Home Improvement Contractors Need to Use WOM Marketing More Effectively
There are too many home improvement contractors who are missing out on work because they don’t realise what they are missing. Home improvement contractors often refuse to give quotes because the job is too small, or the job is too big for them and their brickie mate (or whatever the mates trade is) can’t do the job, has already quoted the job for another mate or for any number of other reasons. But the truth is that the potential client will then talk about them to all their neighbours, friends and anyone else within earshot.
When this happens the person doing the talking isn’t saying anything complimentary about you or your business. Other people then store this ‘talk’ away in their minds and when they have a job come up and see your name written down on the net or in the yellow pages, they are reminded that their friend had a bad experience with you so they will never call you unless totally desperate.
This is definitely not the kind of Word of Mouth (WOM) advertising that you or your business needs.
To avoid this kind of bad WOM advertising is really easy. The first thing to remember is to treat the people requesting a quote from you with the same respect that you would like to be given to you. And that involves ‘fessing up when necessary and simply saying that you prefer not to do the small jobs because your business is too big and you need more work for your employees or whatever feasible and believable reason you can concoct. But talk to them. Let them know up-front why you prefer not to do the job and suggest they call someone else; preferably someone that you can recommend honestly. There’s no point in saying that such-and-such is a terrific trades person and then that person mucks up the job.
My Father always told us kids that “we would be labelled by the company we keep”. My Taiwanese business friends always told me that before they could introduce me to any of their contacts, they had to be sure of my character. This makes perfect sense at any time but particularly when doing business. If the person you recommend to the people that you don’t want to do the job for stuffs it up, you will wear the bad WOM so I suggest extreme caution if you do decide to go this route.
Now the good news is that if you follow the above suggestion, you will get some excellent WOM advertising for being an honest, straight talking trade contractor. There are too many scam stories broadcast regularly about shonky contractors and so most people have become leery, to say the least.
Be different and aim to please as many people as possible with your honesty and knowledge. The good WOM advertising wafts around your business and brings in better paying jobs from people you may never be able to reach through any advertising dollars that you would have to spend to get more work.
Use word of mouth (WOM) advertising to your benefit and not let anything detrimental be said about you or your business. This is far and away the best advertising you will ever get and it is advertising you can never pay for. Us it to your advantage and don’t miss out because of not being up-front initially.
Some Trade Contractors overlook the fact that they are a Small Business and Need to Operate as a business instead of just being a Trade Contractor.
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