Matt Michel
Service Roundtable, CEO
Contributing Writer

One of the great things about ShuBee is all of the simple, yet successful products they provide to the industry that help you stand out and succeed.  Here are ten simple, successful marketing tactics you apply in your company.  Don’t let the simplicity fool you.  Simplest can be best.

Promote Your Green Credentials
If a tree falls in the forest and no one sees it, does it make a sound? Yes, but no one hears it. If you practice green marketing and no one knows about it, does it count? Yes, but to you alone. If you want credit with the public, you need to make some noise.

Hobaica Refrigeration in Phoenix prepared a flyer to communicate their green marketing activities to their customers and community. The Hobaicas note how they recycle, use a zero ozone depletion potential refrigerant, test IAQ for pollutants, use paperless fax technology (e.g, eFax), and promote high efficiency to reduce gas and electricity consumption. They add to this by planting tree in their customers’ names when a customer buys a system replacement.

How many of these are you doing?  Does anyone know?

New Employee Special
When you hire a new employee, create a special in his or her name (e.g., ‘The Employee’s Name Special). Offer your standard seasonal promotion or some other promotion.

Mail this to the family and friends of your employee.  Add the new employee’s family and friends to your in-house mail list.  These could be old customers or co-workers if the employee comes from a different industry, church members, club members, neighbors, family relations, and so on. If you hire the employee from a competitor, DO NOT mail it to the customers of that company.

The letter should be printed on company letterhead. Take a quick digital picture of a *smiling* employee to include at the top.

This approach was pioneered by Tempo Air in Irving, Texas where a limited mailing successfully generated thousands of dollars of sales.

In the end, you conclude with a time-sensitive call to action. Should you want, you can create a separate letter on the employee’s one-year anniversary. You might also send this by email.

Accept Trade-Ins
As long as a water heater heats water, some homeowners will be reluctant to replace it.  It seems wrong and wasteful to replace a working water heater before it’s absolutely necessary.  So give people an incentive.  Allow customers to trade-in their old water heater (or furnace, air conditioner, or heat pump) for a new model.  Give them a trade-in credit of $100 or more.  Print the trade-in value on water heater stickers and mail your customers trade-in promotions.

Facebook Coupons
One of the opportunities Facebook presents is the ability to post pictures on your company wall and personal wall.  The pictures can any graphic.  Instead of positing a straight picture, post a coupon.  Use the coupons when the call board starts to empty.

While Facebook coupons won’t solve all of your marketing problems, they will generate business if you build up a network of friends for your personal page and followers for your business page.

Holiday Post Cards
Joe Girard was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s greatest salesman.  He sold over 13 thousand cars in his career, one at a time, at retail.  These were individual, not fleet sales.

How did Girard do it?  How did he sell so many car?  One of his secrets was the humble post card.  Girard assembled a personal mailing list through the years that was reported to reach more than 16 thousand people before he was finished.  Each month, he mailed everyone a card.

Take a tip from the greatest salesman in the world and mail cards to your customer list every month.  What do you mail?  There’s at least one holiday occurring every month.  Include coupons, offers, season tips, referral requests, etc.

Cloverleaf Door Hangers
At the end of every service call, your technicians should cloverleaf door hangers.  Place one or two door hangers on the houses on each side of the customer and three or five across the street.  This is fundamental marketing.  It’s low cost, only takes a few minutes, and will make a difference over time.

Technicians notoriously resist placing door hangers, despite the use of spiffs.  One solution is for the dispatcher to instruct the technician to call in following the completion of the work, for the dispatcher to instruct the technician to place door hangers, and call back when done to get the next call.  With nothing to do for a few minutes, most technicians will go ahead and place door hangers.

Build a Better Invoice
Most service invoices are boring.  They look like impersonal forms an accountant or engineer created.  An invoice should represent your company well, help increase your average ticket, reinforce value, and encourage repeat business.

Redesign your invoice.  Make it a sales and marketing tool.

How’s My Driving Stickers
Safe driving is always important, but even more so when your technicians are driving vehicles that reflect your company’s brand.  “How’s My Driving” bumper stickers serve three purposes. They inform potential customers that your company cares about road safety and traffic laws, they give you an opportunity to be aware of and address unacceptable driving, and the serve as a reminder to technicians to drive sane or risk someone reporting poor driving to the boss.

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Employee ID Badges
Every field employee should be wearing an Employee ID Badge when he or she arrives at a customer’s home or business.  An ID Badge provides a sense of security for your customer and creates a more professional image for your company. They’re inexpensive and require very little time to produce using this template.

If you’re using a transparent badge holder or are laminating the badges, print the same information on both sides of the card. That way the ID is always visible, even if the badge gets spun around.

Employee Bio for Email
If you want homeowners to provide you with their email addresses, you must provide the homeowners with a reason.  A great reason is to ask for an email address is to send the homeowner a bio and picture of the technician or plumber who will come to the customer’s home.

In the email remind the homeowner of the appointment time, window, and/or day.  Include a picture and information about the employee, such as years with your company, years of industry experience, licenses and certifications, background check results, and drug test results. If you promise background checks and drug testing you must perform these.

Include something personal about the technician (e.g., scout leader, soccer coach, member of XYZ church, avid baseball fan, etc.) to give homeowners ways to connect to, and relate with the technician. It humanizes and personalizes your company.

Finally, make a special, seasonal offer or simply to plant seeds for service agreement sales.

If you liked these tips, they come directly from the Service Roundtable’s HVAC Marketing Toolbox App for the iPhone and Android devices.  Download the app for many more marketing tips.