Tag: home improvement advertising

Home Improvement Advertising Case Study: Energy Guard

As one of Milgard Windows’ top dealers, Energy Guard Windows and Doors has a lot to offer — great products, 27 years of expertise, and first-class installation. For several years, Energy Guard has held Smart Home Seminars where homeowners can learn everything they need to know about replacing their windows.

I’ve sat in on the presentation, and can tell you it’s far more than a sales pitch. There was a tremendous amount of valuable information on materials, energy savings, installation issues, and the new Federal tax credits.

Recently, Energy Guard used radio advertising for the first time to promote a seminar. In the video below, owner Darren Mankin talks about how it went:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=–xw0MYd-U8]

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Does This Customer Survey Have Value?

Customer surveys can be a terrific way to check on your sales and customer service efforts — not everyone will fill them out (and those who do may not tell you everything you need to know), but in some cases you’ll have the opportunity to correct problems you didn’t know you had.

This only works if you act on what you learn.

A survey we recently received in the mail has the potential to be teaching tool, or a complete waste of postage. Updates will follow. The history:

In June, we needed a new backyard fence. This post has more details. The short version is that my wife called three well-known companies. One never returned a phone message, although they did send a postcard promising that someone would call. A second company sent a salesman who took measurements, promised to return with a bid, and was never heard from again. Only the third company followed up with a quote, and that company got our business.

[Roland Young of Rick’s Custom Fencing & Decking deserves credit for his follow-up, and for doing a fine job on the fence. A radio campaign would be an excellent way for Rick’s to tell the world about what they do, and I invite them to call me at 503-323-6553. But I digress.]

The company who never returned our call just sent us a survey. The cover letter is signed by the president of the company. It says, in part:

Our business is based on referrals from the clients who contact [us], and we want that experience to be positive. So that we can ensure that we’re doing a good job for clients, we ask for feedback to see how we are doing. It would help us a great deal if you would complete the questions on the back and return this form at your earliest convenience in the enclosed self-adressed envelope.

Our initial reaction upon opening the envelope was amusement. After having completely dropped the ball, how could they, with a straight face, ask us how they did? But I now think this was a smart move. They don’t what happened, because we never told them — all we did was spend our money with someone else and move on. The survey represents a system they’ve set up to make sure they find out about things like this.

So we’re going to fill it out and send it back. We will be candid about our experience. Our answers may help them plug a hole in their sales funnel, and improve the results of their advertising — but only if someone reads it and acts on what they learn.

Stay tuned for updates.

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How to Convert Contest Entrants into Customers

As reported in an earlier post, my company will soon be launching the “Green Home” contest — an online lead-generation promotion for Portland-area environmentally-conscious home improvement companies.

We’re going to be delivering thousands of leads to the contest sponsors, and I was looking for “out of the box” ideas on how to turn those entrants into customers. So I posted the question on LinkedIn (see it here if you are a LinkedIn member).

Among the answers was this insight from Mike Seidle, who runs the internet marketing firm Indy Associates. Here’s what he has to say about follow-up techniques:

Doesn’t matter what the method of contacting the consumer is, the conversion rate is always a function of the offer you make after you generate the lead. We just did a contest that generated 78,000 leads. Soft offers worked (get a free catalog, try ___ for 30 days at no cost, free fertilizer application, etc…) , hard offers didn’t (SAVE 10%, $100 OFF, GET A FREE TRIP!). Funny thing is sellers don’t like soft offers because they see a risk of higher cost. Reality is that you get lower ROI on hard offers because they don’t convert as well.

It seems counter-intuitive at first — once you’ve got a whole bunch of qualified leads, why can’t you just sell ’em something. But I’m guessing that although these people, by definition, are interested, they’re not yet ready to buy. The contest is a promising first date, but it’s not time to get married yet.

Check out Mike’s blog here.

 

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For Portland/Vancouver Home Improvement Companies Only

This is a confidential message intended for Portland-area companies home remodeling or home improvement businesses. If you are not interested in talking to local homeowners in Northwest Oregon or Southwest Washington, you are forbidden to read this post. Please log off immediately.

Are they gone? Good. Now that it’s just us, I wanted to tell you about a lead-generation program that my company will be doing in September.

Can you help Portland-area homeowners save energy and reduce their impact on the environment? Then they want to talk to you. Clear Channel’s Green Home contest can put you in touch.  

Beginning in September, we’ll be promoting the Green Home Contest on all five of our radio stations and web sites. Listeners will log on and enter to win prizes that help them live greener lives. They’ll be interested in:

  • Insulation
  • Green Kitchen Materials
  • Environmentally Friendly Lighting
  • Energy-Saving Heating and Air Conditioning
  • “Green” Furniture
  • Sustainable Flooring 
  • … and much more.

Once they enter the contest, we’ll have their opt-in contact information — thousands of names, addresses, email addresses and phone numbers of people who have told us they’re interested in what you’re selling. And if you’re a category-exclusive sponsor of the Green Home contest, we’ll give that information to you.

Interested in these leads? Email me here to find out more, or call me at 503-323-6553.

Holes in Your Sales Funnel = Wasted Advertising Dollars

If your advertising isn’t getting you the results you want, there are a couple of possibilities to consider:

1. There’s something wrong with the advertising, or

2. The advertising’s fine, and something’s wrong at your business. prospects are entering your sales funnel, but you’re letting them slip away before they become customers.

The story below illustrates the second possibility. I’ll preface it by saying that if you’re in the home improvement business, my wife and I are great customers:

  • Our house is old, so things break all the time
  • We have no mechanical skills whatsoever, so we’ll pay to have someone else do the work
  • My wife takes care of the details, and hates to negotiate, so most jobs are quite profitable for the contractor.

We needed a new backyard fence. My wife called Company #1, a semi-regular advertiser with my company. A salesman came out, took some measurements, and promised to call with an estimate. We never heard from him again.

So she called Company #2, who has also advertised with my company. The receptionist took her name and number. Nobody ever called back.

Company #3 doesn’t do any radio — just newspaper. But we needed a fence. A call to Company #3 brought a salesman to our house. He took the measurements, went through all of our options with us on the spot, got the order, scheduled the job, and walked away with our deposit check. He’ll get the rest of the money on Thursday when his crew installs the fence.

Companies 1 and 2 may decide that the economy sucks, radio doesn’t work, or both. But either of them could have had our money if they’d practiced the most basic follow-up strategy. How many other jobs did they lose because they weren’t paying attention?

How many jobs are YOU losing?

If you’ve got a sales funnel story — a hole you found and plugged in your own system, or a problem you had with a vendor who didn’t seem to want your money — I’d love to hear it. Leave a comment below.

 

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