What stage do you think your business is at? Have you just started? Are you mad busy, but stuck and not moving anywhere? Or have you nailed it but are curious about what’s next? 

Following last issue’s Boiler Business article about putting your prices up and stepping up your game by taking control of your marketing, this article will dig a little deeper. Let’s discuss the three stages of marketing.

Stage one – Word of Mouth
The first stage of self-employed life is usually finding work through word of mouth, and repeat business for a small number of regular customers. 

Without any other dependable marketing channel, working for family members, friends, friends of friends, builders, and landlords is the norm when you are new to self-employment. 

Being busy and booked up for as many weeks as possible offers some security. Those big projects lasting for numerous weeks are a welcome bonus, but here’s one of the big negatives of relying on word of mouth and accepting those big jobs. 

One month on a large job equals only one customer, one online review, and one more mouth to tell others about your business. Relying on word of mouth may keep you busy, but will likely slow the growth of your customer database. As there will be fewer opportunities to attract new customers, this can often lead to a fear that you will lose customers if you increase the cost of your services. 

Stage two – Advertising

For some businesses, increased ‘busy-ness’ comes with more profits and the chance to advertise for more customers, as well as the chance to sell your most profitable services to ‘better’ customers. For those not at this stage yet, consider how much more confident you would be to charge more for your services if you had more choice on who you worked for. 

Would you still work for the landlords if you had four to eight high-end bathroom enquiries per month? Or if you had 20 to 40 boiler enquiries per month, would you still be quoting for complete central heating jobs in November?

The problem with advertising is you are usually renting somebody else’s space, which hits your profit margin. Not only does it cost you to rent that space, but the advertising channel will also rent space to your competition, most likely next to the space they kindly let you have.

To be fair to those companies, they have made it easy for you to rent the space they own. But you now have increased overheads and competition for work, leading to a squeeze on profits. Your investment is just another overhead. The leads and enquiries will stop as soon as you stop paying the rent. 

So, if this is where you are, let’s look at what mechanisms the top 10% earners have in place to maximise their outreach.

Stage three – Marketing

So, marketing and advertising, what’s the difference again? Advertising usually is renting somebody’s space to get in front of their customers. For instance, you rent a display at Tesco supermarket. Are they your customers, or are they Tesco’s?

Marketing differs from advertising by focusing on creating your own space to attract your chosen customers. 

Understand who you want to serve and what they want, and you will attract that type of customer. Do you want emergency plumbing or bathroom jobs? Or perhaps boilers or heat pump jobs?

Setting a shopfront up to attract customers looking for a product or service is what the middlemen who you were renting advertising space in stage two do. The difference is that, in your space, you are much more in control of what your potential customers can see. 

How do you want to display your fantastic reviews, articles, videos, and dedicated pages about the high-ticket service you provide? Building your marketing channels and assets like websites and social media is not as easy as paying the middleman for the space they want to rent you. But investing in your website, social media, and other printed/digital media will continue to attract better customers for years to come.

So, if you have read this far and want to take control of your marketing and step up to the next level, remember these wise words from Author Mike Michalowicz: ‘Word of mouth is most welcome. You can’t say no to the icing on the cake. But it is not the whole cake!’

If this article has helped and you want to learn more about marketing, head to The Boiler Business for a free marketing and sales masterclass. It’s all video, so you can 
listen or watch rather than read!