By Larry Boehm
The decision to engage in some sort of marketing can be scary. The haunting image of Crazy Moe, the used car salesman in a crown and waving a scepter inviting everyone out to the sale at Crazy Moe's Motors, is enough to make anyone shy away from selling themselves. It's sure enough to make me wince.
But once I stopped to think about it, I realized that I already was marketing my company every day. After all, marketing is simply knowing what your company is and communicating that to potential clients. In the world of remodeling, things like your job-site signs and your business card are fairly standard forms of marketing.
And I knew that there is a wealth of opportunities that might hold the key to taking a business to the next level. But keeping someone on top of all of those opportunities can be a full-time job by itself. That's when it's time to start looking at hiring someone to address your marketing needs for you.
The image doctor
So I decided to hire a public relations and marketing consultant. I needed to gain a complete understanding of my firm’s identity and make sure I was communicating the right message for generating future business. I figured it was like hiring a trade contractor: I gained an expert without the overhead of a full-time employee. And it gave us the benefit of an unbiased, well-informed review of the company and its image.
As a first step, our PR guru suggested an image survey. The firm would interview past clients to gauge their impressions of the company, as well as their preferences in selecting a builder. Once the intake portion is complete, the consultant analyzes the results and makes appropriate recommendations based on where a company’s image stands and where it needs to be.
These recommendations are often the keys to spending your marketing dollars wisely. From talking to your clients, your consultant gains an understanding of where to position you to be seen by other potential clients. Understanding how clients garner information about their service providers and what factors ultimately influence their decisions leads to understanding what magazines you want your work to be published in, what events you should consider sponsoring, and the tone you want associated with your marketing materials.
Building the buzz
Lots of small to mid-size remodeling firms have trouble justifying marketing services. The logic is that if you are doing good work, more opportunities for work will follow. In many instances, that proves true. I agree that happy clients are the best form of marketing, especially in the high-end residential market, where almost all clients hire a service provider based on referral.
But I've learned that using a public relations firm has a similar affect. Almost like a series of referrals, PR creates a buzz that has people talking about your firm. By getting your name into trade magazines or positioning you as a speaker at a trade show or conference, good PR generates an implied third-party endorsement of your firm that raises potential clients' awareness of your work. And much like a referral from a client, that third-party endorsement carries a lot of weight.
Personal referrals and PR play off of the same principle: People are more willing to buy what they don’t know they are being sold.
Too bad no one told Crazy Moe down at Crazy Moe’s Motors.
Larry Boehm is president of the Victor Boehm Building Co., a remodeling company in Timonium, Md., and a member of Remodelers Advantage.
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