Own Your Marketing! with Tommy Richardson

Foreign. Hey everybody, it is Jim Johnson here, your host with Contractor Radio where we help you as contractors hopefully get a little bit more control of your business so that you can grow and scale your business and achieve that personal and financial freedom you were chasing whenever you started your business. And today I'm super excited because we're bringing a guest back that we've had on before, but he's doing something different and that thing that's different is super exciting to me personally and us here at Contractor Coach Pro and what we do. And I can't wait to bring him on because we're going to talk about empowering contractors in their marketing and what are some of the pitfalls to not owning your marketing and owning your marketing? What are the pros and cons and why would you need to think about those things early on in the process when building your business and where they may lead to you and the problems they can cause and challenges? I've made a lot of those mistakes myself and we thought, hey, we need to probably get somebody on here that can help you guys out to avoid those mistakes. But before we do that, let's have a little word from one of our sponsors. We gotta keep the lights on around here and we absolutely love the folks over at get the Referral.

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Well, we're here talking about marketing. Referrals are part of marketing, leveraging technology to optimize that. Nobody does it better than get the referral. Check them out in the link in our show notes below and those guys will help you generate more referrals and reward your customers for doing so. Like I said, today we're going to be talking about marketing and empowering contractors to own their marketing. And I have a special guest that's been on before and I'm just so excited. I'm just going to bring him in right now. Hey Tommy, welcome back, man. Good to have you on Contractor Radio again.

What's up man? Good to be back.

So I've got exciting news to announce and so I'm going to. I'M going to take that opportunity right now. It was interesting because you and I have known each other for quite a while now, a couple of years, and you had done an event in January of this year and after that event, you came to me and said, hey, you know, if I talk to you about, you know, get my business going and moving in the right direction. And I said, absolutely. And we started doing a little coaching and we kind of came to this realization that you would rather help people learn how to do marketing themselves than do the marketing for them. And we had a need for a marketing coach because we want to help our contractors get better at their own marketing. And I'm excited to say you're the man. Like, you were already the man doing it for people, but now you're going to help them learn those things. Welcome to the team here at Contractor Coach Brow.

Yeah, man, I appreciate it. It's, you know, like you said, I reached out to you January, February, I was like, I, I need some help. And, and you know, we, like you said, man, we got to talking and you know, through what you guys do of, you know, figuring out what exactly is it, you know, dream wise that you want to do, what, what type of lifestyle do you want to live and where do you want think, where do you see your life going? You know, I just realized that, you know, the coaching side of it and genuinely helping people is, it's what I wanted and that's what I want to do and it, you know, allows me to be home with the kids and yeah, I mean, I'm just, I'm excited to be on. I went to Top Rep with you guys last week, got to meet everybody. It's, it's been awesome.

Yeah. What's really cool about is you have already, like this natural talent to selflessly serve other people and coach them. Like, you know, coaching is installing a fundamentals, practicing those skills over and over again until you start to perfect them and giving that guidance and understanding about why people are doing what they're doing so that they can execute the strategy and go out and win. And you have a lot of natural talent there. So taking from doing it to coaching, it is going to be super easy. We've already had some experience with that and seeing contractors have some success. So I wanted to talk to you today and share with the listeners out there, like, why would we want to own our own marketing instead of like leveraging it out to some third party, maybe an SEO company, maybe, like, it seems to me there's all kinds of them there's like, hey, I got a social media company, SEO company. I got the one that runs all my ads on Google, my business. You know, you got all these different options and choices and what are some of the pitfalls to doing that, but what are some of the pros to it as well? I don't want to just focus on the negative because there are some positives to it.

Yeah, well, one of the things that I've noticed is, you know, with Nubs Media, we do the, you know, the social media, or we did the social media and we did the content creation. Well, then you also have somebody that's doing SEO, then they have another company that's doing ads, and then they got another company that's doing their website. And now they have five different companies that they're paying every month, and they have five different people that they have to communicate with. And they also have five different opinions on what needs to get done, including what. What the owner wants. And everybody has a different opinion about what works. And then every company's blaming the other one for why things aren't working. So that way they can keep the income every month. Like, it's just. It ends up becoming more work when you start sending everything to all these different companies than it is if you just brought it in house and you had your. Your champions that worked for you. So I would say that's probably the first big advantage of having. Of really owning all of it.

Yeah, I don't know how many times, because we've, you know, over my history of owning businesses, I've worked with lots of different outside organizations. And I got the SEO guys over there arguing about what the social media guys are doing. And you know, what that comes down to is one's wanting to grab the other's budget more for their own benefit than necessarily for the contractor's benefit in a lot of cases. And you have to decipher which is. Which is it for their benefit. Is it actually really and truthfully for your benefit? That can be challenging if you don't actually own your marketing yourself. What are some of the other. What are some of the pros to having somebody third party do the work for you?

Yeah, absolutely. So let's just take search engine optimization. SEO is what everybody calls it, but search engine optimization is something that is extremely confusing. Nobody really understands how it actually works, except for maybe a handful of folks, but everybody knows that they need it. Well, SEO also does take. It does take time, you know, to, to see the results of that, but it's an Everyday thing that you have to be consistently doing on top of, you know, the, the social media side and the content creation, it's just another thing to add on to your day and it's, it can be frustrating and there's people out there that, they know it inside and out and they know how to grow everything organically and that's a great thing to actually send out. From a third party standpoint, that's, that's okay.

Yeah. And that's actually the beauty of, of coaching our contractors in this is, hey, when do we use a third party and how do we make that part of our strategy? Like, one person may be just super oriented on the whole. I have several contractors that absolutely love the market. Like, they lead it and they dig into it. They understand the SEO side of it, they know how to do it, and that's absolutely cool. We want to help them take that passion and drive that in their marketing and add everything else so they can actually own the marketing. But if they're not passionate about it, they don't have somebody in the house that's passionate about it. Get a pro involved, but make it part of the overall strategy that you still own the super important part. So when it comes to owning our marketing, can you describe for me what that actually means? I think we hear this ownership side of things and a lot of times we look at it as, okay, I'm the owner and I own my marketing, so I've got that company over there and that company over there and that company over there doing my marketing for me. I am getting the reports from them and I'm making decisions based off those reports of what I'm going to do with that next. But when it comes to owning marketing, what does that mean to you?

Well, let's use that example that you just gave of taking a look at those reports. First question is, do you even know what you're looking at? Because if you don't know what you're looking at and you're just looking at a sheet full of numbers, you're, you're assuming these things are good. It's like, oh, well, these numbers went up month over month, so that means it's working well, not necessarily. You know, also I like to use the example of sports because that's what I know better than anything else is sports. So in college they have the new nil agreements that they just signed. Name, image and likeness. So when you sub out your stuff to somebody else, they're putting something out there, but it's representing your name, image and likeness. So those are the words that your potential consumers and clients think you're actually saying because they don't see it as a third party's doing it. They see it as you saying it. And nobody's going to write content better than you can about your company because you're the one who started it. It's yours. It's your passion. That's what you want. So when you take ownership over what's being said about you everywhere across all these platforms now, that gives you more control over who your target audience is and making sure that you're getting in front of the audience that you want to through what you're saying and what you're posting. So that's. I would say that's one huge example of what it means to own your marketing.

Yeah. You know, there's absolutely a voice to it. Right. And a tone to your brand. It's something we take really seriously around here. And we've gone through the effort of getting our story, what we want to share, and what we want to tell documented down. And that way, even if I'm not the one saying it and one of my team is out there doing the work, it still has the same tone. Now, that's something you could help coach with, right? Like, if a company wants to come on, you could help them develop those type of things so that their tone is. Right. It's still coming from them, but. But they're not having to write every single word out on every single post, right?

Exactly. And I think a lot of that. A lot of that starts with where the contractor blueprint begins, because I didn't go through all the coaching when we first started, but I went through enough to realize that, okay, we're picking our core values as a company, so those core values set the tone for everything. And if. And that even spreads into your marketing as well. So, like, with Contractor Coach Fro, it's Love Surf Grow or Love Surf Care. Sorry. Golly.

You already know that to me. Like, I'm like, that's great.

That's. That's our church is saying, not ours. Oh, man. I was on the phone with the church, like, 20 minutes before I got off, before I got on here with you, and I was still in that mode. Sorry.

You kind of have a congregation of contractors. Exactly.

But Love, Serve, Care. And that's. That's the tone that everybody uses in all the marketing, you know, but we've ingrained that into our strategy that we're actually using. And everything that we post now, we have control over what is said. And yes, we can coach you with, you know, helping, helping write copy what is your content, you know, not what does it need to look like, but kind of guide you down that road of this is kind of, you know, where you should be heading with content if, if you want to continue to, to push that, those core values.

Yeah, I, you know, I ran across some really good information on understanding like your brand, right? There's this equation that your results times your reach equals your reputation. And your reputation is really what your brand is. It's the tone, it's what people believe about you, it's what they perceive about you. And so when you take those two things, your results times reach. So you might have amazing results, you may serve customers greatly and do the best roofs on the planet and they absolutely love you. But if nobody knows about that, you have no reach. And so your reputation is going to be very diminished. And the reverse, right? Like if your work is crappy and you have a lot of reach, guess what, that's even going to be worse. Like everybody knows who you are, but your work is crappy. That's going to spread negatively really quickly. So these ideas of putting together this strategy, I see so many folks, and this is why it was so important for us to bring somebody in that really understands the marketing of a contracting business and the nuance of it and has experience with it. Because most marketing companies don't delve into the other aspects of the business. They're just like, hey, you want to get more leads? What kind of tone do you want to have to it? Just hope they give them the right thing and oh, that's your logo. Okay, great. What are some of the things that are already on your website? Cool. Okay, we'll go with that. But it's not really tied into their strategy, to their culture, to their processes, their people, what they believe in, what kind of company they are, which we do all of those things earlier in our coaching process. Process. So by the time we get to marketing, marketing gets a lot easier.

It does.

What, what have you noticed, you know, when working with the, the contractors that we have here, you've gotten some experience at top rep, you've seen some of them. What have you noticed about them? When it comes to a marketing aspect of things as far as their, their willingness and want to, to own it?

I think there's a common consensus that everybody wants to have more control over their marketing, but they don't want to have control over every facet of it. When it comes to the doing they want to have control over the strategy and the plan, but not necessarily the act of like performing, if that makes sense.

Do you have, do you ever realize there's a disconnect between those two things though? Like, you got, you got people like me that are very visionary and I think strategy and I know what I want it to do, right. And I can kind of see the big picture of those pieces, but the actual execution of it, number one, incapable, Number two, not the time. Right. Nor do I really understand the copy aspect of it as well as I probably could what actually gets somebody. Because that's the whole goal. The whole goal of marketing is one thing. Raise your hand. Just raise your hand. That's all I want. Raise your hand. Now I got you interested. We can work from there. Why do you think contractors struggle in connecting those two sides of things, Strategy and vision and structure to the actual doing and executing?

I think it's time. I think a lot of contractors view it, view marketing as a necessary evil, but it's also very, it can be time consuming, but it doesn't have to be. So, I mean, think about all the hats any owner wears on a regular basis. I mean, you're the owner of the company, you're keeping track of the books, you're making sure your sales guys are doing what they're supposed to do. You got production, you know, you got bills and then anything else that may pop up during the day as well. You know, these guys have a lot of stuff going on. The first thing on your mind isn't, oh, I need to take a picture of this job and post it on social media. That's not the first thing that pops into your mind when you got a thousand other things going on because you don't look at it. Some kind, not all, but some contractors look at it. That's not making me money right now. I have money making activities I need to be doing. Okay, yes, I agree, but marketing is a money making activity. No, it may not yield you results today, but in 30, 60, 90 days it may if you're consistent with it. I heard a saying a long time ago, whatever you do in this 90 days is actually going to pay off in the next 90. It's, it's a quarterly basis. So if we're hustling hard and we're keeping it up with the marketing on a consistent basis, it might take that long, but it will start paying off after a while. But I, I do think it comes down more to a time management. Maybe not even, maybe not the management side but the, the top of mind to actually put something out there. And then when they do, it's like, oh, well, it's not perfect, so I'm not gonna post it.

There's a lot of that.

Yeah, it's like, I'll. I look a little off on this. I don't like the way my face looks. Oh, there's a shingle laying in the bushes. I can't post that or I'm gonna get hammered on, on social media for something.

If it wasn't about how my. If it was about how my face looks, there wouldn't even be a podcast.

But you get too caught up in perfection that you end up getting paralysis by analysis to where you're not doing anything because you're overanalyzing every word, every picture, every video. And it's like. And people want to see real. That's what people gravitate to. Like they see enough doctored up stuff on TV and you know, all, you know, and everywhere else. It's like they want to see the real you and they want to know your. Why. They want to know what your core values are. So you need to tell them that. That.

Yeah. So I think a little bit of it is intimidating. Right. There's this because there's so much going on with marketing. First off, there's 9 million of them out there. That's in the first place. Secondly, there's the strategy part of it. That's, that's a big piece. There is a writing aspect to it, content, you know, the verbiage that you use to translate your information, which could be intimidating to some people. Then there was the visual part. Right. Like what it looks like graphically or photographically or video wise. And then the fourth component of it, of technology, like running a Facebook ad. How do I do that? And could I go run one? Yeah, but is it going to work? Maybe not. Unless you understand building audiences, funnels and all this other fun stuff. That is actually something that's fairly easy to learn if you put a little bit of time and effort into it.

Yeah.

Do you see like those things and how do you help with those various areas so that that contractor can actually take control of it and pull the right lever at the right time in their marketing to optimize their leads.

Yeah. Well, before you get to the actual doing side of it, your, your step one, and this really is in line with, with what CCP does, is we, we need to define whatever that dream scenario in marketing is. You know, do we want to bring it in house? Do we want third parties. What are. What are our expectations and what do we actually want to get from it? You know, so really, truly defining what all of that looks like. So then we can get to. Okay, now, who is your target audience? And it can't just be, well, anybody with a roof or anybody with a house. Well, there's millions of those in the United States. Every roofer could say that, or every plumber or concrete guy or. Or garage door installed. They could all say that. But no, there's a certain person out there that you want, you know. Well, I was talking with a guy yesterday, and he's like, oh, our target audience is in between this age. They make this much money, you know, they work. They have kids, you know, and it was. I was like, okay, now what do they want from you? What are their expectations? They're like, well, they want someone who's reliable. Well, who doesn't. Yeah, somebody that's reliable.

Everybody says the same thing. They want quality, they want reliability. They want satisfaction. Like, you all say that.

Yeah, everybody do.

Otherwise.

So you have to put yourself in the homeowner's shoes of whatever service it is that you're offering them. What would your expectations be of what you would want? Right. So you were telling me a story about some gutters when we were top rep. Right. That did not meet the expectations that you had.

Oh, far from it. I'm still pissed about. I wish you wouldn't have brought it up.

So. But. But what. What I'm trying to get at here is defining age and demographics and socioeconomics and all of those things. That's fine. Good.

And.

Well, but you need to define what you're actually solving and what you're giving them. That's more than a product or a service of installing a roof or fixing a plumbing problem. So for some people, that may be along the lines of, you know, I want somebody who's gonna, you know, go above and beyond to cover my bushes up when they're putting a roof on the house. I want them to protect my landscaping. Okay.

Ever.

All the roofers do that, but who actually advertises it?

Yeah, exactly.

You know what I mean?

We run into that same problem here because we say the word contractor, and while that might draw a contractor's attention for a little bit, if it doesn't progress quickly and fast to what it is he does, he's on his own way. But if I say painter or I say fencer or I say roofer, that has a whole different level of impact that they'll Stay a little longer and pay a little more attention. So you got, like you said, put yourself in their shoes. What are people going to listen to that are looking for exactly what it is that you do. That's really good. Now, Tommy, I want to move forward in the conversation. I want to talk a little bit about size. Okay, I'm medium, I'm big. But before we do, I got to take a little quick break for one of our sponsors. We'll come right back and we'll talk about some of the things that are different based on the size of the contractor and the things they have to consider. So but before we do that, let's get a little word from Signpost because they're also in marketing and to help you stay engaged with your homeowners throughout the process, from prospect, through sale, through building and collecting.

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Now, Signpost, that whole ad was about them helping you get reviews. But the reason you get those reviews is what they do before that with your website. Text messaging and interacting and automating what happens there so that your customer wants to give you that five star review. So. So, Tommy, we want to help customers get five star reviews as well. But there's various things that happen when we're small, medium and big as a contracting business, because sometimes we always talk big, right? Like, hey, I'm going to own my marketing, so I'm going to have a marketing director, I'm going to have people that are executing the marketing and I'm going to lead all that and do those type of things. But that's a little bit of a bigger company. When I'm small and I'm trying to generate leads, you know, it could be very simple. It could be things like flyers and door hangers and knocking doors and low cost, things like that. But I'm wanting to step into a little bit of the digital world. What are some of the first things that somebody could do to maybe generate a few extra leads and not have the cost get so exorbitant?

Yeah. So if you're Brand new. You need some brand awareness. You just, you need people to just know who you are in general. And a great way to get brand awareness out there is running Facebook ads. But you have to set a level of expectation for that, of saying, look, I'm. My goal here is to get people to just notice us. We may not necessarily be trying to sell something from this if we do, freaking great. But we, we need to, we, we just need to get in front of people if we're small and we're just getting started. You can also utilize Facebook ads because a lot of these smaller companies, door knocking is huge for them. You know, it doesn't, it's, it's a low cost with a relatively high reward when you're smaller. But you can utilize the digital marketing and assisting you with that so people know who you are before you ever get there. So if you have an area that you want to canvas, you can run a 1 mile or, you know, 3 mile radius ad in that area for three days leading up to your guys ever getting out there. And once you show up, they should have seen you before. So you, you've broken the ice before you ever get in front of them. And now you don't have to explain who you are.

We talk about that quite a bit on the sales side. You know, we do a lot of sales coaching. We do our top rep events and I ask all the time, what do we have to have when we build rapport for a customer to want to continue to engage with us? A salesperson needs to be what? And everybody says, well, they need to be liked and trusted. Right. I'm like, you're right. Those two are very important. But there's a third one that's as important, if not more important that happens before that. They have to be known. So you got to know like, and trust whoever it is that you're going to buy something from. And so this idea of running some ads in the area that you're going to be working creates the no part. And then it's up to your salesperson to be liked and trusted. It also helps with some of that trust aspect.

Yeah.

One of the things that I really loved about what social media has brought to the game is as a small country especially, so many depend upon word of mouth. Right. I have homeowner A, I did great work from. They tell homeowner B and C. Right. A couple of people maybe, and they do that maybe for the first week or so after I do whatever it is I do for them and then it's kind of off, and they're busy with other things. Yeah, word of mouth is not a bad way to do business. But what if I can make that word of mouth more impactful? So every time I do work with somebody and they're happy with me, I get my reviews. Like, I'm supposed to get those put into my Google profile, but I'm also recording it and shooting a quick video with them and posting that on Facebook and being a little bit more organic by some of the very affordable things that we can do. But I think so many people do it with a shoot from the hip shotgun approach without strategy behind it. That's sharing their brand and getting this ideal client aligned with who. Who you are. Do you see a lot of that?

Yeah, it's spray and pray. Right? A little bit of a spray and pray mentality. And it's like, we're just gonna shoot a whole bunch of stuff out there and we're gonna see what sticks. And you can waste a lot of time, money, and energy doing that. Like, a lot.

The biggest waste of time to me is like, you, like, you're excited about it. Okay, I'm gonna go and get my pictures, shoot a video, do that, go out there. And I. And I spent a week on it. Like, I'm just doing my thing and I don't get, like, instant response to it and that not getting, okay, I'm done, off on my way, I go and I kind of forget about it and I lose the consistency side of it. Not only did I not get results from it because I wasn't consistent with it, I wasted a bunch of time. Shouldn't even have done it in the first place because you weren't going to be consistent with it. Which is a big part of your coaching, I think, is helping these guys understand the commitment that they're making to this. Would you agree?

Yeah. It's like. It's like going to the gym, you know, you can't. You can't go to the gym for a week and be like, oh, I'm not shredded. Not doing it anymore. Screw it doesn't work. That's crazy. It's crazy. You know, like, you're going to have soreness and it's going to hurt while you're. While you're doing certain things. And it's the same thing in marketing. Like, there's going to be times where it hurts to do it. You're like, I don't want to do this. This is the last thing I want to do. But you have to do It.

This is what I absolutely love about the coaching side of it. So I can go to the gym and work out every day for a year, and I will get results, and it will take some time. I can be consistent, I can be disciplined to it, and I will get some results. But if I had a trainer working with me who was working on my nutrition plan, he was working on the exercises I do, instructing me on what I should do and when, I will get there much faster. I've learned that through my own experiences in the gym. And we take that into our coaching, that we're here to be that person that's giving you those tweaks as you go forward with it. And you noticed something when you came in right away, because the whole goal was, hey, Tommy, we've got a lot of clients. We're going to get some people in your wheelhouse here that need that need and want to bring their one on to bring their marketing internal so they can own it. And you went, hey, hold on a second. What about that? That's expensive, right? What about these small guys that just. You need to get the basics down and put that together. You came to us with an idea. You want to share with everybody what that sounds like?

Yeah. So if you don't know about Contractor Boost, then you should first off, and. Because what that is, is that's made for the. For. For the beginning contractor, somebody who, let's say, generally speaking, doing less than about $3 million a year. Well, I kind of. I looked at that and I was like, man, these guys need to be digging more into marketing. They need to be learning some of the basics and getting a strategy put together young in their company before they lose control over it as they grow, learning these wonderful, you know, foundational bricks that they're learning when. When they're working with John Townsend, who's running Contractor Boost. So I got to thinking about it and I was like, hey. I was like, what if we just did a marketing Boost class? What if we put something together? It was short. It's 10 weeks. It. And it gets these guys headed in the right direction with their marketing and basically giving them an Associate's degree in 10 weeks. What do you guys think about that? And resounding. Yes, absolutely.

High five.

Let's do it.

So first off, it makes it more affordable. You can do it as a group, small group meetings, right? So 10 to 20 guys, and they are allowed to bounce ideas off of each other so they're not in a silo so much and get some pretty Amazing results right away. Yeah, I'm pretty excited about you getting that started. I think it's pretty kick ass.

I'm excited about it. It's gonna be good.

Yeah. We have found that those. So a lot of people in coaching, they're either one on one or these massive groups. Right. Like this group where you almost like you get lost in the mix. And we've really been intentional about these smaller size groups, 10 to 20 people in a group so that you get that personalized attention because it's just really part of who we are. We want to get to know you, want to be in a relationship with you. We want to share in those successes with you. We want you to feel free to reach out and talk with us. What is it about that aspect of the coaching that you enjoy so much?

Man, when you get a group of people together who are all focused on trying to do the same, the same thing for their company, the, the ideas are just flowing and guys are supporting. You know, you have somebody you can celebrate wins with. When you have successes and you end up becoming, you end up becoming a team. Yeah, you're all in the same industry, but you're all over the place. There's no competition, there's no hate inside of these groups. Everybody just loves being together and, and, and problem solving together if there is an issue. And, and, and that's what I love. And, and I don't, I don't, I don't know. Like, I don't have enough words to really describe it because I've only, I've only been inside of one boost class before with John. And it was, it was just really cool to see the camaraderie that was, that was inside of that group is they were just asking questions and you know, just.

Yeah. I think my favorite part is when they break do their breakout. So let's say there's 10 guys in the group. They'll do a breakout of like 5 and 5 and they'll discuss a particular subject or topic we're talking about at that point in time and come to some conclusions together and to see if they're aligned or not, see if they went a different direction and then share that between the groups in a breakout afterwards. It's been some of the most phenomenal results that we've gotten from that. A lot of great ideas come out of it and it's this concept of, you know, two heads are better than one and ten must be a lot better than that. As long as it's organized and not chaotic. When it Comes to implementation, we take these ideas. We say, okay, here's the strategy. Here's the technology we're going to use. Here's the format and copy and tone that we're going to use due to this story that we want to tell and make this customer a part of. What's the biggest struggle you see with people implementing it?

Number one's consistency. I think we've. We've kind of.

Yeah, we nailed that one. What's next?

Understanding how everything works. You know, understanding how. How everything talks to each other and how that circle is and how each portion of it is equally as important as the next. You can't just focus on one thing and expect to get 100 of the results when there's six or seven different pieces to this pie here. When it comes to marketing. So you have to. There's got to be a plan for. For each part of it. And if you. If you're not working on all of those, then you're probably not going to see the successes that you're looking for if there's a part of that that's missing or you're not meeting 100% of the potential. Potential that you could get. So a great example of this would be social media talks to your website. I don't know if you know that or not, but it does.

It does talk to my website.

So you're. When. Think about it. When we're running ads for. For Contractor Coach Pro, right? There is a pixel that comes from social media that I have to put on your website. So that way it'll. Your website will track everything social media does, and social media will track everything that your website does.

That's really hard to do though, right?

No, super simple. Extremely simple. It's just literally copy and paste.

Sounds complicated, right? Like pixel. And put it on my website. How do I put something on my website?

It's a whole bunch of big words to say that. We're just trying to get these two to communicate with each other. And it's copying one thing and putting. Putting it on another. That's literally all it is. And Facebook will even walk you through step by step on how to do it. It's just. They use really big words that nobody understands.

Right.

But what I'm saying is that now I can develop a targeted audience on Facebook based off of website traffic over the course of the past year, and I can retarget those exact people that are visiting our website. We can do that.

We can. Glad you're here, Tommy.

You know, so. So doing just Something as simple as that. If you don't understand how those two are communicating with each other. With each other. If you're like, oh, well, I'm only going to focus on social media. Well, you need to focus on your website too, because you can grow your social media following based off of your website traffic.

Yeah, we actually, we had some experience with that. Right. Depending on what we're doing. So from a outreach aspect of things on social media, our top rep stuff, people knew what that was. There's some buzz about that going, and they would come to the website and the website connected. The message was the same, they had a flow to it, and it led to what we were hoping would happen. But if we did the same thing with our boost program, that was not quite as good as the top rev one, but it was okay. But boy, if you went to one on one, that didn't look anything like it was like one message here and one message over there.

Yeah.

So understanding that is a big thing. And that's where we do need a coach. We do need somebody to help us to gain that understanding. Because once we understand the connection, then we can get really creative. We can really do some problem solving.

Yeah. And to kind of, you know, go back just a little bit on what you said about same message across, you know, from your social media to your website, that same message also needs to be on your landing pages. It needs to be on your Google. It needs to be everywhere. You're preaching the same message across all platforms. So you have to focus on all those platforms. Everything center around that.

We certainly thought we were preaching the same message, but after gaining a bit of understanding from you, we went, oh, okay, now I see, like that thing looks like this and leads to that, but that thing over here looks like they're not. They're not the same. They're not following the same format and leading to the same result, which so many people. That's what we're focused on. We're focused on the result.

Right.

Did I get a lead? Did I get a lead? Did I get a lead? Well, the process is where we need to be focused. What's the process that person's going through to actually become a lead or prospect for our business? Do you see a lot of people make a mistake there when they're working through that process? And if so, what are the common ones?

Yeah, I think that is a mistake. I see. And it kind of goes back to what I said in the beginning. You got five different companies all trying to do stuff for one and none of those companies are communicating with each other. It all goes back to that being an issue of not having full control over everything. But I think one of the issues that I want to focus on. Too many times we focus on cost per lead. And, and I think that's. I think you're looking at it the wrong way. I think what. Instead, let's shift to cost per clothes. Okay, so it's a different cpc. It's not cost per click, it's cost per close. Because now you can see where you're actually making money on marketing instead of saying, okay, where am I getting potentials from? Marketing. Yes, I think calls per lead is important. I'm not saying it's not, but I do think at the end of the day, maybe let's shift a little bit of your mindset over to looking at how much did it cost for me to close each lead that I got and how much money are we spending in that area? Because that might not be what. Where my target audience is. They are. Is so important.

That's one of the unique things that you've brought to this because on the sales side of things, we look at it that way. You know, this, this lead average. In other words, for every lead I hand out to somebody, what's the average amount of the sale for that three. 3,500, 4,000. 4,500. $5,000. Because that then tells me I'm about to give this lead to somebody. Should I give it to that person that's only getting $3,000 per lead or that person that's getting five? Yeah, the person who's getting five.

Exactly.

And so we want that same thing in the generation of those opportunities so that we can relate it to our sales and saying, hey, this guy can close. Is he getting good quality leads that actually close easier? Right? Yeah, because they followed the process and measuring that cost per close versus cost per click. That's unique. I haven't seen too many people with that thought process. And we want to teach that to contractors and help them line it up with everything else that we help them learn. If you were a contractor and you have been outsourcing all of your lead generation or shooting from the hip on it, on your approach, but you had to start over today. What would be the first two or three things you would do?

Oh, first thing I would do is, oh, man, it's a tough one, Jim.

It's always the hard one. It's always. I mean, it seems like I would follow the format. Like, hey, what do I want to get out of my marketing.

Yeah.

Get a strategy written down about it.

Yeah, that's the first, that's honestly the first thing that popped into my mind is I was like, the first thing I need is a strategy. Like I, I need to. There. There's things I need to define here. You know, you know, who's my target audience, how much money am I willing to spend on this, what type of expectations am I looking at, you know, what programs am I going to be using to track everything so I can determine where my successes are coming from.

And Facebook or Google, my business, I.

Need to know where, where everything's coming from. And then also, okay. Based off of those things now it's what type of content do I want to be putting out there? What brand, what is my brand going to look like to people? I think the second thing that I would do, I would, in the very beginning I would take. I would split my marketing budget in half between social media ads and Google local service ads. I would split them in half because I want to see where my best return on investment is going to be in the beginning because there is some split testing you have to do at the beginning just to figure out where everything's coming from.

One market can be different from another market.

Exactly where you are is light years different than North Carolina where I am.

Yeah.

Our markets are just different.

Yep.

And then I think the third thing I would do is I would probably go hire a videographer.

Yeah.

And the reason is because I need to document what I'm doing and I need people to see what I'm doing and in a very professional way. Because I want to. Like with Nubs Media and what we do, we put out. I keep saying we. What Nubs Media does is puts out a lot of information, but we don't necessarily put out a whole bunch of professional looking content. So I, I would shift that to go, yes, it needs to be informational, but it needs to come across in a professional way to where people are impressed with what they're seeing. Because if it looks good, then, and it looks professional, they're going to assume I'm professional, which is exactly what I am.

Because you're putting yourself in the shoes of the homeowner that wants a professional not to, not, not a. What we call an unprofessional check in a truck. Checking truck. Yeah.

Yeah.

That's not what they're looking for now.

They don't want that.

That's some really good advice, Tommy. It's real, really strong stuff.

And if I may Give one more piece of advice here. When I did look to hire somebody in house for marketing, because that's what I would want to do. I'd want to bring it in house. I'm hiring on qualifications, not age.

A young one that actually knows what to do.

Yeah. And I think that's a common misconception about hiring somebody in house to run social media is. It's. I've heard a lot of contractors. Oh, well, they're. They're. They're a millennial. They know what they're doing. Well, just because you know how to use social media doesn't mean you know how to utilize social media.

Yeah.

There's a huge difference between using it for fun and using it for business. So there's. There. There needs to be certain qualifications you're looking for in. In that person.

Let's. Let's dig into that a little bit. Pique my curiosity. All right, so I've decided I want to own my. My own marketing, and I know I can't do it. All right, I need some help. How would I go about finding that person? Like you said, hey, be more on the qualifications than the age. Right. Where are some good resources or places that I could go? Because I, I know what I do. I went, all right, can't afford to hire somebody full time. I'm going to start with, like, virtual people. At the very beginning. Then I had, like, subcontractor come in, do some video work for me here and there, and kind of pieced it together because I was small, still trying to fit it within the budget.

Yep.

But then it came down to, all right, we need somebody to actually start owning this side of things with good direction, strategy, brand, culture behind it. So they understand tone, but they need to be better at it than me. How do we go about finding those type of people?

I always recommend look internally first, look at somebody who's already there, and it's. They're. They're already a part of the culture. You don't have to teach them what the culture is. They're already there. They're in it. That. That's the first place that I look for, because, as we said earlier, tone and sending the right message is. Is extremely important. So. And who better to do that than somebody that's already internally? Because they're going to do it. And in the beginning, it can be a team effort. So I was having this conversation with a contractor yesterday. He's like, yeah, my. My sales manager is always out there taking pictures and videos of all of our jobs. I was like, okay, are you using that on your social media outlets? He's like, no. Why not? You got content. He's already there. Just do it. You know, like it. Just because it's not coming from a drone doesn't mean it ain't right. How.

How quickly. So let's say that that was the route I chose to go, and we've been really lucky here. We have hired somebody outside number one and brought them in to, like, learn the marketing thing. They had some marketing experience before, and then we got you and you coming in. You're new to us, but your culture aligned. I mean, immediately, that was number one reason why we said, hey, be a part of the team. You fit our culture quite well to love serving care for contractors. And you just fit really, really well. What I've noticed from that is you had a skill set that I didn't have to teach you at that point. You already brought that to the game, where in our other circumstances, we had to teach some skill set, which has been fine. It's a little bit of a longer road. But also culturally aligned. Yeah. How do I. How do I find somebody with the skills? Like, yeah, I got a person. This person wants to learn that stuff, but they don't have the skill set. But they are my culture. Can I learn that skill set pretty quickly, or is it something that's going to take a long time?

Yeah, you can learn it in about five weeks. Working with me. I'm just kidding. But no, on a serious note, though, yes, those are teachable skills. You know, you. You can find somebody who fits culturally over somebody who fits from a skill set standpoint, because skills can be told. Character cannot.

Yeah, and that might be the title of podcast.

But. But that is the truth, though. It's 100. I've made that mistake. I made that mistake with Nose Media. I brought somebody in because I was like, okay, you're good. And I hired based on what I just told everybody not to do. I was like, oh, you're young. You know how to do it. I made that mistake. That's why I know. To tell people that is because I made the mistake. And come to find out, we spent the first six months trying to correct 90% of everything this person was doing wrong.

You know, I think a lot of these contractors would be surprised that they have somebody on their team that is like, I would really like to do that, and they've never asked.

That's how I got into it. Yeah, it is. I started off as a roof sales guy. I was A sales rep for a roofing company. And I was terrible. I was terrible.

I don't really like that part. And I'm outdoors, hot up on a roof. Yeah, I like this part of it, but I hate that part.

And I eased into it and it took me probably a solid year to really learn a good skill set and be able to fully take control of everything to where that company could realistically bring every bit of what they were doing in house instead of third party and everything.

That's the nice thing about having you on board. You've actually been in those shoes in there where it's this person that maybe doesn't have a marketing degree or super techie or any of that kind of stuff, but they have a passion for, they have this eye for it. They can learn it quickly and it's not going to take them a year because you had to do it. School of hard knocks.

Yeah.

You know, fail forward now that we have the recipe for it, something we can teach a lot quicker, get people up to speed faster and start generating opportunities quicker.

Yeah. And also on that note, Jim, if you don't want to bring all of it in house and you want to send some things to a third party, I've been into third party shoes as well. So not only can we teach you how to interview the third party, because there are certain qualifications those people should have. If you're paying them three, $4,000 a month, they better have certain quality. They own the company. So there's, there's certain things, certain questions that need to get asked to them and certain requirements you need to have. But also once you do hire them, how do you properly communicate with your third party to get the results you're looking for?

Yeah, I thought it was really insightful, you know, when you came in, like the pitfalls that we should avoid. And I think most of them you kind of named off were ones I had mistakes I had made. But like owning your website, like that's a big thing. And most contractors don't realize they don't own their website. They think they do, but they don't. And what that means, if you're ever going to, like, if you're ever going to adjust what you're doing on that website and you say, hey, I'm going to move in a different direction and you don't own it, you're starting from scratching it.

Yep. Don't mistake owning the domain name for owning the website.

Yeah. That's two different things.

Two completely different things. They're completely different.

And that's just one of the many little pitfalls that when we're working with a third party company they're not going to like say hey are you okay with not owning the website? They're not going to say that.

They're like yeah we'll build it, no problem.

We can help with that and keep you from doing that. And that's, that's where that marketing boost comes in. Those, those simple things early on basics that we want to make sure you don't make those mistakes and we can implement some things really fast to start generating some leads that are low cost, affordable to do and then once you get rolling then we can really dig into that one on one stuff and take it to a whole other level and getting you into that eight figure contractor status and beyond. Tommy, I'm super excited about having you on board if people are interested in talking with Tommy. You've heard this podcast, you.