Calls to Action: What Are You Offering? by Foster Web Marketing
I was driving through Baltimore City this weekend when I passed by a local dry cleaners with a very interesting sign out front that caught my attention. This particular dry cleaners is still considered to be in the city but it is kind of on the outskirts in a district where there are a lot of residential properties and businesses, but not a lot of “service” businesses, like fast food restaurants, grocery stores (there is a small Whole Foods but that’s about it), or pharmacies.
The sign read “Free Box Storage”, and I thought to myself, why on earth would a dry cleaners offer free storage?
Well, come to find out, there aren’t any self storage businesses in this area either. There are a few two miles into town, but as anyone who lives in a major city knows, 1) driving and parking two miles away in the city can be a lot worse than it sounds, and 2) storage space can be hard to find.
But how is the business capitalizing on offering free box storage? Is he just offering this to help others in the community, or is this a business decision?
I went inside and spoke to the owner about the service for a bit. He told me that it was as simple as bringing in any size box, and they’ll store it for as long as I’d like. After speaking to the gentleman for a few minutes and building some rapport, I finally asked him what his motivation for offering this type of service was. And it was pretty simple.
He told me that he had some extra space on the second floor that he tried to rent out as an office, but he had no interest from anyone because that particular area is primarily retail, there is no parking, and not a lot of businesses that would have a need for such a space.
So he decided to dedicate the space to storage in a hope to get some extra dry cleaning business by referrals (”you can go store some things at the local dry cleaners for free, and they get my dress shirts back to me within two days if you want to start using them while you’re at it”) and also as another way to get more people in the door.
He told me that he has about 15 people who have boxes stored there and, since they came in the first time with their boxes, they have been back multiple times for dry cleaning services and use them on a regular basis. He also told me that he doesn’t really have a way of tracking how many people are now his customers thanks to referrals from satisfied box storers, but he did say that he noticed a little bit of an increase in business since offering the service. And afterall, he has their boxes and he knows that they’ll be back at some point, and the people trust him enough to hold their boxes, why not trust him with pressing their suits and cleaning their coats? He’s building a business relationship with clients, who also refer business, all because of some extra space that he had.
I thought this was a pretty creative marketing technique. The space was just going to sit there anyways and the only expense that he had was the cost of the sign that he had out front (it was just a simple vinyl banner) and whatever amount of manhours it took to take a box up a flight of stairs.
This made me think about what kind of creative marketing techniques attorneys use to obtain leads, cases, or even contact information for a drip campaign follow up.
My guess is that if you’re a personal injury attorney reading this blog post, and you have a website that you use for web marketing (versus a normal 5-page that you have just so you can put the address on your business cards), that you offer a “free case analysis” somewhere on your site.
Well guess what. So does everyone else!
I’m not saying to stop offering a free case analysis seeing as that is becoming the standard for attorneys these days. I’m saying that offering some more creative and effective services or incentives for someone to
a) think about hiring you, or
b) tell a friend or family member to visit your website, link to your website, or just spread the word for whatever reason
might be a little more effective.
Some examples are free report downloads (”Ten Reasons Why You Might Need A Lawyer For Your Accident Case”), informative and unique content, polls and surveys, videos, or whatever else you can offer that you think may catch on.
In the dry cleaners’ case, it didn’t even have anything to do with his business’ offering. After all, what does self storage have to do with dry cleaning?
ANYTHING that you can think of to capture a potential client’s contact information (at LEAST) that twenty other attorneys in your city aren’t already doing is what you should be thinking about.
SEO, social media marketing, blogging, and adding content to your site are great ways to get more visits to your site. But what are you offering to turn that visit from someone spending thirty seconds on your site and just leaving into a potential business relationship?
Posted Under: Lead generation for attorneys
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