Popcorn Marketing, who has tried it?

AC Lockyer

AC Lockyer

New member
I have been teaching this marketing concept to my clients, at seminars and on webinars. The results have been very good. Has anyone over here used a Popcorn Marketing concept to improve market penetration?

The simple definition of Popcorn Marketing is,

A system of measured, small blasts of marketing tasks in intervals that are completed while salespersons or contractors are already onsite or in an area on call. The system should have many elements that hit potential customers from many sides or angles like flyers, door knocking, yard signs, truck wraps, letters, mailers, stencils, body wraps and alike. Efforts should be in small bursts without canvasing using many different marketing pieces.

Some refer to this as the rock, baggie, flyer marketing program but it entails much more than that.

Here are some pics from Bill Booz from Accuwash in MD. Here he shows a few milk crates of flyers ready to go. This weekend he put out about 1500 flyers. I believe he told me he got 5 calls from those flyers. One of which he closed for $2,000.00 and when the job was completed he was paid in cash. I believe he explained to me that of the 1,500 flyers that went out he closed 3 of the 5 leads and did $5,000.00 worth of work from this one effort.

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I built a roof cleaning company that did nearly 5 million dollars in one year and 28 million over 20, largely on Popcorn Marketing principals. Lets open a discussion about how Popcorn Marketing can help you grow your business.

Thanks,

AC
 
Well let's see we have been washing truck fleets for 31 years and have become one of the bigger companies in St. Louis mo. Our system is basically applying low pressure soap and then high pressure rinse. We are doing some two step testing and also looking into bio-cleans system. We clean concrete, buildings, heavy machinery and also offer some services such as vinyl graphic removal, and auto detailing. My father started the business back in 1979 and have never done any kind of marketing other than business cards and a website that I just built a couple years ago. My father is very big on just word of mouth but I would really like to tap the market in a different way. Its hard for me to get him to spend money on marketing material because he's what I like to call old school. I'm sending this from my iPhone so I can go more in-depth later.
 
I have seen this over the years and had customers complain about it also. I have never personally done it, but customers have told me about this method and called the authorities. I was told it was considered littering and carried a $500 fine per occurrence and the companies had to go round them all up. I do not see this type of marketing around here hardly at all anymore.
 
mhpoole said:
I have seen this over the years and had customers complain about it also. I have never personally done it, but customers have told me about this method and called the authorities. I was told it was considered littering and carried a $500 fine per occurrence and the companies had to go round them all up. I do not see this type of marketing around here hardly at all anymore.
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Mark,

The flyers are only one type of advertising that can fit into a popcorn marketing system. I have some clients that don,t like rock flyers and hate yard signs. They focus on other forms of advertising that can be cellular by nature and capitalize on those. Popcorn marketing is kinda like a pie crust, you add the filling that you like best and consume the pie. LOL

Thanks,

AC
 
Bosquimc said:
Well let's see we have been washing truck fleets for 31 years and have become one of the bigger companies in St. Louis mo. Our system is basically applying low pressure soap and then high pressure rinse. We are doing some two step testing and also looking into bio-cleans system. We clean concrete, buildings, heavy machinery and also offer some services such as vinyl graphic removal, and auto detailing. My father started the business back in 1979 and have never done any kind of marketing other than business cards and a website that I just built a couple years ago. My father is very big on just word of mouth but I would really like to tap the market in a different way. Its hard for me to get him to spend money on marketing material because he's what I like to call old school. I'm sending this from my iPhone so I can go more in-depth later.
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Ill send you a PM.

AC
 
I have done a couple of small stone baggies. The first one was 100 in my neighborhood. I got a $400 job. IO did another area with about 100 and got 2 calls. Those 2 were talking with other neighbors about using us and that made them call. Anothe area with about 200 did not get any calls I have about 1000 almost ready to go. I am using doorhanger, about 10 on each job. We have gotten some calls from those also.
 
Lenny Schrecengost said:
I have done a couple of small stone baggies. The first one was 100 in my neighborhood. I got a $400 job. IO did another area with about 100 and got 2 calls. Those 2 were talking with other neighbors about using us and that made them call. Anothe area with about 200 did not get any calls I have about 1000 almost ready to go. I am using doorhanger, about 10 on each job. We have gotten some calls from those also.
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Lenny, got my PC and DH's from Keith this week. thanks for sharing the design brother, appreciate mucho grando
 
Lenny Schrecengost said:
I have done a couple of small stone baggies. The first one was 100 in my neighborhood. I got a $400 job. IO did another area with about 100 and got 2 calls. Those 2 were talking with other neighbors about using us and that made them call. Anothe area with about 200 did not get any calls I have about 1000 almost ready to go. I am using doorhanger, about 10 on each job. We have gotten some calls from those also.
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Glad to see that element working well for you!

AC
 
We have done 4 differnet areas throwing and or talking with about 400 households and signed and completed 7 of the 10 calls we've gotten so far. Lost three on pricing. In one of the nieghborhoods we were in we did about 150 and have gotten no return. Sometimes it's hard to tell, they will call months later.
 
I tried this years ago with our dry clean delivery business. It was slow grow but it worked. It was time consuming but effective.

Eventually , we stumbled across the idea of pitching to businesses based on the idea that their employees needed to look good and shouldn't have to worry about leaving early to pick up dry cleaning and we could deliver directly to their work. We usually offered the manager or whoever we were talking to to get permission to address the employees a lifetime discount just for permission to address them.

We literally EXPLODED from that marketing. Surprisingly more than half the new accounts were straight home delivery. Some of the companies didn't want us to deliver to the office but were more than happy to give us a few minutes with their employees at a company meeting for home delivery.

I wonder if there is any way to work that into pressure washing?
 
Tony Shelton said:
I tried this years ago with our dry clean delivery business. It was slow grow but it worked. It was time consuming but effective.

Eventually , we stumbled across the idea of pitching to businesses based on the idea that their employees needed to look good and shouldn't have to worry about leaving early to pick up dry cleaning and we could deliver directly to their work. We usually offered the manager or whoever we were talking to to get permission to address the employees a lifetime discount just for permission to address them.

We literally EXPLODED from that marketing. Surprisingly more than half the new accounts were straight home delivery. Some of the companies didn't want us to deliver to the office but were more than happy to give us a few minutes with their employees at a company meeting for home delivery.

I wonder if there is any way to work that into pressure washing?
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Awesome idea Tony!
 
Any ideas on how to make that work for residential pressure washers?

Maybe a campaign like "While you're working - We're working" or something like that to show how much nicer it is to come home on a Friday and spend time with their families instead of falling off their roof trying to clean it. Maybe an Ipad presentation showing damage done by homeowners. I'm out of my league here and just throwing ideas around.

The popcorn marketing combined with the business presentations brought us from nothing in 2008 to the largest dry clean delivery company in the city with more than 24 competitors when we sold it in 2006.

It worked for us. Just throwing some ideas out. I'll go back into my commercial accounts hole now. :)
 
So are you saying that you knock on doors soliciting clients directly? How often would any of you recommend hitting the same area with marketing materials? I did 200 door hangers that I had sitting around today. I was considering doing a direct mailing to everyone in that neighborhood in three weeks.
 
I throw 5000 rock flyers a month. In combination with yard signs, door flyers, the website and the truck.
 
1 out of every 277.

As for it being "littering", you'll have to check Your local rules but here as long as its on private property its not littering. Its how newspaper companies get away with it. I've had 6 complaints since September, which is less than I've had from door flyers.
 
Did you sell any of the complainers?

Scott D. said:
1 out of every 277.

As for it being "littering", you'll have to check Your local rules but here as long as its on private property its not littering. Its how newspaper companies get away with it. I've had 6 complaints since September, which is less than I've had from door flyers.
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