… into the Ultimate Moneymaker
“The snow business isn’t profitable. My equipment is always breaking, and it’s expensive to fix or replace. It’s a huge time and money suck. There’s no money to be had in the snow industry.”
… is a HUGE LIE you’re told about the snow business.
Most of the time, the people that say this were burned out by their approach to the snow industry.
In the snow business, there’s high risk… but there’s also high reward.
The snow business is a gamble - and you’ll probably lose - UNLESS you know what you’re doing.
If you don’t have these things right in your business, it WILL FAIL:
- Profit-driven pricing
- Ideal client referrals
- “Growth hack” knowledge
- Money-making marketing strategies
- Software especially designed for the snow industry
Once you implement the solutions to these core business functions, you'll be on the right track to growing a profitable snow business.
Actually Make Money by Setting Your Prices Correctly
No matter how many jobs you’ve got, you’ll never grow your snow business if you don’t have your pricing right.
You should consistently be checking your job costing reports to confirm jobs that started profitably remain so. This helps to ensure you’re not overspending or under-pricing your services.
To make sure you’re properly pricing your services, you should consider these factors:
- Wages
- Overall expenses
- Cost of equipment
- Revenue for growth
- Cost of marketing and/or advertising
Once you take factors like these into account, you’ll be on the right track to creating a budget and properly pricing your snow removal services.
Become a Snow Business Expert… By Immersing Yourself in the Best Resources
If you want to grow your snow business, you’ll need to dive into some educational resources.
These resources will help equip you with the knowledge you need to make the right choices for your snow business. They help you to:
- Improve your budgeting
- Properly price your services
- Increase your number of clients
- Improve your client relationships
- Find the best employees to add to your team
- Stay in-the-know on the latest trends in the snow industry
- Discover time-saving technologies that’ll improve your efficiency
… This list could go on and on. When you connect with the right resources, the opportunities that’ll be provided to you are absolutely endless.
Attract Quality Clients with a Referral Program
While referrals tend to be one of the slowest ways to gain new clients, it’s also one of the most reliable ways to gain the right clients.
By using referrals to grow your snow business, you’re essentially duplicating your best, most ideal clients.
Once your best clients start referring you, a “snowball effect” begins to slowly (but steadily) increase your number of clients. As a result, you’ll be generating a much more consistent stream of clients than almost anything else you can do.
One of the main reasons most clients hesitate to become your clients is because of a great, big wall of DOUBT.
A good referral will:
- Make potential clients aware of you
- Shortcut your past competitors (in your client’s mind)
- Remove the giant wall of doubt and objections from their mind
Here are some tips to start generating referrals ASAP:
Be Sure the Timing is Right
Even if the client is right, and the offer is perfect, your client still may not refer you if your timing isn’t right.
Don’t ask for referrals when you:
- Broke something
- Just sent them a bill
- Haven’t done your best work
- Receive a complaint or bad review
Always ask for referrals when you:
- Complete your best work
- Receive a compliment or great review
Here’s the key: Ask for referrals when your clients are at their happiest with you.
Initiate a “Gift Card” Strategy
This is one of the most successful strategies to generate more referrals, because it’s offering an incentive to refer you.
The offer can be something as simple as, “Get $25 off your first plow!”
Honestly, it doesn’t even matter what the offer is… just as long as it’s something that’s worth their time.
Don’t Forget to Send “Thank You” Cards!
For every successful referral, be sure you send “Thank You” cards in addition to following through with your offer.
You’d be surprised how far a simple “Thank You” will get you. Plus, when your clients feel appreciated, they’re more likely to keep referring you to their friends and family.
Keep Your Business “Top of Mind” by Effectively Using Multi-Channel Marketing
First off, you might be asking yourself, “What the heck is multi-channel marketing?”
And that’s okay, because most snow businesses don’t use this money-making marketing strategy… which is why many of them fail or suffer from stagnant growth.
With that said, the most successful snow businesses THRIVE on multi-channel marketing.
In short, multi-channel marketing just means you’re distributing your message or offer across various marketing channels in a coordinated effort (AKA a marketing campaign).
Your marketing mix can include both online (digital) and offline (print channels).
When properly used, you can quickly reach your most ideal clients in a shorter amount of time.
On average it takes 7 to 13 touches to convert a lead into a client. So when you use multi-channel marketing, you’ll be reaching your clients on different platforms - all at the same time.
Ideally, this means you’ll convert your leads into clients in a much shorter amount of time. Plus, the shorter timespan between touches means they’ll be more likely to become a client.
At a minimum, you’ll need to use these platforms:
- Google Ads
Here’s how you’ll use each of them:
Creating an Extraordinary Email Campaign
At SA6 (our annual SA Conference), our Marketing Campaign Manager (Lisa Marino), gave attendees the perfect email campaign to start using in their multi-channel marketing.
And while I can’t give away all of her secrets from this workshop, here’s a quick overview of some of her best tips…
Even though this can seem super intimidating, it’s not as hard as you might think.
All it comes down to is you convincing them:
- There’s a problem in the snow industry
- You’re the authority in the industry
- You’re the answer to the solution
Once you convince them of these things, you’ve got yourself a client!
First off, here are the steps you’ll go through in order to create your emails:
- Write it
- Design it
- Set it up
- Monitor it
- Analyze the results
- Tweak it (over a long period of time to optimize them)
- Do it all again
Next, take a look at an example of what your email campaign might look like for your new clients:
- Week 1 - Email 1: Content (i.e. video on roofs collapsing from snowfall)
- Week 1 - Email 2: Content (i.e. video on liability if someone slips on your property)
- Weeks 2-4 - Email 3: Content (i.e. blog on the checklist before your first big snowstorm)
- Week 5 - Email 4: Sales Offer (i.e. new client, early bird contract discount)
And here’s an example of what your campaign might look like for former clients:
- Week 1 - Email 1: Content (i.e. blog on the checklist before your first big snowstorm)
- Week 1 - Email 2: Sales Offer (i.e. early bird contract discount)
- Week 2: Email 3: Sales Offer (i.e. reiterate your Email 2 Offer with a LIMITED TIME, X DAYS LEFT to get on the early bird special)
DON’T FORGET! Lisa recommends you always check the Current Worldata Calendar to find out which days your email should be most effective.
Depending on the services you provide, you might promote these services in your emails:
- Plowing
- De-icing
- Shoveling
- Sidewalk management
- Seasonal/annual contracts
- Roof and gutter snow removal
- Sand or salt applications on icy spots
- Pre-treating parking lots and driveways
- Snowblowing (walkways, sidewalks, and driveways)
If you need help with your multi-channel marketing, here’s how Lisa recommends you find someone:
- Find an agency (full service)
- Find a printer (who also does digital ads)
- Our SA6 sponsors (Modern Marketing Mechanic and/or Simple Growth)
- Freelance
- Marketing professional (full-time/part-time)
And before you hire a professional, first find out if you can afford it. Ask yourself these questions:
- “How much am I spending to acquire new customers?”
- “What is my ROI (return on investment) with my marketing efforts?”
- “What are my overall profit margins?”
And finally, Lisa recommends you predict how many leads you’ll bring in and convert. Even though you have to spend money to make it, the last thing you want to do is hire someone you can’t afford to keep.
Click here to get the full guide to email marketing for snow businesses.
Creating an Effective Facebook Campaign
You should promote the same offers your emailing on Facebook too.
This might sound repetitive or redundant, but that’s actually a GOOD thing.
Remember how we talked earlier about how it takes 7-13 or more times to convert a lead into a client? … Well that’s why we marketers don’t mind be “repetitive” in a multi-channel marketing campaign.
In fact, that’s our goal. To create an offer that you see EVERYWHERE, and eventually you’ll want to take advantage of it.
Unlike traditional ads, when you use Facebook Ads, it allows you to directly target your ideal clients. In other words, instead of everyone seeing your ads, only the people you’re targeting will see your ads.
Plus, you can set your daily budget so that your ads will stop appearing once your ad budget is reached for the day. So not only are Facebook Ads a very affordable option, but it also allows you to control how much you’re spending.
Take a look at our complete, three-part Facebook guide to find out more (plus, there’s a free social media calendar inside!): Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.
Dip Your Toes Into a More Advanced Marketing Strategy: Google Ads
Unlike Facebook Ads, Google Ads isn’t as “hyper-targeted”. In other words, you can’t directly choose who sees your ads. That said, Google Ads are targeted by search terms, so you’re looking at getting in front of an audience that is ready to buy.
While you can’t choose who sees your ads, you can set a daily budget for your ads So once you’ve reached your daily limit, the ads will stop showing.
If you’re looking to gain new clients, this is probably going to be the most effective way to spend your money.
Here’s why…
People on Facebook aren’t necessarily looking for a solution to their snow and ice removal problems.
However, people on Google are actively searching for a solution to their problems.
In Google Ads, you can choose which keyword searches you want to target, so your ads will only show for those keywords. Plus, you can choose whether you want your ads to show at the top of bottom of the search.
Check out this great beginner’s guide for Google Ads!
Make Managing Your Snow Business a Breeze by Using the Right Software
By far, using the right software is the most vital part of growing your snow and ice removal business.
The right snow software can help you:
- Schedule jobs
- Schedule teams
- Optimize routing
- Track your team’s location
- Create and automatically send invoices
- Create and automatically send estimates
- View and update your calendar from anywhere
- Automatically update save, and charge credit cards
- View and update your client accounts from anywhere
- … And so much MORE!
When you use the right software for your snow removal business, your growth opportunities are absolutely endless.
Unlike other software solutions, Service Autopilot is the only proven software solution specially created to meet the needs of the snow industry.
When you choose Service Autopilot as your snow software, you'll get:
- Unlimited live small group webinar training with Q&A
- Unlimited FREE phone, email, and live chat support
- Unlimited online video training and help center
- A launch advisor to help you get started
- Import assistance
Your future starts here:
Click here to finish taking your free demo of our software for snow businesses.
Grow a Snow Business You Can Be Proud Of
As you're ready to expand your snow business, it becomes increasingly important to utilize the right knowledge and resources.
Plus, when you begin to pinpoint your business’ biggest bottlenecks, you’ll be better able to choose which solutions to implement into your business.
At the end of the day, YOU are the most important resource for your business. No one is going to care about your snow business as much as you do.
Since this is YOUR baby, it’s your responsibility to find the right solutions for your business and ensure they’re implemented.
