$1,500 a Month in Ads, and Still No Recognition?

So let's start from the top. So what's the name of the business?

Creekside Turf Management.

And where are you located?

Marion, Iowa. So eastern Iowa.

Okay, so the first thing I'm looking at is always going to be your. There's your ad. Cool. Is the website. So like, site looks pretty good. There's a few things I would probably change on it. Do you mind me if I tear this up?

Tear this apart, Go for it, let me know.

So like, the thing is if you drive traffic to a site, that's one thing, the next thing is like, will they convert? So I don't want to be sending them to a request quote. I'd rather have that right here. Like on the top one third. So above the fold. Just doing that, you'll get about 30% uptick in leads or conversion. So if you're sending a hundred people here and say five people are converting now, that would lead to about eight more like people or three more people converting. So highly recommend that.

Um, so you're saying just like front and center there.

Well, like, so for example, if I come here. Right. So hold on a second, let me move my bar. There we go. Um, as a customer, the only thing I really care about is one, I want to quote from you and two, I need to make sure do you serve me and do what I want. Now a lot of your, your pictures do show lawns, so I'm going to go out and guess that you're a lawn care company. But I would recommend your subtitle being like doing lawn care and landscaping, serving XYZ cities. Because right now if I look at this, I don't know who you like, where you serve, service area and services.

Yeah.

And as a customer, within 10 seconds I, if I don't know that I'm out. So in my opinion, I'm going to make it really easy for them to give me money. I'm going to put the quote form right here. And if that means like, oh well, it's not integrated or it's not coming, doesn't matter, you're. It's worth increasing your lead flow by 30% by putting a form right here. I would. I really like the one picture of showing your truck. The more of those the better. Because these other ones are kind of like they could be from anywhere. The more you show your brand, your uniforms, your truck, the better. But most importantly, it's your subtitle here. So the customer knows, do they do the service I need and do they serve the area that I'm needing? And, and then next is having the estimate request form above the fold right here, off to the top. Right, gotcha. So like I would start there first because driving traffic from any form of lead gen, like the fastest way to improve that is just increase conversion. So I would look at that first and then next on the ads. How much are you spending per month on Google Ads?

About 1500amonth.

Okay. And do you have a Google tracking code set up?

Yeah, I mean I hired a buddy, family friend that has been doing this for years. And that's kind of my next big thing is like I, I throw dollars at it and it's like, you know, so I, to be honest, I don't even know how I would, you know, begin tracking that and stuff.

And you're good, you're good. So yeah, so I wouldn't change anything in terms of the channel, marketing channel. I would take your fifteen hundred dollars and I would figure out how, where it's going. And to do that, you're going to have tracking codes. So when they submit a request request form, it's going to a thank you page. That thank you page has a, has either a Facebook Pixel or a Google tracking code attached to it. So you know, every single time it hits that now for most people it's like, well, I need to know the customer acquisition cost. I agree with you. But more importantly, the reason you want a tracking code there is to tell Google and tell Facebook that this type of person converted because it gives the, that the AI feedback in terms of the demographic and type of person that actually did what you want. And so right now you're paying. You're essentially, if you don't have tracking, you're basically paying for clicks. And it usually kind of works for a local market because you're, you're servicing a relatively small area and you're like, hey, if they search this keyword, I just want to show up. Great. But if you can actually show the, like send data back to data to Google, which is here's the people who actually convert into an estimate, it'll show it more to those type of people. So age, et cetera. So like the two things I would do is like website optimization and design, like not even SEO, just web design to make sure you convert higher. And then secondly, I'd be putting tracking codes so you actually know how much are you paying per per estimate that coming from Google. Because here's the other thing, Devin. A lot of people don't put tracking codes. They could take their marketing budget away. And all of A sudden, they still get the same lead flow. And it's because, like, oh, I thought it was coming from Google, but they were just finding my website anyways. And so you want to actually know, did they click on the ad and then did they submit Nest request form? And the only way to do that is put tracking code in place. And if your friend does Facebook, you know Google Ads all the time, they shouldn't know how to do this. If not, use Upwork or ChatGPT will walk you through how to, like, set up GA4, Google Analytics 4, put a tracking code behind it, et cetera, and you'll talk to whoever's doing your web design, like, hey, I want in the header, in the footer, I want this tracking code. They'll know what you're talking about.

Okay, cool. I mean, other than that, like I said, I'll be seeing you in a couple of weeks for the turnaround show. So excited about that.

Last month, the average location that was just getting started inside of Augusta Lawn Care was brought in over 50 leads in one month. And they're just getting started why? Because augustalawncare services.com has a domain that has national authority and ranks very high on Google very quickly. So if you'd like to grow your business, take it to the next level and scale with multiple locations, go to augustalongcareservices.com franchise and book a call today. Now back to the video.

I'll let everybody else that has questions and stuff, let them have at it. So thanks, Mike.

Appreciate it. All right.

But marketing, like, I've gone out and I've talked to a few people. This also ties into a question about what I should price jobs at. But I know I've heard you say a lot, you want to go. You want to kind of get in the mindset of going after budgeted hours. And so that way you can start learning that. And down in the future, if you have employees, you already can look at a job and tell what it's going to take. But when I'm going to a job and I'm talking to people, I've. I've only knocked on a few doors. I'm trying to get things kind of set up before I go out and just put myself out there too much. But, like, I know there's one time that I overpriced the job because I don't have a good way of knowing how long it'll take. And I know you just said to Ryan, I think the younger man that just go out and start doing stuff for free.

Yeah. I think honestly, it's like if I'm trying to touch dude sights on a gun, I just keep shooting and I adjust the scope every single time I shoot. Right now you need more shots. Right. So just keep getting more jobs. And by doing that, you understand if you're above price, if you're below price, how long things should take. So don't worry about, you know, quote unquote being put together before you put yourself out there. Just go get the jobs.

Yeah, my dad and I are both like that. We, we sometimes set up a little bit too much before just going and trying to get stuff done. But. But we are also organized people. We like to not. We. We want to be set up and not have something bad go. Go on down the road. So, yeah, I think that's my question and I think a lot of these other questions are being answered anyways by other people.

So. Cool. Good stuff. And Malika, if I, if I was you, if you're, if you're In a city, a 400, I would probably look at the other city. Even if it's, you know, 20 minutes drive away anyways.

Yeah, it's not that far away. If I can go get all day.

400 is a little low. I started in Blaine. We did get to a million and it's only 6,000 people. But if it's less than a couple thousand, you're probably limiting yourself. I'm not, I'm not.

I'm not limiting myself to our town. This is just where I live. But yeah, thank you.

I had a bit of a follow up question for getting those leads for winter services because I wanted to grow as much as I can, even though I know it's going to be harder during the off season. I currently am signed up with Lawn Care web Design, but I, I haven't gotten them all my info yet and I still need to get decals on a truck. So it's not like ready to go and it certainly won't be by the time winter is through. So my current idea that I'm going to follow through with is just direct response marketing and primarily through door hangers. And I know the messaging is going to be critical to get them to reach out and I really want to be able to concisely show them the benefit and how it's going to save them money. Does that sound like the right approach to take with this? Given my current circumstances and how I like don't have. The only other way I can think is people are reaching out for leaf removal and to somehow get on that, because nobody is looking for winter services because it's kind of an education process.

So, hey, page 84 of the Aussie's in book, my friend. This is the exact moment.

I'm sorry?

This is the exact moment when your competition cannot afford these investments. They have nothing to sell during winter. So they're not advertising. They're laying off employees and selling trucks to reduce fixed expenses. That's your moment to accelerate and dominate your local market. Drive online ads to instant pricing forms for winter services as you would for mowing. And then I list off, like, five different things to do in the ad. So and then there's just. You can, like, scan it and see the ad I'm running. And you don't have to get the book, just go to the workshop. It's free. Mikeandys.com workshop. Go to cure number four, which is recurring services, and it'll walk you through the whole process. They'll give you exact words to use for your ads and what to do for existing customers and what to do. Like to actually run ads and stay offensive, basically. You do have to educate them. You have to educate them why they're going to save money by doing it.

And then I'm just going to price it. Just like mowing, like, same thing. I'm not going to tailor anything specific to the services. I'm just going to measure their lawn and think about, like, next year. Is there. Are there any pitfalls to doing that? And am I, like, selling. Am I selling the result every time when we show up? Or is it just. Am I going to tell them we're only going to spend this amount of time, so even if we don't get to, like, this section or this task, like, it's not going to be finished yet. We're going to get that done later.

Yeah. So the pitfalls are the initial service. So you show up to someone's house, they're like, yeah, got your $70 biweekly winter services, and you show up and it's a. It needs a $3,000 cleanup. So that's pitfall number one when you're selling to new customers. Pitfall number two is, regardless of whether a new customer or existing customer, they expect that checklist to get done every single time from top to bottom. When they're like, no, no, that's not how it works. So it is an educational process. And I walk you through the different ways in the workshop, just again, by candidates.comworkup, i walk you through the four different ways to do it and like the one I recommend and then how much based on how much time you have, how I would sell it. But the more time you spend educating them on what they are going to get, the better it goes. So we can retain usually 70% of our customers from mowing into winter services and keep them all winter long if we educate them correctly. If we don't, that goes down to like 25 to 30%.

Yeah, it's very critical. Would that include like tips on like what to add into the services too? Like, am I going to do gutter cleaning? Am I going to do like, like this, this and that? Is it. Does it cover all of that? Basically how to package it?

Yep, exactly. And it shows our templates and like what we put in our emails and then how we actually will do a loom video and show them the price difference, the whole line.

Okay, thank you.

We're a lawn and landscape maintenance company. A big chunk of what we do is mowing. And the typical thing is we give a price for the mowing and it's a weekly service, et cetera. But you know, we have the age old problem of sometimes we get into dry spells and such and our plan usually is to fill in those. Like if, if we have weeks where chunks of the lawns aren't getting mowed, you know, we're filling that in with shrub work and things like that to keep the schedule full. But sometimes even that can, you know, empty out and things like that and it can get a little tough. We're in a dry spell right now. So I'm just curious, in Augusta, have you seen more success with doing that model I just talked to you about, or do you try to get clients on more of like the winter services type setup where it's like, hey, here's your weekly fee. We're going to mow it every week for you, or if it's dry, we'll pull weeds, trim some bushes, spend that amount of time and do it that way. Does that make sense?

Yeah. What market are you in? Norm or Jason? Sorry.

Yeah. Central Illinois.

Okay. Have you ever talked to Dustin from Augusta or not Dustin, he's in Champaign.

Oh, no, not personally.

Okay. I would recommend it. He has a couple locations and he's kind of figured this, this part out too. So all that to say there's two, two ways of thought. One is you sell people like you currently are as a gateway service and then your objective is to upsell during the slow season. Like that's one objective. And so for example, like during Spring rush. We do not do projects at all. None, zilch, nada. And in my locations for like three months, everyone that asks like, yep, we're booked out till July. Yep, yep, we're booked out to July. And then we hit July. I know that mowing comes down, I can start doing those projects and fill in the work and make it more evened out. We do the same way as you. We sell it via the service. The alternative way is that on the upfront, you take more time and educate the customer that hey, it's a monthly service that you pay for. It's a level billing contract inside of copilot. And we come, we do mowing every week or if there's nothing that's needed, we do X, Y and Z and everything else. It really depends on what you're trying to do with the business. Like if you're trying to scale very quickly, selling it per service is easier because it makes more sense to people. And they'll sign up online, they'll sign up over the phone. If you're trying to build this a little slower, a little more methodically and you want cash flow to be really simple, doing it by the monthly contract at a certain price and then saying, hey, by the way, includes all of this stuff and you pay year round. That's something that you can certainly do. Okay.

Yeah. So you'd be looking at it more as like a, a year, a yearly thing. Like they pay a weekly or monthly amount all year round and you try to wrap in whatever services they're going to need and bake it into your price.

I got to. Because otherwise they're going to cancel during the time when I make all my money. And you could actually be upside down on the job. Okay, yeah, right. Because if they, if they cancel at the end of fall, you, you, you will, you will lose money on that contract unless you've annualized it or some people do nine months. But like your whole objective here is like to fill in the whole rest of the off season. So yeah, there, there are, there's certainly markets unlike Illinois where when you can mow once a month at least this is when it makes the most sense to do the 12 month thing. And it's like, hey, you pay the same amount per month. Here's all the things we do during the summer, spring and fall. Here's what we do during the winter. And if we're going to come no matter what, twice, you know, three times a week or once a week or whatever it might be. But in your market you're going to have to either a upsell during slow season and sell one time projects. Like that's the one time we do one time projects. When we slow down during our summer, like our July, August, September in my market is the time we sell projects. Because outside of that I can do recurring services, I can do winter service, I can do Boeing. But like those three months I have to sell project projects. So that's when you're going to use the texting, text blast feature inside of Copilot. Like that thing is so underutilized it's crazy. It's literally we're not charging for it right now. We will have to charge for it. Like there's tens of thousands of dollars that we spend on, on Twilio credits that we do not pass along to users. Right now I would be beating that thing up if I was you in terms of using that to upsell the customers.

If I'm going to bring on another truck, I need to bring in what, another 30 hours plus of work. Can you hear me?

Yeah, I can hear you. Yep.

Okay, so what's my best option on that? I don't have a website right now. I know that you say don't do any advertising until I have a website. Thinking I'm pounding on doors is the best way to go on that in our area. I'm. I did that last season. It seemed to work out pretty good. But that's a. So what's my percentage on how many flyers am I putting out to get new customers and for just to get what, 30 more new clients?

Yeah. Yeah. So like the thing is, I still, you know, I still will go back to what I've always said, which before I spent a dollar in marketing of any sort. I'm going to make sure my website's good because you're driving them to that place ultimately, whether it be a flyer or a Facebook ad or a Google Ad, like regardless of what advertising you're doing, they're going to go check out your website. And so if I can double the conversion once they get there, it's better than trying to get twice as much marketing done. And so that's still where I would still say that if you're like, well, I don't want to do a website for whatever reason and I just want the 30 customers. Then if you've done door hangers in the past, you've done flyers or whatever you've done. This is a math game, right? It's like, okay, well last time I got 20 customers. Okay, I gotta do 50% more and I'll get 30.

But I would strongly recommend before I spend any money on marketing, I gotta get my door hangers. And then secondly, I was my website. But I'll also say like I would be exhausting my free marketing and upsells, right, because you get 30 budget hours a week added by just simply doing a better job of emailing and texting your customers from copilot. So for example, like our Bellingham shop just sent a text today and there's like 70 or 80 estimates they got from a text message that just went for copilot. And you can do it from copilot. You blast all your customers, say, hey, it's Jeff over here. We're getting gearing up for fall cleanups. If you want to get on the schedule, let me know. They text you back. Comes right into your co pilot used to schedule. The jobs like that will do more, more leads for you in one day than you could ever get doing door hangers. And what's nice. It's like on demand. It's like when you need more work, you send out a text message with an offer and you make it relevant to the time in the season. You don't make it super promotional like buy today and you get 10% off. Contact us now. Like it's like, hey, it's Jeff over at Blue Sky. Just checking in, seeing if you'd like fall cleanup. If so, let me know. We'll get you on the schedule. Like that will get responded to. And if you have 500, 600 contacts inside of copilot, you will get responses. And so before I even spend a dollar on marketing, I would be definitely exhausting my free resource. Like it doesn't cost you any more to email and send text messages. Like I would use that first.

Do you have any tips for someone that's in a hyper competitive location?

Okay, what, what service are you in, Chris?

Lawn care.

Okay. And what market?

Monroe, Michigan.

Okay, and when you say competitive, you mean in terms of price? Like just people? Very low prices, right?

Well, there's well over 100, I'd say about 150 lawn care providers in my area. And it's, it's not like a major city. It's a, it's kind of a small town, you know.

So what's the name, what's the name of the business? Your business, Chris Goatscape Lawn Care Michigan. All right. Goat, sir. Goat Lawn Services LLC.com.

No, no.

What's your, what's your URL?

It should be go. It's Lawn care. Monroe.

Lawn care.

You're good. I'm gonna go. Let's see here. I can find it. I got goats. I got Monroe. So I'll go, I'll jump to what I was going to say, which is essentially like, the objective is how do we get value instead of price being the competitive factor. And I guess there's 120, but if you're in Monroe, Michigan. Michigan. Okay. So we got 20,000 people, maybe 21,000. Okay. And if I go lawn care. Oh, you got a beautiful day. Day. 71 degrees. All right, so we got some big players in Detroit like Espir Green. But then when we come to actually, Monroe.

Yeah, you got Jack here. They've got about six, six rigs. Has four rigs. Four Seasons has about 10 rigs.

Yeah.

Big Dog has about 10 rigs.

And those are the big players and the biggest players in our area.

Here's the crazy thing. Jack's lawn service website. Trash.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I agree.

Like, you can beat these guys online. Like, this is low hanging fruit.

Like.

I'm, I'm, I'm learning and I'm, and I am getting customers, but it's, it's costing me more than I'd like it to. My, my customer acquisition cost is about 500 per customer. So.

Okay. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. So this is what I would say. So I'd say, Chris. So the first place I always look when someone says in a competitive market is online. And you do have a competitive market, but fortunately the best players in your market, the biggest guys, their websites are trash online. Like, like their websites don't rank. They're not well designed. They don't look good on mobile. They load slow. They're. This guy's built. Jax is built on WordPress. Like, you can beat these guys online. And the reason I say that is because 80% of our leads come from our website. So I know that if you could just win on your website, you will win in terms of growth. And so I would highly recommend.

Before you start, I did just invest.

Go ahead.

Yeah, I invested $2,000. I. I busted two grand.

What's the URL.

I wouldn't mind getting?

I'm losing. I'm losing. You. You're kind of chopping up on your Internet. I don't have your Internet. You can change your Internet there, Chris Longterm. Monroe.com Lawn Care. Monroe.com. all right. Lawn care, Monroe.

Lawn care, Monroe. Yeah, My, my Internet's not, not good usually. Fire.

You're good. You're good. Okay. So I'm looking at your site. Your site looks better than theirs, I can tell you that. So it looks decent. There's no reason why you can't beat them even with this site, honestly.

When did you get this? Built the site. Oh, can't hear you. Do we lose them.

Chris, or.

About a month ago.

Month ago. Okay. All right. So I do think this. This site looks pretty good. I would change a couple things.

First off, when someone gets here, I want them to be able to submit an estimate request form immediately. So I would put your estimate request form right here. And it doesn't need to be integrated with copilot. Doesn't be fancy. It just needs to be above the fold because I know that 80% of people will not scroll down.

That's in the works. I just. I just.

Okay, it's happening. Okay.

I did put that request in. They're working on that now. Yeah, so it's in the process now.

Okay, that'll be good. I would also like, try to get an actual email address. Something like chris@lawcaremonroad.com look more professional than using a Gmail account there. This is not clickable. I would make, like your phone number, for example, clickable. It's like if I. If I'm on my mobile device, I just want to tap on this. I want to tap on your email. Right. But I think just by putting your. Your estimate request form, that'll be helpful. The next thing I would say is, like, this background image. I have no idea what you do. I want. I would rather see, like, you and your team or your. Your. Your truck. Your branding. It says goatscape. Like this. This iconic. This is iconic. Your. Your logo. That's a great logo. I love the name that should be on the side of your truck or trailer, and then you standing in front of it or your team standing in front of it with a mower. That should be the photo right here.

Okay.

So brand recognition is them seeing the brand on your truck. It's like the sign that stands out next to the road. You're like, oh, cool sign. Cool truck, cool trailer. What do they. You see the sign? You turn in the parking lot, and you turn in the parking lot. Then you're looking for what, the storefront. The storefront is your website, and I need the website to match up the truck and the trailer. And those. The best way to make sure when they pull into the parking lot, they know where to go. And the sign and the storefront look the same. So in this case, the sign is your truck and your trailer. The sign storefront is your website. I need those things to match. And so if you have this on your truck or trailer. Great. Now let's show it right here when they first get to the site. So I think you can win this game, even in a quote, unquote, you know, competitive market, by simply beating them online.