Essential Marketing Materials/ Plan of Attack

Marketing
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As many know,

I am in the start up process. I’ve been researching on here & asking lots of questions. Currently I am at the point where I am about to order marketing materials. I’ve been shopping around with local companies in hopes of trying to stay local if there’s not a huge difference in price, so I can network.

I know there’s folks on here like @Innocentbystander who have little or no need to do marketing because they are long established & get most if not all their work from word of mouth or referrals.

But I am writing this from the other perspective, starting from the bottom & while I plan on reaching out to clients that I did work for working for another company, I still have the task on introducing & establishing my company. I am hoping to hear from others who have been in the same position. I am fortunate enough to have the advice of @squidskc who IMO is one of the most knowledgeable folks on here & to my surprise his company is fairly new, only a few couple of years old if I’m not mistaken. So he is definitely a example to follow, if you have not already I suggest you stalk him on this site & try to read all his posts lol.

However I do know that when it comes to marketing, the way you do things changes from market to market & others find their own way of doing things. As long as they’re successfull, I would like to hear about them.

My goal for this topic is to not only cover my back & ensure that I don’t miss something but I hope other beginners could use this as a rough template to get going themselves. Or maybe even someone established can find something on here that they could use to get a boost.

What I consider essential marketing materials or better yet, what I plan to have before I fully get started is:

A updated business card: I started off with some generic cards with a generic logo from vistaprint. This time around I am having them designed with a professional logo & design, with all the contact info in the front & all the services offered on the back.

Website: Unless you’re @Innocentbystander, I don’t understand how you plan on having success without one. I wouldn’t be surprised of even he has one.

Yard Signs: One of the things I am shopping around, I am leaning towards going a bit larger then the standard 18 x 24. The plan is to include all the services I offer, House Washing, Roof Washing, Pressure Washing, Gutter Cleaning, & Window Cleaning on one sign. I need to see the proof first & mighy just stay at 18 x 24 & only put 2 or 3 of the services. Services & contact info in large easy to read letters with the logo on their but smaller.

Door knockers, I am deciding if I should go with one door knocker design & a flyer or postcard or two door knocker designs.

One would be for 5 arounds, saying we services a neighbor & are in the area. The 2nd would be a general design listing all the services we offer, I would use these for canvassing. A call to action will be included in both.

Brochures: Two types a residential & a commercial, these will list the services offered with more detailed information & pictures. I would leave these behind if I get a face to face meeting with a homeowners or left behind to try to up sell a customer later. Pretty much the same thing with the commercial brochure.

Thinking maybe I should skip the 2nd door knocker or flyer, & just canvass with brochures.

Uniforms: Initially I was going to get housecall pro or a CRM before uniforms bug after talking to @squidskc I am doing the uniforms. Looking for sublimated in order to get chlorine resistant apparel but having a hard time staying local. A proffesional appearance is vital & I can always get a CRM later down there road but I can’t get a 2nd opportunity to make a first impression.

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I am just starting out this year as well, so I don’t exactly have a lot to offer you in means of marketing success from my standpoint. However, I do have a couple of things.

For CRM and estimating and invoicing, try Joist. Its a free app that you can download. It may not be a good as Housecall Pro but it has been working well for me. It even has a pay by card option that allow customers to pay by credit card (for a fee of course) without having to order a card reader or anything. It just gives them the option of clicking a link to pay by card when I email the invoice. This has been a huge benefit to me. It seems to be working well so far and I have no complaints. Looks very professional and I’ve had several compliments about it.

I do have yard signs, but I got them before seeing a lot of the advice on here about them. So mine aren’t exactly what I wish they were as far as design. I wish I had gone with a simple layout without my logo on them. Live and learn I guess. Just waiting to replace them with another design as soon as I can.

I do agree with looking professional. Whether your talking about uniforms or brochures. It pays to have a professional do your marketing materials. Yes, it can add up, but find a graphic designer to work with and have them do your artwork for you. You want to grab someone’s attention and if you don’t look professional, your card, brochure, flyer, door hanger or what ever it is is going straight in the garbage. This goes with printing as well. Pay to have it done right. You can use fiver or other websites for freelance graphic designers that are relatively inexpensive.

And I have only found a few companies that offer the sublimated shirts. I have contacted Finprint and talked with them and they seem fairly reasonable. The shirts are expensive, no doubt. But in comparison they are in line with everyone else and seem to do great work. And they will do your design for you.

Anyway, there is my two cents. I’m interested to see some of the responses as well. Thanks for posting!

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Nope. Just one thing and how to get in touch with you. The thing that’s going to make you the most money in the least amount of time. For me, that’s house washing. It needs to be big enough for people to see a few houses away. Your sign will get lost in the background if you have EVERYTHING on it. Use your main thing to get you in the door. Then provide an estimate on all the things that need cleaned.

I’d go with this. One for 5 arounds after service and next season when the F250 is running and I have a couple minions to man it I’m going to hire someone to hang door hangers in the neighborhoods we’re washing before we ever even get there. Something like this:

We will be pressure washing in your neighborhood on: (fill in date)

Is there anything we can do for you?
List services

Lock in your spot by calling 816-555-9999 by (fill in expiration date) and get $25 off any of our residential flat rate services.

It’s going to look just like the 5 around door hanger, but with different fill ins.

Brochures get thrown away. Next year I’m going to give away door hangers as business cards so it doesn’t get lost in their other pile of business cards, it offers more info, and has a discount on it.

Big Frog T-shirts is a chain. I pay $22 a shirt if I remember correctly. Check them out. They’ll email you proofs. But yes… you need to be seen in public with a professional uniform. No one knows what CRM you use. That’s just noise. Don’t get lost in the minutia.

Lastly, Simple is best. Start with 3 of the things of above. Track your marketing efforts. If you’re not getting Pareto distributions out of it scrap it (or tweak it) and try something else (or try again.)

You need a big enough sample size. Stick with 3 things for an entire season. If ONE of those three things is working better than others, redistribute your effort to that thing and test one more thing next year.

So now you’re up to 4 things instead of 10 different half-effort marketing strategies.

If I only had to pick 3 things on that list to focus on:

  1. Door hangers
  2. Basic website
  3. Shirts

The signs will help your door hangers though. I don’t think this works the other way around.

AND ASK FOR REVIEWS EVERY TIME. A ton of reviews on your map listing means more than your website popping up first in our industry IMO.

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Yes sir, I think I read that you ask for a review through a follow up text and or email right?

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text is best, but they get both

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Regarding the yard signs: think backwards. “Will I get more jobs if this sign is 24 x 36” instead of 18 x 24?"

No.

The yard sign functions to draw eyes to a clean house/driveway/roof/etc, and thus make the potential consumer desire an equally clean house/driveway/roof/etc. It’s a 15-30 second sales grab, at most. More info is not better. Anyone who’s spoken to me can testify that I SWEAR by this. Service offered. Contact number. Name (maybe)… That’s all.

I’ll agree 100% that you can fit more info on a larger sized sign. Of course. I object to claims that more info = more jobs. The signs aren’t your sales pitch. The signs are a trigger that hopefully allows you the opportunity to make your sales pitch.

And just FYI from a production standpoint: 18 x 24" is arbitrary. Flat sheets of 4mm Corex (the material most commonly used for yard signs) are 48 x 96". Accounting for bleed and trim. you can get 10 signs (18 x 24") out of 1 parent sheet of Corex. The standard 18 x 24" size used by most every commercial printer isn’t magical, it’s just an efficient cut size. Much like the most common offset press sheet size is 17.5 x 23" (half) and 23 x 35" (full) - both yield a 8.5 x 11" flyer size.

Don’t get wrapped up in size. Focus on message.

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