Concrete Is Our Canvas

CTi’s tag line of “Concrete Is Our Canvas” sums up what our Dealers provide for home and business owners around the country. From a simple, modern look to something truly spectacular, our Dealers can transform existing concrete into works of art.

Social Media

CTi Dealers around the country are finding a lot of success advertising on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and others. The data gathering these platforms have performed provides a terrific tool for targeting customers who are likely to be interested in decorative and protective coatings for concrete.

Targeting these types of customers is a simple matter of browsing through the hundreds of demographic and psychographic data points these various media can provide. Homeowners who are actively seeking ways to improve the looks of their home, who live in a home that is in the top 30% of the values for the area you’re targeting and have expressed an interest in decorative concrete is just one of the combinations you can use.

This rifle shot approach can be supplemented by targeting the zip codes, cities, counties or other geographic areas of your choosing. When you put it all together, you have a cost effective way of putting an ad in front of a customer who can sometimes be close to ideal. Dealers have been finding the average lead costs them between $15 and $25.

Pandemic Selling

In our current times, home improvement type sales has some challenges. Homeowners are hesitant to invite strangers into their home but are in dire need of sprucing up their home since they’re spending so much more time there. Here are a few tips for setting up an environment where the customer is comfortable and therefore more likely to buy:

  • Mask up – Whether you normally do this or not, it’s important for the customer to think you’re going overboard in making sure they’re safe.
  • Keep your distance – If you decide to speak with the customer at their location, be aware of your distance in proximity with the customer and err on the side of safety.
  • Consider virtual meetings – In an earlier post, we went over how to meet with your customer virtually. Technology allows you to do almost everything you would do at the home via your computer.

Sales Numbers

One of the key elements in any business’s success is its ability to generate sales. At CTi, we stress to our Dealers the importance of knowing their sales numbers so as to know what advertising is working best and whether they are doing the things necessary when meeting with the customer in order to make a sale.

A typical CTi Dealer experiences one sale for every six inquiries his Dealership generates. Normally two inquiries will come in that either are not viable due to not having a proper need for the product (ex. they have an asphalt driveway), or they don’t respond to the Dealer’s follow up. Four of the inquiries will answer follow up calls, texts or emails and the Dealer will be able to setup a time to see their project. Out of these four meetings, a Dealer will normally make one sale.

Knowing your sales model can help you in a number of areas within your sales and marketing efforts. An example might be if you’re generating a lot of leads from a particular advertising source but not getting customers to respond to your follow up. Your cost per lead (what you spent in your advertising divided by the number of leads it generated) may look great but you need to take your analysis a step further and see if your cost per sale (what you spent in your advertising divided by the number of sales you made) is still competitive with your other ads. If not, you’ll find that your return on investment from your advertising will suffer along with having to spend more time following up with inquiries that are not responding which will drive up your sales costs.

Adding Employees

One of the advantages of a CTi Dealership is its ability to generate a vast amount of business with only one or two employees. Even so, finding that first employee can sometimes be daunting.

CTi Dealers find employees in a number of ways.

  • Family members
  • Emergency workers such as firefighters or ambulance technicians.
  • Some Dealers have had success working with their local churches and utilizing members of their alcohol or drug rehabilitation centers.
  • Contact your local trade school’s placement office.
  • List your position with your local employment offices or job bank.
  • Use temporary labor outfits as a way of seeing whether an employee is right for you by using them on the job.

Social Advertising

Our Dealers have been experiencing good results from social media advertising. Media such as Facebook, Instagram and other online outlets provide our Dealers with the ability to target homeowners in their area that have expressed interest in home improvement. In some instances, the social media outlet now has a filter for people who are specifically looking for decorative concrete.

Creating an ad can be as simple as uploading a few pictures of the work the Dealer has done and then creating a carousel of revolving pictures that will then show up in these potential customer’s timelines.

Social media’s ability to not only target these ideal customers but to also allow the Dealer to set a specific budget each month (or in some instances specific days), makes it a flexible and effective way to get the word out.