Integrity marketing in business

The importance of having integrity in business

I once went to a job, where a ladies storage heater had stopped working!

She had called me up the day before, but before I went to have a look at it, I had said to her that it would be best for her to check the fuses first and see if it came on that night before calling me out and having to charge her.

She did this and then called me the next morning to say it still wasn't working, I went round to have a look at it, and found the problem to be the cut out switch inside the heater, which was a ten minute job. So I reset the heater and was well.

As I was leaving she said thanks and that I was the only one who had been honest with her, she had called 4 other companies and all had told her she would need a new heater installed which would have cost a fair bit.

I like to be honest it’s one of my core values, but from that I had a customer for life. I know some people try it on but I was 1 out of 5, I find that disgraceful, that so many people do this. I really appreciated her comments and it gave me a buzz that she was a happy customer.

Integrity marketing

You do hear of people getting ripped off in all businesses but I believe it to be detrimental to running a good business as eventually word will eventually get round, especially if you take business networking!

I've seen it in networking groups before and it's the same with local communities too, certain business owners lose trust with the people around them and therefore no one refers them work and so they lose out, this is hugely costly.

Trying to make a quick few hundred pounds on a job, eventually loses potentially thousands, but also on top of that cost means that a company will have to spend even more on marketing to acquire new customers.

I think it makes sense to use what I call integrity marketing and always do what is best for the customer that way they'll use your services again and likely refer you to others! Not only that, it's what has given the building trade a bad name over the years and gives the media something to chew on for their next program.

Do you have any stories of where a customer was potentially ripped of but you saved them time or money, I'd love to hear them.



To your success
 Paul

How trades people and property businesses can lose money!

Most trades and property businesses are throwing money away by not using this simple marketing tool

I can pretty much guarantee that reading this post will make your trade or property business more money over the next few years!

And this one sentence if you read no more, will do that:- 

"Keep in touch with your customers"

Most trades do not keep in touch and continue marketing to their customers and it means they are losing money, I think it's because most are thinking about the next job rather than long term!

If you're not staying in touch with your customers and letting them know you're still around, the next time they need your services you'll potentially be forgotten about and the simplest way for them to find someone else is to get on to Google and if they don't find you they're going to your competitor!

Let's take a heating engineer who would be one of the best examples, once a customer has had a boiler service with them the company should have a system to make sure the customer is contacted again in 11 months time to schedule in another service and then do the same for the following year and so on! 

The system doesn't have to be any special computer software, you can use a simple card system or Google calendar and just set a reminder so you know when to call.

Marketing to customers to stay in their minds

Of course just staying in touch with those customers once per year just isn't enough and the more you stay in touch the more money you'll make because you'll be in their mind more often and the more you're in their mind when they need one of your other services you're the one they'll call also the bigger chance you'll come up in conversation if a friend or family member needs your service and so get a referral.

There are so many ways to stay in touch with your customers and clients these days I can and probably will write a blog post for each at some point! However you have to make it useful and relevant to them and you need to find creative reasons to stay in touch!

Some ways to stay in touch

When staying in touch it's important to share useful and relevant things with your customer otherwise they'll just tune your marketing out eventually

• You could email tips and news!  
• A regular newsletter, and a printed one not email. 
• A simple phone call or card on an anniversary, birthday or at Christmas.
• Send them your latest blog post and maybe even blog about them
• Social media

Social media is a great and powerful way to stay in touch, with social media you can stay in touch all year round if you wanted to.

If your customer happens to run a business the best thing you can do is help them find more business or connect with others that they could have a great working relationship with!

This is a massive subject and this post does not do it justice I could write a whole book about it, but if you put these simple ideas in to action it'll make you a lot of money for your business!

If you've had a creative way to stay in touch with a customer I'd love to hear it.



To your marketing success
Paul Jennings

Small marketing goals

In a recent post I spoke about setting small marketing goals and that you should plan them every week. With that post I really only scratched the surface, So I thought I'd cover it in a little bit more detail.

If you don't have marketing goals for your trade business, you are just literally working week to week and not knowing what will be happening or where the next job is coming from, sometimes hoping to strike it lucky with a job.

This is why so many businesses and it seems especially with trades suffer from feast or famine, they either have too much work or not enough!

If you are looking to grow your business and take people on, you cannot live business life like that, marketing is how you get business in, it does not just drop in to your lap, every job you have ever done is because of something you've done or said in the past.

Choose and plan your marketing goals

You cannot just use one or two ways to market your business and these days there is no need to, there are so many free or low cost ways to market your business and 'fill the bucket' you should be doing as many as possible, I'd say a minimum of 5 to start with.

Just reading this blog will give you ideas of the marketing tools you may want to use for your trade or property business.

You then set a goal of how many customers you expect to get from that activity, if you don't know what your return on that marketing activity should be, your goal should be to find out by testing.

Put your marketing plan into action.

Once you've decided what marketing you're going to do, you need to add it to your diary, decide what days you'll work on your business and don't change it for anything but emergencies, Your job as a business owner is to get customers if you're out all the time doing the work you're not getting customers, no customers means you'll go into famine.

Read my post on writing a simple marketing plan

Even if you do 30 minutes of marketing a day it'll grow your business over time. If you do this it'll have a snowball effect and really pick up momentum!



To your success

Paul Jennings 
Marketing for Trades


PS if you really are too busy to do your own marketing for your trade or property business and are based in the Hertfordshire area, why not let me do it for you with my done for you marketing service