The five P’s of low-cost marketing

By Jerry Levinson

Back in March, I shot a “Profit Now” video segment for members of my Facebook Retail Group. In it, I discuss ways business owners needed to look at ways to reduce their overall costs and overhead. Following are five takeaways:

1. Pipeline Profits. Go through your existing database of customers who you have given an estimate to in the last six months and see if they are ready to move forward with their project. The best way to do that is use the “Nine-Word e-mail.” In the subject line, simply say something like this: “Hi (customer’s name).” In the body you may write, “Are you still interested in getting carpet for your living room?” The response rate from this system is going to be very high, especially compared to a long e-mail where you explain the prices, sale or any other message. People do not open or read long e-mails, especially when they are busy. Would you?
2. Pay per click Google Ad Words. This is the only one of the five tools that costs money, but it is the best value in advertising. Pay per click is managed by your website administrator. A good web company can help you get the best bang for your buck. With PPC you only pay when someone clicks on your ad, which sends them to a landing page or your website. That’s someone who is interested in your product or service. Compare that to placing an ad in the newspaper, on TV or radio is expensive. You are gambling that someone will see your ad at the moment they are in the market for your service.
3. Post a Video. Videos are one of the hottest forms of marketing today. You can post that video to your Google My Business page, or you can post it to your YouTube page. You can even upload it to Facebook. There are a lot of strategies around videos that I won’t get into here. The most important one is: SHOOT THE DAMN VIDEO! Get it done. No, it’s probably not going to be good. You are going to hate the way you look, and you’ll hate the sound of your voice. Your main goal is to get your prospect to raise her hand and ask for more information.
4. Reach out to previous customers. Your best resource is your previous customers. We use the Customer Call Back System. You call a past customer to give them some news. You’re moving, changing your name, teaming up with a related business, adding carpet cleaning, etc. In most cases you are leaving a voice mail so you will leave a short message such as, “Hi. This is Jerry at Carpets of Arizona. I just wanted to let you know about an exclusive special we have coming up later this month. I’ll send you more information in the mail.
   That one-two punch worked about 3% of the time. Out of 100 calls we would get three jobs, which is actually not too bad especially since the cost is next to nothing—maybe the cost of a stamp. It’s also a way to keep slow salespeople busy.
5. PE – Mail. At its core, this is really just e-mail marketing. (OK, truthfully I just needed a fifth “P.”) Hopefully by now you’re using a CRM program, and you saved all your customers. Did you get e-mail addresses? When my salespeople were too shy to ask for an e-mail, I would tell them, “Either get their e-mail address or underwear size. Whichever makes you most comfortable.”

I have used all these ideas to grow Carpets of Arizona, and I am confident they will work for you as well.