By Joanne Kuipers

Want to get your phone ringing? Get bigger, better paying jobs?

Not sure where to start?

It’s hard to find the time to market yourself, quote jobs, and then do the actual work. You may consider qualifying your customers before you even go out to see them. You can do that by coming up with a brief list of questions to ask them when they call you. You don’t want to sound like you are interrogating them, but it’s good to ask them things like when do they want to have the project done, size of rooms, how much repairs to the walls etc. to get a basic sense of the potential work. You do not have to do business with everyone that calls you. You can pick and choose!

Referrals !

Word of mouth is the best advertising and it’s FREE. In order to help develop your referral business you may come up with a referral system where you compensate people who bring you business. In Joe Girrard’s book How To Sell Anything To Anybody, he outlines a effective ways to do this. Let’s face it you are in the sales business too.

Repeat Business

  A lot of times we overlook this important source of leads. The good news is that you can pick the ones who you want to deal with again in future. If your customers are happy with your work they will want to call you when the next room or whatever needs to get painted! You may think that because you gave them a business card that they will remember you. Let me ask you, have you ever received a business card from someone who you intended to do business with in future but lost it or forgot where you put it. I know I do that all the time. We all have good intentions but life just gets in the way.

What I would suggest is to develop a system where you send monthly or seasonal email promotions to your customers. You could send them the latest trends in colors or other décor tips, which you can easily get from the internet. First you have to get your customers’ email addresses. You can say to them that it was a pleasure doing business with them and you want to put them on your preferred customer list so that you can send them promotions etc. In this way you can get jobs without having to drive all over the place in the evenings after a full day’s work.

Branding and Positionating

If you brand or position yourself as the go to person for decorating/color consultation you will be able to charge for more for you work. People prefer one-stop-shopping solutions. It saves them time and energy. Some may want help with this and others may not. Whether you do it or not I would suggest that you build it into your pricing anyways. People don’t mind paying for quality work, and they will see you as an expert.

Advertising

Craig’s List has become one of the number one ways that people find service providers in their market. And it’s free to put a listing there.

Yellow Pages

When people are ready to buy they will go to the Yellow Pages. They may already know that they want to call you but may have misplaced your card, or a friend told them about you. 60% of Yellow Pages usage is when people already know who they want to contact. When considering to place an ad in there go to the book and see what your competition is doing. You don’t need a half page if everybody else is doing a small ½” ad. Do something slightly larger or the same as your competition. Consider the wording in your ad. If you want to do more expensive jobs convey that in your advertising message. If you are going to do color consulting etc, put that in your ad. It will make you stand out from your competition!

Direct Mail

This can be a very effective tool. It works really well if you have the right offer. If you have Val Pak available in your area I would suggest that. And mail the same area over and over again. People have to see you more that once before they necessarily do business with you. To find out more about Direct Mail read about it in the Direct Mail section on this site or contact Advantage Solutions.

Display advertising in the newspaper is hit and miss. Instead I would suggest just doing a weekly classified ad.

On Line Exposure

If you do not already have a website, it may be important to get one. Start by accumulating pictures of your work, before and after stories and shots are a great way of highlighting your work. With digital cameras it’s not hard to do. If you are a tech savvy and have time, you could do it yourself.

There are a lot of free resources on the internet. Or contact a company that can create the site a for you: Advantage Solutions.

Call around for rates. Since your business is aesthetic people need to see your work. Get testimonials from past customers as well.

By using these different media mixes you will be able to set up a successful and cost effective advertising plan. As a matter of fact, when you combine  Yellow Pages advertising  with your direct mail campaign, you increase your ROI on the direct mail by 15%.