How much free service would you offer to gain 1 new customer?

Marketing
21

the right product aimed at the right people.

as for Paneless leaving that photo on his site, I believe that would have more personal value than cause an increase in sales (I am assuming). I am not sure why it would cause anyone to buy or to buy more.

When it comes to personal interaction with our customers, I believe that is vital to long term success. Like many of you, I have customers that LOVE me. they go to great lengths for me. Maintaining that link is key (however we do it)

Hype passes as the days do.

22

BV

I do a referral program that has brought me lots of new customers. And not at the expense of my time.

Each residential customer I do gets a parcel in the mail a week or so after our service. Inside this envelop is a “thank you” letter to the customer, a Customer Satisfaction Survey, an explanation about our referral program, a referral contact information sheet, a self-addressed stamped envelop with my return address, and a few business cards.

Here is what they do:
they read the thank you letter…get them warm and fuzzy
they see how the referral program works…offer to give them something
they write down the referrals on the sheet…not too time-consuming
they drop the return envelop in the mail to me…again, not much time

I devised this system to be geared more towards women since they are usually the ones who hire me. It gives them a chance to not worry about cleaning or any other domestic duties, but still feel that they are being rewarded for using my service.

Here is how my system works:

They write down the names and phone numbers of at least 5 of their friends whom they think would be interested in window cleaning. Many of them call the referrals to let them know that they are putting their name down. When I get the names of all 5 people, I call them to offer a FREE Custom Estimate for their wc’ing, Pw’ing, Gutters, etc. If all 5 contacts schedule an “consultation” as I call it, (it is an no-purchase-necessary estimate and explanation of our solutions to their problems), then the original person that did the referring will get a $50 gift card to the establishment of their choice (I have a list of local business: Best Buy, Home Depot, A local steakhouse, A local day spa, that they pick from). The same offer is made to the new clients when their service is completed.

If all 5 do not sign up for a consultation, then I send the original person a note explaining that they did not qualify for a gift card because their pals weren’t interested, and offer a discount of $15 off their next cleaning.

Even though I may not get to talk to all of the referrals, I will usually get one or two jobs off each letter. And the original customer feels appreciated too.

This has worked quite well for me. I should be more diligent for it to be the best marketing I have. I am just too busy to office all day and not scrub glass.

23

You’ve always got some neat ideas Bert. Good Stuff!

24

Gentleman. Greetings. Sorry I’ve been away a little while.

Few musings:

[I]“he (me) said it turned out ok and not likely to do that type of promotion again.”[/I]

CFP - Did I say that? I shouldn’t have, if I did. My apologies.

Here’s what happened: I ran a promotion that targeted about 80 of my Spring residential clients that hadn’t booked a fall cleaning yet, and opened the promotion to all new clients too that happened to visit my website during the 3 week promo period. Maybe it was 4 weeks…I cant remember exactly. In the end, I booked $13,000+ in work during the promo period, and the prize that got everybody excited cost about $1800, and the printing and mail stuff cost about $300 (totally rounding numbers just for brevity’s sake)

That’s about a 6 to 1 ROI. Not bad. Pretty wicked actually.

Am I doing it again EVERY year from now on? You better believe it. Except the nature of the prize will change, always trying to stay on target with the demographic in focus. I’ve just been too darn busy lately with all this retraining nonsense, but hey, sometimes we can’t do what we need to do as quickly as we’d like…

Prize promos can be super FUN and effective. I recommend them. And they command peoples attention when they are from unlikely but seemingly reputable (insert YOUR window cleaning company’s name) sources.

All things being equal, cool prize promos outpull, in my opinion, and experience.

But, as has been articulated well, put one together, track it, and then see for yourself.

My ridiculously elusive book actually has a little section on some advice regarding prize giveaways to keep in mind, but I’ll be happy to share it if you wanna know more…just trying not to make this a silly long post.

25

First off, welcome back Kevin!

It is strange for me in many ways when people talk about these promotions to incite a reaction from prospets and customers. There are very few guys on here able to offer up a killer promo like Kevins (considering most can’t afford $200 in fliers)

I feel this type of hype is not needed. Some of us say that this is an excellent marketing idea, I dissagree. Why not give away a car next? Giveaways have been around forever and most of them are bullsh-t (ever enter a drawing for a car/jet ski/vacation?). I believe our society looks at givaways as more of a “yeah sure” mentality. If it is focused on someone we have a relationship with, different story and it may help strengthen the relationship. It also gives us a fun way to keep in touch.

We should focus on what we can do to make the prospect/customers life easier. What problem is it that we can solve for them.

I am not aiming this at Kevin and I don’t remember who his promotion was aimed at or for what outcome he was trying to achieve. I am saying that if we want to get referrals, just ask. If we ask and get nothing, redefine what we are doing because we are screwing something up. If we want new leads, advertise smartly.

26

Hey CFP - thx man, glad to be back.
[I]
If it is focused on someone we have a relationship with, different story and it may help strengthen the relationship. It also gives us a fun way to keep in touch.[/I]

Great point, Paul. To be fair, an existing client base was definitely the basis for my iMac promotion, in trying to motivate them to spend more money, more often. In the end, these are the main people who responded. The “fun” thing was also reinforced, and lots of my customers joked to me that “THEY better win the iMac…” and it gave us something to laugh about together.

In my case, I also selected a prize carefully, and made sure that its value far exceeded the cost of qualifying, as well as fit well into my target demographic’s “lifestyle”.

I’ve never tried launching a campaign directly aimed at new customers, involving a prize giveaway promotion, but I have a few ideas as to what I could offer to make it really tempting. I’m thinking maybe a lunch date with a local sports or entertainment celebrity. Something kind of unattainable for the average joe within my market. Or maybe a 2-day BMW Driver Training experience or something like that.

I think thats part of the reason why the iMac worked well - it was worth big bucks, and people only had to do something really small to reserve their shot at winning it…