Marketing Your Service To Commercial Customers: How Is That Different From Marketing Your Residential Service?

CROSS CONCEPTS SERIES: In our 4th installment, we will learn how to identify your commercial market, and where to find solid commercial customers who will help you grow your business. This series explores how to successfully manage and grow residential and commercial segments of our industry at the same time.

Where to look for customers? Do I spend money on newspaper advertising? Radio? TV? What about my web site? How much money do I put into all of this and which one will get me the most customers? These questions can't be answered simply. Research, planning, investigating and in the end, results are what will determine where you will spend marketing and advertising dollars.

Here's a Tip: Market your company to the places your customers go. Commercial customers will attend and frequent business-oriented events (b2b) such a charity outings, chamber functions, grand openings and other civic activities that bring out movers and shakers in the community. THIS is where you want to be to develop relationships and get to know business people in your market area. The more active you become, the more business people (potential commercial customers) will think of you for their contract cleaning service. The more business people who know you, the better opportunity you have to submit commercial cleaning quotes.

The same theory applies to residential customers. Your REFERRAL MACHINE can be a nail salon, a hair dresser, a personal trainer, a dog groomer, a massage therapist, or a charity. THESE are the people you will want to develop ongoing relationships with to help promote your residential business. This is where your customer goes! The people in these occupations come into contact everyday with your potential customer (b2c)! NEWSPAPER AND YELLOW PAGES. What about these? Everyone's experience with print media is different and while some have great success with print advertising, others do not. Some companies get 90% of their calls from the yellow pages, others get 20%. Every market will produce different results. To experiment with print and radio/tv can be expensive and may bring disappointing results. It may however, be just the vehicle to kick start your business.

Here's an Action Plan:

1. Meet with representatives from all forms of print advertising to get a breakdown of the best programs they have available. Do some negotiating here. They want your business too.

2. Experiment with the lowest cost program at first.

3. Test the results to see if you are getting a good ROI (return on your investment.) Keep a simple chart to track which form of media brings the most calls.

4. Don't commit to anything long term.

5. If it doesn't bring results, drop it!

NETWORKING in the community is one of the easiest and most cost effective ways to meet potential commercial customers. It is at networking events that business people spend time promoting their own businesses. Meet and greets, chamber after hours, charity and non-profit outings are all ways to make business connections that can lead to bidding opportunities. A simple, low cost way for great exposure is to watch for charity golf outings or other events that you can sponsor. A Tee sign for a golf tournament can be as little as $100 and there can be hundreds of business people who see that sign in a single day. This is a great image builder for your company as well.

WEB PRESENCE is expected by business today. Having a web site creates an easy way for potential customers to gather information about your company. Web sites don't have to cost a lot of money. You might contact web design students for help constructing and launching a web site for very little expense.

To Recap:

1. Market to the places your potential customers frequent. Business to Business (B2B) or Business to Consumer (B2C).

2. Identify your REFERRAL MACHINE and develop those relationships.

3. When experimenting with new forms of media get the cost down and the time short until you know that this will work for you.

4. Web presence is imperative to attracting commercial customers. Businesses expect to find you on the web. If you don't have a web site, it's time to create one.

5. Think about maximizing your exposure by getting involved with non-profit organizations. There is great publicity available here and involvement enhances your community minded image.

Focus your energies and resources on the target markets that you have determined fit your company's profile and maximize your REFERRAL MACHINES!

Watch for the next in the series on "How to Break Out of the Janitorial Stereotype?" Is your professional image where it should be to gain more respect from your prospects?

Sharon L. Cowan is the former President and CEO of a multimillion dollar regional commercial and residential cleaning company. She has a passion for helping fellow business owners reach their potential and realize their dreams. Sharon is a popular speaker and workshop leader. She has been a guest speaker and seminar leader for BSCAI and ARCSI and twice won marketing awards from the BSCAI. Sharon holds workshops throughout the country teaching cleaning business owners how to maximize profits and grow their businesses. Sharon can be reached at 772-563-7320 or www.cleaningbusinessconsultinggroup.com