238. Great Work Isn't Enough With Carl Edwards and Annameika Curtis

Welcome to another episode of Professional Builders Secrets. In this episode, I interview Annamika Curtis and Carl Edwards from Edwards Family Homes in New South Wales, Australia. Carl speaks about how he's discovered over time that margins are linked to marketing, and we uncover a whole range of tactics and strategy that they're implementing in their building company. It's a great episode. This episode of Professional Builders 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 at apparatusteam.com or on the APB Rewards Partner Directory.

I've never really understood the importance of marketing until I started working with APB. It's nice to be able to provide a good service, a good outcome for a client, and marketing content is a way that we can communicate that to the people who are actually interested in what we can do. When you have more marketing, you have more opportunity and more choice in who you're actually going to build for. And we've really seen that play out where you have, you have a situation where you can basically choose the margin that you need to provide the good outcome and stick to it. Marketing is very, very important part of the overall process and whatever you can take action with at the moment, wherever you are now, take action at whatever level is appropriate for where you find yourself.

And if that's doing it yourself, just put that one post together. Like you just have to do one step at a time.

Welcome to Professional Builders Secrets, the podcast for building company owners. Wanting to grow safely and securely. I'm your host, Will Blunt, and today I'm joined by Annamika and Carl from Edwards Family Homes. Welcome to the show today.

Thank you.

Thank you. Nice to be here.

So Annamika and Carl are APB clients and they also work at Smarter Websites. So there's a few different perspectives we're bringing to the table today. But to kick everything off and give a bit of a background on why we're here today, maybe I'll throw to Annamika or Carl, whoever wants to dive in first. Can you give a bit of a background on your building company, how it all started out?

Yeah, sure. So we're a residential builder. We've been through a few different starts, I guess you'd call it. For a long time we did concentrate on granny flats and then we've moved from that to custom homes. We're building on custom homes and then from there, a couple of second stories based on referrals. We weren't really pursuing extension work at that time, but we finished the second stories and, you know, we produced happy clients. They went well. We found that they suited our team. So while we've continued building custom homes, we've also really pivoted and focused our market towards the second story market. I felt in our area there was a bit of a shift in the market away from new homes, or I felt there was more potential within the renovation market or the extension market. So that's where we are focusing our marketing at this time.

Yeah, very good. How long have you guys been in business for?

Overall, since 1994. Specifically with my family, there's, we've got our 4 sons in the business. Anna-Mika's my daughter, she's in the business, and my wife as well. So specifically the family business we're in now, we've been about 15 years.

Yeah, amazing. The shift to second stories and extensions, do you think that's a reflection of the market you're in? You're based in New South Wales in Australia, which is obviously a relatively expensive place to build.

Yeah, absolutely. It's a lot easier for a homeowner to do a second story than to either find a block of land that's suitable. Or knock down a house and rebuild. So we just find that it gives, it gives, if a family bought their home 10 or 15 years ago, their kids are now teenagers, we can give them a lot more space at a pretty budget-friendly price.

And is there additional complexities around being someone that specializes in the second stories compared to custom homes?

Absolutely, there is, yes.

So Carl, there's probably some additional complexities with renovating on the second stories compared to building a custom home. What do they look like?

Yeah, there definitely is. You're dealing with the— you're actually working in the homeowner's home to some extent. You have to support the existing ceiling. You're literally taking the roof off their house. And most people— one of the benefits is most people like to stay in the house, which is part of the attraction of the second story. So you have to deal with that. Where we all like to go to a site and start from the ground up and put your slab down and build a house, obviously with the second story you're dealing with some So the existing structure, the structural elements, all of those things become part of it. So yeah, there's a little bit more involved.

I suspect as well, the homeowners really want to trust, uh, the building company they work with if they're going to be living in the house at the same time.

Absolutely. That's a big thing. They want to be sure who's going to be there, how you're going to manage it, how you're going to actually stay out of their house during most of the build, which is something that we do, and that you're going to have people they're comfortable with coming to their home.

I want to go back to learn more about your marketing journey, Carl and Anamaker, and maybe Anamaker, this is a great opportunity for you to give some background. It culminated in you actually winning a marketing award at APB's New South Wales Builder Awards earlier this year. No, sorry, I've lost my timeline. It was last year, but we haven't had this year's ones yet, which is a fantastic achievement, but I'm sure there was a lot of hard work that went into all of that. So where did that all begin? Where did you decide that you needed to do something different with your marketing and how did that play out?

Yeah, so we had originally partnered with Smarter Websites for our website and our advertising because those were two things that we just didn't think we could do ourselves. We were really stoked with how Smarter took the reins on that, had a rollout plan at every point, there were touchpoints. When we heard they rolled out Builder Content Marketing, I think they did it at a summit and Carl came back and was like, oh, and Amica, you know, they're Smarter have started doing content marketing. Up until that point, I'd actually been doing all the content marketing myself, which was a lot of work, and I had to pre-plan it all. I went on maternity leave, came back, and Carl basically said we need to do something new, we need to start systemizing the business. We'd had some good feedback on our current marketing, we had inquiries rolling through, but we just couldn't keep up with everything going on all at once. And Carl made the decision actually to adjust my role to focus on the systemization of the business. Content marketing with Smarter was the way to go, and they just began rolling that out, and pretty quickly we were back on track. We, um, I'd gone from trying to write like 4 blogs a month plus do the content plus then step back out and go, is this working? To just having a team do it all for us while actually actioning our vision. So we had time to review things, see what landed right and what the feedback was with our clients, and then maximize on that again.

When you think of content marketing, you mentioned articles and things like that. What other components are there? I mean, one thing I'm particularly intrigued on is video content. Are you, Carl, are you getting in front of camera for this content?

No, I'm not getting in front of the camera. Nikki, my wife, who's managed our selections for a long time, is a lot more photogenic than me, and she does a great job. So that's what we're doing.

But you're doing video content, I guess, more to the point.

Yeah, we are. Yeah, Nikki's doing it. Yes. And smarter.

Yeah, so we shoot the video ourselves on the basis of we use what we have and we make the best of it, have a crack. But then we actually pass that video along to the Smarter team and they edit it knowing what we're trying to achieve. They roll it out and we've actually even had a video have like 18,000 views, which is really encouraging. And based on that, we get a lot of feedback. You know, Nicky's walking through Bunnings and somebody's saying, ah, I saw you talking about second stories. Like, and Nicky's, yeah, I was. Do you want to build one? Everybody's seeing it, which is great. We've even had friends and family say, oh my gosh, we're trying to watch YouTube and Nicky's popping up on our TV. So. I don't know where they've got it set, but it's hitting home hard.

I'm interested to hear both perspectives on this. From your perspective, why content? Why have you chosen to go down this path of creating content for your business?

Being from a trade background like I am, I've never really understood the importance of marketing until I started working with APB. Grasp, it's nice to be able to provide a good service, a good outcome for a client, but people don't get. They're making a big investment. And when you, when you go and talk to somebody on a one-off visit, they don't understand. And this took me years to understand this. They don't get what you can actually deliver for them. And marketing content is a way that we can communicate that to the people who are actually interested in what we can do.

Yeah, thanks, Carl. That was a very interesting perspective from a builder company owner's point of view. And Amika, as someone that's working on the business, in terms of systemization and marketing. What's your perspective on why it's so important?

I feel that marketing actually gives you so much more creative freedom when it comes to getting who you are as a company across. You can sit there and tell somebody in flesh, like, oh yep, we're trustworthy, we're honest, like we've got this reputation. But until they see that slowly sprinkled across a few weeks and, you know, they get to gently familiarize themselves with you before they even get to that conversation. You've built this rapport and reputation, but it's actually taking nothing from your day to day. You actually get to be there in the decision-making process, whether or not they call you, but you haven't even spoken to them. And to be able to do that at such a broad level and then targeted level, it just opens up so many opportunities for potential clients.

Have you seen that in reality? I mean, you mentioned the people at Bunnings, which is for anyone in North America, it's like your Home Depot equivalent in Australia. But have you mentioned, have you noticed that on sales calls where people have actually heard your video content and understand more about your processes?

Yeah, absolutely. We've actually had a lady one day call Carl and she's talking to him as though he's her long-lost brother. She knew him. She bought into who Carl Edwards is. As a builder and what Edwards Family Homes could do for her. Unfortunately, she was a little bit further away than we travel. To know that the first conversation we had with her, she was already so invested in the company herself was just phenomenal.

Annamayke, you mentioned before that you used to handle all of your marketing in-house and then you started working with Smarter Websites and outsourced a lot of it so you could focus on other things. What was the hardest part about handing that over and has it been smooth for you?

I would say like definitely yes, it's been smooth. The hardest part was letting go of the control we actually had over the marketing. Obviously we'd had a lot to do with Smarter Websites and Marketing through our website and advertising, so they had a confirmed track record, but to actually let go of the visual identity to a degree of our business and trust that somebody else would understand the vision that I had and then execute it was a big step for me. Just to have that opportunity to work with the team who's so responsive— we'd actually previously had really poor partnerships with other marketing agencies that had left a bit of a poor taste in our mouth— to have a team so responsive, so active, and to roll that out actually took took the stress and the strain out of it for me, and it was a no-brainer then to keep going. And we have just had such a benefit from letting go of the content marketing in-house. It's freed me up to do what I do best, which is write systems and just focus on the day-to-day tasks that nobody else outside of the business could actually come in and do. So it's been really good.

It makes a lot of sense. When you say the vision, are you talking about the vision of the company, or are you talking about a more condensed version of that which plays into your marketing?

Definitely the more condensed version that plays into the marketing. Um, Carl and Nikki obviously have a vision. Carl pays the bills, so he makes the final decisions, but I'm very fortunate that he gives me a bit of free rein there, and I get to portray the company out to the greater market how I feel is the most authentic way, because that is actually at our core, our We just want to be authentic with our potential clients as much as possible, which then doubles back in that they really know, they feel they do know us.

And yeah, as far as Annamika's vision goes, she has been with the business for well over 10 years now and has been a part of it throughout the whole time. So she's well and truly ingrained in how we do things and has helped us become who we are and how we operate.

It sounds like there's a few layers of accountability, but also ownership here, which I'm intrigued to hear your perspective on, Karl, because Annamika, you've spoken about handing over control to an agency, but I guess, Karl, from your perspective as the owner and like person that started the company, you're handing over some of that authority to Annamika as well, but then she's handing that authority across to a marketing agency. So how have you grappled with handing over that control?

That was a bit of a step. That was something that concerned me because it's You know, I've learned in recent times how important marketing is. Through the APB, you continually hear margins are linked to marketing, and we found that. Look, I think the training that Anamika had had through APB, which she had, which actually enabled her to manage our marketing herself from the outset, give her a good understanding of what she was looking for. We actually relied really heavily on the knowledge that we gained from that, and I think that's to us in good stead.

What do you do on an ongoing basis to make sure from your perspective, you're confident and happy with what's going on from a marketing perspective?

I look at the dashboard. Obviously we have a CRM, which is, we use SmarterCRM as well. We have a dashboard in that and we look at what we're spending, our cost per lead and how many, how much inquiry we're getting. That's how we track it.

And Amiko, maybe I'll ask you and feel free to tell me you don't want to go into this detail, but I'm fascinated to hear, like, what are you targeting for a cost per lead? What does a lead look like from your perspective? Is that a qualified lead or do you have different definitions for that?

I probably should have refreshed a little harder on this before I jumped on the call.

No, that's okay.

We have actually been on a bit of a journey. So as you sort of briefly mentioned at the start, like, New South Wales is a bit of a, it's a high expensive place to build. We have found through feedback and trials on campaigns and that, that the inquiry level right where we are is actually quite low. So we at first went, okay, let's open it up. We had the discussion with Mark, let's open this up, see what we get in. Turns out we got a whole heap of nothing. Nothing was getting qualified. They were all really cheap. But then we took what we got from that, honed it down, and went, okay, this is what we need to get and do for a sales qualified lead. So we're fine. I think we've got a 26 7 to 50% conversion rate at the moment between what comes in and who we actually then go and meet, which is really great. So qualified leads are quite good now, obviously lower than we probably would call standard, but that's just part of our area. And we're looking into that every day and working with Smarter Websites to make sure that we're targeting the right areas and making sure we get the cream of crop in who actually inquires with us.

Yeah, that's a great distinction. I think you've kind of gone for a quality over quantity approach with— I think, to be honest, that's the natural journey building companies need to go on because you're focused on a very geographical area. It's a large investment to build a home or, you know, put on a second story, whatever you're doing. And it's not like you can run ads like an e-commerce store and get hundreds of leads that are ready to build a home.

Definitely not. Lovely.

So if you're getting more qualified leads but less lead flow, it's a better place to be than, you know, hundreds of unqualified leads that waste your time.

Yeah, absolutely.

Exactly. Yeah.

It's a very dim day for a home builder when you're receiving more expressions from people to come work for you than people asking for you to come work for them. So that's certainly what we found.

So when you talk about leads as well, It sounds like you're talking about, say, for example, someone searches, you know, second story build or something on Google and then they inquire on your website. But are you also attracting leads from the content you're producing and then nurturing them in your CRM too?

Yeah. So we've certainly been doing that for a long time through Instagram. We were really heavy on the Instagram side of things and found a lot of people clicking through on our like little link in bio, you know, engaging with us at a website level then and then actually inquiring. But more recently, we've actually thrown our focus over to Facebook and we're starting to see quite a solid pipeline build and start to mature, which is great.

Yeah, I'm just pulling up your Instagram on another, in another tab. I did look at it earlier, but I just wanted to refresh my memory. So what's your thinking behind Instagram, Animaker? Are you using that primarily as a a lead generation platform, or is it more so a way to just engage with the broader community?

I would have said that it's probably more of a reputation building platform, and that people originally looked at it more as our, like, work portfolio. But then as we started doing advertising, we got people earlier in the stage of where they were thinking, and then that's grown into probably more of a getting our name out there, the initial touchpoint.

I'm getting distracted here, but there's a pinned post, which is a review. I'm assuming maybe a Google review or something like that, but it's designed up with Second Story Review as the key headline. Love that positioning because it's like straight in your face as soon as you land on your Instagram page to tell you what you guys do. So that's really cool.

Pinned posts were a bit of a game changer for us. We like to make it a real banner and yeah, get as much of our information across as we can.

Karl, you mentioned that margins are linked to marketing. If you're open to it, could you share a little bit more about how you've seen the impact on your margins over time by investing in marketing?

Yeah, absolutely. When you don't have a lot of work in your pipeline and you need to keep things moving and pay your accounts, you're more inclined to take a job at a lower margin just so that you can continue to move forward, continue. You can pay your accounts and keep moving. When you have more, more marketing, you have more— basically have more opportunity and more, more choice in who you're actually going to build for. And we've really seen that play out where you have, you have a situation where you can basically choose the margin that you need to provide the good outcome and stick to it.

Yeah, very good. All right, so talk to me about your marketing award that you won at APB's dinner. What do you think, from your perspective, made you stand out from everyone else that, that was in the mix for that?

Pass that to Anna-Meghan because she did it.

I'll be completely honest, when I looked at the other finalists, I almost had a bit of imposter syndrome, um, because I just, I looked at him, I was like, holy dooley, these guys are amazing. I suppose what set us out apart that I would say is that our messaging is consistent and on point. And we are constantly just trying to get the same message across of this is who we are, this is what we want to help you with, this is how we can actually then achieve it, which is what we try and double down on.

Yeah, well, I think that example I gave from your Instagram page probably is reflecting your strategy as a whole. It's very specific. You know who you want to work with and that's just repeated consistently over and over again, which is fantastic. I mean, it does look nice as well. So So if that helps.

That's a plus.

All right.

I want to hear this from both of your perspectives. What's a final piece of advice you'd give to the other builders listening today if they were thinking about, you know, investing more in marketing or maybe they're struggling with lead flow and they're a bit unsure about working with an external agency? What would you say to them about your experience?

I'll speak to that. From my own experience, and as I've said before, I'm somebody with a trade background. And I had no comprehension of the importance of marketing. I felt that if I could do a good job and produce at a reasonable price and do the right thing by people, people would come and we would be busy. We were busy, but we didn't— not busy enough and not enough continuity. So I'd say whatever marketing is, very, very, very important part of the overall process. And whatever you can take action with at the moment, wherever you are now, take action at whatever level is appropriate for where you find yourself. If that's doing it for yourself, if that's making content and doing it yourself, if you can engage someone, but at whatever level, take action because you will see the benefits.

And Ameka, anything to add?

I suppose taking it from having done the marketing myself to overseeing it, if it all feels overwhelming, build yourself a fairway. Just, you just gotta see the touch points down the fairway and just hit that next point. And when you get there, go to the next one. If that is at the moment engaging a content marketing agency and having one meeting, just get to that point. Just book that one meeting. That's all you have to do today. And if that's doing it yourself, just put that one post together. Like, you just have to do one step at a time. It's actually not this whole big messy beast. To get started with.

Yeah, well, I love the way, Karl, you've given Animaker a whole bunch of responsibility to own this because I think that's a key ingredient for anyone being successful in what they do. The same way, Animaker, you've given complete control to Smarter to actually own your marketing as well. Without that autonomy, then people can't achieve great results. So I think that's come through really strongly in what you're doing.

Yeah, absolutely. It is what we've done. Yeah.

Awesome. Well, it's been fantastic to hear more about your story today. Thank you for coming on the show and bearing with me. There was a couple couple of technical issues we had to deal with, but really good to see you both again, and I appreciate you sharing a little bit more about how you've been working with Smarter and improving your marketing.

Thanks, mate.

Thanks, right, please.