If you’re reading this, it’s because you’ve taken a very important step in your life.
Congratulations! You’ve made a wise choice! By deciding to position yourself in the middle of
an exploding industry with the most progressive and supportive franchise around, you’ve laid the
foundation for tremendous business success. As you embark on your journey, the most critical
factor to your success will undoubtedly be your commitment to the Property Management INC
(PMI) marketing plan outlined in the following pages.
Marketing is the most important thing that you do in business today. This is true because
marketing, in all its varied forms is concerned with attracting customers, getting them to buy, and
making sure that they are happy enough with their purchase that they come back for more or
refer you to others. What could be more important? Ever try to run a business without
customers?
Sure, marketing can be a great deal of fun – it is, after all, the one aspect of business where
creativity is not only tolerated but also essential to success. In the long run, however, marketing
is all about the bottom line.
PMI owners use every technique available to gain a foothold in the customer’s mind. With
PMItime-tested marketing plan, your focus should be the effectiveness of your marketing efforts
and the impact of your marketing message. Remember, it’s better to reach ten people with a
message that works than one hundred people with a message that doesn’t.
So, why is following the PMI marketing plan so important? Any successful marketer must have
a sound plan and the belief and commitment to execute the plan in the face of the expected ups
and downs of a start-up venture. PMI’s approach has been refined over years of testing. Each
marketing tactic is an integral part of our owner’s marketing mix. The resulting plan has proven
to be remarkably effective in any market throughout the country.
The marketing plan is separated into three categories; Core Marketing, Advanced Marketing, and
Expert Marketing. Your complete participation in the Core Marketing Program is mandatory, as
referenced in the Operations Manual. Your participation in either the Advanced or Expert
Program will depend upon your goals for your business, the amount of money you allocate to
your marketing efforts, and your ability to successfully master the Core marketing program.
Before you dive head first into PMI’s Core marketing program, take the time read and reread
“Marketing 101”. It’ll give you a proper perspective on marketing as a discipline, help you
understand the “whys” behind some of PMI’s marketing strategies and ensure your appreciation
of the comprehensive PMI program.
Marketing 101
You already know that marketing presents some difficult and puzzling tasks. Marketing
direction and support is one of the biggest values a franchise can give an aspiring start-up. Part
of marketing’s difficulty lays in the little-recognized fact that most other business functions are,
in a sense, part of marketing. That’s because everything that touches the customer is marketing.
The obvious points of customer contact – like advertising and the actual location – are easier for
you to control. But less obvious points of contact – the appearance of your location, or the dress
and conduct of an employee – also make up part of the complex marketing picture.
Marketing can be the most daunting aspect of your new start-up – you have to find customers
and motivate them to refer your business to other consumers. That’s not easy, but it can be
simple. Doing a job well is not that hard, really. All you need to do is have a competent
marketing plan (which you do) and follow that plan completely (which you will, right?)!
How to think about marketing
In marketing, you must plan and coordinate a great many activities in order to reach a customer
and compel them to purchase. Even the smallest businesses have dozens of marketing activities
to coordinate. Many separate activities have an impact on customers and their behavior. The
most powerful marketing source of leverage is an appropriate marketing program that
coordinates and focuses all of the diverse activities of marketing toward one common goal.
The 9 Most Important Marketing Secrets (excerpted from Guerrilla Marketing, by Jay Conrad
Levinson)
The following 9 “secrets” of marketing shouldn’t be secrets at all. You will never grow to your
desired size or success without adhering to each and every one of these secrets.
1. Commitment to your marketing program.
2. Think of the program as an investment.
3. See to it that your program is performed consistently.
4. Make your prospects confident in you and your company.
5. You must see that marketing is an assortment of weapons.
6. You must know that profits come subsequent to the sale.
7. You must run you company in a way that’s convenient to your customer.
8. Use measurement to judge the effectiveness of your weapons.
9. Learn to become dependent upon other businesses and they upon you (especially critical
in the home inspection business).
1. Commitment to your marketing program.
If you’re not committed to a marketing or advertising program, it’s probably not going to work
for you. The single most important word for you to remember during the time you are engaged
in marketing is commitment. It means that you are taking the marketing job seriously. Without
commitment, marketing becomes practically impotent. When you commit to a marketing plan,
you put it to work. And you stay with it, no matter what. You watch it slowly take effect, slide
back a little, start taking hold even more, stumble, then finally grab on and soar, taking you and
your company with it! Your plan is working, your bank account is swelling and it’s because you
were committed to your marketing program. Lest you misunderstand, think about the following
list each time you run an ad or send out a mailer and get a response that doesn’t meet your
expectations:
1. The first time a man looks at an ad, he doesn’t see it.
2. The second time, he doesn’t notice it.
3. The third time, he is conscious of its existence.
4. The fourth time, he faintly remembers having seen it.
5. The fifth time, he reads the ad.
6. The sixth time, he turns up his nose at it.
7. The seventh time, he read it through and says, “Oh brother!”
8. The eighth time, he says, “Here’s that confounded thing again!”
9. The ninth time, he wonders if it amounts to anything.
10. The tenth time, he will ask a colleague if he has tried it.
11. The eleventh time, he wonders how the advertiser makes it pay.
12. The twelfth time, he thinks it must be good thing.
13. The thirteenth time, he thinks it might be worth something.
14. The fourteenth time, he remembers, that he wanted such a thing for a long time.
15. The fifteenth time, he is tantalized because he cannot afford it.
16. The sixteenth time, he thinks he will buy it someday.
17. The seventeenth, he makes a note of it.
18. The eighteenth time, he swears at his poverty.
19. The nineteenth time, he counts his money carefully.
20. The twentieth time he sees the ad, he buys.
2. Think of your program as an investment.
Marketing and advertising should be considered conservative investments. They are not miracle
workers. They are not instant gratifiers. If you don’t recognize that marketing is a conservative
investment, you’ll have difficulty committing yourself to a marketing program. If your
marketing doesn’t produce instant results, it’s because most marketing doesn’t. If it does,
excellent – but don’t expect this to happen every time.
Marketing will contribute to slow but steady increases for you. At the end of the year, you’ll be
able to say that you’ve invested X dollars in marketing and received X plus Y in sales. Don’t
expect marketing to suddenly double your sales. Although that has happened, it is unusual.
Recognizing this, you’ll feel good about making a conservative investment in marketing next
year, and year after that. If you expect more from marketing, chances are, you’ll be
disappointed.
3. See that your program is performed consistently.
Don’t change what PMI’s marketing experts have laid out. Don’t change media. Don’t change
messages. Don’t vary the graphics. Change your offers and discounts, even change your prices,
but DO NOT CHANGE YOUR IDENTITY! Don’t drop out of the eye of your real estate
community for long. When you are ready to market your service, be prepared to put the word
out consistently. Consistently means regularly – and for a good period of time. It means that
instead of running a couple of large newspaper ads once every few months, you should run
smaller ads in the local real estate bulletin every week. Down the road, if you do radio
commercials, don’t run fifty-five commercials in one week every few months. Instead, run
twelve commercials per week every week.
4. Make your prospects confident in you and your company.
Consistency, as described in step 3, breeds familiarity, familiarity breeds confidence, and
confidence breeds sales. If your inspections and customer service is of sufficient quality, your
confidence and your offering will attract buyers more than any other attribute.
5. See that marketing is an assortment of weapons.
The wider the assortment of weapons in your marketing arsenal, the wider the grin on your face
when you review your financial statements. The assortment marketing channels and venues
reinforces your message and identity from a variety of directions. Each weapon strengthens the
message of the others in your arsenal and by using them simultaneously you speed up the buying
process the 20-step buying decision outlined earlier in this chapter.
6. Profits come subsequent to the sale.
It costs six times more to sell your service to a new customer than it does to an existing
customer. In the home inspection business, you have two customers, the realtor who will refer
you your business and the homeowners, who will actually buy your service. Once a realtor has
referred a home inspection or a homeowner has used your inspection and testing services, be sure
to thank them appropriately and consistently follow-up.
7. Be convenient to your customers.
Often times, your chance to create relationships with realtors will come when they or their clients
find themselves in a pinch. You need to be accessible and flexible, ready to perform an
impromptu inspection at a moment’s notice. As your relationship continues, remember that
realtor’s will usually favor inspectors who are readily available, who make it easy to arrange
inspections, who do impressive work, and who make the realtors look good for referring them.
8. Use measurement to judge the effectiveness of your efforts.
The easiest and most effective way to measure the effectiveness of your marketing efforts is to
always ask a realtor who refers business to you where they saw you or how they found out about
you. The same goes for the homeowners who are paying for your services. By tracking their
responses over the long term, you’ll get an accurate idea of exactly where your money and time
is being best spent. Using the tracking form included in this manual, you should also track
every marketing effort, the frequency with you do it, how much it costs you and every response
you can directly attribute to it.
9. Learn to become dependent upon other businesses and they upon you.
In the home inspection industry, most of your inspections will be for homeowners who were
referred to you by professionals in the real estate community. Referrals the highest quality and
most cost-effective advertising there is. To be successful, you’re going to have to recognize that
you’re going to be pretty dependent upon your relationships with those professionals. The good
news is that the relationship works both ways. If a realtor is referring his or her clients to you for
home inspections, it’s because they trust that you’ll do good work, treat their clients
professionally, and be conveniently accessible to the realtor. By making home inspections one
less thing the realtor has to worry about during the home buying or selling process, the realtors
will become dependent upon you as well. Ultimately, you want to strive for a complete
interdependency, a partnership. Once that happens, you’ll be getting as much business from the
realtor as they can give you and it will be very difficult for another home inspection company to
steal any of your business.
There. Now you can never say you weren’t made fully aware of the nine most important
marketing secrets. By knowing them, by making them a cornerstone of your business, you have
a head start on the competition.