Posted by: Daniel Levis
May 6, 2009
Issue #667

Using Info-Marketing to Sell
Physical Products and Services …

(An instructive case study)

Dear Web Business-Builder,

Mornings are my copywriting time. That’s when I’m most productive.

As soon as I get out of bed, I grab a cup of the black juice from hell and hit the keyboard with the sleep still stuck to my eyes.

This morning … when I opened the kitchen cupboard to grab some beans to put in my cup, I noticed my wife had installed a fresh canister while I was fast asleep beneath the sheets.

And on the side of the can there was an image of a dude in coveralls with bushy eyebrows and bare, tattooed arms — obviously a construction worker of some kind — smiling back at me.

I recognized the man as a local construction guy I’d seen on TV who specializes in renovation work.

Why is there a local construction guy pictured on the can of coffee in my cupboard?

Let’s take a look at the back story. There’s a valuable marketing lesson in here, I promise …

The man pictured on the coffee canister is Mike Holmes. Mike learned his craft from his father, who started teaching him how to do basic plumbing, electrical and framing work when he was just six years-old.

By the time he was 19, Holmes had started his first contracting company, with a crew of 13 employees. And by age 21, Holmes had founded his own renovation company.

In addition to being skilled with a hammer, Holmes has a natural flair for marketing. After acting as a consultant for one of those TV home renovation shows on HGTV, he approached the producers with an idea for his own reality-based show.

The show involves finding homeowners with serious problems — victims of a home renovation disaster — and offering to provide subsidized repairs in exchange for permission to film the proceedings.

A typical opening scene has a distraught homeowner showing Mike the butchered area of their home and describing their experiences with the previous contractor, including what had caused the original contractor to leave the work incomplete.

Holmes then explains in detail why the work is substandard and needs to be replaced and proceeds to conduct repairs. In most cases, gutting everything the previous contractor had done and starting over from scratch.

Do you think these shows made effective pseudo-commercials for Mike’s renovations company? More importantly, could this idea be adapted to promote virtually any kind of high-ticket product or service? More on that in a moment …

In the early days, finding people willing to share their horror stories was slow going. Holmes found himself doing work on small botched jobs locally here in the Toronto area in the first season. But the number of submissions exploded in subsequent seasons … with increasingly dramatic jobs pouring in from all over the place. Viewers began tuning into “Holmes on Homes” in droves.

As promotional mediums, these shows are simply masterful.

• Personality Driven — watching one of these shows is like eavesdropping, voyeur-like, on the client/contractor relationship. You can’t help but be impressed by Mike’s remarkably warm and compassionate bedside manner. He comes across as someone on a genuine mission to help people — beyond his own self-interest as a contractor — honest, dependable and caring. These are the essential qualities that any figurehead must have to successfully command action from the buying public.



• Educational — the show is loaded with practical, problem-solving information that homeowners want to know about how to buy renovation services. The consumer is thus armed with tough questions to ask prospective contractors. Being the bearer of such credible, relevant and useful information allows Mike to establish buying criteria that can effectively eliminate any and all competition from the selling equation.
• Archetypal Drama — each episode is drenched in human interest. All of the elements of great, classical storytelling are evident. There is conflict between a victim and a villain. There is a hero championing the victim’s cause. There is a lesson to be learned that can be applied to a variety of different life situations. All of the things we’ve come to expect from a satisfying yarn are delivered, making the shows naturally engaging and entertaining.



• Emotionally Rich — perhaps most importantly, the show taps into a range of powerful emotions resident in the target market — both positive, and negative. There is, of course, the elation, pride, and sense of accomplishment that accompanies a dramatic facelift of one’s castle. The “before” and “after” transformation is evident on both the real estate and the home owner’s face. But what really makes this show work is something far more primal. Above all, the one over-riding emotion for most people, when considering home renovation and repair services, is fear of monetary loss, embarrassment and humiliation — the result of a renovation job gone horribly wrong. 

After seeing a renovation that was so poorly done that he felt it was easier for him to tear the house down and start again rather than try to repair the damage, Holmes created The Holmes Foundation to encourage young people to enter the building trades as well as assist those who have been impoverished by bad renovations.

Holmes has built such a powerful personal brand, and become so successful as a purveyor of information, that he has abandoned his core renovations business to focus on books, DVDs, and other high margin informational products and services.

For a mere $395 you can now have a Holmes certified technician inspect your home or provide a residential energy audit. A pre-delivery inspection will set you back just $595. And an extended home inspection is just $695.

Even Nestle is getting in on the act. The giant food services conglomerate recently awarded a $50,000 Mike Holmes renovation as a grand prize in its latest contest to help flog Nescafe instant coffee — more major exposure for Mike.

This is branding and merchandising at its best, and in an industry where you’d least expect it. Yes it is rather risky betting a lot of time and money on developing a TV show as a promotional vehicle. And it is difficult to track results conclusively back to those investments.

As a direct response purist, you may be tempted to dismiss swiping Mike’s ideas and using them in your own business. That would be a mistake. Because when you strip away the choice of media, you’re left with a cookie-cutter template that can be applied advantageously to promote just about ANY high ticket business with just a few minor tweaks — and with minimal risk.

Regardless of your niche, there are always victims of wrong ways of doing things, and villains who perpetrate them. There are fearful implications that are keeping potential customers awake at night. Or that can be made to keep them up at night by drawing attention to them. And there are always opportunities to cast yourself as a benevolent champion and protector of the public interest.

The drama of these shows could just as easily have been bottled up direct-response-style on a DVD (or even in plain old text and images).and used to generate super qualified leads for a home improvement contracting business.

A similar formula could easily be adapted with different characters and situations by a lawyer, accountant, manufacturer, car dealer, chiropractor or virtually any other serious business. The DVDs of Mike’s shows are well worth studying for this reason.

Those of you offering high-end, quality-differentiated products in cut-throat, price-sensitive markets should pay particularly close attention.

Until next time, Good Selling!

Daniel Levis
Editor, The Web Marketing Advisor
THE TOTAL PACKAGE

Looking for resources related to this article? Try some of these.

Looking for more of Daniel’s articles? Check these out.

Looking for past issues of The Total Package? Click here for our archives.

Want to share or reprint this article? Feel free. Just give us full attribution and a link to our Home Page when you do.

Attribution Statement: This article was first published in The Total Package. To sign-up to receive your own FREE subscription to The Total Package and claim four FREE money making e-books go to www.makepeacetotalpackage.com.

---

9 Comments »

1. Comment by Caleb Osborne — May 6, 2009 @ 11:52 am

   great example Daniel and really gets my brain going!

2. Comment by Linda Byam — May 6, 2009 @ 11:57 am

   Hello, Daniel,
   Because I always get great insight from the Package articles, I don’t have time to respond to all of them. But this one really stood out. Thanks so much.
   Linda

3. Comment by Steve Conrad — May 6, 2009 @ 12:23 pm

   Great article as always Daniel! This one really got me thinking outside the box, or at least my box. There are dozens of applications for this in multiple markets. Thanks for the inspiration and I can’t wait for your next article.
   Steve

4. Comment by Susan Connors — May 6, 2009 @ 5:03 pm

   Great article Daniel!

   It is a perfect example of what can be achieved through the power of “being real” and human.

   Programs like this come from where we are and affect all of our lives in different ways, places in situations.

   It gets to “us” the masses as we can relate. It not like a soap opera like The Bold and The Beautiful - it is real and something we can be inspired by. (Not that there is anything wrong with soap opera’s each to their own).

   It’s the sheer as one company puts it humanness = humanology.

   To stuff up and make mistakes is to be human.
   To be able to salvage a situation from hell - fantastic.
   Villain, victim - hero’s = solution! Wining combination.

   Thanks again!

   Susan Connors
   Australia

5. Comment by Michael in his top secret jungle headquarters — May 7, 2009 @ 6:27 am

   Hey Daniel,
   another great and very timely post about great marketing…

   One thing

   Why is Mike using the wrong sort of hammer with the cold chisel ? Mike is using a claw hammer which is designed for timber not a lump hammer which is designed for heavy work…

   Yeah I know I’m a picky so in so but details do count when you are establishing your credibility as an expert…AND there is always some one like me who will pull you up on it.

   Just a thought…

   Cheers,

   Mike from his Jungle headquarters ( where he is avoiding all contact with builders. Thai construction work is something else believe me )

6. Comment by Eran Malloch - No BS Search Engine Marketing Blog — May 8, 2009 @ 3:04 am

   Hey Daniel,

   Awesome article man!

   What a fantastic idea! Mike deserves a medal for putting that into action - there are just SOOOOOO many ways you could use this model for other types of businesses.

   Now, obviously it’s not going to be a piece of cake to line up a tv show and funds to help supplement what you do, but you could certainly record your own guerilla marketing videos with a hand-held video, and use them on DVD or streaming off your website, as a marketing tool.

   In my line of work (SEO & Adwords consulting for businesses), there’s HEAPS of examples of clients who got screwed by some dodgy clown who took the money and did a runner! Perhaps we can model this ourselves….

   Anyway, thanks for this great insight - as an Australian, I have never heard of Mike and probably would never encounter him, so it was a great introduction to a sharp man!

   Eran

7. Comment by Bill Strait — May 11, 2009 @ 3:07 pm

   Daniel- That is HUGE! Thanks for sharing. Mike has stayed in his comfort zone and “sold what he knows.” Reminds me of our friend Mr. BUT WAIT - Billy Mays, who has turned his talents into a very interesting TV show “Pitchmen.” I observe that they are also using their show to promote their products!
   Respects-
   Bill

8. Pingback by 7 Top Content Marketing Guides : Internet Business Coaching by Terry Dean — May 14, 2009 @ 9:01 am

   [...] Using Info-Marketing to Sell Physical Products and Services [...]

9. Pingback by Content Marketing — May 14, 2009 @ 11:09 am

   [...] Using Info-Marketing to Sell Physical Products and Services Want to Attract and Retain Great Customers? [...]