Marketing Research for Plumbing, HVAC and Electrical Companies

One of the practices that makes Contractor 20/20 so successful is that we build your HVAC, electric or plumbing marketing campaign on a foundation of marketing research. Through research we are able to minimize the margin of error, find the best prices, present you with the best advertising options, and pinpoint your target market and customer. Some advertising agencies use a shotgun approach and try to reach the entire market with your advertising message. In most instances, this approach leads to wasted money. Instead, Contractor 20/20 gets to know your company, identifies your best type of customer, and targets those customers specifically. We use several different research studies to accomplish this.

Prior Customer Consumer Survey

We call up to 500 recent, prior customers (or as many as it takes) to complete a 50 person survey that identifies:

• Customer retention rate
• Reputation
• Satisfaction rates
• Pricing problems
• Pricing opportunities

This survey is used to:

• Correct problems with customer satisfaction levels
• Distinguish between effective and ineffective employees
• Justify upward price adjustments:

Fact: More than 9 times out of 10, the contractors we work with are under priced and don’t know it. Many contractors are overly sensitive to criticism and too modest to appreciate compliments.

Potential Customer Consumer Survey

We call up to 500 potential customers (or as many as it takes) in your target zip codes to complete a 50 person survey that identifies:

• Growth potential for new customers
• Market share
• Brand/reputation strength
• Brand weaknesses
• Estimated resistance to growing your market share
• Public awareness level of your company/brand
• Quality objection levels
• Conversion from awareness to sales (typically 15% and another measure of brand strength)
• Price objection levels
• Percent of consumers without a company preference

Fact: The more undecided consumers without a preference for a particular contractor, the easier it is to grow your company.

This survey is used to:

• Determine if you need to build awareness
• Determine if you need to change public opinion of your brand
• Develop content of advertising
• Determine frequency of advertising

Media Survey

We survey every radio, TV, and cable station in your area. These surveys determine:

• Your service area
• Your target area
• Cost per percentage part of target audience reached with each commercial (CPP)
• Best advertising buys in your area

This survey is used to:

• Determine which stations and times will reach your best potential customer by age, gender, income, and lifestyle
  • Reach the right customers, at the right time, the right number of times
  • Increase efficiency of your advertising campaign
  • Increase success of your advertising campaign
  • Save you money on advertisement placement

Fact: You can reach your prospect 40 times on the radio for every one time by direct mail. If a prospective customer has heard great things about your company before they get a card, read a newspaper, log onto the internet, or use the yellow pages, they are over 35% more likely to buy from you. Radio and TV properly implemented with the right message, heard the right number of times, to the right target audience effectively bring down the cost of all your other media.

Customer Acquisition Cost Study

You and your CSRs gather important data that we analyze to determine:

• The cost per new customer
• The effectiveness of your yellow page ads
• The effectiveness of your internet ads
• How your numbers compare to national averages and top results
• How customers hear about you

Fact: Proper placement, content, and awareness methods can make your advertising results six times better.

This survey is used to:

• Recommend proven methods to increase your results
• Reinforce methods that are working
• Eliminate waste and methods that are not working

Yellow Page Results Analysis

Using tracking sheets and analysis we establish:

• Yellow page new customer cost
• Yellow page success rates in comparison to other advertising options
• Pricing against your closing ratios to see if new customers will bear the cost of their acquisition at expectable closing rates…in other words…to see if you are making money off the yellow pages

This survey is used to:

• Determine if yellow page advertising is worth the money
• Determine if you can replace yellow page customers for less with direct mail or other advertising leads

Fact: For TOO LONG the industry has been overly dependent on yellow page advertising. However, now some companies are dropping out of the yellow pages before they test their real value or have a cost effective, consistent, substitute.

Psychographic Personality Analysis

Using cutting edge technology, our national consumer information partner has broken down the country into 65 personality types. They take your customer list and analyze it in order to:

• Pinpoint the 10% of people most likely to use your company
• Provide highly advanced, targeted mailing lists
• Provide specialized information that helps us develop effective content for your ads

More on Psychographic Personality Analysis:

At Contractor 20/20 we take a more conservative approach by first determining what type of person would naturally use your company. We do this by analyzing your current customer list using the same partners that top Fortune 500 companies use to narrow down their markets. They can give us amazing information about your current customers’ personalities, shopping habits, political preferences, and even their favorite restaurants. Some of that information can be useful when we design your website and advertisements. But what we really want to pinpoint are the top personality types (psychographics) that are your best customers. Once we have those personality types we can then target our direct mail campaigns, internet advertising,  TV advertising and radio advertising to reach the people in your community who have those personality types. This means that every dollar you spend is devoted to reaching people who are more likely to buy from you.

Most plumbing, heating, and cooling companies can’t afford a big expensive advertising campaign with the aim of reaching every person in the community. The truth is, you don’t need to reach everyone. Instead, the best practice is to go after the customers that your business naturally attracts. Not only is this good for you because you build a larger customer base and make more money, but it is also great for the customer because they find a company that shares their same values, offers a quality product, and makes them feel comfortable. This type of customer is more likely to use you again and therefore boosts customer retention and your bottom line.

If you are interested in developing an advertising campaign that pinpoints your best customers contact us today. For a minimal charge we can run your customer list through our software and determine the demographic and psychographic marketing information that will produce the best results. By using our marketing research oriented approach, we can save you money and time and raise your sales closing levels because we get your technicians to the right door in the first place. Don’t waste any more money on shotgun marketing approaches. Let’s pinpoint your best customer today!