11. The New Marketing Process For Builders With Russ, Sky and Andy

This is Professional Builder Secrets, the number one podcast to help you grow your building company safely and securely. Brought to you by the association of Professional Builders. Join us every week as we talk to industry experts and your fellow professional builders on everything you need to know to generate more leads, more sales and higher margins while improving the building experience for your clients. Hello and welcome to the Professional Builder Secrets podcast, a podcast by the association of Professional Builders for building company owners, general managers, VPs and emerging leaders. Here we discuss all things running a professional building company from sales processes, financials, operations and marketing. Hello and welcome. Today I'm joined by co founders sky and Russ Stevens, as well as Andy Scarter, head coach for the association of Professional Builders. Welcome everybody. Excited to be speaking to you all today.

Hey Bosco.

Hey Bosco. Good to see you.

Good to see you all as well. Lovely to have you. Now here's a quick question. How has marketing evolved in the building industry today?

Well, I think the main thing that's happened over the last 15 years or so since the Internet went mainstream, is the whole marketing and sales process has been turned on its head. So nowadays consumers are simply more informed than they've ever been at any time in history and they no longer go to companies and meet with salespeople and get drip fed information. Research is now the key and they do their research online. So in terms of marketing, builders have to be providers of information online. That's the key.

So I'm just curious, I mean, has the Internet just changed things and that's why we're now moving through this transition? Or has the last few months just everyone has just jumped on zoom and said that this is where we want to do business moving forward.

This started long before the enforced changes that we've seen as a result of COVID This really did start with the Internet going mainstream, but of course it's certainly been amplified by recent events with people being locked down with having more time on their hands, unable to visit display homes, etc. So they've been forced into this situation which really has just accelerated it. And we've really seen the guys that have mastered this over the last few years have cleaned up over the last 12 months.

Now with the new age of marketing, how has it impacted builders on a day to day operational value? Like how? What do they need to focus on and what should they be more accountable with?

Well, I think the way marketing works today is certainly for the building company owners, you've got to be leading with value. It is not a case of buy my stuff inquire with me. Let's build a home. It's not that kind of marketing. It's completely different. Exactly what Russ was just saying. It's leading with value being the provider of information online so we can be there when people are actually doing their research. So if we can, you know, put out videos, blog articles, information on our social media platforms, and we're giving away social media, such incredible value, completely free because that's, that's the new way of marketing. We're giving out our best information. You know, how to choose the perfect builder, how to choose the perfect block of land, how to design a home that suits your lifestyle. Now it's all incredibly helpful information. So we're trying to enter the conversation that's going on inside the prospect's mind and we want to answer their questions before they've asked them to ask. Because let's face it, they're not reaching out to ask those questions. They're going to Google to ask those questions questions. Maybe they're thinking about it and you've done some interruption marketing and you've answered a question going on inside their head that they didn't really realize was a full on question until your information came about.

Yeah, the rules haven't changed. They're still the same. People buy from people that they know, like and trust. And this is simply what we're trying to achieve by being the provider of information. We're allowing people to get to know us, get to like us and trust us.

Scott, you brought up a really good point where you said it's about delivering value today as well. What if builders come to you and say, well, what if this value is free? Are we giving up free information? How are we going to make our business if we're just putting all our time into giving away free value? What do you say to that?

Such a good question, Bosco. And that is such a scarcity mindset. If we think, oh, we need to lock away all of our secrets and all of our information and they have to come to us to ask the question and then we'll just bill them for our time. And that's not how it works in marketing. We are going to give away our best, most valuable information, which by the way is a very leveraged way of doing it. Because if you can put that information out there in a video, blog posts, different emails, your social media captions and campaigns, wherever you're providing that actually at scale. Imagine if all those people that were looking and reading and watching those videos were actually reaching out and asking you One on one, probably at the moment. You're answering those questions one on one at the moment anyway. And that takes up a lot of time. So if you can do that at scale, there's actually so much more potential. So let's just see this from an abundance mindset rather than a scarcity mindset.

And I think just to back up what sky has just said, we need to keep in mind the fact that when people are doing research, we may well be asleep. So, again, it's making that value available at the time that suits the buyer. And I think that's one of the fundamental shifts that we believe needs to take place. And that is whatever marketing you're doing isn't about you initially, but it needs to be about what is important to the buyer. That's kind of the focus of where this needs to go.

It's actually a really good point. So if we're talking about new marketing, it's not all about us. And what's so amazing about us, and here are all of our features and benefits. No, we're talking about marketing at the very beginning of the very beginning of the very beginning of this prospect's journey. It's about them. We're talking about them. What are they thinking? What are they curious about? What are they worried about? What are they concerned about? What do they desire? Let's tap in there right at the beginning.

So it sounds like you've all landed on what we call, I guess, content marketing. And that seems to be the gist here. But do you feel that we're at an era now where content marketing and storytelling really impact a builder's business? Should builders become better storytellers today?

Without doubt. I mean, that is the key to marketing in this new world that we live in. And what we've got to understand is that part of what we want our marketing to do for our builders is to make them different, to differentiate them from everybody else that is out there. So it's really a situation of if they can start to tell those stories. And I think those stories come in two ways. Russ always reminds us that stories is how we remember things. If you think about whether we go back to the hieroglyphics or we decide those were spacemen or whatever you decide those funny writing things on the pyramids is before the written word. The only way that people passed information on was by telling stories around campfires and so on and so forth. So it's really tapping back into that scenario of if we can present, as sky has said, really good, valuable content At a place in a way that people want to consume it. What that does is not only differentiates us, but it starts to establish us as the authority. And people, if we're able to essentially articulate a person's concern better than they can themselves, they're going to automatically believe that we have the solution that they are looking for.

Ashley to add to that. There's such an art to storytelling as well. Because there's a way you tell a story to get someone to remember it.

Yeah.

You know, because I think about it, you've. You've been around people in general. You know that you've just been around some people who are just terrible at telling stories and you're almost just hoping that they're at the end, it's over. Whereas there are some people that are so gripping, you're just like, it's, it's dead silent. They've. They've got the entire room, everyone is hanging on to every word that they're saying because they tell really gripping stories. And that is such a good key in marketing and a little bit of a recommendation. Someone who explains this very, very well is Donald Miller. He wrote a book called so Story Brand and he really breaks down the storytelling formula so simply. And I think we've all said this. Everyone in our team's read it. It's so simple. It's crazy how simple it is, but it's also so profound. And he just walks through a very simple five step formula to create gripping stories. And you just see it play out in real life.

Yeah, we see this all the time, don't we? Any salespeople that we've dealt with that we really liked, they've told stories. Yeah, that's really enabled us to bond with them. And they haven't told us about how great they are or their company is or the product is. They've used example stories of past clients so that we really resonate. It really resonates with us. And we remember those stories because. Yeah, it's so hard to remember them. And with marketing, marketing is just a salesperson in print really. So it's really the exact, exact same process in the written word.

And I think the point that Russ made there about using stories of past clients that have had great experiences, if I can use the Latin term, every one of us has a built in bullshit meter. And the reality is when the builder is telling the story because the client instinctively understands there is a reason for that story being told. The bullshit meters hovering just under the red. But literally when a of that Builder tells exactly the same story from their perspective, it comes back down into the green and they're much more open to receive that kind of story. So you know what we're really saying? It's not just the fundamental of telling the story. It's making sure that we find the most effective methodology of telling that story. And often that's getting our past clients to do that work for us.

That's a good point. They don't always have to be positive, though. So the positive ones are a really good point. Like they're your proof, like how the process was successful and whatnot. But also the bad stories, what went wrong, the horror stories that people remember those as well. So if you can comment on those, what actually went wrong and detail the reason as to why, that really can just add so much to your marketing as well.

Yeah, and that's a fantastic point because for a lot of people, building a home or remodeling or renovating their home is probably one of the biggest, if not the biggest single monetary investment they're ever going to make. So they are naturally nervous and not hiding away from those horror stories, but literally putting them out there and saying these are the kind of things that do happen in our industry. Not pretending they're not there. They there. I had a recent situation where I was at a barbecue and somebody asked me what I do for a living. When I told them, they said, oh, thank God, it's about time somebody sorted the 1, 2, 3 of building out. And I said, what do you mean the 1, 2, 3 of building? And they said, well, you only do it once because it'll cost twice as much and take three times as long. And unfortunately I had to cop it because that's almost the default picture that people have of this industry. If we can not pretend that that doesn't exist, but use those stories to our advantage by pointing out that we have a solution to those kind of things that makes that content marketing even more more effective.

I love the way you explain that in a story, Andy. I'm going to remember that now.

I'd like to highlight that, though. That's the difference. Good marketing is tips, it's value, it's information. Great marketing ties it back to something. So if you can have a problem, here's what happened, here was the story, here's what happened and how it all played out. And then if I give you some more tips now on how you solve it, you're going to remember that and you're going to remember that I provided that helpful bit of information, and I'm the solution. Even though I didn't solve the problem, I was able to comment and walk through what that solution would look like to that problem.

Yeah. And that goes back to what Russ said earlier. Because that makes you like me and because I'm helping you solve a problem, that makes you trust me. And because you spent 30 seconds listening to me, now you know me a little bit. And that's the key with this content marketing. We get a lot of our builders say to us, it was quite amazing to be talking to that client for the first time, but they were talking to me as if they were my old friend. And the reason for that was they'd been consuming the content that the builder had been putting out for 12 months before they ever contacted him. So it's building that relationship and that credibility to get the client to that place where they are ready to step into the sales process and then go from there.

I was in a restaurant, this was probably about a year ago now, and the person I was with suddenly waved at a couple walking out of the restaurant, said, oh, hi, and then suddenly realize, no, I don't know these people. I've just seen them on Facebook.

That's a good reference point.

Yeah.

Henry, you brought a really good point about finding these stories and having those communication points with clients as well. With you being on the front lines and talking to all these different builders in the coaching side of things, do you find that builders have trouble sourcing where the stories come from, or do you find that builders just need to become better? Storyteller is which one do you feel is the. Is the one that they need to focus on more?

It's probably a mixture of both, to be honest, and would depend largely on the builder himself and his personal view of it. We have a lot of builders who quite openly say, I love building, I hate people. And then we have other builders that tell us we love people, we want to get somebody else to do the building. So it's really going to depend on. Be dependent on the individual. But if we're talking about marketing as a process, it doesn't really matter who the builder gets to tell the story. They're going to need to provide that person or that organization with the fundamental data that makes up the stories that are then going to be told in terms of marketing that particular builder's business. So it's not really one or the other. It's going to be a combination of the two.

So we have a lot of metrics that marketers measure their performance on when it comes to the success of marketing campaigns. What metrics should builders be looking at today when it comes to marketing?

Well, we should probably start with what we don't look at and that is cost per click, one of the most popular metrics in marketing and marketing managers. But it's meaningless. It really doesn't mean a thing. And both Google and Facebook have proved this by doing in depth study, which is why they use certainly Facebook use a different metric which is cost per landing page view. But the most important metric for a builder to look at initially is cost per lead. From there they need to progress to looking at the cost per marketing qualified lead and even the cost per sales qualified lead. And then as they get better at marketing, they can go for more advanced metrics looking at awareness metrics like cost per video view and cost per landing page view as well. But probably another metric that I'd say to pretty much discard early on at least is cost per sale. Because although it is important, the sales cycle in this industry is just way too long to react and you'll go broke before you refine your marketing. And again, this is something that a lot of marketing agencies simply don't understand when they get involved in marketing a building company. It's just the, the sheer length of the sales cycle makes it very difficult for those guys to understand what's really going on and react and change.

Looking at the current landscape right now, where the builders are at, do they need to adapt to the current times? Do you feel like they're addressing the gap or do you feel like there's still a long way to go?

I think there's without question they need to adapt. It's one of those things that's evolve or die. Marketing in general, general is one of those things. You either you're all for it or you hate it or certainly this is our experience. When you start dealing with builders, they either love it or they hate it. You're either doing it or you're not and you're either doing it well or you're not doing it well. And there's that closed or maybe I should say a fixed mindset of, you know, we've always done it this way. This, this actually is especially a problem when we start dealing with building companies that are multi generational, that have been going for a very long time, that have been successful over the years and so you really can get sucked into. Well, we've been going this long with this successful, this is how we do it. We don't need Instagram we don't need to advertise over here. We do our radio adverts and we keep doing it this way and this is the way it's done. We've been going this long, we're successful. And that really is such a dangerous mindset to get into because it is different. You're going to be left behind and quite frankly, you probably already left behind in a very big way. If you're not showing up online and you're not actually appearing where your prospects are now, actually looking for you, or even not looking for you, because your prospects are on platforms like Instagram and Facebook and YouTube and even Google looking for some answers. And if you're not showing up there, then quite frankly, you don't exist. So absolutely, you're going to get left behind. You need to adapt to the current times, you need to evolve or unfortunately, you're building company is going to die a very slow and painful death because you are just getting left behind. Whereas you see a lot of the newer builders coming into the industry. There's no fear. They, they get it, you know, And I think that's because you've gone from just being a user to now thinking, okay, now I need to actually market my building company as a user. Where have I been? There's suddenly a different mindset. They're a lot more open. So this younger generation of builders coming into this industry will completely take over. And yeah, you are going to get left behind because let's face it, even what worked five years ago doesn't really work the same today. It's evolved so much since then. So, gosh, if you're still using traditional methods from 10 years ago, it's dangerous.

Yeah. Thankfully, virtually all builders now, or any that are still left trading, have all realized that Yellow Pages does not work. People, people do not go to the Yellow Pages and look down the, the adverts to, to choose a builder to speak speak to. So fortunately we got past that. However, a lot of builders are still content to rely on referrals, which is a very dangerous strategy for, for a building company. You can get exposed in that way. And the other, the other fact of that is that if you're saving money, money by not advertising and marketing your building company, you're not really saving money because your margins are compromised. Margins are linked to marketing and if you're not investing between 3 and 5% of your revenue back into advertising and marketing, then your margins are going to suffer because of the, the law of supply and demand. It means you're going to be chasing jobs because you've got a smaller pool to pick from.

What was it. Was it Henry Ford that said that quote? It was like a man who stops advertising to save money is like a man who stops the clock to save time. Yeah, yeah. So it's just futile. It doesn't work that way, unfortunately. And the thing is with building as well, just like Russ said before, the sales cycle is so long in this industry. If you only start advertising and marketing when you need leads, it's too late, unfortunately. It takes so long to build that trust with your marketing and to get them into your sales process and even work through the whole sales process. That's such a lengthy process. You need to be advertising while you're sweet. You still have all your leads, you're working with people, and you're booked out for a period. You never turn it off. But if you only start when you really need them, that's dangerous. And then just piggybacking off what you said before us, referrals. A lot of builders tend to tell us their marketing strategy is referrals. You can't technically call that a big marketing strategy if you're just relying on referrals and you're not actively got any real strategy in place to really boost them. You're just at mercy of who refers you, quite frankly. It's definitely not advertising, and it's not a real strategy when you dig into it with a lot of people that we end up talking to.

And I think the other thing on referrals that we've got to keep in mind is that you tend to then stay stuck doing the kind of work that you've always done at the kind of margins that you've always had with the kind of people that you've been hating for the last decade. You know, so the bottom line is the only way to break yourself out of that is to actually go out there and get a different type of person coming to you. That allows you to address, as Russell said, your margins, which is critical. And obviously, at the end of the day, we speak about it often on this podcast. Our fundamental desire at the APB is to improve this industry for the builder and the consumer. So if we're able to bring people in where we can give them a really good experience, bring the right people in, that obviously makes this. This process work better for everybody.

Yeah, and we're not saying referrals are no good. No, what we're saying is referrals should be the cream on the top. You know, it shouldn't Be the cake.

Totally.

And, and I mean, we always remind our builders, you, you can't make the phone ring. So, you know, the problem is, whilst referrals are generally good quality leads, they are completely inconsistent. You, you put yourself into that feast and famine cycle where some, some months the phone is ringing off the hook and then other months it's tumbleweed and crickets and there's nothing happening and there's nothing you can do to change that. That's the other big plus of your marketing activity. You actually get into the driving seat and you control what sort of lead flow is happening for you.

You made a good point there as well, Andy. Referrals, you're going to get more of the same. If you're not happy with the direction your building company has gone in terms of its clientele, then, yeah, like Andy says, you've got to break out of that through advertising.

We've talked about, you know, we've talked about radio advertising, we've talked about all these different formats of traditional marketing as well and advertising. Here's a hard question. Is it still effective today?

Well, I think I can give you a long answer or a short answer. The short answer is no, it's not simple as that. And primarily because the way that people now look for service providers, as sky has alluded to earlier, is completely different. I mean, if you put yourself in the shoes of a potential buyer or potential client with everything. These days, if I want something, what's the first thing I do? I Google it. I literally go and see if I can find it online. And then when I have found it online, I'll go and look at the reviews to decide whether or not other people have been brave enough to step into that place. And then if enough people have done that, I will then follow suit. So it's no longer a scenario where somebody will actually appoint a builder and work with that builder. Often, if you are contacted directly without any kind of marketing effort, it's purely somebody checking a price. So really it's one of those scenarios where Scott talked about radio advertising and Russ has touched on Yellow Pages. There was a time when those things actually were effective. But we certainly see from the metrics that we measure that those kind of things have very, very little impact these days.

Totally worth mentioning as well, that the big reason for that is attribution, because in the newer methods of advertising and yet paid advertising and marketing, there's so much more visibility. So you can actually have proper attribution of. Well, where did that lead come from? Oh, it was A direct result of that campaign. I know it worked because of all of the metrics that Russ went through earlier. I know it works. I can spend more money on it. So that's such a benefit to all the newer platforms. Plus, you know, you can just get more return because you can actually see you're getting in front of more people. Things like radio. It's such a scattergun approach because you're blasting a message to anyone and everyone who was tuning in at that point. Not a very targeted approach. That was using an algorithm with 42 million data points that these computers have built for us. I mean, let's use the modern technology there. But I think as well, just to piggyback Andy, probably the worst but about traditional marketing is that myth that crops up every so often from a lot of builders and they repeat that phrase, just getting your name out there. Bottom line, if they try and do any marketing, it's like, let's just. Let's just do TV or radio or whatever it ends up being. If anything, we'll just get our name out there. Come on. It just doesn't work like that. Unfortunately, you can't measure it. And it's just such a myth.

Yeah. And I think that's Sky's just hit the other big key. You've got to be able to measure it. At the end of the day, you're investing incredibly hard earned dollars into something and you want to make sure that every dollar you're investing is bringing you back an acceptable return on that investment.

So with us embracing this new age of marketing, what are some of the significant impacts to builders and their revenue? Should they embrace this need to change? What can they expect to see?

Well done. Right. Obviously, good marketing will grow a building company and increase their revenue. But the real impact for builders is not just their revenue, but it's their margins that's the real key. And like we're saying earlier, margins are linked to marketing. And this is the difference between a new home builder hitting the industry benchmark, which means marking up their jobs by 33%, and those guys that are struggling to put 15 or maybe 20% on their jobs and still win a job, and they mistakenly believe that it's all down to price and that consumers are choosing the lower price. They're not. That is a myth. It comes down to their marketing and the fact that maybe they don't like that person as much, maybe they don't know that person as much. Maybe they don't trust that person as much. And that's not to say they dislike them or distrust them. It's just to say they haven't been given the information that would allow them to move down the certainty scale.

And I think, sorry, I can just jump onto the back end of what Russ is saying. If you don't give your prospective buyer anything different to what everybody else is giving them, you leave them with price as the only thing they can make a decision on. I always, when I'm talking to clients, talk about my mobile phone and I happen to have an Apple and I think it's a 10. And literally you can buy the same phone anywhere in the world, identical phone. So how do I choose who I go with? The guy that's going to give me the best deal because this phone looks the same, feels the same, does the same, no matter who I get it from. So the only thing I've got left is let me make the decision based on what it's going to cost me. So by making sure that you marketing and advertising, particularly with the storytelling and content marketing stuff that we're talking about, you make yourself different. You add value and that then moves the discussion and the decision away from just how much the build is going to cost.

Of course, the other side to that coin is why did Andy buy an Apple phone when he could have bought an Android a lot cheaper? And that will come. Comes down to status.

Well, and intelligence, I think, but I'll go with status.

Brand is a big one. You know, like, it's that know, like. And trust. So you're more aligned to a certain brand. It's everything.

Yeah, yeah.

So I'm sure you guys have an example of a builder that's adapted to the new age of marketing. And, and part of this amazing podcast series is to really just open up the curtains and discover some of these insights. Tell us the story of a builder that has embraced this and you've seen success.

Well, look, we probably, with this particular builder and on this podcast, don't want to mention his name out front, but just to kind of, I'll tell everybody that it rhymes with Brian Flannard and he's not from Victoria or New South Wales. I'll just leave it there for now. But he's been part of our private mentoring group. In fact, he moved up into our elite mentoring group at the beginning of this year. And he has fully embraced everything that we teach in terms of content marketing. He's committed to it, he's investing in it, he's part of it. And he's one of the best examples of a builder where clients walk into his office and treat him as if they've known him for years, which in fact they have. Although he's only just met them, they've been watching his videos and consuming the content over the years. Now, one, the quality of the clients that he's getting to work with has risen exponentially over the last three years. He's just recently employed a brand new sales executive who has had, I think somewhere in the region of 20 years in the kind of project home display, home sales kind of environment. And this guy was very skeptical when he first joined the company in terms of whether this marketing stuff was going to work. He has been completely blown away by one, the quality of client that he's getting to work with and the ease with which those clients are converted from an opportunity into an actual sale simply because they've been properly educated, they've grown to know, like and trust the builder and therefore they're ready to move ahead much quicker and easier than they would otherwise have been. So there's absolutely no doubt that this is exactly how it works.

And he committed in every which way. This wasn't a content strategy of he threw up a couple of blogs. This was regular new content every single month coming out on his own website. In terms of new articles, they were getting pushed out and paid to promote them on different social media channels so more eyeballs could come through that way. Every single article came with a brand new video. Every single bit, every single one of those topics and themes were complemented by a theme of social media posts for that entire month. And it was all backed up by everyone already on his database was getting that content broken down and emailed to him. This wasn't a light strategy. He jumped in, he didn't dip his toe in. He, he dove into that pool. And yeah, he, he can reap the rewards because of it, I think.

Great example as well, isn't it? As someone that maybe thought they didn't have too much to say or share, but when we, when we dug into it with him, he's been able to share so much great information. Yeah. With his, with his database, with his target market.

And I think the other point that I remember so clearly about him the first time around, when he started down this road, he was so uncomfortable. It took him so far out of his comfort zone to be this person presenting the stuff. And I remember one of the things he said to me was, but doesn't everybody know this stuff? And what he was battling with was what I think a lot of us battle with From a marketing perspective is we battle to put ourselves in the shoes of the client and things that are absolutely commonplace to us every day, we don't stop to think, well, hang on a minute. The heart surgeon who can replace my heart has no idea about framing a house or how to get a wall. True. Or any of those kind of things. And what we've got to understand is that in a lot of cases, this is not reinventing the wheel. It's taking stuff that we already know, packaging it correctly, and then putting it out there for people to benefit from it.

Yeah. This doesn't have to be groundbreaking new information, does it? New materials coming to the market. We're just explaining the basics to make these people feel comfortable. It could be as simple as explaining what PS and PC mean, terms that we use all the time. We don't think twice that not everyone understands that and they feel a bit silly when they're talking to us and we don't explain to them what they actually mean.

Hands down, the easiest place to start is if it's you doing the sales or you got a sales team. Just regroup, have 10 minutes and jot down every single question you've been asked. When people make an inquiry in the last week, that's. That's all your content right there. Start there. Because just like what Andy was saying, everyone who now comes through the door is so evolved, they're so educated because you, you did it on mass, you were able to leverage that and you were able to communicate widespread to so many people. So that when people come to you, they've got a lot more advanced questions. They're curious about the next steps, what.

What happens from here, and, and their expectations are realistic. So they're not totally. Yeah, they're not walking in there with that sort of beer budget but champagne design mentality anymore. They've. They've started to understand how this thing works. And, and that makes for a much more practical process in terms of getting them to contract and enjoyable.

Suddenly your building company is so enjoyable. You have wonderful clients flowing through to you, getting attracted to you because of how you're presenting your building company.

We've talked about dependencies on cell phone and the new age where most of us rely on it today. How do builders stand out from the noise and the digital clutter that's out there? How do you really originate ideas and really stand out today?

Bottom line is to stand out. It doesn't mean you do the opposite and you actually don't do anything because everyone seems to be online I think we hear, we hear this a couple of times. People trying to be so different. Well, if everyone's doing this, I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to email my database people. Everyone gets so many emails. I don't want to. I'll be different or I'm not going to be on social media, I'm not going to advertise here. That's, you know, not the correct way to go about this. We want to stand out, not be completely invisible. So we need to be very, very, very clear on why and what we're doing here. So you got to really sit down and map out a very clear strategy. It's not a scattered gun approach. We're not just saying, okay, how much have we got this month to do in our marketing? Let's throw it over here and just do Hail Mary's and see what we can get from it. Let's sit down, have a very, very clear strategy on what we're trying to achieve. And if you sit down and you're trying to nut out a marketing strategy, the first place you start is internally. You want to work everything out to do with your building company. Starting with probably the simplest thing. Let's decide and be very clear on who our building company is, what we do and what we specialize in. That's our niche. Okay, what types of project do we want to be the experts and specialists in so that we can attract all the prospects who want to do that particular type of job. Which, by the way, the type of, or your niche or what you specialize in should be the projects you enjoy doing the most and the most profitable ones. Otherwise, what's the point why we're doing this? So decide on your niche. Get very, very clear on your avatar, which is a very fancy word for your ideal clients. Basically, what do they look like? What are their age range? What do they do? What's their income level? Where do they hang out? Do they have children? Are they married? Let's know every single thing about our ideal clients and then let's go another layer deeper and understand all of our marketing messages. So what's super unique about us? What's our unique selling proposition? What value can we deliver that's unique? Do we have any kind of guarantees? Even if it's as simple as a satisfaction guarantee? What kinds of marketing messages can we really sit down and nut out and get very clear on before we spend a cent anywhere on marketing? Otherwise it's just, it's, it's not going to work. And and then you can really flow through and then you get to decide on your content, how you're going to push that out there. That's going to mean creating some exceptionally valuable content, but putting it together well, so you can use things like professional copywriters and you do professional video production so you can shoot your videos. And you have a teleprompter so you don't forget what you're saying. And then it's so important, if you are outlaying all of that money and invested into a proper marketing strategy, make sure you have something very seamlessly integrated so it can back it all up, follow up those inquiries automatically and with speed and with the same amount of value.

Yeah, that's a, that's a really good point. Because if everything else seems a little bit daunting, one way to very easily stand out from all the other builders out there is to respond quickly. How many builders do we speak to that tell us? I didn't want to respond too quickly because I didn't want to appear desperate.

Too many.

They want to give the impression that they're. They're busy and the prospect should be grateful that they've replied no. Get straight on the phone. Seconds count. You may not make the sale instantly on that return call. But further down the track, when you look at your conversion rates, the faster you respond, your conversion rates will increase exponentially because people remember you stand out from all those other builders. And you'll probably have a nice conversation where they tell you about all these other things, building companies they've contacted that haven't bothered or reached out to that haven't bothered getting back to them. So, yeah, respond quickly when you do get an inquiry.

And by the way, you can be in demand and very busy with line out the door and still respond immediately. Like two things can be true. They don't go hand in hand. So just because your building company is booked out for the next 6, 12, 18 months and you're phenomenally successful, really, the most phenomenally successful building companies should be responding quickly. That's how they do it. So pretending and even just downplaying, I'll wait a couple of days so I look a little bit more in demand. It really just does the opposite. All they're doing is talking to your competition. Just like Russ said, you're not making this. You may not be making the sale, but you're making the first impression and people remember the first impression.

And, you know, just sky as you're saying that. What jumps to mind for me is how incredulous builders are that when they are booked out for 12 to 18 months, and they do respond quickly to say to people, how soon would you like me to start? And then they tell people, I can't start for 18 months. They're incredulous at how many people are quite happy to wait. Because it's that old story. You know, you arrive in a city you've never been in before. You walk out the front of your hotel and you look around for a restaurant to have dinner at, and there's a beautiful restaurant over to the left that is empty, and there's one off to the right with a line around the block. Where do you go? You go and stand in line. You could have been finished your meal and back in your hotel room if you went to the other one. But you don't stand in line because that gives you the assurance that what's going on there is worthwhile.

What are some of the trends that we're seeing in the building space right now that's working well?

Certainly blog articles has been the big emerging trend. It's not really anything new. It's been around for a long time now, but we're just seeing a lot more momentum within the residential construction industry. A lot more. Builders have been adopting blog writing over the last few years, and probably more recently that has transitioned into video creation, which is the simple process of verbalizing what they've already written in their blog. And it's as simple as going on camera. And verbalizing that blog makes a. Makes a big, big difference because people prefer to consume videos rather than read. Now we just all consume it in different ways. And it's also getting the personality of the builder across as well. And the more they do it, the more comfortable they get. So because of that, we're seeing, obviously Facebook has been fantastic for builders over the last few years. Instagram as well has got more and more popular. YouTube seems to be becoming a lot more effective over the last 18 months. And then of course, there's the old favorite like Google Display and SEO, which are still very effective channels for builders.

You said something really good there, though. All your videos are just a repeat of your blog articles. And this probably is the biggest stumbling. We've talked about content marketing. We've not clarified this the entire time. Anything you say can be repeated in every single other platform because it's not likely everyone sees every single thing you are posting, whether it be an article, then a video, and then all of your different social media accounts posts and. And then your emails as well. It's likely they're not seeing every single one of them. So A, it's leverage, but B, if they actually are seeing every single one of them, it's not a bad thing because repetition is how we learn. So they may not have even remembered it or just committed it to their long term memory before, but because they saw it again and then again and they got another tip and another bit of helpful information, you're just educating your client that much more.

And, and what Russ said earlier I think is absolutely key. People buy from people they know like and trust. If I watch you in a video for six minutes, I'm gonna get a real handle on all of those non verbal things that don't come across in text. So immediately I get to kind of see how you move. I get all of those other things going on. And what that really helps me to do is to make my mind up on a much sort of broader scale than just what I can read. So that's a critical part in terms of, of, of adding to that process.

And it's the human factor as well, isn't it? If, if you were at that point where you would really comparing two building companies side by side and you know, for everything else, same niche, you know, same quality of photos, as far as you could tell, they had a ton of great information. One did content videos with the owner talking to the camera was very personable, very human and the other didn't. Oof, you've just tipped yourself over the line. You just did it.

Yeah. There's a rule in sales called the 711 rule, which is 7 hours and 11 touches. And that's all we're trying to do with our marketing here. Everything that we produce, we're trying to build on those seven hours and we're trying to get to 11 different touch points. And when we do that, it makes the sales so much easier.

I love the references on the call today. I'm going to remember the 711 and the 1, 2, 3 rule as well. But what does success look like in marketing for builders? If they get it right, what does it look like, you know, to their business?

Well, I think we touched on this before or Russ certainly did when he was explaining, yeah, it will increase revenue. But the bottom line of the bottom line is your net profit because marketing is a direct result. Your margins, sorry, are a direct result of your marketing. So yeah, what does success in marketing look like? This is very much a lag indicator, I should say your net profit because it takes so long to realize that we could just Today, right now, start and properly commit to doing decent marketing strategy. We can get our niche sorted. We've got all of our marketing messages down pat and we are amazing. And we did all of our content today. Say we literally could wave a magic wand and start that today. We can't even realize that benefit in our account for months. I mean look how long your sales cycle goes now. Even if you get the perfect inquiry today, you got to work with them on the design and then the prelims and then into a contract and then you've got months there to even realize anything. So it takes a while and that's why you then need to look at your lead indicators and look at the metrics that Russ was talking about before. Because otherwise you really can just go crazy because you're not seeing the financial results as quickly as you want to. So that's super important to bear in mind.

It's just about getting your name out there. Said the marketing agency to the builder that when they didn't want to be held to account on their results.

Russ, that's such a critical point, I think in, in terms of this, this discussion because the number of builders we have who, because they don't really understand the subject, will get talked into a six month or 12 month contract with a marketing agency that sends them 11,286 reports every month, all meaningless. They literally are just smoke and mirrors at the end of the day to justify the continued payment. That's not it. As sky said, it will be reflected in multiple results, eventually reflected in your net profit.

Yeah, and it's not just marketing agencies either. There are certain channels, quite well known own channels that are an absolute waste of money for builders. I don't think it would be right to name them here. But yeah, you have to be very aware where you're spending your money as a builder because this sales cycle is so long, it takes a long time to realize if it was successful or not.

Well, and I saw an example of that today, funnily enough, on our private Facebook group.

That's what I was thinking of.

There was a discussion about a particular organization that is well known in the building industry for marketing and one of our members actually said, I'm considering joining up. What should I do? And the response they got was so incredibly the same. Every single person that responded had exactly the same story to tell. It was incredible to see how that all came about.

I think the most interesting thing about that is that thread pops up about every six months and we always just wait to See, has it changed yet? And every six months someone else has tried it and it's the same result, which is actually quite interesting. But yeah, it's about every six months it's on a rotation. Someone else then asks the definition of.

Insanity is when you do the same thing over and over again expecting different results. What should builders avoid in marketing today with the intention that they expect to get some results, but if it's not going to get the results, what should they avoid?

Well, I think we've touched on it already. It's critically important if they're going to work with an agency that, that agency, he has not only experience, I think, although that's a good start in the building industry, but has runs on the board has actually been able to deliver provable results in the space. Now it's a scenario of most builders almost want this kind of set and forget situation when it comes to marketing. If they get comfortable with the principles that we teach and really that's all they've got to understand. Although we can teach them how to actually do an ad on one of the social media channels or any of those technical things, the reality is if they get to understand the principles of what works and how it works so that they can measure what is being done, that's going to put them in the best place possible. So in terms of avoiding marketing, don't do anything you don't understand would be the place that I would start and then make sure that if you're going to work with an outside agency that they have runs on the board.

I think to add to that as well. I feel like we could have a long list for this one, but the whole mindset and mentality of build it and they will come hosting and hoping it doesn't do anything. You may have the most amazing website, you may have a wonderful social media channel and you've got beautiful photos and you've got beautiful homes. Doesn't really matter in this day and age. Build it and they will come. It's not a thing you actually need to pay. These platforms, Google and Facebook, they worked out how they can make money and it's through advertising. Advertising. So you need to pay them. It's a pay to play. So you have to actually spend money to get the eyeballs to see, to get prospects to be able to see you and engage with you. So you do have to build and you have to build it well, make sure you've got proper calls to actions so they can go into your marketing funnels. But you then need to Pay to play. And then to add one more to that list is the free quotes strategy. Way too many builders have been doing that for way too many years. A it's not good for business. You do not want to be promoting that. You're just getting yourself into a terrible situation because what every, every single custom home builder should be doing is charging for all of their quotes. So offering free quotes as a marketing strategy? It's not a marketing strategy.

Yeah, and I'd avoid procrastinating because you may be busy now, but marketing, it's a bit like farming. You are planting the seeds for next year. So you've got to be working so far in advance to keep your funnel full in your building company. And if you don't, we know what can happen when things drop off a cliff. You have to really scale down quickly to avoid losing money. So the best way to avoid the that is to be always putting the binoculars on looking further ahead and marketing now so that you are nice and busy this time next year.

And imagine if you had to say no to some work. Imagine if you actually had more work of the type you want than you can handle. Gee, that'd be a terrible problem to have.

Which by the way, you know, I can feel some builders heart rates right now. That's a scary thought. Turning away work like, you know, if you're hungry, you want to eat, but that is how your margins increase even more as soon as there's a line out the door. People are willing to pay more to get you sooner.

As always, this has been an insightful interview with so many different thoughts around the board. I want to thank you all for being here today. Sky, Russ, Andy, thank you so much for your time.

Thanks Pasco.

See you soon.

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