Are You Guilty of "Drop & Hop"?

With almost 40 years in the professional cleaning field,  I am continually amazed at the number of owners of professional cleaning services who were marketing solidly on the pathway to profit, and then decided to stop dead in their tracks, and start doing something else instead.

You may wonder why someone who had a marketing program that was already on the path to profits and would suddenly stop and dump everything. This actually happens all the time, and it could be happening in your business right now. If it is, it could be costing you many thousands in lost sales.

Here are two reasons why this happens:

1. The majority of small business owners frequently can't distinguish between a marketing success and a marketing failure. "They can't see the forest for the tree's".
    
2. Others are expecting a quick and easy windfall, (like winning the lottery), and any marketing effort that doesn't provide that kind of instant big jackpot is dropped like a hot potato. That is not the way marketing works in the real world, and hoping for quick and easy riches is a losers game. Growing a legitimate business takes time and work -- there's no getting around it.

Two real-world examples to show you what I mean:

A business owner we shall call "Jack", the owner of a small carpet cleaning business, tried mailing a brochure designed to generate prospects for his business. He mailed the brochure once, looked at the results and promptly gave up, and never mailed anything again.

When I asked him why, he said, "Well, it just didn't produce much for me, so I couldn't see wasting my time and money with it." I asked, "How many responses did you get from the brochure?" "We mailed 100 and only got 22 calls," he said. I responded, "Jack, that's a 22 percent response! That's a fantastic response."

He said, "Really? I was expecting 60 or 70 calls, so I felt that 22 was a big flop." This is absolutely typical. Obviously, Jack wasn't aware of his marketing numbers. If he was, he would have known that a typical response for a direct mail piece to people who are strangers to any business is only going to be at best -- about 1-2%, with many people actually getting less than 1% -- and still considering it a successful mailing! His 22% response was an overwhelming (and unusual success), but because he didn't know that, he simply dumped it! That's like killing a goose that lays golden eggs.

If Jack would have stuck with his marketing system, there's a good chance he could have built a very successful and profitable business. But he had unrealistic expectations and didn't understand how an effective marketing program works. He was on the right path, but he gave up.

If you're not familiar or experienced in marketing, and especially direct mail marketing, you may think that a 1% response is horrible. The truth is that a 1% response could result in making you thousands of dollars.

Just the other day I received an e-mail from someone who came to the same conclusion as Jack did. This person indicated that they had received only 3 replies from a mailing to 118 people. The immediate conclusion was that the results were 'terrible.'

However, a little math reveals that it is a 2.5% response -- (3 divided by 118). Believe it or not, that is right in line with a typical direct mail response. Again, depending on the marketing strategy and the numbers for this business, that 2.5% response might well indicate an impressive success.

I should tell you right now that marketing a business encompasses so many variables, that it is impossible to set absolute standards of response rates for all businesses, even in the same industry. Some businesses may need to get a much higher response rate in order to succeed. And others may succeed with a very low response. It all depends on the average order size, the profit margins, and most importantly, the lifetime value of each new customer.

Your individual response rates will depend on your particular business as well as your particular marketing strategy, the level of demand for your service, the state of the economy, your pricing, your profit structure, as well a number of other very important considerations.

In the end, the bottom line is how much you invested ( personal time as well as money) in the marketing effort and how much you made after expenses. If you find yourself trying one thing and then hopping to something else, constantly searching for the perfect solution, you've got to stop now!

That's called the 'Drop and Hop' Syndrome. You'll never get anywhere positive like that. You will only burn up time and money -- and opportunity!

If time allows, you might want to drop in at our "Free Friday" in December where I will share some more very interesting marketing tips!

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