EP #19 - The Marketing Playbook (with Harry Papas)

Harry, thanks so much for joining us, mate. It's been great to get you on here. Well, did you want to kick off maybe by just letting us know what your role is at Local Guys?

Yeah.

Give us a little bit of information on that.

Sure. So I am the marketing and IT manager at the Local guys.

Yeah.

So I essentially oversee all of our digital marketing efforts from the support center.

Yeah.

And also manage our digital marketing team. Beautiful.

Okay. Very busy role.

Yeah.

And how many people do we have in the marketing department currently?

Including myself? Four. Yep. So there's myself, then there's Michael, who is our web developer and IT support for the franchise partners. I've got Lisa, who's our marketing assistant. She handles a lot of our social media and written content for the websites and other marketing collateral.

Yep.

And then we've got Harvey, who's our latest recruit. Yep. He is our digital content producer handling our photography and videography for the entire franchise network.

Yeah. Beautiful. So lots.

There's a lot.

A lot of plates for yourself to be constantly spinning.

Yeah.

Which I know you've always got your hands full. I know. We come out of meetings all the time. We've come out of a meeting today which I think went for two, three hours. Yeah. And yeah, it's just we've got this, this, this, this, and then we come back next week and all of those things are done.

Yeah. Yeah.

It's amazing.

The to do list never clears, I'll say that. So I can't say, like, it's better to be busy. It's always better to be busy.

Why do you think we've got such a strong focus at the local guys on digital marketing specifically?

I would say it's our biggest strength with what we do just because it allows our franchise partners to not have to worry about that side of things. Yeah. In some, like in cases they can if they choose to. And we definitely encourage for them to have their own local social media pages. Yeah. But as for the big ticket items like websites, advertising, things like that. Yeah. It's easier for them to. To not have to worry about it because they know that we've got our finger on the pulse and we're constantly checking, changing, optimizing, depending on how the market goes. Basically, it's one of those things that it never just stays put. There's always things changing.

I guess that's one of the things when you buy a franchise is you might have been working for a place for the last 10, 20 years. You've never done one day of marketing in your life. And you don't want to have to become an expert in that overnight. So that's why a lot of people buy a franchise.

Yes.

So that they've bought into a business that specializes in that and they have their finger in the pulse and they understand all of that side of things. What are some of the different types? Because I definitely agree with you. I think that in 2025 now having your finger on digital marketing, specifically over a lot of different types of marketing.

Yeah.

It's probably best bang for buck and it allows us to scale that, you know, all throughout the country and all throughout New Zealand and beyond. So. And it's one of the most complicated. What's some of the different types of digital marketing that are out there?

Yeah. So it's in a way broken down into two categories here. So we've got our digital marketing and then local area marketing.

Yeah.

Support center primarily focuses on the digital marketing aspect and that includes organic SEO and that can be location specific pages.

Yeah. So that's how high we are on Google.

Yeah. A certain keyword. So if you're talking like test and tag, Adelaide, Pest control Adelaide, things like that.

Yeah.

And then you've got.

Why is it called organic?

Well, it's because of the way that the Google search results pages are structured. So towards the top you'll have your like paid ads.

Yep.

And then occasionally you'll see the Google Maps section and then just the other links underneath. That's the organic section. So just pages.

It's not a paid one.

No, they're just. It depends. I mean there's many factors that go into it to be on page one, but yeah, that's primarily what that is. Yeah. The organic way. Yep. Aside from those location pages, we also have blog content and that is based on specific topics that people would be searching.

Yep.

Probably the best example off top of my head would be, you know, like test and tag colors. Yep. So for example, the colors that they use to represent the different quarters of the year.

Yep.

That's definitely a big performing blog on our site.

Yep.

And then aside from that, we have the paid advertising. So we primarily use Google Ads for that. But you know, you can also do like Facebook ads, things like that too.

So that's. I click on. It costs $10, whatever it costs. And that just gets me that paid $10 to get that person to my website, basically. Yeah.

Pay per click marketing.

Yep. Yeah. And we do. We do that side of things for the franchise partners.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we manage that all in house and discuss that constantly yeah. And then there's also the social media. So as I touched on before, the franchise partners can have their own, you know, Facebook, Instagram pages. Yeah. To promote themselves in their local area.

But they don't have to. We have, we have one for them.

But we also have our main local guys pages that we manage and that we update constantly.

Yeah. And then they can share our content, their own ones and they can repurpose it.

Things like that too. Yeah, sure. Which is good.

Yeah.

So that's the digital aspect and then the, I guess local marketing, which is what the franchise partners do and that can include, you know, business card drop offs, fly drops, things like that. Advertising in like local sports clubs, local sponsorships, things like that.

Yeah.

Within their territory that they purchase.

Okay. Okay. So let's say I'm a brand new franchise partner and as we said before, I've never done a day in my life of, of any marketing or anything like that. What does that look like for me? I'm about to join. I've just paid my money or I've just committed that I'm about to join and all the rest of it. How am I, how does that work from, from the marketing team's perspective of how do you get ready for that new franchise partner to make sure that when they do get started that they're going to have work coming in.

Yeah. So that starts about six weeks before and that is essentially when we start the onboarding marketing campaign. So that includes doing digital content creation, which is those location pages that I touched on earlier, blog pages as well. And then also setting up the Google Ads campaigns.

Yep.

So we will deep dive that, do keyword research, things like that, just to make sure that we are, that the franchise partners will get the maximum value out of the efforts we put into it.

And that's quite technical, isn't it? Because there's a lot of aspects that go into that. There is backlinking and it's on page SEO and off page SEO.

Yeah.

How fast the website loads and all that stuff.

There's so many different things and you know, we're very lucky in the sense that we have a lot of industry leading tools that we use. Yeah. So it's one of those things that, you know, we know we work with the best so we know we're going to get the most important information.

Okay.

So we can deliver that to them when they join.

And how long did you say that takes once they've committed?

Yeah, it's about six weeks.

Six weeks.

We start six weeks before training okay.

So my understanding is that you guys have been working on that today. We've got some new franchise partners starting next week. Yeah. So that. So what's been happening today? They've been doing all of those sorts of things to get it ready for those.

Yeah, pretty much. It's been mostly focusing on the organic side of things. So, like those location pages.

Yep.

Um, so the ads are. I've scheduled to do them later in this week, so they'll be ready to go. Because they're generally a bit quicker to set up than the organic side. Yeah, so, yeah, that'll. That's sort of where we're at now.

Okay. So that six weeks stuff happens. You do all the technical on page, off page SEO tasks and all the rest of it, getting it ready for them to be up and running. And then what happens from the franchise partner's perspective when they start their training.

Yeah. So they are pretty much given all the tools and advice that they need to be able to do their local area marketing, which is what they focus on. We prepared all the tools that they need, we have.

So they are just all like the different ideas and the different.

Yeah, different ideas.

Local area marketing that they can do.

Yeah, yeah. So it'll be like we give them local area marketing maps.

Yep.

So basically what that is is a custom map online which they can access from any time and it basically has their territory mapped out, which is really cool. And we go through and pre fill roughly a hundred or so different businesses of different categories. So there might be hospitality, retail, education, things like that.

Depending on the.

Depending on the area, depending on what's within the area.

It's got all the contact information and the business information.

Yeah. Phone numbers, emails, websites, things like that.

Yeah.

Addresses. And then they can sort of essentially start there. Yeah. And then they can add to it, they can put extra ones in, take them out, things like that. Yeah. And they can all track that. And that's all linked within their scorecards. Yeah, that we give them as well.

So tell me about scorecards, what are they?

It's a pretty great project which I was lucky enough to be a part of in the inception of it.

Yeah.

So basically they are a dashboard that we built out and it tracks different metrics of their business. So mostly financial as well.

Yeah. So what sort of financial metrics?

Like revenue, average transaction value, conversion rates.

Yep.

But then there's also the marketing part of it too. So they'll be able to see the amount of leads that they got from SportsCenter versus their own local Area marketing and then they'll meet with their. Well, these are updated monthly as well.

Yep, sure.

So at the beginning of every month we put in all data from the previous month and then the franchise partners will meet every quarter with their franchise support consultant.

Yep.

And basically coach them on different aspects of the scorecard.

So that gives them the dashboard, that gives them all the data. And then the franchise support consultant who look at a bunch of these from, you know, the whole division and all the rest of it can say, your ATV is sitting at XYZ number average transaction value. You're about a hundred and a hundred dollars less than the everyone else in the division or, you know, whatever the number is.

Yeah.

Maybe we need to start looking at things like pricing. Maybe we need to look at why you're lower than everyone else. Yeah, same with conversion rates, etc.

Getting from the marketing aspect, like let's say their local area marketing is, you know, an average lesser compared to the network overall, let's say. Sorry, the division overall, I should say.

Yeah.

There's even been times where the franchise support consultant has even come to us and said, you know, what other ideas could we do? And so then we sort of feed that information back to them to pass on to the franchise partner, which is really good. So yeah, we're. We're always there even if we're not there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think that it's not one silver bullet. There's layers of all of these different things that we do on top of each other that ultimately get the, the franchise partner through that first year and ultimately being successful.

If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.

That's right.

So yeah, I think that's the benefit is that we have our finger on the pulse with all this stuff and, you know, we're sort of watching every number that we possibly can.

You have to be a bit obsessed with it.

You do, you do. Definitely. Keeps you on your toes, the marketing stuff. I'll say that.

All right, so following on from that, what about franchise partner meetings? I know that we have them. How often are they? Does the marketing team attend those? How does that sort of work?

So they're every six weeks and yes, we do attend them.

And how are they conducted on Google Meet?

So they're all online, all franchise partners across the division. So Oz and Anz as well all jump on and we basically just feed all the info. What's happening from the marketing aspect. We talk about results.

Yep.

So that might be, you know, website analytics, for example. It might be, you know, Projects we're working on to get them involved and get them excited about what we're doing. So there's some, like, new website additions that we're currently working on, which is going to get them involved, which is really cool.

Yeah.

So, yeah, this is many different things, but it just allows us to sit down with everyone there and say, hey, guys, this is what we're doing. You know, we'll need your help on this as well. Can you give us this information and, you know, we'll build it out for you, basically.

Yeah.

Again, taking that stress off them that they don't have to actually build it.

Yeah.

Which is, you know, the main benefit of joining franchise.

And I think the thing is, from the franchise partners perspective, you know, all they sort of see is, you know, of contributing a little bit of money each week to the marketing fund and, you know, paying lead fees and stuff like that. And they don't see all the dashboards and all the tools and everything that we kind of see in the background. So I think it's been. I know it was one of your initiatives or yourselves and the marketing team's initiatives to wanting to be getting involved in those franchise partner meetings so that we can show the results and show what we're working on in the back end. And when you can see the website traffic and all the analytics and all the rest of it trending upwards, it's a really good sign. And I think that I know that the franchise partners really enjoy that aspect of it. Of. Okay, we can see where it's going. We can understand the big picture of where we're going. Because particularly, let's say any marketing really, but particularly, say SEO, it's not a quick win.

No.

It's a long play.

Oh, I wish it was. Sometimes it's one of those things that it's. Again, like I was saying before, you have to have. You need to be knowing all the intricate details of it. And of course, you know, Google is Google. They like to make life hard, but it's only because it. The ones that are at the top of. The ones that have their finger on the pulse.

Yeah.

And the ones that are sort of acting accordingly.

Yeah.

Because if you don't go with the flow, you get left behind.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think the thing about it as well is it's. It's not about doing some amazing thing once. It's just about consistency every day over a very long period of time.

Yeah.

Um, and you've just got to have that resilience to be able to constantly provide that consistency over a long period of time.

I was actually saying to someone at home a few weeks ago, just like explaining SEO and it sort of went over their head. And I was. And the way I sort of broke it down was like, SEO is like fitness. You're not going to see the result after one workout.

Yeah.

You need to constantly work at it.

Yeah.

And then you'll see the benefit over time.

Yeah, yeah. And that's. And that's hard conversations sometimes with a lot of people.

Oh, yeah. You know, the amount of times I've had to explain Google's algorithm and all that sort of stuff, and it's just.

Yeah, yeah.

Trying to break it down. But it's just, you know, I guess that having that reassurance and being like, it's okay, like, we're working on it. We already know.

Yeah.

Because there's times where, you know, someone will query something or even yourself will query something and we'll be like, we're already on it. We're good.

All right, so tell me a little bit more about some of the stuff that the marketing team are working on currently. Video you mentioned was a new hire that we've had in the team, which is super exciting. What's some of the stuff that's happening on that side of things?

A lot. I feel like Harvey's getting pulled in all different directions at the moment, but. No, he is. There's many different projects there. A lot of it has to do with our learning management system and improving all of our video content for our franchise partners. So in their learning management system, we'll have 4K produced videos of each service across all divisions. So then if a franchise partner may have not have done a particular service in a while, they can just jump on their phone or on their app that we have and basically watch the video and be able to perform the service confidently.

So a learning management system is just basically the how to guide of how to run a successful business.

Pretty much.

And it's an app and it's a web login as well. And all of our franchise partners from all different divisions have 4k videos. All of the processes and procedures, the brand standards, everything of how to be successful.

That's one of the things is like with the services, you can't predict what you're going to get. And sometimes it might be an influx of some compared to others.

Yeah.

And sometimes you just need that reassurance of like, you know, you can just pull out your phone, watch a video.

Yeah.

And then just go and perform and you Know, you know, some. One of those things that over time, you know, you might just forget, like an intricate detail and you can just go, oh, yeah, let me just watch that video. Yeah, there it is.

I know myself and Harvey just last week were out recording a bunch of content for the learning management system. And yeah, just being able to go through and break it down step by step. This is what this bit of equipment does.

Yes.

This is how to do the maintenance on it. This is why we do it like this. This is why we do it like that, to really break it down for particularly newer franchise partners. Obviously, like, once you've been in the business for a longer period of time, then you're not obviously checking it as frequently.

It's muscle memory.

Yeah, it's muscle memory. But getting those, those newer franchise partners, it's, you know, worth its weight in gold.

Yeah.

So I think adding video to that particularly really adds a lot of, you know, it's great to be able to read text of do it like this, that X, Y, Z. But if you can watch a video of someone doing it, you can through so much more.

Well, it's like that saying, a picture's worth a thousand words. All the videos like a million. Because. Yeah, it's. Yeah, it's one of the things. Because then you can say, you know, this particular tool, whatever it might be. So it might be like the PAT tester and different adapters that go with it.

Yeah.

So it's just easier to convey that in a video than it is through written text and diagrams and things like that.

Okay, tell me about the fun you're having on social media. I've actually allowed a TikTok page. I can't believe it's, what, two years in the making?

We're trying to have TikTok finally.

Yeah, said. Okay, so what's happening on that side of space? Because I know yourself and Harvey and the rest of the team are having a great time. I've seen. Yeah, I was gone for two hours one day and there was a pit bull.

Yeah, that was for my birthday. Birthday.

I thought everyone had lost their minds. Yeah, I saw it on Tick Tock. I'm on Tick Tock now because I have to be, but watch this. So tell me what fun stuff's happening on that sort of thing.

It's a range of things. It'll be, you know, Tick Tock trends or something. Like there was a video on Friday that we did where it was Shannon, I think the caption was, you know, when you've been waiting all day to talk to your manager. And Shannon's got a post and it's like number 45 and then like Lily burst through the door.

Yeah.

So just fun stuff like that. But also, you know, clips with our franchise partners getting them involved. So there was some really good videos recently with Sean and Jason from the pest control.

Yep.

Division. And then also Brendan in New Zealand when you guys went to New Zealand recently. So just putting more of a face to the brand.

Yeah.

And just giving the brand more of a personality from the get go. Because I mean it happens all the time. Because I hear from Shannon constantly feedback from people that are in training and you know, a lot of them say, you know, if I knew what you guys were like before, I would have done it sooner.

Yeah.

Um, so I think that was the main goal because a lot of that, the jokey content stays on TikTok.

Yeah.

But with the content with the franchise partners that gets posted across Instagram, Facebook, YouTube shorts, things like that.

Yeah.

So we're trying to cover as many bases as possible.

Yeah. And I think from winning clients perspective as well.

Yeah.

Like, you know, when. Because TikTok's, you know, as much as bit of fun and everyone else have a good time. I think it creates real engagement. I know even just from my own personal social circle or family or friends, the amount of people that are actually talking about the brand so much more now that there's that video element to it and social media element to it. It's a lot more engagement. And I've just had, you know, people, you know, ex people that I've worked with or whoever, you know, reached out and said, oh, we're seeing a lot more of these guys now, which is great. So it, it's, it's also, as you say, it builds the brand.

Yeah.

And it brings in people when they need a pest control done or a clean done or whatever. It's that, it's that name that comes to mind.

Yeah.

That's the content. That's the idea.

Yeah. Yeah. And even from a support span sports center perspective as well, you know, a lot of the franchise partners don't really meet us until the training stage at least face to face.

Yeah.

You know, we might just be a little picture on our email signature.

Yeah.

But at least if they can see, you know, not like there's a connection. There's a connection, but also they can see, you know, our office.

Yeah.

In a, in the background of a jokey TikTok video.

Yeah.

Or you know, us, you know, talking about marketing on, on social Media and things like that, whatever it may be.

Particularly our friend, our New Zealand franchise partners.

Well, yeah, that's it. They don't see it. You know, you guys don't go over there. I think we've only had one franchise partner, New Zealand. Come here.

The first one.

So. Yeah, yeah. Just to show, give us like a bit more of a personality.

Yeah.

Rather than just being like a little person behind a keyboard, basically.

Yeah.

Which is what I love about it.

The human side of it, I think is really important. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Can you share maybe an example of a franchise partner who's maybe seen strong growth because of some of the marketing strategies that we've sort of implemented?

Yeah, a couple actually, I can't. One was from once. The first story was from, I think about a year ago, I think. Can't remember who it was now, but they had done, and this is the early days of their franchise as well. They had done a business card drop off to different businesses in their territory and then they just didn't hear back from this one particular one for things like six or nine months, basically. And then we get a phone call randomly from them and they were like, oh, I got a job through local area marketing. And we're like, oh, who was it? And I was like, oh, this particular business that I gave a business card months ago.

Yeah.

And then they found her and then they called me up and because they. I went in and met them face to face and gave them the business card that helped that conversion of the job, basically. So that was probably one and I think one was more recent. I think it was one of our New Zealand cleaners, but they had just done like a once off clean for a new business that had opened up and they did that good of a job that they wanted them back weekly.

Yeah.

So yeah, it's those little stories like that that make it all worth it and just goes to show that the process works.

Yeah.

And you just got to follow it.

You do.

And once you get past that first year, I think that's what you will say constantly. What the franchising team say constantly. Once you have 12 months worth of work, you should have 10 years worth of work.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's one of the beautiful things about being one of the, you know, in the service industry is it's that repeat work.

Yes.

Which is fantastic. And we're seeing things like AI now coming in, replacing so many jobs and all of that sort of stuff. It's great to be in an industry where I think they say it's one of the most resilient in that regard because, you know, our team have to physically get out there and meet people and get in roofs and you know, get under desks and all sorts of stuff. So yeah, it's great. From that side of things, what do you think makes our marketing approach different from competitors in the industry?

It's a very good question, I would say because we cover all the basis of marketing, we don't leave any stone unturned.

Yeah.

So when it comes to the different types of marketing, like I said earlier, we do the organic, so the location pages and the blogs, advertising, social media, we give franchise partners sort of like a starter kit for social media as well so they can build up their own pages as well. We've also got, you know, Google my Google business profiles, things like that too that we work with franchise partners on building. So yeah, there's just. And then, and as well now the video and the photo as well, which is, you know, purposeful internal and external use as well. So I think that's probably the biggest difference is that we've, you know, we, we know the different parts that go into digital marketing.

Yeah.

And you know, we have the brain power behind to make it all happen.

Yeah.

And then that then flows over, flows over onto the franchise partners and helping them with their local area marketing.

Yeah.

So yeah, I'll say that's the biggest point of difference.

Couple of quick ones before I finish up and then we'll finish from there.

Yep.

How have you seen AI affect your role a lot and how, you know, you see, how does it look the next five years, I guess, of marketing and particularly digital marketing with AI? I know we're very much leaning into AI and how do you see that sort of impact happening across everything that we do? The tools we're already using.

Yeah, I mean we're already experimenting with a lot of different tools at the moment, which is really great. We're trying to get ahead of the curve rather than fall behind.

Yeah.

I would say the biggest thing with AI is that with what we do, the way that we treat it is that there's a lot of talk about AI replacing jobs like what you just touched on before with us. I don't ever see it replacing certain things. I see it as a supplementary tool. So whether it be inputting analytics and quickly identifying goals or ways to improve because at the end of the day we all wear different hats. Some of us wear multiple hats actually, in fact, all of us wear multiple hats. I think it's just, it's just an added brain to it, just to sort of see, because you can, you know, you can look at a bunch of numbers on a spreadsheet of website analytics or, you know, Google Ads results and things like that, but if you're looking at it constantly, you know, you just like, sometimes you're like, what am I looking at?

Yeah.

So I think it's just a way to sort of help and give yourself an extra bit of brain power.

Yeah.

Rather than replacing members of the team. Because at the end of the day, the way that the local guys was built on was, you know, being a people business.

Yeah.

And if you replace that, then you sort of lose the core.

Yeah, absolutely. I think it's just allowed us to. We know what we want to achieve.

Yeah.

Sometimes humans get in their own way and it kind of takes a deviated path like this and all the rest of it, where, with the help of AI and tools that we're using and all the rest of it, we can kind of move from here to here a lot more, a lot more efficiently, a lot more quickly, which means we can get to the next bit, the next bit, the next bit, and then we're a lot faster and more efficient and we can get results for our franchise partners a lot faster.

Well, we're talking about this morning, our meeting as well. Like, the team sort of went around and sort of explained how they're using AI in their particular roles.

Yeah.

And like, even with myself, like, we're doing. We're AB testing some website changes at the moment.

Yep. And so what is a B testing?

So for the context that we're doing using at the moment, it's basically for the website in particular, we basically have like an existing page on the website and then we have a page that has UI changes, basically just to give a better user experience to our customers. And basically we're just going to put the two pages up against each other. Yeah. Literally. So basically, I'm not too sure about the ratio yet, but let's just say, for example, 50% will receive one version. The original.

Yeah.

And then the other 50% will receive the modified version.

Sure.

And then we'll be able to see which one converts better.

Yep.

Which is really exciting to see. We've never done like that before.

Based on the results of that, that one becomes the permanent.

And then that'll just influence website changes across the entire network, which is really exciting because they were built two years ago and it's always good to have a bit of a facelift.

Yep.

So, yeah. So that's.

That's an example, I guess, of the sort of stuff that you're doing.

Yeah. And it's one of those things that, you know, there was a particular functionality I was trying to achieve because I want to make it more personalized for the user.

Yeah.

And I had written a bunch of code and I got stumped. I didn't know, like, what was wrong with it. I knew, like, what part of it was broken. And, you know, I was sort of staring at it for a good hour and I was like, know what's happening now? Yeah. So, you know, I just put it into AI Chat GPT and it basically identified it for me.

Yeah.

And then it was like, oh, God. I was right there the whole time and I missed it.

Isn't that always the way it is?

There's always a semicolon missing or a bracket, and it's just. Yeah.

I just find that the answers that I get are, like, that's so obvious. Why didn't I think of.

Literally. And sometimes, you know, I've been staring at it for too long.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, no worries. Well, I think that's all the questions that I wanted to go through today. So I wanted to thank you so much for jumping on Harry and allowing me to pick your brain a little bit. Allowing us to have a little bit of a deep dive into under the hood.

Yeah.

Of what sort of happens within the marketing team and what sort of stuff our drivers are and all the rest of it. So hopefully that's given a good insight into, you know, what happens when a potential franchise partner joins us and what we're doing for our current franchise partners to help that we're constantly getting more work for them. So anything you wanted to add before we finished up?

No, nothing really. Pretty. We've covered everything. Yeah.

Okay. Beautiful. Thank you much. Appreciate it.

No worries.

Cheers.