How Companies Can Evolve Digitally to be More Competitive | Podcast Ep. 182 | Toolbox for the Trades

Hello, contractors, and welcome to Toolbox for the Trades. My name is Jackie Aubel, and today I am chatting with Jamie Adams, CRO at Scorpion, Service Titan's preferred digital marketing provider. We spoke about the unique marketing challenges facing contractors and local businesses in 2024, plus how to make the most out of your marketing budget. I hope you enjoy our conversation as much as I did. Jamie Adams, you are the Chief Revenue Officer at Scorpion, which is Service Titan's sole preferred digital marketing partner. Oh, my goodness. Today we're going to be talking one of my favorite topics, which is marketing. We're going to talk about how you understand your marketing ROI and how you can improve your marketing funnel for better results. I am so excited to get into it. Welcome to Toolbox for the Trades.

Thanks for having me, Jackie. I'm excited as well. Really looking forward to the conversation.

Yeah, so am I. But we are going to kick this off with one of my favorite icebreakers recently. Jamie, I would love to know, if you were a professional wrestler, what would your intro song be and why?

Oh, man, it's funny how you change the sport, right? I've always thought about baseball or I used to play college tennis. So, like, you know, if tennis were a loud, rowdy sport, what would it be? But, like, when you. When you throw in wrestling, like, the. The song completely changes.

Sure.

I would probably say that the first one that comes to mind is Sad but True by Metallica, just because it's got this, like, really big, like, thunderous, like, intro. And I just think that, like, the kickoff of, like, the drums and the guitar and the bass, the way that it happens, like, would be pretty powerful from, like, a wrestling walkout. Now, I'm not a wrestler, so, you know, people that. That are interesting may hear that and be like, that's stupid. But, yeah, I think that's what I would pick, though. Sad but True by Metallica, I think.

That'S an excellent choice. And actually, some people have asked me to revise this question to make it if you were a baseball player or if you were another type of sports player. So I love that you leaned into my wrestling suggestion. I think the wrestling component of this question, it makes it a little bit more performative, like you're debuting a Persona. So I love that you chose a Metallica song. I think that's really cool. So instead of talking about Metallica and wrestling, let's actually talk about marketing, which is what we're here for. I would love to know. You know, I always ask on this show, how did you get into the trades. But you were a little bit interesting because you are a marketing expert for local service businesses. And I'd love to know how you got into this line of work.

Yeah, I mean, it's a combination of I would always tell people, God and luck and crossing the right people's paths. Started my career in consulting at Deloitte. I was there for a few years, thought I was going to go to law school. Moved back to Louisiana, ran into a guy who had just started a company. He was a founder at a company called Reach Local, which is kind of the first digital agency, digital marketing agency, selling Google advertising to local businesses. This was back in 2007. He had been in consulting before, so we kind of had something in common. And I didn't really want to go to law school, but I wanted to live closer to Louisiana where I'm from, where I'm from. And so I was like, you know, maybe this will be more fun. So they were opening a sale or they had a sales office in Shreveport, my hometown. And I just, within the first week, I remember working in this job in sales. I never even sold anything or been in marketing for that matter. And I remember thinking, man, this Google thing is really going to be, it's going to change the world in a lot of ways. And I think that coupled with I grew up in a really small town in North Louisiana, like a thousand people, maybe 1500 people. The entire local economy, right, Is small business, right? So I've always had an affinity for small businesses and local businesses. Like I said, I mean, my entire local economy was fueled by that. My family were small business owners. So I think it was just a combination of kind of being a small town guy and having an affinity for technology. And then my paths crossed with the right people at the right time and I just kind of tripped into it. And yeah, from there I just, I fell in love with it, to be honest with you. I thought I started selling and marketing for. Started out in the automotive space, like working with auto dealerships and helping them kind of move their big yellow page budgets from yellow pages to Google and some of their billboard money from billboards into digital display and retargeting and things of that nature. And then just over time that evolved into different types of local service businesses. And I always tell people like most service based businesses that are local in nature, they, they have a lot of the same kind of marketing challenges, right? Like if you need a plumber, you don't really think about needing a plumber until you need a plumber, right? Right. You walk into your house and you've got a leak or your toilet's backed up, or you've got a pipe burst in your yard and it's spewing water out of the ground. That actually happened to me a few months ago. Like, you don't really think about needing a plumber until that. That moment in time.

Right.

And that's. That's really when all the marketing work that the plumbing business, kind of the groundwork that they've done, that's the moment of truth. Right. Google. Google used to call it the zero moment of truth or zmod. But anyway, those types of businesses have. It's the same challenge that an attorney has. Right. I don't need a. I don't need a car accident attorney unless I'm in a car accident and then I need one, and I need one right now. I don't need a dentist until my tooth hurts. Or maybe I think it's been a year or six months since I had my teeth cleaned. So the marketing motions for a lot of service businesses are pretty similar. And I actually think that there's a lot that each can kind of learn from one another as well. But, yeah, that's. I know that's a long answer, but that's how I ended up in. In kind of falling in love with marketing for. For local service businesses.

Amazing. And then from that first position at. What was the name of the company? Reach Local, I think.

Reach Local. Yep.

Yeah. So coming from Reach Local, how did you come become CRO at Scorpion?

Yeah. So, you know, I've been at Reach for a long time. We'd gone public in 2010, and I stayed a few years after. And at the end of 2013, I just decided that I was looking ready to do something different. And I had met the founder, CEO and my current boss, Rustin Kretz. We refer to him as Rue R Double O. I'd met him at Reach through Reach Local, and he and I just became friends. And he came to Dallas a few months after I'd been gone from ReachLocal. We had dinner and we talked about, you know, potentially me joining him. And he wanted to grow the business kind of more. More quickly. And we had a track record of growing really fast at Reach. And so, yeah, I joined the business in, you know, 20, the beginning of 2014, I guess it was in March of 2014. So I'm just past my decade.

Congratulations.

And yeah, thank you. It's been. It's been a lot of fun and been kind of a rocket ship ever since. So still enjoying it 10 years later. Still love the people, still love the mission that we're on. Our kind of theme is, you know, helping local businesses succeed so that they can run their best business. When we do that, obviously through, you know, digital marketing solutions and digital advertising solutions, and like I said, it's just, it's been a blast.

That's awesome. All right, very, very cool. So let's actually tap into your marketing expertise here because I know people are interested, they are listening. And as you know too, with a lot of these local businesses, so many of the owners, founders, the creators of the business end up being the ones who run the marketing, at least at first, until they partner with someone like Scorpion. And I think one of the big challenges is really understanding roi. So I'd love to hear some of your go to tips for making sure your customers are getting the most from their marketing budget.

Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that one of the big unlocks that companies like Service Titan have really contributed to greatly is helping businesses. Let's just use a plumber for an example. Helping a plumber kind of move their entire operation from antiquated offline paper into a digital format, right? And then once, once you've got your data kind of all in one place in a product, in a platform like, like Servicetitan, it allows for companies like Scorpion to come in who are, who are driving, you know, marketing for a lot of these same types of these same customers. And we can plug in all of our marketing technology and our advertising sources that we're really spending our customers money on to drive leads into their business. We can integrate with a tool like Service Titan and we can start to show them not just how much their dollar spent on Google LSAs or on Bing ads or on Meta is driving in terms of leads. But we can actually follow that lead all the way through the service Titan path, right? From booking to dispatch to estimate to invoice to paid customer. And we can actually show now, really, for the first time ever at scale, a business where the transaction historically happens offline.

Right.

Like when I buy a plumbing service, right, used to just write a check or give my credit card, they call it in. Well, now it kind of happens in the home on a digital tool and we can reconcile that entire process with what drove the lead in in the first place. So what we're really trying to do, and again, I think we'll talk more about this, but marketing and advertising is getting more competitive, which means it's getting more expensive.

Right.

So businesses really need to start thinking about moving how they assess the efficacy of a marketing dollar spent. They need to move from how many leads am I getting? Or what's my cost per lead? To how many customers am I driving? What's my cost per transaction? Like, what's my average revenue per ticket? Like, which channels are driving the best roi? And how can I spend more money in those channels and maybe less money in places that aren't driving roi? So, yeah, I think that we're finally in a place here in 2024 where companies like Service Titan and like Scorpion are kind of bringing the ability for these businesses to get a better hold on what. What is actually truly happening to drive ROI into their business through the marketing investments they're making.

Got it. I really love your answer. Let me summarize it because I think everyone should hear it. What I heard you say just now is, what's our cost per lead? Or how many leads do we get from this one marketing source? It sounds like that's really just scratching the surface in terms of analytics, analyzing your marketing budget, because the space is getting more and more competitive. If you have any takes on this, I would love to hear your thoughts on how with more private equity players entering the space now, especially for digital advertising, I'm hearing more and more contractors who are like, I can't compete with this. That is a little aside. So, like, because this is getting more competitive, we have. You can't just look at, we got, you know, 20 leads from Facebook this month, for example, or 100 leads from Facebook this month. You actually have to go through and you have to see, are those Facebook leads actually converting? Are those Facebook leads turning into longtime customers? Are they big ticket? Has that improved our average ticket? So you have to get a lot more granular with the data, and it's not quite as black and white as it might have been even just a couple years ago. Is that right?

Yeah, I mean, I think. I think it's not just as black and white. I don't think that businesses had the systems or the tools or the software in place to even kind of carry it through that next stage of what's my true acquisition cost? Right. And I think that there are other factors at play. Right. I mean, you mentioned private equity dollars, and the fact that, you know, the amount of money that's being invested in some of these businesses is really making it more competitive for the smaller businesses in those markets. Right. So that makes it even more imperative that those smaller players are like, again, leveraging technology to better assess dollar in dollars out, what's my total ROI on my investment and then how can I break that down and optimize it across the different channels that I may be investing in throughout my entire digital marketing or advertising strategy?

Yeah, let's stay on that real quick only because this is something I've heard a ton and I think our listeners would appreciate it. When you hear from small businesses that are that say their closest competitor just got acquired by private equity so now they're dealing with private equity dollars in the digital space and they're panicking. What's something that you usually say to them?

Well, I mean I think number one, I'm not a big victim card player, right. So sometimes you get the businesses that like say well hey, like it is what it is. So like let's, let's think about what we do to adjust. So I mean I think that there are things that's where you have to really double down and make sure that you're doing some of the basics well.

Right.

So I would start with hey, are you, are you optimizing your local presence on Google specifically around how you show up in the maps and how you show up organically in organic search? Right. Because we know that those are the most cost effective leads. If you can get in that top three map pack on Google or in those top four or five organic listings like that is where you're going to get the most ROI period from a digital investment. So how are you doing in those areas? Right, so I would look at from the map pack, is your Google business profile well optimized? Do you have really good reviews? Do you have a good process for getting more good reviews? Are you like taking advantage of, you know, reputation inside of service titan? So I would start there, right? And then I would start thinking, okay, like what are the known cost effective places that you could compete for? Those leads that are being maybe cannibalized by digital ad dollars From Private Equity LSAs is probably a great place to start, right? Spending money in Google LSAs if you've got an existing customer base, tapping into your existing customer base, right? Email marketing to them, SMS marketing to them, those are other places where you can again you can achieve some good low hanging fruit from a cost perspective and then hopefully over time you start incrementally getting more revenue from those, you know, more cost effective. Maybe some volume challenges like you're not going to get the same volume as a private equity that's spending a ton of money but you know, you can get some incremental gains, pocket some of that revenue that you're getting and then start to reinvest some of that into bigger marketing budgets over time.

Got it. Great answer. And these are all things that I think I've got planned to cover with you today. So let's, let's dig into it. I want to talk though before some like we get more into remarketing to existing customers and some of the other things you said about the importance of attribution. So I've heard this a lot in my years at Service Titan. I love how you're, you just passed a decade at Scorpion and I'm going on, I'll be, I think I'll be seven years at the end of this year in August, which is crazy. Thank you. So talk to me about the importance of attribution now. Like if you're a small business or I shouldn't say small business, I. No business is small in my opinion. No business is small until a bunch of trades. But say you're a business that's doing in home, maybe coupled with like a consultant or two. How are you, how do you recommend folks keep their attribution super buttoned up so they can really get that insightful data?

Yeah, I mean look, attribution is a double edged sword, right? Like you want it, you need it, right? But at the same time it's still really, really difficult to do multi touch attribution.

Right.

So that's like one thing that we're really kind of focused on at Scorpion is, you know, you can look at last touch attribution when last touch would be somebody goes and clicks on a Google Ad, they go to your website, they call you and they book. Well then you know you're going to attribute that lead and eventually that customer acquisition to that Google Ad.

Right.

But what if they first went to your Google business profile and they saw you had great reviews.

Right.

And then they googled your name and then they saw, and they saw an ad for your name and then they clicked the ad. Well then there was these other things that kind of led them to that point.

Right.

So I think you have to take attribution today. Like again, some of it is better than none of it. Right. So you want to look at, you certainly want to pay attention to last click attribution. I mentioned that businesses on page one of Google organically, whatever money you're spending to get there, you're going to see from a digital perspective, you're going to see your best ROI from that. Right. So if you can get in that top three in the maps of the top five organically, that's like the, that's the creme de la creme of, of ROI from a channel attribution perspective.

Right.

The next best place to kind of go would be probably Google LSA ads in most cases because it's a fixed cost per lead product today.

Right.

So I think that's kind of the next like you're going to see good ROI there. From there you want to think about. Honestly, I wouldn't have said this three years ago, probably even two years ago. You really want to think about your brand, right? Because at the end of the day, the more well known your brand is, right Then the more people are going to go to Google and they're going to search your brand. Instead of searching plumber near me, they're going to search Jamie's plumbing company because they know my brand right now. Brand, in order to get there takes a big investment. Like you need to spend money in TV ads perhaps or CTV or you know, social video or billboards.

So rewrapping your trucks, new uniforms, wrapping.

Your truck 100%, all those things, right. So but I would say look, if you can, if you've got a good brand, spending money on brand and search, again, a lot of companies mix those things up. Like a lot of marketing companies, they'll run your Google Ad search and they'll kind of throw in brand as part of the broader campaign. When brand, we actually separate it so we can show, hey, this is your Google Ads ROI just on people looking for your brand. And only a small amount of your budget should really go there because people looking for your brand, they're going to find you organically in most cases. Right. So do you want to spend money in brand? And then I'd move up to the broader search and then from there like into meta and Facebook and some of the more upper funnel type of advertising. But again, one thing that's really, really critical when you think about attribution is making sure that you've got the means to track it all the way through.

Right?

So you mentioned out of home and you mentioned maybe working with some salespeople or consultants, right? Well, make sure that in those cases, like let's take a roofer as an example, right? You've got a roofer and they're, they're spending money in digital marketing, so they've got money in Google Ads and they're spending money in SEO and they're doing some meta. They've also got a sales team and in Dallas the last few days we've had horrible storms, right. So I have had multiple roofing people come by my house wanting to assess my roof. Right. Free estimate. Like you need to make sure that you're roofing your salespeople there. They've got business cards with a call tracking number on it, right. With a personalized URL. So if someone looks at the business card and they go to the link on the business card, you can actually attribute that to, oh, they must have got my business card because that's the unique URL that's on my business card. So those things, like little things like that can attribute to some of that offline marketing that you can eventually again follow your leads all the way through the path to becoming customers and make sure you got a good handle on at least what that last action or last click attribution was before they actually bought from you.

Yeah, attribution is so tricky. And as someone who's been in marketing for my entire professional career, I can tell you like it is very hard. And a lot of companies that I've worked for, service titan, including, can struggle with attribution. It's really, really tough. But the, at the end of the day, those results that you get can really inform your marketing plan, which I also want to talk to you about because I know you're really enthusiastic about having a marketing plan right in place. So talk to me about what are the key elements of a good marketing plan?

Yeah, I mean, again, I think my answer would have been different if you'd asked me this question a year ago. I would have said, well, you need to make sure that you're just dominating your search budgets, right? Like you need to make sure that you, you know, go to the low hanging fruit where people are looking for you and go compete there for those leads because those are bottom of funnel and they're ready to buy. I think in today's time, like businesses need to be thinking more about brand first. They need to be thinking about how can I tell my story through all of my assets? My car wraps, right. My TV commercials, my website videos about my business, Right. You really need to be thinking about, like, how can I really tell a story about my business and my company that perhaps makes me a little bit different than the guy or the gal down the street that I'm competing for business with.

Right?

So I would say number one, start with brand. And look, people hear brand and I think that they all of a sudden think, oh man, that's, that's a lot of money. And I Don't have money to spend just in brand, but there are just some little blocking and tackling things that you can do to invest in brand in the beginning, right? You can wrap your trucks, which you should do, or wrap your vans, whatever you have, right? You should wrap your, your, your trucks. You should build a really great website, right? Because your website is the one asset online that you own end to end, right? Like you own the visual content, you own the textual content, you own the video, right? So those are things that are again, all can kind of contribute to, you know, telling your story to be a little bit differently, right? So I think that you've got to, number one, establish a brand identity and make some investments there. Number two, I think you got to deploy your dollars in the places where you can get leads and customers the quickest. And again, I always start there with like search engines, right? And you need a search engine strategy that includes an organic strategy and a paid strategy. So that's investing in SEO and investing in Google Ads, Google LSAs, Bing Ads. I think there's a lot of value in investing in some of these directories like Thumbtack and homeadvisor and Angie, again, like you need to spend money where customers are already looking for your services. And then again, over time, the more sophisticated you get, you can really start to think about how do I make bigger investments into more brand related brand centric advertising, social video. Maybe you want to invest in some type of TikTok strategy where you deploy and teach your technicians how to, you know, film themselves in video and you kind of create a TikTok strategy or you do some CTV. I mean we're starting to see big customers that are really starting to invest more in ctv. So again, I think I would start with basic brand fundamentals first, right? Make sure that you've got a good story to tell and that you can do some basic blocking and tackling through car wraps, your website, etc. Low hanging fruit through a search strategy, right? How do I get leads quickly and then from there kind of move up the funnel and think about how you can spend more money promoting the brand that you developed in the first place.

I think that's excellent advice. And my follow up question here is before you answer this, I just want us to kind of set context. So I want to hear like how often should a plan be revised or how often should a plan be adjusted, right? But I'm also thinking, as you were talking, I was thinking about how we launched this podcast right at the beginning of the pandemic in April 2020. And at that time, a lot of the service titan customers, a lot of our user base, primarily residential service and replacement, you know, they were swimming in leads because of just the nature of what was happening. And it's so interesting that just four years later, like you said, as you were telling me this answer, you're like, I would, I wouldn't have said this two years ago, but now I'm saying this and it's just making me think about how valuable it is to work partner with folks like Scorpion if to do marketing because I can't imagine if I was a business owner trying to keep on top of all of these trends, all these marketing trends while also trying to run my business. And I don't know, just, it's got me. You got my wheels turning, Jamie, so thank you so much for that.

No, look, I mean, it's a good, it's a good call out. I mean, I think that everybody's seen the market tightening right now.

Right.

I mean, it is not the same market as it was even a year ago and it's certainly not even close to the same as it was around the time of the pandemic and for the couple of years post pandemic in the home services business sector specifically. So, yeah, I mean, again, I think that the downside is, is it's gotten more competitive because there are, there's less consumer demand right now. Right. So that lower funnel is kind of being drowned out heavily by your bigger spenders, a lot of who are private equity backed.

Right.

But at the same time, I think that this is kind of the, also the window of opportunity where if you're a smaller guy or girl or gal trying to compete for those, for those leads, this is an opportunity for you to kind of think about your strategy a little bit different and maybe double down a little bit more and how you think about your brand and how you leverage some of these, some very traditional ways of, of marketing or advertising that kind of got drowned out by lower funnel search stuff for a long time.

Yeah, really interesting. All right, so, well, with that being said, like how often do you, do you recommend? So say someone's listening, they're like, okay, this is a great plan. I'm going to start putting it together. I build the plan, I implement the plan. How often do I go back and make adjustments to the plan or see if the plan is working?

Yeah, I mean, look, I think you're always going to be optimizing on the tactical, right, like moving dollars from Google Ads over to LSAs because you're getting better leverage from one versus the other. You know, I think from a strategic perspective, right. I mean, I think that you really got to spend, you know, six to 12 months, like, really leaning into a strategy, unless it's just not working at all and you're upside down.

Right.

Then everything else needs to be just kind of incremental optimizations. You know, the way that we kind of think about it at Scorpion is we try to push our customers to really reevaluate and reassess their kind of digital presence every 18 to 36 months. And again, we're making incremental optimizations along the way. But, like, we have kind of philosophy at Scorpion where we want to redesign our customers websites every two years.

Wow. Right?

So. So, yeah, like, some. That's not a. That's not a rule. Like, we don't. You don't have to do it. Like, if you're killing it right, then why change what's broken? But what we've seen over the course of a lot of years in doing this is that every couple of years, you really need to kind of refine sometimes pretty dramatically your digital strategy. So, again, I think six months is kind of the minimum.

Right?

Again, unless something is just not working at all and you're upside down, six months is the first time where you need to kind of look and say, okay, well, is this really working? Or do we really need to make some big strategic shifts in our strategy? But more oftentimes, like I said, it's in that 18 to 36 months where you really got to start kind of looking. Okay, what else do we need to be doing dramatically differently to maybe, you know, exponentially increase the results we're getting?

Got it. Got it. Okay. I'm like, you have so much information, and I'm just like, debating, like, where to go next. And I'm looking at the time because I. I want to make sure that I get as much information out of you as possible. I know one thing we talked about when you and I first discussed you coming on the show is this idea of making incremental changes to someone's marketing funnel. See, macro impact on their business overall. So can you tell me a little bit about maybe some of these incremental changes that folks can make to see some results?

Yeah, I think this is. Again, this is kind of getting back into the more important than ever conversation right now because of how the market is, right? I mean, the market's just down relative to what it had been. So that means every lead becomes infinitely more valuable than maybe it was a year or two ago. So I think this is where marketing really needs to kind of marry with operations more effectively than it has in the past. And operations I would put in like the, the sales conversation as well. So like, let's just start, like let's start with the channels that you're spending money in.

Right.

And I'll just stay to the digital channels for now. So you need to think about where can you get the biggest bang for your buck from a leads perspective. Right. Again, organically is great. Organic search is a great place. LSAs are a great place. Let's stay there for a second. So you get a lead from one of those channels to go to your website, right? And here's what I mean by, you know, maximizing every stage of the funnel. So you got them to click on your website, the next stage, right, is getting them to actually contact you. Well, historically, you know, the only ways, up until a year or two ago, the only ways that people did that at scale was they pick up the phone and call or they submit this form on a website or they email on the website.

Right?

Well, what we believe now is that you need to give customers as many ways to contact you as humanly possible. So that means online scheduling, right? That means AI chat or some type of live person chat on your website. That means the ability to text you. That means the ability to just request a call back. That means they can still pick up the phone and call you. They can still submit that form. So every additional kind of opportunity that you give someone to contact you at this stage incrementally increases your ability to capture that click from an ad or from organic search and convert them into a lead.

Right.

So what happens then? Okay, well now, now I've got them. They either called me or they submitted a form or they scheduled something online. This is where operations really has to make sure that they're buttoned up.

Right?

So your CSR organization, whoever's answering your phone or booking appointments and getting them on the technician schedule, your follow up processes, your client experience processes. If you're taking the phone call, they've got to be really, really tight because again, you're in the next stage. You now you got to incrementally increase that by a couple of percentage points. The ability to take that lead and that phone call or that scheduled appointment and turn them into a dispatched deal. And then of course, down funnel you get somebody in the home, make sure that they're well trained, that they're able to actually sell the value and why they should choose you and they should actually hire you to do the work. So anyway, there's just things that you can do incrementally around each of those stages to increase the percentage of people that you're moving down the funnel that eventually become customers and buy from.

You got it. So making those slight improvements at every customer stage of the journey, essentially. Every stage of the customer journey, correct?

Yeah, that's right. That's right. Moving up one place organically from the four spot to the three spot gets you a few percentage increase in leads or clicks to your website. Multiple ways for people to contact you on your website get you a slightly higher percentage to the next stage. Right. So you do these little incremental things along the way and all of a sudden, right, like your ROI looks dramatically different over the course of a couple of months. So, yeah, we believe strongly in that. And I could not state it more like the need for marketing investments to be paired with and partnered with sales and operations in these businesses is more important and more critical than it ever has been, at least in my time in this space.

Yeah, 100% agree. Because if you have a lead that comes in through a specific marketing campaign, that's like promising a specific type of service or a specific type of experience, and if you're not delivering on that experience, that's going to impair your brand, impair a lot of things. So you have to be more buttoned up and more communicating, communicating on all sides of the business than ever before, which is very tough.

Exactly. It is tough. It is tough.

It's so tough. So I know that you and the team at Scorpion are Marketing Pro experts, service titans, Marketing Pro. And we had mentioned this a little bit before, Marketing Pro really helps folks remarket to the existing customer base. So tell me why that is so important. And I think given the context of our conversation, it's like, yeah, even more important now, especially if you're competing within the private equity space.

Yeah, I think, I think one of the challenges of, of marketing, or at least the way that a lot of these residential service businesses have approached marketing in the past is they, they really think about it through the lens of new customer acquisition.

Right.

They don't think about marketing through the lens of actually how do I drive more value or deliver more value or incremental value into my existing customer base.

Right.

Or leads that have, that have expressed interest, that maybe didn't buy from me, that maybe would buy from me next time. So Marketing Pro is a great tool.

Right?

That enables these businesses to do that. I think the challenge that they have, that these businesses have with this tool is that most of them are just not marketers.

Right.

They don't have a great grasp on how to leverage it. So, you know, what we've really tried to partner with Service Titan to do is a remind all these plumbing companies of the tool that they've got at their disposal or H vac companies or roofers or whatever business we're talking about, and then also provide them with a service that enables, that unlocks the value of that tool.

Right.

And one of the things that we've seen since we started leveraging Marketing Pro for our shared customers is that it is highly ROI positive. Every time, like, every time, like, we have not had a single instance where we've deployed a Marketing Pro service where a customer looks back and they're like, wait, this isn't driving incremental revenue. This isn't worth the investment that I'm making. Because at the end of the day, I mean, like, you've already gone through the trouble. You spent hundreds, in some cases thousands of dollars to acquire a customer that bought from you. Maybe one, oftentimes one time, right. You've done the hard work. You've got their contact information. In the case of Service Titan, right, where Marketing Pro is just a beautiful tool, it's integrated with the rest of Service Titan. So you know what they bought, how much they spent, when they bought what they bought.

Right.

All that information can be used to predict when's the right time for me to maybe ping this customer about a potential problem they may be having or something that may be coming up that they're not even sure that they're going to have to deal with yet. And it's honestly, it's, it's really, really cost effective to do that versus going and acquiring a new customer.

Yep, 100%.

So, yeah. So, I mean, I think we're shouting at the rooftops to our customer base right now, right now especially is, hey, take advantage of your database. Take advantage of the database of customers that have purchased from you in the past or leads that you spent money trying to acquire that didn't purchase, but that you've got the contact information for and create marketing campaigns by way of Marketing Pro to go reach those people. And like I said, I mean, it's been, it's kind of been a match made in heaven so far. Every piece of feedback that we're getting from customers from businesses that are taking advantage of, of our Marketing Pro services has just Been overwhelmingly positive.

That's great. So again, Scorpion is Service Titan's sole preferred digital marketing partner. So can you tell me a little bit about how the partnership works for anyone who's interested in working with Scorpion with, you know, Service Titan, Marketing Pro?

Yeah. So if you are a Marketing Pro user or Marketing Pro subscriber today, as a, again, we'll just take a plumbing business by way of an example and you feel like maybe you're not getting the most of that tool. Maybe you don't have the time or the internal expertise to actually put it to use. To develop email campaigns, to write the email content, to really mine the database, to make sure that you're sending out the relevant content to the relevant audience in the database. Then, yeah, connect with us at Scorpion and we've got a service. So we actually have different tiers of service that you can subscribe to with us where we'll actually take that lift off of your plate and we'll do all of the work for you and we'll just show you how many people got your email or, you know, future state SMS or your direct mail campaigns. You know, what leads came in or were generated from that. And again, the beautiful thing about Service Titan, you can see it all the way through two transactions. You can actually see how many jobs are booked, how many estimates were created, how many invoices were developed and eventually how many people paid you for a service that you got through leveraging the Marketing Pro tool.

Amazing. And we will link those resources in the show notes of this podcast if anyone wants to check them out. So I'm sure, Jamie, you were excellent here just in sharing some insight and some giving some direction for our listeners here. When it comes to marketing in 2024, you actually have a podcast of your own called the Franchise Edge and I would love to know where can people find it and who should listen specifically.

Yeah, yeah, thanks for. Thanks for mentioning that. Yeah. So we've got podcast at Scorpion called the Franchise Edge. It is obviously by way of definition, it's kind of the target audience is franchise businesses. We work with a lot of franchise businesses. Service Titan works a lot of franchise businesses. So I would say franchise is kind of the number one target. But look, there's a lot of relevant content around digital marketing and sales for service based businesses that's packed in that into that podcast. One again that we did recently was with a company called Pro Nexus, which is kind of a call center company. So they do a lot of call center for, for service based businesses. Lots of interesting stats on trends that they've seen as the markets tighten. So yeah, but you can find it. You can go to YouTube and search the Franchise edge. You can go to Scorpion Co and find it on our website. And of course you can look on Apple or Spotify or wherever you get your podcast and just search the Franchise.

Edge and you'll find it amazing. Jamie, is there anything we should have talked about that we didn't get a chance to.

No, I don't think so. I mean, I, I just, I would say, you know, it's been a really great relationship with Service Titan the last several months. We're doing a lot of really interesting integrations between Service Titan and the different tools insert a service titan and the technology that we build for marketing purposes and our advertising tools. So lots of really things again that we're looking to do just to make customer acquisition revenue generation more cost effective for people in the home services space.

Awesome. Awesome. All right, Jamie, last question of the podcast about you personally. I want to know what are you reading, what are you watching, what are you listening to right now? Any recommendations?

I'll give you. I read a bunch. I just finished a book called Where Men Win Glory. It's by John Krakauer. He wrote Into Thin Air and he wrote a couple of other books, but it's about, honestly, it's about Pat Tillman, if you're familiar with Pat Tillman, football player that joined the army shortly after 911 and was killed in action unfortunately by friendly fire. But really, really, really great book. Well written book on a more kind of like marketing and sales perspective. I'm reading a book called the Jolt Effect, which is great and if you're in sales, I highly recommend it. And then last but not least, in terms of things I'm listening to, I listen to a handful of podcasts, pretty religiously. Favorite podcast over the last several months has been all in podcast.

Oh yeah, I've heard great things about.

It and it's, it's great. I mean it's, it's lots of different topics. Business, politics, cryptocurrency. It kind of covers a pretty broad spectrum. But those are just some kind of the, those are the go tos right now, I guess.

Amazing. All right, well, thank you Jamie so much for coming on Toolbox for the Trades and talking to me a bit about some marketing best practices for our service contractors and about the Scorpion and Service Titan partnership. I really appreciate the time and hopefully you can come back sometime.

Thanks Jackie. It's been a pleasure. Thanks.