Your Business Name As A Marketing Tool

What’s In a Name?

One very important marketing tool is your company name, though you wouldn’t think so if you looked at some of your competitors’ names.

Just why is this such an important marketing tool? Well, I can give 4 important reasons right now. And I could probably pull a few more reasons out of my hat if I tried. But here are the four I KNOW will make a difference in your marketing plan.

1. It needs to be available as a domain name. Since 72% of people in the United States now use the Internet instead of the big,expensive-to-advertise-in yellow phone book, you have to be easy to find on the Internet. You MUST have a website or at least a minisite ( I’ll explain the difference in another lesson.) for your business. And your business name should be the same as your website’s domain name. For example, your company is David’s Lawncare so the domain you want is davidslawncare.com (you could also buy the .net domain and redirect it to your .com domain, but at the very least, you need to have the .com domain since this is the most often used extension by people searching the Internet for your company.) If the domain isn’t available and you haven’t already invested a great deal of effort or money in branding yourself, you may consider changing your name to one that is available as a .com domain. It isn’t very cohesive to have a business name of David’s Lawncare and a domain name of “betterqualitylawncare.com”, because your potential customers will never mentally connect the two.

2. Your name needs to CLEARLY communicate exactly what you do. Anyone who sees your name on the side of a truck, or in an ad or on your uniforms, must know what your service is without trying too awfully hard (people don’t like to have to figure things out for themselves – so let’s help them). When you see a sign that says “Mike’s Automotive” do you know what service that company performs? Automotive what? Mechanical repairs? Auto body repairs? Wheels and Tires? Automotive accessories? Do you see my point? Make it easy for someone to decide that you can solve their problem – don’t leave them wondering if they should even call you.

3. Your name needs to be easy to say and write. Why? Because, when your customer’s neighbor asks him who does his lawn service, you want your customer to be able to tell him your company name without fumbling around. This way, when his neighbor decides to “look you up” (either on the Internet or the phone book) he’ll be able to find you. If your company bears your last name (as many do) and your last name does not have an obvious spelling – you can put it together here – “Rennich’s Lawn care” or was that “Renick’s Lawncare”, do you catch what I’m saying here?

4. Your name needs to be easy to remember – without confusing it. Your prospective customer sees your name on your truck and then 8 hours later tries to find your name on Google. If your name is “AAA Superior Lawncare Service”(VERY generic and obviously created for the now outdated Yellow Pages phone book) your prospective customer may not remember if it was 2 A’s or 3 A’s or was it Superior or Quality Lawncare? But if your name is “1-800-LAWNCARE” and your phone number is 1-800-LAWNCARE and your website is “1800lawncare.com” (by the way, this one’s already taken, sorry) then just how hard will it be for your prospective customer to remember you, and find you when they need your service? Gone are the days of creating a generic name just to show up at the top of the Yellow Pages listing. Nowadays many people (and probably a very large percentage of your target demographic) search phone numbers and services on the Internet. And guess what – Google doesn’t care what your name starts with, Google only cares if your webpage has significant relevance. And the online “phone books” usually list in order of distance from the inquiry source (your prospective customer’s home).

So, if you haven’t already invested a significant amount of money in your current name, and your current name doesn’t quite stand up to the above measuring sticks, you may want to put some creative muscle behind a new name.

Invoices Are Valuable Real Estate

Turn Your Billing Procedure Into A Marketing Piece

Is your customer invoice a part of your marketing plan? Why not? I mean, really. After all, it’s a repeat point of contact with someone who already has decided to do business with you.

Presumably they are already happy with your services. So, what better time to make another offer or to upsell your services than right now while they have their hand on their wallet, thinking about paying you.

So, what exactly should be on your invoices? Well, of course all the normal business stuff. You know, the date of service, description of what you did, an amount to pay, etc. But have you ever thought about including any of these on your invoices:

Method Of Contact

Yes, you need to constantly provide multiple ways for your customer to reach you. Sure you know all your phone numbers and website, but your customer has probably lost your business card by now. That’s why all your contact information needs to be on every invoice. It’s like a new business card every week, and your phone number is there at precisely the moment they are thinking about you.

You should include all your business phone numbers including cell phone, your mailing address, your email address, your website addresses, info-lines if you use them (you know,”call for free recorded information about your lawn.”), and any other way your customer can get in touch with you or your services.

Method Of Payments

Let your customers know how easy it is to do business with you. If you accept any form of payment other than cash or checks, you gotta let them know. Do you have a merchant account to accept credit cards? Do some research to find out if you can afford this. Know this… your bank isn’t the only way to get one of these. What about accepting payment through Paypal on your website? An awful lot of people in your target demographic use Paypal. What about offering a payment plan to break up 9 months of service into a 12 month payment plan.

Timely Notes

How about a short note concerning what services would be appropriate at this time of the year. Your customer may not be aware that a related product or service exists, much less that you offer it. Is it time for aeration? Let your customer know, while they are paying their invoice, what aeration will do for their lawn. You can come up with additional services at any time of the year. Put a short note on the invoices instead of sending out an entirely new mailing.

PR Campaign Notices

Are you using the PR tool to build free publicity? Bring attention to it in your invoices. Something like “Read an interview with me in the local paper tomorrow.” Or “See our Fall Plantings Tips in this month’s Real Estate News available at retailers everywhere.” Maximize your PR efforts.

Incentives

Make an offer in your invoice for reduced cost services, or print coupons for something like “One Free Tree with the purchase of Three.” If you have a historically slow month coming up (you can know this if you have marketing calendars from previous years) you can drum up extra business for those periods by running specials for your existing customers.

Testimonials

Use some space on that invoice to reprint testimonials (which you have solicited from other customers.) Be sure to describe the service performed which elicited those testimonials – it may be something which other customers didn’t know you could do.

Surveys

Print a survey or questionnaire on the bottom half of the invoice and include an incentive of some sort for your customer to take the time to respond to it.

This is a great way to find out what your customers actually want, not what you think they want. What better market research could you have than this? Have you been wondering what would make customers be loyal to you rather than switch to the next cheaper guy? Ask them(I’ll bet it’s not price either.) Are you struggling with what services to offer next? Put some choices in a survey and let your customers tell you what they want.

Newsletter Invitation

Offer a way for your customers to join your online newsletter. This will give you another inexpensive method to promote your services. It will give you unlimited opportunity to show your customers what your company can do.

As you can see, your invoices are actually VALUABLE real estate. Don’t waste it by sending just another bill. Be creative and make it work for you.

Harness The Power Of Word Of Mouth

Setting Up A Referral Marketing System

How many of your current customers have been referred to you by another happy customer? How many new customers can you depend on getting from word of mouth each month? Don’t know? Well, it’s okay. That just makes you normal.

Chance Marketing

Most lawn care operators are in the same boat. They use Chance Marketing – that is, just wait for chance to happen and referrals will somehow come along on their own. Can you afford to leave your business’ growth to chance? Not in today’s economy.

Do You Have Customers Or Do You Have Evangelists?

Of all the tools in your marketing tool bag, “word of mouth” or referral marketing is by far the most effective. When your satisfied customers tell their friends and neighbors about you, they aren’t advertising, they are evangelizing! They believe in you and their word is worth more to that potential customer than 10 or 15 exposures to your marketing message. How can you beat that?

Consistent Referral Results

If you don’t have a system in place to consistently, relentlessly get referral business from your satisfied customers, you are leaving a lot of money on the table. How much? I’d say at least $475 per customer per year. If your average account is $45 per service (conservative) and your average season yields 35 service visits, then your average customer is worth $1575 per season. If you use a 30% response rate on a fine-tuned referral system, that amounts to $475 additional income per customer per season. If you have 20 customers that amounts to $9500 you’re leaving on the table every year. If you target higher end customers and learn the art of upselling of course, your loss is even greater.

Your Referral Garden

Your customers are a garden and you have to cultivate the referrals. This means develop a system or systems to encourage them to share your name with their friends and neighbors. Referrals don’t just happen with enough consistency to depend on.

The Answer Then Is A System

• system
• Noun
• 1. a method or set of methods for doing or organizing something

If you want consistent, predictable results from your referral marketing, you need to have in place a system that works day in and day out. There are as many ways to implement a referral marketing system as there are creative marketers. The key, however, is to know your customer. Think like they think, and you’ll be able to develop a program that will pull consistent results.

One Quick Example

Need a little help to get started? How about this. Create a “New Customer Offer” such as a free 21 point lawn inspection, or free first fertilization application, or whatever your ideal customer would value. Print your offer on a sheet of business card stock (most word processor programs have templates for 8 or 10 business cards to a page, or search for free downloadable templates) along with your satisfied customer’s name. For example, one entire sheet of business cards would look like this:

First Fertilization Application

Provided Compliments of

Mr and Mrs Smith

Call 555-5555

So, you see. You give this stack of 10 cards to your customer, Mr Smith with instructions to pass them on to his neighbors and friends. In return, for every referral call you get, he gets a credit towards one free service. If you get a new customer as a result of his referral you’ll give him a $50 gift card to Long Horn Steak House or something.

So your cost is about 80 cents per sheet of business cards plus the value of the service provided to your new customer plus a gift card to your current customer. So for about $80.00 in hard costs, you get a new customer worth $1575 each season. More if you master the upsell. If you get no referrals, you are only out 80 cents for the stack of business cards.

The Power Of Referral Marketing

If you need help coming up with ideas or just want some concrete advice about how to use referral marketing to its maximum potential, check out this ebook from Vince Golder.  It’s well worth the investment.

Get marketing tips you can really use to grow your lawncare business, every week, delivered straight to your Inbox!  Just join my Yahoo!Group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/greenbizmarketing
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Free Sample vs. Free Estimate

The Art of The Free Estimate

I’ve just spent a long weekend with my family in Gatlinburg, TN. It’s a very nice, scenic, appalachian mountain area we like to visit often. However, it’s no secret that it’s also a tourist trap type of place. There are literally hundreds of small shops selling food,candy, and drinks all within a 1 mile walk – and many marketing lessons to be learned by anyone willing to uncover them.

Free Roasted Pecans?

For example, the guy selling roasted pecans with a sign that says “Free Samples.” Not only did he have a sign that said “Free Samples”, but he waited to make eye contact with you and said “Why don’t you try one-they’re free.” And not only that, he tell’s your kids “They taste like pecan pie, try one.” So we tried some. And guess who ended up buying a bag? Well, it’s obvious the Free Sample strategy works. And I can’t say for sure why in each case.

But in my case – I had a no-risk way to see if I would even like them before I bought any. After having some pecans for free (and he was generous with the samples) I felt almost obligated to buy something from him. It’s a strategy I think could be applied to the lawncare industry – with a few pointers.

What’s This Got To Do With Lawncare?

First,what product will be your free sample? Of course, being in the lawncare industry, you probably don’t have a physical product (but if you do, it may be just the ticket to win some new customers.) In our type of businesses – the service industry – a free consultation could be equated with the free sample strategy.

A Free Estimate (By Any Other Name)

But, you’ll have to spice it up a bit. Everybody has free consultations and free estimates. You’ll have to call it something else. “The 25 Point Lawn Disease Inspection.” Or “The Free Driveway Entrance Landscping Plan.” And you’ll have to make it better than anyone else’s “free estimate” too (I don’t mean a better price, I mean a better experience.) You should have a standard, well rehearsed presentation. It should be executed as if you have done this a thousand times. You are the expert. Show that to your potential customer. And please don’t show up in torn blue jeans and a sweaty t-shirt to make a presentation. (Ask me how many times I did that before I got smart about marketing.)

Reach The Decision Maker

Now you’ve got a hook, next you need to reach the one who decides to buy your services. I have several tips to focus on this in other posts. But for now lets just say “Repetition, repetition, repetition.” Others might call it branding. Commitment to your message. We know that rarely does a customer respond to the first contact with your message.

Exposure To Your Marketing Message

In fact, though they may think they’ve not seen your message before, research bears out that on average it takes 7-9 exposures to your message to elicit a reaction from a customer. And that’s not counting all the times you put your message out there and your prospect didn’t notice it. So don’t give up on your marketing after just one shot. Keep your message consistent so that your potential customer doesn’t get confused over the 7-9 times he is exposed to it. Remember the Pecan Man I described at the beginning? Look at all the contacts he had with us leading up to the free sample. Which brings us to the next point…

That Free Sample Better Be Good

Because if the free sample is a piece of crap that has no value to your customer, why should they think you have anything else of value? Let’s look at two scenarios of the free sample strategy.

Hey, We Offer Free Estimates Too!

Scenario 1 is your competition. Probably all of them. They have it printed on thier business cards. All of thier fliers say the same thing. They all have it on thier truck and trailer signs. You know what I’m talking about. That one line – we offer free estimates. Tell me, is there a lawn care company out there that doesn’t? Believe me, your customers expect it. So he (and every other lawn care company owner) shows up with his mowing or spraying rig, a metal clipboard, and a pad of generic estimate forms. He measures the yard, looks it over for a few minutes, gets a price in his head, and writes on this metal clipboard/pad a description of what he does (and its the same for every customer – cut, trim, blow, edge) and a price per service. If he can use a calculator, he gives a price per season to try to get a contract out of it. Then he shows it to the customer and leaves a business card. No rehearsed sales pitch, no real value to the customer, just a price for them to think about.

Your Lawn Is In Danger!

Scenario 2 is you. Why does it stand apart? Because you don’t offer a free estimate. You offer a 15 point disease and pest inspection. Or a free soil test to determine what’s wrong with your lawn’s foundation. Or a 10 point inspection and explanation of the danger your lawn faces this coming season. And to be sure, you have rehearsed this presentation until you can pull it off in your sleep. It is so well put together and so slick that your prospect will never forget what just happened. Maybe, you had a DVD about these dangers to thier lawn which they watched while you did the inspection. Then you met them with the answers to thier questions, the results of your inspection, and a suggestion for service. You see, you gave them something of value – before you, they didn’t even know they had problems. Now you give them a choice of solutions to
the problems you’ve made them aware of.

Both lawn companies gave an estimate for the same service. But you gave it value. Who do you think gets the job? The guy who writes 4 lines on a generic estimate form, or the expert who let his customer know that they were facing a real lawn crisis if they don’t act now.

If your free sample is truly excellent, both in value and in your execution of it, then the fourth point is a slam dunk.

Trust And Obligation

Yes, your potential customer will trust you more than the 10 fliers she got in the mail last week because you have just proven you know what to do about thier problem. She thought her problem was finding someone to cut the grass. You showed her the problem was much more than that AND that you can fix it. This kind of free service also builds obligation into the mix. And that’s what makes them buy from you.

So map out a plan to offer your free sample and you’ll start closing a whole lot more deals for your lawncare business.

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No More Junk Mail, Please!

Direct Mail Part II

Note: In the previous post we touched on creating a direct mail campaign, package design, and targeting your list. Here we look at what goes into the actual mailing.

The Sales Copy (Copy Writing 101)

Now that the piece has gotten enough attention to be opened (the biggest hurdle of direct mail, where a 1% to 3% response rate is considered average) it is time to turn to sales letter copy. Each piece of direct mail should have one single purpose.

1. This makes it easier to track results as you are only looking for a single result from each piece.
2. You do not want to confuse your customer with conflicting messages. For example, don’t try to get a new lawn care contract and a newsletter sign-up out of the same piece or mailing.

So that one single purpose can be whatever you choose it to be. To get a lead or a call from them, to get a sale, to get them to request more info, to request a quote, to think about your company when they have that problem(branding.)

Headlines and Content

Now you work on your “copy” – that is, the words that trigger the response you desire. Although entire careers are built on this topic of copy writing, with a little practice and study of successful mail pieces, you can write ad copy that will attract the actions you desire from your contact.

Begin by studying some classic ad copy. And by collecting direct mail that you receive that appears especially effective. Also read the full page ads in your favorite magazines (many, many hours have been put into crafting each headline and sentence in these ads.)

Notice that sales pages typically begin with a strong headline that commands the reader’s attention to read more.

Notice also that there are many sud headlines in bolder than normal print. This is useful for readers who like to scan the page.

Under each subhead is a paragraph or two relating to the subhead. Each ending sentence of each paragraph will usually be incomplete without the following subhead and paragraph. For example…

Also notice that the offer is generally made several times throughout the letter. Each time it is offered, it addresses a different need of your potential audience (though it is the same, single offer, leading your reader to the same single action that you desire).

The offer will be made compelling by one of several different reasons such as this is for a limited time, we only have 12 slots left open, this must be done before the winter sets in, not doing so could ruin your lawn, etc.

Professional copywriters charge thousands of dollars for a single sales letter because they have proven ability to cause a person to take the desired action of the letter. You may need to write your own copy until your marketing budget can afford one.

What About Graphics

If your marketing budget is still quite small, I would avoid using pictures, unless you have already purchased some good, high quality postcards or glossy paper stock on which you can print your own message.

If you plan on using a template in a Word processor and printing your own pieces on your home printer, you should stick with logos and the printed word. If you try to print pictures on copy paper with your home ink jet printer, you will most definitely give the impression that you have no marketing budget (and make your customers wonder what else you have no budget for!)

Besides, carefully chosen words can do just as much or more than a bunch of stock photos which look just like the pictures of nice grass on everybody else’s lawncare mailings.

Testing 1-2-3

Any direct mail campaign (and any marketing campaign for that matter) needs to be tested so you can know the results it brings and what changes to make so that future mailings bring in better results. How do you test? Start with a control piece. This can be your first piece. Then choose an element to test – the headline, the envelope size, the color of text, how many times you make the offer, you get the idea, and change that one element. Use two different phone numbers, one for each piece so you can track results. When the test element pulls better results than the control, change to the new element. Keep records of these tests and you’ll have a pile of valuable research.

Tie Up The Loose Ends

We have touched on alot of topics surrounding direct mail, such as copy writing, designing a campaign, building a list of addresses and phone numbers, delivery methods, testing,etc. Some of these topics will be the subject of future posts, so keep your eyes on this blog.

If you can’t wait to get into these topics,then take a look at my blog pages relating to each topic (choose from the column at right) for more info and links to quality programs or books dealing with each topic in depth.

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