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Creating advertising to start a company?
Liquid Hellz
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
My father and I are going to start a company doing wind mitigation inspections in central Florida and I have been tasked with creating an advertising campaign. The state of Florida passed laws about a year ago requiring insurance companies to reduce homeowners insurance costs if their roofs are inspected and up to code. Its a pretty simple business plan. Inspect home for fee, fill out paperwork required by company x, let homeowner save money. You have to be licensed to do this, which he already is. So, does anyone have an experience with advertising? I have a few slogans and phrases and whatnot but it mostly seems to come down to CALL ### TO SAVE MONEY. Does saying things like this really work? Will I get calls?
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Home Inspection and Wind Mitigation
http://www.FairWindInspections.com/
Simplicity is definitely key here. It's a fairly simple system, but not terribly catchy, so being able to distil it down to something akin to CALL ### TO SAVE MONEY is definitely the way to go.
Bullet point the process, make the benefits to the client clear. If you can get an example of how much the average homeowner could save on their insurance and compare that to the cost of the inspection that would be good. Maybe experiment with delivering that information graphically - so a huge bar for money saved and a tiny bar for cost of inspection, that sort of thing.
The important thing when writing advertising copy is to remember that most people aren't interested until they know what's in it for them, so the biggest, most attention grabbing part of the advert needs to be the WIIFM (What's In It For Me?). There's a clear benefit to homeowners here, so it shouldn't be a hard sell so long as you can form that benefit into a slogan or image that can communicate with the reader in the split second they glance at the flyer before throwing it in the bin.
Is putting flyers on car windows at the mall or on peoples front doors efficient?
Home Inspection and Wind Mitigation
http://www.FairWindInspections.com/
Paper is good, website is good if you have a relatively wide service area. Do a competitor analysis, what are they doing?
For example, McDonalds spends a lot of money doing research to figure out where the best place to open a new McDonalds is. Burger King doesn't -- it just builds near new McDonals, figuring "hey, if it's good enough for them, it's good enough for us!"
Don't nail stuff to telephone poles, that's illegal.
Maybe get one of those magnetic signs for your car, or a vinyl cling sticker, so you can be a mobile billboard whenever you're driving around.
We planned on calling the other companies in the area to see how much they are charging. We may even have them come out and do the inspection on our property to see what/how they do it.. is that illegal?
Home Inspection and Wind Mitigation
http://www.FairWindInspections.com/
No, competitor analyses is normal. It'd only be illegal if you snuck into their offices and stole their standard operating procedures, supplier lists or client databases etc. from their computer or paid off one of their employees to spill the beans on their top secret business methods. They might get twitchy and leave if you start taking detailed notes while they work, they are certainly allowed to try and mask their methods from competitors but they can't sue you for just watching what they do and analysing any promotional media that is in public circulation etc.
A website could be a good idea as it allows you to give more details on the benefits your service offers, list comments from happy customers, link to external resources such as the state of Florida's website if they have information about the pertinent laws, analyses of money saved with different insurance companies, generally show them that you know your stuff and it's a legitimately useful service, give a variety of methods for people to contact you and make enquiries (lead generation) etc. But you still want non-internet avenues of promotion, if only to get the domain name out in public - a car magnet would be a good start for this, yellow pages, maybe local TV advertising? Depends what your marketing budget is and how wide you want to reach.
A business plan would help here. How many customers can you realistically service in a year? How many would you need to be profitable? What are you going to charge? Is it going to be affordable for a wide range of incomes or is there a bottom cut-off? Who are your customers? Homeowners, landlords, renters? Will people living in apartments benefit from the service? Are there any limitations imposed by the law or insurance companies that would make the service invalid for certain properties?
Answering questions like these will help you decide how much you can afford to spend on advertising, where you should be advertising, how your adverts should be presented etc.
Much better than 'Oh yeah, it was great. Now, what was their name again? Oh heck, I'll did it out and email you their number later' only they never do.
Word of mouth is always the best marketing method, a little pile of business cards left with happy customers just helps facilitate easier word of mouth.
A local sign or vinyl shop will be able to make these for you. I used to make ton's of car magnets and vinyl decal work while I was in school and right after graduating before I found my current job.
Putting decals/vinyl on your work truck is never a bad investment and a lot of times can make you look more professional then just showing up in whatever vehicle.
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
Its worth it for word-of-mouth and static imagery. If that's your strategy, anyways. The focus there is not on repeat customers, but new business from people who look to their friends for advice first.
A couple is at a restaurant and the female character keeps staring at another table. The waiter comes by and sets a drink down and says, "thats the insurance money you could be saving if you got your home in Florida inspected by [Liquid Hellz]".
--Camera turns to the mysterious table and closes in on a stack of money with real florida oranges for eyes.
Sorry, i know ripoff.. but seriously the only constructive thought i had that hasn't already been said would be to go to maybe a real-estate office and make sure they are getting the word out about this insurance discount. If new and potential home-owners know about this, then the chances of them calling you go up. Then get the customer's feedback and post it on the website.
Since im already stealing ideas from Geico... about how much does this save on your insurance annually? Geico uses the same strategy by always saying something along the lines of, "you could be saving over 300$ a year". Get a decent average of how much a homeowner can save a year and use that as a selling point.
Edit: just saw Szechuanosaurus' comment. Sorry im stealing ideas from everywhere today
t;Josiah_9 With current law the inspections are good for five years worth of discounts on insurance, so were not likely to see repeat customers soon.
t;MagicPrime I have heard car magnets will damage the finish on your paint job, have you heard this?
t;Luck3ySe7en Its hard to predict how much people will save annually because everyone pays a different amount for their hurricane premium and you can save up to 85% on that specific charge. This equals about 900$ for my dad.
t;Improvolone Yes they do and we are talking about how to get them to put us on their list to recommend. I have no idea of how to go about this, Ill probably just call them.
Thanks for everything guys/gals, much appreciated.
Home Inspection and Wind Mitigation
http://www.FairWindInspections.com/
I just recently started my own advertising/marketing company.
Several people that I used to work with at a mid sized agency here in PA have set off to do our own thing. We each operate as separate entities (for business reasons) but we collaborate on projects.
I, personally, focus on public relations, copywriting and other various aspects of strategic marketing. The others are graphic designers, web guys, etc...
If you think you're up for it, drop me a line and we can chat, show you my references and work, etc...