I had a very interesting conversation with the owner of a local plumbing service company.  He is doing a great job of tracking the cost per call (ROI) for his marketing.  He had daily statistics and looked at them regularly.

This company has three main sources of business:

• Past clients or referrals from past clients

• Yellow book advertising

• Pay per click advertising with Google

He considered the past clients and referral to be "free" sources of business.  He advertised in several different phone books and had a unique ad code in each ad.  His call screeners ask everyone who calls for the "code in the corner of the ad."  This way he is able to track how many calls each ad generates.  His pay per click traffic that generated calls was also tracker in the same way.

With no current cost for past clients it is just icing on the cake.  Spending over $250,000 a year for yellow page advertising, he mentioned that his average cost per call was somewhere around $400 (Better hope that is an expensive call.)  The Pay-per-click was right around $28 a call (pretty decent conversion at just over $2 a click.)

Looking at the comparison between the phone book and the pay per click, it is obvious that, at least for this business, print is dead.  But there is also only so much that pay-per-click can do.  With only 100 or so clicks a day, how else is this company going to increase their business.  The other avenues of print and signage (billboards and bus signs) is saturated and the cost even higher than the phone book.  What are they to do?

As a marketer my mind jumps to those past clients and referrals.  How/what is the best way to activate/inspire them when they need or know of someone who needs plumbing services.  Top of mind awareness, our plumbing service company needs to be the first thought they have when they think of plumbers.  So beyond great customer service (Not to ever be discounted or overshadowed by marketing) what can this business do to increase that "brand awareness?"

It is really the simple things that are often the most effective.  What would happen if there was a promotional magnet or a sticker on every hot water heater that this company had ever serviced.  Or how about if they had little removable plastic key tag hanging off the drain line of every sink in every kitchen they had been into?  What about a sticker on the underside of the toilet tank cover?

These are really simple ideas, but it is all in the execution of having every plumber place these or hand them out to every client they see.  What program do you wish you implemented 5 or 10 years ago?  Start that program now!  Plan for the next 5 or 10 years.