My new marketing idea

[jon6336]

Originally Posted by Steve It would be fascinating if you had a display you could bring into a home that had a small pump to show the water flowing down! Is this a video or a model? I'd love to see it! When you study the % it is quite interesting to see how this customer group can make up 20% of the clients but only 10% of the revenue! That would make me wonder if they are on average 50% cheaper than your other clients when it comes to the services they purchase through you. Very interesting! I will take a picture of the display when I have it set up- it is a model. The tough part about a pump is it is so much to bring into a house...In my opinion too much and too complex for a house. As far the the 10% goes, that is mostly because that is of total revenue. Most of the internet "leads" are for gutter cleaning, not gutter protection. The gutter protection is obviously a much higher expense than a gutter cleaning. Gutter cleaning is roughly $65-125, depending on the house, sometimes more expensive. Gutter protection is $800-$1500 on an average home. Most of my gutter protection "leads" come from trade shows.

[Steve]

Lawn care business tips

Come to think of it, I have seen different contractors show off different services at a mall once a year. One I remember had some kind of roof and gutter display to show how the gutter products work. As I looked around at the different contractors, I realized none of them were interacting at all with anyone passing by. They had all these great looking displays but none of them were engaging anyone. Then I got to thinking, what if they did something where they could put on a show for the public. Like what if they built something there onsite that they could raffle off? Maybe they could build a wooden shed? or some window flower pots or things like that? They could have a little form the people could fill out to win. They could be asked if they were home owners and if they were looking for gutter cleaning services or lawn services etc. The contractor could then pick a winner from the entries. This could become a marketing list for them to send further information too. Also while building what ever it is they were building, customers could come up and ask them questions and it would give them a better chance to interact with the public.

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Free gift teaser. Offering a free gift is certainly not a new marketing idea, but it hasn't been done much in internet article "resource boxes." My click-throughs from articles increased as soon as I started putting in the author's resource box, "For more information and a free gift, visit..." The gift is usually a short course, or an e-book. Even if you don't want to write an e-book, you can find one with free distribution rights.

One hour coupons. This idea is for offline businesses that want to increase the traffic to their web sites. Announce in any other advertising that you'll have an "internet coupon" good for a free drink (or whatever) up for an hour on Friday. It takes about two minutes to change a web page, so it is easy to have it up for just an hour. Meanwhile, visitors will be returning again and again to try to be there at the right time to get the freebie. If you collect pay-per-click advertising fees, this repeat traffic might be especially profitable.

Sell word links. You may have heard about the entrepreneur that sold a million pixels on one web page for a dollar each. You could buy a minimum of 100, and the image would link to your site. There have been many copycats so far, but I haven't yet seen anyone selling words. This would be even better for the advertiser, because they could buy the words that are relevant to their product. Of course, a page full of random words isn't pretty, but these things get publicity and traffic for their novelty.

Advertise on cereal boxes. People spend a lot of time staring at cereal boxes. You might get a good rate on advertising on them. There has been some advertising there, of course, but not a box covered in ads yet. Brokering ad space on cereal boxes might be a good business to get into.