Welcome to the wonderful world of advertising. If your not already aware of this, then I hate to tell you that you are entering a world full of silver-tongued charlatans, who will promise you the world, take your hard earned dollar then deliver next to nothing. You may have formed the opinion that I am bitter and twisted when discussing advertising, and to be honest I am, but my view has been formed over almost 25 years of promoting my business and using advertising as one method to achieve this.
In this blog I will discuss a few methods, and a couple of tricks that I have either worked out for myself or have been told by someone else and will gladly pass them of as my own. Anyway I hope you take something from it and learn something form my many mistakes.
One thing I will emphasise before we start, is that when you embark in the marketing campaign is that you should never believe anything marketers say. They will promise you, more business, more profit and may even promise to end world poverty to get your business. So before you write the cheque, or give over your credit card details research their product, I always call other companies who they represent and find out if there advertising method is working. I also haggle, I recently signed up to £350 of internet advertising, for £99.00, marketers, are generally willing to reduce their costs, especially if its on the net.
Over the next couple of blogs I will discuss, advertising by;
· Word of mouth;
· Newspaper & magazines
· Social Networking
In blog 2.
· Internet
· Websites.
Word of mouth.
Word of mouth advertising is probably the most influential form of advertising. People believe what their friends and neighbours say about your company, and they remember it for a long, long time. Your company generates word of mouth advertising, whether you know it or not. People are talking about you. The question is, what are they saying?
The basis of all positive word of mouth advertising is providing superior services. This is, in fact, the basis for all successful marketing and advertising. Happy customers will notice and read your ads and they act as positive reminders of your great services. You customer will think, “Oh yeah, I have to call them, or my mother is looking for a few extra sockets, I will mention you to them.
But no company is perfect…not even mine.
I recognise this and you should too.
It’s a fact that things do go wrong and people will complain, but rarely to your face. They simply take their business elsewhere, then share their experience and opinion with their friends, family and work colleagues.
I make it easy for my customers to complain. I leave a feedback form in every job, with a stamped address envelope and I call to ask them if everything is ok and remind them to complete the form. It is a nice touch and its something that customer remember. And it only costs the cost of a second class stamp and an envelope.
You also need to remember that complaints are a good way to monitor your performance, find out what your customers actually think and hopefully make you stronger. As an example of this, last year I wired a few sockets for an elderly lady, when I asked what she thought she said everything was fine. (which generally means its not) but when I got the feed back form she mentioned that she was not happy at me using her vacuum. (mine had blown up a few days beforehand, and I had not had a chance to repair it) anyway I called and applogised for the inconvenience, and she has subsequently used me for a couple of small jobs and recently surveyed a job for her son. So if you deal with complaints and problems promptly the chances customers will come back to you.
Broken Promises
This is the worst thing you can possibly do, and are hard to fix. The strategy I use is never to over promise. Things come up, and things go wrong. And if I break a promise, I notify the client as quickly as possible and tell them what’s going on. If you keep your customers informed they will generally forgive you and hopefully say nice things about, so it’s well worth giving them a call, being polite and apologising.
No doubt you will have heard people talking about surpassing their customers expectations, and it took me years to figure out how to do this, and its actually quite easy. I under-promise, that way its easier to over-deliver. E.G if I tell someone that I will wire a socket in an hour and wont make a mess, but in reality wire it in 1 ½ hours and make a mess while doing so, the customer wont have a very good impression. But if tell the same customer that it will take 2 hours, and make a bit of a mess, they wont object, because you have surpassed the expectation you gave them in the first place. It’s a simple example but it works. Most of us will fulfil their customer’s expectations but few will actually surpass it, but if you do a few extra things, you will have loyal clients that recommend you to their friends, neighbours, family colleagues etc. It’s the little touches that touch people and create positive word of mouth advertising for you.
Finally on word of mouth…thank the lord I hear you cry.
If a customer is unhappy with your service, they actually have the potential to be your best advocates. If you resolve your problems to their satisfaction, admit your mistake they will generally forgive you. After all it’s human nature, to respect people that admit mistakes, and correct the situation. As long as we don’t make the same mistake time and time, we will be given the benefit of the doubt, and we tell others too. This has happened to me numerous times over they last 30 years
Magazine & Newspaper Advertising.
Q: What's the difference advertising in a magazine and burning five-pound notes?
A: Burning fivers will produce heat and therefore give some benefit.
A friend of mine advertises in eight local magazines and newspapers, and insists that this is the key to his successful plumbing business. We have had many argument over this because he cant even quantify where his customers from, so he does not know what advertising is working for him or not. Anyway it’s his business, but I tend to think that his success is due to him being a really good plumber and offers a great service. So if you do decide to advertise in newspapers of magazines, monitor there performance, and if its not working over a reasonable period of time, drop it and put your hard earned cash into something that is working better.
For me advertising in magazines and newspapers is not always the best use of my money…well at least not always. I find the small A5 mag’s, which are delivered free to homeowners, are useful, and I advertise in a couple, which are delivered into areas with a high elderly population.
The key to advertising in any these Mags is consistency. People will get used to seeing you there month after month when they flicking through it. The advertising world call this “impressions” which is basically looking at your ad briefly, and if they see it enough times, they will remember it. I have a template advertisement that is run month in month out, and only change it slightly a couple of times a year. Once in winter and again in summer, when I run different promotions.
Advertising in magazines can be expensive, but you don’t need a full-page article, but a well-designed ¼ or ½ page is more than enough, and sometimes these ads actually get more attention because they share their page with the content of a different article.
Keep the ad simple.
Don't try to squeeze to much into a small ad. Nobody will read all that stuff anyway. Your ad should have plenty of empty space in it, and it should deliver one very simple message. Unless the reader wants to use your service, they will spend less than one second looking at your ad. So it is important that the design is correct.
Don't hire an agency to design your ad.
Hiring a marketing firm, graphic designer or whatever is a terribly expensive. Often these companies do good work, but the cost can be incredibly high. You can get excellent results with a Do-It-Yourself approach. Have a look at other ads and see what they look like, and take the best bits from them.
Social Media.
Twitter, Facebook & Linked In.
I tweet and have Facebook and Linked in accounts, and am frankly hopeless at updating my status on any of them. Basically I don’t get time…this is not an excuse and I know it’s a trick I am missing. But I do understand hop these can benefit your business.
There is no doubt that there is a benefit to marketing your business on social media site. But the problem I have come across is how to use it effectively and present my business to those people that have a use for an electrician. After all its no little use marketing yourself to businesses that are either outside you’re trading area or have no use for an electrical business. Anyway, compiled a list of companies and e-mail directly asking if I could join there social networking group, and introducing myself, my company tell them what I can do for them. To see what response I would receive I started with a small group of 20 companies. To date I have received 18 responses, all of which have invited me to join there network there group. I am delighted with this and will be rolling the e-mail out to a larger number in the next few weeks. I am relatively positive that once I start presenting my business to solicitors, architects, estate agents etc I will pick some business, basically, because I can target groups directly with offers, promotions etc.
That will do for the moment. In the meantime, if you have any comments please let me know.
Ianwww.johnstoneselectricalservices.co.uk