Don't do what every other business does!

Sticking to the marketing norm will stunt your growth!

I once sat down with a non trade business owner and we got talking about business and marketing and I suggested he try promoting his business with flyers, he bluntly shot my idea down and dismissed it saying it wouldn't work for him!

I asked if he'd ever tried it to which I got the reply of no because it doesn't work! So I asked him how he knew, to which he told me he had spoken to a larger competitor who had told him it doesn't work......

A few months later I was talking to someone in the same industry and mentioned this, I got the reply 'that's how I get most of my business!'

Try different routes to market

So my moral of my story is that you should try every avenue of marketing your business, what didn't work for one business doesn't mean it won't work for you, there are lots of variables and so long as you do small manageable low cost tests. 

On top of this you should try variations of the same marketing method, so if you want to try doing a flyer drop do 2 different versions of it with a different message on each. One may not work or work as well as the other, you may try an offer on one and none on the other to test the response that you get, then you can take the one that worked well and do a different version of that.

What marketing have you seen in a different industry that you can try in your trade or property business?



To your marketing success

Paul Jennings

The 4 Step marketing plan for your trade business.

A simple 4 Step marketing plan

Most tradespeople I speak to have no plan for their marketing, no plan means no direction to growth no way to get what you want from your business.

Churchill said 'Fail to plan, plan to fail' and this applies well to many things but very well to marketing!

Now if you have started your business as a lifestyle business, that's okay although the the stuff I put out probably isn't for you, however if you want to grow a real business and you've not got a plan and I mean one that's written down on paper (it's no good just in your head) then you have a lifestyle business, so this blog post is about getting that plan down on paper and the key things you need to create a basic marketing plan for your trade or property business.

Here are the 4 key steps you need to think about and have in your plan.

Step 1. Who are your customers and clients?

Knowing who your target market are, is really, really important and the answer here can't be anyone.
You don't want to be going to quote for jobs for people who want you to work for £10 an hour or those that don't understand the value you give them!  
Build a picture of them and what they do, their interests and their family the house they live in.

Step 2. What will you tell them?

What is your USP, why should they use you and pay your price?
And more importantly can you prove that you can deliver what you say or do you have a guarantee that says what happens if you don't?

Step 3. How will you get your message out?

You need to detail how you'll spread your message, the actual marketing you'll be doing and you need to have many ways to market your business and be doing many things all at the same time not just one! 
It may be Networking, Pay Per Click, Flyers, Social media, Direct mail, Blogging and articles or one of the many other ways to market your business.

Step 4. When will you do this?

You need to plan when you're going to do your marketing, you need to figure out how much time you're going to put into getting new customers and clients, they are the life blood of your business and what puts the food on the table so if you're not working on getting more you've got a stagnating or dying business.




So hopefully as you've been reading through this simplified marketing plan you've made some notes on your 4 step marketing plan, If not grab a sheet of paper now and write it down, strike while the iron is hot as they say and then follow through!



To your marketing success

Paul Jennings

How to grow your business little by little

Too busy to be marketing your business

I hear from so many trades people that say 'they are too busy to do this or too busy to do that' and that they don't have an hour a day to focus on marketing their business! Is this you and your business?

This is why so many trades and property businesses suffer from feast or famine, they only start marketing when the well is dry, there is an old saying of 'don't wait until you're thirsty to dig your well' and this applies to marketing so well.

So how do we get out of a marketing feast or famine

The best way is to set goals for the week, just small simple goals it may be work on a website page, sending out letters to potential commercial clients or even some customer service calls/ follow up calls to make sure everything is okay.

So lets take the marketing goal of sending out some letters to get commercial clients, If you set yourself a goal of sending out up to 5 letters per day to potential commercial clients at the end of the week you'd have sent out 25 letters, not a lot however over a year that's around 1300 letters! It all adds up!

Breaking down your marketing

Look at your marketing activities as a drip in a bucket

Just by doing a little bit everyday you break it down and make it manageable. Keep doing it and making small marketing goals and you'll never experience a famine! Like a drip in a bucket eventually the bucket will be filled and it's the same with marketing, it all adds up.

You do need to plan these goals too, so be sure to set a planning time during the week when you sit down and just focus on growing your business this may be on a Sunday for the week ahead.

Over time you'll see results from these little marketing activities.

To your marketing success

Paul Jennings

Marketing for Trades

How to convert more quotes to customers

A powerful marketing tool to add to your marketing toolbox

One of my favourite subjects within marketing is the one I call massive value marketing and next to no trades or property businesses are doing it as part of their marketing, so if you grasp this and do it, you'll put your business way above your competitors! 

By showing your potential customers that you give massive value, more will buy from you, If you convert more it will mean you'll save money!

What is massive value marketing

Many businesses give the old 10% off type of incentive to entice customers to buy from them or a voucher for £xx off, this is old, old marketing, frankly boring and if you give these sort of discounts it's money coming from one place - your bottom line, your profit and we're in business to make profit right?

So rather than giving 10% off, give 10% more, this way the customer gets better value, your bottom line stays intact and potentially you can actually make more money.

How does massive value marketing work

We're going to go into a bit of maths now to explain this, not my strongest skill so I'll keep it simple! The 10% more should cost you either nothing or very little.

If you give 10% off, say £100, that's £10, if your profit from £100 is £20 you've cut your profit in half. That £10 can't come from anywhere else because your business costs have remained the same.

If you give an extra service which means you may be on the job a little longer it won't physically cost you money, or lets say you buy a product for £3 that may normally cost the customer £10 to buy and you give them this product for doing business with you, you have given them 10% more but it's only cost you 3% or £3 from your bottom line.

I hope that makes sense!

From a psychological point of view the customer feels like they have got a better deal so are more likely to do business with you and in reality they have, when I used to give discounts (it didn't happen often) I in a way begrudged it and in all honesty the customer probably didn't get me at my best!

This is a much better way of giving value, you are limited on how much discount you can give a customer but on a giving more value basis you are not so limited, if it's something that would be of no or little cost to you.

Lets say you give them 3 products at a cost of £3 each to

you, it would have cost them £30 and however it's only cost you £9, therefore they've got an extra 30% and it's only cost you 9% still less than the 10% discount you may have given!

What can you do to give massive value

So if you decide to give away a product it could be something that you can buy in bulk to get a really good discount, a discount that someone buying one or two would not get.
You could give a discount from a non related business, for example if you are a builder and you've just completed an extension and loft conversion for a customer - If you knew or built a relationship with a local restaurant, they would offer you voucher of say a value of £60 but you'd pay only £30 or less, You give the voucher to the customer for a free meal for 2 to say thanks for being a customer. 
This is a real Win/Win/Win situation.

I know the last example would mainly be given at the end of a job but, do you think that's going to be a talking point when they meet friends and family.

Great massive value marketing for a plumbing and heating engineer could be installing free magna cleans.

Brilliant massive value marketing for an electrician may be a free 1/2 hour Visual condition report at time of quoting!

Massive value marketing for an interior designer could be a free portrait session for the family with a photographer in the newly decorated home.

I'm sure you can come up with many more for your business, be sure to come up with several so you can tailor it to each customer.

To your success
Paul Jennings

No one cares about your logo, except you!

Is branding important to trades and property businesses as part of your marketing?

I often talk about how no one cares about your business name, logo, brand colours etc and it's true that people are not interested in this about your company. 
When you're marketing your business whether it's with flyers, on your website or on your vans the logo should be one of the smallest elements most businesses put too much emphasis on these things, the logo will take up most of the advert or marketing material.

It's generally just us the business owner that cares about these things about our business, prospective customers just want to know that our business can do the job that they need to be done. This said branding is still important.

Why branding is important to marketing your trade or property business

Although customers don't buy your service initially because of your branding, it is part of their decision whether they are going to call you, you need to show that you're running a serious business and not a cowboy outfit, spending time and money on branding will show this and show that you as a business owner care about your business and therefore care about the customer.

Branding is more than a logo

Branding is a huge subject and it's not just for large corporate companies, sole traders looking to grow their business should also look at branding their business.

Branding is not just about your logo and the colours you've chosen it is also about how all of your marketing materials look and about your values as a business, what is important to the business and how that works for customers too, it's important to make sure that all employees and subcontractors know these values too and when interacting with the customer keep this message consistent.

How you are on social media is also important and plays part of your brand that you build, if you are negative on social media always complaining about things or swearing this is devastating to your business brand and is a sure way to make sure you never get business from it.

So what are your thoughts on branding, let me know in the comments below!

To your success

Paul Jennings

Your van sign writing

Marketing your business with your vans

Many construction business vans that I see have their sign writing wrong for getting lots of new enquiries, they normally have their logo as the biggest thing on display and their phone number one of the smallest (as in the image) , sorry if that's your van, after reading this post you may want to have your vans re-sign written.

Don't focus your van sign writing on your logo

I know you're proud of your business and logo, it's important to you, the issue is your logo is only important to you! nobody cares about your logo or other branding! I'm not saying branding isn't important, it is. However to get calls from your van, which is possibly your best and cheapest advertising tool you have so you want as many people to see it as possible.

How best to have your van sign written for marketing your trade or property business

The main set of people who are going to call you from your van marketing are people who need your service now or in the very near future, So you need to tell them what your service is and how to contact you and the bigger that information is the further away people can see it, which means more people can see it, on top of that when you are driving around it makes it easier for people to take down your 

information to call you later! The image on the left is the best way to show that information, the main parts being in large letters and at the top of the van. There is not much more to it than this.

Sign writing like this will make your business stand out from a distance

It's just a very simple way to present your information to get more business.

I also recommend having business card holders on the sides so passers by can take your information too! check out http://bizcardbox.co.uk/ to get some for your vans! (I'm not affiliated in any way with this site) the best way to see how this works for you is to only add 15 cards at a time and then count them, you'll find this is possibly the cheapest way to advertise your business.


To your success

Paul Jennings

Top 10 website basics: A checklist

Website marketing basics: A checklist for trades

Following on from my last post about the pros and cons of building your own website or hiring a web design company I thought I put together this basic checklist.

So you've got a website, Whether you built your own trade website or had it done for you check through this list to help promote your site, be aware just like trades and property businesses there are cowboy web designers who don't know how to put together a decent website, here is a list of the basics your website should have to be a great tool for marketing your business, the more questions you can answer yes to the better!

Do you have text that explains who you are and what you do and where you do it, but more importantly how you Help The Customer? Is your phone number on every page? Does your home page have a call to action such as Follow us on Twitter/call now/ email for more information? Do you have an about me page that represents your passion for your trade business? Have you clearly defined your services, pricing and guarantees with a page for each? Have you included customer reviews/ testimonials, preferably with pictures of the people or videos which would be best? Do you have 'trusted logos' - NAPIT, Gas Safe or NHBC  etc. With a page explaining what they are about. Does your website contain your keywords? Do you have a blog to show your expertise, knowledge and drive visitors to your site. Can a visitor +1 your website and follow you on Google+, Twitter and on other social media networks from your website?

So how many Yeses did you score?

0 - 3 Looks like you're just starting out. Check out the rest of my blog posts on websites.

4 - 7 You're on the right track. list what order you're going to complete the tasks and get to work the sooner it's finished the sooner you'll increase traffic.

8 - 10 Way to go. Think about taking the next step - Pay Per Click Marketing?

Once you've completed this checklist your site will be in the top 20% of websites for trades and property businesses most cannot say yes to all 10 points.

To your Success

Paul Jennings

Want to seriously grow your business? click here to find out more about my services and how they will help you.