Today was an interesting day. Had a meeting with a marketing company, made some cold calls, got an employee thats going to help make cold calls, and now I have to work my nursing job. The day flew by and I kind of feel like I have nothing to show for it.
The marketing meeting. So lets start this off and let me get something out of the way. I didn’t realize that marketing and advertising are two completely different things. My business partner reached out on Facebook to find some people to help market our business. We needed a way to find homeowners at a better and faster rate than we currently are, thus marketing. WRONG. Marketing should be called “brand building” not marketing. An hour discussion to see that the marketing guy (really nice) wants $5k a month to do some brand building. Wants to create ad creatives and video. Video is something they seem to specialize in. While I think this is needed, what I really need is people to give me their dang email and download my app in 2 weeks.
So brand building….probably a good idea. I feel like this is another chicken or the egg thing. We need to build a solid name and become trustworthy. We need people to hear the name and understand the concept. I think a couple of professional videos/commercials showing exactly how it works would be super beneficial so people can feel their pain and relate to how much Fix it Today can help them. But we need money to pay for this. Being on a limited budget (we ain’t rich) we have $X per month set aside. Is it better to spend that $5k a month on ads or brand building. I’m thinking ads
Cold calls – while it’s a cold call, I feel like its kind of an easy one. I’m not selling you anything and not asking you for money on the call. Just asking you to listen for like 45 seconds. I couldn’t sleep last night and had some type of revelation that there was a much simpler way to tell service providers what the heck we do. It goes something like this: “Hi, Im Tim, this is basically a cold call. Im really looking for your input as a professional to see if our idea is good or bad. When you have downtime and you or your employees aren’t working, it cost you money. How does a homeowner know you’re available to fix their problem?” This was met with mostly silence (hopefully they were contemplating the point) and I say, “thats what Fix it Today is trying to solve. Homeowners just want their problem solved and they need to know who can come do it today!”. I had 2 people who answer the phones say it was a good idea and they would forward the info to the owner (one said marketing). Few companies said they weren’t interested (no problem…thanks for your time, have a good day). Some people didn’t answer. This is something we see too often. Had one guy call back and say he’s in but not for 3 months. His whole crew is doing a very large commercial job for the next three months and has zero availability.
Oh yeah, had a meeting with a company today. Super nice guy Ron (may have mentioned him in the past). We discussed the software more and answered some questions. At the end he made me smile. He said “This is a great idea. In the next couple years, when you guys are making millions of dollars…please don’t sell out to the big guys, they will ruin it”. His comment really made me smile to see a stranger has faith that Fix it Today is going to be successful. Thanks Ron
Last but not least, I asked a part time employee for my other business to see if he was interested in cold calling and making some extra money. Hourly rate is the same plus a bonus per company that signs up. He not only said yes, but he used to do cold calling for a living and definitely wasn’t afraid of the rejection! I hope this is a blessing I have been needing.
