Mastering Digital Marketing for the Trades with Evan Hoffman and Thaddeus Tondu
In the virtual Lemonade Stand, Crystal and Emily are joined by Evan Hoffman and Thaddeus Tondu from On Purpose Media! They discuss navigating your digital strategy, emphasizing accountability, and encouraging transparency with your digital provider.
0:07 - Mastering Digital Marketing for Home Services
12:17 - Optimizing PPC for Contractors
17:12 - Marketing Operations and Budget Strategies
26:18 - Strategies for Business Growth
31:31 - Struggles and Importance of Transparency
If you would like to learn more about On Purpose Media, be sure to check out their website and listen to their podcast, HVAC Success Secrets: Revealed!
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We’ll see you next time, Lemon Heads!
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Speaker 2: 0:07
what's up, lemon heads? Welcome back to another episode of from the yellow chair. I'm emily and I'm crystal, and today we're going to be diving into mastering digital marketing for home service companies, paid ads versions, and we got the guys from On Purpose Media here with us.
Speaker 3: 0:24
Y'all know listeners, y'all hate PPC as much as the rest of us. You dislike it, but really I think it's just a bad case of like what I think I don't like about PPC. So we're really going to dig in. We're going to get down to some basics and then go a little bit deeper than that. I can't wait to sip some lemonade. Let's do it All right. So it looks like we have our virtual guest Now. Are y'all in the same place? Are each of you in?
Speaker 1: 0:58
the same place. No, we're about a three hour drive apart from each other.
Speaker 3: 1:01
Oh, Emily and I are three second walk from each other.
Speaker 1: 1:04
I mean in our, in our virtual office, cause our, our team is full of remote Like we're. We're all over the place. We actually have a virtual office and it's probably about three seconds for me to click to go to Evan's office.
Speaker 3: 1:15
Oh, that's fun, that's fun. Awesome, awesome. Well, listen, we're really excited to have these two guys. Y'all probably know them those of you that are in the podcast world of HVAC and plumbing for contractors so I want you guys to tell us a little bit about who you are and why anybody should listen to you too.
Speaker 1: 1:34
Well, for my beautiful face is the only reason that they should listen to us, and I guess Evan's wisdom would probably help out.
Speaker 2: 1:43
Well, so if you're watching this. If you're watching on youtube, you'll see that thaddeus has changed his now on on his screen to thaddeus. But uh, he was. I am awesome that was in all caps.
Speaker 1: 1:53
In all caps, yes yes, make it clear yeah, yeah, I mean.
Speaker 1: 1:59
So one of the things that we uh, so we have on purpose media is our marketing agency, our podcast hfac success secrets. On Purpose Media is our marketing agency, our podcast HVAC Success Secrets Revealed. And when we started our marketing company, one of the reasons that we had a big frustration with digital marketing companies, we were in the print side of things before. We were chatting with business owners from all different types of niches and there are always some level of frustration, and there were some that had great things to say about the digital marketing company. But by and large, it was a lot of frustration because there was a lack of honesty and transparency in the marketing companies and what they do, and so we're like screw it, let's just go for it and start a marketing company based off of honesty and transparency. And that's really where it came from in the marketing space or agency space itself.
Speaker 2: 2:45
I love y'all's name on purpose media and like I feel like there's like some story or even just some like mission and stuff behind that. Can y'all tell us a little bit more, like about the name or how y'all develop that or like this is it? This is how we're going to go to market.
Speaker 1: 3:01
Yeah, we were going back and forth on what a good name would be. We didn't even really know, Um, I mean, it was our first kick of the can of running our own business and, um, we were just throwing around a whole bunch of different ideas. And Evan talked about one of his hold co. Uh, they have a holding co and it's on purpose enterprises and I'm like, oh, on purpose, that sounds really good. I think we can build around that. Can we take it?
Speaker 1: 3:25
He's like yeah, sure, he's like it's different than on purpose media, and so we're like you know, we can be off self and on purpose, and so when we're, when we're not thinking about ourselves and we're thinking about others, that's what off self and on purpose means. When you got a bigger vision, a bigger brand, a bigger want, a bigger care, a bigger impact, whatever those things are in relating to, I say, our core values, and one of them is purpose-driven. Right, Are you bigger? Are you part of something that's bigger than yourself? And when you're part of something that's bigger than yourself, now that's where you can move the needle and that's where you can have great success.
Speaker 3: 3:58
No, absolutely. Yeah, there's a lot to say, you know for for companies. I, you know. Like people say all the time like why don't y'all come up with lemon seed? I'm like I didn't, emily did and I let her take full credit when she's with me. When she's not with me, I'm like oh, thank you very much, but you know what it does, is it just? It makes people understand like, oh, y'all are like this is, this is very memorable and we're like good because we're a branding company, like a lot of what we do.
Speaker 3: 4:31
So I know that we've shared with you guys, just in passing, we see you guys a lot of shows and things like that how frustrated we become for our clients around their paid ads strategy. So you know, we've talked to several people who know a lot about SEO and search engine optimization, and so today's episode we were trying to focus on, like this tangled web of what I call PPC, Cause I have clients that are $2 million spending $30,000 a month, clients that are $30 million spending $2,500 a month. What is the deal with actual pay-per-click? Like how does it work? Like, give us a little basic rundown.
Speaker 4: 5:03
Well, I mean from a basic level.
Speaker 4: 5:04
It's it's bidding on keywords that are being searched within the Google platform.
Speaker 4: 5:10
You can run it on Bing as well, or Dark Go or any of the search platforms, but it's it's bidding to try and get in that top spot, which the data shows from different software companies, that about 11 to 12 percent of people are clicking in the paid ad section.
Speaker 4: 5:26
So when they're searching for AC repair near me or plumber near me or electrician near me, about 12% of those clicks are going to the ad section itself. The thing that I like to paint the picture of with clients when we're talking to them is one you want to own the SERP or the search engine result page, right. So the local service ads, the paid ads, the Google map pack and then the organic rankings down below. If you're not a number one in all of those spots, but you are showing up in every one of those spots, what is the likelihood that someone is going to click on you when they're consistently seeing your name? I would like to think those results consistently go up right, and so being able to dominate that page in your area is going to be incredibly important, and the paid ads part is a part of that. The other part is looking at well, what is the psychology of someone who's clicking on an ad? Well, they're too lazy to scroll down the page.
Speaker 2: 6:24
Imagine that.
Speaker 4: 6:26
Right, and so what type of a buyer profile is that? Well, that's someone who's not wanting to do the research. They just want someone who can solve their problem now.
Speaker 3: 6:35
Quickly.
Speaker 4: 6:36
Right, and so is it worth it to spend a little bit more to get that lead in the door? In a lot of cases it's yes. But something else that we can talk about as we go through this is looking at well, does it make sense based on the business units that you have and how efficient you are at booking those jobs, how efficient you are at selling on those jobs, et cetera. So we can get You'll hear me say this a lot too.
Speaker 3: 6:59
Like you know, we are, this is a partnership. So, like you, you really can't just give things to vendors. So, you know, lemon Seed is like a marketing coach we sit in between the contractor and their vendor partners and we help facilitate their branding and all of those pieces. So a lot of times we deal with multiple digital vendors multiple, multiple digital vendors and they all have a different style, but one of the biggest common factors is lack of contractor engagement with the vendor. So a lot of times I'm like so how is this X amount performing for you? And they're like oh, they try to make me get on a meeting, but I hate meetings and I don't really know what to tell them. But it doesn't work. I was like, yeah, so that's not fair because they're using best practices but they don't know the intricacies. Like you were down to technicians, you couldn't answer the phone you were down.
Speaker 2: 7:53
Csrs. All of those things are very important to the overall success. Right Simple as they think hey, I can just throw more money on this, even if I don't want to. But just like it must not be enough spend. But you're right, you got to get to the core of the problem. It doesn't matter how much money you're spending if you can't operationally execute on these.
Speaker 1: 8:03
These leads Well and you think about the consumer experience that's going to go through if the person clicking on that paid ad, as Evan had mentioned, well, they're too lazy to scroll to the bottom, they don't really want to do the research. So, when they go to your website or landing page, if you're just sending traffic to your routine website but it's not designed to speak to their pain point, it's designed for SEO, it's designed for Google, okay Well, is that person actually going to convert on that page, right? The other part, too, is when, now, if they, if they call, what's the experience like when they land on there? What's the operational aspect?
Speaker 1: 8:40
of things you know are you are you able to answer the phone right away? Because if you're not able to answer the phone right away, you're like right, when they call, they're gone, they're moving on to somebody else. It's hot outside. They want their air conditioner fixed right. It's cold in Canada. They want their furnace back on.
Speaker 3: 8:55
One day I told one of my clients I said, gosh, from 11 to like one 30, like anybody that calls during that time, like you're not booking them. I don't know what's going on. He's like, yeah, my answering service. I was like wait time out, your answering service. He's like yeah, my phone's roll from and I'm like number one that's ridiculous. And number two you got two problems. Number one you got somebody taking advantage of a lunch hour and, second of all, you got a answering service that is either they don't understand what their why is like why they are answering the phone, or there's some sort of other issue. And then also also on your Google local services, like you don't answer the phone. Like why None of these calls are booked from the weekend? Yeah, we don't answer the phones on the weekend. It all goes to an answering service or to an answering machine or to a voicemail and I'm like, ok, what? Like we're just, we're just paying for stuff, but we're not actually going to do anything with it. And then we're like this doesn't work and I'm like that is a lie. It's a lie, it's it. And what it is is because we don't want to give, we don't. Number one, let me. Let me defend contractors. We don't know what to do sometimes, so we just automatically assume that it's y'all's fault or my vendor's fault. And so I will.
Speaker 3: 10:03
The first question I say they'll say well, I'm spending like $10,000 a month and I'm just not getting anything for it. And I'm saying how do you know that? How are you measuring? Get anything for it? What's that mean? And odds are, I'm going to get a collection of well, my service, titan, doesn't show any revenue. Or they're going to say, well, just, nobody ever says I was like, yeah, so have you ever told someone? Hey, I'm calling your company because of a pay-per-click ad. Is that what you say? No, okay, so the rest of the world doesn't either. So they probably said Google or something. And so they're like oh.
Speaker 3: 10:37
And then, before we know it, I told Emily, like I tell this to my clients too we try to be like foster parents. Our goal is unification, right, Our goal is to unify the partner, the contractor, vendor relationship, not destroy it. So I'm not here to destroy a digital company. I'm here to figure out what they need from us as the contractor to make our relationship better. And if everybody started approaching it that way don't get me wrong. I mean, sometimes I'm like okay, this, this person, these people aren't prepared for the HVAC industry. That's normally how I get my way around saying these people are terrible. It's like they're not really suited for our industry. Yeah, a lot of times it's really because there's just zero communication, because the expectations were not set clearly up front a lot of times, and I think contractors are bad about like feeding off each other.
Speaker 2: 11:25
Like they get one little horror story and that horror story like dives into this much bigger monster and they just share and everyone like hones in on that negative aspect of it and they get so scared and distrusting of it and stuff, and so we see that a lot. But so how do you guys like develop your strategies, like how would you coach your clients?
Speaker 4: 11:49
Like hey, here's how we're going to have a successful digital marketing approach like what does that look like with you guys? Well, I think one of the things is is making them aware, first and foremost, because and this is something that both of you touched on is you don't know what, you don't know right, and and people think that ignorance is bliss, and I've said this time and time and again ignorance is not bliss, ignorance is pain.
Speaker 3: 12:05
Ignorance is expensive.
Speaker 4: 12:07
It's incredibly expensive Right and especially when it comes to PPC and ads. Like it's so easy to lose your shirt over. Ppc because it's expensive.
Speaker 3: 12:17
Yeah. So I have a client that's in what I would call a metro, not a major metro market, but they're near the Austin area and we were talking to them and they rebranded and we were just visiting and she said you know what? She said I'm spending about $20,000 a month in pay-per-click. And I was like, okay, she's what? Four or $5 million contractor and plumbing only too. So I mean, not, not really, that's not a super small plumbing shop, right? Okay? So in my mind I was like man, you hate to really rock a boat because something got them to be whatever $4 million plumbing shop. So I'm like man, I really hate to rock the boat.
Speaker 3: 12:54
But the more and more I dug into it, the directional read off of their actual ROI was extremely hard to align. Because I was like man, how much of this is just so much exposure, the homeowner seeing so much of the ads that they then go direct search Like there's a lot to say there. So she's like I'm just I don't know that. I can see this. I think I'm way overspending and she might be, but we don't have near the data that we need to really say if that's true or not, and you can't really go back in time either. So now you have to start measuring. Like it's a hard pill to swallow, sometimes, like have I been a fool for two years? Like way overspending.
Speaker 4: 13:33
But then the same day. To spend that much, to spend 50, like if you had a 10% budget for marketing you know that's $400,000. And she's spending $240,000 a year on PPC. Yes, like that is an incredibly large percentage no-transcript.
Speaker 1: 13:57
But the other part, if it's working, she's growing right, oh, absolutely.
Speaker 3: 14:00
And that was the struggle. Like man, it is like we're hurting over here, so you know. And then on the same day, like Emily and I will talk to a client that they're like man, I'm just way overspending. And I'm like, oh gosh, this client's fixing to tell me. And they're like I'm spending at least $800 a month in PPC and I'm it's a Georgia. Like you're not $800 was. Two people looked towards your ad Like that's nothing you know. And so just understanding this is what I want contractors to understand. I use this analogy a lot. I don't know how old y'all are. Emily smells like the junior high. She's young.
Speaker 1: 14:36
Gen Z-er.
Speaker 3: 14:39
No, I'm a millennial, I'm just old.
Speaker 1: 14:41
No, I'm a millennial.
Speaker 3: 14:42
I'm just old. No, I was born in the 90s, so that hurts Crystal's heart.
Speaker 1: 14:48
I was born in the 80s.
Speaker 3: 14:50
Me too, me too. So like y'all know the show MacGyver. So MacGyver was not an expert at anything, right, so like, but he always was able to fix things because he knew enough about a lot of things to make good decisions. So I always try to tell people, like digital is one of those things. Number one you have to trust the partner that you're with. You have to trust that what they're doing it has your best interest. But you also have to participate in the sense of man.
Speaker 3: 15:15
It's going to be tumultuous, like we're going to have months that we really win, months that we don't win as much. And when demand is down, like who do we blame for that? No one, but like the people of our market, we can't blame a vendor when demand is down. But I will say that vendors have gotten really good about being like oh, demand, it's just a demand issue, and I'm like no other people were having demand. So it was 116 degrees outside in Texas, so there was demand. We just weren't situated correctly. So let's back it up, you know. So I try to tell contractors, like, just learn enough to where you can have good conversations you don't actually have to go buy the ad placement yourself, you know and optimize it. You know.
Speaker 1: 15:57
Well, and that's exactly it. You need to know enough to have a conversation, but you don't know how to execute and do it. If you're to send me into a Google Ads account, for example, I know a very basic, limited amount of Google Ads. We run a marketing agency that does Google Ads. Send Evan into a Google Ads account nuanced details, but I can have a conversation. I'll probably be like the equivalent of what a business owner should know when it comes to PPC. But the thing that you mentioned demanded down, I want to. Since we're on the topic of PPC, I want to. I want to give two little things that I wrote down.
Speaker 1: 16:34
One in this goes back to earlier. You know, on the phone, when you kind of briefly mentioned how did you hear about us? And some people ask that question, that is, michael torbay was on our podcast and he went off the chains on this, this comment. A lot of people, when somebody calls in, first thing they say is oh, how'd you hear about us? Well, my air conditioner is broken, um, and you're concerned about your marketing. Why, like? No, I just want you to solve my problem. It's okay if you ask that question question maybe at the end of the call, but to your point, they're just going to say Google, because they don't actually remember. Or they might say radio or billboard, even though you don't know on radio or billboard ever. Consumers just don't understand that.
Speaker 1: 17:12
But the other thing to do when demand is down, now, if your job board is potentially full, let's say, and somebody calls in, this could just be anything, not just PPC related. Somebody calls in and you know that you can't get to that repair call today or tomorrow because your boards are full. That's okay. Grab their information first before you tell them that the board is full. Now, when you have their name, their phone number, all of their information, well, you might not book them because, well, your board's full, but now you can follow up with them later. Now they're in your ecosystem, now you're in your system. So when it comes to shoulder season, when it's slower, guess what? You've got a bigger leads database to be able to drum up demand yourself.
Speaker 3: 17:50
Yes, yes, don't sleep on. Like you know, I tell everybody you know operations the three-legged stool thing like Ben Stark from GoTime that operations the three-legged stool thing like Ben Stark from GoTime. That's the first time I'd really ever heard it put that way. And then I use a couple of different analogies. But you know, if operate marketing can be pumping along really good and your operations suck, and it's over with, and on the other side too, like you can have really good operations but demand hit you and some weak marketing. Or I mean we had a client that lost like two very important members of their team just to like, just to me, to just butting of heads, and all of a sudden their marketing was tanking. Well, by the time they called Lemon Seed, it was so deep in the weeds that like we literally had to scrap everything and start over because their operations were chucking along. Like they had this great marketing plan.
Speaker 3: 18:39
Well, these marketing people left and they really didn't make sure that there was loose ends tied up anything for the next month. So they went from like literally going a hundred miles an hour with all these things to like hitting a brick wall and I was like man, your operations now are pumping great. This is literally a marketing problem, like you're getting no leads, but most of the time it's not a lead situation, it's an operational issue. I mean, on the backside of that, it's that just being priced correctly and things like that are affecting true growth. So really, most of the time, there's so much more to saying my advertising is not working, my PPC is not working.
Speaker 3: 19:16
I'm like man, that is an onion that we just got to start peeling back because it could be so many things. But you're right, like CSRs really need to be really good at just get the information and get the call book, the call. Then we'll worry about the intricacies of each in particular thing. But you know and I have a client right now that really wants to come on board, but they don't have a CRM and I'm like I just feel like we're going to be throwing money in the wind and like just praying it lands somewhere, like we have no way. They don't want to invest in call rail, they don't want to invest in things. And I'm like man, you're literally, literally.
Speaker 2: 19:50
We're like find an airplane with our eyes covered, like just seeing if we can not hit something as soon as everyone here on the call their eyes got real big, Like you only have CRM.
Speaker 3: 20:03
I mean, like, what are you? So I literally said, hey, I really want you to be a limited client. But what are you using? Like, I just use QuickBooks. I'm like, yeah, so QuickBooks is a finance software, sir. It's not a software that, like, is meant to mine your data. I could go on and on about things like that, but it comes down to marketing is not a bandaid for bad operations. If you think you have problems now, make the phone ring more and really watch your problems escalate. And if you're not priced fairly, you're going to lose more money, you're going to lose it faster. But they don't really grasp that. So tell me about budgets. I know that's a tricky situation. Everybody kind of tiptoes around it. But you know, let's say you're in a rural market, so not a Metro, not a Phoenix, dallas, houston type area, but just a simple rural area. Have y'all, do y'all have some advice on spend, or at least a way that y'all try to look at what you should spend?
Speaker 4: 20:59
It kind of comes back to demand right, how many calls are you generating off of the marketing that you're currently doing, and what is it that we need to fill the gap between where you are and where you want to go? And then that's how we'll dictate where the budget needs to be. But the other component of it too, is what type of calls are we looking to get right, whether that's a maintenance and a service call. Are you looking for sales calls? Are you looking for demand calls? And then how much capacity do you have on those jobs? And, coming back to what I said earlier, what are your efficiencies around that job type and that business unit? Because if we get into service tight and we start pulling reports on what your booking rate is on a demand call and if that number is 30% less than what it is on a tune-up call, well maybe we don't want to spend there Because you're not able to get those jobs on your job board.
Speaker 4: 21:55
We had one client where their repair average ticket was $300. Their repair average ticket was $300. Well, when you're in San Antonio and the average CPC in the summer you're looking at a hundred, 150, $200. A click, not a conversion, not a call, a click. You know it doesn't make sense to run that job type for them, because they weren't turning over leads. They were. They had a great technician who was masterful at repairs and he didn't want to sell.
Speaker 4: 22:24
Well, that doesn't translate to running a lot of repair calls, vice versa. On the flip side of that, though, they had a tune-up technician whose child suffered from asthma, so, big believer in IAQ equipment, they could sell it without even trying. Why? Because they told their story and they talked about it and they could relate to people. So they had a $2,400 average ticket on maintenance calls. So we went after that all day long, and those calls tended to be a little bit cheaper. So we were getting a better ROI, a better return for the client. They were happier. We were able to fill up their job board the way that they wanted and generated more revenue out of the dollars that they had to spend.
Speaker 2: 23:07
But it had to be like an analysis and like self-reflection of like, well, I just want the phone ring. You know that could be a blanket. It's like any call is a good call, but like what you're saying is like you have to one. Know your numbers, what are you looking for that you can determine what that gap is, to develop your budget, what type of call? And so it takes a lot of self-reflection. I know it's kind of like contractors are like is it the chicken or the egg? Like, do I have to do the marketing first so I can get the calls? Or I have to have some calls to know what I'm looking at, what I'm missing here, things like that. But yeah, it definitely takes that conversation and that coaching to help guide them and educate them.
Speaker 2: 23:45
Here's how we're doing it. Here's why I mean our.
Speaker 4: 23:47
Our goal is to get them to spend less, not more.
Speaker 3: 23:50
Yeah.
Speaker 4: 23:50
Right. How can we get more through the door for less?
Speaker 3: 23:53
When we always start, like we know, at Limit Seed, we're building out. We're building out quarters at a time, for the most part like quarterly promotions, around the replacement of a heating and air conditioning or plumbing system, maintenance and then service and repair. So what can we do to actually be the one someone picks for service and repair, ieq and then any other additional services, like if you're a dryer, vent cleaning or generators or whatever? So we're trying to run all four of those because, man, if we all of a sudden let me get a hold of a good lead magnet for replacement and I'm going to come for like, cut everything else because I'm going to make so much more money off of those, and it's just.
Speaker 3: 24:28
Again, it goes back to the importance of an active, engaged relationship with your digital partner and making the meetings and communicating with those things super well. So here's another question that I get a lot. So if they were going to start, let's say, they didn't have a large advertising budget, and so they they invested in a website with good SEO. You know they were starting simple and then they're like, well, when, when should I do paid ads? That's a loaded question.
Speaker 4: 24:59
Yeah, I mean it's dependent. Yeah, that's just it. You're going to get a marketer's favorite answer, which is it depends.
Speaker 3: 25:06
Yes, yes.
Speaker 4: 25:07
Right, it's our go-to for everything it depends on number one.
Speaker 3: 25:15
Let's go back to market size, right? So I tell everybody, if you're a brand new, fresh company starting off in Phoenix, you probably can't really even not only are you not even playing in the basketball game, I don't even think you can afford to park in the parking lot at the arena of the basketball game. So, like what should someone do? So if they've got a website, they're starting SEO, what should they do for immediate lead capturing like a PPC?
Speaker 1: 25:39
I mean it depends if they have budget coming into or not. Have you? Do you have investors behind you? Do you have? Do you have previous experience running the business or not? Right, if you're coming in from having been a general manager at a business for 10 years and now you've got backers and financial backing to be able to hit the ground running and go hard, well, you know what. You could probably spend money on PPC because now you have the financial backing, plus you have the acumen to back it up. If you're brand new and you're green, you're a tech and you turned into a business owner because you want to run your own business, well, you probably don't have the financial backing, you might not necessarily have the experience, and so PPC might not be the right fit for you at that moment in time until you shore up your operationals.
Speaker 3: 26:18
So, emily, and so Emily and I talk about this. I call it the little like lemon seed cocktail of success. So I'm like SEO. We got to have a glass to put this in, okay. So like, if you don't have a website, that's good SEO, that looks good. Everything else is going to struggle. So the next thing that I tried to get was, like you got to get verified for Google local service ads, because I felt like Google local service ads was Google's attempt at like evening the playing field a little bit more. Like it's super hard to really be totally out of the kicked out. You know, as long as you stay relevant, you should show up. And then PPC is like literally just the garnish, like just not piece on top, and so not always can we add garnish yet Like we might need to sit over here until we get some revenue, because I just I see people all the time Like well, I'm putting $350 towards PPC and I'm like man, you might as well burn that $350 up with a ladder.
Speaker 1: 27:09
Like it's not even worth it, you know here's a better use of your $350 is go print off a whole bunch of door knockers and flyers with a, with a tune-up offer. If you're good at tune-ups or whatever your offer is, and every time you're at somebody's house, well, do you go drop those five to the left, five to the right and five across the street doing the cloverleaf pattern from that. Or do you have more time than you have money? Well, if you've got more time than you have money, well then, guess what? Go print off even more of those and just go repetition and frequency on that. So again, if you're going to do jobs in that area, well then, maybe go back to that same area and go again another month to be able to continue to hit something with an offer that is good for that.
Speaker 1: 27:49
One offer that's actually good in terms of the aspect of things is not necessarily offering a specific tune-up. But hey, we were just at your neighbor's house. Let us know if you see any dirt or debris or anything on your area, we'll come back, we'll fix it for you, right? And so now you're not actually selling anything, you're just giving them something that is a food for thought, like, hey, that company was caring, wow.
Speaker 3: 28:11
Yes, like they were so nice, they made sure that no trash blew in my yard. I mean, I agree. So you know we push a lot of like community things. So the day I got this contractor he's a 20-year-old company, he's going to do about $3 million he calls and he's like man for so long I've just kind of coasted. $3 million was a good number for me. I was drawing a good salary, my team was happy, we really weren't pushing the envelope. Now I've really inspired, I really want to hit the gas. I said you have done everything that you need to do to just be a good person, a good business owner. Now this is where we separate the men from the boys, because we are now going to complicate, we're going to be it's going to feel expensive, because we've garnered everything that we can get from doing natural community driven referral things.
Speaker 3: 29:00
And I use I tell a story all the time. Why do most multi-level marketing things fail? Well, because they run out of friends and family to harass, to sell products to. So once you've sold to your friends and family, now you've got to really start working hard, and that working hard starts looking different. And so I'm telling everybody like I'm here for you, like we are going to come along beside you and give you tons of ideas, but when you hit the gas, it's a whole different kind of moving forward, because all of a sudden you're like man, I'm spending this money and I can't see it. And I'm like well, some of this is a marathon strategy. Right, Like SEO, it's a marathon approach, like we're. It's long-term. Short-term sprints like cloverleafing these houses with yard signs and things like that, but by the time I tell them that they're like okay, I'm overwhelmed. That's part of it.
Speaker 2: 29:47
They just don't think it's cool and flashy enough to do door hangers or yard signs or something like that, and then like so. Then there's like I just want to do anything and you're like please just do something.
Speaker 3: 29:57
When I tell you another thing, that's really like firing me up lately. The other day. I get this again, two or three year old contractor doing like right at a million dollars. I'm like, oh my gosh, you've done great, blah, blah, blah. He's like, yeah, but I've got to get on this rehash stuff. Like I'm watching all these people and they're making money. And I was like, yeah, so you understand that that is their database. How many people are in your database right now? Oh, I probably have two or 300. Yeah, so that is one campaign for one month and you're done. You need to have like 5,000, 2,000 or else there's nothing to go to. Like you're going to a well, that's dry.
Speaker 3: 30:32
And I'm like, man, social media messes people up. They live the life of like look what they're doing, I should do that. So like, let me come spend $10,000 in PPC. I'm like, sir, you don't even have a brand. Like the name of the company is still your name. Like we need to do some more work, you know. And they're just following like anyone and everyone that's out there, and like the newest and latest and greatest.
Speaker 3: 30:57
And when my brother was running McWilliams and said I used to be like, so like, oh, let me investigate that. What is that? Let me. And I would get frustrated with Trey because he wouldn't do the new things very quickly and he was like, listen, I'm going to let these other people jump and if any of them come back up to the top and don't drown in it, then I'll look at it. But you gotta going to be a tester of some of this stuff. And I remember the first time he jumped on Rilla, when Rilla first came out, I was shocked. I was like I cannot believe that he did it within the first 15 years of their life, because he is a big believer. Like you, jump into some of these relationships with these different vendors that are popping up here and there and they fail. And you fail sometimes because you've put so much trust into them. So rehashing is also a struggle, I think.
Speaker 4: 31:46
Yeah, no, I mean any type of advice that you see online is a struggle and, as Thad put in the private chat, the gurus that are out there and the things that they profess. But we had one of our clients reach out to us and say that we weren't doing our job because he should have 500 pages on his website was what someone told him and I said 500 pages of what he's like I don't know, I just need 500 pages. I was like, well, we can just put 500 pages of fluff if you really want, but at the end of the day, go look at your keywords that you're ranking for and he's in a small town, right, kind of what we referenced earlier in terms of depending on the market, that you're in small town, very few people and he was ranking number one for every keyword possible that that he could rank for in like a god, oh gosh, what was it? That? Like a 30 ish mile radius, something like that. Yeah, like it's obnoxious, how well he's doing right to an extent.
Speaker 4: 32:41
And, um, yeah, to to take blind advice from someone just doesn't make sense. And you know, I gave a talk a couple weeks ago at a service titan marketing summit and I had someone come up and ask about a strategy that I talked about in the the message and I was like, well, hold on, before you go and execute on that, let's take a look at how you're showing up. And I pulled up his search grids on. It was a Google Maps strategy and I was like you don't need it, you're good, don't do it, it's just going to be extra work. You don't need it. You're showing up. Well, you're working like it's working already. What you're doing? Just keep doing what you're doing. Coming back to your point from earlier, crystal, too, if you don't rely on the data that exists, whether that's within your CRM, if you have it, or at least using some of the tools that exist to see how you're showing up online in order to make decisions, you're just doing it blindly and a lot of those end up hurting you versus helping you.
Speaker 3: 33:35
Yeah.
Speaker 2: 33:36
I mean those people that just comment like well, so-and-so, said like will drive us absolutely bonkers. We've ran into this a few times. Recently we helped a client with a rebrand. I asked my business coach. My business coach said this I'm like, your business coach ain't ever seen anything branding your business coach probably hasn't even ran a business.
Speaker 2: 34:02
Let me see his P&Ls Getting out the noise and being able to trust experts and what they say, and either being willing to sit still so, like you said, like hey, you don't need to do anything else, or hey, here's where we hit the gas. This way, this method and now this timing, it just takes so much. You got to get rid of the noise, cut out the fluff and find those experts that you can trust them and build that relationship. Show up to the meetings, look at the dashboard, seek to understand the dashboard so that you can have these conversations with them.
Speaker 4: 34:34
Absolutely. But even when you have an expert, you still have to ask yourselves how does this apply to me? You know that I had some rules before I gave my message, and the second rule was don't believe a word I say, because I'm only speaking from one person's perspective, and that's me. Wow, I can make that off of my data and the data that I have of all of our clients, but that doesn't apply to your specific business, and that's what we need to take a look at before you make changes.
Speaker 3: 35:02
I know that on purpose, like you guys have this commitment to transparency and like this purpose driven strategy kind of that you've talked about. Like what is transparency Like when you guys say that what does that mean exactly to a contractor, that just a basic good old contractor? What does that mean? Transparency from a digital vendor?
Speaker 4: 35:16
It means you own your shit. Yeah Right, I don't care if it's your Google ads account, your LSA, your GMB, your domain, your website, like you need to own all of it. It's yours. We're going to work on it, we're going to work within it, but it's yours and we want you to own that asset. At the end of the day, it also means that we're going to pop the hood whenever we need to right.
Speaker 4: 35:42
If you want to ask questions about what's going on in your Google Ads account, we'll show you. We show clients where the change history is in Google Ads, so you can see if we've been working in your account or not. Right? Everyone can access that. As long as you have read-only access into your Google Ads account because I know some marketers. They don't want you to make changes in it and so they'll give you read only access to it you can still see what the change history is, so you can see how active your marketing company is in there. Did they set it and forget it, or are they actively going in there and still marking off negative keywords that you shouldn't be showing up for? Adding adding new keywords, testing different ad groups, testing different ad sets, different landing pages, etc. Are they trying to get better and better results?
Speaker 1: 36:30
here's the other part of that too. Is that if we fuck up I mean, I don't actually know if we can swear on your show, but I hope we can um, I asked a question in the private chat and you just went, lol, so but like, here's the thing is, if we, if we fuck up, we're gonna own it right. We own our mistakes and we're not gonna hide behind some fluffy answer that most marketers would we're like nope, no, that's our bad, that's on us right we messed up and we own it well and you know something like lemon seed lives by this too.
Speaker 3: 36:57
Like listen, we're so customized like every single client that we talk to like we don't. We have some guideline templates that we use, like for best practices, but when we're talking to a client with a mascot that's a dog and their colors are blue and yellow and they're in a Metro market and they they're going to do they have $400,000 budget. That's much different than this small rural guy who doesn't have a mask. You know, our strategies are so different and we miss things, we, we miss a deadline or we do like I'm the first one, like, almost to a fault, to be like man. I am so sorry, we messed that up. Let me go back. Here's your money back for this. Let us fix this and do this.
Speaker 3: 37:33
We are all like, if anything, we overcompensate sometimes and on the other side of that, like I'm dealing with some vendors right now and I'm like dude, like just say you know what? I don't know what happened right here. Let us look back, let us do this. But instead, like man, we grab contractors by their balls for a lot for me to say and we just hang on tight Like I'm like man. These like it is. They trusted you.
Speaker 3: 37:59
Things went wrong and you are like abandoning them when they need you. Like I'm over here fighting hard, like me and the car trucker, like I'm over here just fighting for people because it's so weaselly I don't know what other word to use. And I'm not talking about simple things. Like you know, the client didn't pay and now they're mad that you're making them pay a late fee. I'm not talking about stuff like that. I they're mad that you're making them pay a late fee. I'm not talking about stuff like that. I'm talking about like we told you that we wanted to optimize these three cities. You were only working on these two cities and now you're like, well, y'all didn't tell me in the right way, you know, and all these like it. It just gets so clouded and you know, do the right thing and I think it comes back to you 10 times more than trying to collect that little piss ant $750 that you're trying to get from somebody. Yeah, so I can. I can get crazy about that stuff right now.
Speaker 1: 38:45
We hit a. We hit a cord got riled up.
Speaker 3: 38:46
Yes, wow.
Speaker 2: 38:50
Like we just hate that. It's such a thing right now, you know, and like that we are literally battling for our clients with some of these digital vendors and like it is just mind boggling, it's just like no-transcript relate to. But then we'll appreciate and you will earn that trust so much more when you're able to to do that.
Speaker 1: 39:36
Right, well, and and that's exactly the biggest thing when you can, when you can own those mistakes. But the other part is like, why burn the bridge? Guys Like this is any digital marketer that's listening to this? I mean, heck, any contractor that's listening to this? Why burn the bridge? It makes zero sense.
Speaker 1: 39:53
One of our clients and I've known him before. We had the digital marketing agency you're only as good as your last day, and that's what he always used to say about his employees. You're only as good as your last day, and that's what he always used to say about his employees. You're only as good as your last day. But another method of ours is love your people out the door If they're leaving for whatever reason, or even if you're removing them from the business. You know, love them out the door. But the same can be said about your clients. I love them out the door, and we've had this happen before in our agency, where we've loved these people out the door and they realize the grass isn't green on the other side. Well, guess what they came back. If we would have just said, nope, bye, have fun, you don't own your stuff, well, guess what? We're never going to get that person back.
Speaker 3: 40:31
Yeah, no, and they tell others and like it is a small world, like you know. I just think there's so much more power in being transparent and being honest and building relationships with each other. It's still business, like it's still there's still things that might happen, um, but at the end of the day, it's more about exactly like how you left, like we have the best onboarding ever and we were like you know what, we need the best off boarding ever as well to make sure that those things go go great so well. Guys, thank you so much for joining us today. Hey, if people wanted to reach out to you guys like for specific services, how can they reach out to you for that?
Speaker 1: 41:07
You put a letter in an envelope, you attach it to the carrier pigeon, they fly it up to Canada, they land on the dog sled, the dog then takes it and then they drive it up to our igloo.
Speaker 2: 41:18
Perfect.
Speaker 1: 41:19
Can you?
Speaker 2: 41:19
share your number with us, so that way speed that up right, uh, on purpose.
Speaker 1: 41:25
Mediaca is the website you can also find us on. Both evan and myself we're pretty active on facebook, so you can just search our names and find us that way too and you guys or you can shoot us a text.
Speaker 4: 41:36
You can shoot us a text at 719-824-1377.
Speaker 2: 41:40
Okay, awesome.
Speaker 1: 41:41
That might be a little bit quicker than the carrier pitching option.
Speaker 2: 41:46
Well, thank you guys for joining us today. Really great hearing your guys' philosophy and insight to digital and stuff, and I'll share one quick little story. And so we got to. Well, we see these guys a lot at shows and so I got to meet Thaddeus in person for the first time at a Women in HVAC event. Because Crystal is a Women in HVAC board member I am also by auxiliary.
Speaker 2: 42:10
I feel like they had forgotten to put up a banner that had all their major donors. People are giving them tens of thousands of dollars. They need this banner up. It's the evening event. I'm in a beaded gown, high heels, things like that Struggling to get the banner up. It's eight foot tall. We need the pole. Thaddeus sees the struggle over here so he rushes over to help me. Another friend jumps in. She breaks the pole in half. Yeah, behind the thing, but we actually got it up. But it just goes to show like, hey, you guys are good people. They saw us at a show not too long ago struggling with the recording podcast and like, oh, just turn this knob. I'm like, thank you, needed that. But um, yeah, you guys are good people and looking to help make a difference to contractors and, like you said, beyond just yourself, like that's your whole goal and your whole purpose on purpose media, and so really appreciate that about you guys.
Speaker 1: 42:59
You're very welcome, and we fixed it with duct tape.
Speaker 2: 43:01
Yes.
Speaker 1: 43:04
It might not have been straight after we fixed it, but hey, you know what it got put up.
Speaker 2: 43:07
So that's right, that's right.
Speaker 4: 43:10
It was better than perfect.
Speaker 3: 43:12
And also make sure you guys go check out their podcast as well. Hvac secrets revealed that's what I call it. Is that the correct name?
Speaker 1: 43:22
HVAC Secrets Revealed. That's what I call it. Is that the correct name? Hvac Success Secrets Revealed? Yep, you can hit it on our website onpurposemediaca forward slash HVAC Revealed and we'll go to there, or just onpurposemediaca, and you'll see it on the top middle on the menu bar.
Speaker 3: 43:33
And they're braver than Emily and I Like they lots of, lots of cool things, so make sure you're checking out their social channels. Well, guys, thank you so much for listening to another episode of From the Yellow Chair. If you loved what you heard, we'd love to have a review. We would love to hear from you. Want to be a guest on our show? Please reach out to us at hello at LemonSeedMarketingcom. Thanks for listening.
