If advertising is good for business growth, more is better, right? Not necessarily so.Advertising can be fuel for growth, just like fertilizer is good for a garden and helps plants grow. But, like everything else, more is not always better. As much as I would love to see more cleaners promoting themselves, there are, or at least should be, limits. Here’s why.
"If advertising is good for business growth, more is better, right?"
First, and most obvious, is that we only have so much to offer. Dry cleaning is different from most businesses, where a retail store can offer as many products as they wish to customers to buy, we dry cleaners have a very limited list of options to offer. A dry cleaner can clean pants, jackets, dresses, sweaters, shirts, household and outerwear, and that's about it. Certainly, one can offer additional services like alterations and tailoring, but the list is short compared to a store that can sell thousands of items.
Dry cleaning doesn't offer a lot of extras. Unlike a car wash that can offer add-ons and upsells like spot-free rinse treatment, various degrees of wax (regular, premium, turtle), rust inhibitors, etc, and unlike a restaurant’s burger bump of ‘would you like fries with that, an appetizer, a dessert, a premium wine….we cleaners have little if any to offer as an upsell.
So, given slim offerings, we are also limited by our customers’ need for our services. A cleaner customer certainly always needs our services, as I’ve yet to see massive outbreaks of nudity. But, let's face facts, dry cleaning is the type of needed service that can be skipped, delayed, and put off. We dry cleaners have the same ‘lost opportunity cost’ as a pharmacist does, meaning, if a customer decides to skip a day, or put off consuming, we lose 100 percent of that sale and there is absolutely no way to ‘make up’ that lost pill, garment, trip. It costs our customers nothing to ‘wear it one more time’ or delegate a few items to the ‘laundry chair’ for the dreaded ‘maybe I’ll send it on the next trip’ skip. Often, that ‘next trip’ never comes, and that is a huge amount of lost revenue, sales, and profit for cleaners.
Sure, we can advertise, ask, invite, and remind customers to bring in items, which raises the question: how often should we be doing so? Well, that is a balancing act, and one that varies a great deal.
Dry cleaners have some of the best point-of-sale systems available in the world. The data we collect in the routines we go about each day while doing our work is phenomenal. We can capture our customers’ shopping habits in our POS, and then communicate almost effortlessly via email and text, reminding customers their order is ready, but should we be doing more? Probably yes, but then again, perhaps no. It depends.
Just because we can, does not necessarily mean we should. It's entirely one thing to.reach out and invite a customer back to do business again, but entirely another to continuously bludgeon customers with incessant email messages and texts. We cleaners have a very bad habit of abusing the privilege our customers have given us to communicate with them. Too often, I see cleaners browbeat customers abusing the tools we have in the pursuit of extra orders and pieces. Our customers’ attention is the single most valuable resource we can possess; abuse that at your peril. Break that trust with your customers, and you may appear desperate for work, and you really don’t want to find yourself ‘friend-zoned’ by the very people from whom we derive a living.
There are limits to the offers a cleaner can make. Five dollars off this, $19.99 for that, five items for 25.99, two for one, one cent sale, pretty soon everything we offer is on sale, and everyone qualifies for some sort of discount. If everybody is getting a deal and a discount, who is left to pay the regular price? If everything is always on sale, what becomes of your regular price? Customers can and will begin to think: Why pay retail? I may as well wait a week and the cleaner will become desperate and run another ad with another sale. Cus customer’s have the same equal right to ignore and refuse yo listen to you. Push your rights if you want to, but, please, please, keep in mind, we are only guests in our customer’s inbox and cell phone, and the customer can cancel permission to communicate at anytime. tomers become conditioned to timing your offers to take advantage of your habit of cutting prices to bring customers and orders in. You can quickly trash your brand and trash your perceived value in your customer’s mind, all from making too many offers & discounts as eell as running too many ads.
Over the years, I’ve met many, many cleaners who believe every customer not only has potential to be a big big spender, but also believes every customer is a diamond in the rough; all it takes is a little advertising/marketing to get these customers to grow. The reality is, not every customer is a diamond in the rough, many, many customers are, and all they ever will be is a nugget, or a rock. You can polish these customers all you want with offers, deals, specials, but the best these will ever be is a shiny rock.
All the advertising in the world will never change the fact that a customer’s closet, wardrobe, and wallet will only produce so much opportunity. Asking for more, and more, and more, eventually crosses a line in the customer’s mind. And that is the crucial point we do not want to get to with any customer.
How can you tell when you have burnt a customer? It’s not all that easy to tell. It’s normal that anytime you make an offer, only ten percent of your customers will respond with an order, leaving 90 percent that don;t respond at all. If you track open rates and unsubscribes in your email marketing, again, its not uncommon for 90 percent or more to not even open your email. So, open rates and response rates may nt be an accurate gauge of ‘interest’ nor ‘rage’. Unsubscribes from an email list are a pretty good indication, and people who respond STOP to text messages is another. Regardless what platform you are using to communicate, the best indication of ‘customer offer burn out’ is those who withdraw their permission to communicate. THAT is the true,key number.
Once permission is withdrawn, you are literally right back at square one with a customer. You have lost the single biggest advantage you had, and it's rare to regain that customer’s trust. While it might be a fundamental right in your country to freely express yourself, your customer’s have the same equal right to ignore and refuse yo listen to you. Push your rights if you want to, but, please, please, keep in mind, we are only guests in our customer’s inbox and cell phone, and the customer can cancel permission to communicate at anytime.
Key Takeaways
- Why This Shift Is Happening matters for readers making practical decisions.
- Economic Impact matters for readers making practical decisions.
- If advertising is good for business growth, more is better, right?
- Advertising can be fuel for growth, just like fertilizer is good for a garden and helps plants grow.
Key Takeaways
- If advertising is good for business growth, more is better, right?
- First, and most obvious, is that we only have so much to offer.
- Dry cleaning doesn't offer a lot of extras.
