Hardwood Flooring February March 2018

A-Max’s Jerman Maximizes SEO AND OPPORTUNITIES

A-Max Hardwood Floors owner Allan Jerman took a little different route to the wood flooring business thanmost. Prior to buying A-Max, he owned a company that created Facebook apps and used AdSense and AdWords to market more than 100 websites. When Facebook changed its policies in 2013, Jerman’s business was no longer viable, so he started looking for a new challenge. He found A-Max through an online search, bought it, and moved with his wife and 3-month-old son to Boise, Idaho. Jerman wasn’t a newcomer to the building trades. He grew up working in his dad’s contracting business in San Diego. Now Jerman’s dad works with him at A-Max, along with the employees who worked for A-Max’s previous owner. Phasing into marketing Based on his experience, Jerman had plenty of ideas for building A-Max’s business, but initially, he didn’t advertise at all. “I really wanted to get a baseline for sales and then build from there. That was phase one,” explains Jerman. Next, he started using Google AdWords to drive website traffic. Google AdWords helps companies place their website listings near the top of search engine results pages. Google AdSense places users’ ads on relevant websites and blogs and pays the owners of those websites per click or impression. “We wrote a lot of articles about cleaning, refinishing, different types of wood. And they weren’t spammy; it was good content like FAQs or an explanation of a process we used on a project – what we did, how we did it, and what product we used. We even created posts that were searchable by city and type of wood. So if someone wanted to see red oak in Boise, they could find it and go look at it,” shared Jerman. That was phase two.

Phase five was a total rebranding with new colors, a new website, and eventually, vehicle wraps. Throughout each phase, Jerman tracked his expenditures and results on a spreadsheet, calculating his advertising cost on a per-job basis. The more Jerman spent, the higher his percentage of advertising was for each job. But as he put it, “The more you spend, the more referrals you’ll get. I will never stop advertising. People move on; they come and go.”That’s why he recommends an ongoing marketing program.

But where do you start? Jerman suggests hiring someone you’re comfortable with, not a national brand, but someone local. “If you hire someone who doesn’t know the area or the industry, you’re already one or two steps behind the game. You need someone who knows what’s going on. Find someone local with good references, or someone in the industry.”

But that’s only part of Jerman’s story. He’s an entrepreneur with an eye for opportunities as well. After developing a digital marketing system for A-Max, he saw a need in the industry that he could address.

During phase three, Jerman kept his online advertising and added traditional print tactics like flyers and door hangers. Door hangers were too expensive and hard to track. And after a homeowner chased down one of his employees, berating him for hanging “trash” on his doorknob, they stopped. On to phase four – radio. For A-Max, radio was about branding and credibility. “It did generate some leads, but mostly, it was good for awareness,” explained Jerman. “It showed that we were not just some small company and that we would be here. We wouldn’t just do a job and disappear.”

“The more you spend, the more referrals you’ll get. I will never stop advertising.

People move on; they come and go.”

38 hardwood floors www.hardwoodfloorsmag.com