How to Become the Best Known Contractor with Jim Ahlin

Foreign. Hey everybody, it's Jim Johnson, your host here on Contractor Radio and also the head coach at Contractor Coach Pro. And what we do here on Contractor Radio is we help people understand this blueprint that their businesses go through. We tend to be very focused on what we call the operational DNA of our business. Marketing, sales, recruiting and hiring, training, maybe some technology, those type of things. But there's also a foundational part of our DNA that we need to pay attention to. Leadership, culture, process, hr, finance and accountability. And these things happen in a sequence. It's a blueprint, literally, like the blueprint of our human bodies. That's the blueprint of your business that's going to determine whether. Whether it's a beautiful baby that grows into a beautiful business or maybe it's going to be an ugly baby if we don't follow that sequence. We want to help you avoid ugly babies and that's what we do here at Contractor Coach Pro. And here through our podcast, Contractor Radio, we're going to be talking about one of those operational things today. We're going to be talking about marketing. We have an amazing guest. This guy is the end all and be all of making contractors known. The best known contractor in their markets. I'm super excited to have him on board. I can't wait to bring him in. But before we do, we got to pay the bills. Keep the lights on. So we're going to hear a little message from one of our sponsors.

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All right everybody, that was a little message from Signpost. If you want to engage with your prospects and your customers, not a better solution out there, reach out to those guys, tell them you heard about it on Contractor Radio and they will give you a great discount to begin engaging quite a bit better with your prospects and customers. Today we're going to be talking about that engagement, those prospects and how we get them into our world. And we're going to be talking about how to become the best known contractor in your market. And we actually have the author, Jim Allen from Roofer Marketers, founder of roofer marketers. And he's the author of the best known roofer, the omnipresent marketing network. And this idea of omnipresence, which I know when I first heard that, I was like, what? Like, that sounds bad. That sounds a lot like, you know, Terminator AI taking over the world, but it's a whole different thing. Excited to talk about it today. Hey, Jim, welcome aboard on contractor Radio.

Yeah, thanks for having me, Jim.

Yeah, it's, you know, you and I have gotten to know each other over the last few years and really pay a lot of attention to your podcast. We learn every day from what you guys share. Even for our own business here as a coaching business and podcast, we like to follow your lead. You're pretty good at it. You got lots of followers, lots of downloads and subscribers and, and it's because contractors are hungry. They're hungry for getting more leads, growing their business. And so tell us kind of how you got here. Wrote this book. We've got Roofer marketers. Why Roofer Marketers?

So Roofer Marketers started three years ago when we published our first book. So prior to Roofer Marketers, I mean I've been doing web development since 2002. Like I wrote websites. You know that program on your PC called notepad that like, is just the most plain text editor. I wrote code on that thing like server side programming web dynamic websites written in that program. So I've been doing this for a long time. What I learned early on was that I'm not a programmer and I didn't like sitting there looking for, for semicolons and capital letters in my code and trying to fix things. So I got out of that and I got into, into business and the real estate and different things like that. And, and I always found myself in the marketer role and usually on the digital, as the digital marketer, I built all the, with all the partnerships I was in, I built the website and did all of our digital marketing. Over time, people started asking me for help with that. So I started helping people with that. For in the, in the mid-2010 12 area, I started doing pay per lead for contractors, building up my own marketing, getting leads, coming in and selling those leads. And then in around 2018, my business partner Brian and I met and we put together Roofer Marketers. He had a digital marketing agency that, that he had a few contractor clients. I was doing the pay per lead. We put our kind of our ideas together and informed roofer marketers. So three years now, three years just working with Roofing contractors. But what you were saying about the best known contractor, the principles that we deploy in our, in the way that we do our marketing system, it works for all contractors and a lot of other businesses out there.

The concepts we're going to talk about today are really applicable to just about any brick and mortar business. Is that a fair assessment or at least service related brick and mortar business?

Yeah, it really. The concepts that we go around or. Google is kind of the foundation for most online marketing. Right. You have your social media also. But Google is the foundation for everything online. And Google has. Google's overall goal is to provide the searcher with the best user experience. Right. And so anytime someone types something into Google, they format the page differently. So Google understands that with like a contractor, a dentist, you know, things like that. If someone types that into Google, they're looking for someone locally. So they format the page in a, what they call the local search engine results page. And so when your business has that format, a lot of the principles apply. Some of these principles apply to B2B businesses like our marketing agency and your coaching business also. But a lot of it for contractors, it's that local search engine results page where when people are searching and there's some buying intent, there's commercial intent, they're looking to make a phone call.

Yeah, it usually starts off with so and so near me, right? That's right. A roofer, you know, in this town, roofer near me, you know, that type of thing. It could be any contractor, a dentist, a doctor, those concepts. But if you're searching for like a business coach like us, you don't go business coach near me. You say business coach for contractors, that type of thing, right?

That's right.

And so it's a bit of a different search, get a different, different result. And so we want to talk about how it applies to contractors in general and specifically in your world, to roofers. So what is this omnipresence thing? Like we hear that and it sounds like, you know the book 1984, if anybody ever wants that Big Brother type of thing. And you know, when I think of it, what I think of is I talked out loud and I said so and so like, hey man, I've been thinking about getting a new couch. Then all of a sudd on my, on my Facebook feed and on my Google searches there's all these ads for couches and stuff like that. And it's weird like, but you know, most people are freaked out by it. I'm like, that's cool. Like I'M going to talk out loud about all the stuff that I want to get. So it just pops up. I don't have to do a search. But that's not all there is to it. So can you explain this kind of in a, in a brief like Reader's Digest version without making it rocket science for everybody?

So to make it as simple as possible, omnipresence is being best known to your perfect customer. Let's just make it as simple as possible. So if you are a roofer, you want to be the best known to your perfect customer. If you are in a specific location, you want to be best known to the people in that location, right? If you're, if you're a roofer in Minneapolis, Minnesota, you don't want everyone in Texas to know about you. It doesn't matter as much to your business. And this is, it can be boiled down to those to, to, to kind of who's in buying mode at, at any given time. So really, in your market, there's probably only 3% of people who are in buying mode, right? You have a lot of perfect customers out there, but a lot, but only a small portion of them are interested in buying right now. So you want to become best known to them prior to them being in buying mode. So that when they are starting to think about, hey, I want to remodel my kitchen, you come to mind, man, our drain is plugged in, I need a plumber. You come to mind. And the way I like to describe this is that when people are, when people have a need, the first thing that they do is they, they reference their mental Rolodex, right? So, you know, if they're looking for a roofer, they think to themselves, do I know a good roofer? If they do, they make the phone call, right? If they don't, they go two directions. They ask a friend or family member, maybe someone from church Facebook group, you know, or they head to Google or, or neighborhood Facebook group, right? They're asking for referrals. So all of those people is where you can become best known, right? So if they're, it's not just becoming best known to them, their neighbor might know you, right? The person in their neighborhood hoa Facebook group, they're asking for those referrals. So the more people that you can get to know your business, and this is kind of business fundamentals, right? The more people that get to know what you do, the easier it is for you to generate consistent business. So hopefully that helps kind of.

Yeah. So let's talk about what it isn't. What isn't Omnipresence? Because I think there's some confusion out there. Like, I gotta be everywhere all the time, every moment.

Yeah. And that's really the big thing, right. Is that it's omnipresent. Thinking of it as omnipresent to your perfect customer. Just thinking of the people that you want to serve in your business on an ongoing basis. Like I said with that example, if you're a roofer in Minneapolis, you don't have to be omnipresent to people in Texas. You want to be omnipresent to your perfect customer. If you have. If you're a commercial roofing company or a commercial contractor, that homeowner isn't as important to your business. Right. Being omnipresent to them is not as important to you. But being omnipresent to the property managers in your service area, being omnipresent to the building owners, to all of those people, that is where you want to focus it. So not being everywhere to everyone.

Got. So can you get. Can you. This is going to sound like a silly question. Wouldn't even plan on asking this, but can you get like uber targeted with that? Like, I'm the best known roofer to golf course communities.

Yep.

Like, you live in a golf course community. That's our specialty. That's what we do. Does that make it easier to be omnipresent?

Definitely. The, the, the. The more you understand who your customer is, the easier it is to serve them. Right. The easier it is to become omnipresent. There's a great sales book out there that you might have heard of. The Ultimate Sales Machine. Chet Holmes.

Yeah. Great book, that one, Jim.

Great book. Right? And he has a. It's. It's. It's called the Dream 100. He has a. It's called the Dream 100 strategy. So you identify your top 100 prospects. Like, really identify them. Right. Like, I know their name, their address, their phone number, their LinkedIn profile, their Facebook profile. And you become friends and connect with them. And you should. You go to the trade shows that they go to. When you show up at the Right. You're everywhere that they are so that they can get to know you. And in getting to know you and that you serve them, they're going to think of you when, when that need arrives. So it really comes down to. To knowing you, who you are. So for example, if you, you know, I'm where we live in Minneapolis. If you are a contractor that really focuses on lake homes, right. Cabins. We build cabins or we remodel cabins. We are this specific group. When you know who your audience is, right. You know that people who buy cabins are your audience. People who live on the lakes are your audience. Where do they hang out, right? What Facebook groups are they involved in? What, what other things do they buy? Do they go to the boat show? Probably, right? Do they go. Right. There's all of these things that you can, that you can figure out in relation to that. If you are, say, commercial roofing contractor, right. That's still a very broad conversation, right. That you know, who, what type of, what type of roofing systems do you install? Who are the owners of those buildings? So maybe, maybe for example, the, the type of roofing system that you install that you're really good at installing is, is that is used on every restaurant in your area, right? Well, now you need to become the restaurant. You wouldn't, you need to go to the restaurant associate, the local restaurant association.

Yeah, I'm the restaurant roofer. Right.

And you could be the restaurant roofer. Right. Like it's, it's honestly, you can get that narrowly focused if you're, you know, a tenant, if you're doing tenant finish, you're, you know, you, you get involved in the local groups that the local, you know, real estate groups where all of those commercial real estate people hang out. You get involved, like those are the, you can really get focused. And we call that our perfect customer avatar in marketing, right? It's developing your perfect customer avatar. And in developing that perfect customer avatar, first you're, you're understanding who that person is, right? Identifying them, thinking about their fears, their, you know, their desires, all of the things that are in relation to that perfect customer avatar, not just in relation to your business, right? Maybe. And also in relation to their life. For example, for a residential roofing, you know, a residential homeowner looking for a new roof, you know, some of their fears are being ripped off by contractors, right. They have other fears that it's going to take up too much of their time. Right. Things that you wouldn't think of, right. So then in your conversations to these people, you can really focus in on what they, what they are looking for in a contractor and a, you know, a restaurant owner looking to get there is going to be thinking of different things than that, that residential homeowner.

So when it comes to what it isn't, that's like just broad based throwback. Yeah. And that's a form of marketing to top of mind marketing. That is in general. Right. But it's super expensive. I mean, you're looking probably 8 to 10% of your total revenue to become that contractor for sure. And I think it's unnecessary.

We could talk about things like that. Right? So the traditional media channels like television and radio, those are, those kind of try to be everything to everyone, but what you did is you chose. Well, maybe my, my audience watches this specific TV show, right? So you ran your commercials during that TV show versus the something that your, your audience might not. Same with the radio. You would choose the radio station, the type of music, right. Or the talk radio channel that had your type of audience. But you're still kind of, it's, it's really spread thin, you know, since the inception of digital. The data collection, and we may talk about this a little bit later, the data collection, that happens, you know, you could get very precise. You could get so specific as to be in front of those people. And that could be through, you know, Facebook advertising, Google advertising, direct mail, you know, door to door, you know, just being really focused on those perfect customers.

So, so why do most contractors approach their lead generation the wrong way?

I think that they look at it as short term solutions to a long term problem.

Oh, you mean they want leads, right? This second one.

Leads right this second. That's the biggest thing. The biggest issue that I, or one of the bigger issues that I see with contractors is they go, man, I need leads now. They didn't think about it six months ago when that hailstorm hit and they were busy, right? They're thinking now, oh man, I need leads now. Marketing can really be broken down into three. Three types of three. Three channels, right? Or short term, midterm and long term. I heard a good analogy recently that was like in relation to golf, right? Marketing is your driver, right? That's what gets you down towards the green. Your chipping and putting is your sales. So marketing gets you close. The marketing you're doing gets you close. Most contractors are looking for marketing or lead generation. That is a sale. It's not a sale. They're two different things, right? So in short term marketing, you know, that's, that could be more direct sales, right? Marketing and marketing and sales intertwined, right. If you want to, you know, get a roofing con a contract on a roof today. Boots and knuckles.

Yeah, I was gonna say first start knocking doors, right?

That's short term, right? That is short term. Get out there and hustle. You know, that's the, that's that the only kind of short term and direct sales is kind of an overlap with marketing. Right. Your midterm stuff is where you could get focused on is going to be that paid more paid advertising, Google Ads, Facebook ads, Google local service ads, those types of things. Even maybe buying leads from lead aggregators. That may be more of a midterm middle solution. And then you have your long term stuff and that's, that's the, the omnipresence. That's where that's your, your social media posting, your, your social media ads. That is your, your, your branding, right? The, the wrapped trucks that you have driving through the neighborhoods. You're your billboards essentially. Right? All of those things that, that keep you top of mind or help you become top of mind to your perfect customer. And that's the long term stuff. If only 3% of people are in, in buying mode at any given time, that's where that door to door direct sales, you're gonna find that 3% faster. Right. But you want to be hitting that other 97% and be getting them to get to know you.

Yeah, it's this idea that when I have a need isn't necessarily when you're doing your marketing. Right? Yeah, that can, that can happen later. So if you're all about one type of marketing, let's say door knocking, telemarketing, the instant stuff, right? Well, if you don't door knock and telemarket, somebody needs it, right. Then they don't ever hear from you again. Your chances of getting that person are very, very slim. It would have to be that you left something amazing behind that they didn't let go of because it was so awesome. Right? Yeah. And then that, that middle level, your, your Facebook ads and, and your Google Ads and things like that, it's got to come across their screen at the right time in the right place. And you just hopefully get lucky with omnipresent. They're thinking about you already, right? They're like, okay, I need a roofer. Okay, I need game day roofing. Right? So, so explain to me like in real life, like I'm, I'm somebody that's looking for a roofer. And what does that look like in real life for somebody to like go down that road and get into our world.

So from the customer journey, you know, especially for, for some of the, you know, especially for a lot of contractors, right, we're either emergency service or large cash outlays, right. And so no one wants you on until they need you. Right now we can split up even further into things that people want to pay for and things that people don't want to pay for. Right? People want to pay for a kitchen, a new kitchen, because it'll bring joy to their, to their life. It opens up their family, right? Like that. Now we have a great place to eat dinner with the family and. Right. People want that landscape, the beautiful landscaped yard. People don't want to pay a plumber to fix a broken toilet. People don't want to spend money on a roof right there. So there's, there's kind of two things that two, two sides to it there. So for that customer, you're going to have to look at it depending on what type of contractor you are. But one of the things that you have to do is to think about how to provide value to them on an ongoing basis. Right? Because they don't know you, right?

So.

Things like being involved in your community, sponsoring a little league team, you know, those types of things, being, you know, being active in your church, all of those things will be places to start, right? Because that's where people are going to start to get to know you. Wow. Okay. Then they get, that's that attraction. Now maybe they follow you on Facebook. Now you're putting out content that's useful to them, it's relevant to them. It may not be about, hey, we just did this perfect roof today, or this is what to look for, you know, if a storm comes through. But it may be things about the local community, right? You don't have to just talk about what you do. You could talk about your, your local area too. And you're just bringing them into your fold, getting them. I mean, it's the. Know you like you, trust you. Jim.

Yeah. So, so let's say take an example here. I'm somebody, I got an older roof and I know, I know I need one. And I go do a search, right? So we'll talk about what that search looks like. Roofer near me, right? Do I, do I like get the list and go. That's the number one guy. Go to his website and buy from him right away.

A lot of people will. So it's 50% of people buy from the first, the person that they speak with first. Isn't that crazy?

That is wild.

50% of people will buy from the person that they speak to first. Now when they go to Google, there's four main sections. There's the Google local service ads at the top of the page, there's Google pay per click advertising. Below that there's the map with three to four companies listed in the map section. And Then there's the websites that Google finds most relevant below that everybody searches a little bit different. Right. So a certain percentage of people will click on those Google guaranteed Google local service ads and they'll make a call there. Another portion of people will click on one of the Google Ads. I like to go to the map section personally because I like. Right, you too. It's right. That's where you see their reviews, you know, right. That you see that, that's that social proof. Right. So that's one of the biggest things where people start off also online is man, those reviews are probably one of the most important things that you can do on an ongoing basis for that out outward perception of your company. People trust reviews online as much as a recommendation from a friend or family member.

Oh man, it is. And that applies to everything. I'm gonna go buy something on Amazon. What are the reviews on that product? I'm gonna go buy something from Costco or Walmart or I'm doing a Google search. What are the reviews? And I don't necessarily read them all. I tend to go, what's the average?

That's right.

Better than a 4.5. That's the number I'm looking at. I want top notch. Right. So is it better than a 4.5? Yes, it is. So I'll go look at a couple of good ones and say, okay, what happened there? And I always go look for the bad one. What happened? Like why did they have a bad experience? And if I see a reply from the company, I go, okay, they communicate all good or such things as bad customers. They exist.

They exist.

And do you think most people search that way?

Yes. So, so the, about 35% of searches go to those, go to the map section. People go to the map section. They, they, they call from there, they click on your website, they hit directions, all those types of things. But a good portion of that searches, they look in that map section and so that's definitely in that section. Specifically, reputation is, is everything you can show up there. But if you don't have as good or better a reputation than the com than the competitors that you show up next to, you're not getting the phone call.

Perfect. So we've got to take a break here. You know, there's lots of lights around here. I got to keep them all on. We have sponsors that they want to be a part of our show. We're gonna, we're gonna going to run one of those right now. But I want to let everybody know we're going to come Back and we're going to talk about the three principles of omnipresent marketing. We're going to talk about maybe an action plan that people can step into and maybe get some of this omnipresent. Be the best known contractor of your type or trade in your market. You good with that, Joe?

Sounds good.

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And that is no lie. Those guys are awesome. If you are. If you're wanting to get more referrals, track those referrals. Reward your referrals. There is nothing out there better than get the referral in the show notes today. If you guys look down there, there'll be a link there. You get a cool little discount by listening to contractor radio. Click on that link. Talk to the team over at get the referrals. And that was a big thing for us and we were talking about reviews and things like that. Like it's a big thing. These referrals can be three times what your original sales are if you have a good strategy for it. So speaking of strategy, what are the three principles of our omnipresence marketing system? What do we need to understand about that?

So the first principle is to maximize the opportunity to make your phone ring, right? So within that it's, you know, being in those Google local service ads, running pay per click advertising, showing up in the maps and having a good reputation, having your website ranking on Google, doing Facebook ads, social media advertising. Every way that you can generate a lead would be an opportunity. Right? So yard signs, mailers, you know, radio commercials, TV commercials, billboards, real billboards, right? All of these are opportunities. So depending on where you are in your business, it's going to be a little bit different. But you want to start with maximizing your opportunities. If you're not there, you don't have the opportunity, Right?

Yeah. So, so can we take that one step further? Like I hear this a lot, right? Like, yeah, you know, I got this marketing company and they generate a bunch of leads and they're bad leads, right? And I always question that, like, were they bad leads or is it possible that you have poor sales tactics, poor sales practice, poor sales delivery, poor delivery on what it is you do and things like that. That's always a tough question to handle with one of our clients, but it's, it's the truth. Like if you just increase your closing percentage because you got a system and you practiced it and you were good at it by 5 or 10%, does that make the difference whether that was a good lead or a bad? So I think it's, it's like you said earlier, marketing and sales, man, they're tied together and you get these opportunities that your marketing company creates for you. Not only do you need to be on top of them, call them right away and show up on time, but you better be pretty darn good whenever you get there. The nice thing about our industry, to be honest with you, most people aren't very good. So if I just put a little bit of effort into being really good at it, your results can be off the charts if you have some good marketing. Okay, so what's, what's the second thing?

So the second thing is to maximize your brand impressions to your perfect customer. So now that they found you, right, they visited your website or they interacted with you on Facebook or they looked to, they googled you, right? And they read your reviews and things like that, now you're maximizing your brand impressions. So half a portion of that is done through retargeting Google Ads, retargeting Facebook ads, retargeting. And those are those ads that follow you around. Those are those ads that show up when you think you said something into the phone or, but really maybe you said something and your wife searched it and now it shows up on your phone too. Like there's a lot of cross channel stuff going on there. But it's, it's those brand impressions, right? It's the old advertise, old advertising rule of seven. People don't recognize your brand until they've seen it at least seven times, right? So they don't, it just doesn't register. It's the real reason why, why brands like Coca Cola and you know these, you're like, man, why is this everywhere? Like it is everywhere. It's just their brand. So now your brand is everywhere to them. But in today's kind of in the digital marketing age, you can be very targeted with that and very targeted to those customers. They visited your website, now you're in front of them for months. Because you don't know what part of the buying cycle they're in. Right. Also, on Facebook, you can do Facebook. And social media is a great place to do brand awareness. So talking about your brand, your core values, the great customer experiences, things like that, and putting that out to companies in your or to homeowners in your area. We talked about this earlier. You know, the organic side of things is a little bit. It's tough now, right. So it's kind of pay to play. So you have to put a little ad spend behind that sometimes to become that, to have that brand awareness. But the more times people see you, see your brand, see your brand, see your brand, the more likely they are to make that phone call to you.

So I heard this crazy stat that, yeah, it takes seven times for them to even know you exist, 22 to 25 times for them to actually take action. Have you heard that? Yeah, that's crazy, right? And I think so much of that is because of the noise that's out there. There's so much noise, there's so much distraction. There's so much busyness in our lives that while we may be aware of you, we're not taking action because something else is taking priority at that point.

That's right.

And hopefully we're moving up that priority scale. And by that 22nd time, you're like, okay, I got time. I got to do this thing. And I go do this thing, right?

And think about how many times, Jim, that you. That you were like, you know, man, I need to. I need this. I need something, right? And you go and Google something, and you're in the middle of your day, and it just came to your mind. You Google something, and you're. You're. You're looking at it. You look at a couple companies and you're like, okay, I'll come back to that later. We all come back to it later. But in the meantime, you, you know, now they check the weather. You know, they go check the weather. There's an ad for you. Now they, you know, my dad. My dad texts me a couple months back, and he's like, I am playing solitaire on my phone and there's an ad for your company. Is that expensive? Right? Like, it's being everywhere. And the platforms like Facebook and Instagram and Google Ads and other display networks allow us to do that. Right. So that we can capture more of those. Of those people's attention.

All right? So that covers opportunities and brand impressions. What's number three?

Number three is to maximize the conversions of Everything that you're doing online, right? This is where, you know, kind of to that point where you're talking about the leads, right? Quality of lead versus quality of sales person, things like that, where you're optimizing conversions. The first thing that you need to do to optimize conversions is speed to lead, right? Somebody fills out a form on your website or calls your company, you need to be there, right? It's amazing that I have to say this, Jim, but you have to answer your phone.

Yeah, it's the funniest thing. It seems like such a logical thing to me, right? That when somebody calls, you answer the phone. And when you answer the phone, you deliver what it is they want. Which what they want is an appointment. That's why they called you. They want you to come out. But if instead you were to say, hey, thanks for calling us, let me get your address and your information, and I'll have one of my sales reps give you a call here in just a few minutes. That few minutes, they're calling the next person. That's like calling your barber and saying, hey, can I get a, can I get a haircut? And they say, yeah, sure, I'll have Joey call you back here. And I'm like, no, I'm going to go call the next person. So that, that those little nuances of the little nuances right away, be quick to it and give them what they want, right?

And so we do things like, like in that process, if someone fills out one of the forms for, for one of our customers, that generates a phone call to your business. So now they hit submit on the form. They get to a thank you page that says, hey, thank you for submitting your information. Please be near your phone. We're calling you now. And the technology that's available today will allow you to do that. So when they hit submit, that phone rings and it rings your office or whoever, you know, you choose, and they pick up the phone and says, hey, you have a new web form lead. Press 1 to connect. They press 1 and it does an outbound dial to the phone number that they put in the form. If that person answers, you're on the phone with them in 20 seconds. It's the most important thing is what you said, and this is what I want people to remember, is set that appointment. Set the appointment. How many? Especially in an emergency service situation, right. Or something that people don't want to pay for. How many salespeople do you think they want at their house?

Zero. They don't want to.

None of us want to be sold. None of us want that person at our house that we feel like, man, they are gonna, they're gonna try and sell us something, right? When you have that appointment booked, people stop calling the next company. That appointment has to be booked, right? So now we do things like this because you could take it even further. Now maybe they don't answer the phone. So you leave them a voicemail and we wait a minute and we send them a text message. Hey, just tried to call you and left you a voicemail, right? Now if they don't respond to that text within a certain amount of time, we shoot them over an email, then we shoot them another text message, then we call them again later, right? It's all an automated process because on the sales side now that turns into the sales side, right? And on that sales side, some, the, the, the studies have been done that you need to contact people, I think the sweet spot is around eight times before they pick up, right before they respond. So you're responding to them with, with, in, in a very short amount of time. And you're communicating with them in, in many different ways, right? It doesn't have to be. Well, some people filled out a form because they didn't want to call. Well, now you have an option to email and an option to text, right? So now we're giving them more options to have that conversation with us. So those are things that we do around conversion rate optimization. Other things that you can do around conversion rate optimization. Say for example, you're running a Facebook ad for a financing offer. Hey, you know, 147 up, you know, as low as $99 a month for a new roof. Someone clicks on that Facebook ad and it takes them to your website where it says nothing about this offer, about this $99 for a free roof. It just takes them to the homepage of your website. They're gone, right?

They're gone for a reason.

They wanted it clicked on it for a reason. Let me, let, let me speak to this, right? So you know, landing pages are a great way and it's kind of a, you know, so, so getting them to a page, getting them to, to where, where you're speak, continuing that conversation about what you, what you offered them or, you know, let's say you're a metal roofing company, right? If somebody types in metal roofing companies into Google, they should see stuff about metal, right? Like they're not looking for asphalt shingle. They're not looking for tpo. They're not. Right? They are looking for metal, they're not.

Looking for everything you do. They're looking for the specific thing that.

They took action on, that they took action on. So being cognizant of that. Right. In all of the marketing efforts that you're doing, being cognizant of that, if you're in a storm damage restoration market and you're knocking doors and you're leaving door hangers or letters or flyers or whatever, you're leaving, making sure that when those people respond to that, that they're. They're going to a place that speaks to them.

Right.

So all of that is more in that conversion rate optimization.

Does it matter on that sales page if it's a sales page actually on your website? Or could it be through a sales page tool like say, click funnels or sales page lead pages, something like that?

Yeah. So there are plenty of sales page tools. So those. Those things like, things like that. Tools like that instapage, unbounce, click funnels, all of these different softwares that are available for landing page to build land, build these sales pages, build these landing pages will integrate most likely with your. With your current website. Most websites nowadays are built on WordPress. Everything integrates. Maybe, maybe you have to do it, you know, so now it's slash, you know, financing offer. Right. And they land on that page. So in a simple way, you just add a page to your website, redesign it, slash financing offer. And that's where people go on that financing offer. If you want to, you know, get more technical with it, you can have a system like you're talking about and actually build very specific landing pages. That's what.

Yeah. If somebody was wanting to do it on their own, it's not a bad way to start now.

That's right. And we're talking about better than nothing. This is my favorite thing about business, or like my favorite way to do business, Jim, is phase one, do something. Phase two, do something better. Phase three, do something better than that. On and on and on. Right. So start with something. Right. And just continue to improve on. On what you're doing.

Yeah. You know, contractors are in various phases. You know, when they're small. I can't afford roofer marketers to go and do their thing in this big ad spin. So keep and do what you can do on your own. Take that first step, maybe create a landing page. Go create a cheap little Facebook ad and start to get some results from it.

That's right.

And then as you start to get more results and as you start to maximize those conversions and opportunities. Then you go out and you go, I'm tired of doing this. I'm not great at it anyway. Let me go get a pro and step into the world that you're in. So I got one more thing I want to cover before we let you go. Because I always like the ability for somebody to take action. And so how would somebody go about creating a bit of an action plan? They listened to this whole podcast today and said, hey, this marketing thing is pretty cool. I like this. I like the idea of being the best known whatever contractor in my area. What's some actions that they can take to make some of those things happen?

Okay, let's start with making a list of the opportunities that you are already utilizing. Right. So are you utilizing Facebook? Right. Do you have a Facebook page and are you actively posting on it? Are you running ads on that Facebook and Facebook Instagram page? Right. Take. Taking inventory, Right. Hey, have we signed up for Google local service ads? Did we get Google guaranteed? Do we have the opportunity to generate leads from that area? Right. Are we running Google pay per click? Do we have a Google my business listing? Are we actively getting reviews on there? Do we have a website that's built for SEO or is it just a brochure? Right, so taking inventory of where you're at, everybody's going to be in a different place, right? Then it's starting to look at it and say, okay, now what's next in our business?

What's the goal?

What's the goal? Right? And so, you know, let's take a look at what our revenue goals are. What our revenue goal, where, where our current revenue is. And there's always a gap between your current revenue and your revenue goal. And this is where I think that a lot of the misconception happens, especially what we talked about, like people need leads and things like that, is they need to fill that gap. So if you think about it like this, hey, we're a million and a half dollar company. If I did nothing different next year, I could still do a million and a half dollars. Right? That's where you are. That's your base level right? Now. What's my goal for next year? Well, my goal for next year is 2 million or 3 million or 5 million. Notice that gap gets wider as your goal increases. That gap is that effort. Now that effort is going to come in from time and money, right?

Oh, yeah.

And so we have to fill that gap. The larger gap you have, the larger that time and, and financial investment is going. It is going to take to fill that gap. So first we determine, okay, we're doing good in this area, we're not doing good in that area. We took inventory, we have all of these opportunities, then where can we spend our time and effort in that? Right. If we're, if it's organic social media posting, hey, we have a Facebook page and an Instagram account, but we just don't post on it, start posting. If we're, hey, man, we never got signed up for those Google local service ads. They do that. So take inventory of where you are, what you have for you, and then determine that gap. Right. How big of a gap you need to fill for, for next year. And be honest with yourself. Right. In setting those expectations and being honest with yourself in terms of what time and effort it's going to take, you know, in the roofing industry, you know, kind of the industry standard. I don't, I'm not huge on industry standards, but, you know, 5% of your gross revenue is, goes towards a marketing budget on average. Would you. Do you find that, Jim?

Yeah, it ranges depending upon approach by contractor and type of contractor, right?

Yep. A lot of variables.

Yeah. If you're a lot of variable, it's lower because you're knocking doors. If you're more retail, it's going to be a bit more of your budget. But I can, I can confidently say somewhere between 3 and 5%.

Yep. And so now, you know, I mean, we see between 3 and 8% sometimes, and that's because, and we're trying to go from a million dollars a year to $4 million a year, but you better turn that spend up. Right. So being honest with yourself about that, you're not going to fill that gap with nothing. Right. If, like you had mentioned, if you, if you're, if you have a good canvassing teams and you need to fill that gap with canvassing, well, you're gonna, you may need more people.

We're gonna have to hire some people.

We need to hire people. We need to, we need more boots and knuckles. We need to get, you know, so there's a gap to fill at all times. So in your action plan, first is identifying what you're doing. Well. Right. I'm a big fan of Jim Rohn, the business philosopher. Right. You know, one of my favorite things from him was that you need five to seven lead sources to have consistent lead flow in your business. So one thing will work well for you, but as you. Then you just keep adding. Right. So, okay, we're going to start with, we're going to Start posting on social media regularly. That's one thing. Then we're going to add Google local service ads. Then we're going to really focus on our Google my business listing and getting more reviews. Now it's time to get a new website, right? Our website is terrible. We need a website that's built for SEO and for conversion rate optimization, not just to have a website. Now it's running Facebook ads or Google Ads and putting some money into those things. So it really will depend on where you're at. But the action plan will be to continue to add channels, right? Continue to add to the, the ability, your, your opportunities.

That's where the whole, that's where the whole omnichannel thing comes into play. You'll hear omnipresence sometimes described.

Omnipresence. Yeah, Omnichannel, multi channel marketing. There's, there's different ways to, to, to, to describe it. And it's, and then once you're there, right, maybe it's, hey, we need more brand. We need more brand, right? We need our trucks wrapped. We need a better, you know, we want to put a show on, on build day, right on production day. We need flags for the yard and we need a, you know, we want to, you know, it's just small improvements in everything along the way. But taking, taking inventory first of what you're doing, being honest with yourself about the expectations of your revenue goals and where you are currently and what it's going to take to get there. And so hopefully that it's going to be different for everyone.

So exactly the way we would coach it, we'd say, hey, you want to hit 3 million next year? You did one and a half million this year. Okay, let's take into account what you did marketing wise to achieve that 1.5 million. Okay. Okay. What in addition, how many leads are we gonna need in addition to that? Based on your closing percentage. So, okay, your closing percentage is this. That means we're gonna need this many leads. How are we gonna get those leads? And we believe every decision that you make has a return on investment. And so you mentioned them both time and money. They're gonna cost one or the other or both sometimes.

That's right.

In our efforts, we, which one cost me the least time and the least money? That's going to drive the highest results for the, or the effectiveness of what I'm going to do. And that's where I would start. If I was small. If I was small, I'm like, hey, what's the most effective thing I Can do for as little cost as possible, which is the way everybody buys. I want the most for as little as I can spend. But as time goes on and you grow and your business starts to get a little bit of traction and growth and you're looking for a little bit of freedom, that's when you bring in guys like you. We've done that. We're not running all of our marketing anymore. I don't have time for it and there's people that are better at it than me. But it took a lot of effort on the upfront of man, I got to make these posts, I got to run these ads, I got to learn these things. Which gives me. First off, it gave me a great knowledge level base. I had a knowledge level base that whenever I went into it with a third party, I went, hey, I know some of this stuff and I'm going to hold you accountable too. Like, I want, I want to see reporting. And do you guys do that with your customers? Do you provide them like weekly reporting and show improvement and that kind of stuff?

Yeah, monthly reporting, but in great detail. Like in great detail. Like if we're running five different Facebook campaigns, we're where you're seeing each specifically how many calls were generated from that span. Like, we go into great detail in our reporting because it's important to understand where that comes from. The challenge in that sometimes when you do an omnipresence and multi channel approach, if someone sees you on Facebook, they see you a bunch of times on Facebook and then they Google you. Then it comes in from your a call from your Google my business listing because they saw your reviews were good and they're like, I am going to call this company. So sometimes it's the sum of all parts, right? Sometimes it's more challenging to say, well, this one isn't performing as well. There's always optimization that can be done and there's always testing that can be done and cut the losers and scale the winners and things like that. But, but there are other things that happen that are just that all of the parts bring the whole together.

So yeah, we found some of that. Like there's some things that we're not getting direct results from, but it's getting eyes on us. We know people, we can see views, we can see that kind of thing. We go, hey, they're not taking any action there, but they know who we are. They know who we are, they know who we are. And then you kind of watch it. And sure enough, I mean, it's been as much as two or three or four or five years later, they go, I've been watching you for years, been paying attention to your stuff. I'm ready. And. And I think that's how most people buy the things they buy these days. Like, I don't need a roof today, but I've been seeing you. I've seen you in our neighborhood. We saw you in our Facebook group. I see your ads. Come on out, I want to talk to you.

There's a, there's a stat on that. Like we said, 3% of people are in buying mode at any given time. Kind of. That's kind of the broad statistic.

All the time.

Yeah. In a lot of different things. Right. Like, I'm buying this today. You're probably buying in the market for a new smoker right now or something.

I've been cut off in there and that arena.

But now, now you have to think about that in, in terms of. That of people seeing you. Right. So online. 1% of people online are creators, 9% are contributors, and the other 90% are lurkers.

Hey, I'm glad you mentioned that. The lurker thing, the lurkers. So I heard this stat. You tell me how accurate this is, because you probably know better than most anybody I would know. I make a post on Facebook, right? And whatever it is, let's just say it's an organic post. We can compare the two if you want. Organic and paid. But I make this post and 10 people like it, right? So you go, oh, man, that didn't get quite good. And maybe there's a couple of comments. So that gives you a total of 12. The stat is that 100 times what actually interacted with your ad or your post. Actually saw it. They went by it and went, yep, cool. I looked at the comments, but didn't interact. They didn't like the. They didn't make a comment. They didn't put the little love heart on it or any of that stuff. They just saw it. They were lurking. Right.

Yeah.

We need to be aware of that.

That's right. That's where the value is. I so for roofer marketers, I dare you out there, listeners to go and look at our Follow us on social media hit like on our follow. Follow me on Instagram, you will see me in your story and in your posts. Every single time you are on Instagram. If you're on Facebook, you will see me in your story and in your posts. Every single time you're on Facebook. If you're on LinkedIn, you will see my posts on your LinkedIn feed. If you're on Twitter, I will be there. That's that impression share. That's there. There is so much value in that, right. Of just people seeing you over and over again. Our core principle number two, right, let's.

Let'S talk about practicality of that, right?

Yep.

That's a lot of, that's a, that's a lot of content creation and it's a lot of organization and it's a lot of time investment, right. To do that. How do you, how do you structure that? What do you do to like, do you do that every morning? Do you do it once a week? You have this time set aside. Hey, here's my seven post or six posts or whatever it's going to be for the next week. What, what do you do there? And are they paid or organic? It sounds like an all organic and.

I hope this is all right, but I just did a, there's a replay on our YouTube channel of a webinar that I just did recently about this. It's the, the content generation engine for roofing contractors. And so having a framework, right? Starting with a framework, you know, of what, what you want to show your customers, right? Your expertise, your customer reviews, your, your website, you know, your, your work, right? Those types of things, what you're doing in the local community. So you have these categories, kind of categorize this content, right? Once you have categories, then you start creating content in those categories. Now the rocket fuel comes in, in repurposing that content. So now when, like you said, you posted that Facebook post or that Instagram post, and only, you know, 10 people liked it. A lot of other people saw it, but not everyone that follows you saw that post. It's not how the algorithm works.

I wish, right?

So maybe you have a thousand people that follow that liked your page, that like contractor, coach, Pro on Facebook or follow you on Instagram. You do a post, maybe a hundred of people see it. 10, 10 of them liked it. 100 of them saw it, right? There's, there's 900 people that didn't see that. Maybe they just weren't on their phone at that specific time when that content was going out. Whatever. The algorithm, you know, decided to show this and to them instead of that. Why don't you repost that a month from now?

Ah, I gotcha. Or maybe post it in a different venue. Like maybe you did that thing on Facebook and go put it on Instagram.

Yep, we do. We do six to eight posts on every social media channel every day. So we have seven social media channels and about six posts per day on every channel and every.