Filtering Posts by Topic: Advertising

5 Brutal Facts That You May Not Want To Hear…
But Need To Be Said Anyway.

When it comes to home improvement lead generation, things have changed. Drastically. And if you’re still out there using the same tactics and methods from five or ten years ago—like the bank robber who went back for seconds—you’re headed for hard times.

The reason a lot of this is so hard to hear is because it’s so much easier to just do the same thing over and over again. It’s hard to break old habits, ways of thinking, and search out and embrace the new stuff that works better.

There’s a learning curve. A paradigm shift. And on this webinar, I’m going to radically shift your paradigm on a few key lead generation issues. Five of them, to be precise: Read More

How I Write Radio Ads To Consistently Engage Listeners…
And Infuriate Industry “Experts.”

By Rich Harshaw

Sometimes you just have to dig in your heels and make a stand.

When you are 100% certain you’re right—and millions of dollars are at stake—it’s mandatory.

A few years ago I found myself on a conference call hotly debating the best way to write a window company’s radio ad with an overpriced, over-mouthed radio and television “expert.”

This “expert” was a representative from a marketing research firm that had been hired to evaluate the effectiveness of the radio ads I was writing for my client. The service was paid for by a station that was vying to get their hands on some of the client’s budget; they hired the experts as a “value add” to show that they were committed. Nice touch.

The problem was the “experts” were wrong.

According to them, the ads I was writing were labeled as “ineffective” because they didn’t get to the point fast enough. And they could prove they were right using scientific method.
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Listen Carefully: You Can’t Shoestring Budget Your Way To Success.

By Rich Harshaw
I had a conversation with my head of business development lately about a potential client who was struggling to commit to the amount of money we were asking him for our construction marketing services.

$599 a month.

The contractor, it seems, owns a smaller company… and that $599 a month represents a lot of money. If he gives it to us to perform our contractor marketing services, I was told, the contractor probably won’t have any money left over each month to spend on other marketing activities.

Given the fact that our primary service offering includes creating an Identity, building a killer website that converts, performing search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) services, and developing pre-positioning materials, the concern is valid that “it will take a while to develop that stuff and have it make a measurable impact on my business.”

It’s true. Our website building process takes about six months. It takes another six months after that to get your site ranking where you want it in organic search—if everything goes right. Our program is not a “give Monopolize Your Marketplace money and then take a huge check to the bank the next day” kind of program.

It’s more like building a foundation that your entire marketing program can be built on.

So I gave my head of business development some advice about selling our services to that struggling contractor:

DO NOT SELL OUR SERVICES TO THAT COMPANY. PERIOD.
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The Sunroom Idea Guide Offer Generated More Home Improvement Leads In A Day Than They’d Ever Received In A Month…

What If You Could Buy A Mailing List Of Everyone Who Was Going To Buy What You Sell In The Next Two Years?

(You Can. Sort Of.)

By Rich Harshaw

“We’re up to sixteen calls today, and it’s only 2:30! We’ve never seen a response like this before—EVER!”

Sixteen calls by 2:30 may or may not seem like a lot to you, but for Dan, who answered the phone for the little sunroom company in New Jersey, sixteen might as well have been a million. The most they’d ever received in a single day, it turns out, was about ten, and that was years ago. The fact is they had never received more than twenty-five calls from a single ad in an entire MONTH. When the sixteen leads grew into twenty-six by the end of the day—and seventy-three by the end of the first week—they were shocked with disbelief.

The difference? They simply added a second offer to the same ad they had been running for years. Instead of only including the usual (and expected) incentive offer—which rotated between 20% off, a free heat/cool unit, a $2,500 discount, a free cruise, etc.—this time they added an interesting information offer: A free “Sunroom Idea Guide.” Readers were instructed to call in or go online to request the guide that would show them the various styles of sunrooms available, photos of thirty-three different sunrooms this particular company had built, and a pricing guide.
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