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Contests Are A Great Way To Generate A Ton Of Home Improvement Leads… And To Help Out A Person In Need

Contests Are A Great Way To Generate A Ton Of Leads… And To Help Out A Person In Need.

Contests Are A Great Way To Generate A Ton Of Leads… And To Help Out A Person In Need.

Marketing Quick Tips: Contests

By Rich Harshaw

Note: This article is part of Monopolize Your Marketplace’s ongoing “Marketing Quick Tips” series. This information is not meant to be comprehensive; it’s simply meant to give you some quick ideas on the topic.

Pretty much all remodelers hate contests.

When I bring up the topic of home improvement giveaways during seminars, I can hear the collective (non-verbal-but-clearly-evident-in-the-body-language) groan from the audience. Nobody wants to mess with them. Nobody sees the point in them. Nobody wants anything to do with them.

And I keep right on preaching that you should have one.

So before I hop into the quick tips for contest best practices, let me first overcome a few contest objections in an unconventional FAQ format:

Q: When You Say Contest, What Exactly Are You Talking About?
A: I’m talking about a one-time per year giveaway of your products or services. The amount should be big enough to make people feel like it’s worthwhile to enter. I recommend a $5,000 minimum and a $20,000 maximum. The giveaway should be used in two places: home shows (or other events) and on your website. I’ll cover those below.

Q: It Costs Too Much. That’s Not A Question, But Still.
A: Nope. First of all, most contractors have 50% margins, which means your $10,000 giveaway is really only going to cost you $5,000. Granted, that’s a lot of money. Only give it away once per year, and allocate the cost to your marketing budget. If you escrow money monthly to cover it, you could pull this off for about $400 a month.

Q: Won’t This Just Generate Trash Leads?
A: Some, yes. But it will also generate tons construction and home improvement leads you never would have gotten otherwise. You just have to position it right.

Q: Won’t This Just Jam Me Up At The Home Show?
A: The main benefit of the giveaway at the home show is as a mechanism to stop traffic, start conversations, and follow up with people after the show. Definitely worth the extra work involved.

Now onto the quick tips:
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The Lost Art Of The Information Offer

The Sunroom Idea Guide Offer Generated More Leads In A Day Than They’d Ever Received In A Month…

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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The Psychology Of The “Wink, Wink” Deal.

Customers Who Got Two “Free Punches” On Their Loyalty Card Actually Came Back More Often.

Customers Who Got Two “Free Punches” On Their Loyalty Card Actually Came Back More Often.

Give Your Customers A Super Special, “Personalized” Perk
And Watch Their Excitement, Loyalty, And Profitability Soar.

Written by Rich Harshaw.

The Psychology Of The “Wink, Wink” Deal: Don’t be freaked out by the terms, but something called “Endowed Progress” and “Artificial Enhancement” could mean improved customer loyalty and marketing results for contractors.

Researchers from the Wharton School of Business discovered that they could increase a customer’s participation in frequency programs by simply giving them a head start.

Case in point: A car wash required eight purchases and punches on a card to earn a free car wash. They discovered that when they gave a customer a card with two out of ten required punches already “pre-punched,” that thirty-four percent would persist with the program and complete the additional required eight punches. Contrast that to those who were given a card that only required eight punches in the first place—the same number as required on the other card—but with ZERO freebies. The final redemption rate plummeted to a mere nineteen percent.

Holy mackerel!
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