International Door & Operator Industry

JAN-FEB 2013

Garage door industry magazine for garage door dealers, garage door manufacturers, garage door distributors, garage door installers, loading docks, garage door operators and openers, gates, and tools for the door industry.

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SALES&MARKETING; (continued from page 30) Because yellow pages advertising had helped the business flourish for many years, there was a real apprehension about making changes. Like the homeowner who thought that repairing their own overhead door would be easy and smashes a thumb on tensioned spring, there are some things that are harder than they seem and that you need to do right the first time. Town & Country wanted unbiased, expert advice to help improve their bottom line. Working with market research firm Directory Assistants (DAI), the company began to analyze what was spent, where and why. They also needed to know how consumers connect with local businesses and how best to reach their potential customers. The goal was to lower the overall marketing costs, lower the cost-per-lead and increase the marketing reach and media. The action steps included… • Survey the field. DAI began with a survey of over 2,000 local residents and hundreds of Town & Country's customers. This information, combined with data from dozens of other overhead door companies across the country, helped determine how and where consumers were shopping for overhead door companies. • Leverage customer comments. Word-of-mouth, referrals and repeat business from satisfied clients made up the largest sources of new customers. Online reviews and feedback from past clients – via sites like Google, Yelp, Angie's List and the BBB–was also an important factor for prospective customers. To capitalize on this, DAI created a system to identify satisfied customers and made it easy for them to share their comments online. • Revisit yellow pages with an effective plan. Despite the high costs, yellow pages surfaced as a leading source of new customers. However, the higher cost-per-lead meant that there was less profit in most yellow pagesourced jobs. What was necessary was to lower the cost per acquired lead, without impacting the number of leads produced. • Untangle the yellow pages maze. Part of the challenge was to develop an efficient and effective plan for the multiple phone directories and overlapping service areas. Although yellow page sales reps had said in the past that any attempt to reduce the expense was "going to cost more than the great deal" currently offered, that turned out not to be true. By properly selecting the right publishers, books, headings and ad sizes, a more successful and less expensive program was implemented. • Tracking the source delivers a payoff. By providing unique phone numbers for each media channel and ad, the agency made it possible for Claude to identify which areas were most productive and to eliminate those which were not. (Tracking discovered that one of area, costing over $70,000, produced less than 10% of the total calls.) Measuring YP Results esults "At first I was cautious about changing anything but the he more they showed me, the he more sense it all made," Claude admitted. Overall, more than $120,000 was shaved from om the annual yellow page charges. Even better, by focusing on how consumers were shopping in the ng phone books, Town & Country and ountry Directory Assistants Inc. the number of leads produced increased by sed approximately 30 percent, while the nt, cost-per-lead dropped by 60 percent. y "These results make a huge impact our business," Claude said. "I traveled d. from Michigan to Connecticut on my cticut own dime to check out their operation heir and to thank the DAI staff personally for f what they've done for us. I'm very impressed by the whole operation." In fact, eration." the changes continued in other areas as well. Website visitors and prospects. d Although online leads for Town & Country or had started to increase, it wasn't clear how many were coming from the website or how they m had found the Town & Country website. A local Internet marketing specialist, Chris Chen developed geo targeted geo-targeted ris Chen, online marketing campaigns. The cost-per-lead for the online advertising ended up being about 80 percent less expensive than the cost-per-lead from traditional sources. Coupons were not cost-effective. Using coupons attracted price shopper prospects who only wanted the lowest possible rate. This wasn't a good fit for the high level of service and support that Town & Country differentiated itself with in the marketplace. Social Media needed a plan. Town & Country began with a basic Facebook page, but this project stalled because there was no internal staff to focus on it, and nor was there any clear social media plan. DAI created an engagement plan to increase the Fans and Likes as well as create content based on the comments of satisfied customers. Online visibility and credibility. Since more and more consumers were shopping online, an evaluation was done on the overall Internet visibility of the business and more than two-dozen key sites were found to have incorrect or incomplete business information about Town & Country. To fix this, DAI created and updated profiles for Town & Country on sites like Google, Yahoo, Yelp, CitySearch, YP.Com and others. Continued on page 34 V O L U M E 4 6 I S S U E 1 2 0 1 3 33

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