Case Study: Contractor's Business School

For years, Jayme Broudy worked with a variety of business owners, across many industries, helping them develop management systems to better run their businesses. The Ultimate Benefit she delivered for each client was to help them build profitable, stand-alone businesses.

Her challenge, however, was that she lacked a clear, focused target market to guide her marketing efforts.

Contractor's Business School (CBS)

As a Get The Word Out client, we challenged Jayme to determine her most profitable market niche. This turned out to be professional building contractors - from plumbers, to electricians to roofers - who had a long track record of benefiting from her services.

Drawing from this observation, Jayme developed Contractor’s Business School, a group-based learning program aimed at construction business owners, which drew from her years of experience working with building contractors. Her Slightly Famous niche strategy involved the following steps:

Brand, Logo, Web Site Development

We initially developed the new CBS brand identity and web site that was geared entirely to building contractors. This included designing a CBS brand and logo, which was then incorporated into a complete CBS web site, including the creation of all web site copy geared to speak to the needs and mindset of building contractors.

Niche Media Program

A key component of our program was a niche media strategy. We researched and created a list of contractor industry trade magazines, and then developed several article topics related to Jayme’s expertise and approached editors to introduce her as an expert contributor.

Speaker’s Bureau

A key component of Jayme’s marketing program included securing speaking opportunities at industry events. We researched potential speaking venues within the contractor industry, including industry trade shows, and introduced Jayme to key decision makers.

Results

In a period of 9 months, Contractor’s Business School was open for business. Jayme’s new niche responded powerfully as her best prospects responded to her Slightly Famous marketing program.

Our speaker program resulted in 2 key speaker slots at high profile industry gatherings, including the National Electrical Contractor’s Association (NECA) and Electric West conferences.

Our efforts helped Jayme secure seven major several media placements in that time in targeted trade media, including:

• NEC Digest
• Building Systems Magazine
• Permanent Buildings and Foundations
• Lowe’s
• Snips
• Lawn Care Professional

The most successful media placement of all was when Jayme landed a monthly column in the dominant contractor trade magazine, Construction Business Owner Magazine, which was timed to coincide with the launch of www.contractorsbusinessschool.com

Lesson

Jayme’s niche gave her marketing efforts a natural, sharp focus. The more she specialized, the more her market saw the value of her services because she spoke directly to their unique situation.

Assuming your niche is large enough, you can do quite well by becoming a provider of products and services that can't be found anywhere else.