In a landscape where trades professionals often find themselves overwhelmed by the demands of their craft, the podcast serves as a clarion call to action. The speakers emphasize the profound impact of cultivating a comprehensive marketing strategy, urging contractors to shift their mindset from reactive to proactive. Crystal's insights highlight the necessity of understanding one’s target market and crafting messages that resonate with potential clients. The dialogue traverses various marketing tactics, from the utilization of social media to the strategic deployment of digital ads, underscoring the imperative of tracking and analyzing marketing efforts to ascertain their efficacy. Furthermore, the podcast addresses the pitfalls of traditional marketing approaches, advocating for a balanced integration of both digital and conventional methods to establish a well-rounded marketing strategy that can adapt to changing market dynamics.

Takeaways:

• Contractors must prioritize establishing a robust digital presence for effective marketing strategies.
• Understanding one’s target audience is paramount when devising marketing tactics and spending budgets.
• Building trust in marketing requires a commitment to transparency and ongoing engagement with clients.
• Effective marketing is not merely about spending money, but rather strategically investing in brand presence and community engagement.

Links referenced in this episode:

• lemonseedmarketing.com
• [email protected]

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• Lemon Seed
• Angie
• Yelp
• Coca Cola
• McWilliams and Sun Heating
• Eminem Roofing
• House Pro Insider

Mentioned in this episode:

Check out our BRAND NEW YouTube Channel @AroundtheHouseHQ

Check out our brand new YouTube channel! Head over to YouTube and search @AroundtheHouseHQ and subscribe and ring that bell for updates when the new videos upload.

Check out our BRAND NEW YouTube Channel @AroundtheHouseHQ

Check out our brand new YouTube channel! Head over to YouTube and search @AroundtheHouseHQ and subscribe and ring that bell for updates when the new videos upload.

Foreign.

The House Pro Insider.

This is the podcast for trades pros, carpenters, contractors, interior designers and innovators building homes, renovating spaces, or creating the next big thing.

Let's dive in with your host, Eric.

G. Welcome to the around the House Pro Insider.

This show is for you contractors.

If you're a designer, interior designer, architect, or out there in the trades, this show is for you.

John Dudley.

Good to see you, brother.

It's happening, buddy.

This is going to be a fun one, man.

We have got Crystal Williams.

We're going to talk some marketing today.

Welcome to the around the house Pro Insider.

Yay.

Thanks for having me.

Super excited to talk marketing and all those fun things.

So you are.

No, you're not new to this.

You have grown up in a family of what, H vac and trade contractors.

I have.

So my family owns and operates a heating and cooling and plumbing company here in rural East Texas, if you can't tell from this accident.

And my sister and brother in law and now my oldest son are running a pest control company and then I own part of a roofing company as well with a friend of mine.

And basically I live the trade life.

And then of course, Lemon Seed gets to work with so many great contractors across the country.

Yeah, that is super cool because I think marketing is the weakest point for the trades out there.

Yeah.

It's just one of those things, Johnny.

You've seen it, you've lived it.

You actually had both sides of the coin on this.

You've been the contractor that didn't know what to do for marketing and then you turned around and got into marketing.

So now I know exactly who I'm talking to as my client currently.

Right.

Because I was that guy that was just too busy to worry about marketing, which is a good thing.

But it's a good thing until you're not too busy to worry about marketing and it's too late to worry about marketing.

So, yeah, trying to get that point across to business owners now as an agency and we with the new project, we back off the whole marketing stance quite a bit.

But it's incredibly difficult sometimes to get business owners to realize that if you give me a dollar, I'll give you two back.

And they go, no, no, thank you.

You're like, but yeah, it's just staggering sometimes, the depth of not realizing what they need.

And I'm sure you can attest, Crystal, you're painfully aware of the same client.

Yeah.

And you know what it is?

I think we're apprehensive about marketing because we don't understand it.

A lot of times as a contractor we know enough to be dangerous and then we've also a lot of us have been burned or maybe mistreated or misguided, misled, whatever we want to call it, however I can sugarcoat it and we're just more apprehensive.

And so marketing takes a lot of trust.

I say this all the time.

If it was an exact science, everyone would do it.

Related risk and intentionality.

Having a good brand, it's literally risking based off the best knowledge that you have going for it and then pivoting from there.

Yeah, no question.

I had a guy that I worked with years ago that I was almost kind of business partnered in with him the way it was, but this was probably 20 years ago and he went out just wildly one day and decided that he was going to buy for his remodeling company all these full page ads in a local magazine.

And he signed a year contract and didn't get one lead that he could attest to that after spending about $80,000.

And it's.

You can't just throw money at it because it's marketing.

You have to have a plan or.

Because you like somebody.

I get that too.

I love that.

I grew up with him.

So I'm going to.

And I'm like no.

And then there are things, there are different marketing tactics that are very hard to manage.

Meaning manage the one to one correspondence I sent, spend a dollar, made a dollar.

Right.

Or hopefully made more than one dollar.

But at the end of the day they're just your mass media style campaigns.

So your, your radio ads and your billboards and outdoor things, those are really hard to have an exact measurement of roi.

But a pay per click or glsa, we should have very direct one to one correspondence.

And so once we can wrap our head around marketing as a whole and how we need to look at our marketing budget and strategy as a comprehensive full plan and not just piecing out tactics, that's when I think contractors really see the most growth.

Yeah, I agree.

And the other mistake I think people make is they forget who their client is and don't market to their client.

I will hear a heating and cooling ad for instance on the under 25 new music pop chart channel that probably doesn't have anybody over 30 listening to.

It, that doesn't own a home, that.

Doesn't own a home that might be renting.

And I'm looking at that going, who talked you into placing ads over here?

Because I get that you're doing radio or television or whatever you're doing with that, but find your audience.

And you know what, dudes are bad at this.

Specifically same they're all bad at this.

But one time I took a contractor on and I was really excited.

He goes, listen, I feel like I do a lot of branding.

So I go look.

And he was on sports radio, on talk radio.

And so I was like, listen, if we, if our main target was a dude, we would be killing it.

But women are who has to do this?

And the women listenership for talk radio is extremely low and it's low at best for sports radio.

And I said, so we really need to think about this.

And then he said, but I like it.

I said it's your company.

And I'm not saying that we can't be on sports radio also, but I also know that to really grow this, I think we need to more be on our where our target market is and then put icing on our cake with some fun places to be.

But yeah, helping them understand that way of thinking is my always my first goal.

Yeah, it's tough, it's tough.

And yeah, it's interesting too is what do you see?

I guess my question is what do you see with digital ads versus more traditional stuff like the radio, television, billboards.

Print is kind of, kind of on the way out.

It's niche in some areas, depending on who you're trying to get.

But there's sure not a lot of print as there was 20 years ago.

Oh no.

I think it's important to utilize tracking numbers and tracking tools, UTMS or tracking numbers, some type of tracking mechanisms because everything can be tracked to something.

So even like mass media strategies, you should be seeing an uptick in your direct search, meaning more people going and directly searching your name because your name has now become top of mind to them.

So it might take some time to get you there.

But definitely, I would say over 50% of your budget needs to be dedicated to digital resources.

A strong, very strong digital footprint.

Because even if they do get exposure to you like in the environment that they live in, they still are going to go online to find your phone number, book online, send a chat.

So you really, it's really hard to get around that now.

And it all starts with the interpretation of your brand and who you are.

Like how your company makes people feel.

And people don't love that because it feels a little cheesy to a lot of.

But honestly, the way that your vans look, the way your technicians dress, the way that you Leave a job site, the way that you honk in traffic, all of that is reflective of how you make the community feel about who you are as a company.

And so we have to work on that first and really letting our communities plural know who we are as people and as a company.

And then we layer on this strong digital footprint where we, we are where people are looking.

So our website is optimized, our functions, they can call us, they can text us, they can chat with us, they can fill out a form, they can talk agent to agent now.

So my, my Siri can talk to your Siri kind of stuff.

All of that needs to be pumping together for you to have real success.

And listen, there's always holes.

We always will say, okay, we've got all these other really good things now let's add organic social media or let's add paid social media.

What all can we add to the equation?

But definitely, whether we like it or not, the world's going digital.

So we have to do everything we can to make sure that we are set up and prepared there.

That makes sense.

So Crystal, what's your take on wrapping vans and trucks and stuff?

Because you see them running around out there and of course the people that don't want to spend the money go, oh, but it's so expensive.

But it is a rolling billboard in the neighborhood.

So I will tell you this, I think it's more expensive to not.

It's costing you more money to not be wrapped than it costs you to just go do it.

And the reason I say that is because, listen, we spend a lot of money.

I don't know about you guys, but most contractors spend a lot of money just on having a website.

When things like that going on, people are, we are think about how much information you interact with every day.

If you're just.

When you're driving down the road, there's digital billboards standing, billboards flashing, signs wrapped, vehicles non wrapped.

And what's remembered to you is things that you see repeatedly and over again because it's so clustered up with information.

And then at night you sit down, you're scrolling social media and there's constant videos and flashing.

You have to work extremely hard and sometimes for year, years, plural, before your homeowner actually needs you.

Those of us that are in home service before they actually ever need to call our phone number, we need to have already interacted with them.

And so they are rolling billboards.

Wrapping vans is rolling billboards.

It is a mass media strategy to have those vans wrapped.

It's the same reason that at my family's company, we do not allow our team to stack up the dash with like, baseball caps and whataburger.

I don't know if you'll have that there.

But what we did, you got all this in.

The reason is not because I care what these guys live it keep in their vans.

It's because that is our brand.

That is our brand.

It's the same reason if you're going to smoke a cigarette, I need you to smoke it before you get to the house and I need you to not put it out in the customer's driveway.

It's not our brand.

It's the same reason I don't want you using foul language.

I live in the south in the Bible belt.

I did not need you in an attic talking smack about the homeowner and using some F bombs.

Like, we've got to protect our image, right?

So those band wraps, I think it is one of the most slept on, if you will, marketing tactics.

And some guys even try to get away with a partial wrap.

And I'm like, man, if you're into it, partially wrap that whole thing.

Yeah, wrap it for sure.

I had a fun one.

I had a company that I was working with years ago.

I won't even.

They were.

Let's.

We'll just say pest control was there.

And they're like, we don't want to wrap them because we're getting brand new vans next year.

And so we just.

They're like, I want to wait.

And I said, okay, let's have some fun with it.

Let's do the anti rap ad.

Do you want your neighbors to know that you've got mice, rats, roaches and stuff?

And so we did that until they could do the rap, but we got more people laughing and they got more phone calls by doing the anti rap ad for six months to a year.

And then they kept one truck and they.

When they were booking stuff, they were like, do you want it discreet or not?

And they actually made it as a campaign.

It was hilarious.

Yeah, that is true.

That is.

There is a lot of thoughts.

We were talking earlier about a client that has a very simple logo.

And I said, you know what?

It's so simple.

It's like a plan, it's like a strategy.

It's so simple.

With their pl.

With their logo, there's just lots of things that you can do there to really maximize who you are to people in your community.

And just owning it is, I think, really important.

Yeah, no question.

No question.

And I think that's the fun part of it too is that branding.

And quite frankly, it does keep the drivers and the techs or whoever's running around.

It does keep them honest because the first time they don't let somebody in on the freeway or the first time they cut somebody off, you are going to get a phone call.

But the good thing is now you have a chance to make that right with the consumer.

Yeah.

I mean, everything you just said about don't stack the dash, don't smoke in the driveway and put it out.

In the 30 years of preaching that stuff to people that just like, dude, what are you thinking?

What are you doing?

I heard your guys talking about me and they're like, you said up in the attic on that crazy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, common sense stuff that you're like, man, guys, come on.

But yeah, it's important.

And the branding on the trucks, I think just it ups you a level even if you're not up at that level.

Right.

It's just a sign of professionalism.

Even the same thing with T shirts is always great, the most simple things, but it calibrates you to a different level immediately.

Versus a 74 Toyota pickup stained white T shirt.

You're like, no, I'm probably going with that guy with the branded logo on his shirt.

I don't know.

Yep, very true.

The other thing I've noticed too is I've, I've heard this from multiple small business owners.

Another issue that I see out there.

I'm curious to see if you run into this at all, Crystal.

But I'm seeing people stepping on trademarks with their wrapping where they'll put a cool saying on it but not figure out that's a trademarked thing.

And I've seen more people have to rewrap vehicles because of oops.

Trademark violations.

Yeah.

And that's just poor.

That's not thinking through things very well.

You don't want something of someone else.

You want your own information, your own creative on there.

Some people do it inadvertently, especially for lesser known brands and slogans, taglines.

But honestly, you need to do some due diligence for everything that you use.

Campaigns, logos, marks, icons, anything.

Because sometimes like we, I remember one time we even had a client that had used a popular landmark in some marketing and before they came to us and they got into some issues with it, you can't just use that icon.

So there is a certain responsibility that we have as entrepreneurs to know where we can toe the line and where we can't.

And definitely like utilizing different taglines that don't belong to us.

So number one, go make them belong to you.

Go.

Trademark.

What?

You can.

Absolutely, absolutely.

Yeah, we have that here in Portland, Oregon.

Or, Matt, we have the big Made in Portland made in Oregon sign.

That's downtown.

The city owns it and the trademark.

So if you go take a picture of that with it in there, you're going to get the nasty gram from the city if they catch it on your ads or social media or even.

You got to be careful with that one.

So those are things that know your area, know your brand, because, boy, things can get expensive when you make that mistake.

Yeah.

I can't believe, honestly, like, I was just having this conversation four days ago creating that council app I was telling you about.

Eric.

Yeah.

And I can't believe in a society where everything is share this retweet this is giving this stuff away.

But damn, if you use that, buddy, somebody's coming out of tv.

Okay, so share doesn't really mean share, right?

Or does it?

Or all these now, you know, because we're such a boisterous society of project and shout out loud everything about your life.

But, man, you touch a piece of it even though you shared it to a million followers.

Wow.

Yeah, yeah.

So, Crystal, what are you seeing with people marketing and social media like TikTok and of course that has such a different audience maybe than Facebook or Instagram.

What's your thought on social media marketing?

So social media is exactly what it sounds like it needs to be social.

And so I think again, here we go again.

A lot of contractors place no importance on this.

And so they're like, I know they need to do it, but they really aren't willing to do what it takes to use and honestly push social media to be a lead generator for them.

It's not really designed to lead gen, it's designed to build the brand.

So if you want to be known as this fun loving, trustworthy brand, we need to be putting out organic video content, sharing our reviews, sharing testimonials, sharing who our leadership team is, who's behind the phone, all of those things on social media so that people can get to know our brand in a social environment.

And a lot of times people don't want to be on camera behind the camera, they just don't want to.

And they're just giving up so much opportunity there to dominate their local market because they're just seen, they're just visible.

And so social media, you really have to have clear expectations that it is not going to rock your world.

Sometimes to just get active on social.

Active means that you are, again, strategically building the top of mind awareness.

Listen, most of us are in home services.

I wish I could curate it to where the day that the moment you have a problem, you see our social media organic.

I would love for it to work that way.

And I'm sure it will eventually be even better than it is today of targeted traffic.

But the reality is you need.

Again, I'm going to go back to what I said earlier.

If you are doing social media day after day with good content, you're engaging, you're energetic, that builds that top of mind awareness.

And when your homeowners need you, they will call you because you are stuck in their brain as to what they are.

But it does require an investment of something that's actually harder to come by than money, which is time it requires.

Timers are hiring someone to help.

You got to be part of the algorithm.

Yeah, yeah.

And it's a skill you have to.

Right.

It's a habit you have to create to be able to put out that content effortlessly instead of it feeling like this big lift.

And it takes getting used to.

Right.

It takes really getting in that rhythm of.

Not every time I'm on a job and this happens, I video it or take a photo or it's just getting in that rhythm of it.

And that's difficult for, I think, for dudes in general, but contractors as well.

It's just that you're like, my little brother's a great example.

He won't even use WhatsApp.

I don't know what that crap is about.

He wraps insulation pipes at the SeaTac airport all day.

And, you know.

Exactly.

Not that guy.

Yeah.

And that's tough.

Contractors, notoriously, have been slow at embracing technology.

It's just what it is.

And I'm not saying something that anybody doesn't know out there, but there are some that really embrace it quickly.

There's others that.

That I've just sat there and went, wow, okay.

I used to be a speaker for the national association of Home Builders, so I would be their home technology speaker.

And one of the newest upcoming trades out there are those integrators that are making all the smart home stuff work.

I'm sitting there on a stage three years ago, actually four years ago, and I look out to 300 different contractors out there and go, who knows what an integrator is?

And I had three hands get raised and I'm like, holy smokes, I gotta take this whole next half hour talk and dial it back just so we can get the basics down.

And there's so many gate contractors out there that if they could get their message out there and get their culture and everything else, they'd be crushing it.

But they're missing that important part of getting in front of their clients.

Yeah.

And especially in such a traditional way there.

It's a simple approach without.

It's not complicated.

I'm telling you.

The hardest part is the amount of time it requires.

Yep, yep.

So, Chris, what are you seeing out there?

We're seeing this big move of private equity coming in.

What's that?

J Just social media can be very simple and we over complicate it.

And what people really want to see is that transparent authenticity, genuine per.

You could literally go, oh, we're on this silly job today.

Look at Pete, he's wearing a pink shirt.

That's real.

People want that and it's relatable.

They don't need this.

And in your head you're going, I need to make this masterpiece movie.

Right.

And it's not.

It's perfect.

Yes.

Yeah.

Gary Vee will tell you all about it.

Just take the shot and get it over with.

Yeah, you.

A technician is with a phone.

Just talking through a job is the most productive piece of content.

And I could go and get the most high level producted.

Produced.

I'm sorry, produced content.

And it would not perform as better as your technician.

Just saying, this is what we did.

It's true.

I had one technician that had these little puppets that he would.

Yeah, yeah.

I had a technician that would do.

These little puppets and he had puppets and he'd be.

Yeah, he jumped into the puppet thing and would do it while he's doing an H vac thing.

So he'd be doing a tune up and he'd have the puppets and be.

Doing it here for it.

Yeah, it was awesome.

I'm like, it's social.

Yeah, for sure.

I can talk a little bit to that private equity thing.

So this is what I tell every contractor.

Private equity has a secret sauce that they try to deploy and a lot of times it includes a lot of money and a lot of data.

So the way to get around those things is to go the old fashioned way of put boots on the ground.

Because that's hard to measure and it's hard to track and it's hard to scale.

And I know that sounds weird coming from me, but what it is, you have to go where they can't and won't go, which is you've got to get hyper Local.

So you need to be in the parades, at the local events.

You need to be sponsoring little league teams.

But deeper than just giving away money and logos, you need to show up.

You need to take mascots and characters and fun colors, and you need to show up in your community at the local.

Our town north of us just had the Blueberry Festival.

So every company that I'm associated with, spot on.

Pest Control, McWilliams and Sun Heating, Cooling and Plumbing, and Eminem Roofing, were all at the Blueberry Festival with their mascots doing something Blueberry with a tent.

It was hot as Hades in East Texas this weekend.

And they were out there because you have to go where your people are and you have to shake hands and kiss babies and pet dogs and you do it all the time.

Because that is what PE is not always willing to do.

Yeah, good point.

Because they're so on the numbers, right?

That's all about the numbers for pe it's got to perform.

We've got to have this much over last year.

And it's kind of a cookie cutter stamp at times.

Absolutely.

Math.

It is.

It is.

And I think it's going to be interesting out there.

I think that's what gets shorted, right?

Authenticity.

We're back to that again.

Because it's not just math.

It's like you're saying it's kissing babies, right?

It has to have soul or people see right through it.

If you're just doing math, it's not going to sell.

I'm.

I take that back.

It does sell.

But as a contractor, as somebody that's going to come into your home and really be a part of your life for maybe it's two days, maybe it's two months.

That personality goes a long ways.

And I can attest to that.

I sold jobs because people genuinely liked me because I was just authentic and me.

And I didn't try to sell anything versus some guy that was doing math with a suit and tie.

That was that.

That lacked that soul and that connection as a human being.

And I think if you lose that, you lose the job.

And you can be a really large company and still be very customer focused.

Right?

I'll still be all about the customer experience.

And listen, I hate to break it to everybody, but there are PE companies right now.

There are PE companies that we should be like, dang, they have customer service and money.

We've better kick it up.

But listen, they can't win everyone.

Again, I go tell you, the marketing is not an exact science.

And so you gotta Bob and weave, right?

So if they're doing this, you need to go a different direction and just own your space and allow yourself to be successful in your own right.

Odds are you're looking at a team of executives, 20 years of hard work, acquisitions.

It's a lot different than your journey as a contractor.

And so just do the best you can do with your brand.

And if you stay on your P's and Q's, there's plenty of business to go around.

Great example, Crystal.

It's going to be a hundred degrees today in Portland, Oregon, and about 60 or so percent of our homes even have air conditioning here.

It's not about private equity with the phone calls today.

It's who can get out there the fastest to fix what's going on.

That's the other thing I was going to tell you.

Another thing that you have over P.E.

Is that flexibility.

But again, what happens, I think, is contractors get in their own way.

ERIC R. I think what happens is they're like, I can't be pushing my guys this hard.

What it does, what I need contractors to do is get out of their own way of sometimes saying, okay, yes, correct.

Can we work a con?

Can we work one of our technicians 12 hours a day in a hundred degree heat?

No.

But could we all of a sudden say, you know what we're gonna do?

Can we lead?

Let's lead and say, you know what we're gonna do?

I'm gonna split you guys into three shifts for the next two weeks.

We're going to be able to get to everybody, but I'm going to need a little patience because I want some of you coming in at 6 in the morning, some of you coming in at 8 in the morning, and some of you coming in at 10 in the morning, and you're going to work a little bit later.

Because we're going to work through this together and we're going to divide and conquer.

I'm getting in a truck.

Listen, contractors, you also can go to work and get down in the trenches.

We don't always get the privilege to lord over our teams.

Sometimes we need to buckle our own tool belt and go to work and help our team, let them see us in the trenches.

Trust and leadership is not built at the top of the mountain.

It's built on the way up there.

And so you've got to really know your team enough to know, hey guys, I'm asking you to work late, but so am I.

Now is that, that can't be like what you do every day, but I'm saying right now, 100 degrees in Portland is probably rocking their world.

Same thing when a little ice.

We had a sixth of an inch of ice hit Texas.

We called it Snowmageddon because we had to shut down the entire state.

We did not know we don't have snow plows.

We people had their John Deere driving on the road, just trying to make room.

And so again, we had two choices.

My brother, who was the operator at the time, he could have sat back and been like, good luck, everybody.

I hope you guys have a good time.

I'm staying home nice and cozy.

No, he was out.

I'll come pick you up.

Here I come.

And so we do have a responsibility to let your team show up and honestly optimize those opportunities where you can call an audible here, you can pivot.

When a lot of these larger companies, it's turning a cruise ship around.

For them to restructure how their team works for three weeks would cause they needed four votes and a Social Security card to be able to do that, whereas you are able to just make the call.

So there is still a lot of power in being nimble and flexible.

I think there's another thing here too, with that is I think it's a great time to grab.

If you're trying to expand your business, I think it's a great time to grab great technicians out there as well.

Because when PE comes in, they're going to want, year after year, better numbers.

It's about the numbers.

And I think when they start hammering on the H Vac technician going, I know you fixed it for 200 bucks, but why didn't you sell them a brand new system as an upgrade?

You're supposed to do 22.3% close ratio on upgrades.

And I'm making numbers up once that sales starts hitting down on technicians that just want to go out and be good for the company and the people they're working with, I think if there's too much PE out there, some of these good guys are going to go, man, I just want to work and fix stuff.

I'm not worried about trying to get my closing ratios on the.

On this, that and the other year after year, I'm gonna go find a place that's easier to work.

And I think that's gonna be a good opportunity for people.

Yeah, no, yeah, I agree.

As a real tradesman, I would never stand for it.

Right.

You push me on sales with something like that, and I just want to go out and do a nice remodel for Somebody, I'm out.

There's no way you're gonna push me like that because you take pride in your work and you take pride in your craftsmanship.

And if I wanted to be a salesman, I work at Nordstrom's, dude.

I'm out here to build stuff and do cool things for cool people.

But it is part of the job.

That's the other part of it though, right?

Yeah.

So it's one of those things that I think it's.

There's good opportunity for everybody out there.

And it always seems too that when PE comes in, from what I'm seeing, they're really trying to get the margins up higher.

So it leaves space to want to elevate the industry.

And two, I think it just leaves more door opens for the people that, that aren't P.E.

Out there.

Yeah.

Yeah, for sure.

So, Crystal, what else are you seeing out there for contractors and some of your secret sauce of what you guys do when, when somebody calls you up and goes, man, we need help to get going.

Because I know like out in my area out here in, in Oregon, statewide for contractors, I've had more people calling me up going, hey man, we've had a two year back catalog and right now of work and I don't know what I'm doing in, in July, we're seeing a lot of recession here because a lot of people are moving to Texas, let's say.

Yeah.

The first thing that Lemon Seed likes to always talk about is I think the majority of their problem a lot of times is we realize that there's no one really driving marketing in a focused, approached way.

So a lot of contractors are like surviving.

They've invested in things here and there, but there's no one really driving the marketing forward and home.

And honestly following up and transcribing what's coming out of those phone numbers and tracking things.

And I think that's one big issue is someone has to be able to.

My old boss at Coca Cola used to say, I need a tie to grab.

When marketing doesn't work, unfortunately for us as leaders, a lot of times it falls on us to be that person.

And so that's one thing that I encourage people to do is if you're going to manage it yourself, you've got to get down in the weeds with what's working.

You got to communicate with your vendors and you've got to be creative.

And so a lot of times just optimizing what you're already doing and holding your vendors accountable, you get some lift.

But also Many contractors have no brand presence at all, no brand recognition at all.

You think you do, and this is where I hurt people's feelings.

You think you are much more important than you really are.

And I want to say that with a kindness.

Here you live.

Heating and air conditioning, remodeling, plumbing, whatever it is.

You live that every day.

So you're like, what do you mean you did not know I existed?

They've never needed a new air conditioner until today.

Yep.

So now they care who does heating and air conditioning.

That is why you have to work a long time just literally repeating yourself over and over again.

You have to constantly be putting your logo in new and exciting places, but keeping it in places.

You have to be talking about your company.

You have to be sharing about your company.

Because we are a time of need service.

People don't care.

We're not a wonderful.

We're not a cool sports, outdoors retail place.

We don't sell boutique clothing for women.

We don't get to do some of those sexier things.

We are backflow preventers, condensers, two by fours.

No one cares until it feels, until there's pressure.

Yeah.

And so you have to come to that understanding.

So what we're seeing right now is the digit.

The brand is not memorable or recognizable and you need it.

You need that to happen.

The other thing we're seeing is you're investing in marketing.

You just really don't know what's working or if you're even doing the right things or when to pivot.

And the last thing that we're seeing people do is they're just overpaying for lead gen.

So they are overpaying with pay per click and the Angie Yelp local world because it's the easy way to get leads.

And if we understood you get what you pay for.

So if I can buy a lead, that's the kind of lead I just bought somebody that could be bought versus I want people that think of me and remember me and talk about me to their friends and family.

So you have to run, your feet have to be on the gas and the brake at the same time because you have to be focused on branding and knowing that's building and marinating year over year, day over day, month over month, while you're also investing in lead gen and eventually you start finding a happy medium.

So if I'm a brand new company, of course I'm overspending in Legion because I just need jobs.

But I'm also at the same time building my brand and eventually Those two things have to come more together or else I'm forever overpaying for leads just until I can get recognition and then eventually that legion.

I have clients right now that have built solid brands for the last three years.

They don't even need pay per click.

Very deep.

It can be a very simple approach.

They don't have to go to bat toe to toe in a wrestling ring over pay per click in Phoenix and Las Vegas.

Their brand, their community presence, their social media is doing a lot of that galvanizing to keep people interested in what they offer.

You got to get creative.

You got to, I think you have to have some sort of offers going on, discounts or Acknowledgments like 0% financing and just sitting back and being like, I made it to 3 million without doing any advertising.

My first response is, dang.

Imagine where you could be if you did advertising.

Yeah.

You'd be at 6.

Right?

See, that's, that's exactly what I was talking about earlier.

It dumbfounds me when you talk to people and go, right, because that's the attitude.

I made 3 million last year.

So you don't want to make 6?

Is that what you're saying?

You're good there.

Okay, yeah, cool.

And I get that maybe it is.

That's okay.

But why'd you call a marketing agency?

So here's another.

Yeah.

Oh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna throw out my biggest pet peeve in marketing.

And this is contractors, brands, manufacturers.

Stop blindly hiring the 19 year old kid that could run an Instagram account to be your VP of marketing.

Stop, please.

Hire them, Hiram, and pay your dues.

Learn your lesson.

I was the 19 year old that thought I knew a lot about marketing.

Here's the problem.

Someone needs to be leading the charge for your marketing that has both understanding and influence.

Okay?

And this is a unique thought.

They have to have an overall good understanding of comprehensive marketing.

So what happens right now?

Is everybody coming out of college?

Literally everyone?

No.

It doesn't even matter coming out of college or coming out with some experience.

It's all relative to theory.

They understand theoretically what should be happening with your website.

Theoretically, what should be happening with social media.

True marketing experience comes from tell me what you have done yourself, what lessons you have learned.

So I know right now there's a lot of older, quote unquote older, probably Even my age, 44 and older, that we've had to learn social media marketing and we've had to learn email marketing and AI marketing.

But there is something about Those gritty people that have to get down in the trenches and learn it.

19 Year olds have no, no history knowledge.

They don't have any historical background to not repeat mistakes.

So I love new energy in the marketing space but in an, in a support role, not your leader.

So if you have a strong marketing leader and then you go hire a part time social media content creator, they really need to be a lot of times.

And again, just let them show you that they really do know what they're talking about because I'm sure there are tons of them that know.

But you need to have some guidelines in place.

You have to inspect what you expect.

So even if you go hire an executive level VP that's been doing marketing for 20 years, you still need to inspect what you expect as the owner.

And same thing goes for these young egregious, I'm going to call them kids, but young adults coming into the industry, it's not that they're not trained and excellent and smart and creative.

They probably just need guardrails, not handcuffs.

Yeah, good call, good call.

Yeah.

I'm seeing C suite executives getting hired with no job experience and I'm just going, wow, okay, that's, wow.

What are you guys doing?

And then their marketing plan doesn't work and then they wonder what's going on.

And you're right, they needed somebody in there to be a leader and then to have the people below them doing the work.

And that would have been a better hire to have them cutting their teeth on doing the work and learning what works and what doesn't and what part of college maybe didn't teach them right or there were some assumptions there that didn't work.

You know how it's anything like I can sit here and tell you guys how to go make my famous lasagna, but until you go make the lasagna, you have no idea how good you're going to be at it.

There you go.

That is, I will tell you this.

Well, Crystal, we're running out of time.

Go ahead, Johnny.

Yeah, sorry, we got a lag.

And I keep talking over or behind.

I know there is, it's a lag.

I will tell you that at 56 years old I realize how valuable the knowledge we have gained over the years becomes.

Right?

And it's.

You just don't have that at 20, right?

I didn't have it at 30 and I'm not saying I've got it at 56, but the difference in perspective and watching the cycles of life or the cycles of, of business or the cycles of tech is hugely valuable.

And I guess I never really realized that until I started applying it to marketing, to tech, to website development, things like that.

And you're like, wow, it's a good thing.

I know about how to toenail a 2x4.

That actually helped in this situation.

And I think it create, it creates a depth that 19 year old's not going to have.

And, and I'm not saying that's bad, but like you said, it's not a leadership position, it's not a C suite job.

It's okay, hold on tiger.

You've never skinned your knee yet.

So let's just.

It's not fair to them either because they are going to come rocking and rolling, hands up like dukes up, let's go.

And kudos to them.

But someone has to be willing to put in the work.

Somebody.

Everybody's got to learn somewhere.

But I will tell you too one thing that I see and I know we're running out of time, but I'll just tell you, marketing is a game of chess that you sit down at and you never get to get up.

You have to decide, am I the one that loves marketing and being strategic or do I need to hire a strategist to come in and help me?

But you always, as an owner and as an entrepreneurial style person need to be involved in your marketing.

It is not set it and forget it.

You don't have to love it, you don't have to get down in the weeds, but you do have to participate and feed back information in a thoughtful and data driven way.

Because it's when you take your eye completely off the ball that your team loses traction.

And you do have a fiscal responsibility to support your marketing team.

And whether that's outside vendors or inside people, it is your responsibility as the driver and the visionary for your company to participate actively with your marketing teams.

Absolutely, Crystal.

So many people miss too.

Yep.

Yeah.

The one thing I see gets missed out there is let's say something works really well.

They came out with a marketing plan and they're like, wow, that blew up.

Stop and figure out why that worked so well and how you could do it again.

Yes.

Right.

What portion of this can we replicate?

And honestly, you're going to be able to replicate it right now and then guess what, in two months it's not going to work anymore and you got to pivot.

That's why your mindset cannot always be frustrated with marketing because it's always changing.

Absolutely.

People find your crystal if they're like, oh my gosh, my company needs so much help.

How do they find you?

Yeah, so pretty easy to find.

I try to be all over social media but dot com, and there's a little contact us formula or form on there that allows you to give me a little bit of information.

And then my sales and marketing team reaches out and we have a conversation.

Because not everybody's the right fit for Lemon Seed.

Not everybody needs Lemon Seed, but we love to just sit and talk shop, talk marketing, see where you are, see if we are a good fit.

We're unique in a sense of we are fractional CMO departments for you and brand builders.

So we can help you build a brand, build a strategy, do all those things and really give you a pathway forward out of feeling like you're stuck in marketing.

Go nowhere land.

So lemonseedmarketing.com I personally am all over social media, Crystal Williams, and we put out a lot of content.

Even if you're not ready to invest with Lemon Seed, we put out a webinar every month.

We have our own podcast called from the Yellow Chair where we just talk all things marketing and then just straight up you can email me, crystal lemonseedmarketing.com friends and family talk free.

So make sure you tell me that you heard us on the podcast just so I know where you're coming from.

Perfect.

Crystal, thanks for taking the time today.

I appreciate it and hopefully we gain some new insight for people out there that are trying to get their marketing game back on track.

Perfect.

Thanks so much for letting me be here.

No problem.

I'm Eric Gene for John Dudley.

You've been listening to the around the House Pro Insider.

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Man, I need to focus now.

What is that?