Introduction
Hello and welcome to this week’s episode of Marketing Distilled. I’m your master distiller, Jonathan Gaby. Here on the podcast I discuss marketing best practices, trends, and more with the intent of distilling down the complex to the simple. This week’s topic is marketing a service based business.
Introduction of Topic
In this week’s episode I take a listener question from Lily Neal. Lily is the owner of a professional organizing business called Revise Your Space. She is based in the Austin Texas area. If you are in the Austin Texas area and you need help getting your office, home, or business organized, you might want to check her out. She can be found on the web at reviseyourspace.com or @reviseyourspace on social media. Now, I should mention that everything I’m talking about here won’t necessarily guarantee results. It’s marketing after all.
Background:
According to Lilly’s listing on the National Association of Professional Organizers, she has been in business for less than five years. Austin TX is home to approximately 52 or more other professional organizers. Without getting into too much in the weeds I think it’s safe to say that the geographic area is a good place to have a business and has lots of opportunity.
Big Picture
Let’s look at some strategy first. I think it’s always good to have an understanding of what our North Star or our goal is in business is. I state this simply as:
Revise your space helps your organize your home or work to help you enjoy all that Austin has to offer. I think that is more of a vision/mission, but it’s not a goal. Let’s say that Revise Your Space wants to acquire 20 new clients by the end of the quarter. at the minimum offering of $225 for three hours, this means that you’ll make $4500 for the quarter or $1,500 per month. You’ll also need to budget the required time you’ll need to provide the services, which are 20 hours for discovery calls, and then 60 hours in delivery of the services. So a total of 80 hours for the quarter.
So we know what your goal is to acquire 20 more clients in the quarter and earn $4,500 in revenue. This isn’t including your existing clients. and it doesn’t factor in more services/hours according to what a client might need. You might come out even on this projection or you could come behind or ahead.
Now that we have a goal, what’s next?
Get Website Ready
We’re not going to cover everything here, but broadly here are some recommendations for Lilly’s business. These tips might help you in your business too.
Follow Don Miller’s guide on Story Brand Marketing.
Generally, for Lilly’s website I notice that:
- She has great positioning and a “hook” in that she is targeting new comers to the Austin Area
- Swap your introduction section with your testimonial slider.
- Make better use of your graphic elements. Instead of photos of bookshelves maybe photos of work being done or happy clients.
- I love the slider of before and after on the contact page.
Break
- Call to Email with Questions or just say hello: Contact @ Jonathan Gaby . com
- What am I drinking? – Evan Williams Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey
Let’s get back to the content where we are providing some marketing help to Lilly Neal, owner of Revise Your Space, a professional organizing company in Austin Texas
Social Media:
I think that she is doing a great job pulling back the curtain on what you do and how you help your clients. I would recommend that you get more customer testimonials and put your clients first to show the transformation of getting organized and the peace of mind or sanity they gain from hiring you.
Sadly, without looking at the analytics and data behind your posts, I can’t see how to improve, but I like your work so far.
Actually, if you could create some general ad and do zip code targeting or look more into your target audience and just run ads to encourage people to book a discovery call you could do that, if you’re not doing that now.
Marketing Idea
Direct mail
I think you are on to something when you are targeting real estate agents and people that are moving. One thing you might do is consider doing direct mail to people in a targeted area who have just moved. This isn’t something new, but something I learned from listening to a podcast episode with Michael Dell, the founder of Dell Computers. at the time he was selling papers, I think in Austin, and he figured out that the time to market newspapers was when people moved. He thought that people new to the area would want to know what’s going on in the community and more. So, he offered something to people new to the area.
I think it’s pretty interesting that you’re working with real estate agents and working this angle, I would also encourage you to do direct mail on your own.
It seems to me that you might be discounting your services too severely. I would stop doing that and not give away so much free work. Stick to your value and provide that and make sure that you are wowing your clients and asking them for referrals or cross selling them with helping them at work or similar situation.
Email Marketing
One other thing I would add to your marketing mix is using email marketing for your business. Everyone needs to have an email list I think. and you are no exception. I see email as another way to add that Know Like, Trust factor to your business. It’s a great way to establish your relationship with a new client and reinforce existing ones. You don’t have email daily, maybe every two weeks, but probably you should consider:
An Organizing Tip
Story from a client (success)
And Call to action : Have an area to organize? Call me!
Those two things will get and keep you top of mind in your new customers.
Conclusion
Well, that’s about it for me here at Marketing Distilled. I hope that Lilly, if she’s listening, gets some value out of this episode and that she can work on her website, social media, direct mail, and email marketing.
