Contractor Marketing

Marketing your construction company does not have to be hard to do as long as you put a plan together and a budget. After years of trail and error marketing I finally figured it out the hard way. The main thing I want to teach you is that you do not need to spend a fortune to market your company.

So I mastered a way to market my company to millions in sales, and use the cheapest way to get there. Let me give you some of the ways I did this, and yes I bucked the system along the way.

First off I am talking about good ole print advertising but with a few twist along the way. Your best friend you will have in everything you use in print will be your graphics and lay out person. It will be up to you to find that person and educate them on your business.

This by far is the most important asset in print advertising. Yes the printer and the newspaper will tell you they have there own graphics department and can do all of this for you but DO NOT fall into that trap.

Just to give you a short lesson, when you open your paper tonight and look at it page after page circle the ad that really jumps out at you and stops you in your tracks to read the ad or article. I mean it is so good you want to cut the ad out and call about the product or service and buy it yourself.

Or go one further and pull out your favorite magazine and leaf threw it and do the same thing.

See I only have about 2-3 seconds to grab you and pull you into my ad for your time. Then I need to continue to pull you down my ad or article to my call to action. Your ad only works if your client picks up the phone and calls for your service or products.

Now back to the newspaper, as you go threw it almost all the ads start running together, right? Yes they all look the same. This is because of the boiler room graphics department.

Just so you know that little lesson just saved you thousands of dollars. So raise your right hand and repeat after me. I will have my own graphics person do ALL my ads or printing.

Let’s move on here to some of the things I used, but wait one more thing I need to tell you. If you remember back a little I told you to educate your graphics person. See no one knows your contracting business better then you. Right? So make sure they clearly understand your services and products and your warranty’s.

If you are using someone out of town, pack up everything you can about your company and send to them. Send them literature and pictures of completed jobs, if they are local, put them in your truck and take them to completed jobs. This will give your graphics person the education they need to do all your work.

Now if the graphics person refuses to do any of this, then move on to the next one. See once they clearly understand your contracting business, they will be able to give you the best ads and articles. Also remember just tweaking your headline can bring you 50% more business. This is how important it is to have the right graphics person.

I used 3 things to do millions in sales in my contracting business.

1. Newspaper

2. Inserts

3. Postcards

Let’s take a look at what worked for me. Newspaper is about building your brand. Name recognition and being repetitive with your ads. I kept an ad in the paper everyday. Mostly in the home town section or your local section. I also would keep a small ad in the obituary section. Don’t laugh I received a lot of calls from that ad,plus a lot of ribbing from my family and friends.

I changed the ads around according to the seasons or if there were any special events in town. This is how you build your brand.

Now the best kept secrets are inserts. I send out 100,000 or more a month in the newspaper. You can send 5,000 or 10,000 but use inserts. Here is why. THEY WORK! Again your graphics person can lay out a design that works for you. I have 10 to 12 insert campaigns running all the time. Each one is a different product or service offered by us.

You can pay anywhere from $22.00 to $34.00 per thousand. Add in your printing and graphics cost and you should not be over .12-18 cents each. I only send it to paid subscription to the newspaper. NO FREE PAPERS!

I have this set up on remote control at several newspapers for 12 months at a time with a signed contract for the very best price. This little gem alone brings in most of my yearly sales. The nice thing about it is that you can change it any time you want and can run several different zip code campaigns at the same time.

You may want to run replacement windows in one zip zone and siding in another zone all on the same day.

So we do the same exact thing with postcards but we use the post office. We have several cards we use and it is all zip code zoned. Our printer we use owns there own mail house, so they do everything for us. Again we set it up on remote control and all we do is tell them which post card to use.

Now remember you can start this out on a small budget and let it grow as your contracting business grows. I would start with inserts if you are on a limited budget, because I know it works and I have several other contractors that use my set it and forget it system.

So I hope you try some of the marketing for your company and write me and let me know how it works out for you.

Happy Selling

Glen

Tagged as: Contractor, Marketing, Sales