After more than 30 years in sales and marketing roles, I still struggle when someone asks me what is marketing? It is easier to explain what it is by looking at what it isn’t. Effective marketing is not just a slick campaign, clever ad, or single promotion. Marketing is a well thought out strategy, which brings together the 3M's: Market. Message. Media.

For marketing to be effective, these three elements must be in alignment.

Market: No matter how big you are, you cannot afford to try to sell to everyone. And even if you did have a large enough budget, the reality is some people are more likely than others to buy your product. So begin by focusing on a segment of the market. Select a profitable niche, and exceed their expectations. While every homeowner in your community may need a furnace eventually, picking a subset, a type of consumer or a particular neighborhood, allows you to concentrate your effort. Your marketing will be significantly more effective if you reach the same audience two or three times, so your message can really sink in to them.

Message: Now that you have identified your customer, what do you say to get their attention? Think about what is important to your customer, what keeps them up at night? Craft a message, which addresses their concerns, not what you want to sell. I met a financial planner who told me his customer wanted choices. I had a hard time imagining many consumers laying awake at night worrying about not having enough choices. This was an important element to him, but not his clients. What keeps them awake? Worries about retirement and college tuition. My advice to him, stop talking about choices till you have their attention.

For the HVAC contractor, the challenge is unless their systems aren’t running, your customer is not laying awake thinking about you at all. They may be thinking about allergies and fuel bills, but they are not focused on comfort. While that is the long-term benefit you deliver, it is not what prompts them to pick up the phone, so start with pain, finish with the benefit.

Media: In marketing, it is not just what you say, but where you say it. Ask yourself, where are your customers going for information? Select your media, based on the ability to reach a large concentration of your target. To do this, you have to really understand your target. While many contractors are resistant to social media, you need to be aware of the fact consumers are on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. They are using these tools to ask questions, find services, and conduct research. As you look at your 2010 strategy, it may be time to realign your media with your market.

So what about your marketing? Do you have your 3M's in alignment?

One of the most misunderstood terms in the entire trades industry is the word “growth.” The problem lies in the fact that most business owners mentally see a direct relationship between growth and profitability. The thinking is “If we do more work, we will make more money. Therefore, if we do a lot more work we will make a lot more money.” That sounds reasonable, but it’s not necessarily true.

There are three points of growth that can literally put a company out of business:

• Owner moves from the field into the office: When the owner moves from the field into the office, it is a tough transition both mentally and economically. Most owners come from a technical background and now the need arises to learn the business side of the business. That is a topic all by itself. From an economic standpoint, the owner normally replaces himself in the field, and moves to the office, when he or she has 3-5 technicians. The owner’s salary just became overhead normally requiring the companies hourly to be raised somewhere between $8.00 and $12.00/hour … just to make the same profit you made before. Few owners raise their hourly rate at all when they move from the field into the office, therefore initiating the process of going out of business.

• Gross sales reach about $1 million per year: Believe it or not, nearly 70 percent of all contractor that reach $1 million in gross sales for the first time, lose money. Now that’s frustrating. The problem lies in the fact that the company is being forced to make some significant investments in the company in order to prepare to move to the next level, but the sales are not yet sufficient to cover the additional investment. The end result? The company looses money. By the way, the same situation repeats itself at $2.5 million and $5 million as well as the $10 million marks within our company

• Rapid Growth: Any period of rapid growth will not cause minor cash flow problems, it will cause severe cash flow problems. I define rapid growth as anything above 15 percent. Now obviously there is a big difference in 15 percent of $300,000 in sales and 15 percent of $3 million in sales, but any point of rapid growth will cause severe cash flow problems in your company.

If you want to learn the “business side of your business,” you might want to check out Grandy & Associates three-day “Basic Business Boot Camp”. We have trained over 14,000 contractors how to run profitable businesses. For more information, visit www.GrandyAssoicates.com/bbb or call 800-432-7963.

What should we charge per hour? How should my financial statement be set up? Why does my P&L show a profit but there is no money in my checkbook? What do we need to do to increase profitability? These are questions most contractors ask their accountants. After all, they work with numbers all day long; therefore they must know how to run a business, right? Wrong!

Nearly all business owners turn to their accountant for help when they need advice on how to run a profitable business. The date is set and the meeting takes place. After the meeting is over the average business owner’s head is spinning with the accountant’s comments and you still have no idea what he or she just said. Nor did you gain any additional knowledge on how to run a more successful business. All you know for sure is that the meeting you just left cost you several hundred dollars.

No, you don’t necessarily have a poor accountant. The answer is deeper than that. Accountants are trained to do taxes, not how to run a business! That’s right, after years of training at the university they have a very good understanding of how to properly file your tax returns. Well-trained accountants can actually save you some money through proper tax planning. However, accountants receive no business training. We are asking someone to teach us how to run a business that has no business training. That is kind of like asking a professional baseball player how to properly maintain your furnace. Your accountant won’t be much help when it comes to answering business questions and the baseball player won’t be of much value in maintaining your furnace.

If you want to learn the “business side of your business” you might want to check out Grandy & Associates three-day “Basic Business Boot Camp”. We have trained over 14,000 contractors how to run profitable businesses. For more information, visit www.GrandyAssoicates.com/bbb.

Tom Grandy is president of Grandy & Associates.

It seems I remember the current president promising changes. We sure got ’em. Everything’s changed, and if you don’t like the way things are now, just give it a few minutes.

Since the economy generally gives people the creeps about spending money, marketing has changed because it is trying to get them to spend. The same old marketing rules do not apply as before, and yet, we see lots of old rules that should be abandoned. Here’s my list of mistakes not to make:

• No focus – This tops the list for a reason. Wait, what was I saying? Oh, right. Hard to hit a target if you’re constantly distracted. This includes spending endless time on discussion boards, allowing constant interruptions and appointments, unlimited time on e-mail, or the entrepreneurial disease of thinking every opportunity is worth pursuit — it’s not. This is why we pound goal setting into our clients’ heads and stay on them about it.

Top marketing goals should be for number of leads, number of conversions, number of new customers, repurchases from existing customers, and increasing average transaction size for the year. (All quite doable with a plan.) Likewise, commit to x new products to take on, y hours per day/week online, and z training meetings in a year, hopefully more this year than last.

• Too much money wasted on broad and eternally boring ads – This has been the year to engage customer focus, too. Our top clients’ results from likely response groups to a specific product or service have been astounding. In doing this, we’ve advised dumping the broad, generalized advertising (such as Yellow Pages) that eats too much money for too few leads. So, kill your Yellow Page budget that exceeds 25 percent of your total marketing budget, spend the savings in specificity, and watch your leads and ROI rise. Also, I hate institutional ads that have way too many purposes to ever be successful. Get rid of those.

• One-sale customers – Why have ’em? Look, it costs you nearly $200 to get the lead and do the appointment, so if the bill was under $400, you probably lost money on them. Your job is to ascend the customer to a) additional product b) frequency of visit and c) referral generation. This is done with good follow-up marketing and putting them into your customer retention program. Resales and referrals happen by intention, not luck. Focusing on this area can make your profits absolutely explode.

• Perfectionitis – Quit spending one-half your life looking into doing something, but not quite ever doing it. You delay because it’s not perfect. Newsflash: It’s never going to be perfect.

The OK marketing campaign or product launch that’s well-executed will outsell the soon-to-be-perfect one sitting on your desk every time. Results start with action. I don’t know about you, but I find it very hard to make a bank deposit based on things I’m going to do.

• Not justifying the sale (ROI) – This happens in marketing and selling. Contractors think that tossing out a low price in an ad is going to make the phone ring. Sorry. It just makes you look cheap and/or desperate. People have no idea how much your stuff is supposed to cost. Therefore, justify your price position with an ROI-based ad and presentation, such as, “The extended warranty is worth x because a compressor costs y.” Or “The 16 SEER system actually generates a 6.2 percent ROI, better than any bank will offer, plus it keeps you comfortable and increases your home’s value.”

In these times, you’d better be prepared to justify a cost — high or low — with effective, logically deductive reasoning.

• Admit mistakes, commit to get help, move on – No one is an expert in everything. If you’re not a marketing strategist or graphic designer, why are you laboring over those functions or expecting your untrained staff to do it well? Specialists are abundant and, yes, they charge money for their craft (don’t you?) but can likely save you more than they cost in results. Go online or check around.

We recently rewrote a letter for a contractor that was sent to 13,000 customers. The original generated 34 leads; ours generated 112. He paid us $4,000 for the custom letter but sold an extra $116,000 over the previous effort. Though those results are atypical, you can hire a Web designer, sales trainer, or marketing consultant who has seen your problem before and can solve it way easier than you can. This is why I hire people to tune up my furnace.

• Committing the engineer error – The gadgets and gizmos that made you get weepy at the last conference will not have the same effect on your customers. Continually adding new solutions without selling them really only adds to the problem. Commit to the new product after learning how to market and sell it to customers. Without that, who cares? If you have shelves of stuff you thought was the answer to the question nobody ever asked, maybe you should hire the guy that sold it to you.

• Failure to segment – This mistake relates directly to items 1, 2, and 3 on this list; it is that important. No one can afford to attack the full list all the time, and in this economy, it makes no sense. Then consider that 80 percent of your profit comes from 20 percent of your customers. Find the 20 percent and clone them.

Segment your database by recentness, frequency, transaction size, product interest, lead type, and which ad generated the lead. In this way, you strategically engineer results from your marketing in response clusters. Aim, sell, profit, and repeat. The smartest, most successful clients we have make a nice living off segmentation.

• Customer service that isn’t – This hardly needs explanation. Customers are attracted to good service, repelled by the awful norm. Bad stories are oft repeated and silently cost you thousands, maybe tens of thousands. Good service standouts are rare, lauded, referred, and are remarkably insensitive to price. Thus, an investment in customer service can repay you massively. Consider customer service part of your company experience that flows from the ad, to the phone, to the visit, to the follow-up. Treat customer service as it doesn’t matter, and customers will feel the same way about you.

• No customer retention program – This one area touches about seven items on this list. Contractors who can’t get to the next level in sales often find that by installing a customer retention program, it “magically” happens. To me, the gold of your business is already in your business, buried in the customer list waiting to be mined.

Customer retention only costs you about 8-12 percent of your marketing budget, yet generates a high ROI by repeat purchases, less negotiation, faster purchases, more referrals, and far greater willingness to buy your recurring revenue maintenance agreement.

If you don’t actively and intentionally keep customers, why should they stay? It’s not their job to remember you; it’s your job to be remembered. Pursue them more with follow-up calls, postcard reminders, newsletters, and advance sales notices. Easily done, yet also easily not done. Make a goal in 2010 to keep every customer for life.

Avoid these common marketing mistakes for 2010, and you can prosper way beyond those who found out too late that the rules have changed. Here’s hoping that this year is your best and most profitable year ever.

A Jumpstart to Your New Year: NEWS readers can grab the “HVAC Marketing Jumpstart Kit” which includes seven reports, case study research results, CDs, and hottest strategies to help take your sales to the next level at www.hudsonink.com/jumpstart.aspx. But you need to hurry because this page can only be kept open for a limited time.

Adams Hudson is president of Hudson Ink, a creative marketing firm for contractors. Readers can apply to win a free marketing seminar for their group by sending a polite request to freeseminar@hudsonink.com. Go to www.hudsonink.com for more information and to grab Hudson’s free ezine, the Contractor Sales and Marketing Insider.

Contractor marketing expert Adams Hudson recognizes value. For years, this popular speaker and coach has preached “value-based marketing” to contractors through his website, live events, and numerous publications.

His message hit a nerve, resulting in commensurate speaking fees edging $10,000 a day. Even with a bold guarantee of value gained, in 10 years he’s been asked to refund exactly one contractor out of 4,000 who’ve attended. “He told me he was in a bad mood that day” laughed Hudson, “but I refunded him anyway.” Still not a bad record.

Yet something has been bothering him. “In this economy, the people who need this marketing message the most can’t afford it right now. Sort of like being sick, but the sure cure medicine is too expensive to get well.”

This is where that changes.

Hudson is offering 3 seminars in Spring 2010, free of charge. This means there is no speaking fee whatsoever to the event host, and they can charge attendees whatever they want, or nothing. He says the “… information and strategies are the exact same as the paid-fee seminars, no change. All I ask is travel fees, and I fly coach!” Resuming seriousness, “Even the take-aways, stacks of handouts, and open-floor Q&A are the same. We just felt like it was time to do this, and fortunately we can.”

So what do attendees learn at one of his “High Performance Marketing Seminars? A brief synopsis includes:

• How to generate maximum leads in minimum time, at a lower cost per lead.

• Can you fire the Yellow Pages and live to tell about it?

• Why your Website is NOT generating the results you hoped: five very fixable cures.

• The exact ads that have generated triple digit leads for contractors across the United States.

• How much is too much? What to spend in different media all year long, for maximum results. Attendees get a free Marketing Plan calculator at the seminar.

• The Number 1 Costliest Marketing Mistake in all of contracting. He focuses on this toward the end, since it is THE strategy that has given his most successful contractors record years, even during the current economy.

And that’s only a start. Hudson even guarantees results from the seminar. So if your group is planning a Spring Dealer Meeting or Member Event, and are interested in a free speaker … .

How to Get Chosen for a Free Marketing Seminar for your group:

Simply submit to FreeSeminar@hudsonink.com or fax to 1-334-262-1115. Include your name, company name, best month for seminar, size of invitation list, and “Why” you’d like to win. Hudson Ink will review all submissions. Deadline for submissions is January 21, 2010.

My furnace is just so insensitive. It doesn’t care at all about my economic needs. Here we are on the eve of the vast holiday season, where fun, frivolity, and the collective shooing of over-served relatives will soon be heard throughout the land. This extra in-home traffic, increased system usage, and changing of the seasons will equate to more in-home service calls for the 873rd year in a row. Those are givens that can be loosely translated as get ready or get left behind.

Another given for this time of year is increased competition for what I call share of wallet. In essence, mail, email, and other media will begin pounding us to cough up money to buy things — shiny, expensive, decorative, redundant things. (Author’s Marital Tip of the Month: If you’re shopping for a female, make sure your gifts are not terribly useful, lest you want this to be your winter of discontent.)

With this, the market need for in-home service will increase. Good. The market competition is high, yet attraction for service need is fairly low. Not so good. Now if your subconscious is saying, “What about the recession,” tell your subconscious to shut up and re-read the headline.

Three minor recessionary points in your favor: People are more prone to pay for needs than wants. (Strange marketing and sales tip: Your job is to make them want the needs.) Second, since they’re being urged to spend more in this season than others, that message can only help your cause. Third, your direct competition has probably pulled back on marketing, even though the market demand is about to increase.

The marketing answer to all this holiday commotion is to cleverly penetrate competitive forces with sanely-budgeted differentiation.

This is a departure from the marketing myopia that causes many to mimic retailers’ holiday sales pitches. If you advertise a giant holiday sale, please ask yourself how many customers really want to give blower motors to their loved ones.

In fact, it is pointless for a contractor to send sales messages between Dec. 10 and Jan. 12. Not only will your efforts most likely wind up discarded, but you will also earn a spot on the list of insensitive hawkers.

What marketing messages work best during the holidays?

• Rebates, cash, tax incentives. These are especially effective in the current economy. Use them extensively from November through January. Focus heavily on either “Cash Back for the Holidays” rebates and/or the tax incentive for replacements, urging compliance for this year’s tax credit. (Want an audio CD on how to market tax credits? See end.)

• Seasonally-effective guarantees. Many people put off having contractors come into their decorated homes and adding to the general seasonal discord. Thus, offer “We’ll leave your home as clean or cleaner than we found it or we’ll pay you $100 cash.” This strategy stands out and is very effective. Leads will greatly outpace your unwarranted concern that homeowners will take advantage. (We have seven other guarantees we recommend that stand out, space here restricts. Call if you get stuck.)

• Creative discounts. Before the season hits hard, offer discounts that support savings towards holiday cash needs. Tie the savings you’re offering into helping pay for other gifts, such as “How to Turn This Postcard into an iPod.” That one is new for us this year, but clients have successfully used variations on it for years. We’ve also done well with “Have A Repair Free Holiday,” which introduces the maintenance agreement program.

• Publicity and charitable giving. Call your local Habitat for Humanity (our newest charitable donation partner) and inquire about upcoming participatory projects. Alternatively, call your television news for the same purpose; telling either that you’d like to get involved. If you’re granted airtime, make sure of three things: Thank the other volunteers; encourage other service businesses and individuals to help; and wear company attire with a company truck nearby. Good-heart marketing is real; people are naturally attracted to support those who support others.

• Send thanks. If you can only do one of these, do this one. Every year I urge contractors to do this. To be a guaranteed standout, send a unique holiday card — not the same cartoony junk everybody’s sick of — with a nice, thankful message or a little humor. Studies show that stability and humor have risen in response ranks this year. It is a good idea to follow this trend.

When working on implementing your holiday message strategy, try some of these:

• Forget the envelope. Save money and use a self-mailer card. Use the money you would’ve thrown away on sending more cards.

• Send first class. Holiday stamp preferred. This way you scrub your list, which should be done twice a year. This is among the cheapest methods.

• A clever twist. Last year, Yelverton’s Electric used our cards but asked about including a coupon, which almost made me violent. However, he’s so smart it gave me an idea. We termed the coupon as a gift certificate and he sold $17,460 of service in January from card keepers. Who said I couldn’t learn?

• Choose the right image. I beg you, please do not show Santa or a snowman trying to get warm. Kids, animals, happy scenes, and unique scenes — supported by uniquely warm messages — deliver a better, higher-image message.

• Video cards. In addition to your holiday card, you can make a short video from your company to post on YouTube. Sing a holiday song no matter how poorly, or just thank customers for being your customers. If it’s especially heartwarming or funny, you can bet that the link will get forwarded well beyond your customer base. Put the link to this video in your email signature and in your holiday cards for more exposure.

• Share and share alike. Look, for many contractors — and well, everyone else — this has been a tough year. Why not share the expense of holiday marketing by using a cross-promotion with a non-competitor, like a plumber, a restaurant, or movie theater? In exchange for discounted services, tickets, or free appetizers, include these with your holiday mailing.

Likewise, the restaurant can give out your holiday cards (with a clever sales twist as mentioned above) with each meal ticket. It’s a win-win at almost no cost to either of you. Plus it’s an awesome way to gain access to a valuable list, adding to your own.

Bottom Line: The holidays are full of opportunities to get out front and stay there. Don’t waste this built-in opportunity to generate leads, goodwill, and future sales. I promise you, if you retreat during the holidays, you’ll have more “Silent Nights” than you ever wanted. Get bold, get creative, have fun, and join the furnaces who have thankfully forgotten there’s a recession. Maybe we should learn from them.

Are you thinking about relocating someone you'd like to hire or have you considered it in the past? Well don't ... at least not yet.

Why wait for 2-3 months for them to get moved and start working for you? Then, what if it doesn't work out? What if they aren't what they say they are? Heck, what if they move and they don't like working for you?

Well, there's a way for you to get them to start working within 1-2 weeks without them actually moving. You get to try them and they get to try you.

Have you ever heard of "Per Diem"?

Well, Per Diem is the maximum daily rate that you can pay someone "TAX FREE" to help offset any additional living expenses while they are working in a location other than where their primary residence is. You can look at your areas daily Per Diem rate by going to www.gsa.gov/Portal/gsa/ep/contentView.do?contentType=GSA_BASIC&contentId=17943. Per Diem rates can vary based on the time of year in certain metropolitan areas or it can be a fixed daily rate all year long. (see the rate schedule for details on your area)

For example, we’re located in the Dallas area. According to the 2009 rates, we can pay someone up to $174/day in tax free income to help them offset their living expenses. That's $115/day for Lodging + $59/day for M & IE (Meals and Incidentals) for a total of $174/day.

That's $870/week (5 day work week) in Tax Free income that you can legally pay them ... $3,480/month; money that they don't have to claim on their taxes as income, saving them 20% — 35% depending upon their tax bracket. That's equal to paying them $5,000/mo of taxable income. Plus, it saves you the matching taxes of 7.5% +/-, which would be $375/mo based on the $5,000/mo if it were taxable income.

Now, you don't have to pay them that much, but you can. The fact is; you do have to pay them something reasonable as “taxable income”, but you can offset that by the Per Diem, which will help everyone. Sure it's still going to cost you a little more per hour to have this person working for you then it would if you hired a local guy, put it's well worth it if they work out long-term.

You only have to pay the Per Diem for as long as they are still working for you. If they quit or you fire them, you're done. Heck, for someone to stay in an extended stay hotel or furnished apartment would cost between $600 and $800/mo. ($30 - $40/day (based on a 5 day work week)) and Meals would be about $25/day +/-. So, in reality, you could get by with paying someone an extra $65/day in Per Diem to cover all their additional living expenses. That's only $325/week.

If it works out...then they can eventually move and everyone lives happily ever after. If it doesn't work out, they go back home without risking a thing. I think that you can continue to pay someone Per Diem for up to 18 months, but you should definitely check with your payroll company or accountant to get all the facts straight before you start paying Per Diem to anyone.

Mike Mayberry is the president of HVAC Agent, www.hvacagent.com.

What does your customer hear when they call your company and are put on hold? If it’s music, do all your customers like it? If there is nothing, just silence, well that is less than exciting. Perhaps you hook them into your local radio station. Wow, watch out for this one. You have no idea what they are listening to including advertisements from your competition. There is a better way.

Consider installing a professional on-hold system. You can get the equipment, have the content professionally written and recorded, and have the music of your choice in the background for about $450 a year. A professional system tells the caller you are a professional company, even if you are a one-man operation. Be sure your script includes a summary of what you offer. Perhaps your message is about the value of an Annual Maintenance Agreement.

I don’t care if the phone hasn’t rung for 3 hours, put the caller on hold for about 15 seconds, no more. You know what they are listening to. Then pick up the phone, apologize for having to put them on hold, and ask them something like “Hello Mr./Mrs. Jones. Thanks you for calling. I am sorry you were put on hold. By the way, did you know we offer annual maintenance agreements for your equipment?” You know what the customer just heard so off you go, perhaps to the sale of a maintenance agreement.

This, and other tips, are shared during our three-day “Basic Business Boot Camp”. For more information click http://www.grandyassociates.com/bbb

Tom Grandy is president of Grandy & Associates.

What do you do when you don’t know for sure what to do? Jacki Bradbury-Guerrero, owner of Coastal Comfort Heating & Air in Ventura, Calif., is in one of those areas that, like many, has been hit hard during this economic downturn. Jacki is a leader who believes in daring to take action and not simply repeating more of the same action even though she and her team had a track record of proven success.

Jacki and her son Todd began calling on some prospective customers as a team. And, what a great idea that turned out to be — customers were very pleased. Not only did they close more sales, Jacki and Todd enjoyed presenting together.

So where did Jacki get this idea? She lives by her favorite quote, "It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, It is because we do not dare that they are difficult." – Seneca

Jacki dared to try this approach when she remembered she had sent her sons, Todd and Jason, on sales calls together in slower times when their company was new. She dared to borrow from that successful sales strategy and everyone is enjoying the benefits including very happy customers. So, what new ideas or old ideas have you dared to try?  It’s time to roll ‘em out! 

Sharon is a consultant who specializes in selling to women and couples. You can contact her at Sharon@r2assoc.com.

The law of money, simply stated, says “Any significant sized budget (personal or business) will absorb every dollar put in it.” But the bottom line is we spend what we have available. Are you tired of working hard but having nothing to show for it other than a weekly salary?

Try this. Go to the person that handles the checkbook. Instruct them to right a check for “x” number of dollars each week, perhaps on Tuesday. It might be $50 a week or a couple hundred dollars, you pick the number. Once they right the check instruct them to deposit it in your personal savings account or mutual fund. The law of money says everything in your checkbook will be spent but it also says “Somehow you will make it no matter what’s in your checkbook.” Tell the person in the office not to look at the company cash flow and not to ask you about it each week — just do it!

If you invested $100 a week in a mutual fund that historically earns 12 percent (I said historically, not this year in this economy) in five years you would have nearly $35,000 and within 10 years the figure would growth to nearly $100,000. You will never miss the $100 a week and it’s a lot of fun to watch it grow! Try it and then give me a call in a few years.

This, and other tips, are shared during our three-day “Basic Business Boot Camp”. For more information, click http://www.GrandyAssociates.com/bbb 

Tom Grandy is president of Grandy & Associates.

I hate it. We all hate it.

E-mail has turned into the digital telemarketer during dinner. It’s too much, too often, and — in my lowly estimation — too cheap. I wish they’d charge for it so the spammers, slammers, and scammers could just go bother someone else.

In the meantime, you and I nearly dread the return from a vacation, finding inboxes crammed with promised millions, Viagra offers, male “enhancements” and some scandalous promise from the marketing world. (Yes, probably even me on occasion.)

Many of you have e-zines for clients who visit your Website. Yahoo! Great move, that’s an awesome babystep toward the relationship. But it cannot stop there, or in fact, it WILL stop there … then retreat.

MarketingSherpa — an online marketing training company — conducted a study of 4,000 e-mail/e-zine publishers and found some startling news about e-mail backlash. If you ONLY use e-mail as a customer contact, they found that “credibility and readership” were most at risk. Seems those might be important.

Shocker No. 2: They found many online, solely digital based businesses “finally” resorted to postal mail to drive customers to portal and commerce sites with resounding results. One seminar company ($40 million in sales) that teaches how to make money on the internet found its biggest response to seminar attendance was from — gulp — postal mail.

Re-read the first 3 sentences of this article. Now read the rest of this entry and the strategies you should consider now to grab your customer’s attention while your competition is looking for the “cheap” way to drive them to boredom….

Bottom Line: Postal mail is back, in a big way.

Almost immediately, we launched a paper and ink newsletter mailed to our top clients (CRC and MegaMarketer members receive The Contractor MegaMarketer every month.) We’ve been bugging you about this trend, feeling it would only get worse. We were half right.

It got worse, but for two different reasons: distraction and interruption.

Whereas postal mail can be read at leisure, and other media can be chosen or not, e-mail continues to relentlessly bling into place, ever heightening the stack of “unopened” mail, each begging for attention … while some legitimate e-mail lands in the SPAM folder for no discernable reason. (Case in point: I’m doing a product exchange with a man I’ve communicated with for a couple months; today, without warning I see his proposal is in my SPAM folder ... and has been for 2 weeks. Why? He had a dollar sign in his e-mail.)

I was sure I was on the “other side” of the age group attempting to form a “Let’s Kill the Sender of the Next E-mail I Didn’t Request” party. But no, not by a rather long shot. And the “target” audience that contractors are after hate e-mail more than you do!

So, here’s where I admit I was half-wrong, twice in one article. Quoted from Vertis Communications study on readership habits and advertising response:

“Despite the rise of Website, e-mail, and other electronically based advertisements, printed direct-mail marketing pieces are still widely read, especially by women ages 25 to 44.

"Eighty-five percent of women ages 25 to 44 (with e-mail accounts) said they read printed direct-mail pieces compared to just 53 percent who read e-mail advertisements. The percentage of young women who read e-mail advertisements has not changed from 2005, when 54 percent indicated they viewed this type of marketing. Numbers for women 45-65 were 94 percent and 45 percent, increasing the e-mail to postal gap markedly.”

Double oops. Your “target” group prefers postal mail, and e-mail readership hasn’t gone up at all in 3 years. (Remember, the prediction was that the U.S. Post Office would be nearly shut down by now!)

After a year of our print plus e-mail versions, results have been astounding. We “point” from one to the other, engaging people at the level they prefer. Likewise, we point from e-mail to web, web to phone, and mail to both. E-mail alone could never accomplish this. Also.…

Ever try finding that e-mail you so enjoyed 4 months ago? Sure, I can print it out and save it, but who does? But with “real” mail, I can keep up with it in one location quite handily. Mark it up, dog ear, write on it, rip a coupon and put it in my wallet.

Your strategy in a limping economy —

• Build a huge, impenetrable fence around your customer base starting yesterday using a variety of media. Primary means is direct mail. Secondary means is Telephone (as thank you to every service visit, follow up to request referrals). Third means is e-mail identified clearly as from you and NOT a solicitation.

• Postal mail contact frequency per customer: 4-12 times per year with at least 4 contacts as “soft sell” and/or educational pieces (newsletters, reminders, or other). Two to four more can be “celebratory” (birthday, anniversary, holiday, etc.) The remainder direct response offers.

• IN ADDITION to above, you can e-mail up to twice as often (since delivery rates are so pathetic) making sure every contact is run through a SPAM filter. More trigger words are added daily: http://hudsonink.com/marketing_ektid1506.aspx

Remember, your credibility is contained in how you contact your customers. If YOU ONLY communicate in a way that’s cheap and grossly overused, don’t be surprised if you’re “associated” thereby. Combine your contact methods. Let postal mail “drive” customers to the phone and to your Website; pound your name into their recall for their friends and neighbors.