Pest Control Marketing Expert: Optimize For EEAT Before it's Too Late! - Mat Rogers - Pest Control Legends

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Hey there and welcome back to Pest Control Legends.
Today I am with Matt Rogers, whois the CEO of Lizard Marketing,
a very successful agency servingpest control companies and other
home services. And we are actually together in
person in Charlotte. We actually just filmed a series
all on AI stuff, which is going to be great.
That should be coming out maybe in the next few months or so.

(00:20):
And we are going to expand upon our initial podcast.
So if you're not familiar, we filmed a podcast a few weeks ago
or so and it was actually my most popular one on my Pest
Control Legends channel. I told you that like immediately
at a day or two after it dropped, it was already my most
viewed video. So obviously Matt is a huge
guest and we're going to continue to talk about AI, how

(00:40):
it relates to digital marketing,what you need to know and all of
that. So it should be a great show.
So thanks for coming on, Matt. Bro, I'm so excited to talk
about this stuff with you. It is humbling to be considered
a big guess. I feel like I fumble forward
with stuff and so I'm happy to share anything I've learned with
the people that are listening toyou to give them a leg up

(01:01):
because you need a leg up because it's market is
competitive. Definitely, yeah.
So if you haven't seen that first show, go make sure to
watch that one first because this is kind of going to be a a
sequel. That's you need to have that
kind of foundational knowledge that we talked about in that
episode. Now we're gonna go deeper into
all the topics we discussed, butI thought it would make sense to

(01:22):
cover some of Matt experience real quick before we really jump
into things. We actually, I believe we didn't
discuss this on the first show, but I really want to exemplify
the difference between where digital marketing was at before
and where it's at now. And your original start in pest
control is a pretty unique one. Your family ran Killingsworth
Pest Control and it ended up growing to a very big pest

(01:44):
control company with the help ofyou and I.
I want you to talk about that experience.
Talk to me about growing Killingsworth, what was working
back then and how you grew it tosuch a big company?
Yeah. So when I started, the company
was around $8 million and this was around 2012, and I had

(02:05):
pushed back on joining the family business.
I'm the black sheep of the family.
I'm the college graduate of the family.
I was not going to jump in the pest control game, but I had
been going. My father had been doing so well
in this market, in the Charlottemarket, that I would go home
from college or visit places andhe'd be living like in a
different house with more cars in his garage and all kinds of

(02:25):
crazy stuff like that. I'm like, what exactly is going
on? Anyway, he ended up asking me at
the right time and I his 10th try, he said, and I told him I
would do it. And at the time when I jumped
in, what I didn't realize I was jumping into was what I now
consider a renaissance in digital marketing or from
traditional marketing to digitalmarketing.

(02:47):
So at the time there was a heavyimpetus on traditional marketing
channels, things like door hangers, leave behinds, mailers,
right? Things like cloverleafing with
technicians, things like radio commercials.
We had huge budgets set aside for WBT&WFNZ here in Charlotte
on AM radio stations because that didn't play on the FM radio

(03:08):
stations because Spotify. And what was the other one
started with API? Can't remember it now.
Anyway, all you know, people started streaming music back
then. He's like, I want to be on talk
radio. And then we were experimenting
with broadcast television commercials, which which got
pretty expensive actually. But his biggest investment,
which blew my mind when I started working there, was the

(03:29):
Yellow Pages. He started his career in yellow
page advertising. He sold it to companies, right?
And so he was investing $323,000a year in yellow page
advertising. OK, like big spreads.
And this is like really old school is way too old for you.
OK, this is when you like cut and you pasted things down and

(03:51):
you gave layouts to marketing director.
I want my ad to look like this and make this font bigger and
all this is very like hands on old school graphic design,
right? And yellow so, but I knew as a
consumer at the time that this was leaving.
Why are you putting so much money here?
People don't use these things anymore.
We don't use these things anymore.

(04:12):
And it took this big effort to help them understand that the
consumer is changing their behaviors.
And so it's important for us if we're going to make it to change
our behaviors too. And so I, I took a lot of work
to kind of prove that out to himto make it make sense because he
only knew what he knew. And it had gotten into $8
million company. And that's awesome.

(04:34):
But at the time things were rising up and the market, things
that Google Guarantee, which is now LSA, which is now a tertiary
feature on Google right now, right?
Things like Facebook, I'm sorry,Google business profiles, right,
collecting reviews to put it outthere.
Things like social proofing, we're starting to become a
thing. And I was having a hard time
with these like rejoining marketing channels, trying to

(04:56):
convince my dad that we need to put some effort into this.
I believe this is where things are going as a consumer, this is
how I buy things. And I think that we need to make
sure that our voice is present in these spaces.
And so ultimately we did start to make the, it was a fight like
a knock down drag out. So PCO's that are listening to
us, if it feels contentious in your office when you're making

(05:17):
big changes like this, just knowit's normal and change is hard
and you need to change. It's really important, but after
several fights and sleepless nights and all this kind of
stuff, we took it from 8 millionin 2012 to 28 million in 2018
before we sold to Antisemics. Then at the time, the game is a

(05:38):
little different now, but at thetime we made it to position #36
on the PCT Top 100. Yeah, I, I made my dad a coffee
mug after we made it that far. He there are some PC OS that
don't like to share their rank on the PCT top 100 because I
like to keep their cards close much.
But not my dad, man, he loved a showboat.
He loved it. So I made him a coffee mug that
he drank from every day and he said 36 bitches.

(05:59):
That's hilarious on the coffee mug.
And that's, that's what we did. And then it kind of ramped up to
another level. We, I, I sold, we sold the
families company with Paul Giannamore's help to anti
semics. And I stayed on with anti semics
for a couple of years and it waslike drinking from the fire
hydrant of of digital marketing because antisemics gave you
access to digital marketers fromand some relationships that I

(06:21):
still have for 75 countries across the world.
So many states in the United States, you're just gathering
information from people that aretrying to make things work
everywhere. What works in Italy, what works
in France, what works in Australia, what works in South
Carolina, right. You're just learning all this
stuff. And I just felt like I really
kind of pushed the pedal down and what my experience was in
digital marketing. And Fast forward to now, we're

(06:43):
in this like new space together,right?
We're in another this I, I'm calling it the second
renaissance of marketing, not just for PC OS for everybody.
And we, we are a slow moving industry.
It's hard, it's not hard to innovate this industry.
It's hard. I love you PC OS.
Sometimes it's hard to get APCO on board.
And so what's the different now,though, is I had the luxury of

(07:06):
fighting with my dad for those six years to comb away big
budget cuts away from traditional marketing and put it
in places that we're going to work better, right?
This new renaissance, because ofhow fast AI is evolving, is
happening at such a more compressed rate.
I was telling you before the episode started that I feel like

(07:27):
more has changed now in the lastsix months, maybe in digital
marketing, then my last like 12 years of experience in digital
marketing in a, in a short amount of time.
And so just as aggressively as AI is moving forward, Lizard is
aggressively trying to learn what's working so that we can
give that to our clients and, and help them.
Because if we don't help them, they're not going to know how to

(07:47):
like navigate the things. They're trusting us with their
digital marketing, you know? So of everything that has
transpired from 2012 till now, the same transition is
happening. It's just happening faster, more
aggressively. And it's actually giving the
small guy and the medium guy a seat at the table.
A real seat at the table if theytake this shit seriously.
Yeah, no, it's what's wild like like we were talking about

(08:09):
earlier today at breakfast is that so many companies are
moving so fast and really the trend and a lot of people are
using this number that AI is exponentially increasing.
It's growing at about 10 XA year.
So even guys like me and you aresuper digital marketing savvy.
We know all about AI. We're listening to all the top
people. It's even hard for us to keep

(08:30):
up. So at least I want to ask a
follow up question regarding what you were just saying is
this is actually an interesting take, which I don't think
everyone would agree with. That's the smaller and medium
guys actually can compete. Now why?
Why do you think that? Listen, if you're in Bug Bucks
and you're watching, I don't remember your name, but you
commented yesterday and I I put you in check and what I said was

(08:50):
true. The misconception that some PC
OS have right now is that AI is just going to run over them
more. The BIG4 dominate the digital
marketing space because they have big budget, big margin, big
voice, big presence, big brand, right, and it's often often
given the little guys as that form of digital marketing has
gotten smaller by virtue of of these big, you know, Terminix,

(09:12):
anti Semic Orkin. Their big budgets have kind of
soaked up all the room to suckedall the air out of the room.
It's really left these little guys struggling to have to spend
more. But the truth is, and what I
love right now, because I'm a I'm always rooting for the
little guy. Well, our company came from like
a double wide. I grew U in a double wide right
and so I I love it when a littleguy can make it because I

(09:33):
watched my dad make it and nothing filled me with more
pride than it did later in life to realize that he had made it
and how I like how he came literally came from nothing
right. And so to give these a little
guys a shot by virtue of AI is like next level crazy.
It is absolutely fascinating to see AI take what the big guy
used to dominate and give these guys like level up their armor,

(09:56):
level up their voice, level up their trust, level up the
authority and give them an opportunity to step in the ring
and start swinging. I love when the odds are stacked
against me, especially when you got a tool like AI in your back
pocket because all the sudden it's not about being a rank one
on Google anymore. All the sudden you can be on
page 10, but your voice starts showing up because you're doing
the right things. And so if you're listening PC

(10:17):
OS, please pay attention to Danny.
Please pay attention to what I'msaying.
You've got a real shot of getting heard in this new
digital marketing landscape if you will capitalize on these
changes instead of being afraid of them.
Awesome. Yeah, 100%.
So can you talk about the specific things like some of the
initial things that you can start doing to compete with
these big companies like you're talking about?

(10:37):
Yeah. So the thing that AI cares about
is not page one of Google anymore, OK.
And if you are working in digital marketing right now, you
need to know first and foremost that the old school line between
SEO, which used to be a slow game, and paid search, which
used to be the fast game, is real blurry right now.
It's blurry for me. And so if it's blurry for me, it

(10:58):
is blurry for you, I promise. OK, it's hard to distinguish
which comes first now, the chicken or the egg.
OK, so first thing is SEO and paid search.
You have to be doing both of them.
You have to right. And the thing that Pete the
acronym, there's going to be lots of new acronyms, everybody.
So pace yourself and take good notes, right?
Ask ChatGPT, but the and ask ChatGPT this what AI cares about

(11:19):
to make your voice heard is EE AT expertise, experience,
authority and trust. And if you are doing digital
marketing activities that focus on those 4 components, AI is
going to take your teeny tiny little voice and blow it up.
It's going to blow it up on the overview.
It's going to blow up your business, your Google business
profile, and it's going to blow up your LSA ads.

(11:41):
They're going to drop in conversion cost.
It's going to improve the quality of leads that you get on
on your paid search. The thing that you'll be scared
of that I believe PC OS will seeis footprint on their websites
is going to slow down. But if they're doing good
digital marketing, that's actually because they're getting
better visibility at the very tip top of the funnel because AI

(12:02):
is taking information and presenting it to the user before
they ever have to click on anything else.
They're calling it the new zero click.
I don't know, zero click search,zero click search.
That's where we are, right? And so if they're doing those
activities, if they're paying attention to their paid search
in their SEO, particularly hyperlocal SEO, particularly
hyperlocal SEO that's linked into their Google business

(12:22):
profile, and they're focusing onthat EEAT expertise, experience,
authority and trust, they can start swinging up at Antisemex.
They can start swinging up at Terminix and making those boys
pay attention to them. It's an opportunity for people
to stick some rocket fuel in this engine and take off just
like we did in 2012 to 2018, except in a much more condensed

(12:43):
a span of time. Absolutely no, I totally agree
I'm a big proponent of EE ATI learned it from my mentor
dentist and the E at the end, which is that would be
experienced was just added about2 1/2 years ago.
So it used to be EAT now they'veadded the E for experience and
why why have they done that? I'll kind of take some Thunder.

(13:05):
They've done that because of AI rising.
That's AI can't truly have experience.
I mean, it can, it can have experience, I guess like that,
this is me prompting and it can it can, like you said,
regurgitate from other experiences.
But ultimately what we have as humans that's unique is our
experience that we can talk. And like I actually purposely
asked you at the beginning of this interview of what was it

(13:26):
like to grow Killingsworth? What did you guys do there?
Because that is your unique experience.
No one can take that from you. So you could ask Chech BT about
pest control marketing advice. But I mean, what is it polling
from should pull from actual experts.
And that's why we should be bullish on still listening to
humans and not getting totally replaced as long as we're an
expert in our field. Exactly.

(13:46):
Trusting people that know how toengage these AI tools, a thing
that we spent a lot of time talking about today.
Trusting digital marketing companies that are embracing
these things and helping you guys embrace these things as
well is going to be what changesthe game.
To know how to get your voice inthe right place and structured
in the right way so that AI can grab it and give it to the
consumer, because that's where the consumer is.

(14:07):
That's where the the shift that I was making in 2012.
Hey dad, please, this is not howconsumer shops anymore.
Please. Nobody owns a phone book
anymore. People just throw these things
away or hold the door with it, right?
We've got to think, rethink about how the consumer is
buying. And so if the PC OS are thinking
that way too, if they're using ChatGPT to get their answers,
they will understand. How do I make sure my digital

(14:28):
marketing is getting my information here so that I can
get in front of the consumer andtake my piece of the pie?
This is their time to shine. Definitely.
So let's go a little bit deeper on EAT.
And I'm sure a lot of people listening to this show, this
might be the first time you've ever heard of that term.
So you even have to get a littlebit acclimated to that and just
get a little bit of an intro here, which it's it's good
you're listening. Talk to me about then.

(14:48):
How can you demonstrate EATI mean it sounds like some foreign
concept of but like are are there any quick things you can
do or any principles you follow?What I think especially one of
the biggest changes that we've had to make is internally as a
company is the first thing that we had to do is we were using
third party or not third party. We were using ACRM high level to

(15:09):
track and monitor the pipeline activities for all of our
clients, right? A lot of our clients, you know
how it is you open up the hood of some of these pest control
companies. No offense, I love you, but you
open up the hood of some of these PC OS and you're like, you
guys don't have a system in place to track any of this
stuff. I'm going to build a system,
I'll give it to you, right? So we're building this for our
system systems for our clients inside a high level.
And we were having the landing pages as inside of high level

(15:32):
to, to start their funnel to getthe leads in front of their
sales team, right. And one of the biggest things
that we've had to do probably inthe last like 3 months is to
make sure that these landing pages were anchored down
crawlable onto their domains. Because one of the things that's
going to build authority and trust if they're linked up to
the Google business profile, forexample, is to make sure that

(15:53):
these landing pages have access to this deep reservoir of
content that should have been created.
All tags that should have been created, Google business
profiles that should be linked, Schema FA QS that should be
located on. It's going to crawl all this
stuff together, not separate. So the beginning, there's a
learning experience for Lizard. We were treating these things
separately. We had, we call them satellites.
These landing pages for Lizard were satellites to our clients

(16:15):
websites. But now they are practically
part of our clients websites because they, that's one of the
ways that you build a sense of authority for AI, particularly
for paid search. When my paid search team did
that specific task, we saw the oh, maybe I shouldn't even say
this because I know my competitors are watching, but
screw you guys, I'm a competitor.
Yeah. I mean, you're kind of, but
you're also my friend. Yeah.

(16:36):
When we did this activity, we saw the conversion costs of our,
on top of some other stuff we saw like conversion costs of our
clients like plummet and their quality scores increase because
we're getting better informationto Google and to the AI overview
and therefore it's qualifying the leads better, right?
So that's one way that a companycan start to swing up.

(16:57):
Just put make sure that your landing pages are tied into your
domain. That's pretty big.
Absolutely no. This is what me and Ben were
just talking about. Ben, behind the camera is that
we should ideally structure Google ads around the website.
So we should send our Google adsto different pages on the
website and they should be very relevant and targeted.
So a lot of companies will just set up separate landing pages

(17:19):
like you were talking about. That might be through click
funnels or go high level. But Google wants to see as much
data and activity on the site aspossible.
So when we give it that data, even when the, the the page
doesn't perform well an SEO for whatever reason, but we're
sending paid traffic to it, thenGoogle sees, oh, people really
like this page even though it's paid, But still people are

(17:39):
converting at a high level. It seems like they're engaging
with the page. They're not clicking off right
away, they're not bouncing. Then that makes Google want to
boost your SEO, your organic pages as well, right?
Yeah, absolutely. And so that's the other kind of
thing that we do for our clientsthat I won't give away the
secret sauce too much. We talked about a little bit of
breakfast, so you got some secret sauce.

(18:02):
One of the things that's going to give these PC OS a really big
leg up is relevance, right? And by virtue of getting into
the habit of working with your digital marketing company,
whoever it is that are building these EEAT specific types of
campaigns, types of content, types of blogs, types of landing
pages for you particularly, and getting them to your site and
getting them to your Google business profile, you are going

(18:24):
to take over spaces where your voices weren't heard before.
I did a video I posted up on ourInstagram page and it's true.
Simrus just released a report stating that 90% of the AI
Overview isn't pulling information from page one of
Google anymore. So your website, Danny's
website, may Danny's pest control website may rank on page

(18:47):
one of Google, but that's not what AI Overview used to grab
information. 90% of the pages that AI overview pulled from was
not even in the top ten. Think about how crazy that is.
Think about the mindset of some of the PC OS that are still
listening to us and when they hear SEO and they're not even
thinking about AIO and I even think about AEO when they're

(19:07):
thinking SEO, they're thinking about SEO is about getting on
page one of Google. It is not about getting on page
one of Google anymore. It's not right.
It's about relevance, the activity of relevance and the
more habitual you are at gettingthis content in place.
Your digital marketing company is sequentially everyday we do
the same thing like work right. The more you are making sure
that you've got fresh relevant content that is formatted to

(19:30):
EEAT, that is able for the AI overview your Google business
profile and your LSA ads to graban offer up to the consumer you.
That is how you can start to swing up.
Consistency is how you can startto swing up.
So making sure your domains are connected is 1.
Making sure that you are consistent.
You're not just like thinking about this casually from time to
time. You're taking this shit
seriously because your marketingis the first part of a roductive

(19:53):
business. It's marketing sales OS money
lady at the back of the house. OK.
If your marketing is firing in that way and you're not treating
it like something you can just lug and play and walk away from.
Please don't be doing that to your sales or your apps.
But if you're focused on marketing in that way that for
that first component, the the introduction of you to the new
consumer and you are habitual making sure that content is
going to everyday. You're going to be seen in ways

(20:16):
that your competitors, they get to brag about being on page one
of Google are not going to be seen.
They're going to get shoved to the side.
You can tell Terminix and Antisemix.
Don't be mad at me, call me, butyou can tell Terminix and
Antisemix to eat it. Get out of my way.
I'm putting my stuff up and you need to take a back seat.
It's my turn, right? Definitely no.
I, I had Neil Patella on my podcast almost a year ago and

(20:38):
this is when things are still kind of new.
I feel like everyone's kind of acclimated at this point, but
the term he came up with, which is everyone's kind of like
you're saying that has differentterms.
But my favorite is actually still the SEO acronym.
But instead of search engine optimization, it's search
everywhere optimization. Because it's not, it's, it's not
just on the search engines, but it's also the large language

(20:58):
models. Chatch BT is a large language
model. Gemini is a large language.
I wish we'd have talked about that first.
I just launched mine and that one's better.
Perplexity is a large language model.
Then you could also think of social platforms.
I, I talked about this in the videos we were doing that 40% of
Gen. Z is doing their searches on
TikTok. And then there's a lot of
searches. You may be familiar that YouTube
is the second biggest search engine.

(21:20):
I mean, that's also a search that's also a social platform.
It's, it's kind of the, the middle of that.
So it's not just like you were saying about showing up #1 on
Google, because that's also not even really a thing anymore.
I mean, there's AI overviews, there's AI mode, then there's
local service ads, then there's Google business profile.
So you could like, this is actually crazy.
You could be ranking number one on a really good keyword for

(21:40):
your website and still barely get any traffic because Google
Ads, local service ads and Google Business Profile are
taking a lot. Of it, it's so true.
It's so true. And I've got a client right now.
I'm not throwing this client on the bus.
I'm, I'm begging you on a podcast now to pay attention to
what I'm saying. He's hedged all his bets on PPC,
all of them. He's not doing any SEO, he's not
doing any AIO, he's not doing any AEO, he's not doing any LSA.

(22:04):
He's not doing any updates on his business profile.
He's not doing any of those activities.
And PPC, which just like my dad with the Yellow Pages, is now on
the bottom of page one of Googleif it's there and the quality
sucks, right? And so I'm, I'm begging this
person to start taking some of these other activities to heart
because when they do, it's goingto improve the performance of
their PVC. It's going to, they've had shit

(22:26):
luck with LSA. It's going to improve the
performance of their LSA. It's going to improve the
performance of their business profile.
They need to have coded numbers on their business profile so
they can track these things because that's a key KPI for
knowing if you are SEO and AIO activities are working right.
And so, yeah, if you do all of it, not just some of it right
now in particular and you are focused on EEAT, you're going to

(22:49):
see a return. Some of my clients have, I won't
give that, I won't say which companies.
One of my, my favorite, you knowwho you are.
My favorite client right now has$74 cost per qualified lead
qualified. Yeah, that's yeah, $74, right.
Another one has 113 dollars, Another one is $94.00.
The thing that these and they'rein contentious markets, OK, One

(23:11):
of them is in Florida, one of them is in California, Orange
County, another one is in Portland, right.
One of the thing that these three companies have in common
is they're doing all of the things and they're doing them
right. They're not doing one of the
things and doing it well or one of the things in doing it
poorly. They're doing all aspects of
digital marketing that are informed by AI and it is driving

(23:35):
down the cost of their conversion and it's driving up
the the quality score of everything that we're producing
for them. And they that he said my
favorite client, you know who you are, He who shall not be
named. He said he had a 3.64 return on
investment in digital marketing in the first and second quarter
of this year. And that's insane.
You've got APCO who will get a $74.00 for a qualified phone

(23:55):
call and has a solid sales team to receive the phone call.
He will spend money like that all day long.
He's and we have we, I mean, think about it, you've, you've
done this, OK? I know that you've done it.
You've done the same thing for multiple clients in different
markets, OK. And for some of your clients, it
takes off. Maybe it's because they're doing
all the things, well, some of the clients you work with and
they've got real intense feelings about how digital

(24:17):
marketing should be done and things you should do and should
not do and blah, blah, blah. They don't trust you.
And you've got to kind of work around them to keep that
retainer coming in. Do what I'm saying.
And their, their stats suck. And you're like, listen, if
you'll just trust me, I'll tweaka couple of things.
We could show up, but we're doing the same activity for all
of our clients. But those three in particular
are taking and run with it. And that's because they're
focused on AI and they're focused on all aspects of

(24:38):
digital marketing, not some aspects of digital marketing.
Yeah. I, I want to get a little bit
more detailed there. I feel like especially for early
pest control owners, it might feel a little bit complex or
overwhelming. So you mentioned some of your
top clients, they do all things in digital marketing.
Could you just like cover some of those things?
Is there any like anything high level everyone needs to do?

(24:58):
But what what exactly do you? Need to be participating in AI
informed SEO, however you want to name it if you want to do it.
Name search everywhere optimization.
If it's a search engine optimization.
If it's artificial intelligence optimization, you need to be
creating content that is structured for AI habitually.
You need to be putting that content structured well and
organized on your website. You need to be creating clusters

(25:20):
of service type and treatment types and pest types on your
website to kind of network thesethings together on your website.
OK, you need to be doing those activities.
You need to be treating your Google business profile like
it's your effing Instagram account, OK, Constantly on
there, constantly responding to reviews, constantly dropping new
content, constantly linking to these keyword rich, hyperlocal

(25:41):
schema informed pieces of content that are on your
website, linking them up to yourbusiness profile.
And you're going to watch that thing take off.
It's going to take off Merry Christmas, right?
And you need to be doing paid search out to activity that
supports these things. Because I would say probably a
year ago, my, the biggest part of my company was paid search
all PC OS thought if I just givemoney to Google, it's going to

(26:05):
yield a result and it's not. Please listen, if you're not
doing SEO right now, you're going to see your conversion
costs rise on your paid search activities and your quality
score fall on your paid search activities.
Take it to the bank, right, PCO,you know who you are.
This hedging all your bets on PPC.
This is why, OK, you're not listening to me, OK, You need to

(26:25):
be participating in these activities that we just talked
about because what it's going todo is it's going to tell Google
that this this company has expertise, has experience, has
authority, has trust. Let me get their stuff to the
top. Let me drive down the score.
Those three companies, Portland,Florida and California, that
that's a blended average, right?It's not just their PPC, their

(26:47):
PPC, the CPLS are low, right? But they're also getting so much
traffic from organic and their business profile that they blend
all this together. And they've got this beautiful
digital marketing number that they can be proud of, that we
are real proud of, right? And we've haven't even had some
competition. You know who you are, it's not
you. I try to come in and take some
of my slice of the pie. Bro, get out.
You can't beat that number. You can't.

(27:08):
Yeah. Definitely.
And so that that's it. When I say all, I mean they if
you're if you're doing paid search, you need to be doing AI
informed SEO and you need to treat your business profile like
it's your Instagram period. Absolutely.
I agree. I'm glad you keep bringing it
back to EEAT because again, I'm I'm a big advocate for this.
Something most people don't know.
When you look at Google's guidelines in the one they're

(27:29):
talking about, EEAT is that it all ends up falling under trust.
So the expertise, the experienceand the authority all comes
under the trust category. It's almost like the trust
umbrella with those below it. So how specifically can pest
control owners build trust with their customers and with search
engines? So we talked about a little bit

(27:49):
today when we were doing our pieces, and this is a concept
I'm really trying to wrestle with because on the tail end of
that 2018 experience, you had review companies like Applause
Love You Applause and Podium Rise up and give guys real small
businesses a real shot at building reviews if they hadn't
had those before. And that builds into this social

(28:09):
proofing component for the consumer.
These guys are up at the top of the list.
They have 1000 reviews. They have 4.9 stars.
That must mean consumers love them.
Let me give them a shot, but with AI trust Velocity, you
actually have to play a little bit of a slower game.
You have to build consistently and slower to let Google know
that you are trustworthy. You're keeping reviews coming

(28:32):
in. So whether you're using native
applications inside of your CRM like field routes, if you're
eliciting reviews in your field routes, if you're using applause
or podium, I love them, use them, right?
If you're doing these things, keep consistent and build
slowly. Have a consistent velocity of
reviews that are coming in so you can remind AI and Google

(28:56):
over and over again that you have trust.
You are building trust in your local area, in your geographic
region of your business profile.If you built up to 1000 in these
days, if you bumped 1000 reviewson in a short amount of time,
that's actually a negative flag these days with AI.
And if you park it because you did 1000 and think I can be done
now, you're not building velocity anymore.

(29:18):
And so you're further penalized by AI and Google because they
think, well, they cheated to getthese reviews and they're not
getting these reviews consistently.
So it becomes less relevant, right?
You need a slow, relevant intakeof reviews.
You need a subscription to Applause.
You need a subscription to Podium, or you need a consistent
SOP inside of your field route system to elicit these reviews

(29:39):
from customers that you know that love you.
And that's going to build trust with AI and with Google.
Absolutely, no. I I agree reviews is a huge way
to build trust. I would say that is the main one
that there's other ways, but we want to make sure that we're
building as many reviews as possible.
And like you said, it's not justabout the total volume or about
the star rating, but also the recency inconsistency, which you
could also consider velocity or any of other term really if you

(30:03):
haven't gotten a review in the past few months, you cannot
expect a rank and you will not be trusted by the search
engines. So it's.
Going to be like that. The the new answer is if you're
not taking digital marketing seriously, bye, you're not just
going to get left in the dust. You're going to get left in the
dust so bad. It's not going to be like my dad
or I had six years to convince him that we needed to change our
game. You've got like a month in a
couple of months before people that are taking this shit

(30:25):
seriously are going to dog you in a street fight.
But that should encourage you because if you take this stuff
seriously right now, if you callus, if you work with digital
marketing companies that know what they're doing, you will see
your shit take off fast. It's not a slow game anymore.
It's. Yeah, Yeah, I, I will.
I will play the other side of that that I think, I think pest
control is a slower industry like we discussed before.

(30:45):
So things like e-commerce, e-commerce or software
companies, I mean those guys aremoving fast.
Those guys are moving really fast.
So pest control is a smaller industry, it's home services,
it's it's older guys. So you do have some time, but
really this is the fastest marketing has ever moved of you
said you haven't seen anything like this in your history.
I have not, but I also say by virtue of the profit margins for

(31:08):
pest control specifically, I have experience because I I left
the game for a while and then came back to it after we sold,
right? It's a short while, but it was a
while and I'd never been, I've never worked with this many PC
OS. The killings worth was very
insular. We lived in a bubble.
We didn't do things like in PMA.Dad always thought, why am I
going to sit around and tell other people their stuff's
awesome, my stuff's awesome, youknow what I mean?
He didn't like to share, he didn't like to talk to people.

(31:30):
We went, he was a big fish and he liked the attention, all that
kind of stuff. We didn't rub elbows at people.
I didn't know anybody, right. And so now I'm working with PC
OS all across the country. And what I'm seeing, and that's
actually encouraging to me is people like your agent just
above are starting companies andmaking ground really quick.
You can make an A name for yourself in this industry so
fast just by virtue of being different because this industry

(31:53):
is so slow. You can be a little different.
Like my boys, nice, love you, love you Tommy.
You can be a different and make a name for yourself so much
faster. And I love that.
There's also this like spring ofyoung voices and young muscle
and young entrepreneurs that arestepping into the game like me,
like you that are like, I'm, I'mgetting my piece of the pie.
I'm here. You're going to know who I am.

(32:15):
Everybody's going to know who I am and they're taking it
seriously. And because they will play the
game a little bit differently than it's played before, they're
sprinting out in front of these old hats that are not taking
this crap seriously and still trying to use the old playbook.
I've got this guy. You know who you are, You
actually there's a lot of peoplethat know who they are.
This guy in particular, lot of call outs.
He came from Killingsworth. I won't say his name.

(32:38):
I came from Killingsworth. And he is still using such an
old playbook. He's still using radio
advertising. I reached out to him.
He's a young guy. He's my age.
I mean, I'm not, I'm, I'm older than you, but youngish man.
He's still using radio advertising and I called him.
I tried to convince him. He said he hadn't grown more
than his company size. I won't give that away in two
years. He's still the same size after

(32:59):
two years. And these are his words.
Money comes in. It just goes right out the door.
I'm like, bro, let me help you. Let me help you.
We can turn this thing on. He is even on the young side,
but he's still using that old playbook and it's not working.
It's not doing anything. And so these young guys that are
stepping into the ring and are willing to take a risk, are
willing to be different and are willing to take advantage of AI

(33:21):
as opposed to being afraid of AI, are there's something else?
Yeah, no, at the end of the day,no one cares about your opinion
of AI or social media. Some people just not do social
media because I don't like social media and it's for
dancing. I don't I don't like I don't
like AI because it's going to replace jobs and like no one no
one cares your opinion like let's let's get objective.

(33:44):
Let's look at the data and the KP is if we implement something
like AI or you know, new age digital marketing using social
media, whatever, and it gets results.
I mean then why not do it like you have to be open to new
solutions, especially because things are changing so.
Fast put your voice out there building that social network
builds brand relevance in your communities.

(34:05):
And so if you know as the PCO, the AI is focused on hyperlocal
activity and cares that you havea brand relevance inside of your
market that you're working in, man, you're going to go nuts
though the two of the companies that I mentioned have great
brand presence and have so much fun on social media.
They're just having a good time.They they have no, they're not

(34:26):
They're not getting on there andbeing like salesy have pest
control with me. Let's learn about this bug
together. Bullshit like that right?
There are plenty of PC OS out there who still use their social
media like a library of pest control catalogs that nobody
cares about right and wondering why don't anybody engage my
social media? I'll tell you why, call me.
But if you get on there and you have a good time, all the

(34:47):
sudden, like you, you are getting noticed.
And all the sudden, Google, especially if you're all of your
shit's linked together and you're sharing that shit on your
business profile, particularly, all of the sudden your business
is getting noticed and it's got that rocket fuel underneath it
and your business is going to change fast.
Absolutely. Now, I'm so glad you brought up
Brand. That was actually a part of the
notes here. I was, I was writing.
Yeah, no, exactly. So talk to me about Brand in

(35:10):
2025 and beyond. First off, like how is it
changed to a, what was branding different back in the day?
Like you're kind of hinting at it now of at least a good
portion of it is social media and that we're kind of just
being ourselves. Talk to me about like where
branding is at right now and whyit's so important or how
important really is it? Branding is that there's an old
Harvard study that I refer back to a lot that says that a person

(35:34):
has to witness something 2727. There's tons of different
studies all around that range, yeah. 27 times for about 73%
retention, OK, when you're building a brand presence in
particularly when you do it in conjunction with SEO and paid
search activities and Adore team, which we haven't touched
on, OK, If you're building brandrecognition in your community,

(35:56):
you are increasing the likelihood that a consumer is
going to choose you because theyfeel like they know you, right?
And so PC OS that are having fun, particularly in the TikTok
space, particularly in the Instagram space, and they are
letting the consumers get to know them.
They're dropping the veil of professionalism that used to
guard the consumer from the business owner.
They're putting that veil down and they're allowing people to

(36:18):
get to know them by virtue of their social media.
What they're doing is they're increasing the odds that when
that consumer has a problem in their market that they're going
to choose that person by virtue of social proving because they
feel like they know them. I will let Travis and Tyler with
nice pest control come over to my house.
I will let Ryan and Noel come over to my house because I feel
like I know them. And if I, and this is when PC OS

(36:41):
understand this intuitively, when you welcome a stranger into
your house, when your wife is athome and the kids are at home,
that is an intimate space and there has to be some type of
trust quality there that is better than your uniform.
You can't have some scuzzy guy pulling up to the side of the
street to Grace's house, open the car door and a bunch of shit

(37:01):
fall out. Do you know what I'm saying?
And then he walks up, buttons his pants up and stands there.
I'm here to fix your blah blah blah, right?
If you have done the work of good branding now and it's so
much easier. Killings with only went viral
one time, right? I couldn't, I couldn't make it.
I couldn't make lightning striketwice.
But so many people are going viral all the time now.
If you do a good job at branding, getting somebody on

(37:22):
your team that will help, you'reworking with a digital marketing
company that will help you with your branding messages.
You will find that what happens with your inside sales, with
your outside sales, is a higher closing ratio, higher click
through rate, higher conversion rate for the leads that are
already getting produced. Why?
Because the consumer feels like they know you.
Yeah, it's huge. But back in the day, back in the

(37:42):
day at Killingsworth, you had tospend lots of money on expensive
ways to get your name out there and there still wasn't a
guarantee. We would do things like parades
in the town. We would do things like
broadcast television. The one time we went viral, I
spent $18,000 on a 30 second commercial.
OK, but we were in the Super Bowl.
People were tips to watch in theSuper Bowl.

(38:03):
The Panthers are in the game. We made it and and the lightning
struck, but now with simpler tools like TikTok, find some
trends that you think are funny things that make you chuckle
when you're looking around and stuff and just do it as a
company. Let the consumer get to know
you. You don't have to spend a lot of
money. This could be one of the
cheapest aspects of digital marketing that you participate
in. Period, end of sentence.
It's better when you do it. Your digital marketing can help

(38:24):
you. We can help you.
You can help them, but it's actually better if you tell your
own story because you're going to help your digital marketing
company get higher quality leadsfor you.
Period. End of sentence.
Absolutely no. We, we talked about them on the
last podcast that we, that we live in a trust economy.
And really the way I like to think about marketing or
specifically things like SEO andcustomer acquisition is in

(38:47):
relation to competition. So many companies, not many, but
a good amount of companies are starting to take advantage of
this. They might be creating videos
like the the Ryan and Noel you're talking about or other
companies that are making videosare making something fun and
people trust those companies more than yours because oh wow,
no, that's okay. I can tell what it would be like

(39:08):
if Joe came to my house. Okay, wow, okay, that's so cool
that Anna answers the phone thatway.
Okay, now I'm ready to call her and I can expect her to pick up
the phone. Just little things like that.
At the end of the day, I feel like marketing is separating
yourself from the competition, right?
So if we can do things like thatof, again, the trust, the trust.
Trust is so big with the search engines, but it's also so big

(39:29):
with people. And I think the search engines
are actually optimizing for whatwe're looking for.
Isn't that interesting? AI cannot replace trust.
It can augment the consumer's ability to trust you, but it
still needs the human connection, the trust component
that we can build by virtue of our brand messaging.
That's actually like, really fascinating.
You need the real ingredients, but then the AI can help you put

(39:50):
together the meal. Yeah, so true, so true.
You can have all of the tools. We talked about it a little bit
today. You can have all the tools and
still do a shit job, right? You can have all the AI tools
instead of shit digital marketing, or you can have the
right tools with the right components and the right
branding, messaging and the right trust components.
And put those things together and see completely different

(40:12):
results, all using the same tools.
It's interesting. So talk to me about some of the
tools that you're using. Are you using Chats BT or do you
have anything for automation? And is there anything that pest
control companies need to have in place?
You So we everybody uses chat now.
Chat is getting more and more advanced as it goes.
We're using different models fordifferent things inside of chat.

(40:35):
We are using Google's Gemini particularly for the work that
we do for paid search. It is much more integrated into
the deep history of paid search activities that we have and that
Google has access to for paid search specifically.
So we use that for paid search. We're also using tools like N8 N
for ourselves personally. We were touching on this a

(40:55):
little bit at the beginning, butNat N is right now is great at
building AI assistance, right? And one of the ways that we can
clean up shop internally at Lizard and also our PC OS can
clean up shop is taking redundant and minutiae
activities and using artificial intelligence to handle this shit
and getting that salary, that payroll that benefits out of the

(41:21):
way, right? Clear that off the table.
So you got room to do other things, right?
And so those are three of the tools that we use most heavily
on top of the natural, like the old school.
We're still, we still have to for broken API systems.
I mean, we live that we work in a very broken API landscape,
right? None of our tools talk natively
to one another. Well, they're getting better.

(41:43):
God bless you guys. Please work harder, God.
But none of our PC OS tools talkreally well to each other.
And so we're still using things like Zapier.
Way old hat, but not really. No.
We're still using things like Zapier to augment and help us
pivot for our clients on the back end.
But even in High Level, high Level is making big advancements

(42:03):
for AI and AI services, providing its clients from 24/7
presence on their website to answer questions that it can be
taught, it can talk price, it can talk service.
It can talk all these things to not quite in aid in level, but
AI that can provide additional support and automations to get
people off of your payroll to create better margin for you.

(42:24):
Because if you have a better margin, you are much more
marketable when you're ready to sell.
Definitely just a quick follow up question because I feel like
that some of the stuff may be too advanced for some.
Maybe a lot of pest control owners talk to me about how
you're using Chat BT I feel likea lot of people aren't even
taking advantage of that. So do you use it for ideas?
Do you use it for content? What do you use?

(42:44):
Something like Chat BT? For well, think about, think
about like how you and I are using it right now.
I've been talking to chat so much that it knows who I am,
right? It knows who I am in a good way.
It knows that I'm salty. I need to drop a four letter
word every now and then to let people know that I'm serious as
shit. It needs, it knows how to talk
like me. I fed it all of my stuff.
So if I need help bouncing around an idea or creating a

(43:06):
exposite on something or, or, orcreate a script for something,
it can give me a foundation thatI can build on top of and go
from there. But specifically, one of the
things that we're using chat TBTfor is we're exploding in terms
of SEO, OK. And the workload used to be
incredibly hands on. You know you wrote a book the

(43:28):
God bless you, Bridget. God bless you, Allison.
I miss you girls, right? The work used to be very manual,
right? Hours of keyword research,
right? Hours of content creation, hours
of execution on that content. And then the next month rolls
around and you do it. We can cover so much more ground
now, still having our fingerprints all over this
stuff, still providing the correct schema, the correct

(43:50):
signals to AI, the correct signals to Google, the correct
signals to the website, the correct signals to the business
profile. We can do all, all of this stuff
in a fraction, and I mean a fraction of a fraction of the
time for many more components, which helps my bottom line,
right? And so the new guy that just
jumped on with us, Jesus, he loves this stuff and eats it up.
And we're building tools using innate in to help us accomplish

(44:13):
our SEO activities at a much more aggressive rate.
We can cover so much more ground, so much faster.
And that's one of the ways that we use Chichi BT internally for
sure. Do we do heavy research with it?
We run things by it. We ask it if we're doing it
right, asking how it's working in the market, right?
Asking if there's a better way to do it right.
All the time. All the time.
My chat window is open. She's probably listening to me

(44:35):
right now. Yeah, stop listening.
I'm not ready to talk to you. Yeah, no, I was.
I was just telling you before the show and you found it kind
of creepy that I did deep research on you before, before
we did the show. So, so chat BT went to all the
different sources online and even even different social
platforms like LinkedIn and it gave me a whole summary on who
Matt Rogers. Is that scares me and actually

(44:56):
makes me want to make sure I'm like dotting on my eyes and
crossing on my. Yeah, no, you have to be
careful. You have to be careful with what
what content you're putting out now, because AI chat, BT, all
these large language models and even search engines now are
pulling from everywhere. So you have to be really
cautious about what what you're putting out there, but.
Where is the date for chat rightnow?
I actually don't know. It used to be months, months

(45:17):
behind, but I think it's much more caught up now.
I don't know the exact date. I I know it's at least six
months prior. It's polling because of a year
ago or so it was 12 months. It's it's fairly recent.
No, yeah, that's definitely closing.
So great stuff. I think we'll we'll end out
here. Last thing I want to ask you
Matt is what is your and I, I know you have so much to say to

(45:41):
PCOS so you can, you can rant here as much as you want.
What is your final message to PCOS?
What do you want to tell them? What do they need to know?
What? What is your call to action?
Might speak to the camera listenI one of you you know who you
are we we didn't really Duke it out you were very kind on a
particular Facebook group the last couple of days your belief

(46:04):
your mindset that this new renaissance of digital marketing
is going to run over the little guy.
It's not I'm begging PC OS now and particularly the little guy
and particularly the medium guy who are trying to grow their
business, Make it on the PCT top100, sell with Paul Giannamore
one day, right? Take advantage of of this new

(46:24):
digital marketing landscape. Take advantage of it, embrace it
and partner up with the digital marketing company that is
embracing it so they can help you get your voice out there and
grow the shit out of your company because that's what
you're here to do. You're not here to be the same
size for two years in a row. What terrible manual labor you
do crawling under houses, using injection tools, digging

(46:46):
trenches around houses, getting covered in chemical and
showering off everyday. How awful would it be to be the
same size 2 years later? Partner with the digital
marketing company that is going to take your brand voice, take
the building blocks necessary for AI to put some fucking jet
fuel in your engine and help youtake off into a new stratosphere
and tell those big guys I'm here, I'm here, I'm not going

(47:08):
anywhere. You need to pay attention to me.
And when you're ready to buy me,get ready to cut a big ass check
because AI has not just grown the shit out of my company, but
it's also created efficiencies inside of my company.
So I'm running lean and you better have a big multiple.
That is the thing I'm begging for the most for these PC OS in
these communities that I work with.
I want your success. I want your success because I

(47:29):
got, I saw that success happen inside of my family.
That success changed my family'slife.
We went from a double wide to mydad doesn't even know how many
cars he owns right now and if his liver is even functioning
properly. OK, so please, I want that same
type of what day is it victory for you on the other side of
whatever? I want you to be at a car show

(47:49):
throwing out a check for a car that you've fallen in love with
that you've never able to buy yourself because you're too busy
trenching around homes and flooding it with tormidocide,
right? Please take advantage of this
digital marketing renaissance and let it blow your company up
in all the right ways. Absolutely.
And for full transparency, Matt actually does run a separate
marketing agency. So we are technically
competitors. But friends we're friend of.

(48:11):
Yeah, no, no, we're, we're frenemies.
We run different businesses. We do some of the same services,
mainly pest control, but yeah, no, we're good friends there.
There's plenty of plenty of pie to eat.
So we're we're not too concerned.
So yeah, if you want to contact Matt's company, that is Lizard
Marketing, I believe it's lizardmarketing.co.
Dot Co That's it. OK, So you can visit their
website if you're interested in working with them.
And Matt, where can people find you on social media?

(48:34):
Connect with you? You can find me everywhere.
I'm on Tiktok. I'm working on that.
I'm one of those guys that like,don't like selfies.
So if you go to my Instagram, you won't see a lot of those.
But you can find me on Facebook,Tiktok, LinkedIn and Instagram.
You can find me in those spaces.Awesome.
So all those links will be in the description.
Make sure to go follow Matt everywhere.
Go check out his company if you're interested.
And this has been such a great podcast.
I feel like we really covered a lot.

(48:54):
And thanks so much for coming on, Matt.
Such a pleasure, always a pleasure.
Absolutely.

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Pest Control Marketing Expert: Optimize For EEAT Before it's Too Late! - Mat Rogers

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Pest Control Marketing Expert: Optimize For EEAT Before it's Too Late! - Mat Rogers