The Lost Art of Face-to-Face Marketing

By Eric Sprague C & R Magazine 08/07/2023

There are many ways to drive business to a restoration company in today’s market. We have TPAs, Preferred Vendor Programs, Pay Per Click, SEO, and a myriad of other avenues to get the phone to ring.

I am blessed to travel around the country attending many restoration industry conferences and trade shows. One of the topics that is not really spoken about anymore is face to face referral-based marketing. It seems to become a lost art in our industry.

I know it is not as sexy as many of the aforementioned ways of getting work, but it still works. A boots on the ground approach creates long-lasting partnerships which can yield great results over time and those partnerships can often last years, even decades.

The Local Independent Restoration Company

Month after month we read in the pages of this magazine about private equity buyouts and large restoration companies acquiring other large restoration companies to create industry juggernauts. However, we still have an industry chock full of small local restorers trying their best to carve out enough work locally to grow their companies and compete. I am often asked by these smaller restorers how to compete when they aren’t on any programs and don’t have the marketing resources some of their larger competitors have.

My answer is always the same. Get out there and market to your community.

Become the company everyone locally knows and trusts. Yes, still invest in digital marketing, social media marketing, and all the rest. However, you should also put on your walking shoes and find potential referral sources. I know, all too well, how it feels to be the little guy trying to get the phone to ring and not having the funds available to do online marketing. So, my business partner and I decided the best way for us to compete was to become the best-known restoration company in our local area. This is how we did it.

The BBQ Trailer

First, we identified that plumbers would be a major source of referrals for us. However, we needed a way to meet them. We knew many of the larger plumbing shops were already using our more experienced and larger competitors; so, we went after small to medium-sized plumbing companies, instead. Our problem: how do we meet them? Most of these plumbers worked from their homes and there was no shop for us to visit. So, we hatched a plan. Our plan was to build a BBQ trailer to cook and serve carne asada tacos for plumbers at plumbing supply houses. This is where we would farm for new referral sources. We would cook for them, break bread with them, get business cards, and get them to use our services. This worked so well our warehouse started to look like a catering company. We had large freezers full of meat. We went to restaurant supply shops and bought all the necessary items we would need to put on big events. We had shelves packed full of paper plates, cups, napkins and all the rest. Sometimes we would cook for hundreds of plumbers in a day. The BBQ trailer was our #1 marketing tool for the plumbing industry, and it worked like a charm. While other restoration companies would roll up with a 6’ Subway sandwich, we would put on a show they would never would forget.

Chamber of Commerce and Civic Groups

We also became very involved in the local chamber of commerce. So much so, we were active members of five local chambers. The amount of business we received from chambers was amazing. It also gave us the ability to educate other local business leaders about who we were, what we did, and taught them how to refer to us. Like all the strategies in this article, chambers are not a quick fix or easy money, you always get out of a chamber what you put into it. Prepare yourself for ribbon cuttings, new member receptions, and all the rest. However, some of the largest jobs my company was ever referred were from chamber relationships.

Also, civic groups like Kiwanis, Rotary, Lions, and the like can also be very fruitful. Many of your community’s most prolific business professionals are members of these civic groups. They are passionate about giving back to the communities that have given them so much. Make sure you are aligned with these people to help grow your business and do good in your community.

Business Development Routes

Good old door knocking. The bedrock of my restoration company was door to door referral marketing. As we grew, we had a team of business development reps pounding on doors and making relationships with plumbing contractors, property managers, hotels, schools, and large commercial facilities. We bought Chuck Violand’s Power Selling program many years ago and we used it every day. Chuck jokes with me that we may have been his only customers to ever fully implement this product! However, Power Selling was all we needed to structure marketing routes, have a plan of attack, and a repeatable system to create our relationship marketing program.

Building a Solid Foundation

I know none of the three face-to-face marketing strategies I listed above is quick or easy money. The beauty lies in how it creates long-term success in your local market. When you consistently do local face-to-face marketing, it compounds over time and you keep growing. You are making relationships, creating a great community reputation, and creating a flow of work which is very hard for other companies to penetrate. Your business becomes so entrenched in your local community that it is hard for other restorers to take market share from you. You become the “go-to” company because of your hard work and consistent efforts over time. There is so much value in that. So, do I think this is the only marketing you should employ? Of course not! It is one of many strategies you should use to grow your business. I will say if you are a smaller, independent restoration company looking to grow and make a name for yourself, this method will yield amazing results with consistent effort over time. There are no get rich quick schemes or marketing hacks here, just solid marketing efforts that can help you compete successfully in your local market. Get back to basics, go pound the pavement and start meeting people face-to-face and grow your restoration business.

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