Tuesday, 7.14 a.m.22nd September 2026
Dear rural business owner,
It's the twenty-second of September. You have six or eight weeks of workable ground left, at a guess, and then it goes.
So I want to talk to you about February instead.
Not this autumn. February, and the weeks either side of it, when the diary goes thin and the machinery sits in the yard costing precisely what it costs in June.
You know about February. You have been through it plenty of times. What I don't think anybody will have mentioned is that February gets decided about six weeks from now, and hardly anybody decides it on purpose.
Let me explain what I mean by that.
I have spent nine years running paid advertising in the UK green energy market. Four and five-figure jobs, sold to people who had been rung up about the same thing six times that month and had every reason to put the phone down.
You learn a certain amount doing that. Mostly you learn how to earn an enquiry from somebody who was not looking for you.
And the thing I learned that I think matters most to you is this.
There is a fixed number of people who can give you work.
Not "the market". An actual number. Every adult inside the distance you will travel for a job — thirty miles, forty, whatever yours happens to be. It is finite and it is countable, and out where you are it is small enough that you can be in front of all of them, every week, all year.
That does not work in Birmingham. There you would be one of a couple of hundred, shouting at a million strangers. Where you are you are one of about four, and a patch that size can be owned.
I could be wrong about yours. I would want to look before saying anything definite. But I have not yet come across a rural one where the number was too big to be useful.
Now then. Here is how I would go about it. Four things, in this order.
One. Everyone inside the ring.
Not "people interested in farming" — that is an agency ticking a box and charging you for it. Every adult within reach of you, all year, whether they need anything today or not.
Two. Your own photographs.
Not your logo. Not a brochure. A job you have finished, before and after, taken on your phone. In my opinion this is the part almost everybody gets wrong, and it is not a matter of taste. Somebody rings you because they recognised their own problem in your picture. Nothing I write achieves that on its own.
Stock fencing across two fields near Kirkby. Four days, start to finish.
Track that held water every winter. Dug out, drained, stoned.
Three. One question.
What needs doing, roughly where, and when. Three boxes, or a telephone number. Everything else you bolt on costs you enquiries.
Four. The same people, all year.
This is the one that fills February. A small audience seeing your work month after month stops reading you as an advert — by about the third month you are simply the name they know. Which is word of mouth, except you have stopped waiting for it and you know what it cost you.
And you will know what it cost you. Every enquiry gets counted, so you will have a price per enquiry and a number per month, and you can hold both of them against what a job is worth to you.
While I am on the subject — if anybody ever sends you a monthly report with impressions and reach in it and no enquiry count, they are showing you the numbers that flatter them rather than the ones that pay you. I would not stand for it and neither should you.
Anyway.
A word about who you would be dealing with.
As well as the nine years, I put together and ran a national campaign fronted by Adam Henson, marketing a national incentive scheme. I organised the shoot. I would imagine a fair few of your customers know him by sight.
And you do not have to take my word for a single line of this, which brings me to the point.
Here is what I would like you to do.
Book fifteen minutes on the telephone with me. Not a discovery call with the team — there is no team. Me. And I ring you, so there is nothing for you to remember or click on.
The fifteen minutes goes like this.
First three
You talk. What you do, how far you travel, what a job is worth, which month is quietest.
Next five
I open Ads Manager while we are on the phone and read you the adult population inside your radius. A real figure for your postcode, not a range off a website.
Next five
We do the arithmetic out loud. How many extra jobs a month this has to bring in before it is paying for itself — on your job value and your margins, not mine.
Last two
I give you a straight answer.
You keep three numbers whether you hire me or not.
- The size of your patch.
- What an enquiry needs to cost you.
- How many jobs a month covers the lot.
Write them down and take them wherever you like.
The fee is £2,000 a month. The advertising budget sits on top of that and goes to Meta, not to me. I am telling you here rather than on the phone because I would sooner you ruled yourself out at your own kitchen table than felt cornered on a Thursday afternoon.
Do your own sum.
Your numbers, my fee. It runs in your browser and I never see it.
You would need 2 extra jobs a month to cover the £2,000.
About £5,000 of extra work a month. Anything past that is money that was not there before.
And please don't book if any of this is you.
Then you have not got a problem I can help with, and I would only be selling you something.
It is a fortnight to build and about a month before the numbers mean anything.
The sums will not close and I would only end up telling you so.
Then there is nothing to advertise with, and you should not start.
One last thing about the timing, and then I will leave you be.
A fortnight to build it. A month before it can be read properly. Six weeks, call it. Which means advertising switched on in November is working by the time January does what January does, and advertising you are still thinking about in March is aimed at a spring that has already been decided.
That is not a sales deadline. It is just how the calendar sits.
Tom
Matanah. I will be the one running your ads, and the one who answers the phone in month seven.
P.S. The calendar is just below. Two questions on the form: the postcode of your yard, and what a typical job is worth to you. The postcode is so I can look your patch up before I ring, rather than keeping you hanging on while I do it.