Did Online and Offline Marketing Have a Shotgun Marriage?

If you create a less confusing, consistent marketing message across OFFline and ONline media, you will be miles ahead of the competition. How? Once again, let’s start simply.

5 Things You Can Do NOW for Integration, Simplification and Results:

1. Repurpose your best offline promotions into your online promotions. They should have the same theme, voice, message and offer, if any. No confusion for your CSRs, techs or customers.
2. Incorporate print promotions with online by using QR codes that become coupons or deeper offers. (These are simple to do and make you look instantly more relevant.)
3. Invite your website visitor to receive your offline newsletter, which is an instant lead-capture. And the inverse is also true…
4. Make your newsletter point to your website with continuation articles, more advice and valuable promotions.
5. The Right Balance: Let your Social page be 70% entertaining, 30% promotional. Social sites should have the same theme, messaging, look and voice of your main website.

Use the proven model from billion-dollar marketers. Rethink your marketing path from “ad to phone” to the entire world of integrated messages. This will drive traffic, calls and profits right past the competition straight to you.

You can get no-cost training that shows precise steps to eliminate inconsistency and confusion, and maximize your opportunity by getting on the Advanced Access List for the video training series; it’s packed with juicy dollars and cents case studies, content that actually worked and a neat list of bonuses rarely given away.

Adams Hudson will be conducting “The Ultimate HVAC Lead Generation Formula” video training series (his HOTTEST video training event to date) starting on August, 26^th, 2013. In it, you’ll hear AND see the richest Case Studies, techniques and red-hot marketing strategies ever compiled for ONline and OFFline contractor marketing. PLUS, he’s giving away a pile of bonus training, downloads and samples throughout. Learn more in this short video. Limited to the first 255 contractors who get in.

The Nick of Time: Modern Trends in a Trade of Tradition

There are 7 of us total. We meet annually at a semi-secluded retreat near The Middle of Nowhere Alabama. This time, 5 attending shared challenges of consulting in the contracting world. 

We discuss growth, retraction, trends, and opportunities. We even discuss trends in decline, often as other slightly late “experts” are pushing those poised to crash. 

Being coached by and with this group is one of the most valuable things I do in any year. 

There are always two BIG topics: 1) How to spend less time at the airport, and 2) How to get clients to financial freedom, faster. (Fortunately, I spend almost zero time at airports, as announced publicly in ’08.)

At breakfast on Day 2, I was told the tower bedroom was a little “warm”. Since we’re all contracting geniuses, when we saw the thermostat at “84 degrees” we instinctively determined: “Something is wrong. Call somebody.” 

And soon, Nick the Repairman showed up.

He may as well have been Mary or Her Little Lamb showing up to the Lion’s Den for lunch, playing the part of lunch. I’m pretty sure he’s not been the same since this happened…

Soon as he walked in, critical ears enlarged, scrutinizing eyes widened. It was like silent Advice Seeking Missiles had been deployed, with the poor triggerman unaware. As Nick determined a coil leak, I mentioned they’d been out a month earlier for the same thing. 

Nick and the $5,000 Minute

One consultant asked if this could’ve been repaired in the earlier call.

“Well, it could’ve, but recharging is so cheap, we usually just do it to see if it holds.” The response was as if Nick had paid to attend this coach’s $5 grand workshop: 

“Nick, if you’d given Mr. Hudson options that included the now-proposed solution instead of the patch, your company would've collected a thousand bucks then, he’d have been happier, you’d be on another call earning money, and we’d not be sweating.” 

Alrighty then. 

If Nick, ONLY changed this one “habit”, imagine the lasting value of this single piece of advice. 

After I agreed to this second repair for the same problem (SMI readers, take note that if I’d had a “displeasure font”, I’d have used it), advice flowed. 

I virtually begged him to offer “Absentee Service Agreements” as “The Hassle Free Way to Keep Your Lake Home Comfortable”, since only about 10% live here year-round. The other 90% of us really don’t want to be doing “home repair reconnaissance missions” during family respites. He nodded. 

Another suggested he claimed a Google Listing including the name of the lake, and NOT just the name of the town he’s in. This way he’d capture the many homeowners unfamiliar with surrounding town names. Drool began forming on his lower lip. 

It went on like this, for a semi-tense but totally instructive few minutes. Soon Nick staggered out of the only seminar he’d ever been to that had a 5 to 1 teacher to student ratio. 

And I wondered…

Nick’s Take Away, Our Take Home

Will Nick change? Anything? Or did he correctly peg us as help-offering lunatics, and consider that what would’ve been a $28,000 tuition to have us all assembled for a day was value-less because he paid nothing? Time will tell.

With temperatures regulated, and the Post-Nick Autopsy complete, we settled to business. Each consultant took an hour on the “Hot Seat” sharing, “What’s new, What’s Working, and What’s NOT Working”. 

If your actual name didn't come up, your situation did! Most every facet of contracting or consulting was mentioned. I have 7 pages of suggestions, alliances, changes, and books to read “…or else!” We admonished and encouraged. A couple affiliations and outsources recommended. A few squashed, appropriately. 

The ONE Biggest Problem By Far (Answered by ALL 5 OF US)…

We each asked, “What is the MOST COMMON PROBLEM that harms contractors that you can help solve?” Amazingly - -

Each consultant answered this question. (What would THIS be worth?). The moment I got back, I decided to put my answers in a 3-Part Video Training Series. And the consultants give THEIR answers as “bonuses” to this training. Since we were in full “giving mode”…

This Video Training AND the Consultant Bonuses are at NO COST TO YOU AT ALL. I encourage you to get in on this early. It’s like you’d get to be Nick, without the nervous tension!

As those of us who love to teach as do many who experience true growth in MasterMind Groups: This is the best thing we do for each other and our clients all year!

When "No News" Isn't Good News

By now, the world has already shifted its nano-second attention span from the fires in the west and the constant rain in the south (though residents around here will be busy drying out for the foreseeable future), to the next big nightly news headline.

While this news passes, we are entertained by far more important things, like giving the new Royal Prince a nickname (I’m voting for Georgie!) and the years’ long quest to increase job growth. Understood.

We focus where our attention is directed.  Always have, always will.

Sometimes, in a marketing perspective, this is downright funny. When the economy was initially plummeting and gas prices were spiking, people were virtually leaping out of thirsty Suburbans and Explorers while still on the interstate. 

The ‘urgent’ need-of-the-moment was to save money on gas. So, these behemoths stacked on car lots like cord wood while cash-strapped consumers signed loans to drive off in a wheezing replacement that ran on Wheat Thins. All to thwart the evils of 15 mpg in favor of say, 20. Get out your calculator. 

At 15K miles a year, if you ‘only’ paid $6,000 difference for your new gas miser, it would take you 6 years to break even. Whatever. I know; we’re all saving the planet, one newly-manufactured car at a time. (A clear conscience doesn’t pay off loans.) 

Yet, as soon as gas prices dipped to a bit over 3 bucks and the news reported the economy was “improving”, mass interest in condo-sized vehicles soared. The back-lot bargain was the frontline hot seller. This mini-frenzy lasted until gas went to $4. Woe unto those with short-term memory damage.

Big lesson: News sells. News shifts focus. News makes headlines – our lifelines to the outside world – “important” and it makes us respond. News can also kill your sales. (Ever seen a Contractor Sting? Ever read a negative review thread online?) And “lack” of news puts you on the perennial backburner.

“News” isn’t confined to getting into broad media anymore (as you’ll see), but that’s a huge help. So we’ll start with that one - -

1. News in the ‘real’ News – This is so easy, but most contractors don’t do it. Have 12 Media releases, in 3 formats (pdf for email attachment, linked to your site, and good old-fashioned document) to send, one per month, to the top media outlets in your area. These are seasonally based, and informative to readership, not blabbing about you. (If you have ANY of our PowerPrograms, you have these releases.)
2. News as Reviews – When you get ‘good’ ratings or comments from customers either verbalized, on Customer Survey Cards, or written as testimonials, put them on your website under Customer Reviews. Ask these customers if they’d include them on local ‘review’ sites. This drives UP your rankings, adds activity, and reduces the impact of the occasional negative. Also, use these in your newsletters in a ‘Spotlight’ section.
3. News Using YOUR Media – Most contractors don’t think they “own” media, but they do. Any customer ‘list’ you have constitutes “reach”. Email, postal mail, and your newsletter position you accordingly. Also, paid advertising can also be “newsworthy” with a company bump that the editors in unpaid media (Item 1) would never allow. This trend, called ‘hybrid’ advertising combines company news and salesmanship. Requires a bigger ad, but gets more readers. This is why our Direct Response ads are always “advertorial” (same thing) and our web marketing is “advisor based” (same thing.) You want your company promo to appear as an editorial and not promotional to get under the “sales” radar.
4. News online – Your website and social media outlets are an even larger, more visible outlet than above. One exception: if you’re not findable OR promoting your site, doesn’t matter. Solution? Use the real ‘news’ in your area and tie it to your site. Can be weather, city news, regional news, building, expansion, employment. Basically you ‘create’ news out of existing news.
   
   Example: Did your school win a state championship? That’s all you need. Offer to buy the team and coaches a smoothie at .  The owner of the smoothie place discounts them for you. You write the news article using the team name and your congratulations. This gets massively searched locally, you post on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. Smoothie place does exact same thing. Double your fun right there, using news you ‘created’. SEO will like you, too.  Not bad for $100 of blended fruit. 
5. News as the Reminder – News is what you make it. Reminders of ‘customer anniversaries’, of ‘agreement appointments’, of your ‘referral rewards program’ or the endless list including awards, new employees, certifications, job completions, price increases and just about anything you can write a headline for. The reason customers QUIT using you is your indifference to them. They don’t feel connected, so they just leave. If you’re not sending/reaching out to them with advice through newsletters and other programs, you’re on your way to being forgotten.

There’s no shortage of news. Some good, some not, all news. If you’re not pushing your company in front of your prospects with regularly helpful information, someone or something else will. Surely one or more of these 5 ways can become part of your publicity plan today.