We have covered many ways in which computers can help builders be more efficient in the management and sales of existing leads and projects. However, the computer can also help you to generate leads, analyze your prior customers’ demographic patterns, create promotional materials, and run and measure direct mail campaigns.

While all of the items listed above sound helpful, they also sound difficult. The fact is, that they are not too difficult. While no one expects the average builder to have the direct marketing savvy of LL Bean, a little thought about your products and customers can go a long way in generating useful leads.

Let’s examine what direct marketing is. First, it is direct, in that you are trying to send a message to the people that are most likely to be receptive to the message. Targeting you audience is one of the basic principles of direct marketing. Next, you must fashion an ad piece that links their needs to your products. Finally, direct marketing does not bring a large supply of responses, and must be repeated to work effectively. However, landing a $50,000 remodeling job is certainly worth the expense of sending out 1,000 pieces of mail. The better you target your audience, the higher the response rate you’ll get.

How does the computer help in all this? By helping you analyze your company, your customers, and your potential customers. The first thing you need to know before you embark on a direct mail campaign is what your company can do well.

Use your accounting software to see what profit margins you make on different types of jobs. You can enter the profit numbers by job type into a spreadsheet, and then graph them to see quickly where your strengths and weaknesses lie. If your most profitable jobs are dormers, and your hit rate for landing dormer jobs is high, then you may want to send mail to people who live in ranch homes in neighborhoods where families and incomes are expanding.

While this may sound difficult, it really isn’t. You already know the towns where you work. You know where the neighborhoods full of ranch houses are. By using the computer you can choose street names in those neighborhoods and print mailing labels.

Before you run to the Post Office, however, there are other sides to the story. Look at your past customers and leads that didn’t pan out. Put their names and pertinent information into a database and then ask the following questions:

Who

Who are the people that I sold or didn’t sell? What makes them different?

Where

Where do each of these people live? Are there trends or groupings emerging?

When

At what time of the year have I been most busy? With sales lead time in mind, when should I advertise given this information?

How

How have the leads that I lost made their decision? Was it based on price, design, personality, reputation, reference etc.?

The computer will help you to work with large amounts of data and see quickly the answers to many of the questions listed above. If you don’t have the information on the computer then start entering it. Information is the key to understanding your business. Often we are surprised that the factual evidence about our business differs from our personal perceptions. For instance, you may not have realized that many of your past customers worked in the financial industry, and chose you because of your detailed estimates.

The computer can also deal with lists of names that you don’t know. By purchasing a list of people living in your area you have already begun to target your advertising. Your newspaper ads hit people in apartments, dormitories, high school etc. Not exactly your market. You can purchase a list of homeowners and automatically weed out all the folks that would never buy your services. With this list you can then further narrow the scope of your mailing to match the following;

• Your company’s strengths
• Your past customer’s profile
• Target areas by income, house type, house age etc.

You can then design an ad that defines your services in the best light considering your past experience, and the audience you are targeting. Yes, your computer can help you with that too.

In summary, with simple tools you can analyze your business, customers and prospects and then advertise in a way that will make the phone ring. To get started you’ll need:

• A simple accounting/job costing system
• A database to track customers and leads
• A list to mail to new customers
• Some careful thought about who, what, where, how and why you want to sell.

Reprinted from our series of articles in Builder/Architect magazine

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