5 Great Marketing Ideas for Your Service Business

July 23, 2007

Coming up with marketing ideas for a service business can be a challenge. If you’ve just started out, the chances are that you may be doing much of the technical work yourself, so you’ll want to make every single second of the time you allocate to marketing your service business pay.Â

Whilst it might be tempting to spend much of the time you’ve allocated to marketing going after large lucrative contracts for your service business, in the early days, it’s best to concentrate on marketing activities that will bring money into your business quickly.  Some of the best marketing ideas are simple, but they’re effective. Here are five that tips that are certain to get you sales now:

Flyers are one of the most cost effective marketing ideas for a service business. It doesn’t cost much to create and print a few flyers, and deliver them by hand to customers mailboxes, and believe it or not, this can be a great way to generate business. It is particularly effective if you distribute flyers to the same homes two or three times, over a period of seven days. The only downside is that flyer distribution can be time consuming, so it’s great if you have people to help you out. Or it may not cost you much to ask your local paperboy to distribute your flyers along with his newspaper deliveries.

2) Do make sure you get repeat business from your customers. A great way to remind them that you exist is by giving them promotional items, such as fridge magnets and pens. They don’t need to cost much and they could make the difference between your customers remembering to call you, or seeking out a competitor from the Yellow Pages.

3) Team up with service businesses who have the same customer base as you. Negotiate a referal system with them. It could be as simple as referring one another to your existing customer base, or you may even want to pay each other a commission. If you don’t know any suitable service business owners in your area, do a quick search on the Internet, or in your local Yellow Pages, then send a brief letter outline your proposal, and follow it up with a call. Make sure you use the business owners name when your write, not just Dear Sir, or Madam. If you don’t know it, call and ask first.

4) Even if your service business operates in a local area, a website is an essential marketing tool. When we first started our plumbing business, we almost put off setting up a website, as we didn’t believe many people would use the Internet to find a service business, but you’d be amazed at the number who do. We’ve already had a considerable amount of work from our website, and we’ve even been approached by a national company, who have offered us a sizeable contract. If you don’t already have a website, and can’t afford the expense of having one designed, don’t worry. We designed our own cheaply and easily and you can too. I highly recommend Site Build It, as they offer the ultimate package for service businesses who want to build a website and market their business on the Internet. Don’t just take my word for it though. Click here to check out other service businesses owners who have developed successful online marketing strategies using Site Build It.

5) Buy some names from a decent mailing list, or ask another local business if they would be willing to sell you names and addresses of their customers. Then mail a short, but appealing offer to potential customers, which sells the benefits of your services to them. Include a limited time bonus offer which encourages them to act now. If you have time, it’s worth following up these letters with calls. If you don’t have time to make the calls personally, outsource them to a reputable telemarketing agency. These mailings can be time consuming, and you could find yourself stuffing envelopes into the early hours, if you don’t have a helper. I use a letter folding machine like this one to save me a heap of time.

So what are you waiting for - make a start. Implement these ideas into your service business marketing strategy now, and you’ll see some great results.

 

 

 

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Posted by cathlawson | Filed Under Marketing 

Comments

4 Responses to “5 Great Marketing Ideas for Your Service Business”

  1. Ian on July 23rd, 2007 1:51 pm

    All good tips. And easy to do. One thing many overlook until it is too late is collecting email addresses form customers.

    Whether you are in a business-to-business (B2B) or business-to-consumer market (B2C), always gather email addresses.

    For example, B2C market - you’re a plumbing business. Every piece of work you do, ask the customer for their email address.

    If you need a reason, make one up - e.g. so you can email them your checklist of “5 things you can do to save money on your gas bill”.

    Afterwards, email them with this give-away information and say something like:

    “Sue,

    Thanks for choosing us to [fit your radiator].

    I have attached a short check-list of 5 simply things you can do to keep your heating bills down.

    Referrals are the life-blood of our business. That’s why we offer our unique 2 hour turnaround which virtually every other plumbing business would be frightened to offer.

    Everyone who recommends us receives a free [something to do with plumbing that is less than a couple of pound to supply]. The people you recommend us to also receive one as well!

    Can you take two minutes to help us?

    Simply forward this message to all your friends and family in the area.

    Tell them our number is XXX XXXXXX and if they need any plumbing work, we will endeavour to do just a good job as we did for you.

    And feel free to them why you chose us and how our service compares with every other plumbing business you have used before.

    We pride ourselves on [enter your USPs here] and just know that anyone you recommend us to will be equally delighted.

    Regards…”

    If you do this, you are planting a seed in your customers mind - i.e. you want to be recommended. People will remember that.

    Not everyone will email their friends. But what if 1 out of every 3 customers does? That means if you do 30 jobs a week, 10 customers will email their friends and family.

    If each of them has 10 friends or family, that’s 100 people a week hearing how great you are.

    Over the course of a year, that’s 5000 people.

    How much new business would that generate?

    And how much would it cost to get their email address and send the same email to 30 people a week? 20 minutes a week?

    You could also email the same customer a few months later with a similar message.

    In fact, you could write to that customer in September, recommending they consider you for some central heating work before the summer kicks in.

    Or consider your support plan which includes an annual service.

    All for the price of gathering a customer’s email address and sending a friendly message.

  2. cathlawson on July 24th, 2007 10:01 am
    Hi Ian - great tip. One thing we have often been guilty of in the past is not collecting customers email addresses, which is bad, as it would be much cheaper to email them than to send snail mail.

    We find that people who didn’t find us on line are quite reluctant to hand over email addresses - probably because of spam. Also, the other problem is, the autoresponder we use requires people to actually sign up, so we just couldn’t add names.

    I suppose I will have to think of some way to persuade existent customers to sign up to the online newsletter!

  3. Ian on July 26th, 2007 8:28 am

    Does the customer sign anything to say the job is complete? Could you find a way of asking them for their email address as part of this process?

  4. cathlawson on July 27th, 2007 1:06 am

    Ian - that’s a great idea. They sign a form when the job is complete, so I suppose we could get them to add their email address then.

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