Marketing

nlgutters

I see the question on here almost everyday. what is the best way to advertise!! Then everyone tells there way and what works for them. i dont know about you but it is probably my biggest hassel. For each company it is diffrent most jobs take us 1 day so we need steady leads. It is a lot of work to market your self between choosing places to advertise tracking leads designing ads and so on. As contractors we choose what we are good at and delegate everthing else. So i guess my question is why dont we hire an ad firm we hire lawyers accountants and other trades that are better then we are at certin things. Has anyone here ever hired some one for this? what was the cost, what was your experiensce. I dont know about you but if i can pay some one to do a better job and it is affordable why not!!

Grumpy

I see 3 business models working for gutter companies...

Subcontract where you let other companies by your sales team. Low profit high volume. One of my gutter subs can easily do two normal jobs in a day. Something like averaging 500' w/ downsouts.

Install on the spot, highly saturate a specific area that is tight knit, not having too large a service area. You work a job then run an estimate or two after with your crew. If it's a small job you sell it and install it on the spot. This is somethign on hack boss I had used to do often. Those that didn't sign up on the spot would sometimes sign up later.

Hire a salesman or two who can run 6 leads a day each. Gutter sales are quicka nd easy. No reason for 2 hour presentations. Average sale is $1200 at about $7.5 a foot. In and out quick.

If you know nothing about marketing and advertising it wouldn't hurt to hire a marketing consultant. Who's going to sell the job once the lead comes in? Why do you need an adfirm after ALL the free advice on the marketing forum of this website?

silvertree

When I owned a franchise we had an ad firm, takes too long, costs a lot, and they may have a vision of you thats different than yours. Very inefficient. The ad firm we had missed the message in my opinion. They counter bad ad strategies by telling you that you need to spend more. It works, but it doesn't always work that well. Expensive and unproven until you try it. Get some marketing books and see how you can get your message across. As Grumpy says, theres more than one way to skin a cat.

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Vote for Pedro
Kitchen, bath, St Paul remodeling
Minneapolis Remodel Blog
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Publisher1

Would it make sense to check out gutter firms in other cities (similar size, demographics to you), find the leading particpants in the field, and, if you can manage the travel cost, have lunch or after dinner drinks with a few of the guys who run the most successful businesses in these cities? OR get involved in a trade association with membership across the country. You then simply 'borrow' the best ideas from your peers and you have an instant and ready to go marketing campaign. No fear of competition, so the others should be happy to share with you (and you can reciprocate with your own ideas).
This concept works for any business that is primarily local in nature; and I can see some natural leaders within their trades on this board -- yes, you can certainly share ideas on the web, but face-to-face builds even stronger relationships/value.

wpc07834

I would say the best way to produce a steady supply of leads would be canvassing. we do not market for this type of job, but it would be very easy too. Postcards would help, as would door knockers.

Grumpy

That's exactly what THIS website is.

Carport King

This is what works for us in Florida with 6 gutter trucks everyday!
We only do jobsite radius marketing but with one little change.
We market the address before we do the job!

When our sales gal sells the job we radius market the job with a special postcard with a discount if we can do the job the same day.

There are times when we have all 6 trucks in one neighborhood.
We also have a sales gal there when jobs are being done.

This is worked by far better than anything else we have tried.

Our radius marketing company in Florida charges $50.00 for 50 mailers and most of the time we expand if we get great response.

This is inexpensive marketing at it's best.