We have a Members Community website, www.PiranhaCentral.com, where all of our business building and marketing strategies, trainings and templates are organized, archived and searchable.  More importantly Piranha Central is “action central” for Piranha Members across the globe.  Through the site’s ELFLibrary (the Easy, Lucrative & Fun swipe file share module) and the sites’s ELFMail (the Easy, Lucrative & Fun email system), bright and positive Cleaning Industry Marketers from all kinds of markets support each other, answer questions and share the templates and strategies that are working for them, right now.

Here’s a thread that we’ve gotten permission to share with you. These are a few ELFMail posts from yesterday and today about what’s working for marketing carpet cleaning and restoration services right now:

From: Joe Vizi
Date: 4/6/2010
Subject: ELFMail – What’s Working

Hopefully y'all have been busy as heck, like me! We had a almost a 700%
increase over last March! 

Plumber JV, Realtor Open Houses, and Repeat Clients From Newsletters are the
top three strategies.  

Also, a huge job from Yellow Pages in which I used Don & Jane Jones' ad copy.

-Joe Vizi
President & CEO
Eco-Scrub Carpet & Floor Care

From: Tim Mickelson

Date: 4/6/2010

Subject: ELFMail – What’s Working

For us January was a very slow month. February we were up over 26% over last February. March was fantastic; we had our best month ever in over 33 years.What has worked for us?

Facebook marketing to Realtors – making connections and giving them Gift Certificates for a Free Room of cleaning to give to buyers and sellers and their mailing list 3 Step Letters to high end homes.

Joining a dynamic BNI – visit several and join the best group in your area.

Water Damage Restoration ad in the Yellow Pages – the first two jobs were more than double the cost for the entire year and brought in thousands.

Sending out reminder cards thru Send Out Cards – we send out a reminder card every 6 months automatically that keeps repeat clients coming back.

Selling cleaning packages – we offer, buy two cleanings and get the 3rd for FREE. They pay for the two cleanings upfront and the cleanings are every 6 months. On the repeat cleanings we do not move any furniture.

We have had snow and rain. That is normal for the northeast.  Melting snow and lots of rain can lead to wet basements and water damage restoration. We took two water jobs from the guys with the green trucks.

You have to be consistent in your marketing and control expenses when things are slow. NEVER stop marketing, NEVER quit. Always be positive and always be hopeful.

If someone put a gun to your head and said you HAD to make $1,000.00 today or else…. What would you do to make it happen?

-Tim Mickelsen
Clean Your Carpets Inc.

From: Bill Pope
Date: 4/6/2010
Subject: ELFMail – What’s Working

Hello Piranha Family, 

It has been very slow in the Hudson Valley area of New York also. Just wanted to let
others know what we are doing to try and create business:

1) joined local chamber of commerce
2) sending out pink flyers to doctors, lawyers accountants and other professionals
from local telephone book
3) going out on foot and introducing myself to local businesses with info and an
offer about our company
4) sending special offers to those that have not used us in awhile via snail mail

These things have produced some work.  They are also very inexpensive to implement.

-Bill Pope
Stay Positive Stay Focused
Spotless Cleaning Systems

From: Andrew David

Date: 4/6/2010

Subject: ELFMail – What’s Working

Stay focused everyone.  By small and simple things are great things brought to pass.  Don’t forget to push hard with JV’s.  They have kept us active and we are about to leverage them for more with advice from other Piranha Members.  Don’t give up if things are slow.  Market harder!!!  Find things to get E.L.F., but don’t give up.

-Andrew David
One Stop Cleaning & Restoration

From: Beth Lack
Date: 4/6/2010
Subject: ELFMail – What’s Working

I guess that's one of the benefits of living in Phoenix... we've been extremely
busy. February & March were our best months ever in the 7 years that we've been
in business here.  We did the We Miss You 3 step letters starting in January &
we always try & send out at least 1000 pink flyers each month.  Of course, we
also haven't had the rain & flooding that most of the country has had. 

-Beth Lack
Lack's Cleaning Service

From: Jonathan Mickelson
Date: 4/6/2010
Subject: ELFMail – What’s Working

Well ELFland we just finished our day securing a 10k water damage job which is the 4th water damage job from our new yellow page ad that came out four weeks ago!  Our hard work, tenacity, patience, and persistence is paying off.

-Jonathan Mickelsen
Clean Your Carpets Inc.

From: Steve and Carol Busboom
Date: 4/7/2010

We’re pounding the pavement with a positive, upbeat presentation and a fun
little gift as a introduction or way of thanks to our clients and others
we meet… Gives them a reason to smile or laugh.   

They remember we brought some fun into their lives. It’s been a long, cold
winter here in Nebraska.  But our business has almost DOUBLED from last year,
there are Clients out there that want service work done, and they have money,
you just have to find them.

-Steve and Carol Busboom
All Care, Inc.

So there you have it!  A peek at E.L.F. – Easy, Lucrative & Fun Marketing Strategies working right now and a behind-the-scenes look at the power and genuine caring and sharing among Piranha Marketing Members on Piranha Central.

Here are the 8 E.L.F. Marketing Strategies working right now for Piranha Members:

1 – Joint Ventures
2 – Newsletters
3 – Direct Response Yellow Page Ads (with Free Recorded Consumer Awareness Messages – www.TeleCenterSignUp.com/RichCleaner)
4 – Online Social Marketing (Facebook & Twitter)
5 – Piranha’s “Classic Pink Flyer”
6 – Joe Polish’s 3 Step “You’ve Won” Letters
7 – BNI, Networking & Expert Positioning Strategies (with GIFTS! – www.JoePolish.com/LittleSomething)
8 – Direct Response Reminder or “We Miss You” Postcards & Letters (www.CarpetCleanersToolBox.com)

If you’d like to find out more about the templates and strategies mentioned… check out our Rich Cleaner Marketing Kit, our monthly Healthy Home Newsletter, and our Memberships.

Here are a couple of recent YouTube videos from Piranha Members:

Don’t hesitate to give us a call at 1-800-275-2643 with your questions (and mention this blog post for a free gift!)

Enjoy your business more & make more money! Keep it E.L.F. – Easy Lucrative & Fun!

FOLLOW JOE

FOLLOW LISA

Recently on an industry bulletin board I was reading some advice that was being given by a person describing going out and knocking on doors as “Marketing”… well cold calling and face to face selling can be called “Marketing,” but it’s manual marketing and not the type of E.L.F.™ Marketing (Easy, Lucrative & Fun™) that we teach at Piranha Marketing.

So Casey at my office happened to like what I wrote on that discussion and he wanted to post some of it here for our Blog Readers….

Keep It E.L.F.™

Joe

Here is just a small part of the Joe Polish thoughts on….

The Distinction Between Selling & Marketing

Direct Marketing is often confused with selling. Selling is what you do when you are on the phone or face to face with someone. Marketing is what you do to get someone on the phone or face to face with you. If you do your marketing right the only people that you talk to are people that are: Pre-Interested, Pre-Motivated, Pre-Qualified and Pre-Disposed to do business with you. Great marketing makes selling easy and in most cases unnecessary.

You can be the best salesperson in the world, but you are limited by the clock. Marketers don’t get dressed up in a suit and go talk to people face to face, salespeople do that. Great marketers send out sales letters that work and get response. They learn how to use powerful sales copy in all of their advertising online, in print, on TV and Radio. Great marketers “can and clone” themselves using automated marketing systems like Free Recorded Messages and well thought out referral reward programs.

Great marketers use print, video and audio to convey a message that can be listened and heard by dozens, hundreds, thousands and in some cases millions of people.

Great marketers always build and grow more successful and profitable businesses than people that are just great salespeople.

Great marketers know the value of investing in proven marketing tools that have worked for other people so they don’t waste the most valuable asset that any person really has and that’s “time.” You can always make more money; you can’t create more time unless you use automation and replication. Direct Response Marketing allows you to do this because it’s the ultimate leverage in business.

This is NOT my opinion; this is fact and truth that is supported by mountains of research and case-studies by the Direct Marketing Association.

I have spent years of my life using, developing, studying, testing and teaching the subject of Direct Marketing. I’ve brought to this industry or flat out invented the most effective marketing in the cleaning industry and I’ve got over 5000 companies worldwide to prove it.

It was Direct Response Marketing that I used to transform my cleaning business starting in 1992 and since then I’ve spent years learning, building and testing marketing in thousands of cleaning businesses. “It ain’t bragging if you done it.”

So be careful not to label “selling” as “marketing,” because it’s not marketing, it’s selling.  The only marketing that we teach and use at Piranha is Direct Response and our Unique Process at Piranha Marketing for Rich Cleaners is called E.L.F.™ Marketing!

Click here to find out more about Direct Marketing & E.L.F.™ Marketing and listen to audio excerpts from Joe’s “Piranha Marketing: The Seven Success Multiplying Factors To Dominate Any Market You Enter”  where he discusses the definition of real marketing & the difference between selling & marketing.