marketing a lower price...

before u bash it..

Im thinking of marketing to a small radius that is right around my area no more than 8 miles or so and offering a lower ticket


Ive realized that I can make the same amount of money or more but only for doing jobs in my area. Of course this is one type of strategy that you cant use for online ads.

This would be EDDM and sent out in a small radius. Not a huge price drop but could easily go down 40-50$ and make the same or more. Ive realized that almost all my work is further away and very little is in the surrounding neighborhoods. When I do have days with 3 jobs all in my area the day goes so fast and is very profitable, I can get off work at 2-3 easily.


Have any of you ever done this? even road signs can kick ass for this... The best business you can run is all local jobs under 10miles from you and eventually having all repeats no advertising. If you get your business to that point you make a killing cleaning carpets


still keeping all jobs further away, but looking to really boost the close ones this year

No bashing here and nothing to be ashamed of...........

It isn't my type of gig, I'd rather target the higher end market and do less for the same or more.

But the big differences Is I'm only a one man show, and I know when you have employes it works better to keep that volume up.

Why not have the best of both worlds, do high end volume?

Makes good sense to me, I always find myself working in some other cleaners immediate area and wonder why that would happen? Why wouldn't he be cleaning everything right next door?

I would gladly corner the market next door as a business plan....unless you live in a bad neighborhood that it.

AC, I see your point and think that yes, you can make more, travel less, spend less on gas, . I wouldnt drop price or offer a big disc; unless I was doing several rooms of carpet and upholstery at the same time. Then exploit the savings for the potential customer- shout it from the roof top.
For me... 6-8 areas for $175-200.
First upholered item ..,reg ,price.
10% off 2nd piece of upholstery
20% off 3rd item
30% off 4th( usually a recliner $35 reg) so $10.50 savings. Not a lot but they got 30% off!!!
So if the 4 items were a sofa, loveseat and to recliners; I would add 213.50 to the invoice. So about $300 or so $. I could do 2 of those a day.
Disclaimer: your markets may vary.

Sorry; gotta log off, David letterman show is on.

if you can get lots of business within less than 10miles of your house/location you could make a killing not charging as much...       also they are likely to go with you since they are saving a good amount


going to try and hit a 5 miles radius to start and hit it hard.      anything within 5 miles I can do for a cheaper price and make the same amount of money with an easier day...   less driving more cleaning,    less gas,   faster job route.      

Imagine you had a load of business within 5 miles of you,   what would you charge compared to your normal rates?    

in some areas this isnt a big deal,   but Seattle has like the 3rd worst traffic in the nation so it plays a big part in our day to day operations.      

a small town it really wouldnt matter much if your driving 20 miles,   here that could take you over an hr maybe 1 1/2hrs if its during traffic time.

not talking about a major price drop,    we are a higher priced company so could easily drop $40-50 off the normal rates with little to no drive time

A few questions. Have you actuality targeted this are with your regular prices before? Do you think your existing client base will know that your prices are lower in that area? Who's your competition in the lower priced area? Do you see any higher priced company advertising in this area?

Ya weve done a lot of work in my area, not nearly as much as the eastside.

Ive only targeted these areas with online ads, I used to have a lot of success with road signs when I was first starting out.

Im not sure if they will notice, maybe if they see our Angies list ad then also see an EDDM they may just contact us directly.

Existing clients may notice if they get the mailer or see a sign, but most of the close local clients I have had for a long time and dont charge them quite as much as the eastsiders

Since you are talking about staying in a close porximity, why not go door to door on this one? Seems like some old fashioned sales are in order to me. All the old methods of flyers in the gas stations, door hangers on the neighbors house while you clean, etc.

In a 10 mile radius, word can spread fast once they start seeing your van and hearing people talk. Spend a lot of extra time driving the van around in that area on errands to provide the image of a multi-truck company and you will blow up the phone.

I like the idea, I hate wasting my time and fuel in traffic. When I work the Omaha area, it can take an extra 40 minutes to get to a job. With my small towns, it takes less than 20 minutes to get to any of my customers....with very few street lights to slow me down.

door to door is kinda of a big no no in this area. most everyone has no soliciting signs these days in seattle.

I think it could draw in business and I like the old fashioned hand shake meeting but in general I dont like going door to door for anything.

its just a little weird to a lot of people and many feel like your bothering them. Its a type of sales tactic that works in mass volume, penguin windows does it all over the nation.

they pay tons of younger kids to go knock on doors and try to get people to replace windows with about 1/1000 actually doing it. make sense for them because its a 6-10k job but for under 1000.00 would be hard to justify.

door to door just isnt really my thing, I wouldnt mind doing it with commercial or businesses as much but not peoples homes.. I get kind of annoyed personally when Im relaxing at home and a tree guy comes to give me a sales pitch and tell me my trees need to be pruned.

actually I like the door hangers, just a quick hang and your out.. just dont want to knock and wait for an awkward answer lol


Door hangers Im definitely going to do, something like "we just cleaned your neighbors house, ask them how they felt about the service" etc so they get a first hand review

thats a good one Mil, I forgot about door hangers. Also its been a long time coming but going to start up a referral program, with a special program for close neighbors.

no wrap yet on the big truck, really want to get that done soon.. but it isnt cheap and the truck needs a good amount of prep work and clay barring before it will take a wrap well.

I think an EDDM, door hanger, truck wrap bomb on my close area will be well worth the effort and money... its time to get aggressive and let them know this is my territory LOL

I've only had major fail with door hangers, but if you got the balls door to door can work great....or getting on the phone, especially calling past customers you haven't heard from in awhile.

It's funny how most think it's a waste of time keeping in contact with their past customers (Royal man just basically said that in another thread). But people forget your name or mis-place/throw away your card, and then end up calling someone else, because you didn't keep in contact with them.

I just now got off the phone with one of those!......The lady told me she couldn't remember the name of the company she used the last 2 times, that she was happy with.... So because they didn't stay in contact with her, she's my customer now!.........No great loss for them, it's only 5 rms of carpet, Sofa/love, Sectional, and 3 recliners!!

When you are cleaning a house, you can be certain that you are being noticed by the neighbors. Maybe they are looking at their carpet and furniture and thinking about having them cleaned, but are too uncomfortable to approach you.

I like to approach the neighbors after I load up and apologize for the noise (it makes a good ice breaker). That is normally enough of a conversation to get the ball rolling.

Either the owner will ask you about their carpets or they will agree that you made a lot of noise and close the door. Either way, you win. Have a door hanger with you and offer one up before you leave.

I did that last year in a new town and it worked pretty well. I not only got many jobs out of it, but I got to meet a lot of the residents and leave a positive image. I no longer am that stranger rolling through town, I actually get a few waves now from those that I have not cleaned for.......yet.

If your van is lettered the neighbors will see your phone number. I like your idea of contact magnets on the van Rob passer buys can just grab one on the go.

Definitely door to door if there is commercial in the target area. Carpet is one of those those items on most commercial locations deferred maintenance list. They are just waiting for your to stop buy and ask for the biz

customer retention is the single most important aspect of this business.

if you do nothing to market to your existing client base, its not a maybe.. you will fail 100% guaranteed


real success in service businesses happens when you stop paying for each job that comes your way

Agreed.

I wonder what the attrition rate of my client base is. I don't track it but I bet it's higher than most areas.

Anybody who wants to see what I send my client list PM me.

This is another case where working small markets are beneficial.....I see my customers every week at the gas station, post office, theater, etc. Most of the time they ask me cleaning questions.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with advertising different pricing in different areas - especially if the difference is representative of the cost for you to do business in each area. I think direct mail coupled with a targeted adword campaign is the way to go to jump start the business in your area close to home.

That's right you can target geographical areas with adwords and its a perfect fit to target lower price as well.
Dam Joe were you been. We need you around here bubba. Did you get that Magna on the road?

Mo wrote:That's right you can target geographical areas with adwords and its a perfect fit to target lower price as well.
Dam Joe were you been. We need you around here bubba. Did you get that Magna on the road?

Like I said - Crazy Busy . And now that the money is rolling in, my wife agreed to make me do a lot of projects around the house - the biggest one being a 325 sq/ft pave patio. Manually moved a ton of sand, a couple of tons of pavers, and made over 80 paver cuts (it arcs around the pool concrete patio) with no help . Have not had any time to get to the bike yet but thank you all for the advice. Hopefully that's my next project after I lay 1000 sq/ft of sod around the rest of the pool patio...

That is a lot of work man, hell of a way to spend your time off. When you get done with that, there is a pyramid behind the garage we need you to build.

Why even market price ?? How about instead marketing the other good things your company offers and sets your company apart from your competition. Selling by price teaches your clients that price is all that matters. Not good!!!

Agreed!^^^