HVAC Marketing, Using the Telephone

by: Michael Glover - Filed under: Marketing

E-mail and direct mail are essential tools in the HVAC Marketing arsenal.  Using the telephone for marketing  should also be a tool used on a regular basis.  Many people communicate best by voice. Use every excuse you can think of to talk to your customer.

Outbound Telephone Marketing

  • In most states you can call consumers that you
    have done business with in the past.  Check
    your state laws.
  • You can also call consumers who have not
    enrolled in the no-call-list
  • You can usually call businesses
  • Call and confirm service calls before
    dispatching the tech.  Set up a service
    agreement sale by asking if they qualify for your 15% discount?
  • Make a happy call after every visit to make sure
    you have a happy customer
  • Follow direct mail with a phone call and ask the
    customer if they have any questions
  • Ask customers if they want a filter change
    reminder via phone
  • Conduct telephone surveys

Inbound Telephone Marketing

  • Answer the phone with a cheerful greeting.  “It’s a wonderful day at myAcCompany, how can
    we help you?”
  • Ask curiosity questions to get the customer
    involved.  “Do you qualify for our 15%
    discount?”  When the ask how to qualify,
    you explain your service agreement program
  • Have a live person answer the phone
  • Never let the phone ring more than twice
  • Everyone answers the phone, even the owner
  • No one gets their calls screened.  If you don’t want to talk, politely excuse
    yourself
  • Ask all customers if they are happy with their
    electric bill.  Present benefits of
    energy efficient product or service.
  • Design phone scripts for all possible questions
    and have them available in a binder at every desk.
  • Recruit a secret shopper and listen-in when they
    call your company and ask questions.
  • Use a message on hold.

Don’t participate in a slow economy; turn on your HVAC
Marketing.

HVAC Marketing in a Down Economy, Part 1

by: Michael Glover - Filed under: Marketing

Do you remember your high school sports coach saying, “when things get tough, the tough get going”? That was good advice. When things get tough in the economy, make the mental decision not to participate. Redouble your efforts. If a recession is a 10% decline in business, double your efforts to make up the 10% plus growth of 10%.

This series of posts will suggest no-cost or low-cost marketing to help grow your business.

Direct mail is the old reliable marketing technique for HVAC Marketing. Direct mail activity has declined in the past year with many businesses moving their marketing to the Internet. This provides less competition and more opportunity in direct mail.

Make sure you implement your direct mail program using the proven methods suggested in our postcard marketing article. Track your results and if you do decide to experiment, test the trial against the traditional method.

We recommend marketing single HVAC tune-ups and having your tech convert the tune-up to a HVAC service agreement or HVAC replacement lead.

Good luck with your HVAC marketing and growing your business.

HVAC Marketing, Direct Mail or Postcards

by: Michael Glover - Filed under: Marketing

Direct mail for HVAC Marketing works. It has worked as far back as I can remember. If you tried it and it didn’t work, you quit too soon or your expectations were not realistic.

Who to Mail To
Mail to prospects that are just like your existing customers. Are they homeowners, what income level, Married/single, 10 year old homes, 20 year old homes, new homes? Get professional help from a list company if you are not sure.

Test
Test your HVAC Marketing mailing with 1000 to 5000 pieces. Measure the response and decide to mail higher quantities or retest. Multiple mailings, 3 minimum, are recommended since it takes multiple impressions to reach some potential customers. Mail to the same prospect a minimum of three times and test the results (over time) of additional mailings.

Response Rate
Measure the results of your test or mailing based on return on investment. Response numbers will vary greatly based on the level of competition, time of year, your message, etc, etc, etc. Determine what a new customer is worth and how much you can afford in marketing. A new customer should be worth $500 to $1000 per year in sales. If you are making 10% to 20% on sales you can afford $50 to $200 in new customer acquisition cost, per new customer. This is assuming your goal is to grow your company.

Taking the Calls
Make sure your CSR or call taker is well trained. This person should have a bubbly outgoing personality and be genuinely interested in people. Make sure you provide them with a script and that they rehearse so they don’t have to read it. Provide a log and ask the new customers how they heard of your company. Keep good records and measure what works.

Your HVAC Marketing direct mail should include a call to action. If that call to action directs them to your website or a special landing page, make sure the customer will have a favorable first impression. You only have one chance to make a good first impression. This landing page should get, at minimum, an email address. Include your phone number in a prominent place.

Converting
Your techs must be trained to convert tune-ups to service agreements and replacement leads.

HVAC Marketing, “The Secret Sauce”

by: Michael Glover - Filed under: Marketing

Most contractors have a “Driver Personality Profile”. It takes a driver to make a business successful. One of the traits of this profile is a very short attention span. You get bored easily with things. You are not detail oriented and go from the current big thing to the next big thing driving the business.

You are not the person who will make a great HVAC marketing manager, because marketing HVAC is repetition.
• The best customer is an existing customer. You already have name recognition. They trust you. You must repeatedly communicate with and pamper your existing customers to keep them.
• To get a new customer, you have to put your name in front of them dozens of times. This is repetitive and boring. You typically get tired of the same old message before it has time to work.
• To get a new customer you have to establish trust. How do you establish trust before you have an opportunity to demonstrate your technical skills? You guessed it …repetition.

Your competition thanks you for not recognizing and resolving this problem.

The Secret Sauce

As soon as your company can afford an Opportunity Manager, you need to fill this position. This person is in charge of administering and managing the boring tasks and repetition:
• Customer retention
• New customer acquisition.

The opportunity manager is a people person in charge of HVAC Marketing. They love talking to customers and potential customers. They can perform the same functions day after day as long as other people are involved and as long as they can socialize and communicate. The opportunity manager will manage:
• Service agreement customers and renewals.
• Leads generated by your tune-up specialists.
• Leads generated by service technicians
• Track sales results
• Newsletter
• Social media including Face book and Twitter
• Satisfaction surveys

See the “The HVAC Maintenance Department, “Lead Generation Manifesto” for more on the Opportunity Manager.

HVAC Marketing with Postcards

by: admin - Filed under: Marketing

 Your HVAC Marketing goal is to sell single tune-ups, convert those tune-ups to service agreements and generate replacement leads from the single inspection and service agreement tune-ups.  You will renew 80% to 90% of your service agreements every year by delivering great value.  The life cycle retail value for each tune up you sell is $600 to $700 annual or conservatively $6,000.00 to $7,000.00 over the next 10 years. 

Postcards or direct mail can be divided into three major parts.

•             Design

•             The Offer

•             The Mail List

Design

The design of a postcard overcomes some of the initial challenges of direct mail.  The first challenge is getting the mail opened.  Many marketing pieces go to the trash unopened.  With a postcard, there is no opening required.  The recipient can’t help but see the bright colors of the eye catching headline and graphic.

The second challenge of direct mail is getting the piece read.  Professionals advise that the headline must draw the reader into the first sentence.  The first sentence must set the hook and motivate the reader to read on.  Many readers will skip the body and go to the bottom or PS postscript which is your last chance.

Every postcard should have:

•             An uncluttered bold headline.  Design should direct the reader’s eye directly to this headline first.  Example:  “Is your Air Conditioner Leaking Money?”

•             A picture or graphic that supports the headline. Example: Picture of an electric meter.

•             A Clear font and color that draw your eyes to the headline.

•             Any text should have a heading for ease of reading.

•             Stress benefits over features.  Example:  A benefit is saving money and increasing cooling comfort; the feature would be cleaning a condenser.

•             Create urgency to call now.  Example:  This offer expires this week.

•             Don’t let your company logo overshadow the headline or benefits.

•             Don’t leave the next step to chance.  Tell the reader exactly what to do next.  A call to action.  Example:  “Call today” or “Go to www.xxx.com for more information.”

•             Always include your name or company name, e-mail, return address, phone number and website.  Make sure you have a return address so you get undeliverable cards back.

•             If your call to action advises the customer to go to a website, you will need a landing page that will close the sale.

The Offer

Your offer should result in scheduling a tune-up.  You can sell this tune-up at a significant discount or even give it away.  You can offer utility discounts.  The offer must be attractive and a good offer for the HVAC industry.  A benefit too small or too large and unbelievable will not be effective.  What can you profitably offer to land a customer that will spend $6,000 to $10,000 in the next 10 years with you?

Mailing List

You can purchase a list from a list company or you can have a company specializing in a turnkey solution supply the entire project.  You want to match the demographics of your existing service agreement customers.  A good list company can do this for you.  Demographics are things like income level, marital status, location, value of home, etc.  You want to market to potential customers similar to your existing customers in order to get the best results.

You also want to develop an email list if you don’t have one.  This email list will be used for follow-up accessory and replacement sales.  Delivery cost for email is very low.

The Business Details

How much does it cost?

•             Postcard design:  $100 to $200

•             Full color postcards: $ .05 to $ .07 each

•             Mail list and addressing $.05 each

•             Postage:  $.21 to $.28

•             Web site landing page $300.

This is a business and you want to get a good return on your investment.  You can expect a 1% to 2% response rate.  That means 1 or 2 tune-ups sold for every 100 postcards you mail.  This would represent up to $20,000 in sales over the next 10 years.

You will want to do less of the marketing that doesn’t work and more of the marketing that does work, so you are going to track your results.  You can assign a special code or 800 phone number to each postcard campaign and track the results manually or automate the process in Yodle or Infusionsoft.

You should allow one month from the day you pull the trigger to get started to the day you start seeing results.

Call Sammy at: www.Postcardmania.com for a professional turnkey solution.