email addresses really don’t put a professional image to your company. Small businesses should have an email address
that includes their website name in the email address (ie.
[email protected]). Not only is this more professional, but this
also keeps work & home email life separate. When you Build & Host a website with
CleanCraft, you get an email address included at no extra cost! Check out our
Website Building & Hosting page for more info.
Online Video
Commercial:
They say a pictures is
worth a thousand words. Well, we say a
video is worth a million! How
professional would you be with a commercial?
CleanCraft offers customers the potential to use our “Your Best Choice
for Carpet Cleaning” online video commercial for
FREE! This online
video shows why potential customers should choose your business for their
carpet & upholstery cleaning needs.
It can be put right on your company website. This video is so effective at increasing
carpet cleaning company’s sales, that we guarantee it will grow your
business. Want to know how you can use
this commercial? Visit our
Online Video Commercial page for more information and guarantee.
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