Promoting Yourself
We have been working with some builders helping them to put their business plan into place, and the conversation around marketing does come up so we thought we would share some of the clever things we have learned over the last decade.
One of the guys we are working with was complaining that his conversion rate for fixed price quotes was bugger all. He was getting really annoyed because as we all know, creating a fixed price quote for someone takes time and dedication. You certainly want to know that you can achieve a consistent conversion rate for these or you will feel like you are banging your head against a brick wall.
Who Is Your Ideal Client?
For me? The answer is you guys reading this email who probably don’t have your own QS and want to understand how to price better, and sometimes want us to just do it for you. YOU are our ideal client.
If you were to ask yourself the same question, what would the answer be?
Think about these questions as examples;
– Who is my ideal client? What does their world look like?
– What kind of projects do I want to build?
– Where are those projects located?
Results
When you have taken the time to really drill down on the answers to those questions, then you have your customer avatar. No, we aren't not talking about the gangly blue people, we are talking about understanding what these ideal clients do, where they live, what they get up to, etc. When you know this, you can start to figure out with the help of a clever marketing person how to make sure your message gets in front of them.
This approach will never stop the people who want other things getting in touch with you, like the developers or the bathroom renos etc etc. However what the approach will do is create as much bang for your marketing buck as you can get, meaning that the quotes that you are being asked to do will have a much higher acceptance rate than if you are just randomly pricing everything that comes your way. These people are somewhat prequalified, AND you are seen as their expert.
We highly recommend making sure you work with someone to achieve this, by coming up with a plan, you then also know how much it is likely to cost and you can build that cost into the offsite overheads portion of your margin so you know it is covered.