Kelson Carterpresident at carter's my plumber

Double Your Profit Day #28 Beat Big Competitors with SMART Marketing Strategies

28 Aug 2025 · 2 min

Owned and Operated - A Plumbing, Electrical, and HVAC Business Growth Podcast

28 Aug 2025 · 2 min

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In this episode of Double Your Profit, the host argues that businesses should deliberately outspend their rivals in sales and marketing to capture market share. He recounts a 2018 scenario where a private‑equity firm acquired the market’s largest competitor and slashed its marketing budget from 10% to 5% of revenue to boost EBITDA. The host explains how that reduction created an opening for his own company, which continued to invest heavily in marketing even during market downturns, tariffs, and COVID‑related scares. He frames marketing as a strategic asset, emphasizing the need to track ROI rigorously—comparing cost‑per‑lead and lead quality across channels. The host also highlights that many competitors are hesitant to increase marketing spend, viewing that reluctance as a competitive advantage for firms willing to invest. Throughout, he urges listeners to adopt an aggressive, data‑driven marketing approach and to like and subscribe to the video.

Chapters

Welcome back to Double Your Profit. In line with our last video, talked a little bit on sales and marketing. We are going to outspend your competitors in sales and marketing and call this out very directly, not just as strategic or non-strategic, but very directly. Let's outspend in sales and marketing. Back in 2018, a large PE firm came into our market and bought out the largest competitor. I remember being a little fearful. I'd never really competed against PE meaningfully, and all I knew was a well-funded competitor was coming to play ball. It ended up being one of the best things that has ever happened for our business. The reason is that PE firm—they decided they were going to cut their investment in sales and marketing. They took a 10% marketing budget that had been 10% for years, and they decided that they needed to optimize EBITDA, and they took it down to five. They then bought a few more companies inside the area, and they ran the same playbook. And looking at that and saying, if we invest in sales and marketing right now, we can take. This market, like we can win. We are massive investors into this space. Every time the market dips, every time there's a big scare, if there's tariffs, if there's COVID, we have outspent our competitors in marketing. When we're looking at new channels now, a lot of it is how can we spend the most? Marketing is an asset and there is a big ROI attached. Nowadays, we spend $200,000-some a month on marketing, but we have continued to overinvest in there and continue to find new ways to drive ROI. So as we make these investments, we have to ruthlessly track ROI. What is our ROI on this channel versus this channel? What's our cost per lead here versus here? How many leads and are they good leads? Finally, your competitors' reluctance to spend is your opportunity. People just don't know how to pull the trigger. They don't know how to move to that next step, and they also maybe don't believe in it. My dad didn't believe in marketing before we bought the business. That was 10 years ago. He didn't really understand why it mattered, so he didn't want to look that far into it. So their reluctance to invest more and more money is your advantage. Like, you can take advantage of that and you can blow up. If you like this video, make sure you like and sub.