Marketing Strategy vs. Marketing Tactics with Hard Media

Hey, I'm Jim Johnson, your host here with Contractor Radio and I want to thank you for taking the time today to listen to our show. And our show is all about you, helping you get control of your business.

So you can grow your business and.

Find that personal and financial freedom you're after. So hang on tight. Episode's about to start. Alright, so we'll cut through the beginning of this. Go ahead and do that now. So to anybody who's watching right now, thank you for joining. If you're watching this on a recording, my name is Tommy Richardson. I am the marketing coach with Contractor Coach Pro, and I'm joined today with Justin Rankin of Hard Media Group. Justin, tell us a little bit about Hard Media real quick. How long you guys have been in business and what you guys do?

Yeah, absolutely. Hard Media Group, we are a social media and overall digital marketing firm. We focus a lot in lead generation and branding throughout. And we have a spin off of the company called Hard Service Solutions, which is focused solely on in the in home service solutions. So roofing H vac plumbing, if it's being done in the house, we're doing it.

Cool. Awesome, man. How long, how long have you guys been in business now?

Six years. And then I personally have been doing this in this field for like about 12.

There you go. So you got a little seniority on me when it comes to how long you've been in this field. I started in 2018 with Ready Roofing Co. Out of North Carolina. We, I was their marketing manager there and then started nubs media in 2020 and then eventually sold that company last year in Octo. Um, me and you met for the first time last year in August at a Top Rep event. So you've been involved in stuff with Contractor Coach Pro and Top Rep for quite some time. So, you know, I just wanted to thank you for joining, man. Thank you for jumping on here and having this conversation with me. And we're going to bring some good value today when it comes to the difference between marketing strategy and marketing tactics because they're very different. Right. I've noticed over the course of the past year of coaching contractors that they feel that their tactics are their strategy, when in reality that's not true. Your tactics are there to support the strategy, not the other way around. Right. And with you guys, what y' all do is y' all are really good tacticians at accomplishing the overall goal and strategy of what the company has. And so today we're gonna dig into that a little bit. So the first place we're gonna start is we're gonna start at the top, right? Like we're gonna define first off, what exactly is marketing? I think that's a big question that a lot of folks have. There's a lot of assumptions that are out there on what it is. And the reality is that marketing actually has two verticals that are underneath it. The first one is going to be your brand awareness side, so your branding. And the other side is lead generation. And you have to understand the purposes of both of those. Okay, so Justin, me and you have had great conversations. You actually were a part of helping me develop the evolution of the lead that I worked on about seven or eight months ago when we were putting that together. And I loved one of the things that you brought up during that of social media from an organic standpoint isn't necessarily used for lead generation but for branding. And I really like that because that helped me out a lot with developing what that was. So that's a form of branding, right? Social media, organic billboards, tv, radio, your trucks. Even to a certain extent, when you put truck truck wraps on your truck, that's, that's an example of branding. Right. And the purpose of that is to draw people and get them to notice who you are. So when they, it creates that familiarity inside of their brain. And through your branding, if you're doing the right thing, when somebody needs something, then they will get in contact with you. Right? So it can lead to lead generation. Right. But the step in between that is you need to be easy to find. And those are your lead generation activities. That's your Google local services, your Google Ads, your website, your paid social media side of things. Even search engine optimization to a certain extent is a lead generation activity. So I just want to make sure we understand what marketing is before we move forward. Am I missing anything on that, by the way? Justin?

No, I think you're right on point. You know, there's two big facets like you said, especially in this industry. Two big facets. Are we building brand or are we generating leads and making sure that we have a clear differentiation between both of those but understanding how they work together as well.

Yeah, a hundred percent. So when we talk about your overall strategy, the way that I like to coach people on this is the first thing we gotta know is what does success even look like in marketing? Like, what does that look like for you? And that's from a branding side and that's from a lead gen side. So like if you're like, I want X amount of followers on social media, okay, that's great. On the branding side, that's a great goal. That's what success looks like for you. And then on a lead gen side, it's like, well, we need a thousand leads this year in order to do that. Okay? So we know what success looks like, but we also need to know how much money is even realistic for us to spend. And we have a great tool that we use called the goal setter for your leads. And what that does is that tells you based off of revenue, average cost per job, closing percentage and everything, it breaks it down into micro numbers to where we can look at, okay, if we're spending, let's say, 5% of our overall profits after labor material commissions and overhead gets taken out somewhere between that 5 and 10% mark, right? How much does that give us to spend for the year? How much per month? And that even breaks it down to how much does our cost per lead acquisition need to be? What's our cost per sit, you know, what's our cost per close. So that way we can put numbers on everything. So that helps. And what that really does, let's be honest, Justin, if somebody comes to you and they're like, hey, these are our numbers. This is what we need to hit, they can come to you and say, hey, we're in, let's say Texas. We're in Dallas, Texas. We need to have an average cost per lead of $250, right? It gives you a marker to be able to say, is this realistic or is this not based off of what we're doing? You know, so that, that goes hand in hand with what your strategy is, because we're still not talking tactics here, because we got to go find the tactics that are going to be able to support what that calls per lead acquisition is right.

Exactly. We look at it this way, like, if you, if you look at it like, almost like Mario jumping blocks, your first block that you're standing on is your cost per lead. Then there's a giant hole that you can fall in. Then there's your cost per appointment set, there's a giant hole you can fall in, and. And then there's your cost per acquisition. And so as tacticians, we need to figure out our best route of making that jump successfully without losing a ton of budget in between, and then figuring out why we're losing budget in between of those. And that's when we get back to strategy again. But as tacticians, we'll immediately find out that, hey, something's going wrong in these three Processes on, on, on cultivating that lead, and then we go back to strategy to figure out what that is.

Exactly. Exactly. So I think. So when you're looking at what your strategy is, another thing to put into that. So, okay, what our cost per lead acquisition is. We know what our cost per sick cost per. Close. We know those numbers right now. How much of that needs to go to digital, how much of that needs to go to. Or how much of that needs to go to Legion, how much of that actually needs to go to branding, you know what I'm saying? So it's like, what. And that's why we always start with what does success look like? What is success in all these areas? Because if you're sitting at, let's say 5,000 followers total on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and you're trying to get to 15,000 followers by the end of the year, you know, we're going to have to invest a lot of money on the branding and the organic side and all that good stuff, while also investing into social media ads that drive traffic back to your Facebook page to go get those followers. That's branding. Right. So there has to be a budget that is associated with being able to accomplish that. And then also based off of what that budget is, that says, okay, how much, what all do we need from a standpoint of a lead generation side? Well, if we need a thousand leads and we're at an average of $250 cost per lead acquisition, I mean, that right there puts us, I mean, we need 200, we need 250 grand. You know what I'm saying? Well, if you're, if your overall budget for the year is $150,000, that should tell you right there, hey, there's no way we're going to be able to accomplish that.

That's one of the hardest conversations to have with certain contractors because that's where that, you know, that, that, that cloudy haze over your eyes is there. But realistically, it's just math. I mean, it's, it simply is math.

Yeah, because if you have $150,000 budget and let's say 50,000 of that is going to your brand awareness stuff, you know, that leaves you with a hundred grand. You divide that by 250, you're looking at 400 leads for the year. If that's going to be your calls for lead acquisition, you know, so we're, we're only 40% of the way there with the budget that we have and $250 per lead. Yeah, that's high. I'M not going to argue with you. That is. And that's probably going to be beatable. Right. Depending on the market that you're in. If you're in Texas, it's probably going to be higher than what it is, let's say, in North Carolina, where I live, or maybe even Ohio, where you are. Right. So your market is going to determine a lot of this as well, which is what leads me to understanding, you know, your target audience. You've got to know who they are, you know what I'm saying? You got to be able to understand who your target audience is. You need to know what it is that they're looking for, what they want, you know, where they're located digitally and also where they're located, you know, physically as well, because, you know, like downtown Cincinnati, downtown Dayton, downtown Dayton, downtown Dallas, you know, even downtown Raleigh, that lead acquisition is going to be so much higher in your calls than what it's going to be. Let's say, if you went to the outskirts of Dayton or Cincinnati or Dallas or Raleigh, it's just going to be higher. Right.

So that's where we get to tactics as well. Right. So that's a big tactician situation. Because if I'm in a small town with me, you know, 12, 15, 15,000 people, the things I can get away with there are so different in a bid system, right? Because we're, we have a bid system for most of these platforms where we're bidding our cost per lead against who, who else is in the market. If I'm in a smaller market, I can get away with murder to an extent. I'm not going to get away with those same tactics. Right. In, in, in larger cities and metro areas.

That's right. That's right. So because like, people always ask me, they're like, tommy, if you started a new roofing company or something like that today, what would be the first thing that you would do? And I was like, it's a pretty loaded question when you think about it. Right. And my first question comes back to them as well. It depends. I hate to sound like a lawyer or an attorney here, but it does. It depends where am I starting said roofing company. Right?

Yep.

You know, like, if we're in Wilmington, North Carolina, where I live, one of the first things I'm going to do is I'm going to invest very heavily from a branding perspective in the beginning. Like, I need everybody to know that I exist because we're a heavy hurricane market, right. Like, we're very, very hurricane dependent. So sadly, from August, September, October can make your next two years if a hurricane hits, you know, so I've got, I've got to invest really heavily from a branding standpoint so people know who I am and they know that I'm local before I can invest in a lead gen perspective. That's just the reality of it. Whereas if I'm somewhere in a, like if I'm, you know, 30 miles inland, you know, from, from Wilmington, North Carolina, I'm probably going to invest a little bit heavier in the Legion side before I do the branding side because it's not quite as hurricane dependent there because they do get hail in that area, whereas we don't get it in Wilmington. So that's why knowing your area, knowing your target audience, knowing your target locations from a geographical standpoint, all of these things have to known and understood before we can ever put the tactics into play.

100%. Another one there. And you kind of touched on this with your hurricane. But like what is your percentage of retail versus insurance? Right. That's a huge deal. You get into Ohio, where we're at, there's a lot of retail roofers. We are, our climate is pretty mild. We don't get any heavy storms. It gets cold, but not that cold. It gets hot, but not that hot. I live in. It's a fairly mild here in southern Ohio. It's just not that brutal of weather. So we see a lot higher retail percentage than we do insurance percentage on a lot of the companies we work with. Insurance stuff happens, but it's not like being in West Texas or in Minnesota where we see a lot of storm damage, hail damage in those areas.

Yeah, 100%. So I mean, the big takeaways with putting your strategy together is number one, know what success is in both branding and Legion because they're two separate things that fall under the umbrella of marketing. Number two is you have to understand your numbers and what you're trying to accomplish and is it even realistic? Right. And then the next thing you need to understand under your strategy is know your target audience and know your target geographical area so very well. What is it that they value? Because as soon as you can understand those things now we can move forward into saying, okay, what tactics are going to attract that person and in that market to get the numbers that we're looking for so we can get the success that we are looking for at the end of the day. Which is where PAR Media comes in, right?

Yes.

That's where you guys kind of start playing that role. So what I want to do, Justin, is I want you to talk a little bit about, not necessarily in an order of most important to least important, but the different things that are available between Google and social media specifically. Right. Because those are two things that people very often talk about and want to know about. Right. So I want to start there and then if we have time we'll move more into the like old school guerrilla marketing tactics that are available. But I definitely want to start with those two. So let's start out with all of the Google things that are going on. So we got LSA or Google Guaranteed, whatever you know it by, right? You got Google Ads, you got Google my business. And I'm sure I'm missing one or two things in there, but kind of dig into those for us for a little bit.

Well, let's drop in right into LSA or Google Guarantee. So it's my favorite. I mean it should be the favorite of everyone. Multiple reasons. One, it's going to have the highest closing percentage of any lead on planet Earth. I don't care where you take it, traditional marketing, digital marketing, your LSA leads are going to have the highest closing percentage. Most markets we see between 60 and 80%. You know, big markets we might see it dip to 40, but I mean a 40 close rate on a lead that you can guarantee over and over again. And on top of that, if the leads are bad, if you have a competitor who's being a little malicious because unfortunately we see that, that are gobbling up your, some of your spend, you can say, hey look, these aren't legit leads. You, you dispute those with Google and all of a sudden your money comes back. So I mean it's almost, you know, like the leads definitely aren't free, but in comparison to anything else you're spending, the money is almost always valued. So it's one of those things, I'm like, max out your budget there. Like if you're just getting started, max out your budget there, you won't spend it. If I, let's just say I put $10,000 a month into LSA, I'm going to be lucky to spend 3,000 of it. Right. And that's if I'm doing everything correct. But we know and Google will always say this isn't the case. But when we have that budget maxed out and we have no real cap to our spend, we know that those companies are given a little bit of a leg up by Google. So I tell everybody, put in a big budget, even if it scares you, you're not going to spend all of it. And if you can do, you can call and yell at me, but we're not going to spend it all. You call it and actually celebrate me is what you'll do. Once we sell, once we get through the whole LSA budget. But it's the best lead on planet Earth. And then transitioning directly from that into your Google Ads there.

Can we stick on, can we, can we stick on LSA just for a second? Because there's a couple things that you said there that I want to lean into. Right?

Yeah.

So best cost per lead that's out there, man. I've seen, I've seen calls per lead acquisition as low as $40 on LSA. And those are high quality leads that are being booked for appointments. Right. You know, and I've seen them as high as $110. You know what I mean? It depends on your market and how many people are utilizing LSA or Google guaranteed, you know, within your market as well. Right. Like, you have a client right now that's out of Lubbock, Texas. Dude, they're getting like 68 leads a month right now just from LSA alone.

100. And those are amazing leads. Keeping them busy.

Yeah. And dude, they're what, Like, I think we talked about it yesterday. It's like 30 to $40 average cost per lead. Something insane. You know what I mean?

It's great. I haven't. Go ahead.

Yeah, but I was. What I was saying was, is to get back to the strategy part. He knows his area. Right. He knows how people search. And nobody else in his area is attacking LSA the way that he is. Nobody is. And he is extremely active on local services as well, which I think is something that's often gets forgot about. Is like a lot of people think you can just set it and forget it. Well, the reality is you cannot just set and forget lsa. You have to utilize that tool the way Google wants you to utilize that tool. Yep.

I look at it this way. This is the way I've always, like, try to explain it. When it comes to somebody using LSA and trying to keep everything cleaned up, I almost feel like, all right, if you do your job at your house and you keep everything picked up and you keep a tidy home, that's great. But if you're a busy person, you might forget the nooks and crannies, cleaning behind the toilet, getting around the baseboards. So you have someone come in, you know, a cleaning person or something, once every four months, you know, just to get that Part, even if you're keeping the house clean to make sure your LSA is completely cleaned up, making sure that everything's matching across the board, that you're doing everything you need to do. Because LSA is one of our more simpler marketing tactics, it doesn't take an exuberant amount of work, but what it takes is someone to get in there to the details and make sure that you're doing everything right almost. Or like if you're detailing a car, like, hey, you might sweep out your car every single week or every, you know, every couple of weeks, but eventually, you know, every, every six months, you might want to go get a detail by a professional. And that's how I treat LSA is like most of the time we just need light maintenance, but every so often we need to go in there, dig deep, clean it up, make sure that we're staying on top of it. We're staying on the forefront of lsa.

Yeah. So if you could give people two pieces of advice within LSA of things that they need to go clean up to make sure that they're staying on top of, just like on a, maybe not necessarily a daily basis, but at least a weekly basis. Right. Because LSA is something that, let's be realistic. The. The business owner could do it on his own. Right.

100.

Let's be honest, they could. Right. So if there was two things that you would say to a business owner that's listening to this, hey, do these things inside of lsa, make sure you're doing this every week and it will make a difference. What would that be?

Number one, and this does have a little bit associated cost. Make sure that you're, you're open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Now, that may require you to have a call center, but you can literally just make, make sure that there's someone, some kind of system in place to make sure that call doesn't just go into the abyss. Right. That's all you need. But having that set 24 hours a day, seven days a week will put you above everyone else who has set hours that aren't able to take a call at 10 o' clock on a Tuesday when a storm hits, that would be the number one, I would say. And then making sure everything is in alignment. So what Google does, just like SEO is handled, LSA is handled very similar. We need to make sure that your name and everything else is in alignment with what you have registered with Google and what you have registered with your website and what you have registered with Yelp and Facebook, those all need to match because LSA is going to go through and always, it's always searching for legitimacy, right? It wants to give the customer the best roofing companies locally in their area. And what it does is it does that through reviews. It does that through your name recognition, your address matching, making sure that you've tightened up that ship and that everywhere you look online, everything looks the same. Especially in that Google environment or that Google atmosphere where you maybe, maybe you have your GMB going, your Google My business going, you have your Google Ads going, you have your LSA going. Make sure that your address is the exact same if your name is Wright Brothers Roofing, that there's no hyphen or there is a hyphen every single place you are on Google. That just tightening that ship up, it takes, you know, an hour to go through and check and verify that everything matches. But those are the two biggest in LSA that I think will make the biggest impact.

I love that, man. I love that. So, okay, I know we were making, you were making a transition into Google Ads. So I don't want to stop the, I don't want to stop the hard media train here. So now you're good.

That's exactly where I was headed with that, is like, is a making sure that we have everything matching into Google Ads. And what we want to do with Google Ads is we want to make up ground, right? So unfortunately with lsa, if you're in a big market, let's. We can talk to the big market guys. Because we were in Lubbock, Texas. He absolutely cleans house. He doesn't have a lot of competition. Let's talk, let's shift a little bit into the bigger markets. Because as the market grows in size, the more tactics we need, it's just like, let's say you're getting into a job and the more tools you need. Because I, I think as a marketing tactician, I'm a craftsman, right? I'm not an artist, I'm a craftsman. I have tools. And the better I can use those tools, the better job I am. And as the market grows, the number of tools I need to use increases. So we go from LSA puts us right into Google Ads. And Google Ads are a nice place to start making up ground for the companies that need more leads. Because LSA is going to be restricted, one, by how many people in your market, two on, you know, sometimes it's one of those things where you just have to get up and going, your LSA may sit you know, vacant for two months and all of a sudden lights are on and you're crushing it. And that really just happened to Google indexing. You Google starting to funnel lead your way and then over time it increases, increases, increases. But during that pickup, we need to supplement that with Google Ads. And right now, I mean, I'll go and just give you the hot button. Click to call. We saw an oversaturation in the market from a tactic side and the oversaturation was that forms, forms, forms, right. All traditional marketers love to use forms because they're so trackable. You know, we can, we can use so much trackability, it allows you to kind of call on your own time. There's different ways we can index those into your CRM. So forms were so popular for so long. Now we're seeing oversaturation and people not wanting to fill out the forms the way they once were. Or we're seeing a lot of spam bots or people saying, hey, I didn't fill out the form, all right, accidentally fill it out. Because AI has allowed you to click fill a form, right? So we're seeing a drift back to click to call. And yes, you're right. I mean, immediately you're going to know, hey, I'm going to get less calls and forms 100%. But if the quality of that lead is seven times better than that form, you're not tire kicking, you're not wasting your time making phone calls, you're not beating the crap out of your call center or, you know, the people you have up front in your office making those calls. Or especially if you're a smaller company, you're doing a million, 2 million, and you're just getting off the ground and you're handling all those calls as an, as an owner operator, that's saving you so much of that day. So we're pushing a lot of click to call on Google and I think that this will always shift. And you know, if you have a good tactician in place, they're going to be trending. So we watch these trends all the time and we're valuing. So now we're even in. A lot of marketing companies in this, in this field are doing this when it comes to Google Ads, mostly, but all, all our Google leads, mostly, but all leads in general is that we're value sustaining what those leads look like. So what? Yep, go ahead, Tom.

So what I was going to say is I love what you said about if it's a seven times better quality lead, right? Because a lot of Your numbers that we talked about within the strategy are based off of closing percentage, right? So if you can get a marketing company that can get your closing percentage from, let's say 40 to 55%, your cost per lead acquired can actually be higher. Like those two numbers directly correlate with one another. So you can't just look at something like if you're sending, let's say instead of 40 leads a month, you're sending 30 leads a month and they're like, oh my God, our cost per lead acquired is higher. We got to do something to fix it. Yeah, but know your numbers on the backside of that of what's my closing percentage on these leads that I'm getting? Because if my closing percentage went from 40 to 55%, notate that and then go back and look at your numbers and be like, oh, okay, if I stay Here at this 55% number, my calls per lead acquired can be higher. And we're actually under that with based off of what our closing percentage is. Does that make sense?

Yeah, exactly.

So those numbers correlate so closely together when we're talking about the different tactics that we're using and how it supports our overall strategy. At the end of the day, 100 and that's.

And what we're doing now, what a lot of agencies in this field will start doing if they're not doing it already, is you start building a lead value system. So basically in layman terms, we're just building a, a algorithm and it's taking into context your cost per lead, how many leads you got. And it's taking all those numbers into context and is adding a value score like you would on anything else. And it's telling you what your score is. So you can see what, hey, maybe we have a 72 on LSA, we have a 68 on, on Google Ads, we've got a 50. And so we're value sustaining those leads. And then we can even go as far now, and this is something we've started adding is the actual job. You know, if you close a $45,000 a roof on a church, right. Or if you get a large scale home in a nice neighborhood, we start valuing those leads. So not only are we going as far as saying which leads are doing better, we can see which outlet is getting a higher job. So like, let's say Facebook is getting you in small residential areas and you're doing, you know, $15,000 roofs. But you know, on LSA, we're doing a little bit better. We're getting 30, $35,000 roofs on larger scale homes. Now we can start put a value system all the way up to your actual, like what your ticket is on that job. So you're going to see this algorithm get more and more complex as we continue to build this lead value system out. But I feel like most of your good tacticians at this point are incor incorporating this into a system where you can kind of see the ebbs and flows and then you can go back into the micro like we were talking about earlier and you can start analyzing all the different things and how we can increase those. So hey, maybe we should have used a wrench instead of a screwdriver, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. So but with Google Ads, as we start getting into that, because Google Ads can get very overwhelming and very complicated very quickly.

Very expensive, right?

And very expensive. Let's be honest about it, right? Like you know, for instance, just knowing what keywords to use at the right time and understanding the cost that's associated with that particular keyword. Because you can go to your tool and your keyword planner within Google and be like, okay, you know, roofing company near me, roofer, painter, or you know, garage door, concrete, whatever it is, right? Type that in and it's going to give you a low end bid and it's going to give you a high end bid. And that's just to get a click. So everybody's aware that's not to get a conversion, that's just to get somebody to click on your ad. Right? So if you, if you're at $50 on average cost per click and your budget is a hundred dollars a day, one click eats up half your budget for the day. It just does. And you have to realize it's like, well, I'm spending a hundred dollars a day on this, you know, 700 a week, which comes out to $2,800 a month just on this one ad. And I only got like 60 clicks this month. Well, yeah, because the keywords are that expensive. That's just, that's because there's high competition and other companies that are going after that as well. You need to understand Google is a money making platform. That's what they are. They thrive off of you spending money on ads to get people to contact your company the same way that Facebook does, the same way that Instagram does and all these other platforms that are out there. That's why you see on Facebook, from an organic standpoint, your business pages don't always get the engagement that your Personal pages will. Because Facebook wants you to spend money to get the same engagement that you could get on a personal side. That's just the reality of it. That's how it works, you know. So when you're looking inside of Google for from an ad standpoint, that tactic has to match your budget because that can eat up 50% of your budget and get no results. Just because it's so expensive in your area to stay on Google Ads. Literally had this conversation with a client the other day is maybe ads, Google Ads is not where you need to be right now. Maybe we transition over to another platform where it's a little bit cheaper to go get the same leads. Yep.

And the big mistake we see with our insurance guys is that they want a storm chase on Google and it is a huge tactical error in my opinion because this, it's so expensive and everyone is flooding in there at the same time. When you can, you can pick away, you know, you can almost be like a vulture or hyena and just pick away from social media. Where we can go in there, our cost is way less. People are already engaged, they're bored, they're scrolling on their phones. They just had storm damage to their house. You know, they're kind of thinking about it, they're nervous, they're going to make some calls on Monday. But all of a sudden an ad pops up because we have storm stuff in place which we can turn on and off much quicker than we can anywhere else. And our cost, our cost per lead is significantly lower and our closing rate on storms is higher there. Right. Nowhere else. Right. It's much lower than Google on every other aspect. But when we're doing immediate heavy storm damage, social media does really, really well. And so that's another one of those things you to analyze on Google. You know, you guys remember this is an auction based system. It's literally no different than every company putting their hand up every single time. Hey, who wants storm damage on May 5th? I. Oh, I do, I do, I do. You watch that go up and up and up and up and up. Meanwhile, yes, there's an auction based system on social media, but it's way cheaper and we can do it for a shorter period of time because realistically, by the time that Google Ad gets up and running, you've missed a lot of your window and now you're, you're, you're just throwing money into the abyss. So.

Yep, I agree. 100 man. Because typically with Google Ads it's going to take you 24 hours to get the thing approved. And that first 24 hours after a storm happens is usually the most important time to go get the leads that you're looking for. Which is also why it's so important to have your LSA set up from the get go. Because once that's up and running, there's no on and off. Well, there is, but if you, if you turn it off, I think you're a little crazy. Right? You know, so that's why it helps. Because on Google we need to understand, like when you search for Google, you have your LSA at the top, then your ads come next and then you have your, you know, a couple of folks who are ranking at the top that show up there. Then you have your map pack and then you have everything underneath it. I love telling this story about what happened to me and my wife last year. We had a, our air conditioner went out in the middle of July last year in North Carolina. It was hot, dude. It was like 87 degrees inside of the house. We were burning up. It was nighttime. We got two kids. I'm like, dude, nope, we're getting it fixed right now. Like I'm not waiting until tomorrow to do this. I'll pay whatever I have to pay to get this solved. Well, where's the first place that we go? Of course we go to Google, right? Of course. That's Dude. And I literally type in H Vac company, Wilmington, North Carolina and dude, I start smiling and dialing until somebody picks up. So I'm going through. But because for me being, you know, doing the tactical stuff before, I understand that people paid money on to get there for local services. Right? So I'm calling and, and I'm calling until somebody finally picks up the phone. That's how I search on Google when I need something right now. Right. My wife is completely different. She's going to scroll past all the ads, she's going to go look inside of the map pack of who's closest to us and she's also going to go read their reviews and then she's going to make the phone call. That's just how she searches for me. I respect speed to lead. She respects. What are other people, you know, saying about you? I want the highest review right now, fortunately for the company that we went with, somehow we both ended up on the same company. Somehow we did. Right. But what, what that story tells you is that what you do on Google in every location matters. It matters because everybody searches differently. That's why there's so many opportunities to get leads within The Google platform itself. So don't just be on lsa, don't just be on ads. If you can afford to be on ads, don't just be on ads. Focus time on getting your reviews up. Like, have a, have standard operating procedures for getting your Google reviews on a regular basis, because it's also going to help your local services. By the way, the more reviews you get, the more, the more Google's going to put you in front of the right people. You know, invest money into your SEO and be on the first page for certain keywords that people are going to be searching for. You know, like there's four things right there. You know, be in the map pack, make sure everything's accurate. Like what you were talking about earlier. There's four locations on the first page that you need to be on Google every single time because you don't know how somebody's going to find you.

Yep. And you're talking about reviews. So a lot of people don't know. There are two separate review systems inside of Google. There's one for LSA, there's one for Google just in general, like your GmbH. Right. And so when we're collecting reviews, we need to make sure that our review collecting system is in place to match our goals. If you guys are absolutely crushing with LSA and it is making your business, you need to be collecting LSA LSA reviews first. And the other thing is you're going to get standard Google reviews all the time through people who just go back and do it, but they're probably not going to go back and have the exact URL or the QR code to give you that review for your lsa. So with those two being separated, you have to be very, very careful that you're working with, either either internally or working with someone who's doing the strategy for where do you want to be? Because every one of those reviews is like, you know, it's like a $500 bill. Right? Like, you, you, you have to make sure that lands in the right place. Because if not, you're just throwing that money away. Or. Yeah, okay, I got a Google review on LSA Realistic. I'm trying to grow, I'm trying to grow my GMB or hey, I really need to make a big push into lsa. But now I got a regular Google review. It's not going to be the death of you, but it will be an annoyance where you're throwing away value that you could have used towards your goal system.

Oh, I agree 100%. So, all right, we got about 23 and a half minutes to zoom through social media and a couple other things. All right, so I just, I don't want to touch on social media much. I just want to stay there for a split second. Let's visit and then we're going to move on to the next thing. Okay. So from a ad standpoint for a business, I know you guys have seen success with certain things because that is like, for you guys, that is your wheelhouse, man. Like, you guys are really, really good on social media. So I don't want you to give away all the tricks to the trade here, but what I do want you to do is just touch on it like briefly, like two or three minutes of what you guys are seeing is working on social media for these home service contractors right now.

Yeah, social media, especially Meta, more than anything else, Meta is becoming its own environment, very much like Google. So the more tools you're using there, the more love you're going to get on on the platform. So keeping a consistent stream of content going out for your brand awareness and for lead gen. I know it sounds backwards, but organic content will inevitably give you organic leads through people who reach out via messenger, who just hop, hop in your comments. You'd be amazed once you have a consistent stream on social media of content going out, how many people just hop in the comments. Because a lot of people don't understand like the nuances of social media. You'll learn that quickly as you dive in and those hop in the comments like, hey, I need a new roof. There's a lead, there's a hot lead. Call that person right now. It's usually someone a little older who has a general idea of how Facebook works but needs a little bit of help. And if they're directly in your comments, chances are no one else is reaching out to them. That's a single lead. We dive beyond that. Right. We need to be creating some reels, we need to do some of those things in that content strategy to drive some of that growth. But let's stay in the focus on actually business. So if we go into social media ads, I consider this like having a stockbroker working for you more than anywhere else. Social media, if done right, can be the greatest piece of revenue generating element to your marketing. Or it can be the biggest garbage fire where you throw thousands of dollars in here. Right. The difference of using like a, a large broker, you know, like John Hancock or hopping on to Robinhood and just throwing budget into something you have no idea. Yeah, those, it can be that impactful. I'm a big believer in social media for storms. Storms are any kind of ruckus that happens. You know, if you get hail, you get wind, whatever that damage is.

Yeah, any kind of act of God, essentially.

Act of God for sure, 100%. And then I also really like it for building brand awareness. Now we go into generalized generalized ads. Right. So just standard ads like you would run on Google, but we run them in social media. You guys see them all the time. My bigger clients, if you're over 10 million, you better be doing it right. You have to. We need that extra place to get lead growth. Now if you're a smaller company, we have a lot of things we can do that are probably going to have a higher roi. So I would stay away from just generalized social media ads. And if you are going to do it, you need to find someone that's really, really good at it. But once you get to a certain size where you need a certain amount of leads to keep your crews moving, this has to become a tool that we put into the repertoire. Right. So I think that social media has a lot of. It's a very nuanced based way to generate business and has a million different facets. But understand the number one tactic for everyone who does any insurance or if you're doing retail and you just want to play that game as well, is just a storms act of God. That's a big one. And then keeping a consistent stream of content just on your channels, which will inevitably help your SEO value, which we can dive into a little bit as well if we want to go there.

Yeah, SEO gets a little. God, man. We could so go far into the weeds when it comes to SEO because there's like six different ways to do it. Right, Right. So I don't want to. We really don't have time to dig into SEO, dude. That's a whole webinar just in and of itself. Right. But what I love about what you said is giving that number. If you're over 10 million 100%, you need to be consistently. Do you need to be consistently doing this if you' you're under 10 depending on your budget. Depends on you know what I'm saying? Like if you're putting a majority of your budget into digital side, then yeah, there's some money there to, to spend to go get what those $10 million companies will be doing that are over. But certainly if you're under a $5 million company, you need to be very, very tactical with where you spend your money. On or not where, but when you spend your money on social media, 100%, be very tactical when you spend it. So like, you know, me and you had this conversation I think last week sometime, you know, there was a company that you guys are working with that I've coached in the past and you know, they had a massive hail storm come through. Dude, I mean, dude, it was like baseball size hail, right? And he sent you the video from his apartment complex and you guys took that, ran the ads on social media because it was an act of God. You know, I think you guys said you ran it for like five or six days, nothing too crazy, right? You know, got a couple leads out of it, turned it off because LSA was just firing on all cylinders and he's still getting those phone calls based off of that, you know what I mean? So there's nothing wrong with testing the waters. Let's see what we get. Let's put a small budget behind it and if it's working, we invest a little bit more. Like that's, that's how I do some of the Google Ads that I've done in the past, right? Like, are we getting the success that we want? If we are, I'm willing to invest a little bit more and I play that algorithm just a little bit. You know, you give me what, you give me what I want, I'll give you what you want. Because all you got to do is outsmart a computer. Like that's literally all it is.

Exactly. And like you said exactly perfectly. Like when that, that hailstorm hit, we went into social, we went in heavy with a high budget over a short period of time and we went in with, you know, a few thousand dollars over just a couple days and generated a ton of energy. You know, if, when you look at the video too, right? It's a powerful video. It's getting tons of viewership. Let's just take the lead concept out, let's take everything else out to pick up followers, views, engagement. That thing went nuts because holy crap, there's baseball size hail coming down. And you know, and so it's just one of those things that is already going to drive engagement. So you get a budget behind it and all of a sudden it's making an impact on brand awareness. It's, it's driving leads like you need, that's the thing, the timeliness of what you're doing in the storm game is so important. You know, that video was in your, you saw the video at like 7 o' clock that night. We had the Video up and had a budget behind it by nine o', clock, right? Yeah. So that is extremely important. You know, if you send out a message to your, your marketing agency or your internal team, whoever, however you're handling it and they take three to four days to get storm a big storm budget out, you just take, take your money out, put it on the floor, catch it on fire. It's, it's too late, you've missed the boat.

I agree, I agree. Like you, social's a place where you have to be extremely fast, right. Like, cause social is a very in the moment type of thing. That's why small tangent like asking your marketing company to do stories for you is asking way too much. Because stories on social media is a very in the moment thing and it doesn't take that long to post them. You know what I mean? Like that's something that internally you, you could easily handle internally, right. And you're going to have better success internally as well. Like let's just be honest, you know what I mean when it comes to the story side of social media. Right. So all right, 15 minutes because I want to try to stay, I want to try to be respectful of your time as well. Right. So we're going to shift over to the brand awareness side of things real quick and we're going to talk about some non digital stuff. The digital guys are going to talk non digital for a second. Okay. Because there is a way that your traditional guerrilla marketing style can support your digital marketing efforts. It 100% can. There's digital aspects to this that make it work. So I love giving this example of how everything ties together. So if your company is heavy on door knocking and that works and your cost per lead acquisition is there, you know what I'm saying? Like everything is jiving when it comes to that. Don't stop doing it, continue to do it, but use that as a way to build other things up. Right? So what I tell them is that if you book an appointment or somebody's not there, have on your flyer a QR code that drives them to a landing page or drives them to your website, right? Your website should be a converting website, you know, a very much so a sales page type of thing to where people go there they understand you and it's easy to navigate. That's number one. It has to be easy to navigate. It has to be easy to understand. The more traffic that you drive to your website, the more Google sees it as an important website because your traffic numbers are going up, right. So you'll naturally begin to boost just from that alone. Just from that alone. Right. And the more business that you get, get those reviews, which is going to help with your, you know, it's going to help with your lsa, it's going to help with your Google Ads, you know, like all of those things are going to begin to support because eventually you'll get busy enough to where you don't have time to door knock anymore. And that if you're completely relying on that tactic to get you leads and you get so busy you can't go get the leads anymore and you didn't spend the time building up these other verticals of your marketing that support your strategy, you will see a dip in your lead source. I 100% think that that happens to a lot of companies that are out there right now. They've picked one tactic, their entire strategy is built around it. For some reason that quits working one day and they didn't invest time into anything else. And now their lead source has drastically dropped because their strategy was based around a tactic and not success. And that's why we're even having this conversation to begin with.

That's the, that is the. One of my favorite things we've said so far and one of the realest things that I've seen as well is you know, you, once you get tactic driven and especially it's easy to do in this industry, let's just say you go to a, you go to a trade show, you go to, you know, a learning seminar, something like that. And for some reason everyone knows when you go there, a couple things stick in your head. And let's just say you heard a tactic while you're there, that tactic is stuck in your head and you go back and all you focus is on a tactic and not why you're using the tactic, that will get you in so much trouble.

Right?

Oh, I have a new lead tool and I want to, I want to use it. I just heard about this new elite aggregate that is got a really low cpl, right? And then you forget about why you're doing it and that becomes a major issue. And we talked about guerrilla marketing. So I have a really good story about how this goes on and I've seen this more than once, but this is one that's happening in lifetime right now. We have a company based out of a small town. They blew up, you know, they're going to do, you know, probably 20 million this year. But that's because they moved into Dayton. They moved into, they moved in St. Louis, they're moving into Nashville. You know, I get a phone call, hey, man. And huge digital focus. Crushing it. I'm losing my hometown. Well, what aren't you doing? Well, I'm not sponsoring T ball teams. I'm not going out in the community. I'm not doing the food drive. I'm too busy.

I'm not.

And it's not because they intended to, but they're just not the hometown company anymore because they started losing a part of that. And what you realize is, hey, maybe that's only a town of 15,000 people, but how much business were you generating by basically owning that town? All of a sudden you look at your books and all of the more traditional marketing things you did, whether it's sponsoring a baseball team or getting a local radio ad or putting a, you know, putting a thing on the fence at the high school football game, all those lead sources start to slow down because, you know, now Bill down the street, you know that that was just starting up when you were owning the town. He was just starting his roofing business. He's now starting to take that over and he's finding these gaps that you're leaving behind because you've focused so heavy on digital. We've seen this multiple times, but right now we have a live, you know, that's in live time and we're seeing it happen.

Yeah. And that, that's why I've heard this before. Be five mile. Famous, right? Be five month. Own everything within five miles around where your office is, you know, and if. And you do that through being involved in the community and being where your target audience is, is. And you, you have a client that's based out of Hickory, North Carolina, twice a year, they do something in the community. They do it once in the spring where they feed the entire police department in Hickory. And the second part of the year for Veterans Day, they have a veteran food drive where they pay for every single veteran to come and they bring like 10 food trucks out, and it's their event, you know, and they pay for every single veteran that comes through there to eat. You know, like, those are the types of things where that. Yeah, it's a heavy upfront investment, but those people will remember it. They remember who invested back into the community. Right. They remember that you sponsored. Like, think about it. Mom's washing the baseball uniform. How many times does mom have to wash a baseball uniform during a baseball season? After every single game. And if you have 20 games over the course of a two month period, mom sees that 20 times. Over the course of a two month period. It may not pay off within those two months. But guess what will happen if a storm comes through and they need help? Mom's most likely going to remember that logo that she saw time and time again when she had to do laundry. Right. You know, like putting those banners up, doing the billboards in high traffic areas, radio ads, TV ads, like all those little things that is for brand awareness. Your truck wraps like all that stuff. It matters at the end of the day because people need to see you to remember you. Like if you're only there when they have a problem so you can get the shine, they're probably not going to use you.

Yep.

Like you need to be there before the shine. So that way when they go to Google, they actually search for your company and you wipe the competition out before it even starts.

Yep. You get your name ringing in the local community and it will ring for a long time.

I agree, man. I agree. So let's wrap this thing up. Right? So we talked, dude, we covered so much over the course of a, you know, a 50 minute time frame. Right. So let's, let's recap. So when we're looking at overall strategy, a couple things to remember. Define success in your marketing and that's in both brand awareness. That's also going to be in lead generation number two. Know your numbers. How much do you have to actually invest into marketing that fits the budget based off of your revenue. And then your closing percentage is then going to determine your cost per lead acquisition, cost per sit, all that good stuff. Pick a percentage of that overall budget to invest into your branding and also your lead gen. Okay. And then also know, know who you're actually want to do business with. Know your target demographic, know your target audience and also knowing your target geographical area of where you can go based off of what your budget is and then based off of all of those things. Now we can start picking the verticals and the tactics that fit all of those things that we established. Because those first three things that I mentioned, that's your overall strategy. Now that's the lens that you're going to look through all of your marketing moving forward. So put those glasses on and that's the lens, what verticals of marketing are going to support what it is that you want to accomplish. You know, and Justin, you hit a lot of big notes, man. We were talking about lsa, we were talking about Google Ads, we talked about organic social media, we talked about reviews, we talked about, we talked about paid social media, we talked about sponsoring teams and keeping your hometown, you know, and all those things that you can do within the community. Like there's there's probably a hundred different verticals in marketing that every company could possibly choose, but you got to find those handful of ones that are actually going to work for your company. The I'm gonna give a big piece of advice here. When you see people on social media, you ask, hey, you know, I need some help in marketing. That's what I need help with. I'm trying to go produce more leads. There's going to be a lot of people. All Facebook works for me. Oh, Google works for me. This works for. Oh, just door knock, right? Those worked for that company. Because it worked for them doesn't mean it's going to work for you. That's just the reality of it. And that's how it works. Their market is different than your market. Denver, Colorado is different than Wilmington, North Carolina. You know, Sarasota Beach, Florida.