The Map is Where It's At with Blue Goat Marketing

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Hey everybody, it's Jim Johnson here, your host on Contractor Radio and also the head coach of Contractor Coach Pro. Our job here is to help you get better at what you do by finding the right people to share information with you that can help you with your business. And if you were looking in your business of how to get ranked higher on Google so that people that are searching for you for what you do find you, I have a guest today that is going to help us with that. And really from the perspective of how do we beat things like HomeAdvisor and Thumbtack, these places that cost us a tremendous amount of money, put us up against other contractors, force this price war that goes on between contractors. How do we get those leads to beat so simply just hourly these people that we can sell high value to and create large profit in. And I'm super excited about bringing him on today. But before we get there, we gotta keep the lights on. So a little word from one of our sponsors. Get the referral.

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Guys aren't using get the Referral. It is one of the best tools to not only get more referrals than you're getting, but reward those referrals, keep track of them and allow you to, to optimize each interaction that you have with one of your clients or prospects out in the field. I'm talking about optimizing. We want to optimize what we do from a marketing perspective and all honesty. I get contacted 20 to 30 times a week by some marketing guru that has this special thing that will help contractors get more leads and they want to be on our show or engage with us, be a partner, those type of things. And in all honesty, I blow 99% of them off because what they're doing, doing isn't unique, it's not valuable to you, it's something you could maybe do on your own. And most of them are a lot of fluff without a lot of substance. But I had the opportunity to meet a guy that had a different approach, looked at things a Little bit differently than what I see most marketers doing and has a unique way to get you ranked a lot higher in the place that most people are looking to find the contractor to work on their home. And so it's, I'm sure, super excited about bringing on the owner of Blue Goat Marketing, Josh Stockel. Hey Josh. Welcome aboard, man.

Jim, what's going on?

Just working, working. That's what we do. We're trying to educate, educate contractors, serve contractors in a way to help them do better. And like I said, I talked to tons of marketers and it's just like they're always got something and most of them are like, eh, that doesn't seem like a really good solution. And there are a lot of bs, just to be honest with you. Like, it's just, hey, I'll get you 30 new leads in the next 30 days and that kind of stuff.

And I know it's the same message too. They all say the same thing over and over and over again.

And that's the sure sign to me that somebody doesn't know how to market exactly. If I'm copying what everybody else is doing and doing what everybody else is doing, we're all the same and there's no uniqueness. So now I'm a commodity. So I better bring my price down to in order to get you as a customer where if I'm unique and different, hey, I can charge more to do what I do. And so the thing that really like brought my attention out of it is that you had shared a video with me and I watched the video and the video was all about getting contractors ranked using the map feature of Google. And you showed in that video what it was like before and what it was like after. It really grabbed my attention. We engaged, talked little bit about what it is that you do. But before we get there and talk about that, what, what brought you here today? Like what were you doing before? How'd you end up with Bluegill Market?

Yeah, sure. You know, I was raised in a home where business was like frowned upon. Like it was one of those things. You know, my parents were like, you go to college, you stay away from businesses, that's how you're gonna get in trouble. You'll never make it, you'll never survive. You were the same way? Yeah.

Oh yeah, 100% work your way up.

The corporate ladder thing. You know, my stepdad was, he's retiring this year after like 40 years of being with the same company too. And so I ate that, you know, I went to college to be an exercise sport science major and planning to be a coach and a teacher. And I got into that field and hated it. I was miserable. And so then it was kind of this whole, well, where do we go from here? And I just kind of started this journey and this path of figuring out what it is that I wanted to do. Later on, I became a Christian, started loving Jesus, following the Lord, and I was a pastor for eight years. And just to offset some income, because as you know, pastors don't really make a whole lot, I started a pie shop, started making pies and selling pies out of my garage. It was kind of a hobby I just enjoyed doing. And my stepdad had asked, me, he's like, do you enjoy making pie or do you enjoy selling pie? I was like, I think I like selling pieces more than the baking part. And I just love the idea of business. And so our, our number one best selling pie was a blueberry, basil and goat cheese pie. It's incredible pie, but it's a lot to say at the counter. So we just started calling it the Blue Goat. Well, from there I learned that I just, I love the marketing element. I just. We had increased our followership to like 14,000 followers on Instagram and Facebook. And so I just had never done anything like that. It got me excited. And after that, sold the business. And I said, you know what, I really want to go into marketing. Like, how, how can we help businesses grow and do what they do while doing what I enjoy doing at the same time? So not just marketing my business, but marketing other people's businesses. So that just really was the on ramp for Bluego marketing. And so here we are. Been in business for seven years and we've just been growing year after year. We've had record years for the last four years. And it's just been an incredible journey. Love, love doing what we do.

So we cannot skip over the fact that there was a blueberry basil goat cheese pie. Like, that's something I have never.

Seen.

This thing is really good. But first, how do I get one? Like, I gotta try.

Well, you need to go back to that pie shop. Or you come swing by my house over here, we'll bake you one.

Was that something that you just like, hey, I'm being creative and I think those things go together. I'm gonna make that pie. Or did somebody like pass that along to you? How do we get there? Just okay?

Yeah. So my grandmother's from New York. Yeah, we used to make homemade apple pie. And I loved it, that's where I fell in love with homemade pie. And then she passed away and didn't save the recipe. So it was like, we're buying Walmart pie and stuff. And it just wasn't the same. So one day I was like, all right, everybody out of the kitchen. I kicked my whole family out. I put on my headphones, Googled and youtubed how to make a pie. And I just. It took me six hours to make an apple pie. Never done that before. I didn't even know what like measuring cups were at the time. And it just came out really well. And then the next year I made three around Christmas time for friends and stuff. And then I made six the next year. And then all of a sudden we had this missionary friend who was taking a bunch of mangoes into Mexico to an orphanage. And he left the mangoes in the back seat. We came back and he's like, man, I gotta throw these out. And I'm like, no, I think I can make a pie out of that. Just give me all those mangoes and I'll bring you a pie tomorrow. He took it to work and it's just where it took off. A bunch of people were like, we got cash, we'll buy some from this guy. And I, you know, the business bug just kicked in. I'm like, okay, I gotta get a logo, I gotta get a website up. I gotta start getting this thing done. And that's where it just kind of took off from there.

I absolutely love those, like, superhero origin stories. Super cool. So pastor for eight years. Yeah. What was that like?

It was an incredible time. I grew up not knowing the Lord at all. Met Jesus when I was 27, radically transformed my life. And I just came underneath the leadership of another guy who just loved the Lord too, poured into me. And I just believe there was a calling in my life just to teach others about the gospel and who Jesus is and to lead his people. And so I was the executive pastor for a multi site church in South Texas down in McAllen, Texas. And yeah, the Lord just did a crazy work there. It was amazing to see now. Marriages transformed, lives transformed. Yeah, I just, I loved that. That was a great time.

Yeah, I, you know, I always taught like I'm faith oriented guy. I met Jesus when I was young, but we had an acquaintance for quite a while and then, then there was a relationship later through, you know.

And.

Really like we're hand in hand now. We're brothers, we have fellowship with them every day. And it's cool because what I'VE learned from that is he served others. And that's my job. I got to serve others. That's why we do things like contractor radio. We do a lot of events and talk is why we share information. Like what you're going to share today. Like, I don't expect anything necessarily in return either. I just want to do it. I want to help you. And I thought that that was a great approach to life and want to be more like that every day.

Yeah. You know what's neat too? I think this is a really good point for even your listeners and for us in business. There was a moment where Jesus is questioned about greatness in the Bible. And you would think Jesus would be like, you know, shooting down greatness, like, don't try and be great. He actually encourages, hey, you want to be great, go, go be great. But he gives us a map for how to be great. And you know what the answer to that is? He says, serve others. Consider others more important than yourself. Be a servant or a slave to all, and that's how you achieve greatness. Is that not what we do with our businesses too? In serving others and lifting them up? That's how the Lord himself says, that's how you'll achieve greatness. I just love that. I think it's a great daily reminder.

Me too. And I think if we keep it there instead of getting into all the semantics about which wrong and all the other stuff, but just love God, love your neighbor, and serve others, we can all kind of get along as Christians out there. And probably truthfully, if we all were like that, it'd probably be a lot more attractive to other folks too. For sure. We try to be consistent with that. All right, enough. We're not going to pass a plate or anything like that. Let's talk about a little marketing and how we apply that serving others to what it is that you do. Why Google Maps? Why not the ad spend on getting your ads at the top or the Google my business or any of that other stuff? Why there? Why the focus there so much?

It really is the number one best organic lead source. I mean, everything else is a pay to play. And we do that. Our agency offers Facebook ads, website design, Google Ads, SEO. I mean, we do the whole gambit, right? So we have clients and all that. But you know, 90% of our clients are really SEO. And what we've just found as we offer all those services is that some of those methods is a pay to play in such a way that whoever has the deepest pockets are the one who wins? So the biggest dog on the corner who has a million in his marketing, he's going to win. He just is. And so it's hard to come to your client and say, hey, let's grow your company through a paid service only and expect to win. Unless he's just in a really rural area, so the big cities, he's just not going to win. Not that he can get leads. Obviously it works. We've seen that even with small, small budgets. But it's nowhere near the lead flow that comes in through the organic side, through SEO. And what I love about that, I get this question all the time on sales calls or, you know, hey, well, I got this competitor, he's been doing it for 10 years down the street. He's, you know, 10 times bigger than me. You know, how are you planning on beating that guy? Because he's so much bigger. And I remind them, well, there's 100 different ways to skin a cat when it comes to SEO. And SEO, especially with the local map, changes so frequently that if their, their team that they've been paying for 10 years is sleeping, then, oh man, we can swing in behind them and they won't even see it coming. Now all of a sudden, you're the one with the target on the back and then they're firing the company that was just working with because they were sleeping and weren't paying attention to what they were doing. So it's just, it's a creative way as well. On the technical side, it's just there's, there's different ways to do that and it makes it really intriguing.

So to make this hopefully somewhat simple for our listeners, what's the theory behind it? Is it all based off of keywords? Is it based off a city name? Like, how are we at least approaching or thinking about approaching getting ranked on the map?

Yeah, good question. So think about Google is hyper focused on local, and that's everything the map is about. It's all about local. So anybody who has any familiarity with SEO, it is about keywords, right? But they would always say, you know, keyword plus city, this and that, which if you're trying to rank your website, all that is good and important. But in the map, all the near me plus city, all that stuff is already assumed because it's Google's map. They're trying to dictate whoever is the most authoritative on the subject matter or whatever those keywords are, but also who's the nearest, who fits that same profile. And so that's why this works.

Too.

And this is why it works a lot for contractors and service based businesses that truly are local, is that now we're killing two birds, one stone. We're putting the local aspect in play, but we're also going after those primary keywords that bring about the most searches from the general public. If you're a plumber who loves to do hot water heaters and there's certain brands that you love to work with, you know, your tendency may be to talk about just that, that big brand. But you know, Joe Schmo is like, I don't know what brand. I'm just, I'm looking for a plumber. I'm just gonna type plumber in and look and I may not even type.

And he might even type in hot water heater. Like to get the wrong plumber, right?

Exactly, exactly. But they're not going to go usually into the nitty gritty of your industry with, you know, the crazy terms or the brands and stuff like that. So it really is a great method for picking up great lead flow, but while also remaining that local feel that people really enjoy.

Here's the cool thing that I like about it is it doesn't take a big budget now obviously pay somebody to do it for you. Right. You've shared with me what that is and it doesn't seem outrageous to do that. It's like a good way to start. It's like you're getting in there with the smaller contractor, the new guy that's trying to generate some online responses versus, you know, the face to face or word of mouth or door knocking aspect of things at a cost or a price point per entry that allows him to afford it, right? Absolutely. Yeah. Now once he affords it, then he can take the next step and start to own it. Right. And be that guy that is the big guy on the block throwing a bunch of money at it.

Absolutely.

Market and you help them through that process. Right. Like, hey, let's start here and build up and then we can go there. Is that assessment?

Oh yeah, absolutely. We've got. I had a client come to me two years ago that had just relocated to Central Texas here in the Austin market. And you know, we got on a call and he was nervous, is this going to work? You know, I got to feed my family. Yes, it will work. Let's, let's just trust the process. Let's trust our experience. And fast forward two years later. Now I'm on sales calls with other guys in this industry across the state who know his name now. They, they'll go, oh, you worked with him. I see him everywhere. And I said, well, he didn't start there. That's how it works. So the fact that you're seeing him everywhere is because he has become the big dog.

He's.

He now is that guy. But he had to start somewhere first and work his way up to that point. But it can be done.

Yeah, that's. That seems to always be the issue with, especially like the SEO company. That term instantly when I hear it, I hear three to six months before I get any real results. And they want 2500, $5000, whatever the number is, plus whatever ad spend and other stuff I throw on top of that to actually achieve that. And so I've got to be really patient. I haven't had a lot of trust and the results from most are not anywhere near what they said they would be. So I would be looking, if I was a smaller contractor for a lower cost entry point. Very focused in a space that gives me the biggest leverage and advantage to win. That's what, that's what caused me to say, hey, we gotta get Josh on here. I think this is something that could really help contractors. Yeah, so what challenges, like, you're gonna work with a contractor and I would assume that they have to have some things in place first before this actually works. Probably a good website, maybe with a good landing page, the right words and things like that on their. What they need to have before they come to you. And if they don't have it, can you help them with it?

Yeah, absolutely. So the two things we say, we need a website and we need a Google my business, which Google's changed. It's called Google Business Profile now, but I still call it Google My Business. That's just what we're all familiar with. Just feels weird to call it something else. But those two items and a lot of calls I get on, they have one, they have the other, they have neither. So, yeah, we, those are services that we offer. And so I always tell them, I'm not even going to charge you for the SEO. Let's, let's put that on the back burner now. Let's go focus on getting you a great website up and running and then getting your Google my business account set up and then verified. And then once those are in place, now let's talk about how we get that thing in front of as many people as possible.

So I'm sitting here, I'm a contractor, I got a website, it's not terrible. I do have my, the Google My business thing set up. I don't know how to use it, but it's set up. I think a lot of folks have actually done that legwork. So you would be able to start with them. Is that a fair assessment?

Oh, yeah, we can get started within a day. Yep, absolutely. We do that all the time. We say, all right. And then they ask, what's the next step? Well, there's an intake form that we bring you, but basically we're gonna get the logins, the back end access to that website. Because about 85% of everything we do is actually going to be on the website. In order to point to and push that Google my business listing up and then the rest of that work is done on that. Google my business. And then plus there's a number of off. We call it off page work, off page SEO being done.

So here's one of the things that always. I'm always looking for whenever it's marketing, especially with people that do SEO and that type of work, ranking people getting their page up and all that good stuff, is who owns the website. Like, that's an important thing to me, if I understand things correctly. That's not the case with you.

No, 100%. I just. It is a business tactic to make more money. And there are some big companies. I won't say their names right now, but I'm sure you're familiar with them. I get calls all the time from guys who are using them. As soon as I hear their name, I think, great, step one, we got to go all the way back to the beginning and get you a new website because they're going to keep it. Some guys will get on the phone, they didn't even know that. They're like, well, I'll just hand you over the site. And I'm like, well, I know that company. You're not, you're not. They're not going to give us access. They're not even going to let you keep it. So what I always tell every business owner doesn't matter, you know, contractor or what, like own your digital assets. They are assets. Like you can sell these things one day with your company. It's actually going to be. If you choose to build up your company to a place where you can sell it, this will be worth anywhere between 10 and $200,000. So why would you not own that digital asset? It goes with the sale of your business. So, yeah. And then if you move around from different companies or you do different things, you have the access, it's all yours. So I always tell people, I'm building you a site, our team is going to build you a site. It's yours, you own it, we'll manage it.

That's a great insight from you. And I think something that contractors probably don't take into consideration of is that asset has value, especially if it's automated and turning, you know, creating and converting, having conversions on leads. Like, hey, this thing is generating leads and it's generating this much. We close at this percentage. That means that it has this amount of value to it.

Yeah, absolutely.

I think it adds that value to your business.

100%. I've got a, I've got a holiday lighting business that is under contract right now for over six figures that I've only owned for two years. The greatest value in it is not actually the years of business because that's actually a short amount of time. It's because the website and the Google, my business accounts do. I think last year, just for the month of November, had 35,000 visitors coming to it. And so the value was in the digital assets more than anything else. And so imagine if I didn't own that. The sale would have been peanuts compared to what it is. So highly encourage. You own your stuff if you don't find a company that can replicate it. Even if you have a great site, companies like ours can actually take that same site and replicate it to make it still look the same without messing with that, but then give you the full access and ownership.

So that's a question I've always had. I told you I'd have some curiosity questions. So I got this company over here, built the site, they own it, they've got all the traffic and directing and all that other stuff going on with it, right, to drive traffic and convert. And I go, oh crap, I don't own it. And so now I got to rebuild it with this idea that I'm going to own it and I rebuild. I literally replicate it identically from a visual aspect of what it affect or does it affect in any way. Like if I turn the one off and turn the other one on, does it affect my SEO in any way?

Well, it can if you're not truly copying it over. Sometimes websites, there's some hidden pages that people can't see. I've got clients that have like six forward facing pages, but then 1,000 pages that are hidden in the background. And so did the company copy over just the six then? Yeah, it's going to affect your SEO. Did they copy over the thousand and six? Well then yeah, as long as all that's in place, but then the technical aspects of SEO, if those are all dialed in correctly in the transition. So you do need to have someone that's professional at this to look at it, work through that. But the other big piece on SEO is that domain. So there are some of these companies who will own the website, but they will allow you to keep the domain. That's your next best situation. If they keep the domain and the website, then yeah, you're starting from scratch. Because Google looks at that domain as a big piece of your SEO. They hate new websites, they hate new domains. So some age on it. If it's got any previous backlinks, which are basically other sites pointing to your site, all that goes with your domain, even though you transfer to a brand new website. So if you can keep the domain, you already got like a leg up. You're not starting completely from scratch, you're just going to have a new site. But many times when we've helped clients build a new site in this situation, as long as they got to keep the domain, once we were able to really dig in and put all the right pieces in place and switch it over to a new site, the SEO just kind of had a hiccup and then it jumped right back and it kept going where it was because all the right stuff was in place. But that domain was, was key.

So I would, if I understand things correctly, most important thing to own. Donate. Yeah, absolutely. Thing to own is the, is the actual site itself.

Okay, well, yeah, have both. Right? That's the, that's the golden ticket, right? Own all the whole, the domain and the actual website. But if you can't do that, at least own the domain so that someone can go and switch the website out from one second to the next. Like literally. We don't have to have downtime under construction. We can build it off platform. And then when you like it, love it, all right, we click go and it just swaps it out and now it's all yours. But that domain stays in place and all the benefits that came from Google are still connected to that domain.

So somebody comes to you and says, yeah, I like this idea. What does it look like when they first start? Like, you sent me this video. I'm going to show everybody the screen now and talk about this, but.

Let.

Me do that real quick. Give me one second. I don't usually share screen on a podcast, but I think this is important for people to see. And so this is what it normally would look like if you Were. And there might be some, some places that they're having success, but it's pretty overwhelmingly red that they're not ranking on. What, what, what are the red X's mean?

Yeah, so let's, yeah, let's get into that. So what we're looking at is a geogrid that is showing us basically geographically how this company is ranking. So normally what we want to see are ones, twos and threes everywhere. Because in the local map, 75% of all calls and clicks are going to go to the first 1, 2 and 3 position in the local map. Right. So therefore you want geographically in your entire service area to have a 1, 2 and 3. And so if we see an X, a red X, it's basically saying you're in position 20 and beyond. So the software didn't even track it because it doesn't matter. Nobody's going beyond the page one to look up companies.

So if it's better than 20, so like 19. Yes, it'll show the actual number.

Yes, it'll show the actual number. And then that's helpful because the marketing company, your marketing team, or you as Mr. Contractor, like everybody can come to the table. And this is pretty easy to understand. The other reason we do this is because there's a lot of marketing agencies or SEO companies that will, they'll fluff the numbers, they'll give you a spreadsheet and it's got all this data and details and numbers, but you're like, what am I looking at? Oh, it's great. We're ranking you. Okay, but what if we were to run a grid like this? Ranking means that within a two mile radius around my address, we're ranking. Is that success? You know, is there more of a service area than two miles around my address?

Yeah, I noticed the grid is a certain size. But I also know this part of the country because I'm from Texas and I've been to South Padre Island.

I love that area.

And I know McAllen, Brownsville. And if I'm a contractor in McAllen, I'm likely working in Harlingen, Brownsville, South Padre, it's not that far. It's 45 minutes or so over all the way to the island, right?

Yeah, exactly.

And so why is it this size? Why is it that all it is?

So, yeah, this is the software we. When I run these grids, I can do it as small as, you know, four dots or I can go. It maxes out at a certain size. I can do, I could probably do a little bit bigger than that. But at a certain point it just kind of maxes out. But this is a good part to note is that that Google, my business account, when it does start ranking, Google has declared that it should only go about a max 15 to 20 mile radius. So generally when I'm running these grids for clients and stuff, I kind of stay within that to see how they're doing within their radius. Now we've had some clients. I got one that has a 200 mile radius off of his one, Google My Business, which is just insane. He asked me, how'd you do that? It's incredible. And I was like, I'll just be real honest. I don't know how we got that far because Google said I'm not supposed to do that. But I think there's some variables there. But generally it's going to be within a 15 mile radius is what we say. If you're in a bigger, more dense city, let's say we are in Houston, Texas or Manhattan, New York, then yeah, it's going to be an even tighter circle. But if you're in more rural areas, then it can go even wider and rank even faster. So those are the key variables we just kind of talk about in sales calls and explanation of SEO, how it works. So for him.

Go ahead, go ahead. No, for him.

I was going to say for him. Mr. Clean Water does water purification stuff. He had approached us six years ago and said, you know, I just want McAllen. I'd love to go further but you know, I'm based in McAllen. And so that address is how it works. Right? You see the address in the, in that picture? So that's where his, his location of his Google my business is located at. That's where the verification card showed up. And so we went after McAllen, which is 142,000 population. And then we, you know, we dominated it pretty quickly. And then there's a metro in that area around McAllen of about 1.2 million. So we started pushing it. Sorry, I think I can still reach your 15, 20 mile radius. But then it just kept going. So we said, well, we're not gonna stop it. Let's just keep pushing this. So over time then he started reaching all the way to some of these cities that, I mean, to be honest, we weren't really even going after him. And for my clients, one of the things, again, you don't have to have the deepest pockets. He didn't pay for 20 to 30 of these cities. He was only paying for the one city. And the surrounding cities around it. And so technically, if you do the math, since it's a flat rate every month, he's getting cheaper and cheaper leads. The further and the wider this thing goes.

Yeah. And so we came to you. This is what it looked like now over time, this is what it became. How long does something like this take?

So in the primary city, again the very. The national average is six to 12 months. We've had an average around three months. We've had some clients take off in 30 days. We just never guaranteed that. But his McAllen location took off. He was one of those. Was in like 30 to 40 days it took off and then it to do the metro took the full three months. But we were technically, we weren't even going after the metro. It was, that was when the bonus started to happen. And then he's been a client of ours for six years. So it's just been pushing wider and wider, wider for the long time. But there is a way to scale this and faster. If somebody. We just didn't do that. But one of the times sometimes I have clients who are like, hey, I really do have a very big service area. We have a big team. We got multiple sales guys. How do we make this work beyond a 15 mile radio? They get discouraged when they hear that like, okay, 15 miles is not much. So what we do is to scale it faster is we say, all right, well let's. We can launch a Google my business in each one of those service areas and make the bubbles not overlap. So if you've got a really big wide area, I got some clients who are signed up for three, four, five locations. And now we're doing this type of work to go after all five locations. And now they're picking up that same traction they would have gotten in one city. Now they're seeing it, you know, 5x. So that's how we can scale it.

Gotcha. So if I understand that correctly, it's like picking up another address and then getting your Google my business established. And then, hey, I can do the same thing for that next door. Like if I wanted to get South Padre, I'd get me an address out on South Padre.

Exactly. I've got a client now that has a location in Austin, but then we just launched one in Hawaii. So now we're going after the island of Hawaii in Austin, Texas, because he does home automation systems. And so he's got some clients that had hired him in Hawaii and he's like, you know what, I want to start flying to Hawaii more Frequently. And doing home automation stuff on the island. I was like, well, let's do it. So now we've been doing the 2x now, right. We actually took over the whole island of Hawaii within 30 days. That was one of our clients that took off. So that was pretty cool.

Wow. Yeah, that's pretty wild. Now, is there any difference? Like, we're talking about McAllen, Texas. That's not the name that comes up that people know, but let's say, and there's various kinds of contractors that have significant competition and market penetration in an area. For example, if we were going to take Houston, Texas, I'm going to assume there's a hell of a lot of air conditioning companies, right? Air conditioning companies. And they're all battling for, you know, supremacy on SEO. Are they approaching it this way? Is this something different for them? Does it take longer? Like, what does that look like?

It's the same process. There may be more of the elements involved. So, for instance, we're doing backlinks is a great example. Some people are familiar with that. Backlink is something Google likes. It's when another website points at your website. Not all backlinks are created equal. You can't just have a bunch of stuff from China pointing at your stuff or it won't work. But having the right stuff in play can really help. So backlinks on a smaller city of 142,000, we may only do 50, 60, whereas if we're in Houston, I may now do 2,500. Right. So the method is the same, but the volume or the work that we put in may be double, triple to produce a better result in a bigger city with more competition.

And I'm glad you brought up the backlink thing. Most people don't really understand what that is. They just, they know the term, they've heard it, but they don't know what it does. And there's so many marketing companies that do that. They use the backlink thing to drive the SEO. But you mentioned like it was new. I was there. I don't want people listening to miss it. There's a right way and a wrong way to go. And Google knows what those are. They know when they are fake versus when they're something that's actually applicable to the site that it's going to.

Yeah, absolutely. And this is why it does cost money. Right. It's same thing the contractor, world, roofer, plumber, electrician, whatever your. Your thing is, if you hire the guy that has a hammer and a ladder in the back of the Truck likely he's going to put in the lowest quality material and labor possible. And he will, at the end of the day say, I've completed the job, now pay me. Right? So in our world, same thing, guys will say, well, 200 bucks, I'll, I'll get you the top of the map. Well, for 200 bucks, that actually isn't even gonna pay his bills. Like, that's the. He doesn't even have enough money to really afford the quality stuff that he needs to get to accomplish a competitive market. So we've got to make sure that we're really using quality stuff to produce quality results.

That's pretty awesome. So this is super cool. One more time real quick that, hey, we went from this to this in a pretty short time span. It sounds like first month really hit. Well, I think considering our market would be what's going to determine a lot of that, how fast it goes. Like if I'm in Dallas, it's gonna take a little bit. Right. But if I'm in Tyler, Texas, maybe I can just dominate right away. So consider that this approach. The other thing on here is I love the headline, what beating Home Advisor looks like. Home Advisor, and there's a new one out there called Angie that is this big organization that is creating lead opportunities for contractors. And it's a pay to play thing to get those leads. Cost you money. It costs you a pretty significant amount of money. What they do is they go out and take that money, money that you're giving them and invest into ranking number one and being the number one ad on Google's front page. But they're not just giving that lead to you.

It's going, yeah, five other guys. Right. I mean, it's, it's crazy.

And so in order to, to beat them, we have to pick an area that they can't really make a difference based on a monetary investment, right?

Yes.

So is that kind of the thought process and theory behind this approach?

Yeah, if you Google right now, like your own industry, if you're a roofer, go and Google roofer. Odds are when you scroll underneath the map, you're gonna see Home Advisor right there. Right. Or even put, you know, roof repair, whatever the keyword is, Right. You're gonna find HomeAdvisor within somewhere in the top three, which is a great. If I own Home Advisor, that's what I'd be doing. Right. I want to rank the nation, I want to do national rankings in every city for every service. And then they're going to start pulling in leads that way. So what we want to do is you're not going to find them in the local map. So we're going to outperform them in the local map and stay. And we can sometimes we outperform it underneath the map. But the map produces the most volume of leads. Excuse me.

That's how we search for stuff. Even if I'm not necessarily going to go into their office like a roofing contractor, nine times out of 10, maybe 99 times out of 100, I'm not walking in their offices. Like if I did a search for a restaurant, like I've searched for a restaurant near me. I can see that. But whenever I'm searching for a roofing contractor, I'm going to say, you know, roofer in this city. And then it's going to come up on the map and I'm going to see which ones are close to me.

Yeah.

And that's a comparative analysis that almost happens subconsciously. I see. But then I see the Home Advisor ad. I want the guys that are close to me. I was like, who are they? Right.

Yeah. And it's the other section that has all the reviews. That's the other big piece about the map. I think that's why it does so well too. There are now Google's actually trying to put those reviews and like Google guarantee all the paid stuff at the top. They're starting to do that a little bit. But right now really most people will go to the map because side by side, I know all three of these guys truly are local and I can look at the reviews and I can easily call or click on website side by side. So someone's doing their homework real quick. It's a great spot to do it.

It's really like thinking about how you buy. Right. Like if I'm looking for something, I'm like, hey, I need this. And it comes up on Google and there's a map of them and it's like, hey, what are their rankings? That's. I'm usually looking at that.

Yeah.

About a 4.4 or better. That's usually what my personal criteria. Some people are four or better. So we got two things. You got to manage. You got to manage our reviews and get them up. We got to get our keywords right and get ranked on the map.

Yeah.

And if you can get that combination going with a good performing converting website, you can do some killer things with leading.

It's incredible. Again, going back to why I've enjoyed this industry is because we've seen the little guys who are just, I'm stepping into business for the first time. I barely have a. I have a budget this big. I'm trying my best to really feed my family with this new business or this young business and see them get to a place where they're like, I'm hiring my first staff. I'm hiring sales guys. Now I'm hiring. It's an incredible feeling to be like, we helped you achieve that. Like, it was something they didn't know how to do or couldn't do. The other thing, too, is we will get a number of guys who will be like, well, you know, there's enough stuff on YouTube and the Internet. I'm gonna go, you know, try my hand at it. Two things tend to happen. Either you made a mess of it. Now it's more work for a guy like our team to go in and fix. Or two, you just spun your wheels in mud the whole time. Like, you've just not made any traction because it's not your wheelhouse. Right? And so what I tell them is, like, you outsource to us so that you can put more of your time and energy into doing what you do. Like, so roofer, go do roofing. Lead your roofing team. You don't need to be spending 10 hours in the office on the computer, trying to dial in all this technical stuff.

Yeah, I want to own that responsibility. Somebody. If I'm small, it's me that owns the responsibility of communicating what I'm looking for, what I need, and those type of things. If I'm bigger, I probably have a leader that's owning the marketing side of things. But that doesn't mean they got to go out and figure out how to do everything there is to do in marketing. Leveraging a third party from a cost analysis, return, investment aspect of things. Absolutely. A wise thing to do. I gotta, like, keep the lights on around here, so I gotta. I gotta do a sponsor. But I want to come back. I want to come back, and I want to talk to you a little bit about what has allowed the customers that you've had to be the most success. What did maybe two or three things that's driven the most success for them beyond what you do. Okay. So I want. I want these guys to understand, like, based on what you do, what allows. He's excellent. We'll come right back with that awesome stuff so far. Josh, really appreciate it. When you're looking for shingles, you need to look for that Scotchgard brand that Atlas has on the shingles to know that you're getting protection against those black streaks caused by algae.

I think the Scotchgard is an important part of it. And they're literally protecting, putting their science into the product.

It eliminates all streaking on the roofs.

Everyone knows Scotchgard, so it gives it some legitimacy. When we go into a home to.

Sell a roof, you know, the Scotchgard branding's on our samples or on our literature. I mean, it is recognized. Homeowners can't tell you what kind of brand of shingle that they have, but they can tell you that it has Scotchgard.

Husbands, but most importantly, wives. The women know Scotchgard. You go into that house and you say you're gonna have a clean roof. It's backed by Scotchgard.

Wow.

Everything comes with Scotchgard. Our new couch came with Scotchgard. Our new chair came with Scotchgard. Hey, you got Scotchgard on your furniture.

Now we got it on shingles for you.

No more black algae. It's just that brand recognition. So the client just feels really comfortable. It definitely builds credibility as well. When we present an Atlas shingle to a customer and we tell them that this has a Scotchgard 1 warranty back by 3M, the trust is there. We feel more confident that they feel confident in us that we're giving them a product that's going to last for the life of the roof. You're not only selling the color, then you're selling the long lasting color and it lasts for a lifetime. Sold. Done deal.

If I can put on all Atlas products and avoid any type of streaking and drive by that roof 10 years from now and it looks like the day we put it on, that's what I'm looking for. That's the peace of mind I want to give them. My customers. It's just an easy sell. If you're looking for a way to differentiate yourself, give you something a little bit unique and proprietary, some branding that your homeowners know, Go check out Atlas Shingles have helped contractors create something that can separate themselves from everybody else and allows them to sell on value and price. So go check out Atlas Shingles. Josh, similar to you, like, you've got a unique thing, right? This thing is unique. I haven't seen this approach really, like, focused on the way you do is sometimes a part of what people do. And I always find, like that thing, like, hey, we do SEO. We do everything under the sun, right? We do all, but whenever you focus on something, you can be very, very successful with that particular thing. It sounds like you are. Now, what helps the actual contractor be successful, like you do your job, you get them ranking, and they're starting to get these leads. What have you seen that's helped them be the most successful?

Oh, yeah. This is actually part of our conversation we have when we're talking about actually onboarding a new client is do you have the systems in place to successfully handle leads? For some reason, some contractors will think, well, it's going to be, you know, a couple leads here and there. You know, it may be they're in a market that it's going to, you know, turn from a trickle into a steady flow. But sometimes it, like I said, 30 days, all of a sudden they're shooting to the roof and they've had a 300% increase in call volume. So are you able to handle a 300% increase in call volume? It sounds like a dream, but it does happen with this method, and some guys just aren't ready. Having the right things in place to handle that is really helpful. And why we even have that conversation is because it's not an upsell for we're not selling any more services, but it's. It's something that, you know, they have to have in place in order to keep us on board or. Because they're gonna get this place. We've had guys literally let us go because they couldn't handle the leads. And, like, why would I keep paying you? I got too much. I got. I just had a custom home builder let us go because they are booked out for over a year. He's like, I don't. You know. And I was like, well, you could scale. And he's like, oh, I don't want to. I just kind of want to do one home at a time. And I was like, okay, well, that's your business, so, okay, good luck.

Yeah, that's. That's a key question, right? That's why we exist, is that, hey, there's some cool things out there. And. And timing of those things is really important. Hey, I'm going to create a whole bunch of leads. Well, that's great. Do you have a sales. Do you have the systems and processes, the crews that you're going to need to do the work? Can you train people up quickly to move into the position so that those leads can be handled? There's so many other factors in it that if you're not on top of that from a foundational side of your business, actually blow you up. Right. So I see this happen a lot in Stormworm. Like, somebody will have a storm and they'll go sign everybody on the summit, you don't have systems or processes to handle it and that's really anything else.

Well, and then that'll produce negative reviews too, right? So then it's like all the money you've just invested now is getting negative reviews, getting you a bad reputation and now you're, it's making that much harder to grow your business. So that, that's, yeah, definitely having that stuff in place. The other piece I talk about a lot of times business owners is get your branding in, in place too. Like make sure that as you're growing with lead flow, because that's really what this is, lead generation. But is what does your company look like when they get there. So having a one star review, having a terrible looking website, having terrible branding, you know, I can't help you with that part once they come to your site unless you let us help you with that part. But a lot of times if you're just kind of, you know, you are that guy with just a ladder in the back of the truck and you know, slap a sticker on the side like that, you know, the average Joe's gonna see that and go, I don't know who we're giving our money to. And so having good branding in place, which doesn't have to be, you know, the $20,000 ticket to, you know, get all that debt, you don't have to do that. You can't if you want, I've seen that. But, but you don't have to. There's enough technology out there, enough companies like ours and stuff that can get you a really good look, really clean look, really modern look, so that when people do start finding you, they start visiting you. They're just like, this company looks professional. Like I, yeah, we want to work with these guys. And that's what also helps your name get around town too. People are now referring which is the greatest lead flows. You can get people to refer you constantly right and left. Well, they already, there's no barrier of entry with trust, it's now, oh, you're a trusted name, my friend trusts you. So Ned, therefore I trust you. That's an easier sell.

That's awesome. Josh. This has been a really good podcast. First off, you talk well, which is always good. It seems like you really know.

What.

You own, which is super cool. Passionate about it.

I like.

I don't know if I could ever be really passionate about marketing. I enjoy it. Don't know if that's what trips my trigger. And it's cool that I would want people to work alongside of somebody that's passionate about helping others build their business through generation. And I like the uniqueness of this. So thanks a lot for being here today.

Absolutely. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

Awesome. Hey, I'm gonna let you go and we'll wrap up this episode for everybody. And thanks again. Hey, last thing. How does somebody get a hold of you? We're going to be putting a link that you've given us in the show notes below this episode. Wherever you see it. You know, if you're on one of the podcast tools or you're on our website looking at the podcast, we'll have it there. But is there a way that like they can call you or is it. Is there a website?

Yeah, I always try to drive that traffic to the website. Right. Same as stuff. I'm preaching to you guys. So, yeah, go to our website, bluegomarketing.com. i know, Jim, you're have it there. So click that link below. You can get a hold of us easily through that. We have multiple methods for you to get hold of us. So easy enough.

And we'll make it as easy as possible because the link that we're talking about will be right in the show notes on this and click on it. And if somebody wants to talk to you, it doesn't cost money, right? Like they want to talk to you.

About free, free, free. And you know, even to my detriment, sometimes I'll give too much information. I'll say, hey, you don't have to hire us. I just want you to succeed. Here, go do this. This is my recommendation. We are just having a phone call. If you sign up for call, I'm actually gonna do some homework before we even get on the call to show you, just to save time and energy so we can look. Every once in a while, I get a guy who signs up for call and he's killing it already. And I tell him, I mean, if you want to hire us, great, but you're already killing it. I'm not gonna try and steal you from your company. Good job for them.

Do you do something? Something like the screen share we did earlier. Like you go and do the research first and say, hey, there's your square. And this is what I think we can do.

That's what I love to do. We pull those geogrids right off the gate with their company's location, their company's website, and so we can look beforehand. I'll send it over via email or text or whatever and then we can jump on the call and Then it's a matter of let's discuss what I showed you instead of having to try and explain stuff over the phone. So everybody's on the same page. It's really easy.

Perfect. Cool. Well, Josh, once again, man, thanks a lot. High fives. Great job today.

Thank you.

And I think we might bring you back in the future, maybe talk a little bit about branding, because I'm always.

Do it on that side of things. I love it.

Thanks a lot, Josh. All right, everybody. That was Josh, the owner of Blue Goat Marketing. Pretty cool. What he does and how he does it, the results that he gets. I don't usually put a lot of marketers on what we do, but this seems to be something I was actually aware of some of the clients that he works with and those results, it's worth at least checking out. We'll put the link in the show notes down below. Now, he mentioned that, hey, there's other aspects of this that I gotta have kind of in place. And from a marketing side of things, they can certainly help you with that. But when it comes to process, when it comes to training, when it comes to onboarding people, when it comes to actually selling the leads that you get, that's what we do great here at Contractor Coach Pro. If you need help with those things because you're planning to grow your business and scale your business, reach out to here us here@contractorcoachpro.com check out what we do and how we do it. We are a holistic strategy coach where we work with you on 12 different aspects of your business that work together in sequence. As we mentioned, like, creating a bunch of leads is wonderful and awesome, but it can also create a lot of problems if you're not ready for it and blow things up. And we don't want that. And neither does Bluega and Josh. So check us out@contractorcoachpro.com and a lot like him. Our first call is free. Doesn't cost you anything. Just click the talk to a coach button. We will have a short meeting with you to figure out, hey, what is it that we can help you with? And then we'll actually do a coaching call with you to help you with your business. If it's something that's a good fit for you, great. If it's not, we hope that we have helped you that day with the things to help you get a little bit closer to some control of your business so it can grow and you achieve what we're all after as entrepreneurs. A little freedom to do what you want. When you want, with who you want. That's what we help people do. Thank you for hanging out with us here on Contractor Radio today, and we'll see you on our next episode.

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