ffect that vinyl products have on energy efficiency. There are over 10, 000 companies in North America that have some level of involvement in the manufacturing of vinyl windows, including approximately 1000 actual window manufacturers in the United States. While brand name recognition will always have some level of importance, many of the smaller manufacturers have taken advantage of the growth of the overall market to make significant market share inroads as compared to the more established names by offering products that not only equal, but often exceed, the quality and efficiency of many of the national known brands at a lower cost. The cost of replacing your existing windows with vinyl windows varies based upon a number of issues, including geography and manufacturer. Consumers have so much more available information to make value decisions on product performance rather than a “used car” advertising pitch. There are also industry sources to use to compare average costs by project. The most useful of these comes from the Remodeling Magazine Cost vs. Vater.* You have not created a program to pull customers toward what you have to offer.* You don't know who has been interested in your products or services up until now (because you have failed to gather their contact information into a database.)* Worst of all, you have no way at all to reach out and touch those prospects over and over again, keeping them in your marketing system. Instead of having a golden egg that makes you money, you have a badly cracked egg.Consider these points:* Prospects need and want to hear from you over and over again. Research shows that most people will not buy from you on the first contact (we're talking contact by e-mail or Internet here). It takes an average of 6 to 9 contacts. Why is this? People want to feel like they know and trust you before they open up their wallets. You are probably just the same way. And, over the Internet, it's harder to build that know and trust factor because you are not standing right there in person, face to face. (By the way, this is one reason that video works well in Internet marketing.)* If you don't have a system that automatically gathers up the first name and e-mail address of people who hit your website, you never even know who might have been interested in buying from you. You've paid to put up a website, but it isn't supporting an automated marketing system. This is a sad thing! Don't you want a good portion of your marketing to be automated? It sure does save time and money! And it helps you to pay for that website's design and hosting, too.* Every business prospers only to the extent that it keeps new customers coming in the door. Even businesses that are running at capacity