How to Use Buzz Marketing in Your Business

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Every day is a holiday, at least according to Contractor University faculty member Drew Cameron. Creating a buzz amongst customers is an art, not a science, and Drew has mastered that art down to what your marketing team should be doing every hour of every day.

This week on Cracking the Code, Drew explains how he still has a fresh approach to marketing after over 40 years in the industry. Learn to engage the customer outside of the sales conversation and win their hearts in order to open their wallets.

Audio Transcription (in Beta)

Are you using Buzz marketing in your company? Well, if you’re not sure what I’m talking about, you’re going to learn all about it on today’s show.

Now, today we’ve got the one and only Drew Cameron talking about Buzz marketing as well as seasonal marketing. Now, if you didn’t know, Drew does a monthly webinar called Marketing Mastermind 360. You can log on and get your questions answered live, and he will talk to you about what you should be doing seasonally each month specific to your company.

It’s really amazing. And I want to encourage everybody. If you remember to get out there and to get involved, if you have not already. So let’s join Drew right now, as he dives into seasonal and buzz marketing. Every day is a holiday. All right. If you haven’t gotten through this, it’s one of the last things I give you.

Okay. Cause I want you to basically either remember the first thing I tell you, the last thing I tell you, and in the plan, one of the last things I give you. Is buzz marketing and buzz marketing talks about that every day is a holiday I don’t understand why nobody is celebrating these days and and basically in inside the business with your people We’re out there to the marketplace.

This is what creates buzz. This is what creates a fun working environment And so yes to the ladies out there The empowered women. Okay. It is empowered women entrepreneurs day. It is also national beer day. All right You I don’t have one but I will later on the plane going home. It is World Health Day and so I’ve gotten 100 push ups in so far today.

I got 50 squats in all done here in the studio because I was up late out of the hotel early and here in the studio so I had to get my workout movements here today in the studio. Take care of yourself, my friends. We want you around, right? And yes, it is national, no housework day. How cool is that? And so when your technicians go into people’s houses, again, how about they let the customer know, I hope you’re not doing any housework because you’re not allowed to today.

And you let them know it’s national house, no housework day. Have fun with this stuff internally and externally. All right. And then yes, In July, we celebrate our friends to the north. Nigel, I hope you’re with us, buddy, and anybody else who’s up there in Canada in the great white north. It is Canada Day on July 1st, and then Independence Day down here, and then we have Parents Day, and it, yes, is National Hot Dog Month and National Ice Cream Month.

In fact, when you look at the holidays in July, what you’re going to come to find out? There’s a lot of days for food and several ice cream days too, right? And so we’re going to play off of that. Pretty cool. Right? So I want to make sure that you’re using that. And I’m going to also start with some Q and a, so I wanted to see, um, our people in the portal here, questions that you got, like, like, Or comments that you got.

Please explain to me why nobody is taking advantage of marketing the holidays inside their business or outside the business and sending me some kind of creative promotion that they’re using, uh, to celebrate one of these crazy, crazy ass holidays that we got, I gave you the resources to where to find out all these holidays, right?

Holiday insights. com is one of the links that you can go to. And yes, you should celebrate that internally to your business, obviously within your family, and you should celebrate that to your customers. Honor them, right? Honor the father’s next month. Honor the parents the following month. There’s a kid’s day in here somewhere.

I think it comes up in maybe August or something like that. Um, I think step parents month is in there too, uh, maybe in June or July. So, um, I, uh, Shelly, she says I have the calendar. I put that, uh, I put in my office to tell me what national holiday is every day of the year. And that, and that’s not, she’s, so she’s using nationaldaycalendar.

com. Thank you for sharing the link. Sandra said May is national salsa month. Okay, so now I need to have a corona. When I have salsa and chips, another reason to drink. Thank you for that. Sandra, um, or Sandra, we had a company salsa competition, super fun. And there you go. See creating buzz within the environment, right?

That is a marketing event internally to retain your people. And when you can talk about that out there, people want to come and join that. It is a recruiting opportunity, right? You can’t just be thinking about marketing and advertising in a traditional fashion. Operationally, internal. Okay, Ashley, she said for World Health Day, we promoted breathing healthy air on our social media to promote the sale of air purification devices.

Love it. And the fact that you you figured out that it was World Health Day. Yes, we have National Indoor Air Quality Day or weekends. I mean, we’ve got all kinds of stuff going on out there. So appreciate that. What successes have you had? I mean, we’ve gotten through one quarter, you know, already, you’re going into the second quarter.

So we we kind of, cut off last week. But tell me about the successes that you had or the struggles that you had in the first quarter so that maybe we can put a tourniquet on the bleeding if it’s bleeding out here going into the second quarter, right? Because right now you’re in the second quarter, you’re going into it in april here.

Obviously today we’re planning on a third quarter, but I didn’t want to take a moment and kind of do things out of sync because here when we talk about july, like I said, I’m going to give you some stuff, but I’m going to give it to you so you can read. So I get an opportunity because I’m in charge. I get to control the order in which I do this stuff.

So, uh, who had some successes, who had some challenges? All right. We had challenge with converting, um, email clicks to leads. Not surprising. Digital is tough, my friend. Digital stuff. That’s why direct mail is better. Um, you know, so that would be worth a conversation on a coaching call is to I’d like to see what you set in a way of email.

Send me the email. I can probably tell you, you got it formatted wrong. Jeff seals on the call. He sent me an email a few weeks ago. It was put together by his team. Okay. First thing at the top of the, uh, of the thing was all wrong. It was all, it was logos and other things. We had to basically get the compelling headline first.

Um, and who else we got here? We got Sandra. She said, we utilize our CSRs with opportunity to cross promote trades on incoming calls. For example, if they call for AC, we offered electrical and plumbing was very successful. Yes. For those of you who have an ecosystem of other services, services. Yes. Uh, I applaud you, Sondra.

Offer customer other opportunities. Hey, it’s let’s say right now. Uh, it’s it’s April, right? You’re answering the phones. Maybe you’re a little bit slow. You’re between seasons, right? The weather is kind of what coming we call this the shoulder season of the transitional season. You’re coming out of the winter.

The campaign ended in March. Probably that you’re in, if you’re in the at cost letter, um, and you’re probably taking a few weeks off before you do that preseason air conditioner replacement thing, or maybe you’re doing spring maintenance, right? But we’re kind of between things. And so when people call in, you can say it’s April.

And we wanted to go ahead and, uh, introduce a new service to our customers. As you know us for HVAC, we’ve added plumbing services. And we’re going to offer, if you like, no cost, no obligation, a free plumbing inspection. Right? Again, you go out and you do a free plumbing inspection. You let people know what you’re finding in their home.

You’re giving them a discount on those services for doing it. And we’ve done that with other people. We promote whole home service agreements for that. And I love the fact that you’re doing plumbing and electrical. Add that to HVAC. I hope you have a whole home service agreement. See, I knew if I called Chad Bird, uh, he just would not sit down there quietly in Georgia and, and, and he’s great.

So the postcard that we created together, again, is this. Chad sent me his postcard. I edited his postcard. He took it. He ran it. He grossed 42, 000 thus far in a week with that postcard. Way to go, Chad. Way to execute, buddy. I appreciate you sharing it. Number one, see now Art, he says, sorry for the cancellation.

See, I played guilt and the shame, Art. He shows up, but I know Art and Derek, and those are great guys, uh, with the Gold Shield team out there. Uh, I understand how business happens. And he says, we moved it. I saw that you rescheduled. We have an employee appreciation day tomorrow. Okay. I’ll give you a pass.

You got an employee appreciation. Again, internal marketing. All right. So any other comments, uh, please put them in the chat. Uh, there, the rest of you all showed up small. I’m going to guilt and shame you for showing up small. And when you play small, you get hurt. All right. But you also don’t get acknowledged there.

And, uh, so again, let’s get back to. The business at hand. All right. And so zones, so marketing zones. So here are your zones, right? And again, you have to adapt, adjust and execute the plans based on where you’re located in the United States and Canada, as we always talk about here. Right. And so here’s kind of the framework.

It hasn’t changed the, you know, much one, I think one campaign dropped out because we got through, in this case, we got through June. As you can see, we still have, we’re looking at May june and july, uh in this particular quarter And so we still have some things in april But since they finish up in may that pre season tune up is kind of in zone one there We’re still playing off of that right and so we have pre season tune up.

We got a pre season ac sale We’ve got the mid season ac tune up offer because again some of you more further south are going to be mid season You could also have an indoor air quality, uh spring promotion That’s probably started and it’s just going to be finishing up. You may have a mid season AC repair offer and you may have a mid season AC replacement offer.

And again, when I talk in terms of AC sale or AC promotions and things like that, um, It can be just air conditioning or a heat pump. It doesn’t have to be it can be a part of a full system campaign And again, i’ll share with you some things. I already have shared some things with you Last year I shared with you a great campaign for this time of year Um as well, so, um, uh, excuse me for the spring again, right right now the time frame that you’re in but for july We don’t need to do anything right again with july The weather should be driving us, right?

And our opportunities that we get through service and maintenance should be driving us and those other channels And so we don’t have to do, you know, promotional campaigns if the weather in fact cooperates We’ll talk about that here in a little bit because that’s where operations, you know shows up But you should have a contingency plan in place.

So here you are in april Um, I would basically do a very short A conservative approach to where maybe I offer payment options, a trade in allowance and maybe throw in a filtration device. I don’t need to be as aggressive as I was with the free furnace letter in the last quarter or the at cost letter that maybe you’re just kind of winding down.

Some of you are probably going to finish up the at cost letter this month, maybe about the 15th of the month and that’s okay. But again, we’re now targeting july. So again, we’re looking at really may june in july because we always look back two months as well. All right, so let’s look at the departmental and media strategies here again.

You get your legend So your seasonal plan again if again in this case, we’re looking at july So you are going to be in peak season This is where we shift from doing direct response make the phone ring It should be ringing the web form should be coming in people should be tagging on your website um and and We should be playing off those service calls.

So this is where branding and identity comes into place. And, and we should be having messages out there. They’re all about that. And we’re going to show you, share with you some of those messages in the, uh, the content that we’ve got. There always should be a differentiator in what it is we do. Something unique that we stick out for.

And again, when I, uh, I want to bring your attention to the fact, when I say a differentiator, it doesn’t have to be the same thing throughout the year. Right. It can be something that’s unique and special and different that you change up depending on what the season is. Um, is there, does there need to be an offer?

I don’t think there definitely needs to be. I don’t need to give away air conditioners in July. Right. Do I want to market payments? Always. Okay. And I don’t need to get super aggressive with that. That’s just my, my belief that the manufacturer isn’t buying down the, um, Um, The dealer cost there. I go for zero to 36, um, zero for 36 max.

I don’t go zero to 60 unless the manufacturer is buying that down because my dealer cost is going to go above 8%. I don’t want to do that. I like 6. 99 for 120 months or 144 months. I like that long term low interest to give my customers the lowest. Payment possible and the most amount of flexibility in a dealer cost that i’m willing to incur, right?

Yes, I know I can do 299 499 but the dealer cost gets up, you know to be a little bit more than maybe I want to do Right, but i’m going to go ahead and optimize for that. I know some of you uh, Reach out and say all you’re doing is 9. 99 That’s fine The objection I get from a customer, you know tends to be well, I can get a cheaper rate in my bank Yes, you can but And I don’t know that I want that to be an issue They might even be able to do better for six nine nine But not probably on an unsecured loan and not in the with the immediacy that I can get it to them And again, most people when given a payment option will do it through the through the provider So we already talked about may and june.

So we already had those, uh under our under our belt. So july is a Repair month. It’s also a replace month. Okay, and so you can optimize for I for either one of those You We’re in the midst of peak season and so that’s going to be our seasonal message I’m going to go ahead out there into the newspaper Postcards and direct mail and I will do that to the general public as well as to my customer base Whether they be a service agreement customer or a non service agreement customer show np Pcdm, that’s newspaper postcard and direct mail if you’re doing anything Okay, and I’m not saying that you should or have to weather should be driving us This is where we dial back direct response and we dial up branding image top of the mind awareness all purpose advertising Again, I don’t have to give away things.

I don’t have to make compelling offers to people here But I will basically want to make sure that i’m optimizing this window of time Okay to go ahead and convert everything to a replacement Because the market is ripe with opportunity, right? I mean the calls are coming in through the service department calls are coming through with maintenance We’re handling our maintenance for our service agreement customers when we can I may have to reallocate my people We’ll talk more about that a little bit later but That’s what we’re, that’s what we’re focused on here.

And I’m going to support anything that I am doing with digital broadcast billboard in internal and operational stuff. And that’s, we’re going to talk about here today is this internal and operational stuff. But the digital stuff should be making people aware that we’re available to serve. This is when you want to go after the pay per click.

Yes, you will pay more for a click on the digital stuff, but retargeting marketing should be out there, radio and television. Again, Not with offers, but that you’re available to serve whatever your hours may be, you might say, Hey, we never close. We’re open days, nights, weekends and holidays. We’re open late.

You know, that’s a great line. Um, Morris Jenkins down, uh, down in the, uh, the, the Georgia area. I want to say, uh, South Carolina, maybe I think is where they’re located. Uh, that that’s their line on television, you know, call us we’re up late and, uh, but make sure that you, you got your, your ducks in a row. And we’ll talk about how to do that operationally here.

So, uh, the stuff that goes on is ongoing in May, June and July is, uh, the yellow pages, your digital marketing, your streaming services, the things you have contracts on your, your happy calls, your community involvement, all of that stuff that we see every month. Again, that slides here again. And then, um, other things kind of are, are, are falling out here.

The, the home shows are done. Probably in April, I think is the last one I saw around the United States that’s out there. And so you don’t see that there, but I, I left it in there and, uh, the newsletter as well at the end of March, because the opportunities are probably coming, you know, coming through the channel still on that, uh, customers getting, you know, into the newsletter, they’re just reading it and they’re calling you here in April, uh, as well.

Um, and home shows that are in April will probably start running leads into, into May. Don’t forget about these people. When you get those leads, those are hot opportunities. They had interest at the show, they saw something, they heard something, uh, you know, that they’re intrigued by, you know, strike while the iron’s hot.

Then the rest of these, as you can see, spring maintenance, precision tune up offer. Like I said, in the newspaper or a freestanding insert, that’s going to be in May. I can do another spring maintenance, uh, precision tune up offers, you know, uh, service agreement offer, uh, you know, in my VAL, uh, in my postcard to my service agreement customers, or I could do VALPAC there.

Again, that’s going to be direct mail. Preseason AC offer to my customer base with a targeted mailer just to those customers. Uh, uh, we’re in a newsletter at the end of March. Those leads are kind of still playing themselves through, uh, you know, here, uh, preseason AC offer in the newspaper freestanding insert to the public.

Pre season ac ads on radio television and ott And that’s going to be out there into the uh, broadcast media and then service discount offers to uh on equipment Replace versus repair options in the newspaper as well as direct mail And so you might think about that and also consider a third Newsletter right in here in july.

A lot of people don’t do newsletters in july But this is where I have an opportunity not to go ahead and make offers but go ahead and inform people You And we’ll talk about that here today as well. So you have kind of the, the plan, generally speaking, and the, the thing I want to kind of call your attention to here is driving operational maximization.

So, in July, like I said, we don’t have to do a lot of. Marketing spend, if you will, but we need to do a better job with the opportunities. You’re being flooded with opportunities and you can’t be all things to all people. When you try to do so, you fail miserably and you’re nothing to anyone at some point.

And customer experience suffers and it should never suffer. And so when calls are coming in, if you need a prioritization, Okay, DEF CON one through DEF CON five, and you need a prioritization schedule for both your service calls and your sales calls. You’re going to have my contact information at the end.

Email me and I’ll send you my protocol for that, but I’m going to go ahead and triage the opportunities that are coming in. For the highest probability prospects. And so if I have an opening on my calendar, maybe for, let’s say, Tuesday of next week and you call me and your new customer to me and you’re a five year old air conditioning system and you’re not my customer, I didn’t put that system in and you’re not my service or given customer and you’re calling me and you have no cooling and I have an opening on Tuesday, I will schedule that opportunity today.

Yes, I will because I have an opening. Right. I’m taking care of everything else up to that point. Right. And that’s why that customer got pushed out. If they’re willing to wait, then I’m willing to go. But I’ll tell you this come Monday, if I get flooded with calls, my service room and customers, that customer on Tuesdays, getting bumped, they’re gone, right.

We take care of our warranty customers and our service agreement customers first, and then I take care of anybody who’s got a system that meets the protocols. Let’s say, for example, an air conditioner that is 10 years old and has no cooling. I don’t care if they’re my customer or not or under service agreement or not.

That’s a high probability prospect. Awesome content right there from Drew as always. Now listen, if you like this episode, feel free to share it on Facebook. And if you want to unlock more premium training content to take your company to the next level, click the link in the Facebook post for a 30 day free trial.

Well, that’s it for this week, folks. We’ll see you next time until then. Bye bye for now.