Greetings everyone. Working in conjunction with Aaron Wakefield, a NACHI member inspector and owner of Metro-Select Home Inspections (www.metroselectinspects.com), I developed a marketing system that some of you may be interested in. It is a morphing of a couple of different marketing packages we offered in the past for NACHI inspectors, but hopefully, we are getting closer to offering something that you can use on a daily basis.
Our mission is simply to create a “plug-n-play” marketing platform that requires you, the home inspector, to do little more than to engage the consumer with an offer to provide Home Maintenance Inspections. This is a market of approximately 75 million current occupancy home owners, most of which have not had a home inspection in over two years. If explained properly, many of these homeowners will see that they will spend $400 to $600 every 60,000 miles to tune up their car, so it would make sense to spend $300-or-so to tune up their homes that cost ten-to-twenty times more.
I know that HMIs are not in the usual scope of what you offer (e.g., buyer, seller, warranty and builders inspections), but I think there are enough marketing “systems” to help you attack those markets directly through real estate agents, builders, warranty companies and lenders. (If not, then please let me know.) Instead, our goal is to assist you in going directly after the neglected market of homeowners who may want to “tune-up” their homes every two years through Home Maintenance Inspections.
Here’s the program in a nutshell:
(a) Printable Media - This includes door hangers and post cards. RR has emperical evidence that his post card strategy works for him, so we think it’s a good idea to include it. We will provide the preformatted cards customized with appropriate graphics and lingo. Our door hanger program has been around, and we feel that the two print media campaign together will provide you with sufficient direct-marketing coverage.
(b) NEW Plug-n-Play Home Maintenance Inspection Web Site - This site has practically all of the elements you will need to “up-sell” HMI accounts. It functions as an extension of your existing Web presence, and thus, is accessible from you own Web site through a graphical link we will provide. It also functions autonomously, so you can direct people straight to it, or you can have people go to your site first. Very flexible. Additionally, we can customize it with your corporate colors and identifiers. NOTE: This site is NOT intended to be super-customized. Our goal with the Plug-n-Play site is to provide you with something that requires little manipulation or assembly so that we can keep costs low and integration fast. (Link is below.)
© Integrated Inspection Presentations - Our three core presentations have been moved out of the menu-based system and tightly-ingrated into the Plug-n-Play Web site. The presentations are as follow: (i) The Value of Home Inspections, (ii) Home Damage Portfolio, and (iii) Home Maintenance Inspections. Presentation (i) explains home inspections; presentation (ii) shows the consequences of not getting home inspections; and presentation (iii) explains that home inspections can be used for maintenance.
(d) Sales Scripts for Phone, Face-To-Face and Email Marketing - We will also provide you with scripts to help guide you through the introduction and closing process of selling HMIs. Though the HMI inspection process varies little from buyer-seller inspections, the approach is more casual and allows you to focus on helping homeowners maintain quality of life and property value as opposed to protecting a new financial transaction. You will be able to edit these scripts to suit your geographic location and selling style.
I am fully-aware that the majority of home inspectors don’t like to sell. In truth, very few people like to sell. But, if you believe that what you offer is truly good for people, then you should take your mind off “selling” and start thinking of “home maintenance inspection sales” as something more akin to a neighborly conversation. This methodology will be expressed in the sales scripts.
If you are interested in pursuing this program further, then take a look at the working demo site that we set up for Metro Select Home Inspections. You will notice that the Metro Select home-page contains a link to their co-branded Maintenance Inspection Site, yet the two sites can stand alone for marketing purposes.
Just point your browser to www.metroselectinspects.com and click on the “Home Maintenance Inspections” button on the home page. The rest is self-explanatory.
I am not going to price this for you. Instead, I want to give you the opportunity to tell me how much value this system has to you. You price it. Below are the actual cost factors and considerations involved in delivering this system to you. Note that the following outline also includes a buffer of time in each category to allow for re-edits and changes.
- [LIST]
- I. Site Graphics Customization - 30 mins. to 3 hrs. depending on depth
- II. Site Re-coloring - 30 mins. to 45 mins.
- III. Print Media Customization - 30 mins to 45 mins.
- IV. Browser Title Customization - 10 mins.
- V. Yr 2+ Annual Renewal License/Maintenance/Service Charge
[/LIST]—Hard Cost Below—
- [LIST]
- VI. Hosting of HMI site (subdomain) - +$30/12 months
- V. Hosting/Delivery of multimedia - +1-penny per view Bandwidth Consumption fee shared between all subscribers
[/LIST]If we feel that this service is not desired or feasible due to lack of input, then we will consider other options for this service. And please feel free to provide any input that you desire. After all, we are here to serve you.
Thank you in advance for your assistance. I hope to hear from as many of you as possible.
Best,
Robert
rph@commercialnet.biz
(404) 246-0765
