Heating and air conditioning

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Using Ads

Moe Jones

2006-02-17, 12:21 pm

Gentlemen,

I have posted before and got some great help in the past and am in hopes of
the same.

If you were to advertise to the public, what media would you use?

1. The Newspaper
2. Radio
3. Hand Fliers
4. Church News Letters
5. Other Media (What?)

As a service company we wanted to offer our services in the Air Conditioning
& Heating fields and would like some feed back on your experience on what
media you have used in the past or presently using.

--
Moe Jones
HVAC Service Technician
Energy Equalizers Inc.
Houston, Texas

Noon-Air

2006-02-17, 1:21 pm

"Moe Jones" <moejones@hal-pc.org> wrote in message
news:43f5e891$0$654$a726171b@news.hal-pc.org...
> Gentlemen,
>
> I have posted before and got some great help in the past and am in hopes
> of the same.
>
> If you were to advertise to the public, what media would you use?
>
> 1. The Newspaper
nope... no return on the investment $$$

> 2. Radio
Haven't tried it yet

> 3. Hand Fliers
Only works when there are multiple offerings on it...especially the
discounted service call with *no* expiration date... some come back as much
as a year later.... but hey, they *did* call :-) The only other thing you
have to watch with these is that you don't get nailed for "littering".
FWIW... door hangers went over like a lead balloon.

> 4. Church News Letters
Thats kind of a taboo here in the middle of the "Bible Belt"

> 5. Other Media (What?)
Television works pretty good... I got a great deal with a local station
during hurricane season... 25 thirty second spots per month for 3 months, an
ad on the hurricane tracker map(they gave me 1000 of them to distribute),
and a couple of dozen times a day they announced where to get the maps from.
Last year I was the only place in my town to get them from. My customers
loved it when I wrote their ticket and handed them a tracker map or 2.

I did a discount service call ad in the local Seniors magazine... that
worked pretty well for a couple of months then the calls dropped off to
nothing so I canciled the ad.

Before spending a bunch of money with the YP, check out which book is the
most used in your area.... Yeah the YP is gonna get a bunch of "tire
kickers", but remember, they only have to find you once... give them top
quality service, and they won't want to call anybody else, leave 2 biz card
magnets(one on the furnace/air handler, the other on the fridge, and they
won't ever have to "find" you again.

Direct mail probably works the best.... start with your customer base, then
add the folks from all the church directories you can get your hands on,
talk to the folks at your local P & I office and ask for a print-out of all
the re-model and mechanical permits issued over about the last 5 years. This
will give you a good start

> As a service company we wanted to offer our services in the Air
> Conditioning & Heating fields and would like some feed back on your
> experience on what media you have used in the past or presently using.

--

Steve @ Noon-Air Heating & A/C
Noon-Air@comcast.net

Life is what happens while you were making other plans

> --
> Moe Jones
> HVAC Service Technician
> Energy Equalizers Inc.
> Houston, Texas
>

thrugoodmarshall@hotmail.com

2006-02-17, 1:21 pm

To the question you asked: "What media would you use?":

5. Other Media (What)--the usenet. At least, that's what I've used in
the past.

With no advertising budget at all, and selling something *everybody*
wanted, the usenet was the perfect medium. It worked great, and
everybody involved earned lots of money.

So, all things being the same, that's what I would use. Don't mess
with success.

Perhaps, however, you meant to ask a different question--maybe
something like "What medium should I use?"

Were you to ask such a question, you might get an answer something like
this:

What services do you want to advertise? --Design? Preventive
Maintenance? Installation? Repair? For the previous--what market?
Industrial? Residential? Municipal? Commercial? All of the above?

Who is your target? Where is your target (geographically)? "The
public" is a rather large and diverse group. Do you really have a
service to offer to *everybody*.

What is your budget? (This includes your whole cost--man-hours, money,
political capital, etc.)

For examples--you might turn to a couple of well known sales
pitches--One buy a guy who buys 30-minute infomercials and another by a
guy who reportedly just walked around and talked to people.

Both have been very successful at getting results (though, slightly
less than 2,000 years later, some would dispute whether the results the
second guy got were the ones he wanted).

But I don't think the methods of either would have worked for the
other.

That is, of course, were you to ask such a question.

;)

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