What Are You Getting in Return for Your Wash-Dry-Fold Promotional Budget?
Business owners love to discuss and ruminate on what it costs to acquire a new customer.
In the drycleaning world, the generally accepted figure is approximately $50 per customer. In the laundry segment, one hears numbers such as $20 or $30 per customer being tossed around.
Whatever those actual costs may truly be, I believe the real key to such discussions and the true lesson to be learned from them is to always check (and then double-check) your decisions before spending any marketing dollars.
What is the real cost of your marketing program? And are you being successful in actually attracting those new customers to those services and products you’re trying to market?
With regard to wash-dry-fold business, these are questions I ask myself all the time – and they’re questions you should ask yourself each time you consider marketing.
I think about this each time I pay for a pay-per-click ad. I think about it each time I engage in any type of online posting and then boost that post on some social media platform. And I think about it before I launch a new marketing piece within a specific neighborhood.
What type of results am I getting in return for this marketing spend? I will evaluate it as accurately as I can to make sure it’s really working and worthwhile.
And you should do the same – whether you’re promoting your full-service laundry business on your own or perhaps through the help of an app-based marketing company or a wash-dry-fold partner that’s driving customers your way.
How effective are those dollars you’re spending?
I receive mixed reports from many of my friends and peers in the laundry industry. Of course, nothing you try is going to be 100 percent successful in every market with every product or service – some will enjoy great success in some areas, and other will not.
With that said, I’m convinced that the most important factor leading to the success of your full-service wash-dry-fold business is to consistently deliver the highest quality finished product in your marketplace. Do this, and I truly believe that word-of-mouth marketing and happy customers talking about your amazing service are always going to provide the best marketing value you’ll ever receive.
Of course, positive word-of-mouth promotion most likely isn’t going to build your wash-dry-fold business as quickly as you’d like or maybe need it to. But it’s an excellent place to start.
From there, choose your marketing options carefully and spend your promotional dollars wisely. And constantly ask yourself how successful your campaigns are. Are they working? What factors and benchmarks are you measuring them against?
I don’t have these answers. I’ve spoken with so many laundromat owners, and the answers and information are always so different. I’m convinced that there’s no single, correct, most impactful way to build a wash-dry-fold business with online promotions or other marketing tools.
It varies depending on where you’re located, what types of customers you’re trying to attract, what types of customers are available to you, and the particular message you want to deliver to them.
So, when it comes to marketing your wash-dry-fold business, continue to ask yourself the tough questions. And here’s one more question to ask yourself:
“What have I done lately to make sure my wash-dry-fold service is at the highest level and of the best quality it can be?”
After all, slow and steady word-of-mouth promotion maybe still be one of your full-service laundry’s greatest marketing weapons.
