Dialing Up Station

Steve Kanya uses an Insectarium. Michael Bohdan uses a Cockroach Hall of Fame. Mary Cliff uses a "Bug Lady" T-shirt. These three PCOs are among a rare breed of professionals who use unique marketing techniques to promote their pest control companies and themselves. The three have discovered that daring to be different in their marketing has done more than set them apart from their competitors. It has proven to be quite profitable.

Kanya, the president of Steve's Bug Off Exterminating Co. in Philadelphia, says his bug zoo is critical to his firm's 17% annual growth. The 6,500-square-foot Insectarium, which features 100,000 live insects and is visited by 75,000 visitors annually, has attracted so much attention that the company has been able to eliminate its $60,000 annual advertising budget.

Bohdan, owner of The Pest Shop in Plano, Texas, has profited handsomely from the publicity surrounding his "Cockroach Hall of Fame" Museum. The Hall, featuring critters with names like Marilyn Monroach, Ross Peroach and Liberochi, is the latest in a series of promotional stunts that have landed Bohdan on TV nearly 500 times. Bohdan figures an extended TV appearance can generate $10,000 in additional income, and each article in local newspapers can bring in thousands more.

Cliff says that her T-shirts have helped gain recognition for her company, "The Bug Lady Inc." in Huntington, W.Va. That recognition, she adds, helped the firm win the designation by the Huntington Herald-Dispatch as the "Best Pest Control Company in the Tri-State Area." The area covers West Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky, and is served by 26 other companies.

"They really helped us get known and build a reputation," Cliff says of the blue and white shirts, which feature a little girl in the kitchen saying "Hey Mom, Call the Bug Lady." "People laugh about it, but I've been laughing all the way to the bank."

SETTING YOURSELF APART. These PCOs' brand of innovative marketing is surprisingly rare in an era when more pest control companies (about 18,000 in all) are offering more services to more residential and commercial clients than ever before.

"PCOs in general don't do a good job of differentiating themselves," observes Ed Bradbury, president of Viking Termite & Pest Control, Bridgewater, N.J. "So many do only Yellow Pages advertising and are otherwise obscure."

Dr. Bobby Corrigan, the director of educational programs for Purdue's Center for Urban and Industrial Pest Management, agrees. "When it comes to marketing, PCOs are not all that progressive," he points out.

The vast majority of pest control firms play the "Same Game" of marketing they promote themselves the same way that their competitors do. In many areas, that amounts to Yellow Pages advertising, referrals and not much else.

It's not so much a game of "follow the leader" as "follow the follower," a game without winners. By participating in it, PCOs fail to distinguish themselves and establish their uniqueness. They fail to tune in to the radio station that all those they seek to influence listen to all the time: WMYD (What Makes You Different?). And they fail to take advantage of the profits that innovative marketing can yield.

"Distinctive marketing has kept us growing," declares Truly Nolen, whose company became known for its "mouse-like" Volkswagen service cars. The company now generates $50 million in sales nationwide. EXPLOITING FREEBIES. Among the easiest methods by which pest control firms can distinguish themselves is to take advantage of free publicity, the best advertising PCOs can't buy.

Savvy self-promoters understand that an article in a local newspaper or a story on a local TV station can generate hundreds of calls and thousands of dollars in additional revenue.

"People don't often believe ads in which you say you're good," notes Steve Blum, whose Acme Pest Control firm in New Haven, Conn., regularly distributes press releases that yield positive press coverage. "But when you're quoted in an article as an expert, they figure you must be good."

Pest control companies can make news every time they launch a new service, sign a major contract, win an award, contribute to a charity, hire an employee, or even celebrate an anniversary in business. They need only notify the appropriate reporter at the local media outlet with a phone call and follow up with a press release.

Free publicity is easy to come by for PCOs, partly because reporters, editors, producers and others in the media need you more than you need them.

Ed Bradbury, whose marketing efforts range from sponsoring local sports teams to distributing company newsletters, credits free publicity for setting Viking Termite & Pest Control apart.

A press release in which he was quoted on an invasion of ladybugs in areas of New Jersey resulted in considerable broadcast and print coverage, and about 125 jobs worth more than $15,000.

Douglas Stewart applied one of the lessons he learned at my marketing program for the Colorado Pest Control Association, and sent out a press release about his Denver company, Bird Control Inc., to the Rocky Mountain News. He said that a subsequent article on the influx of pigeons in Denver "had my phone ringing off the hook." He booked hundreds of dollars of business within five days, including an airport, a bank, a restaurant, an apartment building and other commercial establishments.

ATTACKING THE IMAGE PROBLEM. Soliciting positive media coverage is not a new idea, but it is still so rarely practiced that it provides a major competitive advantage to those firms that pursue it. And it helps overcome what Cleveland, Ohio PCO Chuck Kettler calls "the lingering image problems our industry has."

"The public mentality of pest control hasn't made the transition from the guy with the tank to IPM," says Kettler, the general manager of Central Exterminating Co.

To upgrade the industry's image and to distinguish their organizations some PCOs are adding a new and different spin to some tried-and-true promotion practices. Some are enhancing and dramatizing their presentations at elementary schools by using such "live props" as Madagascar hissing roaches and other large tropical cockroach species, praying mantises, aquatic insects, tarantulas, scorpions and lizards.

Other firms strive to stand out in their communities by sponsoring bowl-a-thons, entering parades, putting on insect collection contests at local schools, providing and promoting free treatment to charitable institutions, offering "frequent buyer awards," writing columns, and hosting radio shows.

Daring to be different" in the way you market your pest control services can be as simple as including your photo and a list of your services on your business card, or as complex as marketing your company on the Internet. It can involve offering a "Frequent Buyers Award" to your best customers, as does Judi Evans. Her firm, A-Pest Pro of Arlington, Texas, has distributed such "environmentally friendly" gifts as bird feeders, aloe vera plants and certificates for trees in a rain forest.

""These gifts are our way of being different, of being remembered," Evans explains. "They show that we're aware of the environment, and people appreciate it."

PRIZE GIVEAWAYS. Differentiating your company can amount to making available special prizes to those clients responsible for the most referrals. ABC Pest Control, an $8 million operation with five offices in Texas, has offered prizes ranging from movie passes to vacations in South Padre Island, Texas and Las Vegas.

"Referrals are the best way to build a business, and we're aggressive in the way we go after them," points out Bobby Jenkins, the president of ABC's Austin office. "We mostly give away movie passes one pass for two people for each referral. That way couples have a good time courtesy of ABC, and they have a good feeling about our company."

Pest control professionals are limited only by their imagination in the way they promote their companies.

"There are fun ways to talk about a serious subject," remarks Michael Bohdan. "The problem is that PCOs are too afraid of the media."

What Bohdan calls his "cockroach approach to public relations" has, for years, focused on the media. His "Biggest Cockroach in Texas" contest led to an appearance on "The Tonight Show," where he talked Johnny Carson into walking a cockroach on a leash.

But there are plenty of alternatives for media-shy managers.

"PCOs could do what I do and be enormously successful," Tom Turpin, a Purdue entomology professor, says of the edible insect programs he delivers around the country. "Any time you get in front of the public even in fun you get the opportunity to turn the discussion to what you do."

What Turpin does, for audiences ranging from church organizations to attorney groups to 4-H clubs, is present programs in which he cooks mealworms in a wok, creates trail mix out of sautéed wax moth larvae and worms, bakes mealworm cakes, and serves up helpings of "chocolate chirpy chip" cookies comprised of roasted crickets.

Granted, lecturing on tasty insects, sponsoring insectariums and distributing bird feeders might not be your idea of marketing. But there are dozens of other methods by which a PCO can get recognized as a unique, one-of-a-kind pest control professional.

If your business and income are not expanding as rapidly as you would prefer, that may have nothing to do with your knowledge of IPM, pesticide application or wildlife control. But it may have everything to do with your ability to promote yourself differently from your competitors.

Dare to be different in the way you market your business, and you'll discover a greater level of success than you ever dreamed possible.