Your Shop is Slow – What Should You Do?
Stephen Alberts
Countertop Marketing Co.
We work with over 65 shops and we know the ups and downs of the market. It’s slow one week, and busy the next. But a lot of markets across the US are slow right now. The problem we see is that more fabricators are spending money on ads and advertising, so the cost is going up for leads. A slow market plus more advertisers is not the best combination!
The natural reaction is to pull back at times like this. Don’t market, cut spending, and just ride it out. If your overhead is high you might have to do that to survive the slow times. But at some point, you need to bring in more jobs. And once you have a flow (even if it’s a slow one) with marketing, at least it’s another source of jobs rather than builders, contractors, and word-of-mouth work.
I’m going to lay out a plan and the minimum you can spend to see some results. The issue I see often is that shops don’t spend enough on marketing to actually make it work. $300/mo on ads isn’t going to get you far. Read on and I’ll break it down for you.
Reviews On Google
This one is easy, GET MORE REVIEWS! It’s free and will build over time. If you get 50 reviews tomorrow, you aren’t going to see a flood of jobs come in but if you get a handful of reviews each month, Google will show your profile more and you will get more traction on Google Maps and in Google search. Don’t worry, people still use Google search to find countertop shops! AI is not taking over search just yet, I think we have many years before that happens.
Facebook and Instagram Ads
Run ads for your shop. Promote something to catch people’s attention. I usually recommend running social ads before Google ads. You can get more traction with less money. Yes, you will find the price shoppers and people not ready today, but you will also find some gold in there. I recommend spending about $1000/mo here to start and you can stay at that budget if that’s where you are comfortable. The problem is if it’s not set up correctly, you will burn through that money. But $1000 should yield 1-2 dozen leads, some foot traffic, and even some phone calls.
Google Ads
Google ads can bring you in direct leads plus help with foot traffic. The cost per lead is usually more costly but it’s also usually a higher quality lead. A good budget here is $1000-1500/mo. If the ads are set up properly you will show on Google Maps more which can really help boost foot traffic. DON’T LET GOOGLE SET THESE UP FOR YOU! Yes this is odd advice but I do not recommend having a “Google rep” help you set these up. The problem with Google ads are that it’s very easy to set them up in a way that will spend your money quickly. Google will reach out to you and give you advice on how to setup the campaign. Facebook will do this as well. Both will give you advice so that the campaign spends more.
A CRM to Manage Your Marketing
Please, I beg you, get a CRM to manage your marketing. Hubspot, Pipedrive, or ours (STONE ENGAGE) will turn your marketing dollars into more revenue. I see this time and time again, we get shops leads and they don’t properly follow up with the leads. Our CRM is awesome to manage the leads and very easy to use, but some shops fail with this as well. I say this all the time: if your competitor is literally running the same campaign you are, with the same offer, 9 times out of 10 you can still dominate them by simply following up with leads quickly and being consistent.
Something that goes along with the CRM is your sales staff and training. Make sure you have even a basic process in place for lead management and sales. At least one person should be handling the sales (not you as the owner) and there should be a backup. That person should be checking in on the CRM each day and looking for any new leads, replying to any missed messages, and then following up with potential leads in the pipeline. It’s a never-ending process but you need to do this in order to grow your business, especially in the slow times.
If I had to pick an order of when to do this all I would say start with the Google reviews today! It’s free. Then get a CRM and use it. And then Facebook ads, followed by Google ads. You need to make a return quickly and Facebook ads will help you get some jobs booked fast. It’s important at some point, to have both Facebook and Google ads working for you. Just like the word of mouth and builder jobs, you need multiple sources of leads coming into the shop. Don’t just rely on Facebook. Get that working, and then move on to the next. You’ll eventually have a few streams of new leads so if one is slow, the other will be working for you.
Stephen Alberts is the owner of the Countertop Marketing Co. and STONE ENGAGE. They specialize in helping countertop companies grow the retail side of their business outside of word-of-mouth and referrals. They also offer software to help you follow up more with customers and close more countertop projects. To learn more visit https://countertopmarketingco.com/.
You can also email Stephen at steve@countertopmarketingco.com.