Each and every aspect of your home improvement business is important. However, if you don't market your business with the goal to produce sales, then you won't have a business for very long. This article will take you through the important process of marketing your business and your services to prospective customers.
A typical sales process for a home improvement or handyman business follows these steps:
* Marketing
* Qualifying
* Selling
* Getting Hiring!
These sales process steps are typical for most service type businesses. This article will discuss the first step, marketing, in greater detail.
Marketing Your Service Business: According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, marketing is defined as the process of promoting and selling a product or service. Marketing a service-based business is more difficult than selling a product. When a customer buys a product, it is tangible - something you can see, touch, or hold in ones hand, and that can usually be returned if the customer is not satisfied. With a service business, however, your customers are buying something that is intangible and once performed, not returnable. One of the greatest challenges in marketing your service business is persuading people to buy something they can't see, smell, touch, or return. You are selling both yourself and your skills, and selling the value of the services that you and your business provide.
Marketing is the single most important skill needed to be successful in the home improvement business. It involves promoting your company and its services to both immediate and potential customers, and selling your services to those that have found you through your advertising efforts. You will also market your home improvement business by providing quality work and a high level of customer service, which will encourage repeat customers and word-of-mouth referrals.
The primary objective of your marketing efforts is to have a steady stream of current and prospective customers contacting you. Your goal is to be able to sell your services to those customers.
The words 'marketing' and 'advertising' are often used interchangeably. Advertising is one aspect of the marketing strategy that helps you promote your business in the marketplace. Various advertising strategies, as well as strategies to market a home improvement business, are available to handyman business or other service business owners. It is important to keep track of each of your strategies and have a mechanism to both review and evaluate the effectiveness of each of the strategies you employ. That way you can discard ineffective strategies and keep the ones that work to grow your business.