How do you stop wasting money on marketing… and start building a lead engine that actually scales?
In this episode of Click to Calls, John Wilson sits down with Service Scalers CEO Sam Preston to break down one of the biggest mistakes growing home service operators make:
Hiring a marketing person too early — and expecting them to do everything.
They walk through what your first real marketing hire should look like, why most owners misunderstand the budget math, and John’s spicy take:
If you’re under $5M, marketing isn’t complicated — you just need to execute the basics consistently.
Whether you run HVAC, plumbing, or electrical, this episode gives you a clear framework for when to stick with an agency, when to go in-house, and what “good marketing” actually looks like when the board is light and you need calls fast.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- Why “marketing is complicated” is usually an excuse under $5M
- The difference between hiring a coordinator vs. a true marketing manager
- How to know if in-house marketing actually beats agency economics
- The only good reasons to bring marketing inside (and the bad one everyone uses)
💼 Extra Special Thanks to Service Scalers!
We’ve been partnering with Service Scalers to maximize our Local Service Ads (LSAs) and optimize our Google My Business profiles, and the results have been incredible. With hundreds of thousands in sales and 900+ calls in a single week, GMBs are now our top-performing organic lead channel.
Want to learn how Service Scalers can do the same for you?
🔗Check Them Out Here
💼 Big Reputation — Stop chasing reviews and watching competitors outrank you. Big Reputation is the AI-powered review + SEO platform built for home service pros. Automate review generation, respond with AI, track local SEO, and integrate with your CRM. Setup is free, and your first month’s on the house.
👉 Book your demo HERE
Shout Out to FieldPulse 🚀
FieldPulse is an incredible Field Service Management platform that helps you save hours each week while keeping your operations running smoothly. If you're looking to streamline your processes, stay competitive, and focus on what truly matters, FieldPulse is a game-changer!
📅 Book your demo HERE
Connect
John Wilson: https://x.com/WilsonCompanies
Sam Pr
More Ways To Connect with O&O
John Wilson, CEO of Wilson Companies
Jack Carr, CEO of Rapid HVAC
📌 Disclaimer: Some links may include UTM parameters or affiliate relationships, meaning we may earn a commission if you make a purchase. Episodes may feature sponsors, but all opinions expressed are our own.
OAO 282
[00:00:00] I have an opinion that people won't like
hot Take from John. Let's go.
If you're under $5 million, marketing is not complicated.
It's super easy to do my job. You can just, you can do this.
I'd said people are gonna like it. Today we're talking about hiring an internal marketing team,
but I really think.
The first hire is a marketing manager.
If you're expecting somebody to be, sprinkle some Jesus juice and your total budget's $8,000, I'm like, okay,
I want, I wanna speak directly to you owner. This is not an excuse for you to not be good at marketing.
I assume one person can just do it all.
And the answer is no.
As an agency, we prefer to work with a marketing manager versus the owner.
I am, uh, deeply insulted right now.
Welcome back to Owned and Operated. I am your host, John Wilson. I run a plumbing, hvac, and electric company in Ohio. And, uh, for fun I run a podcast where I talk to my friends [00:01:00] about how to build home service companies. Today we're continuing our series. Click to calls with the CEO of service scalers. Sam Preston, welcome to the show.
I am so happy to be here and honored to be called one of your friends.
We're buds. We're buds, bro. You just gotta accept it. Uh, if you are new to the click to Calls series, I would make sure you check out the past couple. Um, and if you have any questions, like throw in the comments, uh, we're, we're really like guiding this series through user questions.
Uh, so far we've talked about, uh, how to budget for marketing, how to think about that, where to spend it. We've talked to LSAs. I don't know if we've talked to PPC yet. We talked to Google Business Profiles. Mm-hmm. Um, so we're just, you know, every time we do one of these, we're breaking a little bit more down.
On how to build marketing as a primary discipline in your home service business. So it's worth a listen
and what I hear that LSA episode's kind of going crazy right now.
Yeah, that one popped the hell off. To be honest, people are [00:02:00] liking that one. It popped, it really popped off, which was pretty cool. Uh, yeah, I mean, I'm, it's, it's fun to do these, um, uh, like me on my soapbox for a second.
When I started this podcast five years ago, I always wanted it to be the resource that I never had when I first started off, uh, in my journey of growing our home service business. And there was just so much I didn't know, and it took me like. Seven or eight years into owning this business to feel like I knew what the hell was going on.
Yeah.
Like I had no idea. And uh, and it just took a long time. And like stuff like Google Business profile and like how to. Like, when do you hire a marketing manager, which is today's topic. How do you manage, uh, LSAs and how do you spend a million dollars on leads? Like, I don't know. I just, I just didn't know.
Yeah. Um, so I think it's really fun and I think it's really cool that we're able to, it's exciting that the episodes like popping off and doing really [00:03:00] well. Yeah. It's also just baller that, uh, we can create content and talk about something that is genuinely helpful to the industry. Um, and I just think that's like a fun way for me to get back.
So, uh, I'm grateful for everyone listening, but know that I'm really excited that I'm helping you.
I mean, I was literally talking to, uh, a guy last week who I just met and he has a $7 million business and he was, he asked me, so what's really the difference between LSA and PPC? I don't, I don't really know.
I was like, you're a $7 million business. You should really like, these are two really legit marketing channels. You've gotta know.
Yeah,
the difference. Um, so, so for me, selfishly, I get to educate people on marketing services. Yeah. On how they can handle this, uh, yeah. And how to think about all the different marketing channels and driving leads and growing your business, which is what.
I really love doing.
For too long, I was letting the wrong marketing agencies set my money on fire, and their marketing looked pretty good. On paper, the reporting was [00:04:00] attractive, but at the end of the day, it just wasn't driving leads. That's why I started using service scalers at Wilson Service. Scalers is a marketing agency built specifically for home service companies.
They focused on the channels that actually drive leads, like targeted PPC, local service ads, SEO, Google Business Profile, so that you're showing up. In front of your customers that are actively searching, they'll help you see exactly what's working, so you stop wasting ad dollars on low quality leads.
Right now they're doing something crazy and they're giving the opportunity for one entrepreneur to get up to 12 months of marketing on them, so that's up to a hundred thousand dollars in services for the right operator. If you are serious about tightening up your marketing and 2026 and want to see what this could look like for your business, go to service scalers.com and book
a free strategy call and let 'em know that I sent you.
All right, so today we're talking about, uh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna give this two titles, your first marketing hire, or hiring an Internal Marketing Team. Yep. But I really think for most people listening to this, the question that I get a lot, [00:05:00] or I'm in a bunch of these group chats or Facebook groups or whatever, and it always goes something like this.
I'm annoyed with my agency. I'm gonna go hire a marketing manager, and I'm like, okay, let's dive a little bit deeper. Uh, like first off, hey, maybe, right? Like if your agency is Scorpion Yeah, fuck yeah. Like, be annoyed. But you know, the people that I'm talking to that are like, yeah, I'm ready to, I'm ready to do this.
Yeah, they're spending like $8,000 a month total on marketing and I'm like, my guy. You cannot introduce, uh, I mean you can, but it would be a very stupid idea to introduce a marketing salary, uh, at that size. So I think the things we're gonna be talking about today is, uh, why do people go in house in the first place?
Mm-hmm. When is the right time?
Yeah.
Uh, and like, what's a good reason how to find that person [00:06:00] when it is the right time? Like. Who are they? What's the, what's the resume look like? What's the background? And uh, finally like, what do they do? What do, what does a marketing hire actually do in your business?
What can you expect? Um, and what can, frankly, what should you not expect? Because if you're expecting somebody to be, sprinkle some Jesus juice and your total budget's $8,000 inclusive of this person's salary. Yeah, you're not, no one's salt banging your leads. Right? Like you just gotta pay for some freaking leads.
Yeah. If you're not watching on YouTube, we're Salt Banging Act. Uh, actively
I'm doing hand gestures for everything John's talking about.
Lots of, lots of hand gestures so far. We're only two, three minutes in. Yeah. Okay. Uh, so first off, why do operators, uh, want to go in-house? Like why do people want to in-house this discipline?
I mean, I can tell you from reasons.
My
perspective one, it's control. You, you just control is a big one. Want to hire the person to do the job. Yeah. And not feeling like you're [00:07:00] paying for a portion of somebody else's Yeah. As they're working at an agency. Um, yes. In which case I've, I've done this in my own business where we have different marketing channels where I hired internally and I failed three different times and finding the right person.
Yeah. So finally I went to an agency. So sometimes it's, it's not as simple as just hiring that person, but the main reason I wanted to do that. Was 'cause I wanted to control that person's time.
Yeah. I think, yeah, control's a good one. Do you have any others? I have two others. Aside from that,
I think there's a perception of cost.
There is a perception of cost. I was even, I wasn't even thinking about perception of cost. So control's a big one. I, I totally agree. Speed is a really big one. Um, so that was a pain point that we had, you know, six, seven years ago. We really struggled with speed, uh, of change. So, hey, I want to, we're doing this coupon we gotta add to the website.
Well, how do we do that fast? Or we have this SEO idea, how do we help execute on this fast? How do we increase our budget? How do we, the board sucks today? [00:08:00] Um, so speed's a really big, uh, big, really big reason. Um, and I, in my mind, if your budget is enough, which we will talk about when is the right time.
Control and speed are good reasons.
Yeah.
Like, I like those reasons. A bad reason is frustration with agency. Uh, so I'm gonna re-pivot that to focus.
Yeah.
Uh, when Brandon and I, Brandon's my partner and president when we were like, Hey, I think we're ready for an internal marketing hire. We were probably 13 or $14 million of revenue.
Even if you have an agency, which like we have agencies today, uh, in addition to like an in-house director of marketing, maybe I'll talk about my, my marketing team stack here. But, uh, we have agencies, we have an in-house team and it's like a pairing together. Um, but what we were really wanting is like Brandon and I were spending a ton of our time on marketing.
'cause we had to fill the board every day. Like that's [00:09:00] an executive function. Is, that's the most important thing. Nothing else happens if we don't have the board filled that day.
Yeah.
No sales, no. Nothing happens if the board's empty.
Yeah.
Um, so it was us like directly managing agencies. It was us drafting SMS campaigns.
It was us drafting emails, managing LSA budgets, trying to figure out how to make Angie's List work. Uh, so focus was a big one. And I think smaller operators, it turns into like frustration. Yeah. But like, really, it's like there's just a lot to do in marketing. It's, it's kind of like one of the most important things.
It's changing
daily.
It changes daily. Yeah. It changes daily. It's hard to keep up with.
Yeah.
Uh, so yeah. Speed control and focus are. The good reasons to, I, I don't even wanna say go in-house because, um, nearly every significantly sized operator that I know of
mm-hmm.
Uses in-house paired with agencies [00:10:00] in some capacity.
Like they're using mail agencies, P-P-C-S-E-O, there, there is an agency somewhere in the mix because it changes all the time. Mm-hmm. And marketing is like specialty driven, so. I, I, I'm gonna be cautious with like, when to go in house. It's more like, when do you, you know, when do you bring on that first?
Yeah. And I, I, if you mentioned y'all went in at 13 million, I feel like that's a little high. I would go sooner. Um, we personally, as an agency, we prefer to work with a marketing manager versus the owner. Yeah. We love you owners. We love you.
I, uh, deeply insulted right now,
but you're busy and you've got a lot of fires put out.
You've gotta figure out so many
different things. I mean, this is focus. This is focus. This is like, this is a great reason to bring on that first. Marketing, hire doesn't have to be a manager, it can be a coordinator. Mm-hmm. Um, but someone should be, this should be their focus.
Because if we as an agency come to you on Tuesday and we say, Hey, we need these two things from you, and then three days later you get it [00:11:00] to us on Friday, and then we're implementing it on Monday, suddenly you're like, Hey, we're like.
Yeah, what the hell to do this for two weeks? Where, where are we at? And we're like, well, we need that information. Whereas a marketing manager, we tend to get responses really quickly and we can iterate much faster, get results faster, which for us, yeah, the faster we can get quick wins, uh, and leads in, in the door, the.
Better off the relationship's gonna be. So we tend to like, with working with marketing managers, uh, yeah, over owners. Some of you owners are phenomenal, but you really, at some point, oh, you're the best. You get big enough. Y'all are, y'all are the best. Uh, at some point you get big enough to where you shouldn't be spending your time on where to put the budget.
You should have a budget set and you should have a marketing manager that's going, oh
yeah,
the cost per lead's better over here. Let's shift the budget that way. Oh, it's over here. Let's go this way. We're having, uh, uh, uh, we don't have any calls coming in or any leads or any appointments booked for today.
We need to get that. So let's, let's throw more budget into this emergency situation, uh, red alert and get some more leads in.
I [00:12:00] think the next natural one is okay. Got it. Those are good reasons. Mm-hmm. Uh, frustration is not a good reason, um, especially if your budget's small. So when is the right time? You know, you said 13 was too late.
When do, when do you think the right time is?
Yeah. And you can, you can, you can back that up into a number. So, um. We, we talked about this in the last episode when we talked about budgets. Uh, but let's say we're gonna go with the, uh, the, the very basic answer of spending 10%. If you're a million dollar company and you're spending, yeah, 80 grand, uh, excuse me, $8,000 a month, uh, on, uh, marketing services, and you hire a marketing manager just for easy numbers, it's call it five.
Well then you only have three left to go into leads. That's just not a good idea. So I think it's closer to four to five. And even then, I think that you, I, I think that's probably a good place to [00:13:00] be like looking for 'em. What do you think of that?
I. Have an opinion that people won't like.
Those are the best. So, buckle up
hot take from John.
Let's go. So here's the opinion that people, that people won't like. Uh, I had this opinion, I shared this opinion with a, like a friend of mine who he's the. He's a marketing, uh, I think VP of Marketing is the title for a, a private equity firm that has 20 different brands.
I was like, Hey, this is my opinion. Like, what do you think? What do you see? Not just what do you think, but like, what do you see across 20 brands? Like that's a pretty big like amount of, uh, feedback mm-hmm. That you, that you can get on this opinion if you're under $5 million, and I've shared this like in, in the past.
Marketing is not complicated. It is, uh, this is the unpopular opinion.
This is
crazy. This is not, this is, you know,
it's super easy to do my job. You can just, you can do this. You just, [00:14:00]
it's, I, you know, I said people are gonna like it. The reason is like, you can roughly buy your way. To pretty big. Like you can get, you can get pretty freaking big.
Um, like you can cross into eight figures, uh, revenue, um, without like very fancy marketing technique.
Sure.
Uh, it now it's like someone needs to know what the hell they're doing. Mm-hmm. So like you still have agencies, you still have like experts. You still have to do stuff. Um. But my point is it's not super complicated.
So when, when I think about like, when's the right time to hire somebody, to me it's like a complication problem. Yeah. If, if all you are doing, and I say this in like the best way possible, if all it takes for your business to grow is spending more money on LSA. You do not need a marketing coordinator or manager or anything out there.
Like you just [00:15:00] don't because it's not complicated. You like, it's one singular thing.
Mm-hmm.
It, so for me it's a complexity problem. Hey, when do you have, uh, when do you have like a lot of different pro like channels going on? When are you emailing frequently? Like that takes a person or ai, I guess. Uh, when are you SMSing campaigns very often.
Uh, do you need speed to lead stuff? Like, do you need to really step up your level? Are you an eight figure business? I think that's a good way to, to think about it. Another way, I like to think about it. If you think about, uh, how does, how does an agency charge?
I mean, there's a handful of ways we charge.
We tend to do a, a, a flat rate based off of the level of service that you're, you're needing, right. Um.
But you could probably roughly back into like a percentage of spend.
Yeah,
yeah.
Pretty easily. So like, yeah. So that's a way to think about when's the right [00:16:00] time. Mm-hmm. What is my percentage of spend? So that, you know, that example that we gave where someone's like, Hey, I'm spending $8,000 a month right now.
Uh, well if, and my agency charge is 10% or 15%. Okay, well, if you hire an in personal marketing coordinator or manager or whatever you wanna title that, that's 70%. Like the agency is a better deal. Yeah. Than 70%. Yeah. Uh, so I'm a big fan of can you beat 10%? Yeah. Like if an agency is 10% or 15 or 20% or whatever that like percentage of spend is, can you beat that efficiently?
Mm-hmm. Uh, and that's when the math started to really make sense for us was, Hey, I'm spending significantly more. On agency fees, then I would spend on the three or four people that I would have to hire, 'cause it's not one usually. Mm-hmm. Three or four people I would have to hire to, to, to do this.
I mean, think about [00:17:00] SEO in general, like the SEO strategist, the person that's just a wizard at SEO is a really expensive hire for me.
And then I go find somebody who's gonna. Backlinks and then I go fi find somebody who's good at content, like just writing content and then I go find somebody, uh, that is good at building out landing pages and development. So like right there, it's just four hire hires for your little SEO package.
Whether that's, well,
this is the biggest mistake that I see people prepping to hire for. They assume that they can just hire this one marketing person and they can do, hey, they can do our social media, they can do videos, they can do funny tiktoks. They can also manage PPC budgets and they can. Like create SEO content and draft emails and um, like not really.
And that, that was a tough learning curve for us of like, oh yeah, okay. Like I have this guy who's like really great, he's amazing at his job, but he does not do, he does not replace everything, right. Uh, that I had. So the number that we chose, uh, I think we divided spend at like 80 or 90,000 a month. Right.
And that's when, hey, this [00:18:00] is a lot of money.
Mm-hmm.
10% of that is nine grand. Can I bring somebody in, reduce a few of my agency fees?
Mm-hmm.
Uh, keep the ones that he cannot replace. Mm-hmm. Uh, and he, his background, we could talk about like how to pick backgrounds, but, uh, the ones we kept were SEO and um, PPC.
But yeah, it was like 80, 90 grand a month.
Yeah.
It was a lot, a lot of spend, uh, before we started, before we brought on that first real, uh, marketing hire. So I think a percentage of spend is a really good way to think about it. Um. And back to like, it not being that complicated. It's not that complicated like an agency if you're not trying to do very complicated stuff.
And if you are talking frequently with your agency partner, um, you can get a lot done. I, Chris Hoffman, like years ago, probably two years ago on Twitter, talked about and it was really like helpful for me, um, treating your. Agencies like an [00:19:00] employee?
Mm-hmm.
Uh, like are you talking with them often?
Mm-hmm.
Are you, do you have scorecards for what success looks like? Mm-hmm. Do they have a target to hit number of leads, budget, cost per lead, like whatever that, whatever the target is. Like, have you set that target, have you communicated about it? Um, or are you just reacting? Mm-hmm. And, and the reason why it was such a good learning for me is because the whole journey up into the twenties, we were just reacting.
Like we only called our marketing person when the board was light. And, but like, what are they gonna do? Like, it's too late. We sh we needed to do that two, three days ago when the board was starting to be light and, um. So, yeah, I think that's the when, and those are some of the mistakes that I know we lived, 'cause we made those mistakes, but I, I see that a lot too, where they assume one person can just do it all.
Yeah. And, and the answer is no. Um, one person can't do it all. Yeah. Definitely not. Uh, even, even within like all the market, like I'm good at marketing. I really am. Uh, and if you. Compared me to my PPC [00:20:00] wizard, you know?
Yeah.
Like, she makes me look dumb a lot. Um, yeah. And same thing with my SEL person. Like, they'll come in, oh, did you see how
fast I agree to that?
Yeah. It's not, yeah, it's not. No.
Yeah. You, I totally agree.
Yeah. I'm good at this. And I realize the more. What I have been good at is finding people that are really damn good at Yeah. Their specific service and mm-hmm allowing them to do this, uh, for other people. Um, and so even within that, uh, it's hard to be good at PPC and SEO and like it just really is, uh.
Yeah, it's, I would say it's, it's kind of like a diet, right? Like, you know, you want to lose weight. It's not hard. It's very simple. Mm-hmm. Eat less, move more. It's, it's very much like that. But at some point you want somebody to come in and go, oh, hey, we just wanna adjust this one thing. We wanna change this one thing in the way you're doing it so that you get better
results.
Are we talking macros now?
You're, [00:21:00] huh?
Is this about to become like a fitness show?
Do
I am here for this? I mean, we did start off
Yeah.
Flexing.
Flexing, uh, yeah. Owned and operated. It is about to be, uh, owned, owned and
operated. Jack edition.
Yeah. That's where we're going with this.
More like click to yolked.
We need, we need a really good transition into that. So here we are.
Yeah. This is it. This is it everyone. We are now a bodybuilding show.
Um, now with all this, I do wanna make a very clear, dis uh. I, I wanna speak directly to you owner. Uh, this is not an excuse for you to not be good at marketing or customer acquisition.
There is nothing in my opinion, John, correct me if I'm wrong. I have been wrong, uh, at least once in my life. Um, but there is nothing more important in your business than being good at customer acquisition. You must know this. If you really want to get to that next level, at some point, it won't be the only thing.
That you need to know. Mm-hmm. Like at some point you need to figure out how to [00:22:00] scale yourself as an owner and get yourself out of the weeds of managing the agency and holding them accountable. It's still your job. Like you're still managing them through a marketing marketing manager. Uh, but that is the number one thing, is you wanna be good at that and then put somebody in place to own that.
As Wilson has grown into a regional powerhouse, I have stopped having the time to be able to babysit our Google business profiles, and that's why we started using big reputation. It turns my Google business profile into a dependable lead engine without pulling me back into the weeds. Within the first 30 days of using big reputation call volume from our Google business profiles went up nearly 27%.
Jobs booked from Google also went up 20%. Without us spending any more time manage it, it helps us keep our profile active managers reviews. Responds fast and shows Google a business that's trusted, alive and worth ranking. You also get real visibility into what is [00:23:00] happening, your review volume, your sentiment trends, which tax locations or teams customers are actually talking about.
There's no more guessing, so it's less babysitting, it's more signals to Google, and most importantly, it's more inbound calls. If you want Google working for you without becoming another job, check out big reputation.ai. Let's talk, uh, who is that first person? Like what's the title?
Uh, I think that you go a couple different directions here.
Uh, one, if you are paying too much, uh, for one specific service and you want to cut those costs, I think that that is a place where you can go and hire one specific person to manage one thing. In those cases, you're probably looking at, uh, offshore talent, but I really think. The first hire is a marketing manager.
Mm-hmm. I think it's somebody that's job is to manage everything that you are already doing because it's going to make everything more effective You when you hire that market, if you hire the right person, [00:24:00] if you hire the right person, then you are the channels that you've been using and dominating and winning should get better.
Your PPC should get better. Your Facebook ads, your TikTok ads, your whatever it is, you should be better at, uh, managing the budget, getting more, a better cost per lead through these channels because you have somebody whose job is to hold agencies accountable and to make sure that that budget is going into the right channels to get you the most leads that turn into a return.
I think I agree. I think people start with a coordinator. My problem with a coordinator. Is, um, marketing for our businesses isn't complicated, like I've said, but it is expensive.
Mm-hmm.
And, uh, like if a lead is $70, like somebody has to really care. And if you're spending a hundred thousand dollars a month or $80,000 a month or 50, or like whatever it is you are in, entrusting someone to manage that budget.
I mean, that's essentially what they're managing is the budget and the process. And the problem [00:25:00] with the coordinator is you've sort of like gone halfway in between, like you don't have the expertise that you had at an agency. Maybe you have more focus, uh, but it's also a lot of money and you're giving someone, uh, control over probably hundreds of thousands of dollars.
And, um, with, with the guidance that you probably don't have, right? Like you probably aren't the like, owner probably isn't like this rockstar marketing, uh, guru. Um. So I, I, I think that's, can be a little bit dangerous and, um, budget control, uh, I definitely think is a manager hire and that's why we waited so late.
Mm-hmm. Was we, we kept budgeting control, like we had a few people help, like emails and stuff, but like, that's a very different thing than like controlling a million dollars.
Mm-hmm.
I think when, what to look for. So. With a coordinator, um, like obviously you can do it, uh, but coordinators are usually just gonna coordinate.
So they might be sending SMS [00:26:00] campaigns, email, maybe around arranging some outbound calling reporting, like they can handle, uh, like reporting by lead source. Um, so they can, they can handle a lot of that stuff. Budget control is probably gonna go to a manager, like if you're talking about real dollars, that should probably be managed.
Um. And the, the candidate that you're looking for. The people that I see that do the best are some version of a direct response marketer.
Mm-hmm.
So that can look a few different ways. Uh, I've seen it a lot in affiliate.
Mm-hmm.
Like someone that can really, like affiliate for the lay person is like, uh, someone on Instagram.
Says, Hey, check out this, I don't know, Kohl's coupon or skincare product, or whatever the hell. And then there's like a link in the bio and they get paid, uh, $5 for that affiliate link. And the, the reason I like that so much is because there's a very direct [00:27:00] outcome. Mm-hmm. Like, I'm going to perform this action, I'm gonna talk about something in branded.
I'm gonna pay for ads to go to this page. And when someone does something, when I sell them that product via my. TikTok or webpage or whatever it is, I get paid a commission. Uh, so it is very similar to how home service works. We're going to invest money into a lead. We're gonna drive that lead to our phone number, we're gonna drive it to our website, we're gonna drive it to our socials.
We need something to happen there. They're gonna book the call. They're gonna do something and the outcome should be revenue after selling it. So I found that that has really worked and for our business, but for friends businesses who've also hired that type of. Background, very direct response. I do x, I get X.
Mm-hmm. Um, that is like a perfect, uh, candidate for this type of role. The candidates that I think tend to struggle are more tan, more, uh, ethereal type of, uh, marketing. So we, we were like, I've talked with people that are probably [00:28:00] really talented in the right setting. It's just like, this isn't the right setting.
And they were really good at, um, like graphic design. Uh, they had an incredible sense of design and they could do branding like nobody's business. Um, and that certainly would be helpful. But that's not going to drive the business today, tomorrow, or the next day. No. Uh, the same way that like a direct response type marketer would, uh, um, and that, you know, if you put up like a position posting on Indeed direct response marketing could be a way to put it.
Um. Affiliate marketer, you, you could put a lot of different ways. Uh, but you will probably get, uh, people that, like we've had a lot of people apply to marketing positions over the past, like for like, hey, paid lead specialist. Like, that'll be the title, like paid lead specialist and, uh, we'll get videographers who are probably incredible at their craft.
Mm-hmm. But that is a very different thing. Um, yes, they've touched marketing. Yes, they've been around it, [00:29:00] but managing a million dollars versus not is, is different things. And knowing the outcome, how to measure it, how to tweak it to drive better performance. So that's what we've seen as being, uh, successful.
I like it when somebody, for a marketing manager who has had experiencing running campaigns or working with a team that has run campaigns, that's not too hard to find. If they've worked at an agency before, somebody that has been a part of a team that's run Google Ads and SEO, uh, can translate really well.
And I would even say it doesn't necessarily have to be in home service. Oh yeah. The phone service is, you know, like you say, it's not, it's not overly complex in comparison. It's expensive. It's just expensive. Yeah. Uh, so somebody that has money.
Yeah, I, I mean, guy guys that I know were like affiliate or like, Hey, mortgage affiliate brokers was really interesting.
I have a friend that hired somebody out of that industry. Insurance was interesting. Like, Hey, I have to go market [00:30:00] this insurance company. And like, I only get paid when someone buys their insurance product. Mm-hmm. Like, that's a, that guy's gonna eat what he kills. Like he has a perfect candidate.
Right.
Exactly. Um, that's gonna work really well. Uh, people that have, um, who have had almost a. I think you could do really well with somebody that has account management experience. So somebody that's worked at an agency Yes. That has worked directly with clients. They may not have the exact experience on running a paid account or a SEO campaign, but they have worked with those teams so they know how to ask the right questions.
They know what they're looking for.
Yep.
It's uh, it's very similar to. When I'm looking for a, like a website project manager, I don't need them to have the development experience. In fact, I, I, I don't really want them to be developers. I want them to be able to look at the developers and go, what do you need to make this happen?
Great. Let me, mm-hmm. Let me connect those two, which might go into [00:31:00] the coordinating, but I think the big thing you want to get away from is the more visual design. Manager, somebody that just wants to help you with branding. Yeah. We specifically want somebody that understands the lead is the only thing that matters.
How do we get more of those And I can work with other companies, or if that's not working, I'm willing to get my hands dirty and go do it myself.
Yeah. Yeah. I, I totally agree.
One of the questions you might be asking is like, where do I go and find this? And I think that depending on like where you're at in your business, you, you might go a couple different ways.
One bucket is to just throw on ads. And I personally, I'm gonna, I'm, I, when we throw on ads to go find marketing talent, we looked at, we look at LinkedIn, and indeed, I personally like, like indie, or excuse me, LinkedIn better. So go onto your LinkedIn, uh, you'll see the. Four business tab. You drop that down, it says hire on LinkedIn.[00:32:00]
You want to go through those steps to hire somebody. If you are looking in, if you're, if you're, if you're looking for somebody, like I want to go a little bit cheaper and, uh, more affordable, but still get good results, um, and you're looking offshore, uh, latam is really talented. Right now for finding marketing managers, uh, people that have experience managing campaigns, you can find really good project managers there.
Uh, I like Brazil. I like Columbia. Uh, I like Costa Rica. Uh, there's a couple different places there that you can find really talented team members there. You can run LinkedIn ads, have some conversations. My suggestion if you're going to do this, or at least here, here's what we do is when we're running these ad uh, these LinkedIn ads, we will then.
Go through and try to find the people that are really qualified or kind of qualified, and then we ask them to give us a Loom video. In that loom video, we want to know who you are. We ask you a [00:33:00] three questions on how you are going to attack this. Specific position. Like, uh, if you're looking for a marketing manager, tell us about a time that you were managing a budget.
Uh, how do you in a situation where there's not enough leads, go get more leads, uh, things like that. And then the last question is like, well, what are you looking for in a company? Once we get all of those, I then wanna look for one, do I wanna work this person? I is there, you know, communication good enough to be able to work with, uh, and then we go into the interview process.
We ask them even tougher questions to try to weed out people that are just pretending, people that are just fluff. And at that point. We then, uh, we, we then look to hire. The only thing I, I have done with a lot of success is the Kobe test. It's like a quiz where it, it figures out kinda like a personality test, but it's more about, uh, how you work.
And I have found that when I have people take this, uh, Kobe [00:34:00] test, KOBE, it is really successful on finding me the right person, uh, to do that now. That's, if you're looking, Hey, I want to go hire this person. The other two places I would look, one is agencies. Um, you can find a lot of really good talent there to go, you know, uh, get from, uh, and the other one would be other home service businesses.
These, again, will be like your main, like marketing people. I, I would not hire like a director of marketing for your entire business. Your hopes to really like. Uh, grow your company in a big way and completely own it. I think that's, that's a completely different story than just a marketing manager to come manage, uh, your budget and your relationships with your clients, or excuse me, your, uh, relationships with your agencies.
I think, uh, I'm, I'm gonna give a plug. My, my buddy Jack runs quick staffers. Oh. And they do a good job. We actually just [00:35:00] hired an assistant controller Oh, nice. Uh, from Latam, uh, outta there, which was really cool. So, good spot to look if you're thinking about offshoring and you don't know where to start.
Good spot to think about
a hundred percent. Uh, I've actually heard a couple clients say really good things about quick staffers. Do they do marketing managers?
I think so. They started in the call center, um mm-hmm. And we have like, I think four, three or four, uh, call center reps from them. And then. Um, we asked them to help us locate, uh, uh, assistant controller, and they did, like, the candidate was frigging awesome.
Uh, we hired 'em yesterday. Uh, so I would assume they could do marketing manager. I, I don't really know, but like the, those are the only two that I've focused on right now, but I, we worth a shot
a hundred percent. What I've liked. From what I've heard on Quick staffers is the people that you get are already trained to do the job.
Mm-hmm. So it really is like kind of a plug and play type of, uh, situation. At least for the call center. We like working with companies like [00:36:00] that because we know that their SDRs, they're call centers already trained, which is a big problem that we, we've come up against all the time, is driving leads and not knowing what happens afterwards or, you know, being sent to.
Just a random admin who's never been trained to turn that into an appointment. That's where it's like, that's really hard for an agency, uh, to overcome. Insert marketing management, insert somebody that already has that experience to help take that to the next level. I mean. That's what you want.
Yeah. Yeah.
Good. Good spots to start for sure. Are you still missing calls after hours, or losing leads while your team sleeps? That's why we work with Avoca, AI owned and operated exclusive call center partner. They answer twenty four seven, sound like a real human, and plug straight into your CRM to book jobs, send quotes, and even revive old leads.
There are plenty of AI call centers out there, but we trust Avoca because we've seen the results firsthand. More book jobs, less wasted spend and no more missed revenue. See it in [00:37:00] action at the link below. Start winning more jobs today with Boca.
Only other plug I would just throw in there is that we are holding a event early March right now.
Uh, dates will be probably live by the time that this podcast goes live. Yeah, I imagine. So we're looking at like the 2nd of March, uh, where we are going to hold an event. Uh, actually, I don't know if you know this. In your building. I've been working with your team.
Uh, Kristen told me yesterday. Did she great.
She's like, oh, yeah, by the way.
Yeah. We've just been working with Kristen this whole time, uh, and it's called, uh, booked solid, where we're gonna come in and teach everything, everything we possibly can. So we're gonna teach you everything about P-P-C-L-S-A, uh GVP, uh, budgeting to you know how to hire your marketing manager.
All of these topics in person, in details where you can ask questions so that you can figure out what, what the heck is PPC? Like, how should I be thinking about this? How do I get the most out of this? [00:38:00] Uh, how do I set up my marketing in a way that builds out a funnel so I know how to get a return on my ad spend?
We're gonna be doing this, uh, it's gonna be two days, no fluff. Really trying to get into the nitty gritty. Uh, so would love to see you there. And, uh, if you have a marketing manager, that'd be a great place that bring them as well so that we can teach them, uh, the different things. If, again, if they have, don't have specific experience in one of those categories.
Uh, the name is dope and apparently I'm pumped to see everybody, so sounds like fun.
Well, you know, early March, John, uh, I'll be in your area.
Well, thanks everybody for, uh, for tuning in today, um, for click to Calls. This has been a lot of fun. I'm really glad that people are getting like a bunch of help out of this.
This is one of our most asked questions is. When is my first marketing hire? What's the right time? Who am I looking for? So I, I hope we answered a bunch of those questions. Uh, today. If you have any more questions on this topic or [00:39:00] any others, make sure you comment it below. We do read 'em and we are building this series based off of listener feedback.
Uh, also make sure you give us a five star review wherever it is that you listen to podcasts and hit that like and sub button. We are super grateful.
