Just recently the Dow Jones dropped 260 points in one day, making it negative for the year. As doubts about an economic recovery send consumers into a selling frenzy, there’s a ray of light at the end of the tunnel if you’re an HVAC contractor.

Jason Kampsen was looking for a change. He ran an ad in a promotional coupon pack similar to Val-Pak. He got one lead and that didn’t convert to a sale. Armed with the sting of a hard lesson, he chose a new strategy. This time his method brought 13 leads, 12 appointments, and 11 sales. What caused the profitable difference?

Get it? Ha! OK, that was bad, but it got you here. (Marketing Lesson #1: Your headline’s main job is to get your prospect to your next statement.) Now that I’ve already been hilarious …

Just like your customers’ systems won’t tune themselves, good marketing doesn’t happen on its own either. There are, however, things you can do to crush your competition no matter the economic outlook. The techniques included here can help you stand out - and get the sales your competition is too afraid to go after.

Dear Mr. Marketing Person, I’m a contractor. The Yellow Pages reps are so aggressive, they have offered to slash the price of my ad by 10 percent, give me blue free, and even given me a coupon in the back where cheapskates can drive my profit margin even further down. Is this a good deal?

Since the economy generally gives people the creeps about spending money, marketing has changed because it is trying to get them to spend. The same old marketing rules do not apply as before, and yet, we see lots of old rules that should be abandoned. Here’s a list of mistakes not to make.

It seems I remember the current president promising changes. We sure got ’em. Everything’s changed, and if you don’t like the way things are now, just give it a few minutes.

If you’ve ever been unfortunate enough to be in one of my seminars, you know that I list certain rules. Things like: fire the Yellow Pages; quit using the competition for ad inspiration; your distributor is your friend, not your mother. And on it goes; there are many.

My furnace is just so insensitive. It doesn’t care at all about my economic needs. Here we are on the eve of the vast holiday season, where fun, frivolity, and the collective shooing of over-served relatives will soon be heard throughout the land.

My furnace is just so insensitive. It doesn’t care at all about my economic needs. The holiday season’s extra in-home traffic, increased system usage, and changing of the seasons will equate to more in-home service calls for the 873rd year in a row. Those are givens that can be loosely translated as get ready or get left behind.