Ai Search is Shifting in Home Service Businesses - What You Can Do To Prepare

Welcome back to the show. I'm your host, Phil Risher, and on today's episode, we're talking about how AI search is shifting in home service businesses and what they can do to prepare. My guest today is Carl Willis, and he owns a digital marketing company for remodeling businesses and other home service businesses too. And hey, come on, let's talk about AI search. Everyone's asking us about it. So thanks so much for joining us today, Carl.

Absolutely. Thanks for having me on, Phil.

Yeah, for sure. So can you take a minute or two and give everyone the background of who you are, what you do?

Yeah, so I'm, I'm a dinosaur in online marketing. I started, uh, marketing in the days of dial-up. So my, my first online business, I had a 366 modem and, uh, I was trying to drop ship vases on eBay. So I've been doing this for a long time.

Yeah, I love it. And now you do digital marketing for home service businesses, remodeling?

Exactly. Yeah, so we, we work on, uh, Really developing ecosystems for home service and home remodeling companies. And the whole premise of that, when I talk about an ecosystem, is really becoming the dominant player in your market. And not just, you know, the days of picking one strategy and shooting for the moon are over. You got to be everywhere all the time. And so that's what we specialize in.

Yeah, I love it. So pre-show, we were talking a little about omnipresence. It's not just, you know, pray to the Google gods and they're going to send you leads and bless you with leads, but it's shifting. So can you talk about what that shift looks like and how you're working with your clients to make sure that they are being shown on AI search?

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I love the term ecosystem and I always want to start with the end in mind. You know, today's consumer You know, let's, let's have some fun with this, Phil. They start their morning on the toilet with their smartphone in hand scrolling. And, and so you've got to be there and they're driving along and they're listening to the podcast or they're listening to, you know, streaming. You got to be there and they're going to be doing searches throughout the day. You've got to be there. They're going to be on YouTube researching content, looking for information. You've got to be there. They're going to be out on their social media at some point during the day. You've got to be there. And the whole point is you've got to be inescapable because today's consumer is making this multiple-step, multiple-platform, multiple-modality research. And what we're finding is they've already made their decision by the time they ever pick up the phone or fill out the form, uh, to contact you. And so by the time you hear from them, they've already pretty much made up their mind. All they're doing is really confirming that decision by the time they make contact. So we've, we've got to do a whole lot of groundwork before they ever get to you, whereas in the past at the point of contact, they were still trying to decide. It's not that way anymore. The decision's already made by the time they get to you. And if you're not in that game, you've already lost.

Yeah, that's right. There's, I talk about there's these two decisions. There's, should I contact this business is one whole decision that happens is what you're talking about. And then should I actually sign this estimate with this company, which is a whole nother sales process and decision process. Whereas before it was like, I got a problem, let me go to Google, ask it some questions. Google's going to tell me to call this company, I'll call them. Simple as that. And now it's shifting. And one thing that you hit on was there's these 7 touchpoints that it takes in order for someone to trust your business. And it's not just like, oh, they have this many reviews. They're going and looking at pictures, they're reading your review responses. They might go to your social media to see yourself. They might go to your website to read a pricing page. These are all the— there's, and there's way more, right? Different types of what happens. So are you, are you all like coaching your, your clients like, hey, you need to be creating top of funnel social media content and like what type of content should they create? And any other stuff that you're talking about?

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

By far. And like in our business, so, you know, our bread and butter is home remodeling companies. Home remodeling is a show and tell business. And so, you know, we're We're sticklers. Like, you know, you're a remodeling company, you need to be showing off your work, kids. Um, so you need to be taking the videos, you need to be taking the photos, you need to be showing off your work on social media. And then, then we, you know, sometimes it's like nursery school. Hey, get the paint can out of the picture. Yeah, get the drop cloth out of there. Maybe turn on some lights. You know, let's get the— let's, let's Show off your best work. And unfortunately, business owners don't think about that. Yeah, you are having to— again, that decision is going to be made before they ever contact you. And so if you are not putting your best foot forward, you know, you almost have to think of it like a dating app. They're going to swipe left or right. You better put your best forward. Because you got about 10 seconds to make that impression. And if you haven't made a good impression, they're moving on.

Yeah. There's a good tool called CompanyCam where you can actually document all your pictures and then you can add this as a widget to your website and you create mini projects. I always tell people like, that's a good starting point. But then, you know, like we have a guy, he does custom closets and wardrobes and he didn't even hire a videographer. He just walked through his projects and showed off his work. And he has like over 11,000-some followers on Instagram. He drives traffic to his website and they already trust him. They've seen his work. And I think a lot of people, they just hide behind stock images or this random thing. And it's like, this is not right.

And there's no excuse for that. I mean, an iPhone today takes ridiculously amazing video and pictures. So really it's, you're just lazy. You know, let's just call it what it is.

Yeah.

You know, go, go buy a canister light, stick it in there, do the walkthrough. There, there's no reason not to put your best foot forward. And, and today's homeowner, they demand it. They expect it. You know, they're, they're trained on HGTV, man. They're, they're, they want the reveal. They, they want to be wowed. And we have to remember, especially in our industry, You are trying to excite the imagination of your prospect. If you want them to be your customer and every remodeler that comes to us, I want the high-end projects. Well, then you better start exciting the imagination of the homeowner.

Yes.

Otherwise you're going to be doing handyman work.

Yeah.

You've got to start exciting people's imagination and showing them I can put together that dream home for you. And the only way you're going to do that is to show social proof. You've got to have the video, you got to have the photos, and then you got to have the testimonials to back that up. And, and, you know, it's one thing to see your videos, another thing when, when Joe and Sally show off their photos and videos behind yours and say, man, we love our new Kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, home addition, whatever it is. And the more you can layer that layer upon layer upon layer, you're unstoppable.

Yeah. Nail in the coffin here. If you're getting price shopped, it's because you haven't built the value outside of it and you're just another commodity. And so what Carl's talking about is how you differentiate your business from the next guy that they're getting a quote from. There's a really good book by Dan Kennedy called Marketing to the Affluent. And in the book, he has this one line which always sticks with me, which is, as you charge more money, people work with you because of who you are, not what you do. And when you demonstrate who you are, they want to justify, I went with this company because they have 10,000 Instagram followers. They were featured on da, da, da, da, da. They were on the billboard that I see on the side. You know that company? Yeah, they're doing our thing. They want to justify why they're working with you and you need to give them the story to justify that reason. And a lot of people hide behind that and then they get price shopped and they get upset about it.

Absolutely. Yeah. And you hit something so key, Phil. People want to work with the best. There's a pride element to that. I want to work with the best. I want to be able to brag about that. This is who did the work on my house. Oh yeah, come on over. You know, when that project's done, I want to invite my friends over. I want to show it off. I want to talk about, yeah, we had so-and-so do my work. Check it out. Now, I mean, there's a pride element to that. When I am envisioning that project, when my imagination's getting excited, I'm already dreaming about who am I going to invite over to show off my dream space to. I've already got my brag list formulating in the back of my head. And that's one of the things I think so many business owners miss, Phil, is they don't put themselves into the mind of the prospect. We sometimes approach marketing too mechanically and we forget that people make buying decisions first with emotion. And then they back it up with logic. And so it always starts with, how do I feel? And then we make logical support decisions to justify why we're doing it. But at the end of the day, it's all about how I feel. And when we start to really get into the emotions behind why people do what they do, we really can unlock a whole lot more success in our marketing efforts.

Yeah, one of the fun things that I recommend to people is go on your phone because more than 50% of people are using their phone and go into your website and see if it takes you longer than 10 or 20 seconds to like figure out how to contact you, figure out how to see the before and after pictures. And that's a really good test to just experience what your prospects would experience. Go to your Google Business Profile and like see what does it feel like, or have your wife do it. God forbid she's going to chew it apart. So, but But test it out, like what you're saying, you know, on mobile in particular, because a lot of people just go on their desktop and they don't think about the mobile experience of what it feels like to work with their people.

And I mean, I laughingly say it, we don't even think about the customer journey. I mean, when I say people start their day on the toilet with their phone in hand, that's just human behavior. Yeah. And we have to think about what is our prospect doing? When are they engaging with us? Yeah, they're at the kids' ballgame.

Exactly.

You know, they're, they're at the dentist office. Yeah, but, but when do they do their heavy lifting? Well, at home, I'm on my laptop. Yeah, you know, so, so I've got to understand when are people engaging me on their phone? When are they engaging me on their laptop? When are they engaging me in other modalities? When are, when are they going to be on YouTube paying attention to me? Yeah, well, when they're in research mode, you know. So I've got to understand, at what points are you going to be engaging with me? Um, you know, before and afters, you're probably going to engage with me on Instagram, you're going to engage with me maybe on Facebook, but when you're in deep research mode You're going to change platforms on me. So I have to understand your psychology if I'm really going to hit you where I need to hit you to connect with you at the deepest levels.

Yeah, I want to throw a couple of things out there for you and you can take it wherever you want. I just want to get your thoughts on it specifically from a remodeling lens. I'm going to give you 3. One, call to actions on a website like, you know, should you have a download a buyer's guide thing or should you have like a design quiz or something? Maybe you have some thoughts on that. Two is online scheduling, like should they use Calendly or something else? And like, is this good? And then three would be like virtual estimating versus onsite. You can take it wherever you want, because I don't know, you know, what all y'all do or what your experience is, but I'm just curious, you know, since I got you here, what do you think?

Sure. Well, my favorite call to action actually is your last one. It's virtual estimating.

Okay.

I love using a virtual estimator as my call-to-action lead generator because what we're finding is today's consumer, especially homeowners, love to take part of that step in that journey themselves and input their own ideas. Yeah, I want to do a kitchen and I want quartz countertop and Yeah, we're going to need to do a little bit of electrical. And yeah, we want these kind of fixtures on the sink. And yeah, we want new appliances. Yeah, we want to go high end on those. And we want a tile backsplash. And so they want to do some of that themselves without having to talk to somebody and then plug all that information in. Give me the email address, the phone number, here's your rough estimate, and if you want firmer numbers, we need to connect to get those firmer numbers. We're finding with most of our clients that that's about a 60 to 65% from the person that, that hits that estimator to the person that submits the information. That's about a 60 to 65% follow-through. Okay. And high quality leads. I mean, the people that do it book, book full appointments.

And so this is going to be like someone goes to their website, they use a tool like LiveSwitch or something, then they click schedule virtual estimate, schedule their estimate, get on the call with someone, give them the information, give them a rough estimate, 65%.

Well, the rough estimate they're, they're doing through an AI estimator. So they already got a— here's your ballpark.

Is that in LiveSwitch or is that something else?

It's something different.

Okay.

So we're using a tool called PriceGuide.

Oh, okay. PriceGuide.ai.

Yeah. PriceGuide.ai.

Yeah.

One of our favorite tools. Now, LiveSwitch is our other favorite tool. Okay. Yeah. You just hit one of our other favorites. So for everyone out there, kudos to the team at LiveSwitch, James and his team. So cheap shameless plugs, we'll put them out here. So LiveSwitch is another great tool that we're having all of our contractors we're introducing to. Where LiveSwitch, they can, you know, text their prospect and say, hey, give me a 360 of your space here.

Yeah.

And have their AI analyze it and send out a quick estimate and say, hey, this looks like a good fit if you'd like to fine-tune those numbers, let's get together. Yeah, so we've used both those, but Price Guide AI, we're finding for, for just inbound traffic, phenomenal, phenomenal lead generator.

So Marcus Sheridan, he's been on the podcast several times, he created priceguide.ai as a good call to action that's unique. And the wardrobe company that I mentioned before, they implemented priceguide.ai, which is the a, you know, a design quiz, you kind of figure out your stuff and then it will give you a basic price guide of what that looks like. So you're saying put those things together.

Absolutely.

Yeah, I like it.

Yeah, it's a, it's a powerful, powerful one-two combination. But here's the thing that I think is critical. Put as many calls to action as you can. People are just—

I agree. I agree.

Just give as many options as you can.

Yeah.

Put a phone number, put a form, put a price guide. Again, multiple modalities.

Yeah.

Older, older people still like the phone call. Some people like form fills. Some people just want to send you a text. Some people want to do the estimate. You just, you don't know who your customer is. So give them options. Give, give them lots of lots of opportunities to contact you. Yeah, but make it clear what you want them to do and make it quick. Yeah, too many, too many websites are just a pretty brochure that never tell you to do something. And, uh, you know, if they have to scroll, if they have to click somewhere, you've already lost the game. Yeah, as soon as they land, they better have an instruction of what to do next.

Yeah, I'll never forget we had a client. He was like, hey, I want to add this form to my homepage right below the hero image. And I was like, oh cool, yeah, let's add it. And it was like, I want the name, email, phone number, and their zip code or something like that. I'm like, okay, cool. Like, sounds like a contact form. And he's like, no, but I want it horizontal, like right across. And I wanted to say get a quote in 7 seconds. It only takes 7 seconds. I was like, I like it. It's his best producing form that he could get. And it's like Instead of going to contact, fill out this form. It's the exact same form, it's just laid out a little different with the different words on it and it crushes it. And now we like literally implement this on a lot of businesses because to your point, it's not about too many call to actions. It's, this kind of ties it together from what you said. These people are doing their research before they hit your website. They are going to read your reviews, they're looking at all our stuff. Then they're saying, I want to go talk to this company. Now when they go to your website, they want to verify that you're legit. They don't want stock photos and all this stuff. And then they want to turn into a customer within like 10 seconds. And you got to make it easy for them. So it's kind of like full circle, like you're preparing them on the front side. And then when they come to your website, you got to convert them as well. So it's good.

We've got to make it easy. And that's, I see too many contractors making it hard. Like you have made it too complicated. People are here, get them in the door.

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. I want to throw a couple of things else out there. What about like email marketing or retargeting or cross-selling? Because like remodels is like bigger stuff and people might be like, that's not good, but there might be some use cases for that that you guys do or have done. And then any other like partnerships, like, you know, coaching them on that, like partnering with other companies or something, just throwing out.

Yeah, I think, I think all of those are really important pieces. Email marketing has not died. It hasn't gone away. That the— yeah, there's two sayings that are timeless. The money is in the list. That's still true. The fortune is in the follow-up. That's still true. Especially when you're dealing with remodeling, you're dealing with larger projects, larger dollar amounts. And so sometimes your sales cycle is a lot longer. Yes. And, you know, the person that reached out to you 2 years ago may not be ready financially to pull the trigger. For another 2 years. And if you let them go cold, you've lost them.

Yeah.

So it's important to, to use again every tool at your disposal. Use your email, use your retargeting, always just stay present in people's faces. Yeah. Um, you know, and even in our business, I mean, our, our sales cycle sometimes are 18 months, 2 years. Um, you know, I had, uh, I actually closed a client yesterday met him 2 years ago and he says, here's the reason, here's the reason I stayed with you. You sent me 2 books and they're on my desk. Otherwise I would have just started calling people.

Yeah.

So I just stayed in his face and he's on my email list. He gets a webinar invite every month. Yeah. We just have to stay with people through their buying cycle. And so we've got to use every tool at our disposal. So, you know, with our email, send value, have a reason to contact people, you know, know your audience, know what they respond to, know what it is that they need. And then partnerships is something you brought up that's so important, Phil, and so many business owners miss this. Get in front of other people's audiences. There are so many good partnerships out there, related service companies where you can joint venture together, get in front of each other's audiences, and really bring a lot of value to your clients. So we, we both mentioned James here with LiveSwitch. I met James and I thought, man, that is the coolest technology in the world. And so we went to our entire client base and said we at least want to put this in front of you because it's going to give you an edge over your competitors. Um, we, we want you to have that edge. This is new technology that is going to give you an advantage and it's going to set you apart. Yeah, just a, just a win-win all around. Yeah, you know, for us and for our clients. And so, you know, why wouldn't you? Um, and it just gives you The opportunity, number one, to be an innovator. It makes you valuable to the people you serve, but then it's opening up just new opportunities for you to get in front of other people's audiences. And, you know, there's just a— especially if you're, you're new and you're starting out building, sometimes the biggest breakthrough for you is one joint venture away. Yeah, it's just finding the right partnership. Person that just becomes a referral source for you and just sends you more business than any other marketing channel you have.

Yeah, realtors, interior designers, painters. I mean, there's so many options. I do want to call one thing out though, Carl, because this is a very important point. We both do marketing, right? And like, we're on here talking, you know, adding value to the world. If you are listening to this and your marketing company doesn't do the things themselves that they're telling you to do, like what you just said, an email every single month, like you should be doing a newsletter, creating content, having downloadable things, doing webinars, adding value. Like if they're not doing the things that they're telling you to do, what are we doing? Like, it's like the guy that he does lawn care and he has a bad lawn. So I just want to call that out. They're like, you're telling people to do this, but then you also are doing it in your own business. So we, you know, that it works and you're also helping people do it. So it's good. Like this is what you should look for in a marketing company.

Yeah, they need to be eating their own dog food.

Yeah, exactly. They need to have some Google reviews. They need to, you know, have a website you can actually navigate on. So, um, I like it, man. Well, I appreciate you hopping on today. Where should people go to learn more about you, uh, get some information about your company?

Yeah, go to remodelingmarketingteam.com, and, uh, from there you'll find the podcast, you'll find the YouTube channel, you'll find the books, uh, pretty much anything you want to find is there. And, uh, Phil, great having you on, and, uh, good to be with you and share some ideas.

Yeah, thanks so much, Carl. Appreciate you, man. Have a great day.

Hey, you