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Marketing … for commercial air duct cleaning services (part two)

  

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Part One of this blog (1-7-2011) deals with defining “Who you want to market to” and “Why they are the important”.  Part Two will focus on “How to find these customer groups” and “How you can reach/market to them.”

How to find potential customers

This part takes a little digging, some phone calling and data entry work.  You build a customer data base.  You should put this data base of customer information in an Excel or Access data base so you can sort and manipulate the data as needed.  Here is where to look: 

• Local Yellow Pages or internet Yellow pages.  Using the group names from part one, look for that name (in printed Yellow Pages) or type in the group name in to the search field (in internet Yellow Pages) and should be able to find basic company information.  Then give them a call to find out best contact person. 
• Association membership lists.  ASHRAE, ACCA, Facility Managers, Hospital Engineers, Property Managers, Environmental Consultants, School Facility Managers and others have associations.
• Local business publications may periodically publish lists like top 25 Property Management firms or Hospitals, etc. Construction bid publications like Dodge Construction Reports and others tell you about upcoming renovation and building projects that can include HVAC system cleaning.  If you subscribe to their service you can get mechanical plans of the projects you want to bid/quote on.  Once you prepare your quote you will send it to a list of mechanical contractors that are also submitting bid for all HVAC work. 
• Referrals from past satisfied customers. 

Once you are done with compiling this initial customer data base effort you should have a list of customer under all the different groups from part one.  You will need to continually update and expand this data base.

Now that you have found them - How do you reach them?

Initial contact:  This will take time to do but a face to face meeting is the first step to build the business relationship that will fuel your success.

• Introductory letter with statement of qualification or company capabilities.
• Phone follow-up to set up an appointment.
• Face to face meeting where you present your companies capabilities and experience.  If you have a website you could use that to present your company capabilities. Your goal is to present yourself as the expert so they will want to work with you in the future.

Ongoing contact: To maintain awareness/visibility with your customers and potential customers you need to remind them of your capabilities periodically.   There are several ways to do this including:

• Newsletter: A bi-monthly or quarterly newsletter is an easy way to maintain awareness.  You can creates this on you computer and e-mail or fax them to your database.  Plus you can post it on your website if you have one.  Make sure the content of your news letter offers something of value to your customers like a “job story,” “how to” section, etc. 
• Periodic phone follow-up and face to face meetings can really reinforce the awareness of your company’s capabilities in your customers’ eyes.
• Local Association meetings like ASHRAE, BOMA etc. are great venues to network.
• Educational seminars are a good way to establish and maintain your company as the “expert.”   You can give these seminars as part of an association meeting, or maybe a small group of companies get together and sponsor an IAQ seminar in which you participate.

Advertising: There are many advertising options in today's marketplace for you to choose from including: 

• Yellow pages. 
• Direct mail. 
• Local trade associations. 
• Local trade shows. 
• News releases, job stories, articles. 
• Space advertising in local media. 
• Web-site
• Others 

Whatever advertising methods you choose to use try to find a way to measure the effectiveness of the ads.  This will allow you to determine the most effective advertising method. 

Post Project Follow-up:

Once you have completed a project (and did a great job) it’s the perfect time to follow up with your customer with a Customer Satisfaction Survey. 

You should develop a short one page questionnaire to thank your customer for their business and then ask them for feedback on your services.  You can mail/email the post project Customer Satisfaction Survey or do it over the phone. 

If you do this consistently over time you’ll get valuable information and you should be able to see trends (both good and not so good).  The survey completes the sales cycle and is another part of good customer service. 

Summary

Hopefully this blog (part one and part two) were informative and helpful.  Please conact me if you have any questions on marketing commercial air duct cleaning services.