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Don’t Settle For Pathetic Sales This Holiday Season.

This Year Stuff A Ton Of Cash Into Your Stocking By Implementing These Ideas For Holiday Selling

Here Are 5 Ideas To Turn What Are Normally
The Worst Sales Months Of The Year Into Money Makers…

By Rich Harshaw

Let’s face it: nobody wants to buy new windows during the holiday season. Or remodel their kitchen. Or deal with a new roof. Or anything else that absolutely can’t wait until people’s hectic holiday lives settle down a bit after the New Year.

That’s why most remodeling companies go into reluctant hibernation mode starting about mid-November. They just assume that people can’t/won’t/don’t buy, and they give up trying. Contractors’ marketing budgets are frequently slashed in an effort to stem the red ink. It’s almost a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But it doesn’t have to be.

Here are a few ideas—courtesy of real-life experience—that may work to scare the Grinch away from your holiday this year. I’m presenting these ideas to you now so you have a bit of time to ponder, decide, then implement what you’re seeing here.

As with any marketing ideas, these should be evaluated against your current situation. Not every idea is right for every situation—just keep that in mind as you make your plans. With that disclaimer set, here are my top five ideas for making the holidays a time of cheer instead of a time to despair (sales-wise!):

Idea #1: Acknowledge The Situation & Tell A Story

Honesty is an underrated principle of effective advertising. I wrote an entire blog posting about acknowledging when things are less than perfect, and how those admissions of inferiority can actually disarm your prospects and endear them to you.

Here’s how to do it:

  • Write a letter or advertisement explaining that your sales during the holiday months are usually quite a bit lower than normal. Be specific so it’s more believable.
  • Offer an incentive for them to do business with you now. The incentive should be real and significant.
  • Let them know that you’re willing to sacrifice some of your normal profit to keep your people busy.
  • Admit that you’re not sure if it will work or not…
  • Limit the number of people who can take advantage of your holiday offer… and stick to it.

I first ran this kind of promotion in 2005 for a sunroom company. This ad hit the newspaper on October 31st, and was an immediate hit. Read through the text and you’ll see that it follows the formula above exactly. This was actually the first page of a multiple page ad… but I’ll only show this page (the most important one) to give you an idea:

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By the way, this type of advertisement can work during other times of the years for products that have seasonal elements to them. Just make sure that whatever you say in your ads is true—I’ve seen companies take this idea and attempt to engineer “slow months” during the summer to boost sales then… and it failed miserably. Here’s an example of a non-holiday seasonal ad:

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Idea #2: Focus On Past Customers

This is the first cousin of the idea above, but instead of sending the ad out to the general public, send a letter version of it to your customers. This works well because it’s hyper-believable that you’d give a bona-fide special offer to your existing customers. Take a look:

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Bonus Idea: Here’s a cool alternative to the above strategy that netted a large window company a $3 million December…. About six times bigger than their normal December. They took their customer list from the past three years and stuck it on a spreadsheet; in one of the columns they listed the sale amount for each customer’s transaction, then they multiplied that amount by 8% and offered it as a discount to the customer in the form of a check mailer.

So for example, if a customer had spent $10,252, the customer was then eligible for an $820.16 discount that came in the mail on a check mailer. This strategy works so well because a) it’s believable that they’d offer their previous customers a discount, and b) the amount of the discount is such an oddball number ($820.16 vs $1,000, for instance) that it lent credibility to the offer. This works.

Idea 3: Make What You Sell A “Giftable” Item:

Position what you sell as something that can be given as a Christmas gift. Naturally, this works better for things that are fun to get (kitchen remodel, sunrooms, pools, decks) and less good for more functional stuff (windows, siding, gutter protection, etc.).

Listen to this ad:

An important part of this strategy is to find a way to actually wrap what you sell as a gift so it can truly be given as a PRESENT. Here are some ideas for stuff you could offer to wrap for your clients:

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Get creative and make it fun for your clients. Nobody ever said that business had to be strictly business. Have some fun in your marketing, contractors!!!

Idea 4: Buy Their Christmas Gifts FOR Them

This is so simple it will punch you in the face and make you feel dumb. Take some of the profit from the customers’ projects and give it back to them in terms of gift cards that they can use to buy their Christmas presents with. If you sell a $30,000 kitchen, instead of giving them “discounts,” just give them a $2,000 gift card to Amazon.com or Walmart or Target or wherever.

The key to making this work is how you position it; here’s a great way to present in an advertisement:

Have you thought about remodeling your kitchen, but decided to put it off until after the holidays? BAD IDEA! Because right now, Custom Kitchen Remodelers wants to pay for ALL YOUR CHRISTMAS GIFTS THIS YEAR. That’s right, Meet with us and sign a deal to remodel your kitchen or bathroom and we’ll give you gift cards worth up to $2,000 to spend on Christmas at retailers like Target, Amazon.com, Williams Sonoma, and ten others….

Idea 5: Keep Your Pay-Per-Click Budget Strong

If most of your competitors are slashing their marketing budgets during the holidays, they might cut their pay-per-click budgets, which could create a huge opportunity for you. Remember, pay-per-click is a great way to capture “now buyers” who are in the market searching RIGHT NOW. Just because there are fewer customers during the holidays doesn’t mean there are NO customers during the holidays! If you keep your construction-related PPC going strong, you’ll find the ones who are actively looking. Combine this strategy with one of the ones above, and you’ll have a holiday marketing double-whammy!

Bonus Idea: At Least Do SOMETHING Productive During The Winter!

Finally, even if you’re not ready or willing to spend money on any of the ideas above—or if they just don’t make sense for your situation—there are still some things you can be doing to take advantage of the down time. Use the time to work on projects that you need to be up and going strong in the spring: the temptation is to wait until you need these things done to start—then you’re too late.

Here’s a short list of things to consider getting done during the holidays:

  • Overhaul your home improvement website. It takes time—might as well be doing something while you’re doing nothing.
  • SEO: Contractors, write blog postings and articles that you can use during the rest of the year while you’re busy working and don’t have time to mess with it.
  • Home Show Preparation: Do you need to revitalize your home show presentation? Winter’s a great time to get it done!
  • Implement A CRM Program: Are you using a powerful marketing management software like MarketSharp? If, not, invest some of your downtime into installing and learning how to use it. It will make the rest of your year SOOOOOOO much easier.

Don’t just sit around and let inertia be your guide. Make something positive happen this year. Whether it’s advertising, reaching out to your existing customers, or doing something productive with the downtime, this can be the winter that makes the difference for your business!



Free Ad Review: Send us any piece of marketing—advertisement, brochure, web page, etc.—and we’ll check it out and give you our unvarnished opinion of what’s right, what’s wrong, and what needs to happen to make it better. Do this BEFORE you spend big money on marketing. Contractors, this offer is limited to the first five companies who respond; one ad/marketing piece per company please. Email your ad and your contact information to
 rharshaw@mymonline.com.

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© 2014 – 2016, Rich Harshaw. All rights reserved.

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