Do This To Stay Top of Mind to Your Customers, For FREE

How would you like your customers to think of you almost every day for the next 3 months, costing you nothing?

I am Ron Ramsden, a DYB coach, and a painting contractor in Massachusetts.

We are always looking for that little nugget that is going to make you different than everybody else.

If you can give something to your customers they’re going to keep it around and see your name all the time.

What I want to talk about is a newsletter.

I know you’ll say, “No, I don’t have time to do a newsletter.”

“I am not very good at writing newsletters.”

“What do I put in it?”

I am going to fix all of that right now.

It’s something very, very, easy.

First of all, you’ll need an email service.

There are 2 services that are pretty well known and they’re free up to a certain number of email addresses.

One is “Constant Contact” and another one is “MailChimp.”

I personally use MailChimp.

Both of these have easy-to-use templates so you can actually choose the different ones you want to work with.

We are going to use the really basic one.

What are we going to put on that?

We are going to actually make a calendar of events for the local area.

A lot of times there are certain events happening that people don’t realize are happening.

I will say, “Oh, I wish I knew about that in town.”

What you want to do is look at some of the local calendars.

Block out an hour jam session for yourself, as we call it in DYB.

Block out an hour of your time and really dig into local calendars.

What kind of calendars should you be looking at?

What we always look at is the city calendar.

I know in our town, they have a pretty extensive calendar of events that are happening.

What you want to do is start putting all those calendar events on a piece of paper.

Copy and Paste them.

Imagine a family with a couple kids at home.

What are we going to do this weekend?

They have that calendar, and so there is a fishing derby here.

When is the local junior prom?

They may not have kids.

They might have friends who have kids though.

I know recently on Facebook, I saw someone had posted their kids junior prom.

Someone else commented underneath “I totally forgot about it.”

If they had that on their calendar and they actually saved it, they would’ve had it in front of them.

Go to the town and find out all those odd things and fun things going on and list those in your calendar.

Secondly, I know the school calendar in our town doesn’t combine with the town calendar.

There are some other things on the school calendar, in fact, one of the things we post is report card day.

I don’t know if the kids like that, but the parents do.

Youth Sports:

You can fill three calendars with youth sports, but maybe you pick out the opening game.

When baseball season kicks off, maybe you just post in the fall, the football game.

Church events:

I know we have quite a few churches in our town.

There are a couple prominent churches that have some pretty extensive calendars online that you can look at and see when things are going on.

We are not posting the board of directors’ meeting or something like that.

We are posting the different things that are coming up on the calendar.

Facebook events:

Go to a local town and key Facebook events.

Look at the events that are happening in town.

It could be election day.

Those things you want to post on there.

Beach Concerts:

I am about a half hour from the beach.

I know some of you are in other places near lakes or you have a big community event.

Down at the beach, they have a weekly series of concerts.

Some of the people that are playing at those concerts are free to watch.

Post those things on your calendar.

Recently we worked at an amusement park and they had a grand opening.

They have some half-price days sometimes and you can also post their specials when they have a special, on there.

If you look ahead and do a little creative research, you are going to end up with anywhere from 20 to 50 different calendar events for the next 3 months.

What do you want to do with that?

You don’t want to end up making it a giant advertisement for your painting company.

What you want to do is keep it very basic.

If you look at the templates on the two programs I talked about, Constant Contact and MailChimp, you are going to find some basic template to use.

You just want to put calendar events.

June 1st through September 1st or something along the lines.

If you are planning ahead, you are thinking about it right now.

But now, while I am writing this, we have about 20 days left in the month.

This would be something that you can put together and email out in the course of an afternoon.

Just start listing them straight across.

Obviously, in the order that the calendar events are going to stay, so you won’t be confusing everybody.

If you do that, write a brief description.

For example: “First Day of Youth Soccer.”

Put a little more detail into it if you want. You can give them as much information here or as little.

You should give them the dates and what’s actually happening.

If someone sees it’s the opening day of something, they can actually figure that out for themselves, but you are reminding them.

On the bottom of the newsletter, that’s where you want to put all your company information.

Let them know if you have a spring special or something like that.

“Please check us out on our Facebook page and then you can also subscribe to this newsletter.”

You put this newsletter page together.

You have all your events in there.

How are you going to get it to someone?

Put all the emails in your contact list of your Gmail, your AOL, your Yahoo, your own company email, whatever you are going to use.

You can import all those contacts.

This is an important feature in both of these email services.

It’s free and it’s going to hang around your customers for a whole 3 months.

If they print it out or they save it, your name is going to come up every time they look at it!

Then they are going to be looking forward to the next one and then the next one.

This is something you can actually touch base with them on.

You are not asking them for anything, you’re giving them something, then they will start really looking forward to it.

I hope that freebie works out for you!

We are always looking for something that is a little different.

You’ll definitely be the first one in the neighborhood to have something like that and you’ll be able to stay top of mind.

I am Ron Ramsden, a DYB coach, and a painting contractor.

Want to reach out to me?

My email is ron@dybcoach.com.

You can find me on Facebook.

I’d love to talk to you there, through chat or on the phone, if that’s easier.

I help painters put money in their pockets and stay out of the buckets.

Give it a shot and let me know how it works out.

I will talk to you soon!