Mike Minutes Mastermind 01/31/2023

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Number one, coming from Evansville. This is actually from yesterday. Sorry about that. Yesterday I had to hop on a call right after, so I had to cut a little bit short. Number one, yearly marketing for all leads people talk to or added to our software address book equals cost per.

Client lead cost. So typically this is CPL cost per lead. CLC sometimes would would be for clicking. So just be careful because CPC is cost per click. So CPL cost per lead is going to be $9852 divided out by 703 equals $14 is what it cost me to get in front of someone. I close roughly 40 of the time in 2022. So that means I take, I take 5. 703 multiplied by 0.4 or by 40% which would be dividing by 0.4 equals 281 people. People sold yearly marketing divided by closed leads equals my client acquisition cost which is going to be 9, 800 divided by 281 which is $35.06. $35. What cost me to add a revenue producing customer to our portfolio? Is this good in terms of marketing costs? I'm looking to spend about 20k this year in marketing to grow past that 500k mark and increase close ratio by lowering mowing bracket pricing a tad per each 1,000 square feet. Okay, so you want to increase your close ratio by reducing prices a little bit. Okay. At $35 for customer acquisition cost is $20,000 too much. So I wouldn't say it's too much, but this is one thing I wanted to.

Explain. So if we take how marketing, how like Google Ads etc works. If I can go to the next page. Thank you, man. UI today is just not my friend Mercy. Okay, here we go. So if we think about. See if I can do this story time with Mike. Okay.

All right. So see if we can't make this work. So if you think about like this as you spend more money. So this would be like money that you spend.

Like this. Let's say you have a five thousand dollar budget. This would be number of leads down here, number of leads you do, clicks, etc. What happens is everything under the bar is your, your budget, right? So if you spend $5,000, maybe it's this, this much. Okay. Now what that means is we ended up spending in your case. Let's just use your numbers. $35.

Cost per lead. Okay, I know this is like pretty bad, but hey, we're going to, we're going to work with what we got folks. Okay? So. Oh yeah, this is great. Look at this. We'll do a split screen. Now we're talking. So you got. This is going to be impossible, right? $35 cost per lead. Here's the thing. If you increase your budget, what's going to happen is now you're going to spend $20,000 instead of 9,000. But now your cost per lead, this is not to scale, might end up looking more like $60 CPL. Okay. The reason for that is because the way that the auctioning system works online for Google and Facebook ads, okay, this might not be the case fully for every door, direct mail because if you have enough people in your audience, you, you should be able to scale this and not have an effect on economies of scale when it comes to Google Ads and Facebook ads where there's an auctioning mechanism, this is how it works. Is your first dollar is your most efficient dollar spent. That's why I always say if you have a marketing campaign that's doing really well at $50 a day, don't just think that you're going to double the amount of clicks and leads you're getting by going to $100 per day. Because this is what's happening. You're getting the leads for the cheapest amount of cost on the auction block. And then as you start to put more bid into it, if there's not enough leads, enough people in your market actually looking for these services, looking, searching for lawn care, landscaping, etc. It just will simply keep moving up the price that you're willing to pay in order to get more leads. So keep that in mind, especially if you're going after less than a million people on targeting. That is very, very true. And that's why I typically say, you know, if you're going to increase marketing on a Google or a Facebook ad, move it up slowly, the budget. Because otherwise I find people will double their budget. They'll get almost the same amount of leads, maybe 10, 20% more, but they're paying twice as much for their but for their marketing. So hope that made sense. But that goes to the reason I'm Talking about that is at $35 for customer equity, cost is 22. Is $20,000 too much? I don't think you're going to get a $35 acquisition cost. When you go from when you double your marketing spend, I think that's probably gonna go to 50 or 60, which is still good. And I would still spend that money and it still makes financial sense for the goals that you have. But I would not count on your $35 customer acquisition cost scaling. That's just my opinion and that's what I have seen. As people double their marketing budget, their customer acquisition cost will go up because. Because, simply because of the auctioning mechanisms of these platforms. If you're doing every door direct mail, and you have hundreds of thousands of people and you're never going to run out of people in your market, that's a different story. But in terms of the way that online marketing works, it works in an auctioning system.

So if someone else is willing to spend more, that's why if you got a whole bunch of your competitors all trying to.

Market on Google, for example, the cost per lead goes way up. Because now it's like, okay, I'm willing to spend a dollar. I'm willing to spend a dollar and 20 cents. Well, I'm willing to spend a dollar and 40 cents. Okay, ding, ding, ding. We have a winner. Right? So that dollar and 40 cents might not have ever got dollar 40 cents if your budget was too low, right? Well, now you increase your budget. Now you're willing to go $2 and $2.50 and $3 because now you have all this budget, but you're getting the same one click. So you might have been paying a dollar for that same click a year ago, but now, because a bunch of people competing and trying to get in and they've raised their budgets, well, now you can, you know, the click costs way more.

Max Harwood from Burnaby asked, what is your stand on risk? Reversing guarantees risk Reversing guarantees in lawn care. Do you think a money back guarantee would increase sales enough to justify the possible refunds? Have you tried something like this in the past to increase sales? Honestly.

I'm not opposed to them. I think they're good. I like money, you know, the whole like money back guaranteed. Jonathan Patos made it really popular 10, 15 years ago when he did the 200 ironclad money back guarantee. And that was basically, if you didn't like service, they would actually pay you twice as much as what you paid them. But again, they would only that for their first service. And it's like they would bill after their first service. And as after that, like if you weren't happy it was 50 bucks, they'd give you a hundred dollars back. So.

In terms of does it get people to actually join? I think it helps upfront. I don't. I'm not so sure about retention and I'm not so sure about the type of quality customer you're getting. And then realizing that if 1 out of 10 people take you up on it, for example, well, now you've got three out of four just to break even. So 34% of those have to. But I really don't think people would take you up on money back guarantees. So that's a good thing. So you can use it as a way to sell. I just don't think that like just by slapping a money back guarantee, someone's like, oh, I'll use them.

I haven't seen that be the case because I've seen like there's tons of people that do the whole money back guarantee thing, especially because of what Jonathan did. There's less and less people now because the city turf doesn't do it anymore. I don't believe. But.

Yeah, I haven't seen that be like a driving factor of people getting into the game or becoming customers. But it's definitely something you can offer because literally one out of probably 50 people, as long as you do a half decent job, will actually take you up on it. And usually they're abusing the system anyways. I would just probably, to protect yourself, make sure you bill after the first visit to kind of make sure that their card is working and things like that before you start offering money back guarantees. I don't mind my money back guarantees on mowing, but when you start doing money back guarantees on things like property cleanups and mulch installs, and if someone calls you on it and they have $5,000, like, yeah, I'm not happy. I want my $5,000 back. That could potentially mean 50 to $80,000 worth of other revenue you have to go do in order just to fill that hole. Terrell Ek Boone's Creek, Tennessee Hey Mike, our opening day of the season is March 1st. Would you start advertising on Google for property clips even two to three weeks prior to getting leads coming in? Even before our opening day, yeah. So I'm a big fan of this. And that is before your mowing season starts, really start to pitch property cleanups, especially one click estimate emails and telling people look like, so we're doing this in Bellingham, for example, we start mowing March 1st, we're going to say, hey, look, in February we're going to send an email and be like, hey.

Once March comes, we're going to be smashed. We're super busy. If you want your property cleanup done for spring, you've got to get it done in February. And so we're going to do that to our one click estimate emails. And that way when we're in the middle of spring rush and someone asked for a property cleanup and it's we're five weeks booked out and we're like, yeah, we can do it in five weeks. Then it's like, look, at least our existing customers were taken care of in February. So the goal is that the two, three, four weeks prior to your mowing season that you're getting people inside your funnel, inside your database, all, you know, set up on cleanups prior to the spring rush. And then I would definitely focus on, you know, the advertising if you can just remember people don't with intent to buy type of marketing like Google. People aren't looking for property cleanups until they need it, which is in the spring rush. So what I would be focusing on to try to level out that spring rush a little bit is make sure that all your existing customers, you really emphasize the need to do their spring cleanup now in February and the four to six weeks prior to you start mowing. Some people, most aren't going to do it two months before, like two, three weeks. You definitely, that is the time to do cleanups for your existing customer database 100%. So you get that email. The one click custom email should be like, we want to prioritize our customers that we've, we have a relationship with. Therefore we're making sure we get your property cleanups done before the spring rush when we start to book out five, six, seven weeks in advance. So sell it as a value prop to them for being an existing customer. And it also helps you because you can go hire people, get them in the door and trained up on their property cleanups from your existing customers for prior to new customers, which will only call when they're when the grass is overgrown, when the bushes are overgrown, when there's weeds in the beds in the middle of spring rush.

Derek Duran Allen Park, Michigan okay, there's a long one. I'll read the whole thing. Here we go. Here's an idea I had and shared with another owner and they suggested I get your opinion for feedback. The goal behind the strategy would be utilizing the special t special special teams tactic and maybe reach out to people we've serviced in the past or have interacted with us just through estimate request. Put a personal touch to a company that in their mind might be corporate and big. Send a video in an email to your whole database of clients. You can modify who you send it to based on your goals. The video would be the estimator or owner saying how we are thrilled to be in contact with you and want you to know that this year we are really focusing on serving our existing customers and contacts better. You're part of that group and we'll be sending emails throughout the year with timely services that will best serve your property needs. We are a young company and this is our third year serving insert territory name, but we are thrilled to be able to serve our clients and we have an amazing team that wants to raise the level of professionals in industry. Please reach out to us any property needs and we look forward to serving you something. Not including that text is maybe even acknowledging. As you know, over the past couple years, hiring and having a team to serve customers has been our biggest challenge for customers. Our biggest challenges for small businesses. At times we haven't been able to keep with everyone and that's why we really want to focus on our existing clients and contacts to deliver an excellent experience. We're so thrilled to be in contact with you and we're pleased that we do have a solid team in place that buys in our mission of raising the level of professionals in the landscape industry. Any feedback and critique is appreciated. Yes, I like this 100%. The challenge is going to be attaching that video into if you are in service autopilot.

I would probably lean to new making this a YouTube link and then sending it if you are in service autopilot. So that's fine. Send the YouTube link. It's just not going to seem as personal. Oh great, now my computer's about to die. Give me a second guys. Whoa. How did that happen?

Oh, no, I left my charger. Oh, we're all going to die. Okay, okay. We have 10%. I think we're good. Yeah. I like this a lot. I really like the spin of, hey, we want to focus on our existing customers because it means that they're going to take the one click estimate emails more seriously because they realize that you're prioritizing them. This would be a perfect one to send with the email that says, get your spring cleanup done sooner than spring rush when everyone wants our services and we have a whole bunch of new people coming in. We want to take care of our existing customers.

And you can even say like, hey, last year we really struggled finding people. We really fell behind. We were months behind on schedule. We had to stop taking new jobs. We want to make sure this year that doesn't happen. So to do that, we're going to get your services done a month before we get really crazy busy. I like this a lot. I think it's great. I think it's awesome. I think you combine this with a one click estimate email or send it prior to your season starting so that throughout the year as you say you're going to send them, you know, specific services throughout the year, you're really offering that as a service. It's like, hey, like we're going to keep in mind your property. We're going to keep, you know, making sure that whatever is needed is being done. So I'm a big fan of this. Love it. I think everyone should do this. Thank you, Derek. You're awesome. Cool. I don't know what the special teams part was at the beginning, but the video. Let's go. I like it.

Yeah. The question would be, I think probably in my mind I would do as an unlisted YouTube video. The problem with that, it doesn't, it's not personalized at that point. But I don't think anyone's going to think that you're going to be personalized in my opinion. Unless someone says their name and the date that they are making a video. Like, if any of you ever see a video from me personally, you know, I say your name and I say what time, what time of day it is because I want you to know like, this is a personal video. So either A, you could, on your unlisted video on YouTube, you could make it where they can't see number of views or B, you could try to attach it to the email. Very difficult in service, off site, most of your emails will get marked as spam. If you can even figure out how to attach and compress the video size. But I would probably just say YouTube link. Don't try to cover up the fact that you are making this to just your, to your. To a bunch of people. Just make it very clear this is for existing customers. I think that's a great idea. So I think everyone should do that. It's a great idea. I love it, Garrett. But if you marry that with trying to get property cleanups prior to mowing, even more better, more points. Because it just emphasizes like we are trying to prioritize our existing customers and we're going to get slammed with new customers, but we're more concerned about you. That just makes them feel good and it puts value in those one click emails for the rest of the year. Is it still considered?

Please tell me I did not go through that whole last question without you guys seeing the.

Okay, sorry. I thought maybe I had. Okay, cool. Here we go. Is it still, Is it still considered throttling leads if we are not having in person estimates, Would it make sense to spend mowing money on mowing marketing during spring rush, even if only taking on mowing clients, only doing over the phone, not do cleanups during spring rush? I wouldn't say, I wouldn't necessarily consider it throttling leads unless you're doing it because you are so you're just completely overbooked and you don't have enough work. You have way too much work coming in. You're like drowning in work and you're turning off all sorts of in person, no cleanups. You're basically like I only want OTP mowing. I would consider that throttle in leads because there is a lot of small property cleanups. There is initial mows. There are a lot more work you could be having. But you're throttling that because just you're at capacity, which is not a bad thing. But I would consider that somewhat throttling leads. As soon as you start removing the ability to do any sort of cleanups, any sort of initial mows projects for your existing customers, things like that. Like if you're not taking work from existing customers and you're not sending out one click estimate emails to get more work from your existing database, you're throttling leads. In my opinion, not a bad thing. Again, if you're at capacity, that's what you should be doing. Just kind of definitions there. I'm happy with $60 at scale. I just want to say stay under a hundred dollars like we talked about training. Just want to double check. Great. Is there a one click that pushes scarcity for getting property cleansed and early like you were just talking about? Thanks. The one for February spring cleanups is the one that you can modify. I would just modify that one by adding in a few more sentences. We gotta be careful with how we do it because if we send it to everyone, we start March 1st. For some of you, you don't start till April, some of May. And so we gotta be careful there. So just add in a few lines there about what we just talked about in terms of. Hey. Cause really the one click estimate emails are built to. I have a need. I see a button, I click on it. That's how they're built for. If you wanna modify that though, just do what we just talked about with Derek and merge that with the fact of like getting property clamps done prior to mowing season starting and really trying to get your existing database to commit to that. Just. You literally just have to add a few more lines in there if you're going to do what Derek said. Here's a, here's a. Here's a kicker for you guys. Okay? If you want a really killer email, do what he just did with the video. The title should be I'm sorry, we're changing things. And literally just say like last year we got way booked out. We couldn't do a lot of cleanups for a lot of our existing customers. We. We're just bombarded. So this year, here's what we're doing to change that. And throughout this year, we're going to send you all first dibs on services throughout the year that are needed. And if you click on those, we're going to give you priority. If you say that, you'll crush it out of the park. I love that idea. Let's go. Makes me so happy. Okay, so next question. Could Derek post that email to Augusta Nation so we can all use it? Derek, can you please put that on the Augusta Nation Facebook group?

I love it. All right, just in time because my batter's about to die. Cool. I think that's all the questions. Did I get them all? Yes. All right, guys, have a great extra Tuesday.