[Becci Swan]

Are you looking to grow your business this year? What plans to you have in place?

- Leafleting Campaign
- Email Campaign
- Telemarketing Campaign
- Door Knocking
- Company Re-brand

[derikraven]

no plans to do any marketing this year. My website seems to generate all the work I need

[Robert Watson]

I`v got plans coming out my ears, implementation is the hard bit.
I`ll give you a bell soon Becci, hit the hotels again with an add on to the last offer.
All the best.

[Becci Swan]

I`v got plans coming out my ears, implementation is the hard bit.
I`ll give you a bell soon Becci, hit the hotels again with an add on to the last offer.
All the best.

Hi Robert

I look forward to hearing from you! Let me know if I can give you a hand on the implementation on any of your other marketing plans - I'd be happy to help!

Kind regards

Becci

[garry22]

no plans to do any marketing this year. My website seems to generate all the work I need Cheesy

You'd better buy Google a big box of chocolates to keep them sweet! 

[Hilton]

With respect thats not a plan its a media mix which is just part of a plan....in which case on its own its pretty much usless.

You have to set a proper plan :

The Message

The Market

The Media

The Systems

I agree implementation is one of the hardest parts of the process because with out it, the above is a waste of time and money.

And my old guvnor used to say, 'fix the roof when the sun is shining' so if a web site on its own is generating enough in sales at present,which is great, you can bet your house on it, that  some time in the future it will start falling away leaving you behind the curve.Much wiser to have other systems to be working on 'while the sun is shining'.

Just my thoughts

[garry22]

so if a web site on its own is generating enough in sales at present,which is great, you can bet your house on it, that  some time in the future it will start falling away leaving you behind the curve

Spot on. When the first Penguin update hit, I had one site's traffic drop from 25,000 + a month down to about 900. Bit of a shock.

[Deep Cleaning Solutions]

derikraven ..... What is your website? if you don't mind me asking ..... I can't seem to find it!

[Mike Halliday]

no plans to do any marketing this year. My website seems to generate all the work I need

Easy done when all you need is 2 jobs a week   

That's the problem with people making quotes like that, what one man 'needs' is another mans mornings work

[benny d]

Copy this into gooooooooogle and its at the top of the page -
D J Cleaning Services ( Inverness)

[Mike Gwilliam]

When the first Penguin update hit, I had one site's traffic drop from 25,000 + a month down to about 900. Bit of a shock.

Did you find out the cause Gary or have an idea what it was?

[bennymon]

Have seen your site derik you are getting good money for your work is there not a lot of competition in Inverness  . If I put them prices on my site I would never get a call . Del

[JandS]

bennymon

Look at the area he covers compared to yours....apart from Inverness itself most of his work will involve travel and the people who live out of the way will expect to pay more for services due to travel times.

[garry22]

Did you find out the cause Gary or have an idea what it was?

Mike, Penguin effectively changed the way Google counted incoming links (particularly the overall percentage keyword rich anchor text). There was no manual penalty, just a change in the algorithm.

The reason for the drop (top three down to six hundred odd - now in the fifties) was that change plus link loss (many of the sites linking in were de-indexed). Put simply, what used to work before 24.4.12 stopped working.

The biggest lesson was my own stupidity.

I was so busy selling stuff to one-off visitors that I failed to build a relationship with them. Had I done so I would have been fairly immune to any search engine changes. This is the mistake I see most carpet cleaners make in their marketing.

That paragraph above I reckon, is about £ 10,000 s worth of marketing advice 

[jasonl]

Did you find out the cause Gary or have an idea what it was?

Mike, Penguin effectively changed the way Google counted incoming links (particularly the overall percentage keyword rich anchor text). There was no manual penalty, just a change in the algorithm.

The reason for the drop (top three down to six hundred odd - now in the fifties) was that change plus link loss (many of the sites linking in were de-indexed). Put simply, what used to work before 24.4.12 stopped working.

The biggest lesson was my own stupidity.

I was so busy selling stuff to one-off visitors that I failed to build a relationship with them. Had I done so I would have been fairly immune to any search engine changes. This is the mistake I see most carpet cleaners make in their marketing.

That paragraph above I reckon, is about £ 10,000 s worth of marketing advice 

Spot on , sell you , who cares about your poxy machine, chems , van .

[mark_roberts]

Gary what do you mean - This is the mistake I see most carpet cleaners make in their marketing.

How does marketing ie. a website or yellow pages build a relationship with a current customer?

Surely they are to attract the potential customer to make contact.  The relationship is build over time.

Thanks
Mark

[garry22]

Mark, I'll qualify this by saying everyone is different and may be getting different results.

I'm talking about conversions. Now some people on here reckon they convert virtually every visitor, so obviously it does not apply to them. it's about when in the relationship, you ask someone to take action.

The site I mentioned above was getting 300,000 visitors a year (95% new visitors! ). Although it was making decent money, I've realised it was a pittance compared to what it SHOULD have made.

For instance, if I'd done something simple capturing emails, I may well have had a list of tens of thousands of subcribers, all from a pretty tight demographic group (a ready made list of buyers on tap).

In effect I was just trying to sell straight off the page to strangers. That is what many cc sites (mine included) still do.

It's a case of...

Carpet Cleaning

Latest equipment & chemicals
Fully insured
We pride ourselves on our work.

Now phone us for a quote

I saw some split test results last week that showed an optimised campaign selling off the page was getting about 1 1/2 % conversion. When the company switched to engagement and relationship, the conversions eventually went above forty per cent! I know what I would rather have.

I'm just saying that I am now totally changing how I do stuff online to boost conversions. I'm not saying anyone else has to.

[mark_roberts]

300,000 visitors a year.  Is this your carpet cleaning site?

The issue is in reality the homeowner only wants and needs to engage us/our site when she needs our contact details or information on who to choose.  Unless we sell products.

I really don't see people logging onto my site to get the latest carpet cleaning tips etc.

How does a cleaning company engage online?

We all engage cleanitup up because we have an interest in its purpose and benefit from it.

Am I missing something here?

THanks
Mark

[garry22]

No Mark. It was in the wedding niche (top 3 in the USA for a couple of big search terms - 20,000 exact searches per month).

Engagement. There's nothing in the rules that a carpet cleaning site should only have carpet cleaning stuff on it. It's basically home maintenance, so they are probably interested in say interior design, furniture, home health. You must be able to come up with something of interest for them (maybe in return for their email address?).

Perhaps negotiate discounts with local stores (only available through your site?).

Think about it. We keep coming back here for news (and granted, gossip and the occasional punch up  )

The more times you can have contact with people, the more likely they will use yourself. I'm sure you could come up with a few ideas (mine normally come when I'm doing the vacuuming!

[jasonl]

http://www.dry-fresh.co.uk/  

 I engage like this , About half of all calls coming in ask to speak to Jason , a real person that customers already partly trust and know , compare this with the vast majority of other carpet cleaning websites ( and other websites generally)  

People buy from people not from the obvious BS statements such as " the midlands leading cc company"  " most powerful machine"  " biggest schlong in the business"   "established 400 years".....

No , people want a reliable bloke , to turn up at a fair price , no nonsense or BS .


My site lacks pictures , I am working on this . It has brought in £30k( 18k fire job inc) this year plus bookings for another 15 in the pipeline.