Everything works . for someone in the right circumstances. Every method has also failed for someone. Usually for a reason other than the method. If radio or TV or newspaper did not make sales, they would have died years ago.

A few basics -
Identify a target market. Who do you want to reach? Trying to market to everyone who has carpet likely will be ineffective. You need a particular group to appeal to. Maybe it is pet owners because you are an expert at pet stain and odor removal. Maybe it is businesses becuase you can schedule cleaning after closing hours; maybe high end homes because you offer such personalized special service; maybe people who suffer from allergies because you can remove the pollen, dust mites, dog dander etc.. There may be 100 groups. Pick one or two to focus on.

When you know who your market is, find out how they get their information. That is the medium or the means you want to use to reach them.

The next step is to find a message that appeals to your target audience and works with the medium you have selected. Consider, what does your audience want that you offer? If you are using radio, you have to "paint a picture" with words since they can't see the clean carpet. So you need a message that matches your target and that matches your means of deliverying the message. The more specific the better it will be at reaching them.

Then consider the budget. People see upwards of 3,000 advertising messages per day. Being able to afford one ad might never make it through the clutter. You need to be able to advertise day after day for a reasonable length of time until they notice. Of course, you don't want to keep running an ad that doesn't work, but the mistake many cleaners make is giving up too soon. The message was stopped before it made enough impressions.

If your budget does not allow you to do what you want and need to do, think about a more personal approach. For example you could put out door hangers, make personal calls on businesses, farm subdivisions or something else that repalces your personal time for the cost of other methods.

Scott W.

Hey John,

Other than needing to use a good spell-checker I would say Scotty is right on.

My guess he learned most of the above during his very successful career down in the trenches. But Scotty also might have picked up a few nuggets in a certain five day seminar that he attended a few years back. Now what was the name of that seminar ...

Steve
www.StrategiesForSuccess.com

PS In addition to all the other challenges Scotty and I faced in business, John, carpet cleaners today have another one. It is what I call the two-edged sword of the internet. Tre (and others) have given you a huge resource where you can learn from brilliant people like Scotty and Big Billy Yeadon. But all the different discussion forums also give the nay-sayers a forum to say none of this stuff works and all carpet cleaners are doomed to go through life as lower middle class drudges! (One huge advantage I had as a neophyte carpet cleaner entering this industry 35 years ago was that I didn't know it couldn't be done ... so I did it!)

Oh, and I almost forgot. One other big problem the internet introduces is it can be a huge waster of time. Here we are- midday in the middle of prime selling time. Where is everyone? Not even Tre will say that you'll get much business glued to your computer screen during business hours! As Chuck Violand, one of our SFS instructors says, "Luck favors a body in motion."

Other than needing to use a good spell-checker I would say Scotty is right on.

My guess he learned most of the above during his very successful career down in the trenches. But Scott also might have picked up a few nuggets in a certain five day seminar that he attended a few years back. Now what was the name of that seminar ...

Steve
www.StrategiesForSuccess.com

PS In addition to all the other challenges Scotty and I faced in business, John, carpet cleaners today have another one. It is what I call the two-edged sword of the internet. Tre (and others) have given you a huge resource where you can learn from brilliant people like Scotty and Big Billy Yeadon. But all the different discussion forums also give the nay-sayers a forum to say none of this stuff works and all carpet cleaners are doomed to go through life as lower middle class drudges! (One huge advantage I had as a neophyte carpet cleaner entering this industry 35 years ago was that I didn't know it couldn't be done ... so I did it!)

Oh, and I almost forgot. One other big problem the internet introduces is it can be a huge waster of time. Here we are- midday in the middle of prime selling time. Where is everyone? Not even Tre will say that you'll get much business glued to your computer screen during business hours! As Chuck Violand, one of our SFS instructors says, "Luck favors a body in motion."

Everything works if it's done properly. The worse thing that you can do is nothing. At a minimum, send out monthly mailers, thank you cards, and get your website professionally designed (do not do it yourself). Finally learn the basics of SEO at the least. The more SEO you learn, the more money you will make.

Direct Mail - Very targeted audiences. Must have a call to action and great offer. You must send monthly mailers to previous customers. Even if you have a small 100 client list, you monthly mailer bill will run about 60 bucks. If that monthly mailer can keep a quarter of your clients that would otherwise forget your number,plus get a few referrals it'll be a huge return on your investment.

Internet - Google friendly site. Good, original content. SEO is key. Learn it well and get surround yourself with good advisors.

Door Hangers - Large homes, children, pets, high income prospects.

Newspaper - High circulation. Good during busy seasons. Make sure the cost justifies the income potencial. This is going to take some guess work. I would recommend calling other businesses in the newspaper and ask how their response has been.

TV and Radio - Branding

I have had a lot of success with google local and its free.

Wow, that has got to be the question any business owner would love to have the answer to. As a matter of fact, if any of us had that answer Howard Partridge would be paying us a monthly fee (along with many others). We could loan Bill Gates and Warren Buffett money.

I will take my stab at this but I warn you it could be a chapter long. I will start with some personal experience. I had the pleasure to train HUNDREDS of insurance agents. I never told them to do it my way because it was the best. I showed them how to handle themselves when the opportunity presented itself. I showed them several ways to help the opportunity present itself. They had to figure out which ways they were comfortable with doing it. I will tell you BTB (Belly-To-Belly) selling is the best way to have high closing ratios.

So ANYTIME the opportunity presents itself, you need to:
1. let the person talk about themselves and you can encourage this by asking them questions about them.
2. Be patient because they will ask questions about you!

Now your job is to pay attention to all the people you walk by everyday and never really talk to. I don't mean every person in a parking lot but the people for whatever reason, you already smalltalk with. Your waitresses, people in diners you frequent. Basically if you go places regularly, those people should know you by name. You should have cleaned for them. So they not only know you but what you do. Then the people they know will know about you. An example is the lady that cuts my hair. For this example we will call her "Pam" (since her name is Pam). She knows we do a good job because she knows me and my work ethic. We did her carpet a couple weeks ago. Today, and a couple times since then, she has called me with leads. Leads she has given my card to. In over a year of being in this business, she had not been that actively involved in our business.

So back to BTB. You need to tell some on your own too. 20BTB. Write it down stick it on your dashboard. 20 people BELLY-TO-BELLY every single business day. Make twenty "tick-marks" on that note everyday. When you make 20 contacts, be sure you have enough info (like getting a business card) to send them a card to let them know how much you enjoyed talking to them . You should collect business cards like a kid collecting baseball cards after coming home from his first Major League game. Sending a card to their office will get you several leads. If you ever go to their office, you will see that card in a prominent place (and so will everyone else). If it happens to be the decision maker for a potentially large account put a little gift with it. I do it with my Send Out Cards account. That way I do it and never leave the office (or can do it on the road from my laptop). Another reason I use that system is that it does the cards in my handwriting with my signature. I can also add all kinds of gifts, gourmet snacks, gift cards, you name it.

Now once you have done these steps. They WILL call you. They will call to thank you!

Two potential problems with this and why it may not be "comfortable" to you.
1. You may not REALLY like to talk to people. I am not saying that is your personality, I am just letting you know ahead of time. You can't fake being a people person.
2. It will only work if you do it. The biggest problem you will have with any marketing program is implementation. Now before anyone accuses me of taking Howard's saying. It is in nearly every book on marketing or selling there is. I promise, I used that for about 15 years before joining TMF. Most trainers will tell you, "I can tell you how until I am blue in the face and if you get up tomorrow and do what you did today, you WILL get the same results, I guarantee it".

Also you hear it all the time. Visit BNI. Just visit. No commitment. Just visit. I will be surprised if you don't leave there with several deals (not just leads).

So already on this thread you have tons of ideas. There will be tons more after my post. Most of all remember, It's up to you. Unless you have a bunch of money to hire an ad agency to run a campaign for you (and I mean a bunch), YOU have to get out there and make it happen. Get people talking about your business and what a great guy you are.

Now for one of my famous sayings....I would wish you good luck on you venture but luck has very little to do with it. Make it happen!

Tom

Internet Marketing and search engine marketing are the way to go. When you advertise in print or media you are advertising to a large number of people who are not interested in your services. When someone types in "Los Angeles carpet cleaning" on Google, that's exactly what they are looking for.

Put your marketing dollars to work intelligently!

I can't talk about it here.

But, it works for me

Send me a PM or E-mail

WOW - I am just shocked that Nick can read!!!

I'm not going to type up a long response ... I just did that on the wash pit post I did here (how you all find value in that...)

Here's someone else's words on the power of marketing:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuUujeR1c54"]YouTube - Sandy Raskob, Piranha Marketing Platinum Plus 2008 Better Your Best Contest Finalist[/ame]

I don't care what you buy - just TAKE ACTION ... as I said on tonight call on PCN, even a MEDIOCRE marketing piece implemented will outperform the perfect campaign that you are delaying month after month to roll out.

With marketing - you test it - if it works, you repeat it. If it does not, you tweak it and retry it.

Most people go from person to person, do I buy this, do I buy that, as an excuse for procrastinating. The Rich Cleaner Conference next week for us is sold out - the price was $1,000 ... 3 decent job invoices (or 2 good rug orders) - if you cannot meet with 650 others in your industry, high performers, get a several inch manual of marketing campaigns, presenters on improving all aspect of your business - if you cannot get multiple jobs out of that investment ... then you need to look at another industry.

The fact is, the average attendee of our events creates $40,000 in revenue tied directly to the materials they take from the event - and that's just if you are average. As with Sandy's video, $175K to $2 million in 5 years ... that's much better than average - and you are talking about ten key strategies implemented completely to create that.

Strategies is a very good course - I remarked on the panel at Connections that it does not matter WHO you choose - just take action. You can course correct later if you need to, but the worst thing you can do is nothing ... or even worse, take Nick's advice and read a library and then build campaigns from scratch.

I don't want to read a library - I want someone to hand me the campaign that worked for them best this year, and plug my name in it and MAIL it. Why reinvent the wheel - to pay $20 for a book instead of $1,000 for a whole host of plug and play materials? So I can spend months trying to learn what to do, when I can literally apply pieces handed to me tomorrow if I wanted to? Would saving months be worth 3 jobs to me? Of course it would.

I buy shortcuts all day long when I can. I don't want to learn how to design a website - I pay to have it done for me. I don't want to pay to learn something new and complicated - i pay for RESULTS. And that's what we all want ... we don't want to sit and learn anything really ... we just want the results we feel that learning will get us.

If you want to get the DVDs of the conference - and watch presentation streamed on-line live - you can go to www.RichCleaner.com/livewebcast. It is 100% guaranteed - you can get your money back if you do not feel it was worth it to you (you can even get it back after a year, if you implemented at least 2 strategies and did not feel it generated you at least ten times your investment.

And if Piranha is not the right fit for you - choose anyone else you want to - just take action. And Nick ... for you to say any of our events, or Strategies, is something he can get out of some book somewhere, is one of the dumbest things I've ever seen you post. You have no idea what you are talking about. And it's a shame, because with all the energy you put into negativity and saying everyone is not worth a dime, really could be used to produce something really valuable.

Bill Yeadon, Steve Toburen, and even the biggest fan of capitalism I know (Joe) - give freely to the boards and the magazines over and over again ... when is the last time you shared a valuable article or report or campaigns with others in the business? If I'm wrong please let me know - I just have nothing in my files on "value I've gotten from Nick." I would LOVE for you to correct me on that ... and I'd be happy to bombard you with all of my free value I continue to share - and for those who like it, implement it, and make money from it - I have no problem saying "hey, buy from me now!"

Capitalism built this country. Entrepreneurs are our backbone. You should not be so anti-selling - nothing in this world happens until a sale is made.

God bless American business owners!

Lisa

www.TheRugChick.com

Originally Posted by b18cyacrx

Our main form of advertising the last few years has been the local newspaper. It cost $145 a month and we run it 3 or 4 times in the spring, summer and fall. Every time it pays for itself and then some. Usually we get at least 1 weekly or monthly customer from it plus one timers. Honestly without it we definitely wouldn't have as many customers as we do have. A couple of our customers even saw our ad and didn't call right away and when it stopped running they said they waited until they saw it again to call.
About a month ago we got on google maps and placed and ad on Craiglsist and so far we have yet to get a call or email from it. Its still early so hopefully it will produce some work.
Getting a website done is the next thing we plan to do.

Getting a website is a validation to people of your business. I know when i search for a business on the web I am always leery to use them if they don't have a web site.

Also, I can tell you for a fact b18, we have done Google local and Craigslist marketing for people with and without websites and with web sites definitely returns almost double the response rate.

If I am searching for carpet cleaners in my area, and one has a web site where I can read about them and see examples I am definitely going to use them over the other one who provides me with nothing.

Just my 2 cents.

Originally Posted by NICK NELLOS

SFS gets you going like a great pep rally. The bottom line is follow thru.

I agree, Nick. I sure HOPE we "get you going" at SFS. Lisa had a great quote at Connections that I plan to shamelessly incorporate in SFS, "Movement outperforms meditation"!

Speaking of "follow through", Nick, just go check out www.StrategiesForSuccess.com which is Jon-Don's latest attempt at giving free help to everyone in the industry, whether they have been to SFS or not. After all, we are all in this together.

Steve
Head SFS Carnival Barker
www.StrategiesForSuccess.com

PS Heck, Nick, I'd be delighted if you would come on board the SFS site. Remember, the SFS web site is free with no spam, no pressure and use what you want and ignore the rest. I like to think of the site as a free resource that complements the different internet discussion forums, including this one.