The Catalyst

In an industry dominated by a multitude of unknowns, it’s easy to grow a business in the home services sector of HVAC, Plumbing, and Electrical.

How does a 30 year old, 18-truck plumbing business grow from 18 to 38 trucks in seven months? Or a $2 million dollar HVAC grow to $9 million (now the largest HVAC in their local market) in three years? How about a 2-truck Electric Service business growing at an 80% clip over six months, even in this down economy?

It’s easy, they all escaped from the abusive, inhibiting, reference guide media called yellow pages, and landed luckily, into the disciplined strategy of direct response on broadcast TV. I say luckily because TV was not their first choice of alternate media, not by a long shot. TV’s reputation for being expensive, and difficult to use, is misunderstood by many owners of retail businesses, especially in the home services sector.

“Hey Culligan Man” and the Roto Rooter brands are top of mind amongst many home owners even today. Both were built with relentless frequency on electronic media. Both recognized decades ago that a reference guide media will not deliver top of mind, first choice awareness, if a businesses ads are hidden deep in the yellow pages until the moment of need.

No, not TV, their first thought of a replacement media is the internet. Logical, right? It’s the new yellow pages. But wrong. The 12th page on a search engine, or a paid position with a category aggregator, buries them a lot faster and deeper, than the yellow pages ever did.

Here’s the solution: Build a direct response TV campaign that is self-funding with “need-to-do” services, using an ultra frequency scheduling pattern and a simple service message with a hook (urgency to call).

Sound easy? It is. So easy in fact, when you explain this to an owner of a home services business, their first reaction to the service message is, “Are you kidding, that’s too easy!”

Any home services business wants to be top of mind, first choice in their category with the home owner. When the toilet clogs, Bob’s Plumbing wants to be the first to be called. Emergencies aren’t conveniently timed, and Bob wants the home owner to know his name and choose him to fix it. The dilemma comes when Bob tries to place his small media budget from a reference guide that gives him some (but not enough) measurable calls, to an intrusive media of TV with a “consumer product” branding schedule that gives him less (or worse no) calls. Now that’s expensive! Even though he’s told to be patient, fewer calls in a new media will not cut it. Bob cancels TV with enhanced irritation.

To acquire and sustain a home services retailer on TV, a campaign is built around deferred “need-to-do” services. In plumbing, a leaky faucet, a slow drain, or a tune-up; in HVAC it would be air conditioning that doesn’t seem cool enough, or a funny noise coming from the unit, or pre-season maintenance. The campaign uses urgency and value to get a direct response from the home owner to fix these “need-to-do” problems. The campaigns are run vertically in very tight windows that are aligned with call volume patterns. Consistent, disciplined flights of two days will build more sustained growth than a year’s worth of rotational or other rate-driven media placement. Undisciplined media spending outside of this window will lead to unpredictable results and an escalation of the cost-per-lead, which is no different than the undesirable result the passive reference guides (yellow pages) have been guilty of for years. A 30-second spot schedule is built with adequate frequency and even distribution of frequency targeted to home owners. Then book ends are introduced with the same message front and back to significantly increase the frequency. Voila! A campaign that gets the phone ringing with regularity, and drops the plumber’s cost-per-lead in the process.

The Media:TV. The Message, “Call us to fix it.” The Math: relentless and even distribution of frequency. The combination that leads to a happy, healthy and growing home services retailer.

Craig Reumund is a Senior Consultant with ESA & Company. He meets with hundreds of local business owners each year and has significantly changed the fortune of thousands of local businesses over the past 20 years.