A YouTube video (creator: Mike Andes) offering practical, low-budget customer-acquisition tactics for local home-service businesses. Covers sidewalk/right-of-way sign-holding, yard sign placement and pitfalls, truck branding (paint/wrap) as a mobile billboard, and static billboards/signage including barter for placement. Also promotes the Blue Collar Summit (three-day event in January 2025, Seattle) for off-season customer retention strategies.
Questions this video answers
January 2025 in Seattle, Washington (three-day event).
One to two customers per hour.
Painting a truck: approximately $1,000 to $3,000–$4,000 depending on location; wrapping an entire truck: about $2,000–$4,000. The speaker cites a combined example cost of about $1,200 for a partial paint + wrap approach.
They describe mowing a small parcel of land for free ("pay exactly $0") in exchange for placing signage on that property.
Chapters
Another way to get customers if you're in a high traffic area is to hold a sign. Now, it's not fun to hold a sign next to the road in the blazing heat, but it can print customers. I've had it before. I get one to two customers per hour that I'm holding a sign in the right spot. So here's a couple tips. First off, make sure people aren't flying by at 80 miles an hour. Like being next to a really big highway. Not ideal. You actually want to be more like a shopping area or where people are coming in and out. Like the entrance to this mall. Perfect spot. Why? Because if they see my sign, they can pull in right next to me and I can actually get the quote information right away from them. So them driving 10, 15 miles an hour, very good. I have a spot for them to park and I can have my truck here presented for everyone to see as they drive in and out of the mall. It's a great way to get brand awareness. And then my sign is going to be drawing them to the attention of get a quote, get a quote for mowing, get a quote for property cleanup. Whatever service you're trying to offer your customers, make the sign about getting the quote. And then your truck attracts the attention. And if you really got some nerves and you build, you know, up a little gumption, stand up on top of the truck, stand on top of the truck, stand on top of the truck. Do something to get people's attention and then get the sign to drive the awareness for them to come park their vehicle next to you and actually get the quote information. Yard signs are one way to also get more customers. Now, a couple things you want to be careful of. First off, they're really easy to steal. And I've put up hundreds of these yard signs before. And all of a sudden, the next day I wake up and they're all gone. Also, they can start to look kind of trashy after several weeks and kind of not associate your brand with high quality. So a lot of times people will look at them and associate them with a lower quality service simply because they start to look bad over time. And most high quality brands aren't putting a ton of yard signs out. However, ultimately, I don't care what people think about me. I, I want to make more money. And so if I can get more leads, get getting started. Let's go. Now, when it comes to placement of these yard signs, a couple of things you want to keep in mind. Look how people are stopping right next to these yard signs, that's a great placement because when they're stopping they have to look next to stop signs. Four way stops and intersections. Great place to put them and you can avoid getting removed if you just look for other places where yard signs are at and focus on those areas. Yard signs can also be used for. If you do like a community project in a area like this and you maybe installed some plants or mulch, you can install some yard signs. Great way to get some publicity also after projects. So once you're doing a big job, ask the customer. Very rude. Ask the customer, hey, is it okay if I just leave this yard sign in your yard? And it's just like this project was completed by and it has your branding.
If all these ideas for getting more customers seems appealing, but in the back of your mind you're saying that's fine for spring and summer but. But I can't get any customers during the off season and during the winter. I'd love to invite you to Blue Collar Summit coming up in January 2025 in Seattle, Washington.
It's a three day event.
There's gonna be a ton of speakers on the Friday. I'm gonna take an entire day and solve this problem for you once and for all. We're gonna figure out how to ensure that you keep customers coming back to you throughout the off season and you don't have an off season because off seasons will keep you poor. Go to blue collarsummit.com, book your tickets today and we'll see you there.
Most of the time, if you're out working in the field, a customer is not going to actually walk up to you and ask you for your information in order to be able to do business with you. Rather, they're going to be looking for a truck like this that's wrapped or painted for them to be able to get contact information like your phone number or go to your website or at least just know what your brand is. This is like a massive walking billboard wherever you go. This is a way to be able to get customers to be able to buy from you. Now, when it comes to the three step process to get a new customer, there's three things that have to happen. Number one, they have to find you, then they have to recognize you, and then they can buy from you. And usually this is the steps that it follows. When you get more and more trucks rolling around, guess what? People are going to find you and be like, oh, Augusta Lawn Care, if I had a white truck, they wouldn't know who was actually doing the lawn, they'd just be like, oh, they're doing great work. That's cool. But now, because they actually can find me, because I have to have my brand name, well, we're good. Then. They usually go to your website and that's where they need to recognize you. And that's why the truck needs to also be on my website page. So I can actually recognize the same truck that I saw in the field. The same brand, Augusta Lawn Care, the uniforms, the guy that saw Moen in yellow shirts. Oh, it's the same company. So I gotta find recognize on my website. And then they can buy from you, but they will never buy from you if they don't first find you. And they're never gonna be able to find you if you don't have a truck that's wrapped decal and has contact information on it. Now, the pricing on this conveyor vary. Painting a truck can cost you anywhere from a thousand to three or four thousand dollars, depending on where you're at in the country. It's insane the amount of change that goes from even just one state to the next. Also, to wrap an entire truck, you might be looking at again, 2, 3, $4,000 to wrap the entire truck. This truck, for example, we painted the front half and then the back half is just the wrap. That allowed us to be able to paint the entire front for like three or four hundred dollars. And then the back half being wrapped allowed us to save money. And. But all in, we're still looking at like $1200 to get this thing painted and decal. And that's pretty low to a lot of places in the country where it's double or even triple. But I can promise you one thing. This alone will get you so many leads. And as you get more trucks and you grow your business, having these billboards rolling around town all day long is the number one way to make sure that customers start to see you everywhere. You get one or two of these trucks rolling around in the neighborhood a couple times a week, and all of a sudden everyone's like, oh man, I just see you all over the place, all over the neighborhood. I go online, I see you on Facebook, I see your website. That's the kind of brand penetration you can get when you get great branding on your truck. Another way to get customers is billboards and signage. Now, if you're just getting started, you might not be able to do this. I'm going to show you in a moment what you could do. If you don't have much of a budget but if you're getting shop space, I'm willing to spend a little bit more. If I can get a space where when I put up a sign, it's going to show it to hundreds, if not thousands of people every day that drive by. Every single day, thousands of vehicles drive by this shop and and see this massive 16 by 8 sign that we put up. It's for our shop space, but also serves as a great way to have advertising. So if you're comparing shop spaces and you're getting your business a little bit bigger, I'm willing to spend a little bit more. Like 5, 6, $, 700 more if it's central to my area in terms of my service area, closer to my customers and next to a road or highway. That's going to bring me a lot of publicity and therefore a lot of leads. Now let's go check out what the budget version of doing this is. Your business might actually be being ran right now out of a storage facility or even your gar and you don't have a fancy shop space. One way to still get billboards out, get signage up, is something like this. This is actually at a mechanic shop just a couple miles away from our shop. Again on the main drag where a lot of people are going to see the sign. It's on the opposite side of the highway compared to our shop which is down the road. This again allows people to be able to see the sign and its position right here next to an intersection. So when people are stopped, they can see directly. It's yellow, it stands out. And really, in order to be able to get this, we pay exactly $0 how we mow this little part of land right here. And so if you're looking for billboards or signage and you don't have the shop space and you don't have a lot of money, one way is just give away your services in exchange for putting out signage on someone's property. Commercial properties already usually have signs, but even residential customers, if they're in a really good spot, you might be able to negotiate free services. And in exchange for putting up a sign in their property, do you struggle to get more leads and more customers to your home service business? If so, watch this video here.
It's a complete masterclass of exactly how I do it.
