[Shaun_Ashmore]

If hypnotism is like going to the physio it'll be a few appointments to diagnose and fix, if the fix is good people remember that as it's a personal or health thing that stays in the subliminal mind I use the same physio but I know a few through cleaning their carpets but I go back to the one that fixed my first problem.

Shaun

[Simon Gerrard]

Huh
The point being?

[Mike Halliday]

For every thousand leaflets dropped, how many of that thousand are going to existing customers?

Garry that's a good question and I've never really worked it out, but I read your question this morning and have been thinking about it while I was doing our first jobs.

Here are some examples, we leaflet Cottingham every month which has 5k homes, we have 40ish customer in there so every month those 40 customers receive our leaflets

Skidby has 500 homes we have 12 customers there those 12 get a monthly leaflet

We have 100s of customers in Beverley they get a leaflet every 5-6 weeks.

This is going slightly of topic (as we were talking about whether it's worth giving customers technical information)


All I do is leaflets, I don't do reminder cards as they are probably the least effective & costliest way to contact existing customers, you could say my leaflet is not a good way of keeping in touch with existing customers but it's better than doing nothing and it's  consistently done plus it's a by product of our marketing not its chief aim.

It doesn't matter if it's not how anyone else runs their business it works very effectively for me.

[garry22]

Mike, your last comment is probably the most relevant. If it works for you, then fine.

I was looking at it from the point of view of relationships. Once someone becomes a customer then that relationship is very different from that of a prospective buyer. They effectively, become a "real" person - the sort of person that you would write a nice letter to.

Amazon takes this much further by giving you personalised recommendations every time you go online. You would need a segmented customer list to pull this off but it might be worth it long term, especially with those high paying customers. This is what Wynn was getting at on a previous page.

[garry22]

Actually...

Why not use one side for new customers and the other for existing ones (you could put the technical stuff here... "customers' questions answered" etc)? Make that side into a mini newsletter.

[ian harper]

Mike

Traffic, traffic traffic, Hits, hits, hits

As I keep saying any content that people are searching for worldwide will help your site seo that in turns give your site authority and that will help your local search.

what are people searching for? adwords will tell you that. below are some post names on one of my blogs, these are real keywords that people search for. to get traffic you need to provide content that matches these type of keywords. you cant know what people in your local area search for, but google never suggests "carpet cleaning town" apart from london or other big city putting all your eggs in the towns names means that your missing out all the many that are being used.

Marketing is about meeting a need and you have tools that tell you what that need is. adwords is the tool for finding out what people are searching for, why do you think google is withholding keywords in searches? because information is worth money, and giving that information to the SEO industry does not help google.

On the subject of needs just look at any carpet cleaning product range, again a list of answers to problems that people have. content about these problems will also help. prochem does not make all those products for fun. just think about this for a moment please,

products are our tools but if you dont have the jobs for those tools your never going to use them. In turn people have say a red wine spillage or urine spot. what are they going to search for? Most carpet cleaners site are very narrow in their message.

SEO is not always about the direct effect it has on your site but the indirect. worldwide search is the indirect way to help local in markets like ours. with keywords you have silos that are related words so carpet cleaning is sub to carpet and all the words below that are what google tells you in adwords. Its our group of keywords. google need to know what relates to what and this is how it does it. why? for ranking the site


https://plus.google.com/101557752785793986239/posts/9oBRfVHyM8J

PS dont confuse selling with marketing. both have a cost and you should always know that cost. I love the term"buying customers" its does not really mater how much or little selling or marketing you do its about the cost of each customer or prospect. below are my real costs

http://www.cleanonomics.cleaning-carpet.co.uk/cost-of-a-customer/

[ian harper]

Mike

here is what google looks at as our family of keywords.

http://www.chelmsford.cleaning-carpet.co.uk/carpet-cleaning/carpet-cleaning/ (you can scroll left to right and down)

[garry22]

Have you been on the happy juice Ian? 

How does that apply to leaflets?

[Ian Gourlay]

Hi Mike others might have said this already.  But it looks quite simple . Do a newsletter or Information leaflet and spend a week after finnishing your jobs hand delivering them to your customer base.

Use your other leaflets for pulling new customers.

Might seem a lot of work but Kleeneze Agents  work on dropping cats off to existing customers for a £10 sale  You are looking for £95 plus.

Alternatively you could just buy some stamps .

If you plan it right you could send to customers who did not buy in last 6 week cycle say 2 or 3 weeks before standard leaflet drop is due to hit doormat

[mark_roberts]

When do you guys get time to actually clean carpets!!

Mark

[Shaun_Ashmore]

Have you not got a smart phone mark?

Pays to have one and keep up with the boring bits of life!

Shaun

[Ian Gourlay]

Me i m in Semi retirement living in the Sun