1. Provide Useful Content
Whether you’re networking on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or Google+, the best way to get people interested in your business is to provide content that is useful to THEM.

Promote events, news and tips that are relevant to your industry. In other words, only write posts that you’d want to read!

2. Data Mine with Twitter
Use Twitter to find people that are interested in the areas your business specializes in—just use their search function!

By following these accounts, you’ll be able to use Twitter to network much more specifically—and effectively.

3. Use LinkedIn to Build Your Professional Reputation
LinkedIn can be a fantastic way for you to build credibility in your industry. Their ‘recommendation’ feature allows supervisors, clients and others to post about your abilities and character on your profile.

This can help enhance your professional standing—especially in the eyes of those who haven’t met you yet. When you accomplish something particularly noteworthy, ask your supervisor or client to write a recommendation about it for you.

And if you have a service business, consider joining Angie’s List. Angie’s List provides unbiased reviews of service companies, and it’s free for businesses to join. A high ranking on Angie’s List can help you to attract lots of new business!

4. Follow the Competition
Chances are, your competitors are using the exact same social media sites as you are. Why not follow them, friend them, and add them to your network?

It’s hard to think of an easier way to track your rivals and stay abreast of the competition.

5. Don’t Spam!
When you go to a Chamber of Commerce or BNI meeting, do you wander about the room mindlessly repeating the name of your business and its phone number over and over again?

I’m guessing the answer is no—instead, you most likely take the time to introduce yourself and get to know other businesspeople in your industry. After all, that’s just common sense. Yet many businesspeople behave online in a way that they never would in person, and that can be a costly mistake.

There are people on the other end of those Facebook and Twitter accounts, and they don’t like reading spam any more than you do.

If you want to network successfully online, treat every interaction the same as you would a face-to-face encounter at an industry convention.

There’s nothing more satisfying than turning a mess into a success, and we know that our friends in the cleaning industry perform small miracles every day. That’s why ServiceMonster is proud to introduce a new feature, “Before & After Cleaning Pics of the Week.” We want to document and showcase your cleaning achievements, and we’re interested in any and all types of cleaning photos–before, after and during.

This week’s “Before & After” pics come courtesy of Lisa Jordan of Accent American, a Tampa-based carpet cleaning and disaster restoration company.

Before (Wax spill on carpet):

After (Wax spill on carpet):

Wow!

If you’re interested in submitting photos to “Before & After: Cleaning Pics of the Week,” please email them to support@principalfocus.com.  Thanks!

American Facility Services (AFS), an Orlando-based company, provides custom-designed facility maintenance services for commercial property managers and owners throughout Florida. Taking your concerns into account, AFS formulates a maintenance solution based on your needs.

AFS provides a complete range of commercial building services so that their clients have the convenience of working with a single provider for all their commercial property maintenance needs.

Services provided by AFS include:

• Building Maintenance
• Sweeping Services
• Bulk Debris Removal
• Janitorial Services
• Pressure Washing
• Hydro-Cleaning
• Painting Services
• Sealcoating & Line Striping Services
• Asphalt Repair Services
• Asphalt Guard
• Porter Services
• Parking Lot Maintenance Service

Learn more about AFS by visiting http://www.afsflorida.com/.

If you’d like be selected as a ServiceMonster’ Fan of the Week, visit our Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/#!/ServiceMonster.net. We’d love to connect with you!

Industry News:
IWCA 2012

Feb. 2-5, New Orleans

The IWCA 2012 Education Forum & Showcase is one of the window cleaning industry’s premier events.

Hosted by the International Window Cleaning Association at the Hyatt Regency, IWCA 2012 will include:

• A wide range of exhibitors
• Roundtables on the state of the industry
• Demonstrations
•  Training courses and classes
• Award ceremonies
• A charity auction
• And more!

To learn more about IWCA 2012, visit http://www.iwca.org/

IWCA headquarters

Hyatt Regency New Orleans

New Orleans' Historical French Quarter

The Secret to Keeping Those New Year’s Resolutions

As we walk into 2012, we all have resolutions—to spend more time with our families, cut down on stress, get more organized or maybe just eat fewer doughnuts. However, though we may yearn to change, bad habits and unproductive patterns can have a strong hold on us, and it may seem difficult to really upturn our lives.

But what if you could make a single change that would accomplish all these goals AND make you more money?

Okay, we’re lying about the doughnuts. But we’re serious about the rest of it. What if there was one major change you could make that would help you to have more time, feel less stressed, be more organized and maximize your profits?

ServiceMonster is that change.

Don’t believe us? Let us ask you some questions:

1. Do you know how and where you’re making your money? What services do you derive the bulk of your revenue from? What are your customers’ buying patterns? Which of your service areas yield the most repeat business? What if you could access any customer’s entire purchase history at the click of a mouse?

If you know from where and whom your money is coming, you can figure out how to make more of it. You can offer more of your most lucrative services, you can eliminate service to unprofitable service areas and you can more cost-effectively target your marketing.

Most importantly, you can understand your customer. Nobody ever succeeded in business without doing that!

2. How much time are you wasting on paperwork? What if you could manage all your data from one central location? What if you could access your data any time, from anywhere, and didn’t have to run around collecting different pieces of paperwork from your techs?

Your business would be streamlined. With all that extra time, you’d be able to book more jobs. Heck, you might not even need a secretary anymore. You’d be able to do your paperwork on the job. At the end of the day, you could park the van and be done. Instead of spending your evenings on coffee-stained invoices, you could spend them relaxing with your family.

3. Are you maximizing your job time? Or do you lose a lot of time traveling between work sites? Do you schedule jobs according to location, so that you’re not wasting time criss-crossing across town, or do you just take jobs as they come? Do you find yourself frequently idling in parking lots, trying to decipher creased maps?

What if you had a tool that could structure your work week months in advance, helping you to map and schedule the best routes possible? What if your techs could access vital customer information without having to call home base?

You’d save phone time, drive time and gas money. By conserving your resources and slashing your costs, you’d able to ensure the long-term fiscal viability of your company—and your future peace of mind.

4. Are your marketing efforts working? Do you know to the penny what kind of return on investment you’re getting on your marketing? What if you knew exactly where your best leads were coming from? Do you want to improve your marketing, but are unsure of where to start? What if you could do all your marketing at the push of a button?

Effective marketing begins and ends with good tracking. If you have good tracking reports for your marketing efforts, you can make better decisions about where to put your dollar. By investing in more effective marketing strategies, you’ll be able to increase your business. And even the most inexperienced marketers have found success in using our automated marketing campaigns to ensure repeat business.

So, to sum up: ServiceMonster can help you to get organized, save time and money, cut stress and maximize profits. We can’t help you with your diet plan, but with all that extra time and cash, you’ll be able to hire someone to yell at you about the doughnuts!

You may be wondering why you should get ServiceMonster instead of another field service software system. Here’s why:

• Free support, training and upgrades;
• Quickbooks integration;
• GPS integration and mapping;
• Free mobile application that runs in all browsers and on all touch-screen devices;
• Detailed financial, marketing, customer and scheduling reports;
• Multi-level security roles;
• Printable route packets;
• Automated AND custom marketing campaigns;
• And more!

Best of all, although we offer a wide array of features, we’re very competitively priced and easy to use.

So what do you think? Are you ready to make the change? Remember: “If you keep on doing what you’ve always done, you’ll keep on getting what you’ve always got.”

Don’t you deserve something better?

CEO Joe Kowalski discusses the controversial IICRC to Clean Trust rebrand, as well as the best strategies for ensuring that your rebrand goes smoothly.

Advanced Concepts: Rebranding

If you could turn back time to when you first started your business . . . you'd probably do things a little bit differently.

As an established business, you already have a brand–one that you have spent time and money building in your community.

But you’re not same person as you were when you started your business. For that matter, your business has probably changed a lot over time as well.

If you could go back and do it all over again, imagine the advice that you would give yourself. Ask yourself whether or not that would include advice on your brand. What would you do differently?

Unless you started out with a lot of marketing knowledge, good advice or fantastic luck, you’ve probably thought about rebranding at some point.

Understand that you’re not alone. I have coached a number of companies though this uncomfortable process, and the ServiceMonster brand itself is the result of a rebrand.

Rebranding is costly, frustrating and ultimately confusing for your customers. But if you know that your business would benefit from a rebrand, don’t put it off because of your fears.

The longer you wait, the more damage your current brand will do to your business.

When To Rebrand

If your logo looks anything like this, you may want to rebrand.

Perhaps you’re considering a rebrand, but aren’t really sure of what kind of risks and benefits might be involved. Here are some questions you can ask yourself to determine if a rebrand is necessary.

1. Can people tell what you do from looking solely at your logo?

2. Is your brand bland? Are you just another cleaner in the crowd?

3. Does your brand conflict with your current company direction?

4. Does the average person have a hard time identifying or remembering your brand?

A “yes” to any of these questions is cause for alarm. If this is your situation, you should seriously consider rebranding–unless you have already captured over 10% of your target demographic.

The Transition

Okay, so you’ve convinced yourself that your business would be better off with a rebrand.

First realize that, if a prospect doesn’t know about you yet, rebranding will have no adverse effects on your chances with them. So the sooner you get it done, the better.

There are only two groups that you need worry about during a rebrand: your current clients and prospects that already know about you. You’re going to have to spend a period of time on transitioning these people–usually about a year.

During a rebrand transition, you may need to use both the old and new logos.

During this time, you will need to maintain both the old brand and the new one so people can find you. After that, you can drop the your old brand.

During this transition, you may want to include both your old and new logos on all marketing materials (although you should drop your old tag line.) Reduce the size of your old logo and position it under the new one.

As time passes by, gradually phase out all the elements of your old brand–tag line, colors, logo, etc. Send at least three notifications regarding the brand change to all of the clients that have used you over the past 24 months.

If you have a new website, redirect your old domain to send visitors to your new one. Remember, there’s no way you can publicize your rebrand too much.

Maintaining Side by Side Brands

It allows you to enter a new market with two different pricing models as well as two separate classes of service. The tricky part about this has to do with the artwork and lettering on your truck.

It’s very difficult to advertise both your logos on your truck at once without confusing your customers.

This problem usually kills this line of discussion. The only way to pull it off is with some sort of removable sticker, which is probably more trouble than it’s worth.

If one day your truck reads “Old and Busted,” and the next it’s advertising “New Hotness,” your customers are going to get confused.

I’ll say it again: if you know you need a rebrand, start the process tomorrow. Waiting will only double your problems.

CEO Joe Kowalski explains how to plan your marketing so that you get maximum bang for your buck.

Branding, Part III: Creating a Marketing Plan

The first step of your marketing plan should be to identify your target demographic.

Creating a Marketing Plan

In order to design a marketing strategy that you can feel confident in, you must understand your demographic.

How many potential customers are in your service area? When it comes to the services you offer, what other choices do they have? Does your target demographic share any common characteristics that might make them easier and less expensive to reach–for instance, do they all subscribe to the same newspaper?

These are a few examples of the kind of data that you should already know by heart. Most cleaners, however, do not.

Step 1: Identify Your Demographic

I like to use the web site infoUSA.com for identifying target demographics. They provide high-quality leads that allow you to target prospects with some simple filters. Best of all, you can get part of this data for free.

Try this exercise. Go to infoUSA.com, and use their geographic filters to narrow down your target area. Determine how far you’re willing to travel for a job, and focus only on that radius. The site will generate a list of leads for you.

Next, filter the list by single-family dwellings. From here you can add additional filters, such as home values, age, household income, personal finances and more.

Once you’ve determined the total number of available leads matching your filters, write that number down. This is your total potential marketable base. Again, YOU MUST KNOW THIS NUMBER.

Ideally, this list will consist of 25-to-55-year-old married female homeowners with kids and/or pets. Remember, however, that you can use this same technique to target any number of prospect groups, both residential and commercial.

Step 2: Do the Math

I have witnessed an interesting trend with our clients. When you “own” one percent of your total potential marketable base (the early adopters), you will begin to see an increase in referrals–especially if you are asking for them. (When we say “own,” what we mean is that you have served this client within the last two years.)

If you can reach ten percent “ownership” of your total potential marketable base, you will achieve critical mass. In other words, when a significant amount of people in your target demographic are aware of you, your business will begin to enjoy consistent and sustained prospect traffic via referrals.

Example:

If 50,000 Potential Prospects = Your Total Potential Marketable Base

Then 500 Clients = Early Adopters

And 5,000 Clients = Critical Mass

This is why you should focus on winning over merely a portion of your potential marketable base, rather than spreading your marketing efforts thinly and ineffectively across a wider demographic. If you can get just a small percentage of your potential prospects to purchase your services, they’ll do the rest of your marketing for you.

Step 3: Assess the Competition

There are many companies that went down in flames because they paid too much attention to their competition. I would never suggest using your competition’s rates to determine your business’ pricing.

That said, you need to be aware of the other choices your customers have when they are looking for someone to solve their problem. Try to focus not just on companies that provide the same services as you do, but more specifically on those companies that provide identical services and are also targeting your core demographic.

Now, put yourself in your customer’s shoes. Given her options, which company would you choose? What makes your company different from the others? Do you stand out from the crowd (and if not, what would make her notice you)?

Bear in mind, a strong brand can go a long way towards pushing you to the head of the pack.

Step 4: Find Your “Ideal” Client

If you have been in business for a while, you have a resource that can help you reach the next level–your data. If your accounts are being tracked by a program like ServiceMonster, you can use them to do some data mining. Data mining can reveal some very interesting information, such as the common traits of the top 10 percent of your clients. By focusing on understanding these traits, you will be able to find new ways to market to prospects with similar characteristics, i.e., your “ideal” clients.

Look for common factors. What neighborhoods do your ideal clients live in? Where do they work? How about their home values, income level or even the cars they drive? Most cleaners won’t be able to find out all this information right off the bat. But keep your mind open and pay attention, and I guarantee you’ll spot some intriguing opportunities.

For instance, do a number of your clients share a single large employer, such as a university or major company? If so, you might consider offering employees of that company a special ten percent discount. I guarantee, you’ll generate far more revenue than you’ll lose.

While you’re at it, try offering the employer this discount in exchange for a contract to regularly clean their facilities. Remember, the best way to get business is to keep asking for it.

At the end of the day, no one knows your clients like you do, which makes you the expert when it comes to finding the right marketing plan for your business.