13th
What I learned from the garage door guy
I had a new garage door installed last week. As with most of the things I buy these days I went to Google and typed in “Garage doors LA”.
The company that looked the best was on a sponsored link, LA Overhead Garage Door and Gate. It was a Sunday so I sent them a request through the site. From that request the owner came out to my house to do the inspection and give me a price.
I complimented the owner on his use of pay per click on Google. He then told me that he used to spend $30,000 per month with the yellow pages, which he had been doing for over 15 years. About 3 months ago a local marketing company came to him and pitched him on doing online advertising.
For a fraction of the cost he is now getting more leads then he ever got through the yellow pages (which he has now stopped). His business is literally exploding in a market that has probably shrunk 50% in size in the last 12-18 months.
Some thoughts/opportunities:
- If you are out of work and understand online, go to a local business that is not on Google and do it for them. You can learn 90% of Google pay per click in a week of doing their tutorials.
- If you own a local business, get on Google PPC. Right now it is a super cheap to get leads. (this will change as the market normalizes)
- If you want to buy a local business, this is a great time. You could have bought this guys garage door company a year ago, put them on Google and tripled sales while reducing cost.
- Getting leads is only half the battle. My garage guy is smart, the first person I meet is the owner, he walks me through everything, gets me comfortable (up sells me on ton of shit I do not need) and gets a check. From that point on he never sees or talks to me again (unless something goes wrong). Leads are great but they are only worth something when they get closed.
- Even in shrinking markets, opportunity can still be great to those that work hard and innovate.
- Also there is real value in having some history to your business even in (maybe you could say especially in) the online world. Being able to see that the company has been around since 1989 is part of what made me choose them over someone else. If you are a start-up figure out how to leverage someone else’s experience to give yourself some immediate credibility.
