April 5, 2024 • 58 mins
Get set to dive deep into the world of trades and marketing in "Mastering Marketing in the Trades: Inside Scoop From the Experts at The TradeMarke Podcast". Joining our dynamic conversation are Sarah Ghirardo, Eric Thomas, and our special guest, Gregg Towsley, a trade and marketing maestro. Explore a riveting synergy between marketing and trades as we uncover innovative insights from industry experts.
In this episode, Gregg discusses the fascinating journey of digital transformation within the trades Industry. Discover how the trades have evolved from traditional methods like whiteboards to sophisticated digital platforms like ServiceTitan. While understanding key metrics such as Return On Ad Spend (ROAS), you will also learn about the nitty-gritty of managing business operations sustainably.
This episode underlines the importance of "back-to-basics" approach in running a successful business and also elaborates on how understanding your breakeven point can significantly impact the effectiveness of your marketing strategies. Hence, we delve into the essence of consistency, a simple approach, and maintaining focus on your business operations.
Further, our panel habituates with the idea of having ground rules around business operations data and upscaling team skills to understand high-level metrics for driving profitability. Also, explore the crucial roles of communication, preparation, and customer treatment in growing your business.
In an era saturated with technologically advanced tools, the panel encourages beginners to master the art of simple strategies and avoid quick-fixes. Additionally, our experts discuss the potential of Artificial Intelligence in marketing and how it can significantly increase efficiency and better customer relationships.
Whether you are a trades professional or a marketing expert, these insights will help you supercharge your skillset. Lastly, understand the critical role of nurturing customer relationships post-service and get tips on leveraging KPIs for your business growth.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Step into The Trademark, your go-to podcast for everything marketing and the trades.
Hosted by award-winning industry marketing experts, Sarah Girardo from Remarketable
and Eric Thomas from Rival Digital.
Together, we're here to unite the worlds of trades and marketing.
Bringing you insights, stories, and strategies from the heart of the industry.
(00:21):
Whether you're a trade professional, a marketing expert, or somewhere in between,
this is the place for you.
Listen in as we're here for the big ideas, the game changers,
and the everyday successes.
Because at The Trademark, we're with the trades and for the trades.
What is going on, everyone?
(00:42):
Welcome back to another episode of The Trademark. Super excited to have you
all back here again for another episode.
And we've got a really special guest with us this week, don't we, Sarah? Yeah, we do.
Super excited. So everyone meet Greg Towsley.
And Greg, tell us a little bit about your background.
(01:03):
So I've been in the trades for a long time. It goes all the way back to 2007.
I started a digital media marketing consulting company back in 2007 and was
providing local businesses with SEO and in search and I decided to focus in on a niche,
(01:24):
which was home services, specifically plumbing and HVAC and did that for a while.
And since then I've had a passion for working with companies in the trades and
it's been great. It's exciting.
Yeah, that's awesome. I might be biased, but I think the trades is probably
the best niche that you could choose for a business.
(01:48):
So since then, I know that before we started recording, you'd mentioned that
currently you're working a lot in ServiceTitan, day in and day out, Marketing Pro.
And I know that Sarah is also very knowledgeable on this topic.
So definitely want to hear what you're seeing as far as what's working well
for different campaigns, different campaign summary reports, stuff like that.
(02:12):
Cool. Yeah. And just to give a little bit of background, you know,
I mean, Service Titan is relatively new on the scene.
You know, when I started working with the trades, specifically plumbing and
HVAC companies back in like 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, everything was done on a whiteboard. board.
And so the phone would ring and the CSRs would answer the phone and then they
(02:37):
would write down on the little sticky pads and then put the job up on the board.
The technicians would always come back to the office, grab the little sticky pad.
So to fast forward, I think Service Titan came on the scene around 2015, 2016,
2017, and really revolutionized the way that home service companies not only
(02:58):
do their marketing, we can get into that, but how they answer the phone and how they do dispatch.
And I launched an app really early, I think it was around 2012, a dispatch app.
And the feedback that I got from a lot of owners, plumbing and HVAC companies
are like, no way am I going to give this guy a smartphone.
There's no way I'm going to give him an iPad out in the field.
(03:20):
This guy can't even keep track of his tools and you want me to give him a smartphone
smartphone so he can call the office, that's never going to happen.
And now if you look at where we're at, it is standard protocol for anybody that does home services.
Even like locksmiths, they still have an iPad that are out in the field and
doing estimates and jobs and interacting with customers in the digital format.
(03:46):
Yeah, I think the trades have really become thought leaders in innovation.
And especially with AI that's coming out, I see a lot of them playing to see,
well, how can I automate this? How can I be more efficient?
And I think that's really where we need to go just in general in the home service
industry, because we are laggards on the adoption curve.
(04:09):
It's just that we have opportunity to be innovators.
A hundred percent. And Eric and Sarah, let's be real.
Things are still moving pretty slow when it comes to technology adaptation for
a lot of the plumbing and HVAC companies, but the horizon looks pretty amazing. amazing.
(04:32):
And the, the companies that are, you know, I listened to your podcast.
I I've listened to previous guests. I listened to a bunch of other podcasts
and the conversations now compared to like two years ago, you know,
a lot of these owners of, uh,
plumbing companies and, you know, even folks in, you know, how can we,
how can we automate this?
(04:53):
Or, you know, what's the, the,
the digitization of our service offering look like? And I'm like, huh?
I'm like, that was never part of the vocabulary two years ago.
And now it seems like that's really the trend. But I would say things are still moving pretty slow.
(05:14):
But the opportunity is as the trades gets more and more automated,
I think these companies are just going to run so much more efficiently.
And be more profitable.
Yeah, most definitely because time hits your bottom line. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Oh, that's a good one.
And so you work with a lot of different companies working at Titan Pro Technologies.
(05:39):
And what is the biggest opportunity that you see in using the Service Titan
Marketing Pro platform?
Like, what are they doing or not doing that you've seen?
So Sarah, you may or may not like this answer, but they're just not using Marketing Pro,
where they've read the literature on it, they've attended Pantheon,
(06:05):
they've heard a lot of people speak about it, they've watched YouTube videos on it.
But they're just not using the product, even some of the basic features of it.
We can go into some of the features, but once companies start using it,
(06:25):
their return on investment, just look at some basic stuff around aggregating
reviews and getting reviews online.
Just having that simple feature set up all the way to doing the VBB,
which is the value based bidding and integrating Google AdWords to get good
(06:46):
data in around what you're currently spending on marketing.
So just using the product and getting customers more used to some of the features
and being able to grow with it because there's a lot in there.
And so you have to really really take small steps to move the rate.
(07:08):
Yeah. Yeah. That's what I was talking to a client recently and he had been on
marketing pro for about a year and he was like, can I cancel constant contact now?
And I was like, did you get a cancel constant contact a year ago?
And he was just like, he was, he had marketing probates, wasn't using it.
Like you said, you know, to your point, he wasn't not even like at all for that matter.
(07:32):
But there are some folks that, you know, really aren't, you know,
using it quite to its full capabilities.
And so, yeah, I think the more people dig into it, that's when they become more
efficient. They become smarter in their decision-making too.
Once you start seeing what's working and what's not working with your PPC campaigns
and with LSA and email marketing and all that stuff.
(07:55):
And I know that you were talking about ROAS earlier, return on ad spend.
Like that, that used to not be in the conversation from an advertising or marketing standpoint.
Like we used to just before the GDPR days, we used to just like shit money into
the wind on brand awareness and no one cared about ROAS.
(08:15):
But now it's like, how much money did I make off of this campaign?
Let's go look and we can see that. And now we can, like you said,
become more efficient, which helps with profitability.
Yeah. And I think there's a lot of spend, a wasted spend in software just in general.
Right. Like we see these new shiny things and we're like, oh,
like, let's go ahead and buy this.
And then we don't use it. And that's the opportunity is to utilize what you have. Right.
(08:41):
And it's not that we're always out there talking about what you can do and what you can do.
But we all we know that only a certain percentage of people will take action.
Right. I can give them the answers all day long.
And I would say probably less than 20% would actually do something with that
information that's given to them.
(09:02):
And that's where the mindset shift needs to come in.
If you're going on a complicated software where it could be Salesforce,
it could be QuickBooks, it could be whatever.
If you're not fully understanding and taking the time to learn the software,
then you're You're doing yourself just an injustice because you bought this,
(09:25):
like put action behind it, delegate the task,
ensure that like, you know, everybody has training on it that needs it and develop
processes and systems to make it work.
And that's easier to say because you have people that are still out in the truck,
you know, wanting to utilize the software or any software.
(09:46):
And they're like, I just don't have time to learn it.
But that's, that's the difference in, I guess, user levels. It's who is working
in the business and who is working on the business.
And so like, that's the tips that I would give is like, you have to really just
shift your mindset and say, what am I going to do with this software?
What's the goal? What's my intent?
Like, does it make sense for my growth? Where am I at right now?
(10:09):
And where can I be tomorrow?
Most definitely. Those are all great points.
And I'm nodding a lot, trying not to nod too much, agreeing with you.
But I'm going to share something that I know you know, Sarah,
and then Eric, obviously, you know, but it's kind of for the listeners.
(10:30):
Just some real basic things regarding ServiceTitan.
And I look at instances of ServiceTitan customers that are using it pretty much every day.
And I can say, just off the top of my head, I've looked at over 50 different
users that are, you know, 50 different companies that are using ServiceTitan.
And one of the most basic things is to, is within the campaign summer report
(10:53):
is to set up phone numbers associated with each one of your campaigns.
So as it retains to its marketing, you have LSA, you have Yelp,
you have your Google business profile, you have your website,
you have landing page, you have Angie's.
I mean, I could go on and on. But just having dedicated phone numbers to each
one of those, nevermind your direct mail or any direct response that you're doing.
(11:17):
And that's super important because as customers find you on all these different
channels, if you have a good dedicated number,
I know both of you know this, but that phone number will track how many booked
calls you're getting, how many booked calls you're getting, how many jobs run
you're getting, and how much sales you're getting from that particular platform.
(11:39):
And you take sales divided by what you're currently spending on that platform, example,
you know, LSA or Yelp, and that gives you the number that, you know,
as marketers, we talk a lot about, which is ROAS, return on ad spend.
And that's super simple.
It's a setup feature within ServiceTitan. That's not even ServiceTitan Marketing
(12:02):
Pro, but just doing that, our conversations about marketing on the front end
is going to yield a lot more.
Of good decision-making data on the back end. Yeah.
I know both of you guys know that, but I thought maybe if anybody's listening,
that's pretty basic stuff.
(12:23):
And I'm not seeing that out there.
And it's cool when it is done effectively because you can make some really smart
decisions, whereas Yelp's not working or LSA's working or you get the idea.
Yeah. And so when you talk about ROAD, what is a good ROAS that people should be looking for?
(12:45):
I think we use so many acronyms. We're like, return on marketing spend,
return on ad spend, return our marketed expense to revenue or marketed expense to income.
What am I looking for from a business perspective of how much money do I want to get back on my ads?
So Sarah, that's a pretty open-ended question. And I can speak from my experience only.
(13:08):
And most recently, I came from private equity.
So for the last two years, I was part of a roll-up.
So we had a good amount of companies that we were able to draw that information from.
And I also recommend collaborating with whatever marketing firm you're working
with, because that's kind of their responsibility to generate some of that data.
(13:28):
So one of the goals that we always shot for is 3X.
So anytime you can get a a three or above on ROAS.
And again, ROAS, just as the definition that we're talking about here,
at least from my lens, is the sales divided by what you're currently spending
for that particular channel.
(13:49):
So if you can get a three or above, obviously your LSA, you're paying per lead.
Feed so you know and then each channel varies
but your lsa should be seven or above
so 7x on on roas for
for lsa of you know there's going to be people out there at seven you know i'm
(14:13):
22 x on lsa you know but each platform i don't think we need to go into each
platform but you know If you're getting a 3X ROAS on your direct mail,
obviously your website, you're probably not spending as much.
So that's just kind of what we shot for is bare minimum three.
(14:36):
Otherwise, you really have to cancel that campaign or look into what's wrong.
I'll bounce it off for you, Eric. And Sarah, what do you guys see for a good ROAS number? For us?
Here's a classic marketer's answer. It depends. I was trying to avoid the answer. Yeah.
(14:57):
So what we always like to do before, you know, asking or even trying to shoot
for a particular, you know, ROAS number is to understand what their,
what the, the contractors, either their breakeven point or their product, like what their net is.
Because a three-to-one for someone at a 25% net is going to look a lot different
(15:19):
than a three-to-one at someone at a 7% net.
And so, yeah, we always like to understand what their net is first.
So then we got to know at least how much we got to make for them to make a dollar.
So from there, but yeah, generally, I always tell the team, let's shoot for
a seven, shoot for an eight and above above on any type of paid channel.
(15:41):
If we fall short, then it's still typically a profitable campaign.
Of course, obviously, organic is going to be much higher because like you said,
the spend's a lot lower, but the quality of leads from organic are also a lot better.
So hug your local SEO person today.
For sure. Yeah. And I would say the same thing. You need to know your breakeven
(16:02):
point because it looks different for every company. and it hits differently on the P&L.
So really knowing what that, you know, break-even point on your return on marketing
spend is in line with your business will help you decide of what you need to see.
We went for a 4X men and then we would evaluate the campaigns based off of a
(16:29):
six month and it would depend on the campaign, right?
On how it's performing because it's not like, Like, oh, it's going to be piss
poor one month and we're going to turn it off.
We're going to have to optimize it. Like marketing is a test, right?
Like when I think about it, marketers are probably the biggest gamblers because
we have someone else's money that we're spending and we're like,
(16:52):
hey, look what we can do. And we're just testing.
We don't know if anything is tried and true until it becomes tried and true, right?
And so really just understanding that perspective of like, hey,
we're going in this and we know that this works, but we don't know if it's going to work for you.
That's really the truth, right? And marketers don't really tell people that,
(17:14):
but we are risky gamblers is what I like to say with other people's money because
our money is not being spent.
That's a good point. And then each area of the country, Northern California,
Southern California, Florida, New England, the flyover states,
each market is completely different.
(17:35):
And as a marketer, I'm always wrong. I think this is going to happen.
And then I'm always wrong. But I always try to take an educated guess,
like this is going to work.
So the data is key.
Also putting context text around the data, whereas sometimes numbers can tell different stories.
(18:00):
I think that's the best point. Everyone in the company has a different story on the data.
The owner sees it as way differently than the marketer, right?
We're like, oh, I can see the conversions that are happening or not happening
throughout the entire customer journey, whereas the owner is It's like,
oh, I see the bottom line numbers and they need to stay high level.
(18:23):
The CSR sees their own numbers.
The dispatcher sees their own numbers. So everyone has a different story.
So aligning that story to make it make sense is really important for culture is what I've noticed,
you know, having those all team meetings, talking about the numbers,
talking about EBITDA, talking about gross margin, like teaching your staff to
(18:43):
act as owners and understand the metrics from the high-level stories so that
they can own their own stories in the data and be able to repeat it back to others.
Sarah, can I double-click on exactly what you just said?
And I knew that this was going to come up because I know you fairly well.
And we had this conversation in a boardroom in Dallas, Texas when I met you
(19:07):
many, many years ago. And a perfect example of this is you use the five-letter
word calls as an example.
As a marketer, calls mean something. As an agency, an SEO calls mean something.
As a operations managers, calls mean something. As a technician, calls mean something.
(19:31):
And as the owner of the company or an operations person, like a chief operations
officer, calls mean something completely different.
Then you talk to the private equity folks, calls mean something different.
And so we could break down that definition of calls for each,
every single one of those persons.
And I guarantee you're going to get five different definitions.
(19:54):
So you highlighted a keyword culture.
And I wish I had a dollar for every company that I went into or that I talked
to that just didn't have clear definitions around any one of these topics like
jobs, appointments, run, calls.
I could go on, KPIs. You know, so yeah, that's a, that's a challenge.
(20:17):
And I don't, you know, it's a challenge within our industry across the board.
I'm not going to mention the word conversion rate, which means like,
what does that mean either?
You know, guys are talking out on the, on the YouTubes and the interwebs about
my conversion rate is 43%. And then they put their stake in the ground.
(20:40):
What does that mean? I don't know. Calls to calls to calls is 43% or conversion
rate on jobs, conversion rate on sales.
Like, who knows? So anyway, you hit the nail on the head. It's the company culture
and, you know, communication with inside the company.
Never mind, you know, how important communication is to the customer.
But anyway, I just want to go on that little tangent. Yeah, no,
(21:03):
that was a great tangent.
Like that, that makes sense. And for those listening, you know,
when you're building your business, understand that you're building people.
And, and I think that's the important part. And the important part is to teach
people numbers, because what they don't know, they don't know.
And conversion rates are, are based on every little interaction that that one person could have.
(21:26):
So the call center has conversion rates, the technician has conversion rates,
dispatch has conversion rates. And a technician has multiple conversion rates,
right? Did they sell membership?
Did they have add-on sales? Did they have to go back on a call and make no money from that call?
So then you just wasted how many dollars, right?
So there's a lot of things that need to be measured within the entire customer
(21:50):
journey just to make sure that you're profitable.
So yeah, we could talk about that stuff all day long, but very,
very good tangent that you went on.
I just really enjoy it. I really enjoy telling people of like,
hey, it's not your marketing, it's your operations.
Because maybe because there's a little bit of bitterness to me,
(22:13):
because it's like, oh, I got blamed for a lot of things sometimes as a marketer,
like, oh, why aren't the phones ringing?
And I'm like, dude, I gave you a bunch of phone calls, but you just didn't convert them.
Right? Like, I can only control what's in my control.
And then you have to think bigger, right? Like the bitterness has to go away
and you're like, cool, they don't have scripts.
(22:33):
Cool, they don't have like training. They don't have a process.
So that's all the things that you have to create as a marketer to help aid the conversion.
And I think that, I think a lot of, that's the missing piece that a lot of people,
a lot of marketers stop at the campaign level.
They're like, look, my job's done. And you're like, no, no, no,
your job is just starting.
(22:55):
Sarah, the flip side of that, one of my favorite text messages that I,
that I used to get, or I still do get or emails is, Hey, can you turn the phones off?
We're, we're, we're booked for the rest of the week.
And then me on the other, oh yeah, I'll just, let me run over to the office.
I'll unplug the electricity to turn the phones off.
(23:17):
Like, obviously I know what they mean, but you know, as a marketer,
that's always a good thing.
By the way, that's not just like one company that I work for.
You know what I mean? I worked for a big plumbing company that had 13 locations
and the, you know, 13 different operations managers.
And they'd be like, Hey, turn the phones on this afternoon and turn them off.
That's, you know, all the, not all the communication, but that was like the
(23:39):
primary communication. And then, you know, just seems like operation managers
rely so heavily upon marketing to either make the phone rings or,
you know, turn the phone ring, just keeping that board full.
So anyway, I'm chuckling. I'm like, yeah, can you turn the phone off this afternoon?
But, but, but make sure you turn it up tomorrow morning. Okay.
(23:59):
Right. You're like magic doesn't work like that, but we'll see what we can do.
You yeah i turned it off you
know i mean like you know i mean they obviously aren't saying that literally
but yeah just the message that comes over the the uh the wire yeah yeah most
definitely and sometimes like we don't even know the capacity to be honest it's
(24:22):
like the call center has a capacity board and then the dispatcher has a capacity
board and you're like do you speak to one another?
Are you matching? And then they're like, well, we need calls.
And you're like, what? You told me that you didn't. I thought we were fine.
So yeah, the reaction as a marketer, it's, it's, it can be, you know,
(24:42):
it's a big, deep breath sometimes is what I like to say.
But I have a question. So what's one piece of advice that you would give any
business owner just starting out with marketing today?
What would you say to them?
So specific starting out with marketing? Yeah. They're just starting out.
They're like, oh gosh, I know I have to do marketing.
(25:04):
I've been doing referral-based for so long.
Now what? it? So it's, it's, it's pretty basic, not a very fancy answer,
but to, to, to know your, know your numbers.
And if you're just starting out with like either, you know, marketing pro or
service tight end, or, you know, is, is, is experiment.
And I like the, and I've always felt this way is, is, is multi-channel.
(25:28):
So you gotta be everywhere.
So, you know, the, the, the same, Well, you asked for like somebody just starting
out would be to work with a good agency and go with the multi-channel approach.
So multi-channel just be in as many places as you can.
So Yelp, Angie, you know, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube threads,
(25:49):
Instagram, you know, be everywhere.
Yeah. And Eric, what advice would you give someone just starting out?
Ooh, that's, I like that question. You know, that's the question I used to always ask people too.
Yeah, definitely. Definitely knowing your numbers and knowing your breakeven point for each day.
Because if you know your breakeven point, as far as if it was a good day or
(26:12):
not, as far as profitability,
once you hit that breakeven point, then you can empower anyone on the team,
the comfort advisors, your CSRs.
You can start wiggling on price if you need to.
You can start to be a little bit more empowered to...
To take a risk once you've hit your breakeven point for the day.
(26:33):
And then if you haven't quite hit your breakeven point, then,
you know, it's time to smile and dial and, and get that board full until you,
you know, so that you make up for it the next day.
But I would also say like, I think also a lot of times, like there's,
there's a lot of good technology out there.
And I think when you're first starting out, you don't always need all of it.
Like, I think a lot of people really just forget the fundamentals of running a business from a,
(26:57):
a marketing and advertising standpoint from an operational standpoint of sometimes
it doesn't take a shiny object to become a million-dollar company.
Sometimes you just need to roll up your sleeves and just be a little gritty.
But I think a lot of people forget that sometimes.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Eric, that's a good point. And I feel the pain for a lot of
(27:22):
these home services companies.
When I say home service, not only plumbing and HVAC, but roofing and everything
that falls within home services, because it seems like the marketing or back
to what we talked about, getting the phones to ring.
It seems like it can be so challenging for these operators because they're getting
(27:43):
hit with so many different shiny objects from so many different.
And nowadays there's so many different agencies. So they're being pulled in
so many different directions.
But Eric, to your point is, go back to the basics, work on building your brand,
work on generating reviews, work on word of mouth, and utilizing the tools.
(28:04):
And like I said, getting a good agency that communicates well.
You know, so, so trying to take all that noise and just boiling it down to,
you know, what you would have done 15 years ago, which is take out the biggest
ad in the yellow pages, but now just, you know, the, the tools and resources.
So Eric, to your point is try, try to just come with, with a simple approach.
(28:27):
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I think, yeah, I think a lot of times too,
you know, like you're, like you were saying, there's so many different,
you know, companies and options and stuff like out there, stuff like that out there.
And there's times where, you know, we've seen contractors where it's like,
they're going from this agency to that agency, from this CRM to that CRM,
(28:49):
from this finance provider to that finance provider,
from this call center to that call center.
And I'm like, you're spending all your time and onboarding with stuff.
Like, imagine if you just stuck with one thing for a year with all the things
that you need and just focused on the business instead of, you know,
switching every three to six months on stuff, how much farther they could be ahead.
(29:13):
Like these, you know, a lot of these things, when you change,
it should be a good change.
But I think a lot of times people think that that change is what's going to
make the phone ring and what's going to make them a successful business.
When that's just not the reality of it.
That grass is not always greener. No, grass is only greener where you water it.
(29:34):
You have to optimize, even with your agencies, right?
You have to create a partnership and listen to one another because you don't
know it all. They don't know it all.
Google, everyone's changing every single day and the landscape is constantly evolving.
Evolving and so if you can create a partnership
where hey you see something that maybe you
(29:56):
can just share with your agency and maybe they already
know who cares if you're wrong you're wrong if you're right you're right but
at least the idea is out there and that partnership is created by sharing mutual
strategies or or you know understanding now the the changing of the the agency, like toilet paper,
(30:17):
it doesn't make sense, right? You're not even giving it a chance.
And maybe you don't have a great partnership. And maybe you don't like the attitude. Okay, fine.
Like, then it's not a great partnership, the culture fits not there.
But you analyze the culture of that agency, as well as you know,
the data and the outcomes that they've delivered before you even say yes.
(30:41):
And so, you know, I keep seeing this online.
They're like, well, we've gone to three to six different agencies within the last year.
And I'm like, you haven't even given anyone a chance. You know,
like it takes time to test things.
So totally on point with that in general.
(31:02):
My other question to you, and we're going to switch topics on to automation
and efficiency using AI.
So Greg, where do you see the best use case for AI in the marketing field?
So I was listening to a recent podcast of Ara, the CEO of ServiceTitan.
And I'm going to bring it back to ServiceTitan because that's kind of where
(31:25):
I've been living inside of for like the last five years and doing a lot of consulting
with companies right now.
And one AI feature that I do see on the horizon, maybe it'll be rolled out at
the upcoming Pantheon conference, but it's called Universal Inbox.
So you can think about these companies and CSRs that are going through their
(31:48):
day-to-day, and they're generating leads and phone calls from so many different sources.
So R was talking about this concept using AI for the Universal Inbox and the
prioritization of leads in that inbox.
So I'll just explain it real quick. It's kind of like, you know,
Gmail, but you have leads that come in from Yelp. You have LSA leads and each
(32:08):
one of these lead gen sources, including Angie or even some agencies,
they all have, you know, their own inbox.
So if ServiceTitan, and by the way, I've been begging for this product for a
long time, but if ServiceTitan was able to say, okay, all leads are going to
go into say Marketing Pro or just within ServiceTitan, this universal inbox,
(32:29):
and then we can use smart technology, i.e.
AI to filter which ones are real customers, that would be super cool,
super efficient for CSRs, make marketing look like a hero.
And then, you know, AI is really good at lead scoring.
(32:50):
So, you know, maybe the Yelp leads get pushed down a little bit.
LSA gets pushed up a little bit.
And, you know, when people provide, check this out. This is pretty crazy.
This is, you know, blows my mind.
But when people provide their address, and by the way, all the call answering and the call recording,
like CallRail and Mongoose, you know, all those call answering,
(33:12):
When a customer provides their home address,
that data point that you get on an inbound call, or just think about that one
data point, that meta data that is collected,
whether it be over the telephone, which obviously you can record that and capture
that, or on a particular lead that's sent over,
(33:35):
you can do some really, really rough guesstimating.
On what the quality of that potential home is.
That's to freak people out, but every single business has what I call honeypots.
(33:56):
And you want to fish where fish are, and if you have good bait,
you're going to load your boat up with fish all day long.
And a honeypot is just like a particular street in a neighborhood or a geography of the city.
Think of your given city where you live. and it's
not always the high net worth home individuals that
generate the most amount of revenue or have the highest sales rates a lot of
(34:18):
times it's not it's not the high net worth areas sometimes it's the other side
of the track or it's kind of that in between but you can imagine you know when
a lead comes in with that data point of the address you know,
I can think off the top of my head, you know, I'd much rather go to that house.
And it's not the car that's parked in the driveway.
(34:40):
It's like, okay, this neighborhood, they're really good at, you know,
getting approved for finance. You understand what I'm saying?
So just those things, universal inbox and, you know, what you can do with that data point.
And think about roofers too. You know what I mean? We're not only talking about
plumbing and HVAC, but the roofing companies with, you know, okay.
(35:03):
Next to service science working on this, but next to that lead that just came
in from Yelp on the new roof, I can see the roof via global satellites that Elon put up there.
That's a new roof. I don't know what they're calling. Maybe they have a leak.
So let's pass that. Anyway, you got to stop me, but you know,
and then AI is not anything new. It's not a shiny object.
(35:25):
We've been using it. You know, if you drive your car, if you have a new car, you know what I mean?
AI is keeping you in the lane. so it's always
like you know how can we capitalize on ai i'm like using it
every single day you know i mean look at your gmail it's you
know it's already there sorry i
tend to go go off i could do the same thing i'm like here's all of my ideas
(35:49):
and they just look at me like what is happening right now and then they they
say they say the same thing back to me but in a way of a developer standpoint or engineer.
And I'm like, cool, but the people that we are marketing to are not engineers.
So I'm going to tell you what it sounds like from a normal person.
(36:09):
And, and I think like you have great ideas. Like you can see the whole home
in like the neighborhood, right?
Like for instance, is the plumbing, you're having plumbing problems in your
home in the neighborhood.
You can can only imagine that the entire neighborhood was, you know, not piped correctly.
(36:30):
So a hundred percent, right, right there.
Hey, we did three homes on, on the street, you know, it's because the town screwed
up the sewer lines. Right.
Because that means that, yeah, sorry. I did not mean to cut you off, but that means,
Hey, we got to send our best rain tech because, you know, he can, he, he's the,
the guy that can solve that verse sending, you
(36:53):
know the faucet guy yeah and
also just making sure when you're yeah and
when you're when you're there and you identify that you know making sure that
those vans are stocked full of of door hangers and yard signs and all the other
things all the collateral that they can need so that if they if someone sees
(37:16):
that opportunity you know say they're up on a roof,
and they're looking around the neighborhood and they see six or seven other
roofs that look like crap.
It's like, hmm, maybe we can...
Stay in this neighborhood, keep getting work in this neighborhood.
There's opportunity all around us and start putting out door hangers and yard signs.
You know, I don't understand what every, I'm about, I'm about to go on tangent.
(37:39):
I don't understand why everyone's so dang scared to put out yard signs.
The worst thing that's going to happen is that it's going to get pulled up and
thrown away. Unless you're in California where there's probably some law.
In California, in California, they're probably like going to arrest you. and I'm just kidding.
But I'll tell you one thing. When I worked at Mosquito Joe, we used to have
(38:02):
these like local marketing days where we would go out as a team and just litter
the town with yard signs.
I mean, litter. And I know I don't work there anymore,
but this past week I was driving to the post office and I had known that they
must have had one of their marketing days because I must have seen at least
(38:24):
250 Mosquito Joe yard signs just in one area of town.
And I'd say it's brilliant. Like it's all you can think of at that point.
So if you're in that neighborhood and you've got the yard signs,
it's going to start sticking them out, maybe not in people's yards,
but at the nearest intersection or when you're at a stoplight,
hop out and put one in the ground.
(38:47):
What's going to happen is it's going to get pulled up and thrown away.
Well, Eric, that's a good point. You know, what's one of the best lead gen sources
is when you see the truck at your neighbor's house and you have that same nagging problem.
And it just goes down to, it just gets back to marketing basics is,
you know, you're only going to buy from people who you know, like, and trust.
And you would kind of think based upon, you know, your neighbor that,
(39:10):
hey, they probably, you know, called the right guy to solve the problem.
And so, you know, having the good signage on the truck and in the neighborhood,
those are the best leads.
Yeah. And what if the signs were like fun, right? Like it wasn't like, you know...
Frost boss is here call today what if
(39:32):
it was like i fixed your pipes or like i i
cleared your pipes like something or like hilarious i
don't even know i'm not even thinking funny things but like and then
the the slogan was just fun
like i feel like sometimes we are so direct direct
direct it we forget to have fun in our marketing in our advertising and so yard
(39:54):
signs can be hilarious What if you had a child draw an image for you and then
you went and just taped it up on the street sign and you're like,
that's that's an advertising.
They'd be like, why is there a child's photo? And then you're saying,
oh, enter a contest to win.
And those people that run by it, you know, see that.
(40:14):
And it's just it's guerrilla marketing. It's just different ways to get out there and be different.
And I think that's the point.
It's how are you going to be different? Yes, your truck's showing up.
They can't be white vans. It's just, A, it's just totally inappropriate at this
point in time, right? Like, kidnappers are real.
(40:35):
Like, don't be a white van. But at the same time, like, show your brand in different
ways and be creative and be fun and be out there in the community as much as you can.
Maybe not littering is the best word. and you just litter everywhere,
but you strategically place your yard signs so that they won't get seen.
(40:56):
I'll litter. Sarah, a good example of this is a company that you and I both
know that we both have visited before a while back, Milestone out in Dallas, Texas.
Their billboard, I'm not going to describe it right now, but their billboard
has a really cute dog on it. and they have like a QR code and a landing page
(41:21):
driving people to that cute dog.
And I'll let people go out and Google it on themselves because I'm not going
to do it justice, but it's completely different.
And it's cool. It's a dog contest billboard that they are putting all over Dallas.
My brother lives there. He's seen it and he's taken pictures of it.
(41:42):
He's like, how come you don't do this?
I'm like, well, I wasn't really given the opportunity to do anything like that, but it's really cool.
Yeah. Don't do that in the show notes or a link or something like that.
I'll show you an example, but I've been using that one over and over again. Yeah. Yeah.
I know Lee's air conditioning did a billboard for a coloring contest from a
(42:03):
local children's hospital.
There's so many brilliant ideas out there. Like what can you,
how can you showcase them?
How can you get them involved? The people love dogs, they love children and
you know, they love cute things that get their attention. So, yeah, they expect.
What do you think a consumer expects from when a plumber shows up at their house without service titan?
(42:28):
Like what if you just had to hire a plumber, what would you expect for that
plumber to do when he comes to your house and how would he look or he or she look?
I'm a financial year. Are you asking me the question? I'm asking you the question.
So I'm not a good person to ask because I've been in the industry for like 15
(42:49):
years, but I will tell you my biggest concern,
and I share this in every single one of my trainings or every single one of
like, you know, anytime I'm in the CSR meetings,
which I've been into a lot of, you know, my biggest concern is,
you know, especially in today's day and age is I want to have comfort from the
(43:12):
company and the company.
The person that is going to be showing up in my home.
I could be at work and my wife's at home with the two young kids.
My kids are old now, but two young kids, um,
I just want to know that when I do send that plumber to my house,
there's going to be a level of professionalism and I want to feel more comfortable.
(43:34):
And that's the same thing if my wife, I'm using me as an example because you
asked me, if my wife is calling a company, one, I want to make sure that I'm
going to check the reviews for somebody that's going to be coming to my house.
And then two, I'm not as concerned about the booties or looking clean or the
truck being being immaculate,
(43:55):
but I want that person to, you know, have my vested interest in mind around fixing the problem.
So, you know, the more that the business owner and the business and the,
and the company culture can do to, you know, break down those, those barriers.
Like I love the idea and this is integrated in service heightened,
(44:17):
but Hey, you know, Johnny is going to be coming to to your house.
And then, you know, here's a five second video of what Johnny looks like.
So you can keep an eye out and he's not going to park in the,
anyway, you get the idea,
but to make that customer feel a little bit more comfortable around having an
(44:38):
individual into their house with a,
you know, and they're not happy that person's coming over, you know, they got a a problem.
So when that person shows up to be professional and showing sincerity around
how that customer feels.
And that is really hard for a technician to do because he might've just got
(45:02):
off the phone with his boss or his manager, or he might've just had a bad call.
And these guys, I feel for them because they're going from personality to personality
to personality and And everybody's human.
So, yeah, I love that. And Eric, what would you say?
I don't remember where I heard this from, but I heard a statistic about how
(45:25):
if – and this is a statistic in regards to females and how they view service professionals.
And it was something about if there's a service professional coming to do work
the next day, that females get 40% less sleep or something like that.
Don't quote me on that, but I've heard it on a podcast somewhere,
(45:46):
and that was pretty eye-opening to me.
It was like that there is some subconscious anxiety around a stranger coming
into your home, regardless of any stereotypes about any type of trade or what they might be.
There's generally anxiety around letting people into your home that you don't know.
(46:08):
So I do think to really hit home on that point, Greg,
like you were saying, the more you can do prior to service and not just when
they're on their way, the day before, two days before,
leading up to that appointment, as much as you can do beforehand to remind them,
(46:30):
to introduce them, to here's a fun fact,
he loves puppies, whatever it might be.
And then he shows up and he's got milk bones and he's got a puppy.
It's, you know, for me as a homeowner and, and my experience with,
you know, different service professionals, it's frustrating when I don't get any reminders.
(46:51):
And then they, they called me the morning of, and they're like,
Hey, just want to make sure that 12 is still a good time. And I'm like,
I called you like three weeks ago. I forgot that I even booked this.
And so, yeah, as much as you can do leading up to that appointment,
because it also helped, you know, if you, if you can catch that cancellation
three or four days before,
it's going to be a lot more, there's gonna be a lot more wiggle room for you
(47:12):
to fill that backfill that opening in the calendar,
than if you get that cancellation the morning of or a couple hours before because
the customer forgot you were coming.
So yeah, I guess my answer would just be as much as you can do to personify
your company and make the customer feel like they already know you before you show up, the better.
(47:33):
Yep. And then after, right? I think a lot of people forget about the nurture.
So either the conversion didn't happen or it did, in either way,
they need to be nurtured.
Thank you for letting us come out to your home.
These are either simple emails or just another part of a connection, right?
(47:53):
You've got to continue that customer journey and direct them to where you want
them to go. I think that's also really important.
Being professional as a female, I can say that having someone in my home is
sometimes nerve wracking.
But at the same time, like I do this for a living. So I just watch the experience.
(48:15):
And then I'm always rating the experience, right? Like, okay,
and I rent so it's a property manager experience.
So it's totally different from any other, you know, if I would have would have called a company.
But it's, it's really, for me, it's like, I want to be talked to like,
I'm not in, like, I don't know something.
(48:38):
Don't assume that I don't know what's going on. Like I called you,
I, I, you know, did my research, I figured out what the problem was, because it is just me.
And never like, like treat people appropriately.
I think that's really what I would say to business owners that are coming out
there or not business. Yeah.
(48:59):
Small business owners that maybe don't have a system in place.
Start your system with the brand experience and the customer experience.
And really understand that you are speaking to many different people throughout
the day, but each person is still just a human, as Greg said.
And, you know, what we don't know, we don't know, but what we do know,
like watch out because I'm watching you kind of.
(49:23):
Yeah, I think you, I think you're spot on there with the, like the post service as well.
Just a simple, a simple little thought of gratitude goes a long way for sure there.
Like I remember at one time I got my car serviced and when I got my car back,
there was a little bag of candy and it said, have a sweet ride home.
(49:44):
And that's my auto shop for the rest of my life, as long as I live here,
because it was like three or four Jolly Ranchers and maybe like a Reese's or two.
And it just didn't have a sweet ride home, probably cost them a dollar, $1.50.
And I have never forgotten it. But same with another Mosquito Joe thought,
because it was outdoor pest control, we always had to make sure that if the
(50:07):
customer had any animals, because there's a period where you have to wait before
your dogs can go on the grass.
And so if they had a dog, every technician, at least here in the Virginia Beach
area, we had Frisbees that had the Mosquito Joe logo on it.
And they would just throw one into the backyard before they left for the dog.
(50:28):
And so just imagine like you're a homeowner and you let the dog out and the
dog comes back inside with a frisbee with your logo on it like how cool that
i mean i just think that's pretty neat.
Yeah there's little leave behind you know they matter greatly you don't have
to spend a lot of money and just like eat that candy with a sticker on it or
(50:48):
what if you did a qr code a lot of people do qr code magnets they do qr code
stickers on units you know like there's a lot of different leave-behinds that you can do.
But the more, like I like to say, the more Instagrammable the leave-behind is,
I think that's really where it's at because you want people to share the service
that they just had, but more than likely they're going to share what you left behind,
(51:12):
because it's either cute, quirky, or something that they will use or just maybe
they won't use, or maybe they'll give it to their kid and their kid carries it around all day.
Think of like a little Hot Wheel or think of like a little stuffed animal that looks like your logo.
And your mascot. So all sorts of leave-behinds are a great part of the experience.
(51:34):
You know, and even like thinking about, okay, well, you might be there for one
part of the home, but what about thinking about the whole home and,
you know, giving them a calendar of when the different things in your home need to be serviced.
You know, like just little things that really, that are inexpensive to make,
you could make that on Canva and print it out really cheaply. So, um, Sure.
(51:58):
On this topic, one of the stories that I always share,
which I find remarkable is we, we, we interviewed and we did some ride alongs
with this super successful comfort advisor or channel leader,
whatever, whatever you call them.
But this guy crushes in terms of, you know, what he makes per money per year
(52:19):
on his, you know, in his paycheck as well as what he sales.
And the story that I tell that he shared with us when we were really deep diving
on what makes this guy so successful,
why does he 10x what every other comfort advisor and channel leader does,
is he had two really simple icebreakers that he said on every single appointment.
(52:40):
So there's never any, any time that he didn't walk into the house that he said this.
And if it gets back to like knowing your audience.
So if he was dealing with a woman who had kids or had a dog or,
you know, even if she was elderly, he would position it, but he would always
say, you know, I'm here because, and this is what was his opening line.
And I'll give you one for the, the, the male, like the, the,
the homeowner, like either like the dad or the father figure or the female.
(53:06):
But if it was a female, he would always say like, as he's bending down to like
put his, his booties on, or before he walked in the house, he would always say
this with like a chuckle or a smile without making eye contact.
Has this particular problem been an issue for you for a little while?
(53:26):
And he would say some variation of that. And that just like opened up,
you know, the welcoming him into the house.
Or if it was a, the male counterpart of the house,
he would always say with a smile have you
tried to fix the problem or like you know
what have you done to try to fix it and like
(53:47):
that was just like his opening line it broke down all the barriers it brought
in like the human connection and he did it on every single call almost like
you know he was an actor you know on you know in front of the big screen but yeah,
At that point in time, all the barriers are broken. And, you know,
(54:10):
she's talking about like, yeah, Jesus Christ, I wouldn't have you out here if,
you know, the kids bathroom work.
And, you know, he's like, yeah, I know. Yeah.
Yeah. It kind of reminds me of like. Because, you know, he was he was just magical
on on how he just said that exact same phrase, depending upon the audience.
And he'd tell her it a little bit if it was elderly or, you know,
(54:33):
a young mom or, you know, a college, you know, student.
Yeah, it's kind of like I didn't. That was my dog.
I'm just kidding. My dog's been like working at the end of like every every podcast. cast.
I can think of no better way to, to land this plane than to have a dog barking.
(55:01):
It's my favorite. I love dogs.
So yeah. So Greg kind of, as we're, as we're, we're tying the bow on this one,
wrapping it up, you know, kind of like a last tip before we dip kind of deal.
What's a, no, we're in what we're in now.
I was going to say, we're looking forward to a rough year, So we're in probably
(55:22):
what's going to be a pretty rough year for some folks.
What's your piece of advice for folks for this year specifically from now until
the end of 2024 that if they want to stay afloat and really just make sure that
they come through what is another election year,
it's the one thing they got to do?
(55:44):
So I always go back to knowing your numbers and come up with,
no matter who you are, if you're in operations,
if you're a channel leader, a comfort advisor, if you're the owner of the company,
come up with two or three, I call them KPIs, key performance indicators, or goals.
(56:06):
Goals and then, you know, prioritize your, your, your day around,
you know, those particular numbers or those particular goals and say,
Hey, you know, I'm given all of these particular, you know, things that I have to do today.
Are they going to help me achieve, you know, and I recommend,
you know, two or three of them, are they going to help me achieve,
(56:28):
you know, this number or this goal?
So just to keep it, keep it simple. And I have to do that But in my day to day,
like every hour, you know, because I see a lot of shiny objects and I have a
lot of squirrels running around up here.
But keep your eyes on eyes on the prize.
Awesome. Well, Greg, this has been this has been fun. It's been a quick hour.
(56:52):
Definitely appreciate you taking some time out of your busy schedule to chat
with us. And what are some ways that our listeners out there can connect with
you or learn more about what you've got going on?
I think the easiest way is LinkedIn. I tend to be a LinkedIn guy.
I try to post there often, interact there on often.
(57:12):
Anytime I see Sarah or Eric's post, I always give it a like.
I think that's probably the best way to connect with me. And then my phone number's
on there. So I carry this thing around in my pocket.
And every time it rings, I answer it.
Unless I'm sleeping or even sometimes I still answer while I'm sleeping.
So I'm pretty easy to find and collaborate with. and I look forward to reaching
(57:36):
out to as many people. I love your podcast.
I love what you guys are doing and I love home services and I'm going to stick
around for a while. So it's pretty awesome.
Awesome. Well, thank you so much. It's been just an absolute pleasure catching
up with you again and I appreciate your support.
Likewise. And that wraps up another episode of The Trademark where we bridge
(57:58):
the worlds of the trades and marketing one story at a time.
We can't wait to see you next time Thank you to The Trades for giving back big,
loving big, and taking massive action.
Don't forget to join us next time for more engaging conversations and innovative ideas.
If you enjoyed today's episode, please leave us a review and share it with your
(58:20):
colleagues and friends in the trades and marketing.
Your support means the world to us.
Stay connected with us off the air by following us on social media.
We'd love to hear your thoughts and get your feedback. back.
Until next time, keep making your mark in the trades.
Thank you for listening to The Trademark. Goodbye for now. And remember,
(58:40):
we're with the trades for the trades.
Step into The Trademark, your go-to podcast for everything marketing and the trades.
Hosted by award-winning industry marketing experts, Sarah Girardo from Remarketable
and Eric Thomas from Rival Digital.
Together, we're here to unite the worlds of trades and marketing.
Bringing you insights, stories, and strategies from the heart of the industry.
(00:21):
Whether you're a trade professional, a marketing expert, or somewhere in between,
this is the place for you.
Listen in as we're here for the big ideas, the game changers,
and the everyday successes.
Because at The Trademark, we're with the trades and for the trades.
What is going on, everyone?
(00:42):
Welcome back to another episode of The Trademark. Super excited to have you
all back here again for another episode.
And we've got a really special guest with us this week, don't we, Sarah? Yeah, we do.
Super excited. So everyone meet Greg Towsley.
And Greg, tell us a little bit about your background.
(01:03):
So I've been in the trades for a long time. It goes all the way back to 2007.
I started a digital media marketing consulting company back in 2007 and was
providing local businesses with SEO and in search and I decided to focus in on a niche,
(01:24):
which was home services, specifically plumbing and HVAC and did that for a while.
And since then I've had a passion for working with companies in the trades and
it's been great. It's exciting.
Yeah, that's awesome. I might be biased, but I think the trades is probably
the best niche that you could choose for a business.
(01:48):
So since then, I know that before we started recording, you'd mentioned that
currently you're working a lot in ServiceTitan, day in and day out, Marketing Pro.
And I know that Sarah is also very knowledgeable on this topic.
So definitely want to hear what you're seeing as far as what's working well
for different campaigns, different campaign summary reports, stuff like that.
(02:12):
Cool. Yeah. And just to give a little bit of background, you know,
I mean, Service Titan is relatively new on the scene.
You know, when I started working with the trades, specifically plumbing and
HVAC companies back in like 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, everything was done on a whiteboard. board.
And so the phone would ring and the CSRs would answer the phone and then they
(02:37):
would write down on the little sticky pads and then put the job up on the board.
The technicians would always come back to the office, grab the little sticky pad.
So to fast forward, I think Service Titan came on the scene around 2015, 2016,
2017, and really revolutionized the way that home service companies not only
(02:58):
do their marketing, we can get into that, but how they answer the phone and how they do dispatch.
And I launched an app really early, I think it was around 2012, a dispatch app.
And the feedback that I got from a lot of owners, plumbing and HVAC companies
are like, no way am I going to give this guy a smartphone.
There's no way I'm going to give him an iPad out in the field.
(03:20):
This guy can't even keep track of his tools and you want me to give him a smartphone
smartphone so he can call the office, that's never going to happen.
And now if you look at where we're at, it is standard protocol for anybody that does home services.
Even like locksmiths, they still have an iPad that are out in the field and
doing estimates and jobs and interacting with customers in the digital format.
(03:46):
Yeah, I think the trades have really become thought leaders in innovation.
And especially with AI that's coming out, I see a lot of them playing to see,
well, how can I automate this? How can I be more efficient?
And I think that's really where we need to go just in general in the home service
industry, because we are laggards on the adoption curve.
(04:09):
It's just that we have opportunity to be innovators.
A hundred percent. And Eric and Sarah, let's be real.
Things are still moving pretty slow when it comes to technology adaptation for
a lot of the plumbing and HVAC companies, but the horizon looks pretty amazing. amazing.
(04:32):
And the, the companies that are, you know, I listened to your podcast.
I I've listened to previous guests. I listened to a bunch of other podcasts
and the conversations now compared to like two years ago, you know,
a lot of these owners of, uh,
plumbing companies and, you know, even folks in, you know, how can we,
how can we automate this?
(04:53):
Or, you know, what's the, the,
the digitization of our service offering look like? And I'm like, huh?
I'm like, that was never part of the vocabulary two years ago.
And now it seems like that's really the trend. But I would say things are still moving pretty slow.
(05:14):
But the opportunity is as the trades gets more and more automated,
I think these companies are just going to run so much more efficiently.
And be more profitable.
Yeah, most definitely because time hits your bottom line. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Oh, that's a good one.
And so you work with a lot of different companies working at Titan Pro Technologies.
(05:39):
And what is the biggest opportunity that you see in using the Service Titan
Marketing Pro platform?
Like, what are they doing or not doing that you've seen?
So Sarah, you may or may not like this answer, but they're just not using Marketing Pro,
where they've read the literature on it, they've attended Pantheon,
(06:05):
they've heard a lot of people speak about it, they've watched YouTube videos on it.
But they're just not using the product, even some of the basic features of it.
We can go into some of the features, but once companies start using it,
(06:25):
their return on investment, just look at some basic stuff around aggregating
reviews and getting reviews online.
Just having that simple feature set up all the way to doing the VBB,
which is the value based bidding and integrating Google AdWords to get good
(06:46):
data in around what you're currently spending on marketing.
So just using the product and getting customers more used to some of the features
and being able to grow with it because there's a lot in there.
And so you have to really really take small steps to move the rate.
(07:08):
Yeah. Yeah. That's what I was talking to a client recently and he had been on
marketing pro for about a year and he was like, can I cancel constant contact now?
And I was like, did you get a cancel constant contact a year ago?
And he was just like, he was, he had marketing probates, wasn't using it.
Like you said, you know, to your point, he wasn't not even like at all for that matter.
(07:32):
But there are some folks that, you know, really aren't, you know,
using it quite to its full capabilities.
And so, yeah, I think the more people dig into it, that's when they become more
efficient. They become smarter in their decision-making too.
Once you start seeing what's working and what's not working with your PPC campaigns
and with LSA and email marketing and all that stuff.
(07:55):
And I know that you were talking about ROAS earlier, return on ad spend.
Like that, that used to not be in the conversation from an advertising or marketing standpoint.
Like we used to just before the GDPR days, we used to just like shit money into
the wind on brand awareness and no one cared about ROAS.
(08:15):
But now it's like, how much money did I make off of this campaign?
Let's go look and we can see that. And now we can, like you said,
become more efficient, which helps with profitability.
Yeah. And I think there's a lot of spend, a wasted spend in software just in general.
Right. Like we see these new shiny things and we're like, oh,
like, let's go ahead and buy this.
And then we don't use it. And that's the opportunity is to utilize what you have. Right.
(08:41):
And it's not that we're always out there talking about what you can do and what you can do.
But we all we know that only a certain percentage of people will take action.
Right. I can give them the answers all day long.
And I would say probably less than 20% would actually do something with that
information that's given to them.
(09:02):
And that's where the mindset shift needs to come in.
If you're going on a complicated software where it could be Salesforce,
it could be QuickBooks, it could be whatever.
If you're not fully understanding and taking the time to learn the software,
then you're You're doing yourself just an injustice because you bought this,
(09:25):
like put action behind it, delegate the task,
ensure that like, you know, everybody has training on it that needs it and develop
processes and systems to make it work.
And that's easier to say because you have people that are still out in the truck,
you know, wanting to utilize the software or any software.
(09:46):
And they're like, I just don't have time to learn it.
But that's, that's the difference in, I guess, user levels. It's who is working
in the business and who is working on the business.
And so like, that's the tips that I would give is like, you have to really just
shift your mindset and say, what am I going to do with this software?
What's the goal? What's my intent?
Like, does it make sense for my growth? Where am I at right now?
(10:09):
And where can I be tomorrow?
Most definitely. Those are all great points.
And I'm nodding a lot, trying not to nod too much, agreeing with you.
But I'm going to share something that I know you know, Sarah,
and then Eric, obviously, you know, but it's kind of for the listeners.
(10:30):
Just some real basic things regarding ServiceTitan.
And I look at instances of ServiceTitan customers that are using it pretty much every day.
And I can say, just off the top of my head, I've looked at over 50 different
users that are, you know, 50 different companies that are using ServiceTitan.
And one of the most basic things is to, is within the campaign summer report
(10:53):
is to set up phone numbers associated with each one of your campaigns.
So as it retains to its marketing, you have LSA, you have Yelp,
you have your Google business profile, you have your website,
you have landing page, you have Angie's.
I mean, I could go on and on. But just having dedicated phone numbers to each
one of those, nevermind your direct mail or any direct response that you're doing.
(11:17):
And that's super important because as customers find you on all these different
channels, if you have a good dedicated number,
I know both of you know this, but that phone number will track how many booked
calls you're getting, how many booked calls you're getting, how many jobs run
you're getting, and how much sales you're getting from that particular platform.
(11:39):
And you take sales divided by what you're currently spending on that platform, example,
you know, LSA or Yelp, and that gives you the number that, you know,
as marketers, we talk a lot about, which is ROAS, return on ad spend.
And that's super simple.
It's a setup feature within ServiceTitan. That's not even ServiceTitan Marketing
(12:02):
Pro, but just doing that, our conversations about marketing on the front end
is going to yield a lot more.
Of good decision-making data on the back end. Yeah.
I know both of you guys know that, but I thought maybe if anybody's listening,
that's pretty basic stuff.
(12:23):
And I'm not seeing that out there.
And it's cool when it is done effectively because you can make some really smart
decisions, whereas Yelp's not working or LSA's working or you get the idea.
Yeah. And so when you talk about ROAD, what is a good ROAS that people should be looking for?
(12:45):
I think we use so many acronyms. We're like, return on marketing spend,
return on ad spend, return our marketed expense to revenue or marketed expense to income.
What am I looking for from a business perspective of how much money do I want to get back on my ads?
So Sarah, that's a pretty open-ended question. And I can speak from my experience only.
(13:08):
And most recently, I came from private equity.
So for the last two years, I was part of a roll-up.
So we had a good amount of companies that we were able to draw that information from.
And I also recommend collaborating with whatever marketing firm you're working
with, because that's kind of their responsibility to generate some of that data.
(13:28):
So one of the goals that we always shot for is 3X.
So anytime you can get a a three or above on ROAS.
And again, ROAS, just as the definition that we're talking about here,
at least from my lens, is the sales divided by what you're currently spending
for that particular channel.
(13:49):
So if you can get a three or above, obviously your LSA, you're paying per lead.
Feed so you know and then each channel varies
but your lsa should be seven or above
so 7x on on roas for
for lsa of you know there's going to be people out there at seven you know i'm
(14:13):
22 x on lsa you know but each platform i don't think we need to go into each
platform but you know If you're getting a 3X ROAS on your direct mail,
obviously your website, you're probably not spending as much.
So that's just kind of what we shot for is bare minimum three.
(14:36):
Otherwise, you really have to cancel that campaign or look into what's wrong.
I'll bounce it off for you, Eric. And Sarah, what do you guys see for a good ROAS number? For us?
Here's a classic marketer's answer. It depends. I was trying to avoid the answer. Yeah.
(14:57):
So what we always like to do before, you know, asking or even trying to shoot
for a particular, you know, ROAS number is to understand what their,
what the, the contractors, either their breakeven point or their product, like what their net is.
Because a three-to-one for someone at a 25% net is going to look a lot different
(15:19):
than a three-to-one at someone at a 7% net.
And so, yeah, we always like to understand what their net is first.
So then we got to know at least how much we got to make for them to make a dollar.
So from there, but yeah, generally, I always tell the team, let's shoot for
a seven, shoot for an eight and above above on any type of paid channel.
(15:41):
If we fall short, then it's still typically a profitable campaign.
Of course, obviously, organic is going to be much higher because like you said,
the spend's a lot lower, but the quality of leads from organic are also a lot better.
So hug your local SEO person today.
For sure. Yeah. And I would say the same thing. You need to know your breakeven
(16:02):
point because it looks different for every company. and it hits differently on the P&L.
So really knowing what that, you know, break-even point on your return on marketing
spend is in line with your business will help you decide of what you need to see.
We went for a 4X men and then we would evaluate the campaigns based off of a
(16:29):
six month and it would depend on the campaign, right?
On how it's performing because it's not like, Like, oh, it's going to be piss
poor one month and we're going to turn it off.
We're going to have to optimize it. Like marketing is a test, right?
Like when I think about it, marketers are probably the biggest gamblers because
we have someone else's money that we're spending and we're like,
(16:52):
hey, look what we can do. And we're just testing.
We don't know if anything is tried and true until it becomes tried and true, right?
And so really just understanding that perspective of like, hey,
we're going in this and we know that this works, but we don't know if it's going to work for you.
That's really the truth, right? And marketers don't really tell people that,
(17:14):
but we are risky gamblers is what I like to say with other people's money because
our money is not being spent.
That's a good point. And then each area of the country, Northern California,
Southern California, Florida, New England, the flyover states,
each market is completely different.
(17:35):
And as a marketer, I'm always wrong. I think this is going to happen.
And then I'm always wrong. But I always try to take an educated guess,
like this is going to work.
So the data is key.
Also putting context text around the data, whereas sometimes numbers can tell different stories.
(18:00):
I think that's the best point. Everyone in the company has a different story on the data.
The owner sees it as way differently than the marketer, right?
We're like, oh, I can see the conversions that are happening or not happening
throughout the entire customer journey, whereas the owner is It's like,
oh, I see the bottom line numbers and they need to stay high level.
(18:23):
The CSR sees their own numbers.
The dispatcher sees their own numbers. So everyone has a different story.
So aligning that story to make it make sense is really important for culture is what I've noticed,
you know, having those all team meetings, talking about the numbers,
talking about EBITDA, talking about gross margin, like teaching your staff to
(18:43):
act as owners and understand the metrics from the high-level stories so that
they can own their own stories in the data and be able to repeat it back to others.
Sarah, can I double-click on exactly what you just said?
And I knew that this was going to come up because I know you fairly well.
And we had this conversation in a boardroom in Dallas, Texas when I met you
(19:07):
many, many years ago. And a perfect example of this is you use the five-letter
word calls as an example.
As a marketer, calls mean something. As an agency, an SEO calls mean something.
As a operations managers, calls mean something. As a technician, calls mean something.
(19:31):
And as the owner of the company or an operations person, like a chief operations
officer, calls mean something completely different.
Then you talk to the private equity folks, calls mean something different.
And so we could break down that definition of calls for each,
every single one of those persons.
And I guarantee you're going to get five different definitions.
(19:54):
So you highlighted a keyword culture.
And I wish I had a dollar for every company that I went into or that I talked
to that just didn't have clear definitions around any one of these topics like
jobs, appointments, run, calls.
I could go on, KPIs. You know, so yeah, that's a, that's a challenge.
(20:17):
And I don't, you know, it's a challenge within our industry across the board.
I'm not going to mention the word conversion rate, which means like,
what does that mean either?
You know, guys are talking out on the, on the YouTubes and the interwebs about
my conversion rate is 43%. And then they put their stake in the ground.
(20:40):
What does that mean? I don't know. Calls to calls to calls is 43% or conversion
rate on jobs, conversion rate on sales.
Like, who knows? So anyway, you hit the nail on the head. It's the company culture
and, you know, communication with inside the company.
Never mind, you know, how important communication is to the customer.
But anyway, I just want to go on that little tangent. Yeah, no,
(21:03):
that was a great tangent.
Like that, that makes sense. And for those listening, you know,
when you're building your business, understand that you're building people.
And, and I think that's the important part. And the important part is to teach
people numbers, because what they don't know, they don't know.
And conversion rates are, are based on every little interaction that that one person could have.
(21:26):
So the call center has conversion rates, the technician has conversion rates,
dispatch has conversion rates. And a technician has multiple conversion rates,
right? Did they sell membership?
Did they have add-on sales? Did they have to go back on a call and make no money from that call?
So then you just wasted how many dollars, right?
So there's a lot of things that need to be measured within the entire customer
(21:50):
journey just to make sure that you're profitable.
So yeah, we could talk about that stuff all day long, but very,
very good tangent that you went on.
I just really enjoy it. I really enjoy telling people of like,
hey, it's not your marketing, it's your operations.
Because maybe because there's a little bit of bitterness to me,
(22:13):
because it's like, oh, I got blamed for a lot of things sometimes as a marketer,
like, oh, why aren't the phones ringing?
And I'm like, dude, I gave you a bunch of phone calls, but you just didn't convert them.
Right? Like, I can only control what's in my control.
And then you have to think bigger, right? Like the bitterness has to go away
and you're like, cool, they don't have scripts.
(22:33):
Cool, they don't have like training. They don't have a process.
So that's all the things that you have to create as a marketer to help aid the conversion.
And I think that, I think a lot of, that's the missing piece that a lot of people,
a lot of marketers stop at the campaign level.
They're like, look, my job's done. And you're like, no, no, no,
your job is just starting.
(22:55):
Sarah, the flip side of that, one of my favorite text messages that I,
that I used to get, or I still do get or emails is, Hey, can you turn the phones off?
We're, we're, we're booked for the rest of the week.
And then me on the other, oh yeah, I'll just, let me run over to the office.
I'll unplug the electricity to turn the phones off.
(23:17):
Like, obviously I know what they mean, but you know, as a marketer,
that's always a good thing.
By the way, that's not just like one company that I work for.
You know what I mean? I worked for a big plumbing company that had 13 locations
and the, you know, 13 different operations managers.
And they'd be like, Hey, turn the phones on this afternoon and turn them off.
That's, you know, all the, not all the communication, but that was like the
(23:39):
primary communication. And then, you know, just seems like operation managers
rely so heavily upon marketing to either make the phone rings or,
you know, turn the phone ring, just keeping that board full.
So anyway, I'm chuckling. I'm like, yeah, can you turn the phone off this afternoon?
But, but, but make sure you turn it up tomorrow morning. Okay.
(23:59):
Right. You're like magic doesn't work like that, but we'll see what we can do.
You yeah i turned it off you
know i mean like you know i mean they obviously aren't saying that literally
but yeah just the message that comes over the the uh the wire yeah yeah most
definitely and sometimes like we don't even know the capacity to be honest it's
(24:22):
like the call center has a capacity board and then the dispatcher has a capacity
board and you're like do you speak to one another?
Are you matching? And then they're like, well, we need calls.
And you're like, what? You told me that you didn't. I thought we were fine.
So yeah, the reaction as a marketer, it's, it's, it can be, you know,
(24:42):
it's a big, deep breath sometimes is what I like to say.
But I have a question. So what's one piece of advice that you would give any
business owner just starting out with marketing today?
What would you say to them?
So specific starting out with marketing? Yeah. They're just starting out.
They're like, oh gosh, I know I have to do marketing.
(25:04):
I've been doing referral-based for so long.
Now what? it? So it's, it's, it's pretty basic, not a very fancy answer,
but to, to, to know your, know your numbers.
And if you're just starting out with like either, you know, marketing pro or
service tight end, or, you know, is, is, is experiment.
And I like the, and I've always felt this way is, is, is multi-channel.
(25:28):
So you gotta be everywhere.
So, you know, the, the, the same, Well, you asked for like somebody just starting
out would be to work with a good agency and go with the multi-channel approach.
So multi-channel just be in as many places as you can.
So Yelp, Angie, you know, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube threads,
(25:49):
Instagram, you know, be everywhere.
Yeah. And Eric, what advice would you give someone just starting out?
Ooh, that's, I like that question. You know, that's the question I used to always ask people too.
Yeah, definitely. Definitely knowing your numbers and knowing your breakeven point for each day.
Because if you know your breakeven point, as far as if it was a good day or
(26:12):
not, as far as profitability,
once you hit that breakeven point, then you can empower anyone on the team,
the comfort advisors, your CSRs.
You can start wiggling on price if you need to.
You can start to be a little bit more empowered to...
To take a risk once you've hit your breakeven point for the day.
(26:33):
And then if you haven't quite hit your breakeven point, then,
you know, it's time to smile and dial and, and get that board full until you,
you know, so that you make up for it the next day.
But I would also say like, I think also a lot of times, like there's,
there's a lot of good technology out there.
And I think when you're first starting out, you don't always need all of it.
Like, I think a lot of people really just forget the fundamentals of running a business from a,
(26:57):
a marketing and advertising standpoint from an operational standpoint of sometimes
it doesn't take a shiny object to become a million-dollar company.
Sometimes you just need to roll up your sleeves and just be a little gritty.
But I think a lot of people forget that sometimes.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Eric, that's a good point. And I feel the pain for a lot of
(27:22):
these home services companies.
When I say home service, not only plumbing and HVAC, but roofing and everything
that falls within home services, because it seems like the marketing or back
to what we talked about, getting the phones to ring.
It seems like it can be so challenging for these operators because they're getting
(27:43):
hit with so many different shiny objects from so many different.
And nowadays there's so many different agencies. So they're being pulled in
so many different directions.
But Eric, to your point is, go back to the basics, work on building your brand,
work on generating reviews, work on word of mouth, and utilizing the tools.
(28:04):
And like I said, getting a good agency that communicates well.
You know, so, so trying to take all that noise and just boiling it down to,
you know, what you would have done 15 years ago, which is take out the biggest
ad in the yellow pages, but now just, you know, the, the tools and resources.
So Eric, to your point is try, try to just come with, with a simple approach.
(28:27):
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I think, yeah, I think a lot of times too,
you know, like you're, like you were saying, there's so many different,
you know, companies and options and stuff like out there, stuff like that out there.
And there's times where, you know, we've seen contractors where it's like,
they're going from this agency to that agency, from this CRM to that CRM,
(28:49):
from this finance provider to that finance provider,
from this call center to that call center.
And I'm like, you're spending all your time and onboarding with stuff.
Like, imagine if you just stuck with one thing for a year with all the things
that you need and just focused on the business instead of, you know,
switching every three to six months on stuff, how much farther they could be ahead.
(29:13):
Like these, you know, a lot of these things, when you change,
it should be a good change.
But I think a lot of times people think that that change is what's going to
make the phone ring and what's going to make them a successful business.
When that's just not the reality of it.
That grass is not always greener. No, grass is only greener where you water it.
(29:34):
You have to optimize, even with your agencies, right?
You have to create a partnership and listen to one another because you don't
know it all. They don't know it all.
Google, everyone's changing every single day and the landscape is constantly evolving.
Evolving and so if you can create a partnership
where hey you see something that maybe you
(29:56):
can just share with your agency and maybe they already
know who cares if you're wrong you're wrong if you're right you're right but
at least the idea is out there and that partnership is created by sharing mutual
strategies or or you know understanding now the the changing of the the agency, like toilet paper,
(30:17):
it doesn't make sense, right? You're not even giving it a chance.
And maybe you don't have a great partnership. And maybe you don't like the attitude. Okay, fine.
Like, then it's not a great partnership, the culture fits not there.
But you analyze the culture of that agency, as well as you know,
the data and the outcomes that they've delivered before you even say yes.
(30:41):
And so, you know, I keep seeing this online.
They're like, well, we've gone to three to six different agencies within the last year.
And I'm like, you haven't even given anyone a chance. You know,
like it takes time to test things.
So totally on point with that in general.
(31:02):
My other question to you, and we're going to switch topics on to automation
and efficiency using AI.
So Greg, where do you see the best use case for AI in the marketing field?
So I was listening to a recent podcast of Ara, the CEO of ServiceTitan.
And I'm going to bring it back to ServiceTitan because that's kind of where
(31:25):
I've been living inside of for like the last five years and doing a lot of consulting
with companies right now.
And one AI feature that I do see on the horizon, maybe it'll be rolled out at
the upcoming Pantheon conference, but it's called Universal Inbox.
So you can think about these companies and CSRs that are going through their
(31:48):
day-to-day, and they're generating leads and phone calls from so many different sources.
So R was talking about this concept using AI for the Universal Inbox and the
prioritization of leads in that inbox.
So I'll just explain it real quick. It's kind of like, you know,
Gmail, but you have leads that come in from Yelp. You have LSA leads and each
(32:08):
one of these lead gen sources, including Angie or even some agencies,
they all have, you know, their own inbox.
So if ServiceTitan, and by the way, I've been begging for this product for a
long time, but if ServiceTitan was able to say, okay, all leads are going to
go into say Marketing Pro or just within ServiceTitan, this universal inbox,
(32:29):
and then we can use smart technology, i.e.
AI to filter which ones are real customers, that would be super cool,
super efficient for CSRs, make marketing look like a hero.
And then, you know, AI is really good at lead scoring.
(32:50):
So, you know, maybe the Yelp leads get pushed down a little bit.
LSA gets pushed up a little bit.
And, you know, when people provide, check this out. This is pretty crazy.
This is, you know, blows my mind.
But when people provide their address, and by the way, all the call answering and the call recording,
like CallRail and Mongoose, you know, all those call answering,
(33:12):
When a customer provides their home address,
that data point that you get on an inbound call, or just think about that one
data point, that meta data that is collected,
whether it be over the telephone, which obviously you can record that and capture
that, or on a particular lead that's sent over,
(33:35):
you can do some really, really rough guesstimating.
On what the quality of that potential home is.
That's to freak people out, but every single business has what I call honeypots.
(33:56):
And you want to fish where fish are, and if you have good bait,
you're going to load your boat up with fish all day long.
And a honeypot is just like a particular street in a neighborhood or a geography of the city.
Think of your given city where you live. and it's
not always the high net worth home individuals that
generate the most amount of revenue or have the highest sales rates a lot of
(34:18):
times it's not it's not the high net worth areas sometimes it's the other side
of the track or it's kind of that in between but you can imagine you know when
a lead comes in with that data point of the address you know,
I can think off the top of my head, you know, I'd much rather go to that house.
And it's not the car that's parked in the driveway.
(34:40):
It's like, okay, this neighborhood, they're really good at, you know,
getting approved for finance. You understand what I'm saying?
So just those things, universal inbox and, you know, what you can do with that data point.
And think about roofers too. You know what I mean? We're not only talking about
plumbing and HVAC, but the roofing companies with, you know, okay.
(35:03):
Next to service science working on this, but next to that lead that just came
in from Yelp on the new roof, I can see the roof via global satellites that Elon put up there.
That's a new roof. I don't know what they're calling. Maybe they have a leak.
So let's pass that. Anyway, you got to stop me, but you know,
and then AI is not anything new. It's not a shiny object.
(35:25):
We've been using it. You know, if you drive your car, if you have a new car, you know what I mean?
AI is keeping you in the lane. so it's always
like you know how can we capitalize on ai i'm like using it
every single day you know i mean look at your gmail it's you
know it's already there sorry i
tend to go go off i could do the same thing i'm like here's all of my ideas
(35:49):
and they just look at me like what is happening right now and then they they
say they say the same thing back to me but in a way of a developer standpoint or engineer.
And I'm like, cool, but the people that we are marketing to are not engineers.
So I'm going to tell you what it sounds like from a normal person.
(36:09):
And, and I think like you have great ideas. Like you can see the whole home
in like the neighborhood, right?
Like for instance, is the plumbing, you're having plumbing problems in your
home in the neighborhood.
You can can only imagine that the entire neighborhood was, you know, not piped correctly.
(36:30):
So a hundred percent, right, right there.
Hey, we did three homes on, on the street, you know, it's because the town screwed
up the sewer lines. Right.
Because that means that, yeah, sorry. I did not mean to cut you off, but that means,
Hey, we got to send our best rain tech because, you know, he can, he, he's the,
the guy that can solve that verse sending, you
(36:53):
know the faucet guy yeah and
also just making sure when you're yeah and
when you're when you're there and you identify that you know making sure that
those vans are stocked full of of door hangers and yard signs and all the other
things all the collateral that they can need so that if they if someone sees
(37:16):
that opportunity you know say they're up on a roof,
and they're looking around the neighborhood and they see six or seven other
roofs that look like crap.
It's like, hmm, maybe we can...
Stay in this neighborhood, keep getting work in this neighborhood.
There's opportunity all around us and start putting out door hangers and yard signs.
You know, I don't understand what every, I'm about, I'm about to go on tangent.
(37:39):
I don't understand why everyone's so dang scared to put out yard signs.
The worst thing that's going to happen is that it's going to get pulled up and
thrown away. Unless you're in California where there's probably some law.
In California, in California, they're probably like going to arrest you. and I'm just kidding.
But I'll tell you one thing. When I worked at Mosquito Joe, we used to have
(38:02):
these like local marketing days where we would go out as a team and just litter
the town with yard signs.
I mean, litter. And I know I don't work there anymore,
but this past week I was driving to the post office and I had known that they
must have had one of their marketing days because I must have seen at least
(38:24):
250 Mosquito Joe yard signs just in one area of town.
And I'd say it's brilliant. Like it's all you can think of at that point.
So if you're in that neighborhood and you've got the yard signs,
it's going to start sticking them out, maybe not in people's yards,
but at the nearest intersection or when you're at a stoplight,
hop out and put one in the ground.
(38:47):
What's going to happen is it's going to get pulled up and thrown away.
Well, Eric, that's a good point. You know, what's one of the best lead gen sources
is when you see the truck at your neighbor's house and you have that same nagging problem.
And it just goes down to, it just gets back to marketing basics is,
you know, you're only going to buy from people who you know, like, and trust.
And you would kind of think based upon, you know, your neighbor that,
(39:10):
hey, they probably, you know, called the right guy to solve the problem.
And so, you know, having the good signage on the truck and in the neighborhood,
those are the best leads.
Yeah. And what if the signs were like fun, right? Like it wasn't like, you know...
Frost boss is here call today what if
(39:32):
it was like i fixed your pipes or like i i
cleared your pipes like something or like hilarious i
don't even know i'm not even thinking funny things but like and then
the the slogan was just fun
like i feel like sometimes we are so direct direct
direct it we forget to have fun in our marketing in our advertising and so yard
(39:54):
signs can be hilarious What if you had a child draw an image for you and then
you went and just taped it up on the street sign and you're like,
that's that's an advertising.
They'd be like, why is there a child's photo? And then you're saying,
oh, enter a contest to win.
And those people that run by it, you know, see that.
(40:14):
And it's just it's guerrilla marketing. It's just different ways to get out there and be different.
And I think that's the point.
It's how are you going to be different? Yes, your truck's showing up.
They can't be white vans. It's just, A, it's just totally inappropriate at this
point in time, right? Like, kidnappers are real.
(40:35):
Like, don't be a white van. But at the same time, like, show your brand in different
ways and be creative and be fun and be out there in the community as much as you can.
Maybe not littering is the best word. and you just litter everywhere,
but you strategically place your yard signs so that they won't get seen.
(40:56):
I'll litter. Sarah, a good example of this is a company that you and I both
know that we both have visited before a while back, Milestone out in Dallas, Texas.
Their billboard, I'm not going to describe it right now, but their billboard
has a really cute dog on it. and they have like a QR code and a landing page
(41:21):
driving people to that cute dog.
And I'll let people go out and Google it on themselves because I'm not going
to do it justice, but it's completely different.
And it's cool. It's a dog contest billboard that they are putting all over Dallas.
My brother lives there. He's seen it and he's taken pictures of it.
(41:42):
He's like, how come you don't do this?
I'm like, well, I wasn't really given the opportunity to do anything like that, but it's really cool.
Yeah. Don't do that in the show notes or a link or something like that.
I'll show you an example, but I've been using that one over and over again. Yeah. Yeah.
I know Lee's air conditioning did a billboard for a coloring contest from a
(42:03):
local children's hospital.
There's so many brilliant ideas out there. Like what can you,
how can you showcase them?
How can you get them involved? The people love dogs, they love children and
you know, they love cute things that get their attention. So, yeah, they expect.
What do you think a consumer expects from when a plumber shows up at their house without service titan?
(42:28):
Like what if you just had to hire a plumber, what would you expect for that
plumber to do when he comes to your house and how would he look or he or she look?
I'm a financial year. Are you asking me the question? I'm asking you the question.
So I'm not a good person to ask because I've been in the industry for like 15
(42:49):
years, but I will tell you my biggest concern,
and I share this in every single one of my trainings or every single one of
like, you know, anytime I'm in the CSR meetings,
which I've been into a lot of, you know, my biggest concern is,
you know, especially in today's day and age is I want to have comfort from the
(43:12):
company and the company.
The person that is going to be showing up in my home.
I could be at work and my wife's at home with the two young kids.
My kids are old now, but two young kids, um,
I just want to know that when I do send that plumber to my house,
there's going to be a level of professionalism and I want to feel more comfortable.
(43:34):
And that's the same thing if my wife, I'm using me as an example because you
asked me, if my wife is calling a company, one, I want to make sure that I'm
going to check the reviews for somebody that's going to be coming to my house.
And then two, I'm not as concerned about the booties or looking clean or the
truck being being immaculate,
(43:55):
but I want that person to, you know, have my vested interest in mind around fixing the problem.
So, you know, the more that the business owner and the business and the,
and the company culture can do to, you know, break down those, those barriers.
Like I love the idea and this is integrated in service heightened,
(44:17):
but Hey, you know, Johnny is going to be coming to to your house.
And then, you know, here's a five second video of what Johnny looks like.
So you can keep an eye out and he's not going to park in the,
anyway, you get the idea,
but to make that customer feel a little bit more comfortable around having an
(44:38):
individual into their house with a,
you know, and they're not happy that person's coming over, you know, they got a a problem.
So when that person shows up to be professional and showing sincerity around
how that customer feels.
And that is really hard for a technician to do because he might've just got
(45:02):
off the phone with his boss or his manager, or he might've just had a bad call.
And these guys, I feel for them because they're going from personality to personality
to personality and And everybody's human.
So, yeah, I love that. And Eric, what would you say?
I don't remember where I heard this from, but I heard a statistic about how
(45:25):
if – and this is a statistic in regards to females and how they view service professionals.
And it was something about if there's a service professional coming to do work
the next day, that females get 40% less sleep or something like that.
Don't quote me on that, but I've heard it on a podcast somewhere,
(45:46):
and that was pretty eye-opening to me.
It was like that there is some subconscious anxiety around a stranger coming
into your home, regardless of any stereotypes about any type of trade or what they might be.
There's generally anxiety around letting people into your home that you don't know.
(46:08):
So I do think to really hit home on that point, Greg,
like you were saying, the more you can do prior to service and not just when
they're on their way, the day before, two days before,
leading up to that appointment, as much as you can do beforehand to remind them,
(46:30):
to introduce them, to here's a fun fact,
he loves puppies, whatever it might be.
And then he shows up and he's got milk bones and he's got a puppy.
It's, you know, for me as a homeowner and, and my experience with,
you know, different service professionals, it's frustrating when I don't get any reminders.
(46:51):
And then they, they called me the morning of, and they're like,
Hey, just want to make sure that 12 is still a good time. And I'm like,
I called you like three weeks ago. I forgot that I even booked this.
And so, yeah, as much as you can do leading up to that appointment,
because it also helped, you know, if you, if you can catch that cancellation
three or four days before,
it's going to be a lot more, there's gonna be a lot more wiggle room for you
(47:12):
to fill that backfill that opening in the calendar,
than if you get that cancellation the morning of or a couple hours before because
the customer forgot you were coming.
So yeah, I guess my answer would just be as much as you can do to personify
your company and make the customer feel like they already know you before you show up, the better.
(47:33):
Yep. And then after, right? I think a lot of people forget about the nurture.
So either the conversion didn't happen or it did, in either way,
they need to be nurtured.
Thank you for letting us come out to your home.
These are either simple emails or just another part of a connection, right?
(47:53):
You've got to continue that customer journey and direct them to where you want
them to go. I think that's also really important.
Being professional as a female, I can say that having someone in my home is
sometimes nerve wracking.
But at the same time, like I do this for a living. So I just watch the experience.
(48:15):
And then I'm always rating the experience, right? Like, okay,
and I rent so it's a property manager experience.
So it's totally different from any other, you know, if I would have would have called a company.
But it's, it's really, for me, it's like, I want to be talked to like,
I'm not in, like, I don't know something.
(48:38):
Don't assume that I don't know what's going on. Like I called you,
I, I, you know, did my research, I figured out what the problem was, because it is just me.
And never like, like treat people appropriately.
I think that's really what I would say to business owners that are coming out
there or not business. Yeah.
(48:59):
Small business owners that maybe don't have a system in place.
Start your system with the brand experience and the customer experience.
And really understand that you are speaking to many different people throughout
the day, but each person is still just a human, as Greg said.
And, you know, what we don't know, we don't know, but what we do know,
like watch out because I'm watching you kind of.
(49:23):
Yeah, I think you, I think you're spot on there with the, like the post service as well.
Just a simple, a simple little thought of gratitude goes a long way for sure there.
Like I remember at one time I got my car serviced and when I got my car back,
there was a little bag of candy and it said, have a sweet ride home.
(49:44):
And that's my auto shop for the rest of my life, as long as I live here,
because it was like three or four Jolly Ranchers and maybe like a Reese's or two.
And it just didn't have a sweet ride home, probably cost them a dollar, $1.50.
And I have never forgotten it. But same with another Mosquito Joe thought,
because it was outdoor pest control, we always had to make sure that if the
(50:07):
customer had any animals, because there's a period where you have to wait before
your dogs can go on the grass.
And so if they had a dog, every technician, at least here in the Virginia Beach
area, we had Frisbees that had the Mosquito Joe logo on it.
And they would just throw one into the backyard before they left for the dog.
(50:28):
And so just imagine like you're a homeowner and you let the dog out and the
dog comes back inside with a frisbee with your logo on it like how cool that
i mean i just think that's pretty neat.
Yeah there's little leave behind you know they matter greatly you don't have
to spend a lot of money and just like eat that candy with a sticker on it or
(50:48):
what if you did a qr code a lot of people do qr code magnets they do qr code
stickers on units you know like there's a lot of different leave-behinds that you can do.
But the more, like I like to say, the more Instagrammable the leave-behind is,
I think that's really where it's at because you want people to share the service
that they just had, but more than likely they're going to share what you left behind,
(51:12):
because it's either cute, quirky, or something that they will use or just maybe
they won't use, or maybe they'll give it to their kid and their kid carries it around all day.
Think of like a little Hot Wheel or think of like a little stuffed animal that looks like your logo.
And your mascot. So all sorts of leave-behinds are a great part of the experience.
(51:34):
You know, and even like thinking about, okay, well, you might be there for one
part of the home, but what about thinking about the whole home and,
you know, giving them a calendar of when the different things in your home need to be serviced.
You know, like just little things that really, that are inexpensive to make,
you could make that on Canva and print it out really cheaply. So, um, Sure.
(51:58):
On this topic, one of the stories that I always share,
which I find remarkable is we, we, we interviewed and we did some ride alongs
with this super successful comfort advisor or channel leader,
whatever, whatever you call them.
But this guy crushes in terms of, you know, what he makes per money per year
(52:19):
on his, you know, in his paycheck as well as what he sales.
And the story that I tell that he shared with us when we were really deep diving
on what makes this guy so successful,
why does he 10x what every other comfort advisor and channel leader does,
is he had two really simple icebreakers that he said on every single appointment.
(52:40):
So there's never any, any time that he didn't walk into the house that he said this.
And if it gets back to like knowing your audience.
So if he was dealing with a woman who had kids or had a dog or,
you know, even if she was elderly, he would position it, but he would always
say, you know, I'm here because, and this is what was his opening line.
And I'll give you one for the, the, the male, like the, the,
the homeowner, like either like the dad or the father figure or the female.
(53:06):
But if it was a female, he would always say like, as he's bending down to like
put his, his booties on, or before he walked in the house, he would always say
this with like a chuckle or a smile without making eye contact.
Has this particular problem been an issue for you for a little while?
(53:26):
And he would say some variation of that. And that just like opened up,
you know, the welcoming him into the house.
Or if it was a, the male counterpart of the house,
he would always say with a smile have you
tried to fix the problem or like you know
what have you done to try to fix it and like
(53:47):
that was just like his opening line it broke down all the barriers it brought
in like the human connection and he did it on every single call almost like
you know he was an actor you know on you know in front of the big screen but yeah,
At that point in time, all the barriers are broken. And, you know,
(54:10):
she's talking about like, yeah, Jesus Christ, I wouldn't have you out here if,
you know, the kids bathroom work.
And, you know, he's like, yeah, I know. Yeah.
Yeah. It kind of reminds me of like. Because, you know, he was he was just magical
on on how he just said that exact same phrase, depending upon the audience.
And he'd tell her it a little bit if it was elderly or, you know,
(54:33):
a young mom or, you know, a college, you know, student.
Yeah, it's kind of like I didn't. That was my dog.
I'm just kidding. My dog's been like working at the end of like every every podcast. cast.
I can think of no better way to, to land this plane than to have a dog barking.
(55:01):
It's my favorite. I love dogs.
So yeah. So Greg kind of, as we're, as we're, we're tying the bow on this one,
wrapping it up, you know, kind of like a last tip before we dip kind of deal.
What's a, no, we're in what we're in now.
I was going to say, we're looking forward to a rough year, So we're in probably
(55:22):
what's going to be a pretty rough year for some folks.
What's your piece of advice for folks for this year specifically from now until
the end of 2024 that if they want to stay afloat and really just make sure that
they come through what is another election year,
it's the one thing they got to do?
(55:44):
So I always go back to knowing your numbers and come up with,
no matter who you are, if you're in operations,
if you're a channel leader, a comfort advisor, if you're the owner of the company,
come up with two or three, I call them KPIs, key performance indicators, or goals.
(56:06):
Goals and then, you know, prioritize your, your, your day around,
you know, those particular numbers or those particular goals and say,
Hey, you know, I'm given all of these particular, you know, things that I have to do today.
Are they going to help me achieve, you know, and I recommend,
you know, two or three of them, are they going to help me achieve,
(56:28):
you know, this number or this goal?
So just to keep it, keep it simple. And I have to do that But in my day to day,
like every hour, you know, because I see a lot of shiny objects and I have a
lot of squirrels running around up here.
But keep your eyes on eyes on the prize.
Awesome. Well, Greg, this has been this has been fun. It's been a quick hour.
(56:52):
Definitely appreciate you taking some time out of your busy schedule to chat
with us. And what are some ways that our listeners out there can connect with
you or learn more about what you've got going on?
I think the easiest way is LinkedIn. I tend to be a LinkedIn guy.
I try to post there often, interact there on often.
(57:12):
Anytime I see Sarah or Eric's post, I always give it a like.
I think that's probably the best way to connect with me. And then my phone number's
on there. So I carry this thing around in my pocket.
And every time it rings, I answer it.
Unless I'm sleeping or even sometimes I still answer while I'm sleeping.
So I'm pretty easy to find and collaborate with. and I look forward to reaching
(57:36):
out to as many people. I love your podcast.
I love what you guys are doing and I love home services and I'm going to stick
around for a while. So it's pretty awesome.
Awesome. Well, thank you so much. It's been just an absolute pleasure catching
up with you again and I appreciate your support.
Likewise. And that wraps up another episode of The Trademark where we bridge
(57:58):
the worlds of the trades and marketing one story at a time.
We can't wait to see you next time Thank you to The Trades for giving back big,
loving big, and taking massive action.
Don't forget to join us next time for more engaging conversations and innovative ideas.
If you enjoyed today's episode, please leave us a review and share it with your
(58:20):
colleagues and friends in the trades and marketing.
Your support means the world to us.
Stay connected with us off the air by following us on social media.
We'd love to hear your thoughts and get your feedback. back.
Until next time, keep making your mark in the trades.
Thank you for listening to The Trademark. Goodbye for now. And remember,
(58:40):
we're with the trades for the trades.
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