Qualified Remodeler Magazine

JUN 2015

Qualified Remodeler helps independent remodeling firms to survive, become more professional and more profitable by providing must-have business information, namely best business practices, new product information and timely design ideas.

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¡ ¡ Most people read newsletters with their guard down, making them quite efective because they aren't perceived as being just another sales solicitation. ¡ ¡ Your newsletter keeps your company's name top of mind. With each passing month you don't communicate with clients, you risk them forgetting who you are and the solu- tions you ofer. Your newsletter minimizes that risk. ¡ ¡ Your newsletter lets you more efectively catch clients when they — or a friend or family member — have a need for your product or service. ¡ ¡ Your newsletter gives you the opportunity to introduce new products in a no-pressure, nonaggressive way. ¡ ¡ Your newsletter provides a vehicle to edu- cate and entertain your customers. Te bottom line is a good newsletter program is really designed to make your business less dependent on one-time, new transactions (which are the most expensive to make) and more about developing rela- tionships with people who have trusted you in the past. It's ultimately about nurturing and caring for your customers, so they will nurture and care for you in return. | you provide, chances are good they will forget about you, your business and even the products and services you sell. Te one constant in every business is the need for staying in touch with customers. In fact, in almost every business (likely including yours), there are tens of thousands — maybe hundreds of thousands — of dollars in un- tapped opportunities inside your fle cabinets. B2B or B2C doesn't matter. Your product or service doesn't matter. If you are serious about long-term business success and maximum proftability, you must take a small piece of your marketing budget to consistently stay in touch with your past and current customers. So, what's the best way to do that? By far the best way I have found is with a printed and mailed company newsletter. A printed company newsletter is one of the best ways to maintain and nurture an ongoing relationship with your customers. (Yes, print- ed and sent to real mailboxes. Email newslet- ters have their place, but only as a complement to print newsletters, never a substitution.) If executed properly, your company news- letter can be a powerful marketing tool that, not only will boost your sales and profts, but also elevates your brand awareness and brand equity with the people that matter most. (To learn more about how to create an efective and proftable company newsletter you can go to: tiny.cc/qn6syx.) WHEN DONE RIGHT, there are a number of reasons why newsletters must be an essen- tial part of your marketing mix. ¡ ¡ Te "magic" of newsletters is they are per- ceived as a publication (not junk mail).For this reason, they tend to stay in the home longer (unlike fyers or direct mail promo- tions which often end up in the garbage), get passed along and read by multiple people. ne of the biggest mistakes many business owners make is spending all of their time, energy and re- sources chasing after the next new customer to get the next transaction without giving much time, efort or resources to maxi- mizing each customer's proft value by keeping them coming back and sending their friends. I'll be the frst to admit I've been guilty of this. In one of my home improvement businesses throughout a three-year period, I spent more than $1 million in advertising to get new customers. Sure, it worked, and we acquired a lot of new customers but all we cared about was how many transactions we were completing each week. We didn't consider what our customers could or would be worth over the long haul; we only looked at what they were worth that minute, week or month. I knew better but still did it, and I know now I paid the price in lost profts and lost business value. My justi- fcation for it was it was working at the time. THE PROBLEM with this thinking is the real value and proft potential of your business is not just in the one-time transaction with new customers, but in the quality of the rela- tionship your business builds and maintains with every customer. So many business owners mistakenly believe once someone buys their product or service, they are now somehow magically loyal to their business, will return every time they need their product or service, or will recom- mend them when the opportunity presents itself. Tis couldn't be further from the truth. Unless you do something to nurture and protect that relationship, to continually keep you and your business top of mind, to re- inforce your relationship, and to remind them of your existence and the solutions Use Newsletters as a Tool to Multiply Customers By Brian Kaskavalciyan O BRIAN KASKAVALCIYAN is a marketing strategist and an expert on relationship marketing in the home improvement industry. From start-ups to $50 million enterprises, his company g|Four Marketing Group — gFourMarketing.com — works with hundreds of contractors each year in the areas of lead generation and profit growth. 12 June 2015 QR QualifiedRemodeler.com | ForResidentialPros.com PROFITS: Marketing

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