Effective advertising is centered around the three “M’s”, Message, Market and Media. To maximize the return on your advertising investment, you should always be examining whether these three are working their hardest in your advertising:

Message: This is what you’re advertising is telling your customer about your products and how well it’s resonating with the customer. Your advertising should be bringing up the best selling points about your product in order to get the customer to the point where they want to find out more. Always remember your advertising is simply to get a customer interested enough to engage with your company, too many businesses try to sell their products through their ads and this tends to muddy the message.

Market: Who are your best customers? You can segment this a number of ways, it could be areas of town where your best customers live. You can also segment by types of customers and the products they need. Figuring out which segments provide the best return on your advertising dollar insures you send your message to people who can provide the business.

Media: How will you deliver your message to your market? One of the easiest ways to determine which media is working the hardest for you is to start every conversation with a new customer with the question, “where did you hear about us?” This allows your market to tell you which media is working the hardest for you. Obviously you have to track this information and determine which customers are buying and which ones provide the best return on your advertising investment.

When starting a small business, you should look for three things that will help you in its success:

1) Is the product in demand: This is usually a function of how much value your prospective customers see in the solution offered by the product or service. Look for products or services that match up well with issues that face a sizable number of people. The larger the potential market, accompanied by the amount of value the product or service brings to this market, the better the chances of the business being a success.

2) Does the business have a reachable break even point: In order to achieve profitability, businesses must surpass their break even point. This is the amount of sales needed to cover both the variable and fixed costs associated with the business. The amount of sales beyond this point is what contributes to the business’ profitability. To determine the amount of units needed to reach break even, take the price you’re going to charge for the product or service and subtract the variable cost associated with that unit (an example would be CTi’s Hallmark System’s price is $7.00 per square foot and it’s costs for materials and labor (variable cost) is $2.00. Take this number and divide it by the amount of fixed costs associated with the business; these are the costs that don’t go up or down with the amount of sales you make (an example would be rent). To continue on with our example, if we have a selling price for the Hallmark System of $7.00 per square foot and variable costs associated with it are $2.00 per square foot, and if the fixed costs associated with running the business are $80,000 per year, our break even would be 16,000 square feet (7-2/80,000) = 16,000. This means the amount of square footage installed for the year above the 16,000 now contributes to the business’ profitability.

3) Is the business scalable: Can you adjust how much your business can do easily? This is normally a function of how skilled the labor needed for the business is, how expensive is it to get new customers, and how easy it is to manage the business’ growth? A new business is normally a function within a person’s life. You need to determine how large a business needs to be in order to meet your financial obligations and then look at how much you have to do in order to achieve this size business. Does that amount of work fit into your overall lifestyle comfortably or will you be married to the business in order for it to produce what you need.

CTi Dealers are seeing an uptick in their businesses due to the slow down in the buying and selling of homes across the nation. Interest rates have risen and since homeowners more and more are deciding to stay in their current home they are spending money on home improvement.

A new look for a patio, pool deck, driveway or walkway is an easy and relatively inexpensive way to improve the looks and increase the enjoyment of a home.

A Shout Out to Shaun Gamma, owner of West Coast Surfacing Reinforcing. Starting last year, Shaun and his crew have created one of the fastest starts of a new Dealership in northern California. This is no doubt due to the superb service offered by his company.

Is the concrete around your house in good condition but just needs to have some excitement added to it? Concrete Technology’s Color Tone Classic stains can transform the look of ordinary concrete into something extraordinary.

A lot of people spend a significant amount of time in their garages and workshops pursuing hobbies and sprucing things up around the house. Make your space a pleasure to be in with CTi’s F1 Fast Floor. These projects can many times be completed in one day and provide a chemical resistant, easy to clean floor that is perfect for garages, workshops, basements and the like.

Everyone loves the look of a hardwood floor; however, wear patterns can start to erode the beauty of the new wood floor in a short period of time.

Let our Dealers show you how the CTi products, which are twice the strength of concrete, provide you with a hardwood floor look that will last a lifetime!

A Shout Out to Erick Martinez, owner of Dream Ideas, LLC in Southeast Florida. Erick and his staff have been providing outstanding service and installations to their customers since 2017!

When considering where to advertise and how much to spend, you need to know what model your business is operating within. A typical CTi Dealer needs six prospective customers contacting his business in order to set four appointments to go out and look at the project and offer a price. Out of those four appointments, one sale is made on average.

With this information, you can figure out what you need to do from an advertising standpoint in order to achieve your business’ goals. If your goal is to have $400,000 in top line revenue and your average project brings in $6000, you know you’ll need approximately 65-70 projects completed for the year. Take this information and combine it with the advertising model and you can calculate you’ll need approximately 420 people contacting your business for the year and you will need to offer 280 of those folks an estimate for them to consider.

The final question to consider then is how to most cost effectively generate the 420 interested prospects through a combination of advertising and referrals.

CTi’s Stone Classic application can provide you with the beauty of cut stone but with a product that is more durable and easier to maintain.