Marshall - The Digital Wrap: Get Out of the Truck and Go Online to Own Your Customers

Advance Praise for The Digital Wrap

Impressive! Right on target! The Digital Wrap is an eye-opening, entertaining, and informative book that zeros in on customer-focused relationships using current technology tools and eMarketing concepts that many contractors have just plain missed. Contractors often keep up with technical advances in the industry, but most have not stayed current on customer service and marketing technology. The Digital Wrap guides contractors through current best practices for marketing in an age when everyone is seeking the attention of the customer.

James Graening, CEO, B2B Sales Excellence

B2B customers are buying differently than ever before. They evaluate buying decisions based on confidence, perceived value, and ease of use. Giving the end user a phenomenal experience and keeping them engaged is more important than ever. The Digital Wrap reinforces the importance of user experience and embodies the new way of doing business. Billy will challenge you to rethink old strategies and to start working smarter. You will learn how to communicate with your customers online to give them an amazing experience that builds the value of your brand.

Michael Crafton, CEO, Team 360 Services

Leaders looking to create a higher level of intimacy with their customers should read The Digital Wrap . This book has made us think differently about how we approach our customers, and incorporating some of Billys key applications outlined inside have transformed our business model. He provides an innovative approach for driving companies into the digital world and making them indispensable to their customers. If you are looking for ideas to take your business to the next level, then read this book.

Patrick Lynch, President and CEO, The Hiller Companies

Copyright 2016 by Billy Marshall. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced mechanically, electronically, or by any other means, including photocopying, without written permission of the author. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission from the author.

Contact the author at www.ServiceTrade.com

Thomas Noble Books

Wilmington, DE

www.thomasnoblebooks.com

ISBN: 978-0-9892357-3-0

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016903168

Printed in the United States of America

First Printing 2016

Cover design by 2FacedDesign.com

Editing by Gwen Hoffnagle

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

The DunnWell Story and the Origin of ServiceTrade

Have you heard the story about the terrorist plumber? Mark-1 Plumbing in Texas City, Texas, was flooded with phone calls when images of their service truck with two hooded thugs manning an anti-aircraft gun mounted in the back surfaced in jihadi promotional videos. Mark Oberholtzer, the owner of Mark-1 Plumbing, traded in his Ford F-250 for a newer model, but the truck wrap with the name of his company and his contact information was never removed from the old truck. After a series of auctions and relocations, the Mark-1 Plumbing truck landed in the hands of the Ansar al-Deen Front, a jihadist group operating near Aleppo, Syria. They mounted an anti-aircraft gun in the bed and used the truck in a series of propaganda videos. Anyone who wants to recall Mark-1 Plumbing can just search terrorist plumber, and there is the phone number to give Mark a call.

Taking your brand online along with a good story can deliver extraordinary visibility for your business just ask Mark Oberholtzer. When his truck wrap went online, people all over the world learned about Mark-1 Plumbing. Because you probably do not want to be remembered as the terrorist plumber, your online story should instead tell a tale of terrific customer service. Your company becomes memorable and easy to recall when you build an online connection to your customers through your service activities. I call this concept the digital wrap.

No doubt you are familiar with truck wraps. You probably have your logo, business name, and contact information on the side of your company trucks and vans. Its good, free advertising. Its foolproof as well because the truck wrap cannot be forgotten back at the shop like a ladder or a special tool. No one has to remember anything or do any extra work for the truck wrap to leave positive impressions on prospective customers as the truck crisscrosses the service territory.

The drawback of a truck wrap, however, is that the impression is fleeting. Once your truck is out of sight, your brand is out of mind. The information never moves from short-term memory to long-term memory, and customers cannot easily recall your company when they need service. Outside of someone taking a photo of your truck with a smartphone and forwarding it along or making a jihadi promotional video your truck wrap cannot go digital or online.

What common service activities, like driving the truck in the service territory, could you take online to build customer impressions? What about scheduling notifications? Arrival check-ins? Or after-service reports with before and after photos? Or repair quotes with photos or video documenting the problem you are offering to fix? And service history on your website for customer self-service? And positive customer reviews? What if all of these were online so that it was easy for the customer to search, review, and recall your company when service was needed? What if every service call could potentially yield hundreds of online impressions? What if all the stuff in your filing cabinets was filed online? What if the information that is currently stored on computer hard drives in your office was instead stored on an Internet cloud so that the information was available to everyone all the time? And what if none of these online impressions required any extra or specialized work, just like the truck wrap foolproof advertising with no extra work?

Taking your service activities online is how you build your digital wrap. When your service activities are digital and online, it is easy for the customer to do business with you, recall you for more business, tell a good story about you, and refer you to others. With a digital wrap, your company brand is always in the palm of your customers hand just an email or online search away on their smartphone. This book is all about helping you discover techniques for building a digital wrap taking service activities online to connect to customers and maximize the value of your service brand.

I am not going to suggest that you tweet or blog or become a search engine optimization expert, because these techniques are not practical for you. Specialized marketing work that does not involve taking care of a customer will be ignored. Instead Im going to show you ways that you can use the power of the Internet to continually market your business while simultaneously making your service calls more efficient and effective. If saving money on advertising and giving your technicians the potential to serve more customers each day sounds like something your business needs, this book is for you.

But before we go any further, youre probably wondering who I am and why you should pay any attention to The Digital Wrap . I discovered the power of a digital wrap thanks to a guy named Joe Dunn. I met Joe in February of 2010 at a Starbucks in Durham, North Carolina. It was seven in the morning cold, dark, and raining and I had nothing else on my calendar for the day. Id been fired from a Silicon Valley start-up three months earlier after bickering with the CEO about how to run marketing and sales. Turns out being fired was a blessing because the Silicon Valley company tanked, and Joe was about to make me a terrific offer.