So the landowners sell to the companies? If so, is there a way to target people that own large pieces of land through the mail? I've toyed around with doing mailers to everyone in my area with a house worth more than 400k. That might work better than doing blanket mass advertising. I can do radio and billboard because everyone in my area has lots of trees. Everyone needs it here, unless they are in college.
Currently I reach individuals via cold-callers and generally send a letter after the first call/contact has been made. That way they're receiving multiple touches/media from us. The last county we called had about 1,500 landowners we called out of a population of 26k. Sending out an infographic/ad to 1,000 people would cost $986 if I did it through FedEx Office, so radio would reach a lot more people for a lot less.
In smaller towns, you might get more results by doing newspaper ads in the local paper. Radio might also work, as long as it's the same geography, and you might find it's not so expensive. Radio has as good a reach in my market in my niche as TV, but it is 1/6 the price. You could target the stations with the higher demo's (talk radio, classic country or rock, or the oldies). I'm not sure if you compete with the local sawmills or not (in some cases, probably not) so you might call them for some prospects. Hell, you could even call local tree companies. I have some days where I haul off five tons of wood to the dump.
I don't compete with sawmills or timber companies. My service is the first and only of its kind in my niche. As long as I can attract landowners to my service, which is mostly educational, timber companies directly benefit. So, my biggest problem is getting landowners.
Here is a rough proof of the radio commercial I'm running (company name edited out). I'm keying in on people that have waited to do their work all year, and what they tell me. We are getting less calls, but the average ticket is higher. My average ticket is $762, but it doubles this time of year from people that are worried about big storms and potential emergency work. All I need is 20 customers to sign up at 2k a month right now, which we are getting. I just counted up our work total, and we are backlogged until the 3rd week in January already. As I said, we've been growing at a 15% annual clip over each of the last three years after the recession hit, I want to grow 25-30% next year, so I'm going to do a lot more radio (200 spots a week on this one station) and I'm thinking about TV.
I didn't think about it until an email I got just yesterday. Dude started complainingbefore he's even interviewedabout how the work is too hard. The last two guys I've talked to have done this.
Why does everyone seem to be picking retail? I thought retail was trending downward? Also, what are the % chances of getting your stool pushed in by a big corp one day? I purposefully picked a boring industry, as I've read that the more mundane your business is, the less competition it attracts, so you have higher margins.
I say yes, as long as you're willing to disclose the bits that make it interesting. Numbers, marketing strategy, successes, failures, rolls of the dice, etc. I've gotten the most out of Lyrical's post when he talks about numbers and the actual strategies/processes he's put into play (the boring stuff). These are the parts I really enjoy and can actually take something from.
Not even just a little bit, I wish women were more like men. No homo (keep the breasts and vagina). I'm just saying that with a wife and daughter, I don't understand their line of reasoning most of the time.
