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Thread: Marketing overhaul

  1. #1

    Default Marketing overhaul

    Hello everyone, new here. I am involved in a family business. I am in charge of our marketing, which has been unchanged for years. Currently our main form of advertisement has been word of mouth, our company vehicles, a full page phone book ad and a website. Our marketing needs a major overhaul.

    I have a few ideas, but could really use some guidance towards the best options. My ideas are the following.

    Focus more on how our business is viewed as a whole, T-shirts and sweatshirts with our name and info for our employees to wear, have our fleet of vehicles match in color, lettering and layout in general. Keep our vehicles clean and presentable. Have an open dialogue with our employees on how to treat customers and how to handle situations that arise. Also have a more formal and professional approach with customers such as having business cards for our employees to hand out.

    I want to downsize the phonebook ad due to the lack of use of phonebooks anymore. This is a tricky subject with the others involved and it looks like its going to end up being renewed for this year as a full page. I do want to update our ad at least since it looks very out dated and ad a coupon that we can track to see how much traffic is actually being generated by the ad.

    I want to update our website to a more streamline and professional look. I want it to be optimized for searches.

    I want to branch out into social media such as facebook and possibly twitter.

    I want to possibly use adwords and paid facebook ads to target certain areas and keywords to direct traffic to our web site.

    Thinking outside the box, possibly hosting or sponsoring an event that could get our name out in different ways.

    Any thoughts, comments and feedback would greatly be appreciated. I am still learning everyday, and would really like to increase the amount of traffic our business gets.

    Thanks in advance!

  2. #2
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    David Hunter's Avatar

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    Howdy Andrew! I'm curious... what business are you in???
    David Hunter | Duke of Marketing | Former Real Estate Agent
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    www.BibleAndFriends.com/go/youtube

  3. #3

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    Hi David. We are a septic company, we deal mostly in providing services. We do sell some products, but it's not a major part of our business.

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    I have to agree with you. If I were looking for someone for the services you provide I would do an internet search rather than look in the Yellow Pages as I might have done ages ago. I think an investment in your web site and creating a Facebook page and promoting your Facebook page would be the best investment you could make with your advertising dollars.
    Ray Badger, Turbo Technologies, Inc.
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  5. #5

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    It's still on the table of what size ad we are going to do, the best I can do with the time being is getting them to agree to a half page ad with a coupon on it so we can track how many people use that ad. Unfortunately even if our ad does not draw much traffic(like I think) they don't want to go with anything smaller than a triple quarter ad, which is still over $150 a month.

    We are going to save some money however, we found that we had a small ad a triple quarter ad along with our full page, and those two were costing us over $220 a month, so we're going to drop them.

    Im working on a new ad for the phone book that will include the coupon and a qr code for our Facebook.

  6. #6
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    Ah, nice! The guy who services my septic system has a tagline of, "Nobody sticks their nose in our business!" haha

    I take it there's a lot of people with septic systems in your area? Is this more rural areas? Have any Valpak or Coupon Magazines? How about local newspapers? I'd say they would be better than the yellow pages, though someone who looks in the yellow pages for septic service is probably going to choose one of them.

    Where are you located? Like here in Cleveland, we had a very dry summer so a lot of the roots from the trees were digging deeper and spreading out so our one pipe got clogged by all of the roots.

    So, you could create ads to be based off the weather... even if it rains a lot you could tell people it's a great time to get their septic pumped so they don't get any backups... blah blah blah.
    David Hunter | Duke of Marketing | Former Real Estate Agent
    www.DukeOfMarketing.com
    www.BibleAndFriends.com/go/youtube

  7. #7

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    South central Pa, in a fairly rural area, there are small cities around us, but there is a lot of country side with a lot of homes. We service a fairly decent size area as well.

    As far as I know we do not have any kind of advertisement in the coupon area, and i'm positive we don't advertise in the newspaper.

    We find most of the time we get more weather related issues when we get a good bit of rain, we get a lot of emergency calls. A lot of the townships we service enforce mandatory pumping, home owners have to have their septic system services and inspected at a set interval of time. This has really helped our business, as more townships adopt the ordinance. I know basically who we need to reach, and what needs said to them, i'm just not sure how to reach them the most effective way.

  8. #8

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    I thought of another idea, since we are largely based off of word of mouth, I think focus in that are would be a great investment. Since we are service based, I think a small package including business cards, refrigerator magnets, neighbor referal discounts, etc. Would be a great incentive to get more people talking about us. We could simply leave a bag on their door stating they were serviced, and what we done could be listed and any problems we found could be added. Then they would also get our advertising material and coupons. It's a win win in my eyes.

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    Well your current customers are you best customers! So I would send them direct mail or call them regularly (or how ever often you find necessary with septics).

    The only way to know if your word of mouth marketing will work is if you test it out. Give an incentive for people referring you.

    Another idea you could do is either drop stuff off or send direct mail to the houses around the house that you just serviced. Say roots were clogging the pipes for the septic and you had to cut them out because of a dry season, well you could send the direct mail to the neighbors and let them know what you did at your customers (I'd ask permission if you are going to be specific) and that they may end up with the same problem so to call you for an inspection.

    The goal with marketing is to get people to raise their hands that they are interested in what you have to offer. Just remember you may do 10 different marketing campaigns and only 1 or 2 actually bring in results... but those results make up for the other 8-9 that didn't work... and then some!
    David Hunter | Duke of Marketing | Former Real Estate Agent
    www.DukeOfMarketing.com
    www.BibleAndFriends.com/go/youtube

  10. #10

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    Thank you very much for the feedback. I was actually going to ask about direct mailing. It was something we never really got into, but I think it would be a great way to push into territory that we don't service, or don't get a lot of calls from. That paired with possibly a targeted adwords campaign could really help us branch out into new areas.

    I just finished up the new ad for the phonebook, we are meeting with our rep tomorrow. I added a coupon to it, a QR code to our facebook and make our web address noticeable. I'm actually pretty proud of it, hehe.

    I'm going to pitch the idea of a small package for customers, this way we are offering them both an incentive to refer others and gather information from the customer all while providing a professional look and experience.

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