How to get more customers???

[Allstar Sanitation]

I was wondering if anyone had any ideas on how to get more customers, what do you guys do?

I have heard of salesmen, yellow pages, fliers, toilet signs, and internet ads, what else is there? Does having a lower price work? Maybe talking about the service works better?

[iowa pumper]

winter is slow times here if u figer that one out let me know

[trifecta]

friendly service and word of mouth

[Stephen]

You have to be better than your competition. Always!!! Not just when it slows down. Satisfied customers are your best advertisement, in my opinion. I know that's not the magic answer or a quick fix, but to be honest, I damn glad there's not a cheep advertising trick to create a solid pumping business. This way it's about competition and the one who creates more value for there customers wins. Not the one who operates under 5 different business names, and runs Full color, double page, yellow pages adds for each company.

[Mr Stinky]

Get your technicians to ask for referrels.

When you have a happy customer, ask then if they are pleased with your service. When they say yes, ask them if they will tell their friends or neighbors about your service? If they say yes, then thank them and let them know this is really appricated.
When they say yes, they made a comment to do this and more times than none ..they will do just that.

Best wishes for business growth

[Trent]

Implement a reminder program. It won't help right now but in a few years it will. For right now, mail out fliers, put an ad in the paper that explains how the septic system works and why it needs to be maintained. Post your business cards at the local mini-mart cork board. I've hung brochures on door knobs with some success. Alot of these things wont necessarily bring you business today but the more your name is out there the better off you are. The very best thing is word of mouth. Be the best you can be at a pump job and they'll tell others. Be clean, helpfull, friendly, efficient and quick and they'll remember you.

[Allstar Sanitation]

What we do is have good service, its not the best because I cant find seat cover dispensers so we just stick them behind the vent pipe. But we have less complaints then the other companies apparently, only about 6 a month, and we have 300 customers. We had a couple companies start up and blow the doors off us though. 1 offers them with their dumpsters for next to nothing, and the other is more expensive then us. Both have new toilets though. I hear though its about having a good sales man that calls the people up sends them mail and convinces them to choose their company.

I am under the impression that you gotta have new equipment, new trucks, clean all the way around and have professional service. I do the billing myself and I admit I make mistakes, but I always give the customer the benifit of the doubt when i do.

Anyway Ideas Ive had were putting brochures in event toilets for people to take home, puting ads in our toilets so that the customer knows everything we do, google ads, signs on telephone poles, and other ideas, what do yall think?

[Stephen]

Allstar, you pretty well summed it up when you said,

"I am under the impression that you gotta have new equipment, new trucks, clean all the way around and have professional service.";)

[COLE_Jeff]

Sponsor local youth sports teams. This gets your name out to all the parents and the teams they play. Parents feel like "we should call him because he supported our son/daughter."

Insert a flyer in the local Sunday paper. This can just be a simple 8.5x11 flyer that promotes your services or offers a coupon. The local paper just charges you an insert or blow-in fee (you pay for printing the flyer).

Highway billboards. Depending on your geographic location these can be inexpensive, yet effective marketing tools. "I was driving to work, saw your billboard and remembered I needed to get my septic tank pumped."

Uniquely painted or brightly colored and lettered service vehicles. Pink, orange, bright green or even black with nice lettering. Make your trucks rolling billboards.

Direct mail postcards. Start with a small area for a test, either residential, commercial or both. Lists can be purchased based on geography, income, area code, zip code and other criteria. Visit http://www.infousa.com to build a list (I have no affiliation, but I have used them). Postcards are cheap to print and mail and can be done in small quantities. I would suggest someplace like http://www.overnightprints.com because they will do small runs (again, no affiliation, but I have used them).

Refrigerator magnets. These have a long shelf life and usually don't find the garbage can right away. http://www.pumper.com/products/?action=extendedinfo&advertiserid=31&name=Magnets+by+Stamp+Works

Submit articles to your local newspaper(s) on septic maintenance, restrooms or anything that they would be interested in that applies to your business. Publishers love (good) submitted material and will run it if they think the public will find it interesting. Ask them in return for the submission they add a byline with something like "John Doe of XYZ Pumping has been serving Anytown, USA with portable toilet rentals and septic tank service since 19XX. They can be reached at 888-111-2222 or online at www.yourcompany.com."

I am sure there are more ideas, but these are off the top of my head. If I can think of more I'll come back in and edit this post.

Best,
Jeff

[txshriner]

You have to be better than your competition. Always!!! Not just when it slows down. Satisfied customers are your best advertisement, in my opinion. I know that's not the magic answer or a quick fix, but to be honest, I damn glad there's not a cheep advertising trick to create a solid pumping business. This way it's about competition and the one who creates more value for there customers wins. Not the one who operates under 5 different business names, and runs Full color, double page, yellow pages adds for each company.

i could not be further apart with you on the issue of multi listings. where im at there are 18 pumpers in the phone book. the roto-rooter owner was the only one in the book that had 2 different business listings. ive been in business since 92 and until 3 years ago only had one business listed. a friend with a well known plumbing company wanted to get out of the pumping business. i bought his truck and kept his ads in the yellow pages along with mine. that was a real rough year in my area and the following year i stepped my ads up a notch in hopes of getting more business(honestly i had a beautiful sales lady that flat upsold me!) anyway it just so happened that every other company backed up a notch. so instead of being in the pack i wound up with the biggest 2 ads. AND THIS IS WHAT I LEARNED! the first, biggest or most colorful ad doesnt usually get the job. the second ad in the book is alomost the best place to be. the absolute best place to be is 1st and second! because most people dont settle with the first person, but they get a price in mind and learn a little(most people have no clue) now, the second guy and fortunately in my case im both, if the second person is comarable in price with the first and you have a descent rapport with the person they will get the job. i know all my competitors real well and we talk. my research has shown me that the first ad in the book i land @10% of the calls received but on the second ad i land a solid 50% or better of the calls. this is talking in the same voice, saying the same things and at the exact same price! i know the man very well that is 3rd in the book(we actually sign up for the phone book at the same time, been friends for years) and he tells me that he lands @25% of the calls he receives and he is cheaper than both of my companies. i also happen to know the owners of 3 cheapest companies in this book. they are scattered through the crowd in the book and get FAR less work than the 1,2 or 3rd company. we all just did our annual summary reports for the state. my 2 companies together did just under a million gallons. the number 3 guy a little over 300k gallons. the cheapest guy, i dont have his numbers for the year. SO MY PERSONAL CONCLUSION WHICH IS FROM REAL LIFE EXPERIENCE is that being first and second in the phone book is VERY beneficial! ive been last and ive been in the pack which is how i learned that if you want the cream of the crop jobs this is the way to get them. if you want to bottom feed and be the cheapest guy in the book it dont matter where you are. i dont run a non-profit organization but for the first 10 years it turned out that way! im a slow learner so i hope this speeds up someone's learning curve.

[pottyqueen]

[QUOTE=COLE_Jeff;325]

......Direct mail postcards. Start with a small area for a test, either residential, commercial or both. Lists can be purchased based on geography, income, area code, zip code and other criteria. Visit http://www.infousa.com to build a list (I have no affiliation, but I have used them). Postcards are cheap to print and mail and can be done in small quantities. I would suggest someplace like http://www.overnightprints.com because they will do small runs (again, no affiliation, but I have used them)......

Jeff offered many good suggestions. My only comment is that regarding the postcards, many local printers will also do small batches and offer the mailing services too. I try to use local people as much as possible because they are in the same boat as us trying to stay in business and make a living!

[COLE_Jeff]

Very good point! We are in such a rural area that we don't have a local printer in our town, so that concept escaped me. But it's a point well made and taken.

Jeff

[Mackman]

hey pottyqueen what does that infousa cost? How do they base there rate per postcard or something??

[mallenk]

Everyone here has good points. You don't have to have new equipment but it does have to be clean, nicely painted and in good repairs. Your driver must have a clean appearance and know what he or she is doing. Your driver is your salesman at the point of sale and if he fails so will you. We are always looking for ways to grow and you should also. That is all part of the business. I have not had much success in the papers. Our phone book ad gets improved every year and we are on the internet even though we are in a more of a rural setting. We hand out fridge magnets to whoever will take them. I put the magnets in with billings. Very inexpensive and practicle. We are also a precaster and we set 98% of all the tanks in our area so we list pumping with our precast ads also. Best of luck.

[COLE_Jeff]

InfoUSA is just a place that sells customer lists. They charge you x cents per name. So if you want to do a mailer to a certain geographic region, that's one place you can get a list. You still have to buy the postcards, pay the postage and send out the mailer on your end. They are simply a list supplier - they give you the names.

Another place you can get names is simply from tax rolls, or even better, if your county has good records, go in and ask them for a list of everyone on a septic system. That information should be available under the open records law.

[Mackman]

InfoUSA is just a place that sells customer lists. They charge you x cents per name. So if you want to do a mailer to a certain geographic region, that's one place you can get a list. You still have to buy the postcards, pay the postage and send out the mailer on your end. They are simply a list supplier - they give you the names.

Another place you can get names is simply from tax rolls, or even better, if your county has good records, go in and ask them for a list of everyone on a septic system. That information should be available under the open records law.

Thanks Jeff. Im been thinking about buying my own pump truck so all of this is a big help.

[jack darling]

snd me your mailing address, and I'll send you some good information regarding marketing.Jack Darling P.O. Box 228 Uxbridge,MA. 01569-0228

[Clancy@SmartService]

I liked most of what TXshriner said about the yellow pages. Yellow pages are the original "inbound marketing" and having more than one listing to me equates to coming up in multiple search terms in google. I'm not talking about being listed under different business names as much as being in multiple sections.

It also intersects with the stuff Jeff was saying about trucks. I think it amounts to "branding" your business and I think it can help any business. Make your trucks look unique. Make your refrigerator magnets look like little versions of your trucks. Make your billboards have similar recognizable design elements. Make a solid image with all your marketing stuff that sticks in people's minds. If you can pull that off, (tastefully) you can differentiate yourself from all the other listings in the yellow pages without having to buy a quarter page listing!

Oh, one more thing. I don't know how much it helps, but Google is pushing their local business section alot harder these days in searches. You should definitely fill out a google local business profile, and upload a picture to come up with your local listing.

[susanb]

Sales Genie is another website where you can purchase leads which you can pre-qualify by SIC number, state, annual sales, number of employees, etc.

Some of our best new customers are referrals from satisfied customers.

If you are in the grease trap cleaning and recycled cooking oil collection businesses, you can use Microsoft Mappoint to highlight all restaurants in a particular geographical area. We have customers using our Total Activity Control software with Mappoint and offering their drivers incentives to find customers along their particular routes.

Susan Baldwin
Account Manager
www.clearcomputing.com

[txshriner]

I liked most of what TXshriner said about the yellow pages. Yellow pages are the original "inbound marketing" and having more than one listing to me equates to coming up in multiple search terms in google. I'm not talking about being listed under different business names as much as being in multiple sections.

It also intersects with the stuff Jeff was saying about trucks. I think it amounts to "branding" your business and I think it can help any business. Make your trucks look unique. Make your refrigerator magnets look like little versions of your trucks. Make your billboards have similar recognizable design elements. Make a solid image with all your marketing stuff that sticks in people's minds. If you can pull that off, (tastefully) you can differentiate yourself from all the other listings in the yellow pages without having to buy a quarter page listing!

Oh, one more thing. I don't know how much it helps, but Google is pushing their local business section alot harder these days in searches. You should definitely fill out a google local business profile, and upload a picture to come up with your local listing.

im all about good accepting good advice so after reading your post i tried for several hours to get into google local business section to fill out my profile and add a picture. without no luck. where how & what site did you go through?
now a good story about magnets and good competitors. my biggest competitor which also happens to be a man im proud to say is a real friend. has a very sharp truck(i may be biased here because it resmbles my fleet since he copied my best ideas) and he had the coolest magnets ive seen made that look alot like his truck. now here is where the story gets good, he and i will work together sometimes.
one day we were at a house that the customer had called me out of the phone book & he went in the mans house to leak test a toilet and noticed that the customer had not 1 but 4 of his neat little magnets on the fridge! he mentioned it to the customer and the customer went on and on about how neat his magnets were. but picked my ad out of the phone book when he needed service. the funniest thing about this story is that he copied the magnet idea off of me! for 10 years he told me i was crazy spending money on magnets. here is what his magnet looks like.http://i44.tinypic.com/3525it3.jpg

[Clancy@SmartService]

So are you saying you still believe in the magnets? :D Maybe magnets are not the answer, but branding is the message - and I think it can have a positive effect on business for anyone! It gives people something catchy to store your reputation under in their brains. The other half being, maintaining a good reputation!

As for google local - the address is google.com/local/add --- sign up and fill in your profile, check your map dot, and request a verification postcard. They will snail mail a postcard to you with an activation code. Once you enter that, you will be visible. Google also just added a dashboard for business owners that offers a bit of analytics for your listing. If you can't figure it out, pm or email me and I can walk you through it!

Clancy

[txshriner]

So are you saying you still believe in the magnets? :D Maybe magnets are not the answer, but branding is the message - and I think it can have a positive effect on business for anyone! It gives people something catchy to store your reputation under in their brains. The other half being, maintaining a good reputation!

As for google local - the address is google.com/local/add --- sign up and fill in your profile, check your map dot, and request a verification postcard. They will snail mail a postcard to you with an activation code. Once you enter that, you will be visible. Google also just added a dashboard for business owners that offers a bit of analytics for your listing. If you can't figure it out, pm or email me and I can walk you through it!

Clancy

Been a long time since I posted on this thread and being the season to re-sign in all the phone books again I have some info that may be important to some guy sitting around wondering what to do! But as far as the magnets go after that incident I dropped them from my play book.
I'm sure there is Simone wondering if he should pony up the bucks for the phone book and others thinking a about putting their money on the Internet horse. Every few years I bomb the net with ads and last year was the one. And things ain't changed one bit, the net will burn your phone up with callers looking for the cheapest s.o.b. On the planet(no offense intended if your him, if you want to run a non profit organization that's your business ) but for the man wanting the cream of the crop jobs you can name your price in the phone book and usually get it in today's market. There are so many fools dropping out of the phone book them boys have a whole new outlook! If you get one that puts on a brave act just tell him you have to think it over a few days and he will have to call you back. When he pushes you for a decision tell him if you had to decide at that moment you would have to drop out. You ain't gonna believe this but by some miracle his boss will authorize a discount. And like a woman the better you are at the hold out game the better your reward will be.

[RaiderRooter]

Not sure what ads your using online. Im managing and tracking where all my leads come from. I just took over the company, and since 1978 this company has used yellow pages as if it were the answer to the new customer prayers, and it was for many years. For the past 2 years Ive been tracking how much money comes in from Internet advertising vs yellow pages and I get as much from internet on 1/10 of the budget. I manage my own google adwords account, and have my domain provider manage another set of ads but they do not compete with each other since they both link to the same webpage. (If you are clueless about advertising online, yellow pages will now "conveniently" help you in this matter) So next round of yellow pages advertising im going to scale way back to an in column ad for reference purposes, make it pop out to make it easy to find but will no longer be putting my money on that horse

[RaiderRooter]

Not sure what ads your using online. Im managing and tracking where all my leads come from. I just took over the company, and since 1978 this company has used yellow pages as if it were the answer to the new customer prayers, and it was for many years. For the past 2 years Ive been tracking how much money comes in from Internet advertising vs yellow pages and I get as much from internet on 1/10 of the budget. I manage my own google adwords account, and have my domain provider manage another set of ads but they do not compete with each other since they both link to the same webpage. (If you are clueless about advertising online, yellow pages will now "conveniently" help you in this matter) So next round of yellow pages advertising im going to scale way back to an in column ad for reference purposes, make it pop out to make it easy to find but will no longer be putting my money on that horse

Oh and I forgot to mention this but yellow pages is netting me a loss every month where as my different online advertising approaches are all yielding a very nice gain.

[Trent]

We continue to reduce our yellow page presence. We recently had our website overhauled and I keep a facebook account for the business. I have a couple of videos on you tube as well. We are thinking of changing our website to a blog where we can change the content our selves and keep it fresh and keep pricing current.

[RaiderRooter]

We continue to reduce our yellow page presence. We recently had our website overhauled and I keep a facebook account for the business. I have a couple of videos on you tube as well. We are thinking of changing our website to a blog where we can change the content our selves and keep it fresh and keep pricing current.

This is a GREAT approach that I have seen many small business be successful with. I have been wondering for a long time whether or not to create a facebook page. Would you mind sharing this process? How do you get your customers to take the time to "like" you? What types of updates do you post? Specials only or do you put in tips and general reminders about frequency of pumps etc? Do you have a twitter account that updates at the same time when you post to facebook?

Also did you create the videos yourself? Mind sharing them with everyone?

I just had a website built by a friend who makes them for a living during his spare time and even with the simple (but effective) website we have gotten a lot of business. It is only a year or so old but I am going to have it redone by a firm because i firmly believe it will drive even more traffic to us

[Trent]

One video was created as part of an incentive from one of the yellow page books. The other is homemade of our wheelie potty in a parade. Basically it's a cut down lawn mower in a portable toilet.

Go to www.clinkscalestoilets.com for our website, there is a link to our facebook page. Go to discussions for some of the things I post. The stories also run in a special section of our local newspaper called the community connection. We usually run a coupon with it. We are finding that the septic coupons work in the spring and fall and portable toilets work in the summer. We do coupons for weekend rentals only.

I don't have a twitter account. As far as day to day posts on facebook, they may be about upcoming events, small tips, general comments about the weather, anything to keep your name in front of everyone.

Another thing that we do to self promote is fliers in our billing. With the portable toilets we send out alot of bills, so we will put a flier in about our other services. It's amazing how many people tell us they never knew we pumed septic tanks or sold RV deoderizer or whatever.

[COLE_Jeff]

Well done Trent. Using Facebook as well and anyone I've seen inside our outside of our industry.

With more than 500 million (yes, 1/2 billion) users Facebook is definitely something people should examine. Advertising is very targetable and relatively inexpensive. Pumper also has a Facebook page - http://www.facebook.com/pages/Pumper-Magazine-Dedicated-to-the-liquid-waste-industry/108349609204240

[Trent]

Jeff, your link didn't work. It works now, thanks!

[POOMAN]

I used tracking numbers in 2010 for all my markets. All I can say is the phone book in this area is only a small portion of new customers. It cost me more for the adds than I brought in. Word of mouth, nice clean trucks and the web are the way to go. I have thought about direct post cards but it would have to be very reasonable in price t be worth it. The problem with direct advertising is people need to see it constantly. Think about how often Mickey d's runs adds, you see them all the time. Do a good job all the time and you will get work. Remember your only as good as your last satisfied customer.

[RaiderRooter]

After I get my website up and running (hoping to be done by the end of Jan) im going to concentrate on the facebook page more and collecting more content (pictures and videos) for both.

I love the idea of including a flier with the services you offer. I have had many commercial accounts who have been using us for years tell us "You pump grease traps too??" or the other way around "Do you guys clear blockages?". I dont always get those extra services because sometimes they have a good relationship built with another company but it would be good to make the customer aware.

One avenue we started trying this year that has really worked for us has been using a website called servicepro. there are a lot of them just like it out there and i avoided them all, but i dont know what made me say yes to the guy that called me from their company but im happy we did. We basically pay per lead they generate for us. A lot of times they match us directly with a customer instead of giving them a bunch of names. Sometimes its just people pricing, but a lot of times people actually want the job to get done. The trick here is to have a nice profile, and to call the person immediately after receiving the lead. Wait too long and they might already be talking to someone else.

Not necessarily a plug for the website, and it might not suit your needs (i live in a very densely populated area) but its something to think about. we started off with 100 bucks a month for our budget and have been steadily increasing it to see if we will hit a plateau . so far so good

[txshriner]

I beat the phone book drum because it produces me the highest profit jobs. I am all over the internet also, one survey that was done showed me no lower than the top 3 on google. This does make the phone ring but if I didn't ask where they got my number before I gave them a price I wouldn't have got the chance because 9 out of 10 net callers are shopping prices and I'm far from being the cheapest and don't hide that fact. But you need to be there in today's market. But other than the book I'd say the second best place I get the best profit jobs is from the B.B.B., now it don't ring your phone off the hook but they typically aren't shopping for the cheapest prices! After 20 years of this I've learned the quality leads will keep you in business and running good eqipment in the ground running the roads for marginal profits isn't how I want to do it.

[Western]

This is an old thread but I'll revive it here.

I would just like to encourage anyone reading this thread to please, for the good of the industry, think of a "catchy" slogan without it being off-color.

Also, our experience with a website is the exact opposite of Shriner's. I get actually very few calls off of my site even though it ranks really well. However, the calls I do get are almost never for pumping, but for new system installations which are worth more to me than 10 tank pumpouts.

I built a spreadsheet that I use to track advertising. Every customer gets asked where they heard about us. I can tell you the percentage of calls each form of advertising (including referrals and repeats) generates, as well as total number of calls, percentage of gross sales, average job value per call per media, and so forth. Build yourself one and in one year you'll know where to concentrate your advertising efforts.

[jack darling]

:) Check out the Building the Business column in the September 2006 issue of The Pumper. I submitted an article which has worked very well for me, and eliminated wasting money on advertising that does not work.

[Western]

:) Check out the Building the Business column in the September 2006 issue of The Pumper. I submitted an article which has worked very well for me, and eliminated wasting money on advertising that does not work.

I don't have a copy of that volume. Could you post a copy of it here or a link to it online?

[txshriner]

Also, our experience with a website is the exact opposite of Shriner's. I get actually very few calls off of my site even though it ranks really well. However, the calls I do get are almost never for pumping, but for new system installations which are worth more to me than 10 tank pumpouts.


Either our market or the way we do business are exact opposites. Most people calling for a pump out arent calling because there aint nothing on T.V. There is more often than not a reason they called & we specialize in taking care of the problem not just the pump & go. Solving problems is where the best profits are.