What My Vacuum Repair Guy Can Teach You About Web Marketing

I was talking to a friend about web marketing recently, and we were discussing the time commitment that’s involved. At the time, we both agreed it’s a serious time commitment, and she said she’d rather invest most of her time into marketing her business coaching practice locally offline.

I came away from the discussion feeling like it’s an either-or proposition. Either you invest a lot of time and energy into web marketing, or you simply give up on the idea of web marketing altogether, and invest most of your time into local offline marketing. While writing my morning pages today, I came to a different conclusion.

Your online presence can be the hub of your local marketing strategy without a huge investment of time, money and energy. As an example, lets look at my local vacuum repair store, Phaneuf Vacuums, located a couple miles from my home.

First, a little background. If you know much about me, you may know I have a cute, cuddly beagle named Ellie. What you probably don’t know, and I’m embarrassed to admit, is even though she’s nearly two-years-old, Ellie still isn’t house broken.

Consequently, I spend a lot of time cleaning my carpet. I even have my own Hoover Steamvac carpet cleaner. Last week, my sturdy Steamvac stopped steaming because of a broken part.

So, like many folks these days, I went straight to Google to find a replacement part. After a brief search, I was unable to find the part online, but I discovered Phaneuf Vacuums is a service provider for Hoover products. So I marched down there, broken part in hand, hoping to get a replacement. To shorten the story, they didn’t have the part in stock, but they ordered it, and my Steamvac is once again fit as a fiddle, and back in action.

Lets look at Phaneuf Vacuums from a marketing perspective. They have two big strengths. First, they have a well-defined, specialty niche: vacuum sales and service; and general floor care. Second, they offer a broad range of products and services within that niche. If you can master those two issues, you’re more than half way up the mountain.

Where Phaneuf falls flat is in the area of web marketing. Other than a listing on Google Local and some online Yellow Pages ads, they don’t have a web presence. No website. No blog. Not even an email newsletter as far as I know. And because they don’t have a solid web presence, they’re losing money to competitors.

As an example, before I bought my Steamvac, I rented a carpet cleaner from a local grocery store. Phanuef offers carpet cleaners for rent as well, but I didn’t know that until I visited their store. Had I known, I likely would’ve rented from them simply because they’re closer. I also would’ve bought the necessary carpet cleaning solution from them.

Further, when it came time to buy my own carpet cleaner, I probably would have bought it from them instead of the Walmart located ten miles away. All tolled, I’d estimate they lost at least $100 simply because I didn’t know they offered what I needed. Of course, $100 isn’t a huge number, but if you multiply that by, say, 500 customers over the course of a year, you’re talking about some serious money.

So, how can Phaneuf Vacuums use the web to earn more money without investing a lot of time and money? First, they could set up a basic website with a few pages that tell people about the company, its people and the products they have available.

This doesn’t have to be a $3000 custom-designed website. A simple WordPress-driven site can be set up for $500 or less. Much less if you set it up yourself. As for the design, there are literally thousands of free and low cost WordPress themes (templates) that would work just fine. A basic site like that can serve as an online connection point to develop and nurture a relationship with customers and potential customers.

They could also integrate a blog into the site where they might post informative articles on topics like general floor care, vacuums, carpet cleaners, etc. Fresh, informative content like that will help attract site visitors via Google and other search engines. Search engines love fresh, informative content, and even one new article posted each week will have value over time.

The final component that would be helpful is a monthly email newsletter, which would serve several purposes. First, it would provide a chance to connect with their customers and potential customers on a consistent basis, and continue to nurture a relationship with them. A simple “How to Clean Your Carpet” article would go a long way toward building good will.

The newsletter could also inform and remind readers about products and services available in their store. And like the website, the email newsletter is relatively inexpensive to implement. There are plenty of newsletter services out there, such as aWeber, that charge less than $20 per month to host your newsletter.

If you add it all up, the investment to implement a web marketing strategy like this is relatively small. Once all the systems are in place, you’re looking at perhaps 5-7 hours per month, and maybe $500 over the course of a year. Sure, you could invest more time and money into your online marketing, but this is a great first step until you’re ready to do that.