Kill Your Competition with Jessica Reyna

Hey, out there, all you contractors, it's Jim Johnson, the head coach here at Contractor Coach Pro, with this week's episode of Contractor Radio, and we have a superstar of marketing. I'm super excited. We have been friends for a little while on Facebook, but we really connected over this whole situation that we're dealing with this coronavirus thing. And she was watching a panel that I was on with CompanyCam, and she reached out and she said, hey, if any of your contractors need some help with this new program you're putting out, I'd be willing to do that. And me being me is like, okay, what does she want? Like, that's the deal. Like, nobody says I help for free anymore, right? And I reached out to her and said, that's really nice. You know what? What do you want to get out of it? How do I help you with your business? And she's like, no, I don't want anything. I just want to help people. And so I was immediately like, okay, let's tap her for everything she's got. And I got an opportunity to talk with her a little bit more. She's a fountain of knowledge, and she's got some knowledge in an area that most contractors don't focus in. And so we're going to talk about that today. But I would like to welcome to the show Jessica Rea with Kill youl Competition.

Hi. Thanks for having me.

We're super pumped about it. So, Jessica, just to kind of get things started off, we kind of do this as we get. I like to get to know people, and I think our audience likes to get to know people. You'd be surprised how many people, like, download this podcast. It's been pretty humbling, and it's been encouraging to keep doing it. And so just tell us a little bit about yourself, maybe some background and history, how you got to where you are, and dig into some of that stuff we were talking about.

Well, my name is Jessica, and I've been in marketing since 2006. My background is actually primarily digital and audio, and that includes video, not just audio. But I've been doing this for a long time. And the reason I switched and I own my own company is while I was working, my husband, who's a Marine, had to get out of the Marines and try to make a transition to civilian life, and just had a baby, and it wasn't working. So we started our own business and went from there, and it's been just real great. We've worked with contractors for the last 15 years, and prior to that, I worked with contractors in banking, and it's probably my favorite category despite any economic circumstance.

So you see, you work with contractors. What kind of contractors do you work with? Is it like all roofing contractors or is it a niche thing or is it a broad based. What does that look like?

The contractors, we have range. We have ones that are small, that are ac, plumbing, siding, solar and landscaping, and even sprinkler repair all the way up to very large roofing contractors, some in the top 20 in the country.

Well, one of the things that kind of caught me off guard was I didn't know who you were. Like, this is weird. Like, when you reached out to me, I'm like, I don't know this Jessica person. And. And then when I asked if you know what you wanted out of, you said, well, I don't really need any business. I just want to help. I went, okay, who is this person that says they don't want business? And I know you do. Like, I know we'll always take on a great client, but what do you think has been the recipe to kind of get to there where you have all these clients and you can be a little bit picky and choosy?

I think the most important thing is just establishing fit. Just like in any market, you have tons of homes, tons of homeowners, and you have to say to yourself, who is my customer? And the most important thing is understanding who you can have a good relationship with. For me, I really like the mutual engagement, but I also like the ability to create and do what I do best. So a lot of my clients will allow me that free. They'll give me as much education about what they do in detail so I can speak intelligently to homeowners and do it in a way where I can reach them in as many ways possible and. And understand how they're going to reach back to the contractor to become a customer.

So that brings me to one of my things I struggle with. With marketing companies. It's interesting. Like, as a contractor, we kind of handled it all in house. We knew what we were doing. I know how to speak to a homeowner and that type of thing. But here as a coach, digital, this new, weird digital world, I've struggled. I've struggled mightily, and I've tried several different companies. And the thing that really gets me is we're super busy. That's been a really good thing. Our results have been pretty good. We get really good word of mouth. I get to speak at a lot of events that bring people to us. But every time I try to engage a marketing company, it's like this giant thing to try and get them to understand what it is that I do. And we sit down and we go through the Persona of your client and all these different things, right? And your editorial calendar and how the post needs to look and you need to take these pictures and that I'm like, that's what I hired you for. Like, that's the part I don't want to do. That's the part that I. So what does that look like for you guys? Because I'm sure you got to get to know your people, but how do you handle that part?

Well, the most important thing for us is early on we take the time before we reach out to someone to understand your business. And there's going to be times too where we're not going to know. Lot of information. There was. I remember when I first started working very closely with roofers in a much more, I would say, one to one sense. I remember I heard him say something about a dry in, and I had never heard that term before. And I looked at him and I said, what's a dry in? And this is a large commercial roofing contractor. And he's like, you don't know what a dry in is? And I said, no. And I gave him a very specific marketing term that I knew he wouldn't know. And I said, you don't know what this is. And. And he laughed and we're still very good friends. But that was really important is I'm not going to know all of your technical terms right off. But it's very important that you allow me to have the opportunity to do it. And you don't have to do it by us sitting in a meeting. Every marketer can go on, they can Google you, they can read all about your business. They don't need to know how long your business, if you're spending time that you don't have, explaining things that someone can already look at, in my opinion, that's not the right person for me. I wouldn't want them asking me the same questions. I want my time to be treated as valuable as their time is. And again, those are things we can look at. There's going to be times where something new is going to come up and I'm not going to understand. But if I can have the opportunity or a resource within your company where I can ask again, not what a dry. Obviously that's a very basic term and I know that now. But if I have something Where I really want to stand the difference. You know, allow me a resource within the company and ask those questions, and that will allow me to create content constantly for you through a variety of formats that communicates to people in a way that they can understand what your workmanship is, your technicality within it, and your expertise in a way that someone can understand and act upon the information they're receiving.

Awesome. Yeah. Good. Thank you. We all say thank you. Like, it is such a frustration. I'm like, all that stuff's on my website here. I'll let you log into all my learning stuff. You can go watch all that and get up to speed on it. When you get done with that, then come back to me because now you'll know. And it's frustrating to have to go fill out a bunch of forms and write a bunch. Like, I don't want to write a bunch of content. That's the reason I'm kidding you. Yeah.

They have a website. People can look that information up. One of the things I always respond back to salespeople when they reach out to me for my contractors, they always say, can you handle 15 more leads a month, or are you still working right now and taking on business? And I would just always respond with, no. We just flip the lights on and sit around and plan on what we're going to do next month. And, you know, when you talk to people, you know, treat them the way that you want to be treated.

I could not agree more. We were actually talking about that before we hopped on of putting ourselves in the other person's shoes. Right. You know, we don't know what route they've gone and how they've gotten to where they are. So we have this practice. After getting to know you a little bit, we always ask this question, and so I'm interested to find out from you what's your greatest achievement to date. And that doesn't include getting married or having kids or any of that family stuff. Like, those are always easy wins for our greatest achievement. Other than that, what's it been?

I think this is not necessarily one of my greatest achievements because it does involve other people. And I'm a believer in Jesus, and I cannot credit anything I've done without him. But he continues to provide me with opportunities to help people in ways that I never in my wildest dreams would have imagined. And he's done so much in my life and again, just gave me opportunities. And one of them, I had a client who actually got a lot of TV stations used to give out gifts where they would send you on a trip if you spent a certain amount of dollars and one of the owners couldn't go and none of the other managers in the office could go. And I said, well, can I have your trip? Because I'm managing his marketing. And he said, sure. And so I got the privilege of going to Africa for about two weeks and it was amazing. But while we were there and you're experiencing all these five star and beautiful things, my best friend came with me and I said, hey, can we see real Africa? And they said yes. So they got us a taxi. We drove 20 minutes away from town into this little tiny village called Mikuni Village. You can look it up. It's M U K U N I. And they're right outside Victoria Falls, which is one of the seven wonders of the world. So huge area, but no one even knew this place existed. And this is a village that is 100% dependent on tourism to survive. They're a traditional village. They have, I think maybe half a dozen homes in a village of maybe 7,000 have electricity. None of them have running water. And I got to find out who these people are and a great deal with them. I said, I would love to help you. Still does anyone? Can I give someone my car? Can I connect with someone? And I gave this guy, his name is Clifton. I gave him my card and about a couple months later he reached out to me and I was working. He goes, hey, my name is Clifton. I met you in the village. Can you help us? How can you help us? My husband does web design and so he built him a website and I built him a social media presence and I created the content on there. And it's really cool because now we constantly see people that are even despite the circumstances and travel issues, and even when they went through this really crazy drought, we constantly would see people coming in saying, I went to the village, I experienced the village, I found out about the village, I bought crafts from the village. And that's how they make their money, is people come and do tours. This is the most historical villages in the whole country of Zambia. This is the place where David Livingston went. They took care of him and his men and they're the ones who brought him to Victoria Falls. It's so cool that people now are available and they see this and that we can support them. And even in there's a lot I could go on about them and just amazing people. And it would never have happened if God did not allow those opportunities to happen. And I still check on And I still have access to their social media and I just, I love it. And you know, we all have different things we can offer and if we're just open to the opportunities that God puts before us, the opportunities are endless.

Wow, that was. I don't get shivers down my spine very often when I'm listening to a story, but I'm sitting here going, wow, she like marketed a whole village that's super cool. Like, how do you do that? How does that even come across to your mind to go, hey, I want to market this village and help these folks out. Man, that is awesome. I love the faith based side of it. You know, times are a little bit sketchy right now with this whole coronavirus thing that we're dealing with. And I think a lot of people are finding their faith again and reconnecting with God. And I'm looking at that as a blessing of some of this stuff. So it's always nice to have an interview with somebody else of faith and seeing that it isn't about them or anything like that. Anything we do, it's God working through us. That's been our attitude from the beginning. Here at Contractor Coach Pro, our core values are love, serve and care. That's what we do every single day. We figure if we do that well, everything else will be okay. And so far, absolutely, that's great. So let's talk a little bit about what you do, right? You do some unique things, I think, for our particular industry. Most people in our industry, and when I talk about our industry, I'm talking the home services contractor world, they probably tend to send some direct mail. They might do some telemarketing, they maybe even incorporate some door to door extreme cases. They might have some radio and tv, but it's just spots, you know, like they buy them and that's kind of all there is to it. Some of them are a little bit hinky and goofy, which sometimes plays quite well. And then they dabble in social media and they dabble in Google and the results are kind of iffy and that type of thing. And so what I find intriguing about you is you kind of wrap all those things together. Do I understand that thing correctly?

Yes, 100%. So what we do and what we specialize in is called omnichannel marketing. And what it means is that we are understanding how people are interacting with you, how they're seeing you, where they're seeing you, whether it's trucks going through the neighborhood, whether it's online, if they're hearing about you on the radio, and then making sure that they're not working independently because people don't respond to your company and call you and do business with you based on one independent interaction. So what we want to do is make sure every interaction that you have, every opportunity for you to be in front of people is the most effective as possible to eventually drive them to the final point of calling and saying yes. And they're so pre qualified at that point that it's a done deal, it's a 100% done deal. So by the time your estimator gets to the door, they know all about your estimator, they know all about your company, and they know why they chose to call you in the first place. And they're confident in that.

So first off, that's super cool. Like that doesn't sound like a salesperson, that sounds like an order taker. Just show up and like, come on, I don't have to go sell a whole lot because you've done a lot of the dirty work for us. You might have seen me. I was distracted. Those of you that are seeing this on video, I actually pulled my phone up and I wanted to look up the meaning of omni. And so omni means of all things. Which I thought, oh, that definitely describes exactly what you do. It's all of it, right? How do you manage all that? Like, there's so many different channels. We talk about these different marketing channels and there's so many different channels. Social media, Google Ads, Google, my business, tv, radio, direct mail. And I give the list is a mile long that goes down my arm, you know, talking about those things. How do you, how do you manage all that stuff? How do you bring it together into one cool place?

The most important thing is that you understand the top message and understanding that you have to invest in the right resources to be able to track all that information. Because if you sit there and you rely on basic things such as how did I hear about your business? You're going to fail. It's not going to work. I always tell people, I'll write you $1,000 check today if you can find me a credible source that says that's a way to verify how your marketing is working. So what we do is we understand the top down and then the people that work for us, they are specialized. So I have the top vision, I have the top planner, top researcher. And then once I say, okay, this is the messaging, this is what we're going to do. And I'll start with, for example, one of our clients Call us roofing we talked about earlier. We'll start with here's the top message and then she'll spread that message throughout the employee's social medias as well. And so you have someone that specifically has to work on that. Because if you try to be everything to everyone for all your clients and doing every single post, every single Google Ad, you're gonna get burnt out. So it's really important that you start with someone at the top who really understands those things and is qualified and do it. A lot of people say, Well, I have one certification, I have 15. So they need to have enough certifications, enough research, enough data and enough support underneath that they can continue to focus everything down. Otherwise, what ends up happening is a lot of these larger companies, they'll have one person that does it. They'll manage 20 to 50 campaigns online, for example, on Facebook and Google Ads, and they will all have the same message. And so what happens is, is that you and your competitors who are probably using these larger companies all look the same. So it has no meaning to a potential customer.

We talk about that, this idea, you know, if you look the same and I'll put it into corn, alright? Corn. Every ear of corn looks like the next ear of corn. And that's why they call it a commodity, right? I can buy that one or that one, it doesn't make any difference.

Right, right.

As soon as you put the word organic on it. Oh wow, that's like good corn. That's different corn. I'll pay more for that corn. Right? It's the same thing in the roofing world. If everybody else is doing it, this I got to do this way over here. That's completely different and unique because I want to stick out. I don't want to be, I don't want to be white noise with everybody else. I want to be that, that trumpet that everybody hears. They don't miss it. Is that kind of how your philosophy works?

That is very important. But it has to not be an obnoxious trumpet. It has to be the one where I like that sound. And you also again have to understand if, especially as your budget is smaller, so that the smaller budget, the more finite you have to be. And you have to figure out, where can I reach the most people for the least amount of money with the best, as you say, trumpet blast. That is going to succinct with them where they say, yes, I like that sound, I want that sound. How do I get that sound in my house?

So you were talking about targeting earlier and we have a concept. We talk with guys about that all the time, and we really get down to, like, the super detail of it. So we say, you know, target. Usually people picture either like an archery target or they picture a, like the dartboard, right? And we were like, okay, so picture dartboard, but picture that little bullseye in the middle. That's who I want to know. That's the one I want to know. And tell me who that one is, because if I can get to that one, everybody they know is going to be very close to that type of person that you want to work with. And so I can work from there out instead of from out here in. Is that something that works in your marketing thing or do you. What are your opinions on that?

There's two ways you can go about it. Yes, 100%, you should have precision targeting. And it's extremely important. And I like to use the word scope. You know, you have a scope, especially if you're going to do a thousand yards, you need to make sure, you know, it's going to go up, it's going to come down, and you want to make sure that your grouping is tight because if it's all over the place, you've wasted a bunch of ammo.

You better check the wind, too. Right.

You got to make sure that you're precise. But on the other hand, you don't be so precise that once you finish, let's say you're working a neighborhood or you're working a zip code, but all of a sudden you have to go to this next zip code and you have to start from ground zero. So in that case, you need to have some mass reach as well. That is still broad enough. Yes, they need to be homeowners. They need verified homeowners. Not we took a survey, but an actual verified homeowner homeowner and not a small sample size with these surveys, because you cannot take 1% of a population and say that it represents the rest of the market. You really need to have precise data. So when you look at. In a large sense, you can say, okay, I want people to know why they should do business with me, know all about me in a way. So when I go to the next neighborhood and I knock on that door or I send them a flyer or whatever it is, or my truck comes in, they already are. They're already warmed up to who I am. I'm not a stranger at the door. And that's also even more so in the sales process. And I'm not trying to jump on your Toes. But sales and marketing, they're like, you cannot have one without the other.

We're married. Yeah.

Yes, we're married. So that way, one of the things that we do with one of our client, a lot of our clients actually I should say now, is we use Bombbomb. So before that estimator even arrives at that door, they have got an email with the estimate, says, hi, I'm Jessica. I've been with so and so company for so many years. During that time, I've helped this many people and just give a little bit of information. Just literally 15 to 30 seconds. It doesn't have to be a novel because you're gonna bore them, but at least that way, when you knock on a door, they're like, oh, that's Jessica. You know the sound of my voice. They know what I look like. They know a little bit about me and why people choose to use specifically me. Because what you're doing with marketing is selling them on the reputation of your company. When you get to the door, it's about the reputation of your salesperson. And so marketing that whole way through the process is extremely important for your success.

I could not agree more, 100%. I talk to more marketers than I want to, to be honest with you.

I think it's every business.

I bet you I get 20amonth that want to be on our podcast or want to be a part of our thing or they want to work with our contractors. They get all kinds of them, and I normally just blow them off. One of the things about you that, like, I add, as we've interacted and done more and more, and I hope I don't offend you here.

No, not at all.

You seem to be almost like marketing nerdy like you. Like, you want to know it inside and out and backwards and forward and dig in. Am I off base there? I don't want to.

100%. I am an extreme introvert. I don't go to parties. But, man, I love marketing and I love data. And the time I'm most excited is when I get to go to my comscore conference every year and I'm surrounded by my other data nerds. But I remember I got invited by a client to go to a company Christmas party, and they said, listen, we've invited you every year and you haven't come. Like, please, please don't make me come. I'm really good in your meetings. I can talk about marketing. We can talk about draw ins all day long now. But I went to the party and I called the owner's son, who I've worked with for eight years now, by the wrong name in front of him and his whole family. So I just get really nervous. But. So I'm not good with that. I cannot buy a pair of heels. I don't know how to do my hair. But I love marketing and I love data, and it's my passion outside of my family and my faith.

What fascinates you about it? Why are you so like 15 certifications, all that, like the data stuff, like, what fascinates you about that? What is the thing? Because anybody that's passionate about something, something gives them fulfillment and energy from it. What is it about marketing that does that for you?

I love the engineering aspect of it, I think is really, really important. And just seeing how everything works together, understanding how people work and create things. And I really like supporting businesses. I like learning about people's businesses and I like supporting that. Because marketing, that's my number one job, is to grow a business. If I grow a business, I create more jobs. If I create more jobs, I create a happier economy. And that to me is fulfilling.

That's really cool. So we have two opposing things going on right here. We have engineer and nerd. Like you. Whether you were in agreement with those two, you actually mentioned engineer mind. Like you like the engineering of it. Then you have this creative side, right? You have this copy and content delivery and video script and all this other stuff that goes along with that. Is that you or is that somebody else or where does that fall?

Hi to you. Those. I have a lot of time. Yeah. So I. One of the ones that you participated with me earlier this week, I actually came up with all those within the space of an hour. And I really like, again, it comes back to how can. Once I understand the engineering of the human mind, now I want to understand the heart of the human and how to reach them there. Because again, it's another. In my opinion, it's still. Even though it's creative, it's still engineering. How do I create the response at that point and how do I make it unique to that business and to the customer? And I get really excited about that too. So I get really excited. I do actually produce TV commercials. I produce radio spots. I produce a lot of things like you've seen. I've produced a lot of social media content. And one of the ones that I came up with recently, I was really excited, was just yes, we can. And I think that's really important in the industry, you know, especially with roofing right now and how people feel is that, yes, we can help you now. And it's not that we can and you should, it's we can, we should because that storm is going to come. You know, nobody cares. No storm cares. If COVID 19 is here three months. And it's important that we say that and that we're positive about it. Not just we can meet with you virtually. People know that people are seeing virtual meetings every which way.

Yes, we're doing one right here, we're.

Doing one right now. But it's true, man. I mean, people have heard of virtual doctor visits for two years. So that's not a new concept. It's not a reason for them to do business with you. But if you're positive and say, yes, we can care for you, and here's why, we're caring for you now during this time, even if you're in an area that's not impacted by storms, letting that leak that they know that they have from last season, that they put off, the rain is going to come, spring is coming, and that's putting their family at risk for mold. So, yes, COVID 19 is a thing. Mold is a really serious thing and it can affect anybody. And so again, it's showing that just the positivity. And I know it's gonna sound even worse, but, you know, I am a marketing person. But one of the ads that I've been putting out with the yes, we can it is an old customer, he is at least 65, he's full on gray, he's holding the customer's sign or the client sign and right about yes, we can. And he's got beautiful roof behind him. Yes, we can help you even if you're old. We will safely protect your home. And it's not because we have to meet with you virtually. It's because we care about you and we're taking the precautions and we're positive about the future.

So I'm going to end up having to give a plug here, which we started this new program, right, this contractor evolved thing. I was very grateful that you sat in with us. And you're starting to dig in kind of to why we did it, because we see on the surface that we can do this thing from a no touch and virtual way. I don't have to be within 10ft of you. I don't even have to meet you at your house. I can, I can come to your house, do your inspection without you being involved. I can go back to my office. I can set up a Virtual call with you. And if you want to go with us, I can sign an edoc. We can all do those things. We know that this isn't anything new. We just haven't done it yet. We've been moving that way very slowly. Everybody's taking a little steps. I actually have about 10 contractors we've coached that are fully 100% virtual already. And they were bragging about it. Every time I posted. They would go, oh, we've been doing this for a while. It's great. We sell this many jobs a month. And it hadn't changed a thing. But it's not whether we can. It's how effective will we be. And so you like us, we had to pivot with what we're doing. Like, we weren't planning on putting this program out until January of 2021. We're going to really work kind of slowly on it and kind of get it all done, pick at it until we're finished. And we had it all planned out. Obviously, things changed. We had to pivot dramatically to take on helping these guys get through this, through that program. How have you had to pivot? You know, like, all the messaging just changed, like, literally overnight. Like, okay, the messaging changed. What does that cause in your business? And how are you handling that?

The most important thing is a lot of people, like we talked about earlier, you have a whole range of people, just like you see among everyone who's on this call and their, you know, their friends, their family and. And understanding that we have a job to do and the most important job that we have to do. Yes, we want people to be safe. Yes, we want people to take reasonable precautions. Yes, we want people to stay in their homes if they can. But we have to remind people that it will end. We have to be positive and we have to be responsible with that positivity and taking that time away for us. While everyone's trying to figure out what their internal operations allowed us to take. Step back. Before all the quarantines and orders happen, we approached our clients and said, this is the correct messaging and. Or this is what you need to do. You need to step back and here's why. And then here's. Until when? And that's really important because 73% of people there was a Media post article said are being judged on how you're managing your brand, what type of messaging you're having out there. And you can't just be very. I hate you using it, but, you know, sappy, you know, oh, we're so sorry and whatever, because you're going to placate into that fear and you can't be like, hey, there's no problem. You have to be a healthy medium. Yes, there is an issue. These are steps we've taken and this is why we still need to keep the lights on in all the businesses. You know, we still need to, as we talked earlier, we still need to go through that drive through. We still need to pick up, you know, restaurant business. We still need to interact to support the economy because those people that are working at the restaurants, that are working in the stores, in the stores, I shouldn't really say, because they're gaining employees right now. So as some are losing, some are gaining. But the biggest thing to do is we keep the economy moving at least at a healthy pace. It's not going to move at the pace it was before until this resolves itself. But we need to support that because those are your future customers. Those are the people that you're going to try to sell a roof to. And if we help keep the lights on in a positive way with responsibility, we can continue to do business. We can grow our business. And people will remember, just like after a major disaster, how we handled it, how we spoke to people, the precautions we took and our positivity. And I think it's extremely important because your reputation is so critical during this time, no matter where your business is located.

Yeah, it was. Again, it's been kind of humbling and just I was a little bit shocked, to be honest with you. We've had a ton of emails, I mean, a ton of emails, Facebook messages, text messages of, hey, way to step up and take the bull by the horns on this. Keep being positive, keep doing what you're doing. And it's from people involved in our program and people outside of our program just seeing the stuff that we're putting out there. Like, I always look at everything as it's just a puzzle, right? I got this new puzzle and somebody this time dumped out a 4,000 piece, tiny little piece puzzle on me and said, okay, figure that out, Jim. So you've been figuring all the others try this one on for size. And I don't get intimidated by it and I don't have fear of it or any of that kind of stuff. I just look at, okay, so what are the steps we need to take? And start putting those puzzle pieces together. And if you just determine and you're persistent, those puzzle pieces at some point will get put back together.

And.

And I think that we're doing a Fair job of helping people get through this. From the response has been really good and with really because of people like you, people like you coming in and saying, hey, I'll help. We've had quite a few marketing people that I actually trust to come in and do some of that stuff and some technology people and some proposal people and just a variety of different folks that CRM companies that have come in to help be experts with all this and put it together. And it's that people are going to remember how Contractor Coach Pro handled this. People are going to remember how kill the competition with Jessica handled this. They're going to remember how your client call us Roofing handled this. And it's interesting, you look at the biggest companies in the world at this point in time. Apple, Microsoft, cnn, you name it, Walmart, all were created in a recession. That's amazing to me. Like Uber was created in a recession. Like those are. It says there's opportunity there if we jump on it. We just got to have a really good plan for it. So I'm going to be honest about myself a little bit here. I've not always been a fan of marketing folk all that much and I, I'm not either. I dismissed many of them and did for a long time. I've maybe changed my tune a little bit. But I want to get your take on this. There's this difference between brand building and lead generation, right? Like you see a lot of people like, you got to build your brand, you got to build your brand. And I'm the, you better give me a lead. That's what I'm looking for. I'm not going to spend all this money without having an opportunity. That's what I'm looking for. And so I used to completely dismiss anybody that said anything about brand. As a matter of fact, I hate that word. And I think you mentioned before, you don't like that word either.

Brand is a four letter word.

Yeah, brand is a four letter word. And I don't know which letter we got to get rid of, but one of them I got rid of this idea of brand building. I think you really need to use the word reputation instead and that reputation is what you're really building. But I still want the lead generator. Like I need that lead generation. So how is your, like, seriously, I wouldn't even work with somebody unless you could deliver leads like right now. And none of this like, hey, it'll start working in three months or five months or six months or anything like that. That's like, okay, three months from now I'm going to find out that you cannot do this. And I just spent a bunch of money. So where do you stand on that stuff?

I am 100% in your camp. I don't know any business and I don't feel it is reasonable in any way, shape or form to ask a business to spend money on any sort of marketing and have to wait three months to see a result. I think that is absurd. There is so many great formats out there. I also think there's a lot of things you shouldn't spend money on every month too. I don't know who I'm not allowed to say right now, but.

Hey man, we're transparent around here and I would love to get your feelings on that. I mean, don't disparage any of my buddies or anything, but gloves off.

If you're paying every month for SEO, for example, in very rare circumstances, does it warrant a monthly payment? Otherwise it is one and it is done. I know, I'm pretty sure my house is going to burn down, so don't tell anyone where I live. But that's the thing I tell people. And it's something that we often people always say, well, can we put you on retainer for a second? You want to say, no, you can't. I'm going to show you what needs to be fixed, we're going to address it and it's going to be done. And when people say, well, what about X, Y or Z? I'll say, let me show you. Here is my citation directly from Google, from their own thing that says google.com or think with Google and I will cite you every reason why you should not pay for it and what it means to actually optimize. So those are some of the things. And also I'm not going to tell people. Even if you are the same roofing, two different roofing companies, same city, it does not matter. You should not have the same marketing plan you have. Whether you like it or not, you have different customers and therefore you should not be marketing the exact same way. It does not matter if Joe Schmo roofing over here and Bob Joe roofing over here. What's happening with them? What matters is, is what you are doing. Are you reaching the people that you need to reach. Because a lot of times you'll see people and I love Google. I have a lot of certifications from Google, I'm a Google partner and I'm just gonna be honest. Google will have their sponsored or their I forgot what it's called.

Don't say anything that's gonna get your certification taken away.

I can say this. They'll have local services ads. So you have all these ones across the top, okay. And it's a little checkbox. And then below that, you have Google Ads, and then you have the map. And even in the map, there's now ads you can place through Google Ads. And then finally get down to organic. So if you think someone's going to surf all the way down, you're paying. And I've heard some ungodly amounts of money that people pay every month for SEO, you're out of your treat. And if you're sitting there trying to be focusing all your money on that one, that first one leads local services to Google Ads. 3 Google Ads through the maps, that's a lot of competition. And if you're a small roofing contract, you cannot afford that. You need to find a way where you're not sitting there trying to be one jelly bean in the jar of jelly beans and hoping that the customer can find you. It is really important.

That's super fantastic. So if I was going to go the Google route, because, I mean, that's the way people search, right? They search like roofer in Greeley, Colorado. And, you know, we get the results, there's three or four ads at the top. And then they Google Ads. And then like you said in the map, you're now seeing. First time I saw an ad in the map, I was like, what are you doing? Please stop. Is that a calculated thing, do you think by Google that really that whole first page is going to be an ad and you won't see organic until the next page at some point.

I think that they are definitely heading in that direction. And it's also fancy if you get an email or you get a call from a salesperson in marketing, they're like, do you know you're not number one of this really ridiculously long keyword? Don't have a panic attack. It's probably not even a keyword that people search, because what they do is they bank on your fear. So whenever I get those from clients, they'll say, oh, my gosh, I'm not number one of flat roofer Denver. And I'll say, okay, let's look on Google, because all this information is public. Like I've mentioned how many people search flat roofer Denver? Less than 10amonth. So who cares if you're not number one, a flat roofer Denver? Let's be number one of where all the people are at and then find even within those keywords, there's times just changing a simple thing within that keyword strategy. Instead of having the local services, then the Google Ads, then the map with the ads, there might just be one of those things, maybe two, and you might have less ads, less competition. So again, this is trying to find how can I be. You should be on Google Ads in most cases. That doesn't mean all of your budget should be there. And sometimes it's looking at something completely out of the box. So for example, landscaping is very high dollar item and it's also very competitive, like roofing. And so I talked to one of our contractors and I said, are you familiar with Waze? And they said, what's Waze? And we talked about it's a navigation app. It's number two in the iPhone. I don't have an iPhone. I don't have an Apple, whatever your Apple Store is. And on mine, because I have an Android, it's number three. It's very well used. Sorry, I don't have Apple.

They're both Android people. This is unusual. Almost everybody I talked to is like Apple. The App Store is what it's called.

Okay, the App Store. Well, cool people store. I'm not the cool person. That's okay. So I said, why don't we do these takeover ads? And everyone's first response is, well, that's just for driving somewhere. And I said, yes, they're driving somewhere, but it's very similar to a billboard. The only difference between them and a billboard, which I know there's probably people that buy billboards on here, is I'm not asking a driver to look away from the road for 7 to 10 seconds. Hope to God I can memorize all the information you put on there. And try not to drive off the road. If I decide to take action now to dial you or to call you. So now I'm looking at my phone, I'm driving and safely driving and looking at your phone, looking out for navigation. And you can do call now or save offer. And this landscaper was using it for an offer of $1,000 off landscaping of $10,000 more. So he thought, let's make it so bare Minim. He got 52 calls in the first month and I think he spent maybe $1,000. Wow, you're not going to get that on Google Ads. But it was an area where he had the local services, then he had the Google Ads, then he had the map and the ads. So yes, he still had a presence on Google, but he got More calls from something that he could literally click to call right there than you could from doing Google Ads. So it's really important about being open minded again, finding a partner, and we talked about earlier, find a partner that you're comfortable with and a partner that you're willing, that you feel confident in listening to. If they come up with a creative idea and be willing to try it. And I'm not saying again, don't wait three months. If it's not working within two weeks, stop it. Especially if it's digital. I don't care what anyone tells you. There's literally a button on Google Ads and you can say pause, pause the ad. If it is not working, it is okay to say this is not working. Let's find what is working. And being realistic with people, you're going to have the first month with any client, you're going to have some fluctuation. You're trying to figure out, okay, how many calls is this driving? What's the length of these calls? Be willing to take two weeks. That's all I ask people. Give me two weeks. Let's work on it another two weeks. It's going to get better and it should continue to get better. And eventually with any good marketing person, you're going to plateau, you're going to max out what you can do with that dollar. And then you have to say, okay, do I want to stay here? Because some people may not have the capacity, you may not have the ability to the market you're in, depending on the season to get more crews on. If it's storm season or major storms happen, it's going to be difficult. Yes, the market's going to be flooded, but people are going to grab those contractors up. So all of a sudden you can't go from here to here unless you know that you have the ability to hire the labor to handle it for you. So be reasonable in your expectations about when you should jump because it doesn't make sense. Sense. If I plateau here with my marketing and my leads, my calls, and they're good and I cannot get the labor to spend more money to get more leads that you cannot handle. Because it doesn't matter if you can get an estimator there if you cannot do the work because then you create.

A bad reputation, I can always get the labor. I promise you, you can give me a lead, I'll get the labor and I'll get the salespeople. We'll make it happen.

Okay?

Big believer in that aspect of things. So I feel like I Could talk to you for hours. No, no. I got so many questions. And, like, I would. Would it be okay to bring you back at some point? We're not going to end right now, but I just want to ask that now so I don't forget later.

Yeah, okay.

I'd like to do maybe one more here in a couple months or something. Well, maybe when we're through all this coronavirus stuff and deal with that. So when it comes to advertising, you know, I'm still a neophyte. I don't really know all that much, but. But one thing I do know, or at least I think I know, and you tell me if I'm wrong or not, is if you're gonna. If you're gonna market, wherever it is that you're gonna market, do you start with the end in mind? Do you start with, like, what do I want that person to do? And then build backwards from that? Or do you say, hey, we're gonna do this, and we hope they do that?

I think just if you're a salesperson, I feel like most people on here either have some sort of sales experience. You always start with. With, you know, what do I want to make this year? I want to be a $5 million company? I want to be a $10 million company. I want to be, whatever it is, 25 million. Well, then you have to work backwards from that. Because if you start at the beginning with no end goal in mind, you're just burning dollars.

Yeah. So. And I get that for setting my company up. Like, we all talk about that, right? Sales guys with their goals and companies with their goals. But is marketing like your ad that you're going to, this campaign that you're gonna run or this funnel you're gonna create? Is it. With this idea I want them to click to call or to fill out a form or download this? Like, do you start with the in thing, like, the thing I want them to do and work your way back on that? Or is it, hey, we just have this one big message that we're sending out, and I hope they click this thing.

Going back to the omnichannel, marketing, you have a right message for the right media at the right time, place at the right time. And so you start with, yes, I want to be the end goal. And you have to understand how your customer interacts with all the different times that they interact with you. Whether they see an ad, they see your truck, they see someone knocking on the door. But the end goal has to be extremely important, and everything focuses and goes off of what that end goal is. So if I, let's say, want to make sure that people in the market know, yes, I'm in this one neighborhood, I'm working this one neighborhood, but I have the intentions of going to this next one. And maybe it's a month, maybe it's two weeks, you got to make sure that they already are aware of going back to your reputation. That's really what it comes down to, building that reputation in a broad sense. But every time you build your reputation, you should still have a call to action on there and telling them what to do with it. Because there's no point again letting people know, even your reputation, if you're not asking them to do something. At minimum, minimum, visit your website, give you a call, should be the most minimum thing you add on there.

Can I get an am like serious, Like I don't know how many ads, how many marketing pieces I see that don't have a call to action. It's just like, this is who I am. Here's my picture, here's my company. And there's no like call now. There's no download this. There's no apply or set an inspection or an appointment. There's, there's no call to action. Like whatever you spend on that, you just set it on fire. It's like just fire. And that's all there is to it. It's so frustrating to watch it. And so I understand these concepts. I actually spent an exorbitant amount of money on getting a marketing coach for myself and getting a better handle on this digital world and how to. Because I don't like it. To be honest with you. I do. I hate social media. I hate all of that. I don't like to be on tv. I don't like, like to, you know, I don't even like to hear my own voice is like, I don't. Those things seem very ego driven to me. I'm somewhat narcissistic. And it's just, I'm not wired. I used to be. I'm not wired that way anymore. I'm very cognizant of it. And what I did is I had to come to grips with being who I am. Like that part. Like as long as I can be genuine and authentic, then I'm comfortable with it. Then I, then it's okay, I can go shoot a video or write a piece of copy or like we put an ad out and I wasn't real happy with it. And it wasn't me, it was my video. But the Call to action was wrong and the piece that was taken out wasn't the right piece for what the message was saying. Like, so frustrating. I'm going, alright, so now I got to get involved again and go do that thing. And nothing against anybody. It's just they're all still learning. We're not great at it. So you said the words. It was the three words I was hoping you were going to say. And what do you think of call to action? So it was one of my questions I'm going to ask you now. We know the answer. Like it should be on everything, right?

Everything.

All right.

Even a truck can have a call to action.

What's your favorite call to action?

It depends on what action you want them to take.

Good, good political answer. Well, no, I mean I want the answer. I want you at my house. That's the answer I want. I want you at my house. And so what's the best way going.

Back to you have different customers? I have some roofing contractors that are really great with calls. They are really good with people on the phone. One of the girls, she, if I had like a company where I was having people call me all day and they weren't trying to sell me like the logo to sponsor the logo on a sweatsock, I would hire her. But there's also different types of businesses where they don't want to call. They're really good with online. So you have to understand who your customer is. Because if you're asking people to download an ad or to book it online and they're the type people that want to call, then your call to action is wrong. So you have to think about who the end user is and what their comfort level is. And that's really important.

Oh, nail on the head. Well done. I am thoroughly impressed. I really am. You know your stuff for sure. Why does somebody react to an ad?

Well, they're going to react good or bad, only if you make an impression on them.

Ah, that word. Can you explain what an impression is? Like I talk about it with my contractor clients and it's like this foreign concept. Every single time I put together KPIs, the very first thing is impressions. And the very first question is what's an impression? So can we get it from the marketing expert what an impression is?

Okay, so an impression is someone physically seeing, hearing, or in a video case seeing and hearing at the same time. Your message and is an impression is not necessarily unique to a person. So for example, I might see the same ad if someone didn't place my media correctly five times in one day. Okay? That does not mean that five different people saw it. It means it was seen five times. You can set it to the point where there's five different people who saw one time and it's still five impressions. So it's really important that people understand the difference between impressions and unique people that are exposed to them and also understanding too at some point they're going to be sick of you. Cap it off. Great example is if you've ever used Hulu and early stages in Hulu, even though it's cheap to advertise, a lot of local businesses didn't do it because I'm one of which you probably would have seen would have been Geico. Every single ad break had Geico. So after two hours of seeing Geico, you're like, I'm Netflixing out. I'm something. Show me anything. But I don't even care what it is.

We were an early adopter of Hulu. And you're right, it was. I'm like, all right, maybe not.

Geico is car insurance company. And that tells you also the impression it made, it wasn't a good one. And I remember the brand. So it's important and impression only to understand what it is, the visual side of it, but also understanding what impact an impression has. Just like impression can also refer to reputation. So when you're talking to your marketing person, make sure you understand how many people will see it, how many times, how often they will see it. Because even if you have the biggest, best message, it's the greatest ad in the world. Whether it's in a print magazine, whether it's a flyer, whether it's you knock on the door, there's a point where people will A, act on it or B, be sick of it. And it's really important that you understand that every type of interaction has a different threshold of patience with people too.

Do you have a favorite media for particular? Like this type of contractor, that kind of media? Or is it. Is it just we're casting a wide net through a variety of things. Is it like we'll use a roofing contractor? Because all honesty, that's most of our clients, about 70%. We have a bunch of others as well. But that's most of our clients. Like, is there a specific one? Like for roofers, they go, man, this is the cat's meow for you.

Okay, if this is. These are all very ifs. If you can create a good message, and I mean a good quality message, it does not have to cost you a million dollars to do it. I mean, don't show video of you rolling up in a truck. Nobody cares what your truck looks like. No one cares how many trucks you have. Make it something that is valuable to the person. TV is amazing again, if you target them correctly. Because there's a million programs, there's hundreds of seconds of airtime out there. But it does not matter if you have the wrong message and the wrong audience. It is so critical to understand that audience and who's on there, because every TV rep and a lot of agencies, I love what I do, but there's a lot of. Just like in any industry, there's a lot of bad information out there. And at the end of the day, their job is to sell you something. So it's really important that you ask and it's unfortunate that you have to ask where are you getting this information from? Because what TV can do. Even Google spends about 60 to 65% of their weekly ad budget on TV. They won't tell you that, but that's what they do. There is a media firm, I've seen.

Them a couple of times.

I can, I can prove it, I can show it. It's Kantar. They track every dollar that's spent throughout tv, social media, billboards, radio and all. I mean, you can get as finite down to what ad was ran, what the message within that is down to the second in every market. They are extremely good at that information. But again, Google spends 60 to 65% of that. The group is called Fang. Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google. The majority of their budget companies will never walk in the door. Expedia, Lowe's, they all spend the majority of their budget on TV because they know how much impact if they have the right place and if they have the right message it can make on the business. Because all of that drives online action. They're going to go to your website, they're going to search more value, they're going to ask their friends online. There's a whole again talking about the omnichannel process. It makes a huge flood of digital impact. You could actually go. If it's placed right, you can actually go to your analytics and look at it. If you use specific types of TV advertising, like Hulu, for example, it's called ott. You can actually track. If I saw an ad right now, I'm watching it on Sling tv, it'll see on my device because the same IP trying to slow down because I know this is weird and abcdfg you're.

Actually getting right to where I want to talk about.

They'll see the ad there, I'll see the ad there. Go to contractor coach Pro. My husband Jason might go to it a couple days later. But that IP attribution, attribution reporting, when it's done processing, it'll say, okay, one household. Because Jason and I are not separate clients or separate potential customers. We're really one. We're within the same household. It'll say, went to the website and then what happened? Where did I go once I got there? And when you look at that, you treat it just the way you would an ad campaign on Google. You'd say, okay, how many clicks did I get? What actions did they take? Only difference is it in cost. Typically, they don't go to Google now. They know your name, they know your website. They'll go to, you know, abc.com, whatever it is that you're sending them to. And then typically they're going to take action because you've again, if you've made the right message, right placement, right call to action, they're going to take the action that you ask them to do. And it does really well. And it's competitive to actually Google Ads.

Okay, so this is a question I was hoping, and I know we're short on time, excuse my cough there. I do have a couple more questions. So marketing for me is like this thing that's moving too fast for me to keep up with. It's just so much to it. And there's so many different channels now than there. It used to be yellow pages, tv, radio, billboards. Like, that was pretty much the tried and true. Maybe some direct mail, right? There we go. Then they added an email. And so I'd love to get your opinion on email. Like, is that still a thing and do you do it? And. And because one of the things I learned about email that I didn't know before, I used to always worry about spamming people, right? Like giving them too much email. So I'd really reel it back in. But you have to send it to them often because what we're doing is we're on our phones and you guys that are watching a video see me with my phone open up my email. And I do what I think most people do. I open the email up and I do the click thing to highlight that particular email. And then I hit the delete button and I just delete them all. All the ones are like extraneous. I don't even look at them. It's like oh, yeah. I see those guys every day. Boom. And I delete them, right? Because I'm busy. I'm in the middle of the day. I'm working. It's hot and heavy. And then that night, I was sitting in bed, and I got the phone in front of me, and I'm looking at my email, and, oh, yeah, I kind of wanted to look at that thing that I just deleted three times earlier today, and I got it again, but I had the time for it. Is that something that. How do you feel about that? Like, is there too much type stuff that you can do along those lines again?

I don't know who's all listening, and I don't know who all your partners are. I'm just gonna be really honest. Like, I was with SEO. You know, when you go to your mailbox and it's full.