6 Proven Ways to Market Your Garage Door Business

If you ask anyone what’s hot in marketing, they’ll tell you to put all of your eggs in digital. What they don’t realize is that just because everyone’s using a specific tactic doesn’t mean it’s the most effective. In fact, you can make the argument that many of the most common marketing tactics today, like email marketing, are oversaturated and can’t deliver the sorts of returns they used to.

If you’re looking for garage door marketing ideas to capture more leads, close more projects, and build your business rapidly, it’s worth expanding your marketing repertoire to include proven strategies that may sometimes fall through the cracks. The six tactics we discuss below fall into this category. They’re highly effective but underutilized by small businesses.

Remember that no one tactic exists in a vacuum. Work you do in one area can help increase results in others. That’s why it’s always a good idea to spread your marketing dollars around between several strategies. This lets you capture leads everywhere they occur while defraying your risk. Try adding these six proven garage door marketing ideas into your campaigns today!

A thank you card with an image of an old fashioned cocktail that reads "Just and old fashioned thank you."

LEVERAGE THE RELATIONSHIP-BUILDING MAGIC OF HANDWRITTEN DIRECT MAIL

Classic direct mail is a numbers game. You compute how much you want to make from a given campaign, given your average profit per purchase, and then work backward using expected response rates and open rates to get the total number of mail pieces you’ll send. The lower your open and response rates, the more cards you’ll need to mail, equating to higher campaign costs.

That’s where the magic of handwritten direct mail makes a difference. Handwritten cards in hand-addressed envelopes enjoy a 99% open rate. That means that only one person in a hundred won’t read your mailing — a staggering response to be sure. And this saves you money because the more people that read your mailings, the greater your response will be. In turn, the more people that respond, the more leads you’ll get and the more business you’ll sell. You’ll either make more money per campaign, or you’ll be able to spend less to make the same return — both great options!

Simply Noted is on the cutting edge of handwritten direct mail, one of the most effective yet unexpected garage door marketing ideas on this list. We were featured in DASMA’s magazine for the work we did with A1 Garage Door Services. They saw a ten times ROI increase on their handwritten campaigns. It's one of the more effective personalized marketing strategies.

Using handwriting machines with real ballpoint pens and AI-driven smart fonts, we automate the handwriting process to create authentic feeling cards indistinguishable from the real thing. That means you can send a hundred, a thousand, or even ten thousand handwritten cards as quickly and as easily as one.

We offer software integrations that allow further personalization and automation options. Using your CRM or preferred automation package, you can trigger handwritten cards as quickly as an email or any digital response tactic. Handwritten cards turn direct mail into a powerful business magnet.

BUILD YOUR ONLINE REPUTATION

The garage door business is built on trust. Companies live and die by their reputation, and this is more true in the digital age than ever before. A recent study found that a whopping 97% of consumers consult online reviews before making a purchase or working with a new company. If you’re not concentrating on accumulating favorable reviews and defusing negative ones, you’re likely missing out on a lot of business.

To remedy this, claim and set up your Google My Business account and then start asking your customers for reviews. Most will be happy to give you a boost online if you ask. Their thoughts don’t need to be lengthy. Just honest (and ideally positive.)

When you find negative reviews, address them immediately. Explain yourself diplomatically and offer to make good on your critic’s complaints. It’s often possible to turn a negative review into a positive one by providing responsive customer service. Then make sure your company is available on the major business review sites like Yelp or Foursquare.

Close up of Scrabble tiles spelling "blog."

START A BLOG

Start a blog? “But I’m not a blogger,” you might say. Well, you should be. Blogs are a critical element to a robust content marketing strategy. They are one of the best ways to increase your website’s SEO by providing Google and other search engines a constant stream of new content to catalog and serve up to searches.

Make sure to host your blog as a part of your regular website. That way, it will direct any traffic it generates directly to your site. Then publish information that’s useful to people looking for a garage door — publish often and regularly. Explore topics by asking yourself what potential customers are searching for. What questions might they by asking? By providing answers, you create opportunities to appear in organic search listings while establishing your company as a trusted industry advisor. As your blog grows, so will your traffic — and your business.

BALANCE ORGANIC AND PAID SEARCH TRAFFIC

Search traffic can be challenging to master. Organic traffic is free. You don’t have to pay when your website comes up in a search engine’s natural listings. However, your search rankings are never guaranteed. By contrast, paid ads, in the form of PPC, or pay-per-click, deliver a guaranteed first-page listing placement and predictable results but can be expensive.

The best garage door marketing ideas involve a mixed investment. You should use a portion of your marketing budget to improve your website’s SEO and your local search standings to capture a more significant share of available organic traffic. This one-time investment pays dividends long after. As you’re building your organic traffic, supplement with paid ads to consistently keep your brand on the first page of search results.

USE RETARGETING ADS TO FOLLOW PROSPECTS ONLINE

Most small business owners aren’t aware of retargeting, but it’s another of the best garage door marketing ideas available to enterprising entrepreneurs.

Imagine a potential customer visits your website after seeing a link to one of your blog posts. They read the article, get the answer they need, and then move on. Retargeting allows you to follow them after they leave your site, displaying ads for your services on the other sites they visit. This keeps your brand in their face and greatly increases conversions.

Long shot of a community event in the city.

BECOME A FIXTURE IN YOUR LOCAL COMMUNITY

People do business with companies they know. To increase consumer awareness of your brand, get out into your local community and raise your visibility. Sponsoring events is a great way to find eyeballs. Look for large-scale events that are likely to be frequented by your target audience. You might also offer free, local training sessions for DIYers and others in your community. The more relationships you build within your local market, the wider your reach will grow.

In the end, these six strategies focus your marketing efforts on getting your brand out into the local community while establishing your staff as experts. The more people know you, and the more they trust your skills and products, the faster your business will grow.