204. Burning Money In Marketing With Emily & Helena

Welcome to another episode of Professional Builder's Secrets. In this episode, I interview Helena and Emily from the Arrow Agency. A lot of builders tell us they're spending money on marketing but not seeing a lot in return. So in this episode I wanted to dig into why that happens and what can be done about it. Helena and Emily work closely with builders every day, so they've seen firsthand where marketing tends to go off track. We talk about what to look for in an agency, how to set things up for success, and how to avoid wasting your budget on stuff that doesn't really move the needle. Enjoy the episode. This episode of Professional Builder Secrets is brought to you by Apparatus Contractor Services. Apparatus provides full scope, end to end QuickBooks, Precision Construction accounting and CFO services for residential builders. If you feel like you can't completely trust your weekly and monthly financial reports or you feel like you're flying blind, Apparatus will rebuild and operate your QuickBooks accounting system and give you precision construction accounting capability you can trust. Learn more@apparatusteam.com or on the APB Rewards Partner Directory.

We hear this a lot and we talk to builders all year. Every one of them comes up to us at the stand and says, I I hate marketers. I've tried an agency before. It didn't work. I've wasted 10, 20, 50k on this.

If you don't have a good understanding of your business, how you want to identify online, what your values are, if you don't know who your ideal client is, what you're offering them, and you can't give that information to a marketing agency, they're not going to do a good enough job for you.

If you do hear from an agency or from an external body that they can get you those kind of results within like a week or a few days, then that's a massive red flag for them. And it's very, very easy to make things sound good in marketing.

But at the end of the day, are they reaching KPIs that have been set? Have you seen an increase in revenue?

Welcome to Professional Builder Secrets, the podcast for building company owners who want to grow safely and securely. I'm your host, Will Blunt, and today I'm joined by Helena and Emily from the Arrow Agency. Welcome to the show today.

Thank you so much.

We're so excited to be here to.

Be on the show today. I must admit, I feel like I'm on a talk show. I made this joke beforehand, but I thought it was good enough to bring to.

Yeah, we've gone all out, but we're Very excited. So, yeah, it's all good.

And I think it's a reflection of the professionalism of what you do as a company. So could you share a bit more about what the Arrow agency is, how it all came about?

Yeah, absolutely. So Emily and I founded the agency a few years ago now and we've been working exclusively with builders in the marketing space. But more specifically we work in the lead generation and sales automation part of the sort of marketing funnel. So our job is to work with builders that have pretty ambitious growth goals and you know, get them there with paid marketing and good sort of sales strategy.

Yeah, and we're sort of like a lot of marketing agencies where at the very beginning when Helena and I were both sort of freelancers, we were doing a bit of everything for everyone. And very quickly we decided construction industry was something we both felt it was a really fun industry to work in because people are so down to earth. They just want results. They're great to work with. And we were seeing some great results working with builders so that we decided to kind of narrow the focus and that's, that's all that we do now.

Great. Well, marketing is a big challenge for builders. A lot of builders aren't familiar with how to market their company. They are struggling with getting leads and getting new prospects and things like that. Unfortunately probably been burned by many marketing agencies in the past. Why do you think so many builders feel like they're just wasting money on marketing?

That's a bit of an open ended question.

It's a big question and we get that a lot of people hate us. So it's a great place to start.

We are here to try and redefine industry standards and I guess to sort of answer that question, there are kind of a lot of things that kind of could come into play as to why that money is being wasted. And you know, some examples of that are, you know, there's no clear KPIs or goals that have been set. They may be working too far up the funnel and not working on more kind of lead focused campaigns. One thing that we kind of see a lot of is that budget distribution is not really aligning with the goals that have been set or the, you know, the goals that the builder is trying to reach through that marketing. So for example, one builder that we've worked with was spending like upwards of $10,000 per month on their marketing. And that was including, you know, all sorts of content creation, SEO, organic socials and all really great things to be doing and really important things to have, but there was no paid advertising in there. So effectively all of their marketing and all of their messaging and creative was, was not being pushed out to, you know, a new audience. It was just going to their existing sort of following. So that wasn't aligning with the fact that they wanted to double their business over an 18 month period because they're not going to get in front of any new people in that way.

And that's really the theme I think that we see because obviously we hear this a lot and we go to events all year and we talk to builders all year and every one of them comes up to us at the stand and says, I hate marketers. I've tried an agency before, it didn't work. I've wasted 10, 20, 50k on this how are you different? Or what have I done wrong? Kind of thing. And I completely sympathize with that because we're business owners as well and you work really hard for your money and you want to make sure you're doing the right thing with it. I think that, as Helena said, it just comes back to that strategy piece. I think a lot of people think marketing is just this silver bullet and I just need to give it to an agency or give it to a specialist press go and kind of hide over here until I get results. And it's not realistic. I think you've got to do the work to get the strategy done and to make sure you're making time to kind of understand it as well. Yeah.

And understand that it's an ongoing evolution and it should be kind of growing with your business. Absolutely.

Like we see a lot of people who, they aren't going at it with this mindset of, okay, this needs to evolve as my goals evolve and this needs to, to keep getting better. They go at it with this. I'm giving it this much for this many months with these platforms with this message and then I'm going to take my hands off it. And that's a very old school approach to marketing. It needs to be something that is constantly being optimized. So that's another thing we see for sure.

Yeah, it's often that builders will come to us or come to an agency like you when they need leads right now. And I often joke that the best time, if you need a lead right now, the best time to start marketing is 18 months ago. Especially in an industry with a long sales cycle. Obviously the second best time is right now.

But yeah, it scares us a little bit and say, I need a lead by next week. Or I need to remortgage my house. And we're like, ah, unfortunately we're not miracle workers. We're very upfront with people when we do our sales calls of what's achievable. And I think if you do hear from an agency or from an external kind of body that they can get you those kind of results within like a week or a few days, then that's a massive red flag for me.

Yeah, Helena, talk to me more about paid advertising. We'll dive into a little bit more about engaging agencies and things like that as the interview goes on. But you mentioned the importance of paid advertising for builders. Specifically what type of paid advertising should they be doing?

So the platforms that we usually recommend and again, it comes back to, you know, what are those goals and what are they trying to achieve through their marketing. But yeah, generally speaking we tend to sort of utilize meta, which is Facebook and Instagram marketing. And that's kind of where you really create intent. You get your brand out there. You can put specific messaging and offers and sort of capture this new audience with a kind of really targeted, strategic kind of messaging creative campaign. And then that kind of works really well in tandem with Google search marketing, which is, you know, when someone is searching for, you know, custom home builder in a specific area, we want your ad or your business kind of coming up at the top of those search results. In the sort of building industry, it is a, a lot more, kind of sort of people move around a lot more. So they'll see, they need to be seeing you and having sort of like, you know, six to 10 touch points before kind of taking action on that. So they may do some research and then see your socials, see some signage and it's, that's why it's really important to have like a really clear kind of content strategy around that. So the direction that you want them to take is to get in touch with you and kind of give you some additional information and pre qualifications in which to kind of acknowledge that that is a good quality lead.

And I think it comes back to strategy again because that's, that's generally speaking what we recommend for builders. But we were literally in a meeting yesterday with one of our clients. He has a much younger ideal target client essentially. So we were having discussions around TikTok because that's where a lot of young people are getting their DIY inspiration from and things like that. We hear a lot from builders and we get a lot of questions around traditional media as well. So we're talking like tv, radio, billboards, things like that. It's very. We see a lot that people get unfortunately. Unfortunately a bit sort of talked into or sold into buying radio packages and things like that, because they often come with a cruise or, you know, different kind of incentives. And I would just really encourage people, again, to make sure that aligns with your strategy. If you're trying to get. If you're trying to build your brand at a sort of higher level and you're trying to get that brand validation in your local area, maybe that's something you want to spend your money on. But if you're really focused on lead generation, there's a lot of wastage in traditional media. You can be a much more targeted with digital platforms like Meta and Google. So that's why we usually start there.

For people, I imagine it comes down to who they're targeting too. If they're targeting a specific person who's building a home that maybe doesn't listen to the radio during the day, then that could just be a complete waste of money.

Well, we're all on our phones, right? So, yeah, it's a pretty safe bet.

And it's funny because we hear a lot of, we get a lot of pushback because I think some people will say to us, well, I'm, I'm not on Facebook. I'm like, well, your target audience are. They're on Facebook and Instagram. And I think the way to think about it as well is a lot of people still have that mindset around traditional media where, for example, you pay for a billboard and you're paying for that space. Whether people see it or not, you're paying for it. But with digital advertising, with Meta, Facebook and Instagram, that ad only exists if someone's there to scroll and see it. So you're paying for impressions. And then you take that a step further for Google search, that's ppc, pay per click. So you're actually only paying if someone clicks on it. So it's a very different style of marketing. So when people say, oh, I'm not on Facebook, I'm like, that doesn't. Doesn't matter.

Yeah. And I think what I like about it, for builders, especially if they've not done a lot of marketing before, they feel like they have wasted money on marketing before. To your point, you can really get granular and do small little increments to start just to build it up, right?

Yeah, definitely. And I think we keep kind of coming back to, to strategy. And sometimes I hate that word because it can kind of in the marketing space come across as a bit fluffy and a bit, you know, people are like, well, what is it? But really, it's like if you. You just need to be super clear on, you know, what you want to achieve out of your marketing, and super clear who your ideal client is, what your kind of specialty is, what you're offering them, and sort of making sure that that all kind of that journey makes sense. Because the one thing that we find in the digital space is that if you try and be generalist or you try and speak to everyone, you're effectively not kind of speaking to anyone. So that would be kind of my only tip on that space.

I'd like to get a little technical for a second and then we can get back on track to what the questions I sent you before the interview.

Oh, we love technical. Don't worry.

Oh, that's Emily.

The questions that are ticking around in my head, which I feel like builders might be asking as they're listening.

Yeah.

How much does. Is it going to cost for me to get a lead on Facebook, on Google? What does a lead actually mean? How many of those leads will result in a building contract?

You know, that's so funny. My partner asked me last night, how much is it to put an ad on Facebook? And it really struck me. I think because we've been working in the industry so long, we just assume everyone has this basic level of knowledge, but it's just not the case. So I can feel everyone listening to this podcast right now in the car on the way to the job site are probably asking these questions. So it's one of those things where, again, and I hate to say it keeps going back to strategy, but it does. So you kind of need to say, what are my goals? Generally, when we take clients on, that's the first kind of conversation we're having with them is what is your budget and what are you trying to achieve? And that's where we can tell them whether that's realistic. Unfortunately, there is no black and white chart that I can give someone and say a lead on Facebook is $20 or $100 or $500. That's not how it works. Generally speaking, you know, our builders are spending anywhere from kind of upwards of $1,000 a month per platform up to, you know, 5, 10K. It just depends on what the budgeted budget and strategy are and size of the business.

Size of the business, how many leads they need.

Exactly. And in terms of cost per lead, that's something that should, over time, probably creep down and over the course of a year is going to go up and down depending on the market and depending on the competition that's on the platform. So we talked a little bit before about, you know, it's paying for impressions. So if you look at something like Facebook, it might be that during local elections the cost for ads goes up a little bit because there's more people on the platform who want that space to be in front of those eyeballs. So we kind of tend to see that during local election time, for example. So, like I say, there's. There's no straight answer to that, but it's something that, that's a really key metric, cost per lead. And it's something that you should be measuring and looking at on a monthly basis and tracking. And our job as someone's marketing team is to try and get that as low as possible while keeping the quality as high as possible.

Yeah, that's the big thing I was going to say is a lot of people get caught up on the cost per lead, but it's like if it's not a quality lead, then that, that or if it's out of area or, you know, you could be like getting 25 cost per lead but, you know, they're all garbage.

Yeah. None of them pick up the phone. It doesn't matter.

Then it. So it's really like needs to be cost per qualified lead, cost per sales call, things like that, that, that attract is the kind of valuable metrics with regards to what is classed as a lead. We love this because we have seen some stuff in our time and one of those being it's really important that a lead is tracked as a qualified inquiry. That is someone's obviously contact information, but also we want some additional information from them, like what is their project site, what type of project is it potentially like what budget range are they sitting in? Because that's how you're going to kind of weed out anyone that's potentially, you know, not really serious about inquiry and kind of just get those quality leads coming through. Now I always kind of say this to everyone, there's kind of two really important parts to that. Obviously. The first is, you know, wastage. If you've got heaps of unqualified leads coming into your pipeline, it that just costs time and energy for, you know, whoever's sort of filtering through those. But the other side of it is from a tracking perspective and a technical perspective, you're effectively telling Google or telling matter like, this is a lead, this is what the goal of this campaign is. To get more of these, go find more. So if you're feeding the wrong information back into what we call the algorithm, then obviously that's detrimental from a technical perspective as well.

And what are you advising builders do once they get a lead from Meta, for example?

So please call them.

We always set up a CRM system for our clients if they don't already have one in place, because it is really important to have visibility over not just the lead that's been generated, but what's actually happening to that, where did it come from and how is it tracking through so you can actually measure eventually, like a true ROI and not just report on leads generated and sort of tying this back into, you know, marketing agencies and wasting money and things like that. That is actually a really important kind of part of our process in, is to, to really understand beyond the lead generation what's actually happening. Because, yeah, you kind of see it a lot if you don't have the visibility or the data to kind of make decisions based on where things are coming from and what's been most successful from like an actual lead turning into a contract, you don't have enough data to, I don't think, optimize effectively enough.

And I think that the thing that the CRM does is it allows that instant communication. So if someone has filled out a form on website, are going to get a text and an email immediately to say, thank you so much, we'll be in touch, you know, whatever it is, within 24 hours. And ideally the builder, or if there's an admin person involved, they're calling that lead as soon as possible, really as soon as possible. And if they don't pick up, you're calling them again at a different time of day. It's something that we really drill into everyone that we work with. And a big part of the job of our team is that they look at the CRM of our builders every day. And if we can see there's a lead in there and you haven't phoned them, we're calling you and asking you why? Because you're paying for those leads. Unfortunately, we can do the part to, to get a lead in and give the contact details, but then there has to be a hungry builder or salesperson on the other side who's going to take that lead and really run with it and, and really try and squeeze out everyone that they can. Because, yeah, it's competitive and you've got to be on it and you've got to want it and you can't just, yeah, Just let them come to you. You've got to really keep chasing them.

Yeah. Especially if you've got, you know, ambitious growth goals and you know, that's what you're trying to achieve.

Yeah. That speed is so important because if you're not the one that calls them, then another builder will that they've probably filled in an inquiry form on a different website. And if your point, Emily, like if they're, if you just call them once and then, oh, they didn't answer, then I'll give up. Like, you know what I mean? Like most people don't answer the phone the first time we talk about the double dial rule. Like if they don't answer the first time, call straight back again, oftentimes the second one, so.

Absolutely. And that's what I think that there's a bit of a shift, I think, when, you know, these guys are professional builders and that's the shift from just being like a tradie who's got a few projects to I'm a business owner now and I'm also a sales manager. I need to act like it. And if you have any aversion to kind of calling people, unfortunately you need to put your big boy pants on or your big girl pants on and just do it. And yeah, you need to be hungry for it.

Yeah. Or if not, you know, you've got someone in sales that can do that for you kind of thing.

Exactly. Yeah.

Yeah. And that doesn't have to mean this kind of ties into the whole, you know, your kind of premium positioning and there's that, you know, you could go all day into that sort of whole application based sort of sales strategy and things like that. Whether you want to, you know, come across as hungry or you want people, you know, that are trying to reach out to you because you're so exclusive, people still expect to have good communication. And if you're not communicating with people in an efficient and effective way in those early parts of the sales process, you know, that's instantly going to reflect on their opinion of your company and those first impressions really count.

It's a great point. Okay, so let's shift back to the concept of working with a marketing agency. What do you recommend a builder does before engaging with an agency? Just to make sure that they're ready and they're going to get the best possible result for from it.

So story for you, Will. So we were talking about this the other day and we obviously take over a lot of accounts where they've been using an agency beforehand. And we came across one. And it's not the first time it's happened where they've given us a report from another agency and said, here's what I'm doing, here's the results I'm getting. What do you reckon? And we've had a look through and what we found was actually that the, the way that the campaigns have been set up, they were basically reporting a page view as a lead and that's obviously massively problematic. It's a lie. First up, it's not a truthful way to report on things and you're also feeding the wrong information back into the algorithm that Helena was talking about earlier. So if you're saying to the campaign, optimize for people who view the page, that doesn't, you know, change the bottom line of my business. You need to optimize for people who fill out a form. Those are the people who are seriously interested. That's a lead. So that's such a basic thing. In answer to your question, I think a big thing to do before you look to engage an agency is to make sure you yourself have a basic understanding of the marketing landscape. I think particularly understanding a couple of key metrics is going to set you up for success because, you know, there's a lot of great agencies out there and great freelancers who want to do the best thing they can by clients. But unfortunately it's not always the case that they do or things are missed. And you need to make sure you're the captain of that ship still, you need to make sure you're asking the right questions, that you're being kind of, you're thinking critically, understanding click through. Rate the percentage of people that see it and then click through. Do you understand what that means and why that's important? Do you know what a lead is or a conversion is? Making sure that you understand cost per lead and like Helena was saying earlier, cost per qualified lead. Just some really basic metrics which are going to set you up to ask the right questions. Essentially when you are working with someone. I think another thing as well is like we were saying earlier, hopefully, you know, you're going to do your marketing and you're going to get a bunch of inquiry. Are you ready to pick up the phone and call these people? That's another big part of it. If you're flat out, you don't have the time or you're simply going to refuse to call people, don't bother spending five grand, ten grand a month on marketing because you're probably going to get some inquiry and you need to make sure that you, you know, can be responding to that inquiry and you are actually looking to grow is a big thing.

Yeah. And just to add to that as well, obviously you know, a marketing agency, you know, has all the kind of technical skill and, and they should, you know, be able to guide you in a lot of the kind of information that they need to do their job properly. However, if you don't have a good understanding of your business, how you want to identify online, what your values are, if you don't know who your ideal client is, what you're offering them, you and you can't give that information to a marketing agency. They're not going to be able to do a good, yeah, they're not going to do a good enough job for you. So it's still kind of, you know, you need to be able to provide the information to, to get the results.

And I think as well it's, it comes back to the goal setting stuff. You need to understand your business, have some clear goals in mind, short term and long term goals. And what are the KPIs around those as well. Because before you really spend anything, you want to make sure, well, how am I going to measure this? What does success look like? How am I going to keep these people accountable? Otherwise we're all just sort of blind. And I think like if you have those things in place and you have a basic understanding and you're willing to learn then and you've got the budget, then it's, that would be the time to do it.

Yeah.

And I think as well we always say, because we get this question a lot of how should I choose an agency? Because there's so many of us. And I definitely recommend whatever business you're in, have a look around. You know, ask your kind of peers if they've used people and had a good experience. And then when you go to engage an agency, ask them, you know, have you worked with builders? Have you worked with people in my industry? Because the building industry is very specific. It has a very unique set of challenges. So you need to make sure that the agency going to understand the difficulties you're facing. And I would be asking for proof as well. I'd be saying, give me three examples of people you've worked with. What have you done for them? What were the results that they got? If they can't give that, probably not ready to engage.

Yeah, that's a great point. The complexities of marketing in the building industry is totally different to pretty much any other industry out There. So working with an agency that doesn't have that experience would be a big fail point, I think.

Yeah, definitely, for sure. And also another thing to kind of consider would be are they just doing the lead generation or are they tracking what's happening to those leads beyond that? So are they asking you for access to your CRM or are they implementing a CRM for you? Because really that's where the, the kind of real value comes in is access to that, you know that the data. And making data driven decisions based on what's actually converting into contracts.

Yeah, I think it's almost like you answered it in a bit reverse, Emily. I feel like you need to. For many, for many builders out there, they might go, wow, that's all overwhelming. I don't know what a lead is. I don't know how to determine what a lead is. I don't even know how to like clarify what my ideal customer is. It's a lot to figure out. Whereas if you can do your due diligence to find the right marketing partner first, they should be able to guide you through that process as well.

Yeah, definitely. And that's why we love working with app builders because they already, they've been.

Through the process and they have these ideas in mind.

They've got a good understanding.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

I guess this is a similar question, but in a different kind of way. When you're already working with an agency, how do you determine whether or not they're in it for you or they're just kind of ticking boxes to your. Like the, the story you told Emily about using the wrong metric, for example. How can you make sure that you are getting what you're, you're paying for?

Yes, that's a great question because a lot of the time when they're sort of reporting to you and, and you know, they'll be reporting all of the, the things are making it sound like it's all really great.

It's very, very easy to make things sound good in marketing. Yeah. If you're aware of that.

But at the end of the day, are they reaching KPIs that have been set? Has. Have you seen an increase in revenue and goals, you know, or kind of met those goals that have been set for your business is really like the be all and end all. Because that's, you know, the reason that you would be investing is to, to get a return on that.

Yeah, definitely. And I think that, I think a lot of people who engage in agency, they'll say to the agency like oh, I'm not, I'm not getting enough work, or, you know, this isn't working. And the agency might say, well, I got you 30 leads last month. That's my job done. Wash my hands of it. That's your problem. And that, that's an issue. If that's been the response that you're getting, then that's a big red flag, because the job of an agency is to make your business grow, not just to get in quite. If that inquiry doesn't turn into, you know, signed contracts, we're wasting our time. So I think that if they're, you know, running the ads and posting the things and giving you a report each month and then saying, what's your problem now? Then that feels ticking boxy to me. But if they're saying, oh, so you didn't convert any of those, why not tell me which ones were wrong and why were they out of area? Do they not have the budget? Okay, so we need to go to the front end and change XYZ so that you're getting the right kind of leads. Or do you need sales support help? You know, do you need help with a CRM? Do you need sales training? What is it? Where does the problem lie? Let's fix it. There needs to be constant and continual optimization.

Yeah. And then when you have a system like that in place, if there's a bottleneck, you can sort of identify what that is and then look for a solution. So it's never like it's not working or it is working or it's not working. It should be. Yeah. Constant evolution of problem. Okay. Solve what's, you know, let's figure this out. Like, where's the weak link, the weakest link? And, and when you've got a system in place like that, you can easily do that through the data and, and the tools in front of you with regards to the agency, like what they. They should be asking or what you should be asking them. We do have a resource which we can share, which is pretty much just like a bit of a checklist of questions that you might want to sort of ask them, if that's helpful at all.

Yeah, definitely. I'll get the link off you after the show and we can put them in the show notes. Yeah.

Yeah, Cool.

What about expectations? And I'll go to you, Helena, on this one. If I need leads tomorrow, that's unrealistic. So, like, what is realistic to think? Okay, if I've been working with that agency for a month, should I have signed a building contract by that point or is that just luck or. Yeah, like what, how do you set expectations with a builder that you're working with?

Yeah, and that would depend on I guess, the type of builder that they are and the location that they are. In some areas, you know, there's sort of higher demand than others that we see. And also obviously a renov, a renovator is going to sort of see the sort of outcome or the revenue generated from their leads like a lot quicker than a concept to completion custom home builder. So you know, again, it would, when I'm having that conversation with people and setting expectation, it would kind of depend on what kind of a builder they are with regards to what they would expect to see. Like, we do generally tend to see people start to get leads within the first two to three weeks of running a marketing campaign. And we sort of tend to say, you know, three to four months is where, you know, it'll be ticking along quite nicely and then sort of based on the sort of the lead cycle or the sales cycle obviously beyond that, you know, it could be in planning stage for a few months and things. But yeah, with regards to when the inquiry starts to come in, I mean we've definitely seen it with some people doing like high end renovations and extensions like signing contracts within the first couple.

Of months, like but we kind of, and we really don't take people on as an agency if they, if this is not something they're looking at as a long term sort of investment, if they, if they can't give this three, four months at the bare minimum, then we're not the right partner for them. We try and be really realistic in this, in the start phases that yeah, you might get leads as soon as we turn the ads on, but it's unlikely that this campaign is going to reach your goals in weeks. It's probably going to be months.

Yeah.

How do you, from a budget perspective, how do you balance the, the short term goals with those longer term objectives when it comes to spend on Facebook, Google, but also content creation and all of these different elements that you need to kind of have an effective strategy there.

I think the main thing that it comes back to is not diluting too much. So if you're in a spot and we get this a lot where builders will come to us and say, I really need in the next six months to sign another new build contract. That's my main thing right now. Other than that I want to build my brand, I want to increase my Instagram following all this stuff. That's a Secondary kind of long term thing. So what we would say is, okay, well, what have you got to play with? If you've only got, you know, a couple thousand dollars, then we're probably only going to do one, maybe two platforms and we're going to focus on that first short term goal. So again, it comes back to what the budget is and what the strategy is. But I think that the biggest thing is to not try and divvy it up too much because there is a point where if you don't spend enough, then you're just not going to see anything. So it's about making sure that you really prioritize your goals and say, well, if I only got this much, let's try and get that going and then we've got some more revenue, I can tackle another campaign for my following, whatever it is. Yeah, that's how we probably attack that.

Yeah. So it really comes down to. Yeah. And we do guide people in this, like what their goals are and what is achievable and what needs to kind of get, be spent to get them there.

I like that. Good response right now.

You're welcome.

You're welcome. All right, now for the fun stuff. Well, from your perspective at least, what does it look like if a builder wants to engage the Arrow Agency?

Look, well, it's a lot of fun, I'll tell you that much.

We do have a good time.

We do, we do. Well, the first kind of thing for us is the first person you'd be speaking to is Helena. So Helena is really, she's our head of growth and you'll probably see her a lot of app events and things like that. So we do an initial call with people and just get to know a bit more about their business and whether or not we would be a good partner for them. And then Helena will sort of take them through how we operate as a business and what we can offer. So do you want to sort of talk a bit about that?

Yeah, yeah. So we just would do similar to what we promote for our builders, like initial discovery call, which is as much about kind of getting to know the business as making sure there's a good alignment between, you know, what they're trying to achieve and what we can, you know, do for them. And then, yeah, we would invite them along to do a bit more of a strategy call. At which time, yeah, we cover all of the, you know, bit more of the nitty gritty what's involved and then, yeah, if, if it's a good fit and we'll, we'll get them sort of locked in for a start date and.

And she hands them over to me. So I'm the head of operations, so me and the team who you'd be working with, if you engage the ARA Agency, we have a really fantastic group of strategists that we work with in house here. So to start with, we do have an onboarding process that's pretty thorough and it takes about two or three weeks. So that's why we say to people, you know, if you're needing to just throw up a Facebook ad tomorrow, we're not the agency for you. It's pretty comprehensive what we do and as we said, it starts with a strategy. So we're going to put together a strategy for you. We're going to have a session with you where we go through that, we make sure that we're aligned, we set those KPIs, we make sure we're clear on that ideal client, the ideal job, long term goals, short term goals, all of that stuff. And then we go and get to work. And generally speaking, it's usually a bit of a mystery hunt to find some passwords to kind of iron out if they've worked with an agency before. Maybe there's double accounts and lots of different things we have to clean up. We sort of tidy that all up, set it up. We go through the creative process of making the ads and getting those approved, which is probably the funnest bit of what we do. And then we go live and we do training on the CRM and we push everything live. And then from there, you're probably at the beginning going to speak with your dedicated digital strategist a few times a week. You'll be getting a more formal report twice a month. So we used to send out these big long PDF reports to people and they didn't read them and it was heartbreaking. We stopped doing that. And what we do now is the middle of the month, we will record a loom. So we just screen record and you'll see us in the corner and we'll just sort of talk you through the results and what we've done and what you've achieved and what we need to do to make things better. And that's a two, three minute video and you can watch it at your leisure. And then once you've had a full month with us, we'll then do an end of month report. So, you know, the start of September, we'll give you your end of month report for August. And that's a little bit More in depth. And that's a video call or in person, if they're here on the sunny coast and we actually take them through, you know, things in more depth. And we just make sure at the start of every report we've got those goals there and we're talking to those saying, you know, have we reached them yet? How far along are we and what do we need to do to, to get there? Like we say, it's, it's not a set and forget kind of thing. It's. Digital marketing should be constantly optimized. So that's the job of your digital strategist, is to be constantly looking at the data and saying what's going wrong in this process and what can we improve?

Yeah. And I think one thing that is so incredible about our team is that your strategy are allocated a strategist and they are working with you. The traditional agency model is that you will have an account manager and then that work is kind of handed over to other people. And that communication breakdown I think is probably in a lot of cases, you know, what sort of results in things taking a long time to action. And, and so the way that we've kind of built this out is just really based on, you know, quick turnarounds, great communication, industry specific.

So the, the person that the builder is calling to say, hey, I want to run this or I have a new area I want to target or whatever it is, that's the person who's actually going to do the work on the account. And that's so powerful because like you say, a lot of builders come into this and they don't really have an understanding of digital channels. And so they do have a lot of questions. And to be able to have someone you can call who's going to pick up that day and talk you through things and educate you is really beneficial. So we find that over the months, our reports, they start off very kind of, we're talking a lot and we're educating and then it kind of flips and it starts to be more. The builders have got, you know, really great questions for us, which is fun to see.

Perfect. Well, APB members out there that want to get in touch, they can find you on our rewards directory and there's a cash rebate there for engaging the Arrow agency. If not, if you're not a member, go to the arrowagency.com look out for the headline high value pipelines for premium residential builders. Unless of course, you're running a split test on that. And then.

Who can say?

And of course. Otherwise they can. We'll share the link for that free checklist you mentioned and I'm sure they'll get in your CRM and then you'll call them straight away at some point as well.

Oh, we absolutely will, yeah. Night or day?

One last clarifying question. Obviously, you're based in Australia. Do you just work with Australian builders?

No, no, we actually work across Australia, New Zealand and the United States.

Okay, perfect. So for pretty much our entire audience, you'll be able to get in touch with us. Emily, thank you so much for coming on the show today. I've really enjoyed the chat. Thanks.

Thank you, Will.

Thank you so much.

Cool. A big thank you to our listeners as well, wherever you are in the world. If you like the show today, please subscribe to Professional Builder Secrets on your platform of choice. And if you're feeling generous, leave us a review. But until next time, have a great day.