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A successful marketing campaign gives Harris-Dudley Co. plenty of exposure and gives potential customers plenty of reasons to put the company at the top of the bid list at makes memorable marketing stick with you isn't so much an award-winning jingle as much as a respectable message promoted again and again ... and again.
Robert Dudley, for example, doesn't think a company logo has to be all that catchy. Or that trucks have to win national recognition for design. But he isn't so modest explaining how an aggressive marketing plan he started in 1995 makes customers associate radiant and snowmelt systems with his family's business, Harris-Dudley Co., Salt Lake City, Utah.
"Building a new home - let alone choosing a radiant or snowmelt system - is a long-term decision," adds Dudley, who along with brother Michael Dudley is the fourth generation to run Harris-Dudley Co. Their father, John R. Dudley, is still at the helm as president. "The people you hear from today are people who read a newspaper article about you a year ago and clipped it out. Too many contractors will get discouraged since they don't typically get an immediate payoff from marketing. So they figure it's best to cut their losses -- never realizing that they're cutting any possibility of gains, too."
Instead, the former marketing major insists on sticking to a wellthought out plan that integrates advertising, marketing and public relations into a seamless game plan.
The results? Before Dudley implemented his plan four years ago, Harris-Dudley had done only two radiant jobs. Last year alone, the company installed 100,000 feet of PEX, and completed 22 projects ranging from retrofits to individual new homes with $60,000 heating and snowmelt projects.
"It's a campaign," Dudley explains. "It's not a single newspaper article or a single home show appearance or a single Yellow Pages ad. The overall mystery about marketing is that it's nebulous - you can't necessarily tie a result directly to one action. But you'll never get results without sticking to a plan."
Admittedly, Dudley started out with a big advantage - his great-grandfather founded the company in 1931. But as Dudley sees it, 60-plus years of service was just the beginning. He wasn't about to leave the company's continued...