Hey guys so I’m a new business I started this season. Obviously word of mouth is a great way to get jobs arguably the best way. However when your new and no one knows you exist word of mouth isn’t really existent. So I’ve gone a different route hoping to get a decent amount of work, but so far it’s been very disappointing. I’m having a hard time to get the phone to ring at all. I’m just burning threw my budget, I’ve done several round of EDDM, I had a bunch of smaller flyers made up that I could Wright a quote on. I then literally drove around to a ton of neighborhoods and looked for addresses that needed their house or roof washed. I then mailed a quote and the post cards to those addresses a few times. I’ve posted on Facebook several times in my town and surrounding towns group pages. I’ve posted a ton on nextdoor I also ran paid ads on nextdoor. In my town I’m the second listing on google, and in top 5 or 6 in surrounding towns.
All this and I literally have only gotten a few calls and even less jobs. I’m not sure how to get the phone to ring. There are several big companies around here so there is a market for it. I feel like I’m just throwing money away and I’m
Burning threw my budget and have no revenue coming in to replace it ( luckily I still have a day job) I don’t think door knocking is going to work and I’m considering Angie list or home advisor but Idk if I have the budget right now to take that risk.
Any tips or ideas how I can get the phone to ring ? Any help would be appreciated.
Door knocking. That’s what i did first 3 years. Takes courage and determination to do but very effective. No way around it.
And i would add, i tried many approaches, focusing the conversation on price is the least effective in my experience. Put the focus on quality/service if that fits you. Be very polite and somewhat friendly. You’ll book jobs. Just don’t insist when someone says no, just say “thank you for your time” or something and move on. You don’t need them all to say yes, just a few.
Seconding on the door knocking. If you need to, get a haircut, shave and brush your teeth. Put on a collared shirt and a big smile if your teeth aren’t black. Knock on doors with your flyer/business card in hand. Be nothing but polite, it helps me to think about waiting a table to get in the right mindset. Be confident and do not expect everyone to answer the door or be anywhere close to interested. Just be polite and leave your information if they’ll take it. If you leave a good impression it’ll be worth it. It’ll work, and if it doesn’t change something until it does! Door knockin is fun too. Just be wise about the houses you pick
I must have left 100 business cards in mailboxes of “dirty” homes my first year and only got ONE phone call from that. Doesn’t mean it won’t work, but it didn’t work for me. It likely didn’t help that I didn’t have the name recognition out there yet, no real website, etc.
If you do have a neighborhood that you’d like to market to, see about trying to do a house near the entrance of the neighborhood or near a real popular common area. Offer a great deal to the homeowner of choice in exchange for being able to also leave a yard sign in the lawn for a week or so.
My thoughts lead me to believe that people are flooded with names of possible business on the internet/social media, but they like trusting (or at least asking) they company that their neighbor uses.
Hang in there, keep trying to be creative. Be sure your cleaning technique and practices are where you want them to be, that both you and your truck look professional, and that your pricing is where it needs to be.
may as well not be there, statistically speaking…top 2, maybe 3 get all the calls.
what was the ROI on the EDDMs? Size, weight of paper, design and day delivered all make a big difference in our research.
1 call from 100 cards isn’t great, but the actual ROI was probably decent if you got the job…and 100 attempts is far too small of a sample set to declare anything statistically speaking
Door knocking is definitely a good move. Especially if you’re out with a well marked professional setup. It gets seen all over town, and you’re able to say “I mean, I’ve got the truck right here, and can have it taken care of for you by the time you finish writing the check…”
Don’t put anything in (or on) mailboxes…it’s technically a federal offense from what I recall. Do it in a professional way, and so that there’s zero chance of whatever you leave becoming litter blowing around the neighborhood.
Bandit signs will generate some momentum also, if well done and smartly placed at the right time.
Yard signs work well for me. Do a friends house for free, put a sign in the yard. Once you get a few signs out there it will start to happen. I’m nowhere as busy as others are in this forum, but every week I get one or two jobs for the following week which keeps me going. Signs by far have gotten me business - I don’t put them on the roadways, just in subdivisions and it seems to take off. I’m now getting folks visiting subdivisions who contact me and then I put a sign in their SD and it starts there.
It hasn’t been very consistent with regard to scheduling several weeks out, but it is growing.
So I sent out 5,000 8.5 x11 EDDM over the span of 3 months they were re sent to the same routes. (I dropped them off at usps on a Wednesday for a Friday or Saturday delivery ( however the last round usps lost 900 cards and delivered them out the on a Tuesday a week later than I wanted) the EDDM cards were made by WCR and at cost printing. I send out a bunch of other 4x6 postcards to houses in neighborhoods that’s needed the service with the quote written on them also on a Wednesday for a Friday/ Saturday drop off. As far as ROI I got 0 calls from the 4x6 and I got 7 total calls from the EDDM postcards and landed 3 of them. So ROI is bad.
ROI is $$$s…what was your spend on the 5k, and what did the 3 jobs net you in revenue? You can’t work off just # sent and # of leads/jobs, because different forms of marketing will have distinctly different avg. ticket results.
I’d guess you spent about $1750-2000, so those 3 jobs would have had to be decent to break even. If you get it right, at the right time, EDDM should net you about an 8:1 return (at peak season, maybe 4:1 in the doldrums).
Yeah, it’s so specialized to stay ahead of the Google algorithm changes anymore…the people we have now said they have like 5 people whose job is just to analyze the constant changes… IDK
He was charging me $100 a month. Nothing at all. Spending $400ish in ads and was able to convert 5k+ not including what leads I wasn’t able to convert on
Look in nicer neighborhoods where there is green on one side of house or maybe drive is dirty. Stop and knock on door. Obviously when people are home is better. Saturday mornings usually pretty good because people out working in yards or at least at home.
