Offline
Here’s a quick story of how some simple offline marketing… with the right words, in the right place, at the right time… can propel your business forward in an instant.
Like a lot of local business owners these days, a friend of mine who’s a talented home contractor has been scrambling to create new revenues in his decades-old business. Although his reputation has always been good, he found that he couldn’t depend on good ‘word of mouth’ to generate enough income to keep him and his crew busy on a regular basis.
So we sat down to brainstorm a new approach, using a direct-mail sales letter and one of his upcoming projects to generate a buzz in the neighborhood. And some paying jobs on his schedule.
In short, he had already scheduled some repair work with the management of a mid-sized townhouse complex this spring, and hoped to catch the attention of homeowners in the complex to do some additional ’side jobs’ while his crew was on site. Even though the property manager was also a friend, there were certain restrictions on what we could say to approach any new business in the area (as any contractor knows).
Starting with an offer that any homeowner would be thrilled to receive, I created a short, 1-page ‘introduction letter’ with a service that we could see many of the property owners needed. After a few revisions to pass the property manager’s approval, and to ensure the work could be done profitably by the contractor’s crew, we sent the letter out to a hand-picked selection of less than 100 addresses in the complex.
And then followed up with a second letter to the same group a week later, keeping close track of which ones responded each time.
The result?
5 weeks later, I got a call from the contractor asking me how I liked my coffee (’double-double’, thanks!), and to arrange a short visit to my office at the end of that day. He dropped by in a few hours with paint-covered overalls and a big smile on his face…
Then he dropped a handful of crisp new $100 bills on the table, as my ‘commission’ on the 6 extra jobs he’d already completed that month, as a result of our mailing campaign!
It made my day to see the look of relief on his face, now that he and his crew were ‘in the black’ again. And a few hundred bucks helped my bottom line too, thank you very much.
The only question he had left was to ask when we could sit down to write his next promotion…!
(Note to self: I’ve GOT to make the time to update this blog more often!)
