Ryan Jones Blog – dotCULT.com Ryan Jones Blogs About Internet Culture, Marketing, SEO, & Social Media

April 7, 2008

A (literally) UnTapped Market

Filed under: Main — Ryan Jones @ 1:01 pm

http://e17arttrail.co.uk/about-us/ Quick. You want to put in a sprinkler system in your yard. Who do you call?

I’ve been asking that question for a while now. There doesn’t seem to be a major company that does this. Sears, Home Depot, and Lowes don’t seem to offer the service, and they won’t recommend any good companies.

Looking at the industry as a whole, there doesn’t appear to be anybody actually marketing the service.

I need sprinklers, privacy lattice fences, and a new front lawn. I’ve got the money in my hand and will pay for it today – yet I can’t find anybody willing to come take this money out of my hand. As a marketing professional, that spells epic FAIL.

Searching Google shows up a few vague companies who don’t have websites. I called a couple, but none of them answered (and most were just cell phones)

A got a flyer on my door about it a few days ago, and called, but it said “sorry, the voicemail box belonging to Mario is full” That’s right, he put his cell phone number on the flyer and didn’t even list the company name on the voicemail. I’m going to assume from the full voicemail box that his flyer worked pretty well for him.

So there’s companies out there doing this, and they probably do pretty well by word of mouth and random door to door flyers – but that’s it. There’s so much potential here and nobody seems willing to step up to the plate.

If you own a lawn care / property maintenance company there’s no reason you shouldn’t have a website. There’s also no reason you shouldn’t be running local ads on all of the search engines. If you’re in the Detroit area, it will probably be very successful because you currently don’t have any advertising competition.

If you’re a product manager at Lowes, Sears, or Home Depot, you should think about offering this service. I think it could be very profitable.

3 Comments

  1. I’ve actually found a company to do this. I found them on Google, but only in a press release saying that my city chose them to do the sprinkler system for the library.

    Comment by Ryan — April 7, 2008 @ 1:58 pm

  2. check out lowes. They have a whole guide.

    Comment by james — April 7, 2008 @ 9:59 pm

  3. Thanks James. That Guide helps if I want to do it myself, but I don’t. I’d rather pay the $1200 than give up a whole weekend of my time.

    I also edited your link to make it fit on the page better.

    Comment by Ryan — April 7, 2008 @ 10:09 pm

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