Advertising to high end homes

Hi Nestor,
Welcome aboard!

I’m not the most experienced, but I’ll chime in since nobody else has yet.

Here are some ideas in no particular order or priority:

– Find someone or some business who already has the customers you want in high end areas, such as maid services or lawn care. See if you can work out a deal with them. Perhaps they would agree to recommend you or send their customers a mailing about you. You might offer to clean some for demonstration purposes – maybe at their business or home.

– Door hangers in the high end areas. I’ve only done door hangers once and it did result in a positive ROI, but just barely. Also, most previous comments on the board here by other operators weren’t very positive concerning door hangers.

– Franchise Xpress flyers. You could arrange for them to go out in your local newspaper. These have worked fairly well for most operators who stuck with it for a few months. Usually, you can select which zip codes you want to receive the flyers, so you need to research the zip codes in your area for factors such as income, home value, etc. You can find some of this from the Census Bureau’s web site. You can check with Franchise Xpresss as follows:
Franchise Xpress® program call Joanne Calloway today. Call toll-free 1-800-248-4667, EXTENSION 6. Send e-mail to: jcallowa@gannett.com or visit us at http://www.franchisexpress.com
The Census Bureau web site is: http://factfinder.census.gov/home/saff/main.html?_lang=en
The Census web site allows you to search by county, city, and by zip code. If you punch in a zip code, it will return a whole sheet of info. Scroll down to see the median household income.

– Realtors. Hook up with a couple of realtors who seem to do well listing homes in desirable areas.

– Direct mailings. You can buy a mailing list based on almost any demographics you want in the desirable areas. This can prove expensive and time consuming to put together a mailing. I recommend testing this on a small scale.
Also, you can build your own mailing list if you are satisfied to obtain names and addresses only in the desirable areas. If you know one name, you can find neighbors at http://www.infospace.com

– Find an influential advocate. Cody mentioned this when I went to training. If you have lived there for a while and know someone of some stature, get that person to send a letter to everyone he/she knows on your behalf.

For what it’s worth, don’t sweat it when you see ads at lower prices. People in high end areas know that they get what they pay for. Early last year, I had a potential new customer call me after he saw one of my flyers for 3 rooms at $129.95 (That price includes protector.). He told me he figured I must be doing a good job to ask that price, so he called me. He also told me his last carpet cleaner had charged him exactly half – $65.00 – and that he had gotten about $65.00 worth of service, which wasn’t good enough for him. I cleaned his carpets 4 times last year! He has three dogs and doesn’t take time to wipe their paws as they come in from outside, so he needs frequent service. He also referred me to a friend. If I had advertised at a lower price, I would not have him as a customer today.

The board has been kind of quiet lately, probably due to the holidays. Perhaps some other operators will post some of their successful tactics for you soon.

Good luck getting started!

Mike

I agree Jeff. I was called by a lady in an upper-class neighborhood. She called because her regular carpet cleaner missed the appointment. Of course everyone in her neighborhood knew about it and we’ve cleaned for 4 people so far. These are 7000 sqft homes and most of these people clean every 6 months. Get your foot in the door and then you should see more work down the road.