There are five great reasons to advertise: 1) To reach new customers; 2) To keep your name before current customers; 3) Because it pays over the long term; 4) To generate traffic; and 5) To increase sales and profits. A great way to maximize sales and profits is to complement your advertising with referral marketing.

The Road to Success Lennox dealer meetings are part business seminar and part pep rally by design, said Jay Gidick, vice president of merchandising and national accounts. “We’re trying to make these meetings entertaining for dealers, and we think it’s working.”

While service marketers are paddling diligently to stay ahead of the changes in online marketing, a new wave is about to come crashing in. Those who see it coming and act on it quickly will ride it to the top and leave the competition in their wake.

Service Experts announced that it is helping consumers save energy by offering a new program, allowing them to upgrade old, inefficient heating and air conditioning systems for as low as $99 per month. With this program, homeowners can purchase a new Lennox® high-efficiency system to replace their older HVAC equipment.

The last article in this series discussed different survey options that you might employ to collect results. While it’s important that you choose one, it’s also important that you realize each possesses pros and cons. If you have your technicians distribute surveys, some techs may attempt to lobby homeowners for better scores.

It only takes a visionary imagination and an inexpensive hand-held video camera to become a YouTube sensation. While videos on YouTube can become overnight hits with good marketing and originality, some businesses are choosing to market themselves by posting videos both on YouTube and on their own websites.

It’s another year and it will soon be time again for more of the hustle and bustle of contractor shows. It’s time to shake hands, meet new business prospects and - most importantly - sell, sell, sell. If you’re a contractor who plans on going to a local or regional home and garden show in order to round up some new business, be sure to take maximum advantage of your time at the show.

Mistakes are powerful lesson builders. And nowhere is this more evident than in e-mail marketing. E-mail marketing inherently brings mistakes. That’s because it’s free and everyone who can push “send” can use it. Usually, the more difficult or expensive your marketing media is, the greater the research and testing you put behind it.

During the winter months, Dan Hagenhoff, regional manager for Goodman Sales and Distribution, typically hosts numerous dealer meetings. This year got off to a bang as regional staff and personnel from the Goodman Global Group corporate offices were on hand to introduce new Goodman and Amana brand products, sales support programs, and to meet, greet, retain, and recruit HVAC dealers.

In the first column in this series, “Customers and True-Blue Customers” (Jan. 17), we identified that the most important number that matters is the number of repeat customers you’ve established. In this column, we’re going to take a lesson from elementary school and apply it to retaining customers.