Marketing: From The Yellow Pages To Focus Groups To The Internet

The term marketing can mean different things to different companies. Generally our industry markets by word of mouth, or we let customers "let their fingers do the walking" to find a pest control service provider. The various meetings we attend almost always have some management program that considers marketing methods from members. The questions on how to market and what to market are always there in the back of our minds. And for most people, that is where they stay: "I know I should market, but who has the time to create these programs?"

SIZE MATTERS. In some cases there is no need to go any further than the Yellow Pages or local telephone classified advertising. Small companies may not need anything more than that and quality service. Quality service brings in customers. You let the satisfied customer be your salesperson and marketer for the company. I was with a PCO the other day, and I could see that this concept was working very well with the customer we were visiting. Solve her termite problem and she'll be yours for life — and she'll tell all her friends, too.

Marketing, though, is one of those vague things we as businesspeople have to try to comprehend. For some companies there are no questions. They may even have people who are there to do just marketing and sales, probably leaning more toward the sales side, but that too is marketing isn't it? You can read about marketing and the concepts, but how do you get an explanation that you can understand or assistance that you can use to incorporate into your company's marketing program?

KNOWING THE CUSTOMER. I recently read an article in American Demographics magazine. What caught my eye and encouraged me to read the article was a statement in the first paragraph: "Organizations need a constant flow of new information to stay competitive." The article summarized marketing into four areas: • Who are the customers?

• What's on their minds?

• Where can they be reached?

• What are they buying?

These are basic questions for the consumer goods industry, which the article addressed. But these questions should be the marketing basis for our industry as well. Without a doubt our consumer has changed to some extent because of our educational efforts and to a greater extent because of media education. Whatever the reason, the modern pest control company had better be looking at the above four questions and trying to answer them.

Consider the second question: What's on their minds? When is the last time you asked that of your customers? Or have you ever? Do you simply wait for questions about baits, sprays, toxicity or other topics to pop into the conversation? How do we train our technicians to see the signs? Should we be aggressive or progressive and give customers the information before they even ask for it? This seems to be one of the toughest questions to answer.

Sometimes this can be done for us. In the day-to-day operations of the average PCO that's you there is no time for this. But more and more manufacturers are using focus groups of average citizens our customers to formulate information that will help them market their products. How do they do that? They have a meeting. They ask some questions. They provide information sometimes slanted toward their product, but if they want to be purely objective, they avoid doing this. Then they ask some more questions. The manufacturer takes all this information, synthesizes it, determines how it can benefit its market position, and then puts it into the products it develops and markets to you.

A case in point is a mailing I received recently from Clorox about Maxforce. The marketing information enclosed wasn't earthshaking, although some of the statistics were interesting. The information was geared toward those companies who perform contract pest control in the multifamily housing arena, or for public housing authorities. The information was straightforward and direct, and a valuable aid for any pest control company that can't or doesn't want to do this for itself. Door hangers, calculation sheets and valuable information about you-guessed-it: who the customers are; what is on their minds; and what they are buying. It would be interesting to know how many of the PCOs who received this package used it.

Manufacturers do a lot of this, from offering videos to marketing brochures. Some manufacturers are even running commercials in certain market areas inviting consumers to call a toll-free number to obtain referrals for PCOs who use the product advertised. This saves some PCOs a lot of time and, more importantly, a lot of money. But it may create a marketing nightmare for others.

WHERE TO REACH THEM. This becomes an interesting question in today's fast-paced or should I say cyber-paced? communications industry. More and more PCOs are asking questions about the use of the Internet for marketing information and services to customers. I have published information about this in the past the percentages of homes with personal computers, how businesses are using them, and so on. In recent months I have seen several PCOs go online with Web pages and e-mail.

Van Waters & Rogers has a system that, when it reaches its full potential, will be a resource to be reckoned with in the industry. Just about all universities are on the World Wide Web. Even the NPCA has advertised its own home page on the Web.

The key questions for the average PCO to answer are "What good is it?" and "Assuming it is good, how do I use it?" I do not believe we have reached the point at which we're able to reap the benefits in this area yet. But I do believe it is time to consider the future rather than being unprepared and letting it come to us. I scanned the Web in late 1995 for references to the keyword Pest Control and received about 350 references. They covered mostly agriculture and university sites, with a sprinkling of PCOs. I went back last week for a peek and the keyword Pest Control resulted in a list of more than 46,000 references! After seeing pest control companies such as Cook's, Massey, Orkin, Hulett Environmental and many other small companies, I wondered, "Why are they there? Who is looking? And how will the average consumer find them in this maze of 46,000 Web sites?"

Incidentally, most of the listings were not actually pest control-related, but were other services being offered to PCOs — CPAs, attorneys, equipment manufacturers, etc. as well as those from the agricultural area. There were no listings for structural pest control per se. So here we go again being lumped with agriculture, but now we're stuck in cyberspace with them not to mention with attorneys and CPAs! I know there must be a way to use this media for marketing, but how? I guess I'll have to get out the old Yellow Pages to find someone who can help me.