The Evolution of Marketing with Jessica Reyna

Hi, I'm Coach Thibodeau and welcome to the Contractor Radio podcast. Now, have you ever had this happen to you? You may be hanging out with a group of friends and or acquaintances and one of them begins to tell a story or talk about a really bad experience they had with a contractor and, and you happen to be the same type of contractor. Well, it's happened to me and I am not too proud to admit that. My first thought was, hey, I could have done a better job than that or I could have helped you through this whole process. Why didn't they ask me? I actually do that same thing instead of going off with some stranger and having a bad experience. Well, whose fault is that? It's my fault. It's my fault that either A they didn't know that I was that kind of contractor or B I wasn't close enough to them to realize that they could have used my services and didn't engage with them enough or have that realization. Okay, so this is. There's no rocket science to today's two minute drill, Just an encouraging reminder to make sure that your network, your friends, your family, acquaintances, your social media group and followers your know what you do. Now, why is it that oftentimes we fail to tell other people about what we do for a living or about our skills or our abilities in the first place? Well, I think one of those reasons happens to be insecurity. I think sometimes we're worried about what people will think about us being a contractor perhaps. Right? Or we're worried that other people are going to think that we're constantly trying to sell everybody all the time. The more difficult reason for not sharing what you do with people is oftentimes your mindset. If you have too much of a me focused mindset, then what happens is that we're too focused on how other people and situations benefit us. Okay. Rather than how we can help others. If we have an others focused mindset, then we're more likely to share with people what we're capable of and how we can help and that we're willing to help. Alright, couple of things to keep in mind here, right? If we're truly wanting to help others, they need to know what we're capable of and that we want to help. And lastly, this one's important. The only people who would be bothered by you sharing and talking about what you do are the people that don't care about you. And if that's the case, why are we worried about bothering them in the first place? Alright, on to this Episode of Contractor Radio right after a word from our sponsors.

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Welcome to this episode of the Contractor Radio podcast. I am super excited to once again be talking with Jessica Reyna, who I believe is.

You have.

This is your second appearance on one of our podcasts, is it not?

I think second, yeah. Yeah.

Although the first one you did with Jim. This one. This one will be way better.

Is that because of present company?

Yeah, clearly. No, I'm just kidding. Jim does a great job. So tell us a little bit about your company, Kill youl Competition, which is only one of the coolest names ever, by the way.

Thank you very much. I'm pretty excited about her name. So it's basically what it is. We come in. We're an ad agency. We help develop strategies for marketing. We implement them fully, we track them completely, and we do it across all medias, on air, online, offline and website development.

That's awesome. That's awesome. How many people do you have as your team? How big is your team at this point now?

So we have five people on our team currently, and we are looking to grow actually right now. So we're in a good place. So. And I think a lot of that has to do with. During this time, a lot of people were really reanalyzing what's working, what's not, how do I know if it's working and how much am I paying? And a lot of what benefited us was we didn't have to explain and there was no hidden secrets about what we charge. We're very transparent and we don't have high fees. And I think that really helps when your people really need those leads and you don't have to worry about how much is it really going to cost me.

Right, right. That helps you calculate your ROI as well as just your budgeting. Like, you know, the marketing thing, especially if you're paying per lead or if you're using social media ads. Sometimes you. You're not Entirely sure how much you're gonna spend and that that can be a little worrisome.

Not how much are you gonna spend, but who's following it, what's happening with it day to day? There's a lot. And especially when you're already trying to run a business. Mm.

So if you're out there and you've got some, some marketing experience and you're looking for a new job, you should maybe reach out to Jessica. There she is. So I want to talk to you a little because I know that you said across all disciplines. Right. And I know that there's a lot of focus on social media and digital marketing and everything like that. But you also do marketing through television and radio and all the different, even the older school mediums.

Right.

So some of the older school marketing, like billboards, radio, television, maybe even print media. How have you seen some of the more traditional media or more traditional marketing evolve?

Well, we don't actually advertise on billboards or print. Just want to clarify that real quick. And the reason is on Google's ecosystem of ad platforms, they have Waze. And what's great about Waze is there's nothing hypothetical about it. You can make it addressable. For example, if you only wanted to reach people that are homeowners while they're on the road, and you want to make sure that while they're receiving your message, you're not going to drive off, crash into somebody, or you want to verify their income. When you have a regular billboard, people are driving by, but you have no idea about who's actually in that car. Versus now we can identify by income, homeownership, and we can serve them an ad and we make it really simple for people to connect them and they just click to call, for example. And the cost per lead for that is actually surprisingly low when it comes to things like tv. TV has definitely evolved. A lot of broadcast TV is still very influential. But now with addressable media, through things like ott, you can again verify that the only person seeing your ad has a specific income, lives in a specific type of home, owns their home, all that information. And again, it helps you to create that awareness, that trust and build that reputation. So when they end up being ready or they are ready now to search for someone that's offering your service, they can get right to you. And most of those people don't even realize that when they're doing that, they're going to your website directly. So, for example, if it was me, I would be going to contractorcoachpro.com I don't have to search about it because I know it and 99.9% of the time and I, and I can show this to anyone whoever is like, well, show me. It's usually less than 4% of all the people that see those ads on OTT on an actual TV screen come to your website through Google Ads. And so when your cost per website Visit is between 10 to $20 on there versus you could spend $43 sometimes for a really qualified Google Ad, especially if you're in a very, very competitive area like Texas is extremely competitive. Cost per click, if you're not managing closely can be very expensive. And they don't necessarily know who you are. So those are for non branded. So again, it's a way to drive traffic to your website for less. So that's one of the great ways that a traditional thing, a big TV screen, has actually really benefited contractors.

Okay, so as far as some of the more traditional marketing methods, which ones do you think are still, are there any that are still viable? Which ones do you think are still viable and most valuable?

I think TV first and foremost because they're getting a sense of who you are and with the right data, you can actually still buy it like you would buy a dressable TV. So for example, we use comScore in my market that measures one in every two homes with an Experian household match. So every two homes are going, counting, not counting. Counting, not counting. That's huge amount of data. And then they can say, okay, owns their home, rents a home, owns. And you can again find those programs, find those places. And it's still very cost effective. It just has to be. When you're buying tv, just like any other thing, you have to be careful about buying, you know what you buy. Just like if you're going to go to pick up a new truck for your company, you're going to look very carefully what is underneath the hood, what is the model, what is the trim. In the same way you can do the same thing with actual broadcast and cable tv, radio, you have to be very careful because the format and how many competitors, because they have no visual piece to help reaffirm that. So if you're going on a radio, there might be a really great format. Talk radio is still really good. But if it's you, plus 17 other contractors, you're just going to be blah, blah, blah, blah, contractor, they'll never catch it.

Lost in the noise.

Absolutely.

So are there any of these tactics that just don't work anymore? That you just say if you're doing that, if you're still doing this, stop it.

Okay. I am not a fan of print. I cannot say how hard I am not a fan of it. If you're in the newspaper, it's like rolling the dice. You have to hope to God that they picked it up off their driveway before the sprinklers or the snow or the rain hit it. Then you have to hope to God they get to the section you're in, then does the page you're on, and then actually see it. So there's that whole issue with it. So. And the way that they sell newspaper is they take the actual number of deliveries they make. Let's say it's 100. And they multiply it by 2.34 because they assume the person who received it plus 2.34 people are actually going to read it, view it again. So huge. Like you're better off playing the lottery, to be honest. And then the other issue you have with direct mail is direct mail is a lot like email. People get over inundated. So a lot of times you go to the mailbox, you have 17 credit card offers, refi home loans, you have all this junk, and all they do is just see junk, junk, junk, junk, junk. Or you get into the same magazine and it's the same thing with radio. It's you plus four or five other competitors, and you're all offering the same exact thing. And they're all looking for that discount price right? Now, you know, there's plenty of people that are going to buy that are educated enough to know that $500 off a roof or 250 off a roof really isn't going to make a big dent. You want to really educate them about why they choose you. Otherwise, all you're doing is having someone buy you on price.

Okay, that's good information. Now I think the cat's out of the bag. Social media and social marketing is kind of like a thing now, right?

Yes, absolutely.

It's pretty important.

Yes.

So I think we've kind of, in a lot of ways, we've gotten past this idea of, hey, you need to be doing this, right? Like that that's out there. People need to be doing it kind of 100%. If you're not doing it, then you either have a referral network that's just, you know, 100 years old or. Or you're gonna get left behind. Right? So social media marketing, it's happening, okay. And it's been happening for a little while now. How have you seen that evolve since kind of its fruition and where it's come from?

I think people are a lot more receptive to the ads on social media, whereas before, I know that different social media, such as Facebook, tried to reformat. So you saw less ads. And people are receptive to the ads. People are willing to fill out their information. They're willing to contact companies. Now, the biggest and best piece of advice I can give to contractors is really understand what the goals are of your campaign and the best way to get there. Because if you have a campaign, let's say you have three different campaigns, and one's a coupon and one's a special offer, and one's just about your brand. What is the goal of it? Because a lot of times you'll see these ads, and they're either very generic or they use. They don't use personalized. I'm sorry, I'm coming. They don't use personalized photography. It's very stock. It's very fake. Sorry. That was what I was looking for. And the problem is then all of a sudden they're like, well, I grew a hundred likes. Well, that's great. How many new contracts did you get? How many new leads did you get? What was the quality of those leads? Because there's things even on Facebook where we'll auto fill the forms and send it over. And then all of a sudden they go through this list and they're like, I called 20 people. I was so excited. I got 20, and not a single one answered my call, responded to my email. So it's really important to understand what is the goal. Make sure it's personalized. And of course, making sure that as you're getting those leads, that they are quality and they are turning into actual contracts.

Okay.

I like that that people are more receptive to that medium now. And that's kind of interesting, right? Because, you know, it makes me think of back in the day with cable television, and you used to buy cable TV because then you didn't get any ads. Right. Now there's no such thing as cable TV without ads, Right?

Well, it's called ott, but then it's paid subscription, but yes, go ahead.

Yeah, no, social media kind of was like, it kind of got started, and there really wasn't much of that. And then all of a sudden, as that started, people got upset at it. Like, hey, I didn't used to see all this stuff, and now it's just. Okay, that's just what it is.

Yes. I think people Are starting to accept that if it's free, it's going to be ad supported, whether it's, I'm listening to music on Pandora, I'm on Facebook, even on ott, I'm watching a pre movie, whatever it is. Mm.

So if somebody was to break down their own marketing strategy, right, and they're gonna go, okay, here are the different things we do for marketing. Some of this is we knock some doors and we do some social media, we do some radio. What are some key things that they need to really be paying attention to? Especially like we were talking, we were just talking about contractor strategy conference put on by contractor coach Pro. Quick commercial coming up, right? And one of the things that we do at contractor strategy conference is this idea that we need to take the different areas of our business, right, and dissect them a little bit and see how these different areas in our business are performing so that we can create our strategy for the, for the coming year. And so even if somebody doesn't go to our conference, which you should totally go, yeah, totally need to go. But even if somebody didn't and they were going to, you know, take some time to break this area of their business apart that they call marketing, what are some areas they need to be paying attention to in order to build their strategy for next year?

The number one mistake that every business is probably making right now, I would say, I would say as close to 95% of the businesses are making, is not looking at optimizing all of their marketing strategies. What happens you hear about all the time is Google has been very good about pushing, optimize, optimize, optimize. But a lot of times we're not necessarily looking at, are we optimizing how we strategize knocking on doors? Are we optimizing how those pieces of materials that we hand out to customers are working? Are we optimizing how our radio ads are working? Are we optimizing and how are they all working together? And those are the two things that people don't do. If everyone would actually work to optimize each piece of their marketing and understand how each piece work together and make sure that the messaging all ties together and it's timely, they're gonna find that they don't have to spend as much to get as many leads.

Could you give me an example of like, what would be something that I could look at and go, ooh, I'm not optimizing that. And then how would I do it? Like, do you have like, just like a.

Absolutely. So the first thing you can look at, there's different tools that you can use. If you want to use online tools, you can actually use Google Attribution and what that is a free tool that's in your analytics. And it'll say, here's how many direct people are coming in, here's how many organic people are coming in, here's how many social media people are coming in. Paid search all these different places and it'll tell you, okay, this percent of these became leads, this percent of these came leads. And then, oh, by the way, 15% of all of your paid ads actually helped you get a direct lead and actually convert to a customer. So you need to understand how they're all working together and understand what the goal is. If I'm knocking on your door, I expect that I'm going to drive. If I don't get to connect with you that day, direct traffic, that website should be on that door hanger. It'll say contractor, Coach, Pro. Com. And so I should see in those specific places that I'm targeting an increase in that during those days and times. The other thing that you should look at to let's say you use radio, for example. Is the messaging that I'm putting out there consistent with the messaging that's on my website? Is it consistent with the message that's on my door hanger? If I'm talking about on my door hanger that they have storm damage and then I'm talking on the radio about a coupon for regular retail roofing, then on my website I'm talking about repairs or even something as simple as not having the same color, same look, same feel. People are going to get confused and think it's multiple different companies. And then you can create a lot of distrust from that as well.

Okay, that's great, that's perfect. So are there some emerging tactics that businesses need to be aware of and implement, like some new stuff that's coming out and some new methodologies and things that, that they should, they should know about and be looking into.

I cannot stress enough using that attribution tool, even at the lowest level on Google Analytics. And the second thing I would recommend is called IP attribution. And what's great about that is when those people are served those ads, they can follow them wherever they go throughout the Internet. So if they saw the ad, IP attribution, IP attribution. So on my phone I have an IP address that's connected to all the devices in my phone, my tv, my computers, everything. And what's Great about that is, let's say you're a roofer. You run a roofing ad campaign on ott. Well, then I look at it on my phone because I'm interested. I'm thinking, gosh, we have a storm that's coming. Hurricane or tropical storm. We don't even know what it's going to be, but it's going to be here on Thursday. And I look at it, trying to get a little more information about it. Say, on Friday, we've had storm damage. My husband goes to his computer and looks it up. It's still looking and seeing us as one household. So what happens is a lot of times people will see clicks, and what they don't realize is how many of those ones happen within the same household. All of a sudden, now it takes it into, this is one household. Here are the pages they went onto the website. Here are the actions that they took, and this is the ad that they were originally exposed to. And so I can go all the way back to the beginning, and I can understand how they came to my website, what they were interested in. And again, you can also take that IP information and you can apply it to other types of campaigns online.

That's awesome. Okay.

I know it's, like, really technical when I'm. That was probably a little too much information. But that's why you have people like me who can take that information and say, okay, let me tell you where they went, the actions they took. And if you're curious, is my ad effective? You know, was my offer good? Do people believe in my message? You can see right away, without any guessing, did it work? And that's so important because there's a lot of times, and there's so many jokes in the industry. You know, 50% of my marketing works. 50% doesn't. I just don't know which one that takes me. I don't know which one. Completely off the table.

Okay. No, I mean, this is a little bit technical, but it is really tricky. I was thinking about this the other day with tracking lead management for either myself or for a contractor. You know, if they have two or three different ads running on Facebook, like, you can't just say Facebook ad. You want to know which one it was that was successful.

Right.

And so if you've got multiple hits to your website, but they're coming from a singular household, that's different than multiple hits coming from multiple different households or multiple different IP addresses. Right. Or even where that IP address is. Right. If you're a roofer in St. Louis. And you've got an IP address that's hitting your website from the UK. That's probably not a great lead for you.

Yeah, that's a very good point. And the other thing too is you can actually create rules within those Facebook ads. And you can say, anyone who's already clicked on this ad but didn't fill out a form, I want to serve them a completely different ad because they're interested but they didn't take action. It allows you to take additional steps. Or I saw these people clicked on the ad and they didn't take action. I want to exclude those types of people or I want to find people that are like these people that filled out a form. There's so many ways to take that step. Very specific ad and create very specific actions with them.

Awesome. Awesome. So in your mind, what are the cardinal marketing sins? Like, do not do this, whatever that is.

Are there any of those? Oh, yeah. Number one, you should never be paying someone monthly for SEO. And I know everyone gasps at that when I say it. I've said it since the beginning of Jim. I'll say it till the day I die. There is nothing supporting it because I'm sorry, and I know this is going to break a lot of hearts and especially people on here who sell SEO. But the point of the matter is the way that I search for a roof, and what a roofer is, is not changing. It is not constantly evolving like a medical thing like COVID 19. There are going to be very rare circumstances where you will have to create new content and new search. So, for example, the hurricanes that come through here, you'd want to make ones that are specific for those in the areas that are impacted that you serve. Okay. But all of a sudden, there's not going to be. No one's going to wake up tomorrow morning and have a brand new way to think of what is a roofer. They're not going to call you. I don't even know what. I can't even think of a word for it because it's so wild and out there, you know.

Elevated carpenter.

Yes. They're not going to look up elevated carpenter. It's not going to happen. And you know what? Google looks at how much time is involved into your website. They look at those keywords, and if you're consistent in there, you know you have the right keywords. It's all unique. There are billions, and I mean billions of keywords out there in the universe. But not all of your customers are searching for billions. They're probably Searching for a select few. And now those select few, they're probably looking and actually becoming an actual customer. So you don't need to try to be number one of every thousand billion keywords in the sky. And the other thing that people don't know, and I can say this with authority, because we are a podium partner, which is also invested in by Google. Google has shared that 34% of your ranking isn't even dependent on what's happening on your website. It's actually your reviews.

34% of your ranking is dependent on those reviews.

How often you're getting them, how high you're getting them, and how many you have. And so you could be spending a boatload of money paying someone to maybe add a period, change a keyword, whatever it is that you're paying, or probably not do anything or make a blog that nobody cares about except for the people that are tired kicking about the color of a root. Okay, when my roof is leaking and there's crack coming in, a tree has fallen, my insurance told me they're gonna drop me. I don't care about the color of the roof. I care about you meeting my need. And can I trust you?

You care about finding an elevated carpenter.

Elevated carpenter right now. Because that is how I'm gonna change my behavior. We are creatures of habit, you know, if we weren't creatures of habit, we still wouldn't design living rooms around TVs. We are creatures of habits, you know, and that's okay. We still have dinner and breakfast and lunch, and you can rename them, you can reorder them, but you're probably going to have three meals a day. And it's the same thing with search. So that is my number one. If you can't tell how I feel.

About this, okay, yes, you're very passionate.

About it, very passionate about that. But the second one I already mentioned, so I won't drill into it again, is optimize all of your media. Don't just get tunnel vision on one type of media. Don't be like, I'm only going to focus on my Google Ads, only going to focus on my Facebook, because people are not one dimensional. There's. They're going to reach out to different ways. You know, they're going to go to your website possibly more than once. You know, understand what that looks like. You have such. There's so many free tools out there that even. Okay, I'm not a roofer, I'm not a carpenter, an elevated carpenter either. Okay? But I can understand the basics. You know, I know what a drying is, I understand what shingles are, I can understand type. And these are very basic things that if someone reached out to us and said, hey, I'm not sure if you're the right fit for us yet, but would you show us how to access these tools or look at these tools? We are more than happy to help people with it because everyone should be aware because how are you going to know what am I paying for? Is it working? You know, and again, going back to what we talked about earlier, that cost per lead, you know, could I lower that? You know, could I do better with it? You know, we only have at the end of the day, so many hours in the day and we all for all, real honest only have so many dollars in the bank to invest into marketing. And so it's important that you don't just look at. It'd be kind of like looking at your finances and only looking at how much you're spending on groceries and not looking at your utilities.

Gotcha. Okay, that's good. That's very good. So let's say we've got somebody and I know marketing is just always such a big topic all the time, right? And then there's lots of different ways to market, lots of different things that you can do. And there's so much information out there that you can, whether you decide to outsource or whether you decide to do it yourself. Right. You should at least be educated to a degree about marketing. No matter whether you, whether you hire somebody to come in and do it in house, whether you out, whatever. Right? So if you wanted to educate yourself and know more about marketing and get better at that. Who are some, do you have some books, podcasts, people you would follow? That would be great to just educate yourself about marketing, especially if you're like a contractor, specifically because this is contractor radio. So those are the guys we're talking.

If you're a contractor and you want to be self informed or self sufficient where you can run your marketing on your own, if you legitimately spent 15 to 30 minutes a day, you could become an expert, but it's going to take time. Then once you become the expert, then it's time to actually implement everything, right? So there's a whole thing to it, but you can. And if you spend that amount of time, you know, you can make better qualified decisions because you'll understand. Okay, I don't really need to worry about what my click through rate is. I need to know what my cost per lead is or my cost per Acquisition, so you'll understand more about the jargon. But Google has a great thing called Skill Shop. So even if you don't want to become certified in something, at least give you the concepts about how to create the right message at the right time to create the right action. Comscore has tons of information about all different types of media behavior and consumption and they are actually the global authority. So they're the ones who actually verify every month how many people use Google, how many people use Yahoo, what are the top apps. So they're not even looking at that. But again, there's people that everyone looks to as the authority for all screenshots. Those are definitely my top two go to's when it comes to the digital world. Excuse me, Trade Desk. If you're into programmatic and you have a huge budget and you want to go that route, Trade Desk offers a lot of free learning options. Pandora actually recently rolled out a certification program. So there's a lot of different places to go and you should, if you have a company that you work with, you should feel comfortable enough to say, show me your dashboard. Show me how you do this. You know, I remember we met with someone that you guys work with and he was totally stunned that I walked him through everything. I'm like, this is your dashboard. This is what we do. We always do a walkthrough. The very beginning standards stand it. We send all of our reports first party. And you should feel comfortable and confident enough to ask anyone that's providing any services for you for that information. Show me the first party information. I mean, everyone likes having the really pretty cute reports, but really, really pretty cute reports can be doctored. So it's always important to be able to go back and have someone you can trust to be transparent with you.

That's awesome.

Okay.

Alright. So now we're kind of talking a little bit about that, right? Because some, some guys want to educate themselves and do it on their own. Some people want to hire somebody in house to do it. And there's obviously the outsourcing of your marketing. When should you consider outsourcing? Like what would be some things where you're talking to somebody and they're talking and you think, you know, you should maybe think about outsourcing this.

It's really a lot comes down to two things. One, can you find someone you can trust? Two, and I hate using this word, but how much do you need to manage your marketing person? Some people need to see that face every day in the office. It gives them confidence. Even though they'll spend astronomically more having someone in house doing it who won't have as many resources as someone who works with large companies or also with partnerships such as Google, Pandora, Premium, Facebook, etc. But again, it's all depending on your comfort level. And if you don't feel comfortable with someone, you should pull the flag. You know, you don't feel like you're getting what you need and they're not sharing with you. Being transparent, like you mentioned. But again, you have to look at what am I actually paying. A lot of people think that doing it in house costs less. And we were talking earlier and I said, you know, it's shockingly less to actually have it outsourced to the right company. And I'm not saying you have to send it over to India or wherever or Poland or Ukraine or wherever. You can actually have companies here that will work with you. But again, the most important thing is identifying that you can qualify if that person's working in house, if they have the right certifications, if they understand how to implement the goals, they understand, you know, the type of business that you operate. You know, if you bring someone in and they're really good at Facebook, but they don't know how to speak roofing or they don't have to speak elevated contractor or then it doesn't matter. Because, I mean, I've seen ads and it's really sad for great, I mean, really good contracting companies. And I remember seeing one that was. There was maybe one inch Hail. And they are asking people that if you're, you know, your shingles were all ripped off, to call them right away because mold will start. And I was like, wow, one inch hail. Probably not going to rip off tons of shingles and probably not going to cause mold tomorrow. But, you know, ongoing leaks will. You need someone that understands what that is or when people ask questions on your social media, especially that they can respond to it intelligently and identify who's actually also a competitor on your Facebook, trying to develop leads or trying to question the quality of your work. And the only person who's going to do that is someone who loves what you do as much as they understand how to manage your marketing.

Okay, so then I guess that's. That's really good advice. Like that trust and actually counting the cost. That's one thing that you're right. There's more to it than just how much you spent per month. There's more to it than cost per lead. There's more to it than cost per acquisition. Like all of those numbers are important. And then when you begin to factor in, you know, how much are you going to pay somebody? Is it going to be a salary? You're going to pay them by the hour? Are they going to have benefits? How much are their benefits going to cost? You know, there's the human capital portion of it and their expertise. Right. Because if I just hire one person to come in, do I expect that person to be good at LinkedIn, at Facebook, at Instagram, at Twitter? And then also expect them to be good at audio editing and doing videos and taking pictures? Like, are they a full, rounded media person? Because what somebody like that is extraordinarily expensive, plus really rare.

Yeah, you can find them. They're not cheap. I have been one of those for a contractor once, and then I was like, you know, it'd be a lot less for you guys if you just had me as your agency. And this was about, I don't know, eight or 10 years ago. And we went that route instead. And then they got our entire company support instead of just having me as the employee. And the other thing, too is unless you're spending that time that we talked about, that 15 to 30 minutes a day, it's going to be very difficult for you to qualify. Does this person have the skill set? And just some of that research stuff that we were talking about earlier? We spend about $50,000 a year just on research for our clients. And locally, you could easily spend 20,000 without blinking, you know, getting really qualified research. Because if you're getting it from your salespeople, like, you know, the TV station, the radio station, whoever it is that's sending it to you, or, you know, or they either will have piecemeal stuff or they're going to have a research department that can kind of tweak it to make it look really good for them. And that person that's working at the agency can be unbiased and say, actually, I subscribe to that data and here's what it really looks like. And having that unbiased person makes a lot easier and also takes a lot of stress off the contractor, too, because they don't have to deal with the calls when the person in the office says no. Like, hey, your assistant told me no. And I think, you know, you're going to be really missing out. You know, it takes that, and they don't want that pressure. You know, nobody likes saying no. I don't like being told no, and I don't like saying no. But again, we don't have the Pressure. We can alleviate people with that pressure, alleviate those phone calls, because all they have to do is they call in and they'll say, hi, I want to know if you want to buy billboards or you need SEO for a monthly cost or whatever crazy thing they're trying to sell. And they say, oh, well, just talk to our agency. Kill your competition. And then it takes all the pressure off. And rarely do people actually go around that. It's really rare because most people in the ad and marketing industry will respect that.

Oh, that's. I hadn't even thought about that component of it. That's pretty cool.

That's a major time saver.

Yeah, hadn't even occurred to me on that one, but that makes total sense. So Now I know 100%. There's going to be some contractors that are listening to this right now who are currently outsourcing and they've been going through that.

Right.

They've probably worked with one, maybe two, I mean, maybe even been through three different agencies trying to find that right fit. And so when it comes to outsourcing, what are some good indicators that maybe it's time to pull the plug on that and go a different direction?

It is. I'm glad you said that. Fit is the most critical thing. And when we talk to people and we're considering working with someone, we tell them the same thing, like, this is our fit, this is the way that we work. And if you're already committed to someone, go back to those things that are concerning to you. Like for example, asking for that first party, reporting that first party data. You can ask a lot of companies, we do it too. We can do it. We've done it privately for some of the largest companies in the country. And we'll go in and we'll audit what the other person's doing. They'll say, oh, I bought this types of stuff for you. And we'll say, okay, well, we'll look at it for you. The other company doesn't need to know, but we'll let us look at your invoices and we'll see what actually happened. Let us have access to your analytics. So if you're concerned that there might be something and they're not willing to share first party data with you, reach out to a company that can do that type of auditing and research for you. The second thing is, you know, go with your gut. This has been a really difficult year for a lot of people, not just contractors, but also marketers. We've had to make a lot of changes Change a lot of creatives, be responsive, you know, but it's also been a good year for us too, because if you're doing the right things, you're going to retain your clients. Ask us, you know, ask whoever you're talking to. Do you have some other people I can talk to that have gone through some of the issues I have because maybe it was something that was out of their control. Out of your control. If, you know, you had a major shutdown, all you were allowed to do was repairs or the area you were in. Only one in five people were unemployed because of COVID Take a look at those outer things and then make that gut choice. Because I think a lot of times we know what the right thing to do is. But sometimes it's kind of like having that dysfunctional relationship with a girlfriend. You're like, I know I should break up with her. I know she just wants my money, that I'm really comfortable. We've been together for a while, you know, it's okay to question those things and it's okay to take action on them, you know, and especially as you're looking into going into 20, 21, you know, it's really, I cannot stress, especially going into this next year, really taking a look at, is this the right fit for me? Some people really love fancy third party dashboards, and that's okay, you know, I don't provide those. And we make it very clear and we kind of. I call it dating. We date a client and we're talking to each other. What are you looking for? And I say, well, this is what we offer. This is the way we do business. You know, it's good to have those things out there, you know, consider it like, you know, a first date. Who are you? What have you got to offer me? Are we going to be great together or are we going to be driving each other nuts out of the gate? You want something that I don't offer or you want me to only look at how each media operates by itself, when I know for a fact that they're going to see your truck drive by, you might. They might see a yard sign, they might see your TV ad. There's so many different ways they're going to interact with you. And it's okay to say, you know what? We're not a great fit. And you know, your marketer might be relieved when you're like, you know what? I don't know if this is working. Well, maybe they might not. But I prefer. I think it's good to have those good, honest conversations with people. It's, there's nothing wrong with it. And now is a good time to be having those conversations because what you don't want to do is roll through the holidays, roll through a brand new year and saying, I wish I had made those changes beforehand. I wish I had really looked at my marketing. I wish I really understood what the strategy was. I wish I really understood how it was working.

Yeah, well, that is, man, that is all fantastic stuff. I know. I definitely learned quite a bit. So is there anything else you want to, you want to shout out? How can people get ahold of you? Jessica?

Well, we try to make it as complicated as possible. So we made the world's longest URL and it's killyourcompetition today. You can actually text on there through us, you can email us, but you can do whatever you'd like. You can follow me on LinkedIn. There's a lot of different ways you can get a hold of us. We're pretty responsive and like I said, we'll be pretty straightforward. Like I said, we have no problem having those conversations and whatever is the best way to communicate with us is the best way for us to communicate with you. Perfect.

Perfect. Well, thank you so much for all the information. I really appreciate you jumping on and being part of this podcast. And we're going to take a break now from a word from our sponsor.

Awesome.

Contractor Radio has been brought to you by the Contractor Strategy Conference. This year's conference, Strategy 21 is designed to help contractors develop a winning strategy for for the upcoming year that they can execute. They get a full one page strategy plan as well as an entire workbook on all of the strategies by quarter, month and week that they need to execute to achieve their goals and aspirations. Our coaches work hand in hand with you and your leadership team to develop a strategy that you'll walk away with at the end of the conference. This conference is not about award shows and talking heads and those type of things. It's about getting some work done where we work directly with you you to develop those strategies. Don't go into the season playing checkers or at worst, Russian roulette. Let's start playing chess and dominate your market.

Welcome back and thank you for joining us in this episode of the podcast. Just wanted to throw a couple of the reminders and some of my takeaways out from this podcast. One of them, optimize your marketing. Make sure that you are paying attention to all the different avenues that you use and make sure that they have a co author lessing uniform message for your people. Also, when it comes to in house or outsourcing your marketing efforts, sit down and truly put some thought behind the actual cost of doing that, because it may not be that different or it could be significantly cheaper to outsource that to somebody else. Alright, thank you for joining us today and if you ever need any additional info from on Contractor Coach Pro, our resources, or any of the Contractor Radio guests, don't hesitate to reach us at our website, contractorcoachpro.com you can obviously also find us at Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and if you just want to get to me directly, feel free@coachontractorcoachpro.com hope you have a great one and we'll talk to you soon.