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From The Remodeling Magazine Blog
In a remodeling business, whether you’re talking about marketing, sales, production, or customer service, you cannot make good decisions without accurate information.
It is very important to capture accurate information about your businesses performance by setting up the proper procedures to gather, track and analyze this information. Today, I’d like to review marketing metrics.
If your business invests any money in advertising, it is imperative that when you look at your marketing and advertising efforts to make sure you understand how to capture the right information, analyze the results properly, and plan for the future decisions from that accurate information.
Hold your marketing team accountable. When I was running a remodeling business, I would review all my advertising vehicles on a monthly basis. I created a report called the Summary of Repetitive Advertising to help me analyze the performance of all aspects of marketing. The important elements are setting up proper tracking, and reviewing the results.
Tracking
Here are my suggestions on how best to track advertising and marketing information:
Reviewing Advertising Metrics
Here is a list of advertising information you should review.
• Advertising source or lead source
• Leads received from this source
• Cost of the source/ad
• Number of contracts earned from this source
• Total sales volume from this ad source
• Advertising cost compared to the total dollar amount of the sales earned
• Cost invested in advertising divided by every lead received. This gives you the cost per lead
• To calculate the return per lead, take the total sales amount from a lead source and divide it by the number of leads your received
• To calculate the closing percentage, take the total amount of sales contracts and divide them by the leads from that source
I place all this information in my Summary of Repetitive Advertising form. With this format, it’s easier to assess the information and make decisions on what is working and what is not. This will allow you to evaluate where you will place your future marketing dollars.
What are you using to track your performance? There are online tools available with monthly membership costs that range from $25 to $100+ per month that can help you manage your client information and advertising performance. With these online services, you can access the information from anywhere. A few customer relation management (CRM) tools that remodelers tell me they use are MarketSharp, ELMS Software, and improveit! 360. If you want to use this type of service, do your research. Many offer free trial use so you can see if it is a good fit for your business.
Next week, I’ll review the types of decisions you can make from the Summary of Repetitive advertising report.
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From time to time I like to look a different advertising pieces. This will be a review we do once a month, advertising pieces. The benefit of Establishing a Advertising Campaign that is effective is a business saver sometimes.
Having the ability to step on the gas to create revenue or ease off the gas when needed for your remodeling business can be a valuable vehicle, if the strategy is,…. and tactics are… done right. I do highly recommend using an experienced marketing agent to strategize, develop and implement your campaign, as trial and error can be costly.
Not only can trail and error be costly, but the money and time lost can stop you from venturing down this road again and ultimately prevent you from advertising, which can be the loss of a great vehicle for the right company to take advantage of to grow their business, when your budget allows. Also, the experience of negotiating for the proper rates can be a savings in itself and get the greatest value for your money, dollars and budget. The professional experience is negotiating is priceless.
Direct Mail Pieces
Val Pak
I would just like to give you general information and a description of Valpak, so you can understand how it is used. Personally, I have had extensive experience with Valpak in numerous metro markets throughout the U.S. For customized advice, please contact Remodel Buddy to arrange a plan for you business. Valpak’s PDF media-kit can be downloaded here;
What is Val Pak?
The Valpak sealed envelope contains a mix of ads from national, regional and local advertisers, delivered via mail in a sealed blue envelope. Remodel Buddy’s take: Valpak’s business advertisers the majority of the time, advertise with discounts on their ads or use coupons, as the Valpak audience likes to open and review the blue envelope looking for local specials. Depending on the marketplace, this can be a vehicle that will have more than one competitor in each Remodeling/Home Improvement field.
Val Pak describes itself as the following;
From savings alerts, special discounts and offers, to menus and more, consumers look to Valpak each month to deliver rewarding, relevant and reliable ads from neighborhood businesses and national brands. Advertisers can select from a full range of professional marketing services including campaign concept, design, printing, list acquisition and in-home distribution.
How Valpak is traditionally distributed.
The distribution of Valpak is through the mail, directly to the homeowners and or commercial businesses. When mailing your ad to the local area, here a a couple options.
Saturated List-
Each Valpak distributor is a franchise and will have a certain geographic area it targets for the mailing of the blue envelope with all the ads & coupons. For example, if someone is operating a remodeling business in Washington, DC., and wants to do a saturated mailing, the mailing will go out to everyone that is located in the zip codes that the Valpak franchise mails to. If you are in DC, the ad will go to everyone in the DC metro area and the list of zip codes they distribute to 100% coverage. Saturated lists are less expensive on a cost of per thousand mailed, per thousand reached( which is a common evaluating term for pricing -cost per thousand -cpm)
Targeted List-
this is exactly as it sounds, a specific demographic, income range, home owners, occupation, targeted zip codes only and can be used to focus on more of an ideal client. It is important to know your ideal client and their demographics anyway, when advertising as if you are reaching your targeted customer, you are more apt to achieve better results. Targeted mailings with Valpak have higher response rates, leads, inquiries etc, but also cost more per thousand.
Remodel Buddy’s take:
When choosing a direct mail piece there are quite a few things to consider when trying to capitalizing on the vehicles potential. First, consider the reason for the advertising purpose. Is this for generating leads for an event? The event could be an open house, a sale or special offer. Is this for branding? Some Remodeling organizations set aside a certain amount of their advertising for brand awareness, to get the name out and reach people they may not otherwise reach by, by using saturated mailings to a wider audience- everyone. A more focused approach for ideal clients and a better opportunity to earn business on each customer contacting you would be the targeted mailing. Even though the cost per thousand mailed is higher, the overall cost will be less on the budget, since less will be mailed.
Remodel Buddy’s Summary
We analyze the marketplace and review all the possible vehicles for direct mail advertising. Direct mail pieces more than likely come with a few or more competitors advertising in the same mailing on group pieces. Valpak is no exception. A good sales approach will be necessary to close these leads and make the cost effective. This is always a consideration when choosing what ads to run, when and gauging the response expected. Knowing your ideal client and their demographics etc,etc is a process Remodel Buddy can go through with you and will be necessary to maximizing success & making an effective advertising campaign. The message and content in the ad along with the creative artwork itself is just as important as every other step.
