Joe Polish & Lisa Wagner’s Rich Cleaner Blog ::

Does Marketing Work For Restoration Work?

On an industry bulletin board, someone asked the question “does marketing work to get restoration emergency work?”

There were then several responses of “no” and that the expense of trying to get end-user jobs from marketing to them was not worth the expense.

Are you kidding me?

The Dry Guys – the post before this one – received this past week 50 flood calls, half from their new yellow pages ad, and the other half from EXISTING clients who knew they did emergency work now because they communicated this in their monthly newsletter.

All from MARKETING.

“Does direct marketing work for restoration?” - the answer is – depends. Depends on:

1) the target market
2) the target message
3) your marketing media and timing
4) your offer
5) your guarantee

Here’s the interesting thing about emergency restoration work … the majority of claims do NOT go to national franchises - they go to independent operations. And though some emergency call centers do have deals with some national franchises to direct those jobs to them, many claims begin first with a call to the company to come “save” them and stop the damage because when they call the agent they are usually leaving a message and waiting for a call back.

Are you really going to stand around in a flooded house for an hour waiting to hear from your agent, who usually will tell you they cannot recommend anyone to you? Sometimes they will give you some companies, but many times they are not allowed to.

In fact, my own agent when my flood happened in my home told me I was on my own. He didn’t even have a list of CERTIFIED companies to choose from. I was curious what “help” a consumer like me would get from the claim center, and I discovered the answer was NONE.

And I’m not alone. So, the question is, if homeowners know you and trust you, wouldn’t they be most likely to call you IF you do restoration work? Of course.

So then, how do you get them to CALL YOU? And this is where direct response marketing comes into play.

Here are a few strategies I’ve mentioned before:

If you have an existing list of residential and commercial clients - let them know you do restoration work and are WRT/ASD certified (at least) since this is becoming more of a requirement for the insurance adjusters (which is why the large national franchises are all getting certified and have become more involved with IICRC politically).

I disagree with those who say end user marketing by restorers is expensive with a low ROI. That depends on the message to market match - Piranha Members are very successfully marketing their restoration services to their cleaning lists. I get flood calls to my rug plant, and I don’t even do structural drying (but I have someone to refer those calls to while I give instructions on acquiring their rugs for restorative cleaning.)

With an average restoration job of even the low end of $2,500 - $5,000, how many jobs do you need to generate from marketing to your own list of clients and business referral sources to justify spending a few hundred to reach them? Even mailing a monthly newsletter for less than a dollar per person a month, you can keep your name/number in front of these people to grab that flood call when it happens.

There is a myth in this industry that marketing does not work in restoration … and that means those who are using direct response marketing methods (trackable) have very few competitors in this arena.

Hope you enjoy the video - there’s some good ideas in there … proven in the field, which is all I ever try to share because I’m all about results and not just theory.

If you are looking for an entire system on creating Restoration Success in your company, then check out www.asktherestorer.com.

Thank you to those restorers who do this emergency work to save our homes and put our lives back together – you all rock!

- Lisa

If you remember when you first decided to get into water restoration work, that first big call is EXCITING. A chance for you to put your training, tools, and team into action.

Piranha Marketing dominates the carpet cleaning industry as a marketing company (we are the #1 provider by a long shot of marketing tools and business training in this industry). But Piranha also dominates the restoration sector, as two-thirds of our members do some level of restoration work from a small loss now and then to chasing hurricanes.

This year we decided to lay out a complete system for getting into water damage work. Every step it takes to go from ZERO knowledge to a full-fledged Disaster-Response Restoration Operation.

Our very first company in this “Zero to Hero” Restoration Success Path has been the Dry Guys (Jerry, Mike, Jamie and their team). You’ve seen updates from them with their Piranha Restoration Mentor Ron Osborne on this blog, going to get their WRT and ASD training, getting their equipment (and saving THOUSANDS through Piranha’s Buyers Group), and getting their technical/operational/documentation systems in place.

In fact, Mike and Jerry were both at our recent Hands-on Restoration Symposium in Nashville co-hosted by Dri-Eaz and Interlink Supply, where we flooded a house right here:

Here’s Mike & Jerry asking questions to Dri-Eaz’s Mike Newby and Interlink’s Ron Collings:

100+ other professionals came to town to learn a ton about the technical side of the craft…

In particular how they can, even if they are a small company, use the Piranha Network to do LARGE LOSS work.  No matter what the size of loss, they have the resources to secure jobs that before they believed to be out of their reach. Here’s one of our Partners helping with larger loss work – Bryan Dant of GDSI with one of his first response vehicles:

Here’s the Dry Guys update this Father’s Day weekend – TWENTY FLOOD CALLS!

They knew in January they were going to get into water restoration work, so they ran an ad in their Yellow Pages directory that just recently hit homes … just in time for the rains, and basement floods.

Basement flooding was a question we addressed in depth during our recent technical Restoration Success Tele-Training call with ASD Instructor Kevin Fisher of Dri-Eaz, so they knew what makes these floods in particular a Category 2 versus a Category 3 and whether the path would be to clean or to replace all affected areas.

(By the way – these are VERY important distinctions, and each dictates how you approach the job. Reference your IICRC S-500 Water Damage Restoration Standards for what is recommended for each, and be sure to own a copy of Dri-Eaz’s “New Guide To Restorative Drying” manual, it is incredibly valuable for you and your technicians.)

This weekend Ron was planning to head to the Dry Guys facility to help do some intensive one-on-one consulting on their marketing systems to get more flood work, and now he’ll be an extra set of eyes and hands in watching these newly certified, trained, and well-prepared Restoration Professionals in action.

Most who get into restoration do so accidentally.  They have a cleaning client who has a pipe break, and BAM they become a restorer.

Or they invest hundreds of thousands into vehicles, a franchise, and equipment and sit and wait for the work to magically appear. The only strategy seems to be “buy it and it will come.” When it doesn’t come, you “magically” go bankrupt!

The Dry Guys did it the right way.

They became FULLY knowledgeable about they were getting into. They got FULLY trained and IICRC certified.  THEN they bought the equipment and strategized what they wanted to own, and what they could rent from Piranha Partners if they suddenly got a surge in work (like right now). They also began building a network of Piranha Members to tap into when the work gets larger than they are comfortable handling.

Four months after they made their decision to become focused on Restoration Work, they are entering into the weekend with a flood of floods.  Mike and his father-in-law Jerry will be spending Father’s Day doing flood work… and I think that might be one of the best gifts they could have received.

The Dry Guys run a very successful, high-service, cleaning company. In fact, last year they were finalists in our “Better Your Best” implementation contest.

A year from now, because they have chosen to add Restoration to their services, and are planning a Restoration Success Strategic plan to do it, their company will be at an entirely different revenue level.

Not only will they have the personal satisfaction of being able to put people’s lives and homes back together… but they will also discover how valuable (and lucrative) that skill is to their community.

Happy Father’s Day!
-    Lisa

When you sort through your mail, you probably have an “A” pile and a “B” pile. The personal looking stuff goes into the “A” pile. The junk goes into the “B” pile and then into the garbage can. But, that’s not what this post is about; we already did a blog post on that.

In today’s economy, many newspapers and advertisement publications are doing poorly or going out of business. That means advertising space and “remnant” advertising space is more available and more affordable than ever before. Unfortunately, much of the time the advertisers or companies taking advantage of this opportunity (especially in the cleaning industry) are the low-price, unethical, bait & switch companies.

But that’s not what this post is about either (although the first minute or so of the video below is me babbling about this).

Although… if you’re NOT a low-priced, unethical, bait & switch advertiser then now is the time to buy advertising - especially remnant ad space. If you didn’t know, remnant space is what’s created when other advertisers pull out of a publication at the last minute and therefore the publication is forced contact advertisers who’ve made it known they WANT remnant space for 1/2 price or lower!

If you do that, you’ll want to get our 7 Steps To A Successful Ad free report from our NEW www.JoePolish.com.  Yes, go read this report right now and check out the new layout of the site.

But again, that’s not what this blog post is about.

This is actually about an idea we want to give you on “Joint Ventures” - specifically Joint Ventures with Dry Cleaners. Piranha Members can use the “Dry Cleaner Letters” (from www.PiranhaCentral.com) to initiate and run extremely successful Joint Ventures with Dry Cleaners….

Or interior designers, or realtors, or allergists, or carpet retailers… or any other ethical business owner in your Chamber of Commerce or BNI group.

This works! Even in a tough economy.

Here’s a video explaining:

Best,
JOE

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If you’re thinking about getting into Restoration (a 130 billion dollar a year industry), watch this video…  This could be the most valuable 3 minutes you spend online for your business this year!
Visit www.AskTheRestorer.com to sign up for this awesome teleseminar training!

Here’s an example of what Piranha has done for one Cleaning & Restoration Company:

At one time, I believe this was the COOLEST cleaner on the block.

Or was it these guys?

Now come on! That brought a smile or two, right?

Don’t you love looking back to see the way things used to be? What we thought was ultra-cool, suddenly makes us ask “what were we thinking?!?” Big feathered hair and leg warmers (puhleeeez don’t remind me).

But decade to decade, styles change.  Our “packaging” changes.

Twitter, social media, mobile websites – things that most “brick and mortar” small businesses say “huh?” to, will shortly be what EVERYONE is doing.

You have to, or you are going to lose business.

For years Piranha Members have done a Carpet Audit™ presentation in the home, with a presentation folder and support materials.  It’s always worked beautifully.

But innovation happened to it and it became a DVD presentation (shown on a laptop) and then an on-line streaming video. Sales conversions AND invoice averages both went up an average of 25%.

This is HUGE.  Here’s one Member sharing his experience on the tool:

Packaging isn’t just about how you bundle your services together.  It’s about how you package yourself, your presentation, and your company. From the uniforms you wear, to your paperwork, to your tools, to your van, to your marketing material and messages, to YOU.

I can chuckle about the two “vintage” cleaning photos … or laugh at my own rug shop’s photos of our first old blue Dodge van, with duct tape as the “fix all” tool used on the front grill. Gotta love those good old days.  It’s nice to look back, laugh, and be incredibly thankful about how far we’ve come and how satisfying it is to build your own business.

If you are looking for the best tools, templates, and systems for success in the cleaning and restoration industries, mark your calendar for September 23-26 – The Rich Cleaner Conference and Trade Show.

Keep it ELF!
Lisa

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