Many remodelers miss the chance to market to a wonderful audience: the people who own the homes surrounding their current jobs. Because they're likely to have a similar buying profile to your current customer, and live in the same age home, they're excellent prospects.

A well thought-out program will establish your company name in the neighborhood and increase awareness of your company's services. By drawing attention to the job site with signs, mailings, and other tactics, you'll have the opportunity to show off your company's skills first-hand. Here are some ideas on how to reach this desirable audience:

Job Site Signs
A great-looking job site sign in the yard of a customer is the first step to an effective job site marketing program. Site signs are a proven, effective marketing tactic that produces quality leads at a very low price.

A New England remodeler revamped his signage to be oversized, bright, and well-designed and saw leads jump 20% as a result. If your signs aren't pulling in leads now, they may need help.

Ask yourself these questions:

• Are your site signs neat, clean and well-designed?
• Do they include a large company logo and your telephone number?
• Do they coordinate with your other marketing materials?
• Are they so well designed that they demonstrate your workmanship as well?

If you answered "no" to any of them, consider redesigning your signs because they are the first things people will see and connect with your company.

Street Smart Tip
Consider attaching one of those "FREE BROCHURE" boxes that realtors use to your job site sign. You can stock your company brochure for passers-by.

Find brochure box manufacturers online by entering "brochure boxes" in the Google search engine. (http://www.google.com)

Vehicle Signage
Patty McDaniel of Boardwalk Builders in Rehoboth, Maryland invests a large part of her marketing budget in unique, four color signage for trailers which stay at the job site.

Alan Derrick of Derrick Design & Remodeling in Huntsville Alabama also has seen the value of great signage. New vinyl technology makes it easy to use photography and logos on vehicles creating a dynamic moving billboard for the company.

Door Knob Hangers
Door knob hangers are marketing pieces meant to be left hanging on the door knob of homes in the area immediately surrounding a job. This method of marketing is experiencing a resurgence in popularity.  Hangers can be used as a part of a canvassing program or as a free-standing means of generating telephone calls to your office.

• Target at least 20-30 houses surrounding the job site.
• Be sure that the door hanger includes:
  • your logo
  • the services you offer and
  • a strong call-to-action such as "Call today to schedule your free consultation."
  
  
• Today’s door knob hangers should be professional and classy-looking.

Street Smart Tip
One remodeling company takes doorknob hangers to a higher level. It produces nicely designed plastic doormats complete with the company logo. Salespeople visit 10-20 homes surrounding a job, place the doormat on the front porch along with a letter stating:

"We’re helping your neighbors beautify their home and will be working in your neighborhood for the next few weeks. Because construction can sometimes add dirt and dust to the street, we’ve taken the liberty to place a ABC Remodeling doormat at your door to help keep your home clean."

At the end of the job, while collecting the doormats, the salespeople have an opportunity for a face to face introduction. The neighbors appreciate the courtesy and the salespeople generate more sales!

Canvassing
Simply put, canvassing is selling door-to-door. The goal is to talk to a homeowner face-to-face with the objective of setting an appointment for a full presentation by a company salesperson sometime in the next few days.

It's a marketing technique that's been around forever and some companies find it a very effective addition to their overall marketing program. When canvassing is done on a small scale with the production manager or company owner talking with homeowners around a job site, it is fairly easy. However, when done on a large scale with professional canvassers, it is a difficult form of marketing requiring crews of canvassers that can handle constant rejection. It's a technique most suited to the lower-middle class market -- and to specialty products. But make no mistake about it, canvassing sells.

Job Site Mailings
Reach prospects living around a job site by mail. This outreach is easy to implement and produces high quality leads. The actual mailing can be as simple as a letter or as complex as a multi-piece mailing with a business reply card attached.

How to Create a Job Site Mailing List

1. Use your city’s criss-cross directory--Cole (http://www.coleinformation.com) or Haines (http://www.haines.com/ccdir1.htm) are two common ones. You can purchase a CD-ROM of addresses directly from one of these two companies or they are available at most libraries.
   
   These directories list house addresses for every street in your job site area arranged numerically, along with:
   • resident(s) name and zip code
   • phone number (when available)
   • first year listed at address (for length of residency)
   • homeowner indicator
   • wealth code rating for each street
   • number of residents
   
   
2. Alternatively, drive through the neighborhood and make note of the house numbers and street names.
3. Enter the names and addresses into your computer for easy printing of envelopes and personalized letters.
4. Plan ahead so you produce sets of labels all at once for efficiency.

Combine Mailing with Telemarketing
Some remodelers combine mailing and telemarketing successfully. Telemarketing may sound like a technique only for the very large specialty firm. But Ray Silva, sales manager of Tech Builders, Smithfield RI, has dispelled this myth. "We use one person who follows up our other marketing efforts in the neighborhood where we’re currently working," says Silva. "He works 20 hours per week over five days and sometimes Saturday. He makes 20-30 calls per day for 5-7 appointments. Out of these leads, we close at least two siding jobs per week." Silva pays the telemarketer by the hour with a $200.00 bonus for each closed job. Silva says, "It’s promising to be a very economical way to generate additional leads."

Try More Than One Mailing
A campaign of more than one mailing will generate the largest response--depending on the length of time you'll be in the neighborhood. Mailing can reach a large quantity of people rather inexpensively so plan to mail to up to 100 homes surrounding each job. Some remodelers in highly populated urban areas send up to 500 around a job.

In you don’t have in-house capabilities, hire a secretarial or office service firm to help you with the actual mailing. They can input the names and addresses, print the letters, stuff the envelopes, or put labels on the postcards, add the postage and drop them at the USPS - all for a fee.

A Final Note
Now, with all of this marketing, you'll soon have the entire neighborhood watching so keeping your job site clean and neat is a must! By combining marketing tactics you'll find yourself increasing your business in the neighborhoods you target.