George Cleary, owner of The Cleary Company in Columbus, Ohio, recently ran his very own Tour of Remodeled Homes. George and his employees have come up with some pretty innovative marketing initiatives over the time we have known each other. This one was quite remarkable!
Here is what George says about how he and his team pulled off the tour: “We had an open house of 4 homes last Thursday in my neighborhood. The Tour ran from 6PM to 8PM with ½ hr of set up before it started and ½ hr of close out at the end.
We had 2 employees at each house to show off our work. Each team was 1 woman and 1 man, which worked out great.
As people said that night “It was great, it was like your own parade of homes.’ The last of the four homes on the Tour was my house, where we had a food truck, beverages and desserts.
The rain held out, lots of children were there, and several very interested potential clients were there. There was an overall good mood.
We signed a Design agreement at 9AM the next morning with a couple that we had already met with before the Tour and who had come to the Tour, which they loved.
I’m not saying they did it because of the Tour, but they sure enjoyed seeing 4 other homes we had remodeled and the different ideas, as it gave them the confidence we knew what we were doing.
Everyone here really enjoyed, our clients/future clients loved it, and even some vendors showed up.
It was a huge hit.
The hard costs $700 in food/beer/water/paper products and $300 in cleaning person/floor protection products. Our employee who helps with marketing, April, came up with the idea for the Tour and did a wonderful job pulling this all together.
The outcome was 80 attendees chattering how cool it was to be able to see 4 tastefully done houses all within walking distance. The projects were all within 250 yards of each other.
I hand wrote personal thank you cards to the 3 clients who allowed us to put their homes on the Tour. We had a cleaning company go in and prep the homes and we gave these wonderful clients flowers to express our appreciation for what they did for us.”
Now, not every one of you has four or so remodeling projects within walking distance of each other, with one of the projects being your own home, but you see the possibilities here? Do you have 2 or 3 remodeling projects within a short distance of each other? Have you recently done a remodel on your home?
You and your company could do this! —Paul Winans, a veteran remodeler, now works as a facilitator for Remodelers Advantage, and as a consultant to remodeling business owners. [email protected]
