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Helping businesses to succeed!"
An End to Constant Cold Calling An Investment in Proven Results $49 per month guarantees results An End to Constant Cold Calling Tired of having more cold-calling sales people stop by each day than customers? Confused by advertising options? Interested in targeting your customers and increasing sales? Then go with the professionals at Servant Communications. For less than two dollars per day, you can put more than thirty years experience in public relations and advertising consulting to work for you. Develop a marketing plan that increases sales and
builds your media confidence.
An Investment in Proven Results
$49 per month guarantees results
Experience You Can Trust Lee Johndrow
Who We Are Servant Communications is a public relations agency specializing in formulating and executing marketing plans for small to medium sized retail businesses. We handle all client marketing needs in traditional advertising such as print, radio,direct mail, cable, and television. A separate branch of our operation handles all internet related marketing, including web page design,search engines, banners, and more. Servant Communications was founded in 1987. Our main office is located in Springfield, VT. Our Kennebec Valley branch is located in Oakland, ME. Servant Communications representatives work one-on-one with clients to access advertising and promotional needs, design and implement marketing plans, and measure results. Our vision is to bring professional marketing techniques and advertising accountability to the small and medium retail business owner. Servant Communications owner Lee Johndrow brings nearly 30 years' experience to the table. He has served as editor and owner of a newspaper, worked in direct mail, re-programmed and managed radio stations, and worked in the fields of marketing, retail and advertising, fundraising,and public relations plus extensive internet experience to our clientele. Our Mission Statement is simple - To help you to succeed. To assist and support the best individual advertising and marketing plan for each client;to ensure that advertising dollars are spent wisely; to increase sales income for our clients; and to put an end to constant cold-calling by sales people at our client's place of business.
What We Provide Servant Communications provides complete marketing and public relations services to all our clients. In addition to handling all advertising, we will generate press releases and feature articles and provide a complete public relations staff without the overhead.We'll survey customers, create specialized mailing lists, develop promotions, and measure the results of your advertising and publicity efforts. Servant Communications becomes your account manager.That means all solicitations that come to your business are steered immediately to us, leaving you free to do what you do best. We carefully, objectively, measure each advertising opportunity and calculate its potential place in your marketing plan. No more"impulse" buying of advertising packages you may later regret; no more sinking money into "community" projects because you have a soft heart. Here's how it works - When you join our family of clients, we'll provide you with two window or door stickers. One says "No Solicitation."The other says "All Advertising Handled by Servant Communications, (802) 885-2885." We'll also provide you with a stack of our business cards. When a salesperson walks through the door, just hand them one of our business cards and say: "This guy handles all my advertising, you'll have to talk to him." When the chief fundraiser for the Area Polka Preservation Society shows up, hand him a business card and say: "This company handles all my charitable giving." Servant Communications operates on a philosophy that emphasizes three H's - Head, Heart, and Hands. We encourage our clients to build a marketing plan that focuses on intelligent,targeted advertising (Head); support of worthy community charities(Heart) and public relations (Hands). By using your hands to reach out to clients, your head to develop a plan to reach them, and your heart to give back to the community, you achieve a profitable balance.
Why Servant Communications? The thought of never having to deal with obnoxious sales people trying to separate you from you wallet may seem like an adequate incentive, but investing in a marketing plan is so much more. It provides you the opportunity to step forward and take charge of your advertising investments, and the image you project to your customers. When our car breaks down, we take it to a garage; when the septic system backs up, we call a plumber; when we have money to invest, we call our broker. Yet most business owners, despite a lack of any formal education in marketing or promotions, attempt to manage their own advertising decisions. Bear in mind, those promotional decisions on behalf of your company are generating the money to fix your car, the plumbing, or invest in your retirement fund. Take this simple four question test, and see if you know the basics of advertising:
Call us at (802) 885-2885 for the answers to this test, and see how you rate!
The Power of Advertising I was selling radio advertising in Cheyenne, Wyoming, in the early 1980's when I stopped into a shoe store on Main Street and began to pitch our latest promotion to the owner of the store.He listened politely, said "No thanks," and pointed to the door. I mentioned the three shoe stores at the mall across town and the new one at the K-Mart plaza and asked how he was going to stay in business if he didn't use my station to reach his customers. "I don't do any advertising," he answered. "None?" "None," he said. "See, I don't know anything about advertising. And if I can't do something right, I won't do it." I left his store with more respect for that man than most of the business owners I have discussed marketing and advertising with in the last 15 years. Was he right? Do you lose more money by not advertising at all, or by advertising unwisely? The truth is, the lose more money if you waste advertising dollars on misguided and inappropriate advertising options. Most business owners believe it's better to do some advertising and see if it sticks, but they are wrong.No advertising salesperson would admit it, but my personal experience and statistical evidence proves retail owners without experience in advertising or marketing are better off developing their business through personal service, referrals, and others areas of expertise.I can't begin to tell you the number of business owners I spoken to who have said, in effect: "I spent a lot of money on "X"(advertising option), and I didn't get anything out of it. I mean nothing." The bottom line is that advertising sales people believe in their products and want you to think they represent your best interests, but they really represent the interests of their employer and the commission check they're going to earn if you buy their product. Let me illustrate: If you are injured in an accident, you hire a lawyer. He or she is a professional in the field hired to represent your interests. The insurance company, or other driver, also hires a lawyer to represent them. You wouldn't think of walking into the courtroom on your own and leaning on the advice and direction of the other lawyer! And why not? Because you consider the stakes high enough that you need representation. If your business is your life-blood, and your marketing is dramatically responsible for the success of your business, aren't those stakes high enough to hire representation? Let's go back to Cheyenne, Wyoming, for a moment. I was consulting for a Christian radio station with a handful of listeners and a zero Arbitron rating. In order to sell my product to potential advertisers, I needed to take the focus off the air sound and listenership and generate interest another way. So I developed a trip promotion called "Dinner for Two, Anywhere in America." Merchants paid $499 for 100 commercials and a registration box, people registered at the stores and listed where they would go if they won. I had the d.j.s read registration slips every day - "Here's a dinner for two registration from Linda Smith of Cheyene. Linda says she's going to St. Louis to visit her sister Ruth if she wins. Linda registered at Dave's hardware on the miracle mile;" "Peter Gaines dropped his dinner for two registration off at Bonanza.Peter went to college at USC and says he's polishing up the surfboard for a trip to Hawaii if he's are lucky winner." Cheyenne had never seen such a large promotion. I was betting that advertisers would be so excited about the promotion they would want to be part of it. To hedge my bets, I made it exclusive.Knowing that fear of the competition drives many retail advertisers,I decided to have only one travel agency, one restaurant, department store, etc. In an effort to tie it into the community, we invited the merchants and 30 finalists to dinner at Cheyenne's finest restaurant, and we chose the winner live over the air after dinner. My assumptions were correct. I sold 30 packages in 20 days,and we earned over $13,000 profit for the station in 20 days,more than three-and-a-half times above normal. Our image with the citizens of Cheyenne went from non-existent to very positive, and we finished second that year (out of seven radio stations) in a local poll of favorite radio stations. Remember,this was a Christian radio format. People didn't vote for us because they listened to us, but because they associated us with the dinner promotion, which they liked. The radio station was happy and the community was happy, but I wonder how many of those advertisers later said to someone:"We spent $500 on this dinner promotion and I didn't get anything out it. I mean nothing." We retained only 5 of the 30 merchants on our next promotion,so you could infer that over 80% of the merchants involved were not satisfied with that advertising expense. Have you spent advertising money, with some uncertainty, and later regretted it? You won't do it again if you hire Servant Communications to represent you. By now, you may be turning a little sour on advertising, but you shouldn't, because appropriate advertising has tremendous power. Here are some examples:
Intelligent Advertising Today, Coke and Pepsi dominate the soft drink market. They have dominated for more than 20 years. Although "cola"has always been the leading flavor of soft drink, Coke and Pepsi had no where near their current market share until the mid-1970's,when Coke launched a massive marketing campaign to take over the soft-drink market. Pepsi soon took the plunge, and the rest is history. Quick, name another soft drink! You probably said Sprite. Sprite has been gaining market share ever since the brand was purchased by Coca-Cola and given the fast track for national exposure. Coke executives correctly guessed that national advertising exposure for Sprite would improve Sprite sales without cutting into Coke's loyalty. An example closer to home illustrates the role marketing can play in any business. From a fellow marketer, BG. "In 1993, I was hired to manage Camp Holiday,a United Way summer day camp for special needs children based in Keene. Although Camp Holiday had a long and proud tradition of service, a combination of factors caused the camp to lose half its net worth the year prior to my hiring. Another similar year would bankrupt the camp. By using a careful, targeted marketing approach, I was able to reduce the loss in income our first year by over 80% (it is important to note, however, that we did lose a significant amount of money that first year. Change takes time).During the second year, I launched an aggressive marketing and advertising campaign. We doubled the number of campers, sold out the camp, and broke even. Through appropriate marketing techniques,we improved the income of this organization by nearly $70,000 in just two years." You may ask why we didn't launch the marketing campaign the first year. The answer is simple: we were surveying our clientele and improving our product. The rules of successful sales are simple:know what people want, provide a superior product, and let people know you have the product available at a fair price. The Fox software story is even more amazing. In the
mid 1990's,Fox software was a mom and pop business with about $125,000 in sales
and a small take over offer from Microsoft, which liked the company's research
and development team. Before selling, the owners hired Hank Pawluk
Communications for a marketing campaign. Pawluk surveyed the market and found
that Fox' DOS database was totally out of favor with the public, which had grown
to expect WINDOWS-based products. So his company helped them develop a
menu-based program for databases.At the time, Fox software was almost completely
unknown on the national scene. So Pawluk developed a national campaign in
computer magazines that asked the question - "Why is the Best Database Software
Made by Someone You've Never Heard of?" Sales of Foxbase Pro went skyward. The
company's profits jumped to over$1 million in 12 months solely on the basis of
Foxbase Pro, their share of the database market went from 6% to 24%, and
Microsoft purchased the computer for ten time more than had been offered just 18
months prior. The Offer What You Get: What It Costs:
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