Squeezing the Juice in Your Marketing ROI with Jim Ahlin

Foreign. Hey, everybody, it's Jim Johnson, your host here at Contractor Radio with another awesome episode to help you get control of your business so you can grow your business and find that personal and financial freedom in your business. Which is what we do here at Contractor Coach Pro. And why I love doing this podcast so much is we get to bring on some pretty awesome guests to help you facilitate some of those things. When we look at our businesses, we look at our businesses. Two sides of a coin. We have this foundational side that we've got to get all those things in place from leadership, culture, process, hr, finance and accountability that we don't spend as much time as we probably should as contractors. And then there's the operational side. That's kind of the fun stuff. Technology, marketing, sales training, training, production, recruiting, hiring, onboarding, where we tend to focus a lot of our time. Today I'm going to be talking about one of those operational aspects of our business in marketing and what we should maybe be doing and planning for a new year coming and how we should look at that planning throughout the year. I've got an amazing guest for that today. I cannot wait to bring him on board. But before we talk to him, let's hear a word from one of our sponsors. Atlas Roofing Shingles. The Atlas Pro plus Contractor program is designed to help you build your business. It gives you tools and resources, training, industry insights, bonus structures, technical knowledge, the brand power and science of 3M Scotchgard and what we think is the best product and warranty in the industry. Become part of the family that is succeeding and growing their businesses. We went from nobody ever heard of us to the number one roofing company in our region. And we've gone from 12 roofs a year to 2035, and we did over 400 last year.

We're on track right now to do 1,000 roofs this year.

You'll begin earning Atlas bucks and rewards as you move up to even greater reward levels. Become an Atlas Pro today. As I said, hey, marketing is key. And one of the things that I love about Atlas is they actually help you do that. They help you differentiate yourself from your competition. They support you with some marketing assets to help your business. But we're going to talk about a little bit of the other side of things, some of the digital side of marketing and some planning aspect of marketing that we should really be thinking about at this time of year. And I have one of the top guys in our industry out there. He works with roofers, but it applies to all contractors that do home services. Let's bring on our special guest co founder, Rockstar social media savant Jim Alan from Roofer Marketers. Hey, Jim, good to have you on board, buddy.

Good to have you. Good. Good to be here, man. Awesome.

That's a great. I always like telling the story about how I'm like engaged with you the very first time. Like we had glanced each other, you know, at events and things like that, just kind of crossing glows. But the very first time I engaged with you is because I was sick and tired of seeing you. You're on like everything I pull up Instagram, there's a. There's Roofer Marketers. I would pull up Facebook. There was roofer Market on my tv, there was Roofer marketers. And I went, hey, this guy must be pretty good. How do I get him off of my social stuff and actually talk to him about what he does? So thanks for coming on board today, man.

Yeah, no problem. And that's our goal, is to see us everywhere, right? And you do that.

So that's a good question. And I'm going to ask this question before I have you do what I would normally do. But this idea of seeing us everywhere, what is the point of that? Why can't I just do like the old days and have an ad and, you know, the newspaper or I don't even think they have the yellow pages anymore, but I think there's a digital version of that. Why do we need to be everywhere all the time? And what I would call sometimes seems overly persistent. Why does it need to be like that today?

You know, it's. We're maximizing our brand impressions is kind of the simplest way to put it. Right. And it's not a new concept. I mean, big companies for decades have been doing this right? Every time there's a marketing channel, they're in it. From the Coca Colas to the Nikes to ge, right. All of the Johnson and Johnson product placements everywhere. It's the same concept that they would do. Right? There's an old advertising rule of seven that people don't see, don't recognize your brand until they've seen it at least seven times. And so for us, you said social media savant is the way we've kind of hacked the social networks in a way, is that you will always see us. Every time you open Facebook, we'll be in your stories, we'll have a post in your feed, open Instagram, we're in your stories, we have a post in your feed, we're in your reels, open TikTok we're there. Go to LinkedIn, we're there. And so our goal is just to be where all of our perfect customers are. And so for contractors it's the same thing. Know who your customer is, where they are, and be there so that you become top of mind the weird. I was talking to someone about this earlier today, but it's the, the, the most valuable real estate you can own is mental real estate. Right. And so when Jim Johnson started thinking about the marketing companies that he could maybe refer his customers to in the roofing niche or who's, who's reputable, who's not reputable, he saw roofer marketers everywhere. Right? And you're like, that had an impact on, on the way that you thought about us, right? And, and then you had a conversation with us and then we started talking and you know, an impression share. Without us, you seeing us so many times, you wouldn't have had that initial conversation.

Yeah, it was, it was pretty. Well, I want to get back to that. I want to talk a little bit more about this just being present all the time and, and maybe some, some, some of the struggles over that. But before we do, why don't you tell us a little background of roofer markets. Like where, where did you come from? Why roofing for in particular? Like you could probably do what you do for pretty much any home service, contractor or kind of any business, to be honest with you. But why, why roofing? Why roofing marketers and little, little, I don't know, Reader's Digest of the backstory.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, for myself, it goes back a little bit further, a couple of decades, right. I started in web dev, I started in doing web development, server side programming in 2002. So I've been doing this a long time. I realized quickly that I wasn't a programmer, right. I wasn't built for that. So I started other. My entrepreneurial journey and many things. Real estate brokerages, mortgage brokerages, real estate investing, had business, all kinds of businesses that I was working in along the way. And every time that I was in these businesses, whether it was as a, as an employee or as a partner or, or as the owner, it was on me. Well, you know how to do those website things. Can you build us one of those? And so I kind of got pulled into the digital marketing side of things, which I've enjoyed thoroughly. That's my path over programming. And then as you get to know these things, you have friends that say, hey, you know that stuff. Can you help me with that stuff and then that snowballs into things. And at the time we started roofer marketers in 2008, I was doing a pay per lead service for contractors, mostly in the roofing space. Some other contractors, electrical contractors, and hike and things.

Like, were you one of the first guys that was out there, like, hey, we'll get you 30 leads the next 30 days type of thing?

I could have been. Yeah, I could have been like, and they're still sending those emails out today. So, but, but, so. And then my business partner, Brian had a digital marketing agency that was more of a generalist agency. So what, what that means is they, you know, not specific to a niche and, but he had a couple of roofing contractors as clients and we, we, we started working together and, and it was like the roofing fit with both of us. Right? Like, it's kind of like roofing finds you kind of thing or contracting. Right? It finds you and it pulls you in. It's not your. The, like, I want to do marketing for roofing contractors. Right, but, but that's not what you.

Were sitting in high school just dreaming about.

It's what I majored in in college. But, but, but really it's, you know, Brian was doing a great job with some of his clients. I was doing a great job. And then we came together and said, look, this is the, this is it right here. And, you know, since then, we're off and running. We work with just over a hundred roofing contractors nationwide. Written two books on the subject of digital marketing for roofing contractors. You know, have my podcast, the Roofing Success Podcast. Do educational webinars on an ongoing basis. So there's part of it. Part of what we do at Roofer Marketers is not just with our clients. You know, we want to help roofing contractors generate more revenue through their digital marketing efforts. So we do that through the education.

We get along. Yeah, we do a lot of coaching, but we do a lot of just educating. Like this podcast.

That's right.

That's our point is like, give you, you know, you never know where somebody is along their roadmap of growing. And if you can give them the stuff to make some of those first leaps, maybe at some point they find the value in what you do. Kind of like you mentioned with me, like, I didn't know who you. I started seeing your face all over the place, your content all over the place. Then I started to go, hey, I kind of like this guy. And so now I have this idea that, like, I know who Jim Allen is. Or at least who I perceive him to be. Then it's this like, and trusting people buy what they know, like, and trust. And I went, okay, so that's now a brand. And then I contacted you. I actually liked you. You're like, hey, that guy's pretty cool. That's awesome. And then you actually gave me some free advice, even for my own company. And so there was this trust thing that wasn't just a one side transaction. There was actually a relationship there. Do you see that much in roofing as a mo? Like, hey, this is the approach that we should use, man.

Definitely. I've talked to especially like on the residential side, being that, that, that educational leader in your marketplace to help people understand what, what the problems they're facing. That's, that's one thing. It really is very impactful. On the commercial side, I've had a couple of guests on my podcast who, you know, they're just the trusted resource for anyone that they, that ever wants to call them. Like, they are willing to give their unbiased, you know, expertise to, to a building owner, a homeowner, without the expectation of using them as, as their contractor.

But they're not, they're not trying to sell them there, right? Like, it's, hey, man, I want to freely give to you and be authentic about it. And who knows, at some point you may need me, but right now I'm just doing the right you and you.

Can do that through being the resource right for, hey, anyone, anyone, anytime, Give me a phone, give me a call. You know, I'll, I'll be as helpful as I can to, in guiding you in the right direction. But then on the other side of it, and you talked about the social media side of that and kind of getting back to that and how you could take that and utilize that. It's, it's, it's such an easy thing to provide that expertise online, right, through video content on your social media.

Yeah, I think a lot of us struggle with it. I know we do. Like, it's one of those things that we struggle with because to be consistent, to be present all the time has its challenges. And we've started to figure out some things, thankfully, because of some of the input that you gave me long ago and then some key people coming into play for us. But do you hear that much from contractors? Like, man, it's just a lot. I gotta shoot this video all the time. I gotta create these graphics, I gotta put it on Instagram and I can eat it. Which things should I do? Should I be Tick Tock Master or should I be Instagram Real Guy or which, like, do you hear a lot of that?

A lot of it, right? And that, that's the challenge and the, the consistency is, is the superpower. Right? And if you're not consistent, that's what that, that's why some of these things fail for people or what they, they, they feel like they fail, right? Like, man, I just can't get any traction on my social media. When do you post? Well, when I can, you know how I can, when I can. Well, what do you post? Well, you know, we do before and afters. Okay, well what do you write in that before and after post? Right? Do you write, you know, new GAF Timberline HD charcoal gray. Cool, right? Like, like do you write that? Because that's what most people write, but that has, but to that person who is viewing your company, that doesn't mean anything, right? It's, it's, it's not as impactful as, like to a, to a homeowner as that. And maybe you have some, some renovation contractors who listen here too. You guys have it easier, right? Like people save up money for that kitchen and bath remodel. No one wants to buy a roof. So it's very challenging. So, but, but they, but there are problems that in the social media content that you create, you should be thinking about who you're creating that content for and putting them into that social media. So for example, in that before and after, hey, the Johnsons down in Texas, in this area of Texas, there was a windstorm and they saw shingles on the ground. We came out and did our thorough 38 point inspection to determine if there was damage and if it, you know, and what the potential solution to that would be. Right? We, their insurance company was, was contacted and covered the whole cost of their roof minus their deductible. And, and we put, and we installed this new GAF roofing system. You know that, that in charcoal gray xyz, right? Like it's a different thing now. The next person reading that post goes, oh, well, we had a windstorm too. Not right, like it's the story that you tell in the conversation that you're having with the, with that homeowner.

Yeah, I got some really good advice on that a while back. And whenever you're talking like whatever it is you're doing on social media or YouTube, any of those things, use the word you a lot instead of we or you guys or all of us or that type of thing, use the word you a lot you are dealing with this. You are probably feeling this way. It brings them into the story. You're talking directly to them, and you're telling a story directly to them and nobody else is there to hear it. And actually works in a variety of situations. Situations. Because if you think about it, when you're on social media or any of that other stuff like that, we're all thinking we're talking to a big crowd, right? Like, hey, we're talking to thousands of people. So we got to talk like thousands of people. But even in speaking engagements where I get up on stage and I'm talking in front of, you know, thousands of contractors, I'm saying the word you a lot. I'm using that to speak directly to them. And you know who else is good at that? Who? We learn that from pastors at a church that have great attendance. They know how to make it all about you. And so if you want to learn how to talk like that, go find a church that's got a lot of people in it. And I promise you, that guy is saying, hey, you are having this problem. You're feeling this way about your faith. You're this, you're that, and boy, you're just brought in like, man, he's talking directly to me.

Directly, right? Like, yeah, yeah, me. Yeah, yeah, I do feel that way, you know, like, and that's. It's so powerful and impactful to do that. That there is. I've seen Facebook ads. If you get it. If you get too good at it, Facebook will is. It will like filter on the ad side. They're like, no, no, that ad is way too. It makes it too creepy. When they used to have a lot of demographic targeting in Facebook, like, do you make $60,000 and live in this neighborhood? Like, whoa, that's, you know.

Yeah, that's a little uncomfortable.

So.

So how do we make this thing easier? I'm willing. Let's say I'm a contractor and I'm willing. I'm like, all right, I'll shoot the video, man. But I can't shoot a video every day. I don't have an on staff graphics person. I don't have all that. I don't even know. Like, I can get on my phone and post it to Instagram reels. I know how to do that. But I also needed to go to TikTok and I need to go to Facebook and I need to go on YouTube and I'll. How do we make it easier?

So the first thing that I think makes it easier is Is, is. Is building like a building some kind of content calendar for the future, right? You want to understand what you're going to talk about. So maybe you, and you could, you could categorize these, right? So you have a customer success story, right? That's one category that you're going to talk about that might be a job that you've completed that worked out well or a problem and maybe you solved that someone wasn't even your customer, right? Like you could tell success stories along the way. Another category, maybe your backstory, you know, why you got into contracting, how you are improving your business, how, how you feel like you're doing better than the, the competition, right? Like what you're doing that differentiates your company from the next. Another one might be another category might be things about your team, right? Like, so talking about your team members and the things that they're doing.

Community.

Community involvement might be another category that you do, right? And so you have these multiple categories. Education is another category, right? So getting people to know that you know what you're talking about. So you have all these categories. Then you take these categories and you break them up over a month, right? On today I'm going to do a, you know, Monday I'm going to do a customer success. Tuesday I'm going to do an educational. Wednesday I'm going to talk about the team, right? So now you have these buckets. So now when you're going out and creating the content, you know which bucket it fits into. So now you can fill your buckets. So now you have essentially multiple pieces of content for each of these buckets. One of the things that, that I think is people don't realize on social media is you don't just. You're allowed to post things more than once.

Oh, you mean they don't see it the first time I post it, everybody.

So you put something on your business page on Facebook, you know, if you have a hundred followers on there, you know, maybe 10 of them see it, maybe 15 if you're lucky.

It's about 11% if I've read, right?

So, yeah, so in that 10 to 15% range, like, if something is really getting a lot of likes and shares, you might get in so you can post it again, right? Take a snapshot of your Google reviews and put that on there or have yourself talking about the Google review. Man, this is so great of Sally for leaving this review. We really appreciate it. When we were working on this project, it was this X, Y and Z. We overcame these problems and we're so happy to get a five star review from her. Those types of things. That's a customer experience piece of content and that's something that, yeah, maybe you post it again in three months, post it again two months later. Right. You can continuously post this stuff and that's how we get to the quantity of what we post.

Right.

We have seven social media networks that seven social media accounts over a couple of over LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok that we, that we post on four to six times a day on each them. Right. So no matter where you're at, we're there. So, so you could take that same post, right. And you could put a clip on TikTok of it and then you could put your post on Facebook and you put it as an Instagram reel and put it over on LinkedIn and all of a sudden you're everywhere.

Do you guys see anybody do like we look at them as like themes. I got this theme or a series. I'm going to do a series on some things. Right. And do you ever see anybody do like long form stuff is kind of like the, like, let's take education for example. That thing might be 10 or 15 minutes about hey, why this chimney leaked for whatever reason or this decking wood's bad. It could be very much like almost a training type thing that you could leverage inside of your business. You put it outside of your business and then you take little snips of that and put it on other things. So you're really creating one thing that creates multiple things across the board. Do you see a lot of that?

Yeah, long form content into short form content. That, that's really a lot of what we do with our podcast and our webinars and things like that is we'll take those, those big pieces of content, an hour long piece of content or a 30 minute piece of content and just pull little snippets out of it. Right. Instagram is less than 59 seconds. You know, Facebook maybe a two minute or LinkedIn. We could go up maybe up to 10 minutes, have a clip on there for up to 10 minutes. TikTok, right? Do you have your, your short form stuff, reels, things like that? So, so whatever the content that you have, you can repurpose. Right.

Should I strategically. Here's a question I think most contractors would ask. Should I strategically drive them back to the long form thing though? Like they're interested. Like, hey, I watched the whole thing. You can go check out the rest of it on this or is that important?

You Know, I think it's more important for that clip. Right. We like for our perspective, you know. Well, I think this year our podcast episodes shoot will probably be, you know, 75, 000 downloads listens on our. On our podcast episodes on the podcast platform. So that's the long form, right? Long form pieces of content. We'll 10x that easily with the short form clips on our social media. But it's, you know, we have it, it's our brand. So the, you know, if it's a clip of the podcast on the roofing success Instagram page. Right. Instagram profile. It's oh well, roofing success. It, it leads to. I don't think that you need the calls to action on everything.

Okay, cool. Good. Right, Right. We always wonder about that kind of stuff sitting there. As a contractor, it's really just to stay in front of them.

Stay in front.

Piece of content that's important. Thought I'd share it with you. Here you go.

There's a, there's a, there's a book that was published years ago by Gary Vaynerchuk. It's called the Jab jab, jab, right hook. Right. So the jabs are just content, content, content value, value, value, value, value, value, value. The right hook is the ask. So there's a concept of just provide value. Don't worry about all the calls to action and you know, people might disagree with me on that. Comments, please. Let's, let's get in a little comment war here. We'll get the views up on this. Really good.

I would love that. Is it leads right this second or is it relationship over a long time?

That's right. And, and so, you know, we, you know, I am a big fan of just being there all the time, owning that mental real estate. Other people need that click, need that. They want something to go viral. They want that, that call to action. They want calls to act. You know, you could do it either way. It's your. Here's the thing about business, Jim, that's fun is that it's your business.

You can do what you want.

Right. Like there's no one way. So.

All right, so are there tools that make any of that easier for me? So I want to make sure I post to everything.

Yeah. First off, you said you'd made a, a comment about, you know, man, maybe we don't have someone that could do this. I don't have time to do all of these things, you know, using assistance. Right. So people who, you know, having a, you know, a local person who Maybe does videography that could come in and, and help you with this, create the long form video, pull some of those clips out, format them for those different things. Boy, this generation of youth is pretty darn proficient. It looks like they know how to use them pretty well. So you know, and then there's other people in your area, right? Like especially as a contractor, the videographers that really know how to shoot a good contracting video, real estate videographers, right. If they're not busy doing, you know, if they have some extra time or hire them to come out once a week. One of my, one of my I, I shout out Masters Roof Memphis. Andrew Itnauer did a great job of this. I've had him on my podcast a couple of times where he had a friend who's a videographer and he took him out once a week and they would go out to the projects that they were built. You know, the roofs that they were building, they'd go out at to some homeowners that they were meeting with or picking up check and they would just film that day and then it would take all of that content for the day and that's shoot, man. That was almost a month's worth of content right there. So you can hack it that way. Other things that you can do, there are websites like Upwork.com that you can hire freelancers on that maybe you do the filming of the video, then you upload it into Google Drive or Dropbox or something like that and have them pull the clips and make something out of it. There's a service that we used for a little while called Repurpose House. They, you, you upload your video and they make 15 or 7 or 15 pieces of content out of what you upload for a monthly fee. And they make them specific to, you know, formats formatted for Facebook and Instagram and different things. So it's multiple. So there are multiple resources out there to do that part it right, because you have the content creation, you have the editing of it and then you have the posting of it. So you could kind of separate it that way. The posting of it. There are a ton of softwares out there that will post for you kind of on an automatic, automatic basis where you can schedule all of your posts in so you could preload your week, preload your year. Almost one one that comes to mind is sendable. That's one that we've used a lot.

We've used Eclincher works pretty well. Yeah, we use that because it goes to TikTok too at the same time.

So, so, you know, one of my favorite features, this is the feature that I look for sometimes in these social media posters. Posting softwares is, is the ability to post evergreen content. It's referred to as evergreen content. So you could create what are called queues. So you could take those content banks and load them up in these queues and then it'll kind of randomly select things and post them. So you create a bunch of posts and then the software posts them. Kind of, you kind of put in a rant, a kind of a schedule. Hey, I want one from this bucket to go out every Monday, Wednesday and Friday and one from this bucket to go out Tuesday and, and at about this time. And then it'll, it'll kind of randomly select and start posting those from those buckets.

What are some of the names of those that you've seen?

Sendable is one of them. Meet Edgar is another one. I think Social Pilot does that. But so look for an evergreen functionality in there. And if you have that now, those posts never end. Right now you could, now you can really just focus on filling those buckets. And then the software does some of the work for you on that, posting it.

So here's a. I got a question on that. Just real quick, does it. And I don't know if contractors have thought of this, but I'm like, I wonder if I use one of those tools like Sendable or Eclincher or something like that and to post my content, does it have any difference than if I was just like manually doing it on my phone?

There, there is, yep, there is. And you know, so posting natively in the TikTok. TikTok app, posting natively in Instagram and using their little editors to like throw little things in and stuff like that. I don't, I, I've heard that it has an impact, right? There are a lot of people that measure the, the, the, the success of posts done inside or outside of these platforms. And so that's phase two to me. Phase one is do something, right? Phase two, do something better than that. Phase three, do something a little better than that, right? So in each phase, if you are someone who is not posting at all, get a scheduler, let it post. It's better than what you're doing now.

Better than nothing.

Better than what you're doing now. Now as you grow, maybe you can add a team member into your business that can do some of the native posting in between the scheduled posts. Right now you can just start to add phase two, phase three, and continuously get better, better at it.

So we've talked about some of the ways to make it a bit easier, right? You've got these tools that can do it. You can create some long form and edit it down into a bunch of pieces and create your content. You use the one example like you would have a guy come out once a month and there would be enough there for a whole month's worth of, of content. Those are awesome ideas. So at this time of year, you know, I got all these ideas coming up, right? And I got a million people reaching out to me, trying to get me to do whatever it is they are selling or doing. When it comes to marketing. What should I be thinking about when I'm planning for the coming year? There's, you know, all kinds of things that people are worried about right now, whether it be a recession and you know, are, are we going to be able to sell anything? I think roofing is fairly recession proof. You got a leak inside of your house, you're going to need somebody regardless of the situation. But if I was planning for marketing, what would be some of the things I'd want to look at as a contractor?

So starting with, at this point of the year when we talked about that is like it's a weird thing that we'd use this time of year as a point of reflection, right? We're looking back at what, what worked in 2022 and, and what could we improve upon in 2023. And so the first thing that, that I, I would go to is your marketing budget, right? What did you allocate towards marketing in 2022? And I, and I think that sometimes this is something that surprises contractors to know that they under spent on their marketing.

So what should they spend?

So we see on average our, our clients are, are usually between 3 and 8% is, is, is the, but everyone is different, right? So if you're a startup going from zero to a million and a half, 2 million, you know, you, you probably don't have the cash flow to invest, right? So you're gonna have to rely a little bit more on time, right? And that time is in developing relationships. That time may be spent in, in, in doing some social media content, getting your brand out there, connecting in the community, you know, spending some strategic funds on, on. I, I love truck wraps, right? They, they, they generate a lot of, of interest yard signs, right? There's these smaller outlays of money that you can invest, right?

Yeah, you can get right down to like, let's just do some door hangers and Flyers, but make them.

Right. And get out there. Like, let's just be honest, just boots and knuckles.

Like, you could certainly do that. But you're, you're.

Right.

Yeah. You're. You're, you're investing time versus money.

You're investing time versus money. Right. And, but, but as you grow, you know, we see between 3 and 8%. I think that I've seen it said many times, the industry standard is 5%.

Yeah.

But let's talk about that. Industry standard is 5% of your gross revenue goal.

Yeah. So let's say you were. Let's say you were 5 million this year. Right? You're 5 million this year. You don't look at the 5 million. You didn't take 5% of that and say, I'm going to market. You say, I want to be 7 million next year. So I want to invest 5% of 7 million.

That's right.

To get to that number. Is that how you're saying to look at it?

Exactly, exactly. And so what we look at when we, when we look at budgeting, we look at the leads that are, that are currently coming into your business. Because there are leads that will organically come into your business. The longer you've been in business, a lot of times the more organic leads come into your business. Those are the referral leads, mostly. Right. People that just know who they're going to call when they want to, when they need your services. So I would take some time to reflect and say if, if we were only looking at those, that, those leads for next year. Right. Just that kind of. The leads that we get organically, mainly referral leads, where does that get us on a revenue perspective? Right. So maybe you have $3 million. Like, man, we could do 3 million. We, we did 3. We did 4 million last year. I bet if we just kind of coasted, didn't spend money on marketing, we could hit three just based on the number of people who refer us. Right. There's a. Then the leads that you need to hit your revenue goal. There's a gap there. That's the gap that you have to fill with your paid marketing. In the referral side of things, sometimes you'll have to spend some marketing effort there just to make sure that people remember to call you. Right. Remember to refer you. But really what you're doing is how much market share do I need to buy? Because that's all marketing is. It's buying market share. The greater the gap, the larger, the higher you want to push that percentage. Right. So if you're a million dollar company and you want to do 10 next year, be prepared. Yeah, they may need you to like really coach them on some operational things. But, but, but, but moving into that, like that's a big gap.

Yeah, we talk about that all the time. Because we will have contractors come to us that, you know, they want to grow and they want to grow fast, they want to grow big and they want to do all that good stuff. I'm like, that sounds wonderful. Let's just assume that you did take that money you invested and you were going to get all these leads. Exactly. How are you going to optimize each one to sell every single one? Are you going to have a unique system to do that with or are you going to just wing it and let's say you did sell them, do you have the crews to actually produce it? Do you have the process to put them into. Like there's so much other stuff to consider before you go, hey, I'm going to go hog wild on marketing because if you don't have the systems and processes in place, come blow up in a pretty big hurry.

So Chuck and I have had this conversation, right, a couple of times. Chuck Toki, top rep, sales coach for Contractor Coach Pro. We'll do the plug there. Chuck and I have had this conversation. I was at a, we were at a trade show one time and I think I was having lunch with them or something and we were chatting and he was someone there was talking about HomeAdvisor and how they hated HomeAdvisor and Chuck's like, well, we buy every home advisor lead that we could get our hands on. And everyone looks at him like, what is your problem? You know what I mean?

You've got to know how to work.

It, but it's because you have a system and process to work it. Right? And that's the biggest part of it, right. Do you have someone that is going to answer the phone for you and sell immediately? Immediately.

And keep them on the line for a little while so all the other people calling them can't get through?

Can't get through. Yeah. Especially if it's a home advisor lead. That's right. I think Chuck told me that they like try to keep them on the phone for at least eight minutes or something like that. Like there's a strategy to it. Like there are strategies to these things. So. But what I like to refer to it is your marketing stack, right? And I think that like foundationally, from a digital perspective, you start with your website and your Google business profile, your Google Maps listing. You start there foundationally, right? You build out that foundational SEO from a digital perspective, and then you stack.