Qtips: Leveraging Marketing Tools
Investing in growth during challenging times is the philosophy of many successful building and remodeling companies out there. When the market slows down, they speed up. I’ve seen as a characteristic among GuildQuality members the tendency to be a bit ahead of the curve, the willingness to face challenges head on, and as a result, these companies stay afloat when all around them others are folding or slapping stickers onto their trucks promoting some new skill. In talking to building professionals all across the country, one thing we’ve heard consistently from all sizes, types, and locations of our members is a stress on the importance of a strong, smart marketing push during market downturns.
I wanted to pass along a few tips on ways to use your GuildQuality tools to help strengthen your brand and promote your excellence to past, present, and future customers. Combining these things with your other marketing efforts should yield positive effects. Most importantly, these things are FREE– they are just some of the many benefits of being a GuildQuality member.
Customize your Qlisting
Add content to your Qlisting and use as it a reference piece. Include satisfaction scores, testimonials, a company bio, type of work you do, etc. Building your Qlisting helps your web-marketing efforts: linking to relevant content boosts your search results in search engines such as Google and Yahoo (this is called Search Engine Optimization). A stronger web presence brings your name and brand to your customers’ eyes and minds. The GuildQuality Qlist gets tons of trafficâ€��?about 800 hits a month. You can see how many people have viewed your company’s Qlisting via your Dashboard.
Incorporate your company logo
Add your logo to your Qlisting and put it on your survey mailers. Reinforce the strength of your brand and your commitment to quality and satisfaction. Both Qlistings and survey mailers look really slick when the logo is added. Check out this previous blog post on the 10 most visited Qlistings, and here’s a picture of our gallery of survey mailers. Both of these are easily uploaded right into your account.
Share your stats
Share your strengths with your clientsâ€��?let them know what to expect when working with your team. You can do this in a number of different ways, but one easy way is to print your Customer Report and include it in leave-behind material on sales calls. You can also link your Customer Report to your company’s website so that clients and potential clients can see your commitment to the customer experience.
Most importantly, share your results with your entire team. When it’s transparently clear what the company’s strengths and weaknesses are, you can work on improving the weak areas and promoting the strong areas. Holding your team accountable to their performance will result in a better customer experience.
For any additional info on these things, send an email to our Member Services team and we’ll help you out.
Here’s a good read on how and why to leverage testimonials. Shawn McCadden, a former owner of a remodeling company, talks about how customer testimonials serve as a way for prospects and leads to “understand distinction”.
http://www.remodeling.hw.net/industry-news.asp?sectionID=817&articleID=666155