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John teams up with Sam Preston, CEO of Service Scalers, to break down the exact marketing strategies that move the needle for home service businesses. Whether you’re HVAC, plumbing, or any trades business, you'll learn how to prioritize channels that capture demand today—before wasting money on ones that might (or might not) pay off later.
Struggling to turn marketing dollars into real leads? This episode is your blueprint.
From real-world wins to costly missteps, John and Sam unpack where most businesses go wrong—like blowing budgets on flashy billboards while ignoring Google Ads, LSAs, and SEO. This isn’t theory; it’s a tactical deep dive grounded in what’s actually working right now.
🚨 What You'll Learn:
• The difference between demand capture vs. demand creation
• Why Google Ads, GMB, LSAs, and SEO are non-negotiable
• How to time your investment in traditional media like mailers and billboards
• The dangers of hiring an internal marketing manager too soon
• How to hold your marketing agency accountable—and what to expect from them
• Real marketing systems that fuel actual growth in the trades
💼 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?
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!
🎙️ Hosts:
🗣️ John Wilson
🎙️ Guest:
🗣️ Sam Preston
197 Transcript
John Wilson: [00:00:00] This is kind of like a deep dive. We're gonna be talking about when to add different types of marketing. You need leads today, tomorrow, and the next day. And when I see people complaining about leads, they're like, God, we just can't stay busy. We like pull up in their marketing budget and they have like five grand a month going to billboard.
Like, what do you do? What are you doing? You don't understand. Demand capture, first. Demand generation.
Sam Preston: One, one of the guys said, I, I've got $2,000 a month that I do in Google Ads and 2000 a month I do in LSA. And my first thought is why GMB is the so
John Wilson: good. And like the people, the biggest people in our industry are hyper-focused on their GMB.
Sam Preston: I think that the, the big mistake we see a lot of companies doing is they want to do a bunch of different channels.
John Wilson: Welcome back. To owned and operated. Uh, today in studio with me, I have Sam Preston, the CEO of service. Scalers. Welcome to the sofa. Oh, thanks bro. This is such a nice studio. Yeah, [00:01:00] yeah. It's been, it's, it's been good. We're having a lot of fun with it. We are pumping out content. It people should start to question.
Does he actually run a plumbing company? Yeah. Like that should start to be coming up in people's brains. Yeah.
Sam Preston: Yeah. Uh, the answer is, yeah, I do. Yeah. And soon we're gonna ask, is this AI generator or is this really John? 'cause this is a lot of content. Content, yeah. Dude. Deep fake stuff. Yeah.
John Wilson: Yeah. I haven't tried.
Have you tried any, like deepfake like videos of yourself yet?
Sam Preston: Uh, we have, we have. Is it good? Yeah, it's pretty good. Oh man. Okay. So you can't show the hands, you gotta be careful with that. So you make sure it's, you know, chest up and you just tell the deepfake software to like, don't show my hands. Yeah, you just have to get it, the, the camera angle up.
Like, um, and sometimes we've done it like of ourselves, like me talking in an ad. It's not really me, it's the AI generator. Me. Yeah. But we've also like used other, like AI generated people to talk. And so we have like a couple characters that do a lot better. And what it's allowed us to do is we run just like a [00:02:00] bunch of scripts on like Facebook ads or something like that to see like what is gonna hit.
That's wild before you get into trying to actually create that yourself. That's wild. Because you wanna see what's, what's gonna connect, what's gonna get the best, uh, what's the hook that gets people to click and yeah, play that game.
John Wilson: I wonder when likeness becomes like illegal, like can't do deep fakes of Trump can't 'cause like, all I wanna do now is like, dude, like a deep fake of Trump being like, you know, that toilet is huge, like by our buy our coupon or something.
I don't know. Like that. That'd be good. There's
Sam Preston: so many good ones. Uh, yeah, I, I don't know. How do you, how do you even regulate that? Yeah, that'll be interesting. That's a whole wild west. I know. We're not even, it feels, yeah, it feels
John Wilson: wild. It feels wild. Um, well, that's not what we're here to talk about. So today we're gonna be talking about, we're gonna be talking about levels, when to add different types of marketing, when not to, maybe more importantly.
How to give feedback [00:03:00] to, uh, whoever you're working with, whether it's an agency, you're like a lead partner or something like that. Internal
Sam Preston: team.
John Wilson: Yep. Yep. And uh, like basically how, how marketing grows over time at a home service business. So, yeah, let's do it. I feel like this, so this is kind of in a series we've been doing.
Um, we've been doing this series on like how to scale your plumbing company, how to scale your HVAC company, and. Each of 'em. We talk about the three pillars that I always talk about, which is like the lead, the sale, the fulfillment, and this is kinda like a deep dive into the lead portion of like how you should be thinking if you're on the path scale, home service company, how you should be thinking about like, when's the right time to do X.
We just are finishing the best April we've ever had. 55% year over year. Organic growth. Really just a huge thanks to Service Scalers for being our marketing partner in that a ton of that growth came from both paid and organic [00:04:00] SEO efforts. We did a ton of work on our SEO with service scalers, really strategizing and working on that about a year and a half ago, and the results have been creeping up over the past about year.
Really started to go crazy over the last few months as we're starting to see multiple six figures of revenue attributed to our website. And that's from their work on our SEO. On top of that, the management of paid has just been absolutely huge. Year to date, we're up 30 something percent. April alone was 55, and uh, we're just super grateful for service scalers in that partnership.
So. If you wanna learn more about how they helped us, make sure you check out service scalers.com. I, I know there's a bunch of like low lift stuff, but you know, like mass me, we talked, we just talked about this in the workshop, like, most companies, like a million dollars shouldn't be thinking about TV or like bus stop, you know, benches or, I, I, I remember talking to a guy, this was like two years ago and it was like a $3 million company in Fort Worth, I think, and they're plumbing.
[00:05:00] And he was like, Hey, what do you think of this marketing budget? And it was like full 10%. So $300,000. And it was like, I've got 60 grand in like Google ads and I've got 40 grand on like some billboards and I. He had park benches and like church bulletins. Like it was just sort of like this spray and pray Yeah.
Type of method, which like, I know is not gonna be effective, but, but he didn't seem to, and I think most people don't seem to know like, hey, you can't just like blow money under the, under the budget of marketing.
Sam Preston: Yeah. What do you think? Yeah, I mean, we get that all the time. I think that the, the big mistake we see a lot of companies doing is they want to do a bunch of different channels.
Well, they want to be everywhere.
John Wilson: Yeah. They're like, oh yeah, I'm starting to market, like, I want brand awareness. So like buses
Sam Preston: or, I've heard John talk about SEO, so I've definitely want SEO and like LSA, you know, let's, let's do that as well. Right. The problem is, is you spread your budget too thin. Uh, like in the workshop we were just [00:06:00] talking about this.
One, one of the guys said, I, I've got $2,000 a month that I do in Google ads and 2000 a month I do in LSA. And my first thought is why it's an easy, which one has a better cost per lead and dump the full $4,000 into that one.
John Wilson: Yeah.
Sam Preston: Don't, don't spread it. So, yeah. You know, when you're thinking about a marketing channel, any, any safe business has multiple channels that are driving leads.
'cause if you only have one, you're really a lot of leads. Yeah. You're vulnerable.
John Wilson: Yeah.
Sam Preston: Um, however. I really like to go deep Yeah. Into a, a service. So if you're running LSA and you've got a good cost per lead, just keep increasing your budget. Yeah. Until you can't spend anymore. You know, if you're, if you're spending, I mean, spend 20, $30,000 a month.
On LSA, that's, yeah. I think you spend 15 a week. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So I mean, you can, you can get a lot outta these marketing. I mean, what do y'all spend from, uh, Google Ads right now? Right now we don't have PPC going.
John Wilson: Okay. Um, so we've got LSA [00:07:00] 15 a week and like Modern Eye, like lead partners. Yeah. Uh, and that's another.
I wanna say five to 10 a week. Yeah. And that's all our direct lead spend.
Sam Preston: My point is like some people are spending significant budget in Google ads. Yeah. Um, that we have as clients that are spending 30 a month Yeah. In, in Google ads. So. There is a lot that you can get out of these channels and people quickly go, well let's do SEO and Google ads and yeah, and and LSA and Facebook ads and it's like, hold on.
Like find one.
John Wilson: Yeah.
Sam Preston: Get as much as you can outta that and then find another, get as much as you can outta that and continue to play that game.
John Wilson: Yeah. And I feel like, uh, and we can get pretty tactical, but the roof is pretty high. Like, I have a friend in Chicago. And 21 million this year, like 16 last year.
It's like 95% of their marketing budget is PPC. Yeah. Like it's Google Ads, PPC in Chicago. So competitive market. Yeah. And they spend three grand a day. Yeah. And like, that's it. Yeah. [00:08:00] And like they got to 20 million, like just that. And, and I feel, you know, we got, I, I tell this story a lot, but like we got to 20 million.
L-S-A-P-P-C-S-E-O. Like we didn't over complicate it. Yeah. But yeah, I totally agree. It's this like deep, not wide. And I also think you did a good job describing like the difference between. Like how to think about spend. Mm-hmm. Um, like, uh, it was demand
Sam Preston: creation and Yep. Yeah. Demand creation versus demand capture.
Yeah. Um, effectively demand creation is, you know, someone's doom, church bulletins, Facebook, church, Facebook, billboards, tv. You show up an ad they didn't want Yeah. A new HVAC unit. Yeah. But because thing saw a picture of John. Yeah. Saying, Hey, come by this safe flashing with the toilet. Yeah. As they're like, yeah, we need this new toilet.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's demand creation was, it didn't exist and now they're like, holy shit, I need this toilet. Right. Whereas demand capture is [00:09:00] leading a thirsty horse to water, you're not convincing the horse that it's thirsty. Um, and that's everybody that already has a broken toilet. And so they're going to Google and saying, toilet contractors near me.
Yeah. Plumber near me. Um, type of, you know, where's the nearest Home Depot for a toilet? Right. That's where you're, you're just trying to go Look, we we're not trying to sell you anything. You said you want a toilet, here are your options. Yeah. For a toilet. Oh. And that's,
John Wilson: well, I feel like that's where everyone should live.
And I think when you, so I'll, I'll, I'll give, um, how we break that down inside our marketing budget today. 'cause I feel like that might help people. So we spend 150. Eight, I think like four to 8,000 a month. Mm-hmm. On March. So much money. That's so much fun. Oh my God. Okay. Yeah. That's, that's a lot. A lot. Um, okay, so we spend a lot of that on, on, uh, that, that's our marketing budget, and that's inclusive of a bunch of stuff.
So we'll break it down. [00:10:00] 70 grand a month is demand capture. Mm-hmm. We call it lead gen. Lead gen, like it is leads and I, I think the point that I want to bring here with demand capture and why I brought up my friend in Chicago and like why I'm bringing up our portion of that budget, like the only thing that most people should be caring about is, do I have enough leads for today, tomorrow, and the next day?
Yeah. Like, that's it. And like a, like a church. Bulletin's not gonna do that for you. And a bulletin's not, or, uh, like a billboard's not gonna do that. TV's not gonna do that for you. You need bleeds for today, tomorrow, or the next day. And the purpose of, uh, TV or billboards or anything else is to solve your lead problems nine months from now.
Yeah. And it's like to build brand. So that's inevitably how you, like, you get there, but you can get to 20 million just focusing on the, uh, lead gen portion of the budget. So 70 grand a month towards lead gen. 20 to 25,000 a month towards [00:11:00] like our events and door knocking, like canvassing team. And that, that's inclusive of like paying for the events.
And then also the, uh, like staff themselves and we consider that lead gen, like they're there getting leads, they're there to get leads. We're at 150 and that's 95 of our budget. Those two things together. So the lion share, 60 some percent of our budget is to get leads. Yeah. And up until January. That was actually the budget.
Like that was it. We didn't have branding and we're gonna do 30 something million dollars this year. And like we were not focused on branding. 'cause I don't think it's that important. Like it's important eventually. Yeah. But like you can't build a brand ever if you don't have leads today, tomorrow, and the next day.
Like your brand is irrelevant if you can't keep your people. But see,
Sam Preston: what do you mean by brand? Because what, when you say brand and when I think brand, I think it might be slightly different. So what do you mean by brand?
John Wilson: Our measurement of brand is our people searching for us organically. Like that's it.
Like if I [00:12:00] was gonna go buy like Billy Bob's Plumbing Yeah. In Columbus, and I wanted to see if they had a brand I would get on SEMrush or hres. And I would find out how many times people are searching Billy Bob's Plumbing. Yeah. That's brand. People know the name. Yeah. In the community that you want them to know the name.
So it's very measurable. Yeah. So for us, our measurement of brand is, are we being talked about on Facebook? Are we being talked about on Nextdoor positively? Are people searching for us organically on Google? So that's how we measure it and that's how we think about it. I think the same thing. Okay. Yeah.
Just wanna make sure. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So it's like a very quantifiable, uh, metric, which I think is great. You know, in January we added branded spend and that was just a net increase of budget, uh, of like 35 or 40 grand a month. And that's like tv, radio, billboards go live in May. Yeah. So that'll be kind of fun.
It's all like one big, it's one giant campaign and the entire campaign's [00:13:00] purpose. To drive traffic back to our website where we can convert there. So that's kinda cool. So that puts us at 140. And then like my last 10 grand is the salaries of internal marketing. Okay folks. So yeah, that's the marketing budget.
But like until January of this year, it was all lead gen. 'cause that is really like, that's all the matters. Yeah. Like you need leads today, tomorrow, and the next day. And when I see people complaining about leads, they're like, oh my God, we just can't stay busy. We like pull up in their marketing budget and they have like.
Five grand a month going to billboards. I'm like, what the fuck are you doing? Yeah. Like, what do you do? What are you doing? Yeah. Like you're spending four grand on Google ads and five grand on billboards. Like you don't understand demand capture versus demand generation.
Sam Preston: Yeah. I think if you're below 5 million and you're making the con, I would say below 2020.
Yeah. But like the majority of your spend should be in trying to
John Wilson: capture demand. Uh, I mean there's, there's billion dollar companies. That the majority of their spend is to capture [00:14:00] demand. Like you never, that's not something you scale out of. No. Like ever. No. So you just have to figure, like, the whole journey from zero to 20 is figuring out how to capture demand.
Yeah. And then you can start, like, all brand is, is it's a way to make your demand capture more efficient. Yeah. It's still. Demand capture. Yeah. Like it's still like I have to send people to my website, but now my branded searches are cheaper and my cost for customer acquisition is cheaper. 'cause I didn't have to pay for every single one.
Right? Like I get a little bit of mind share lift.
Sam Preston: So you
John Wilson: think about that as a cost per, like how do I drive that cost per lead down and how do I get, we see it as a cost like cac, customer acquisition cost will be reduced over time because of our branded search. So if we bring on, and the way we measure that is like very simple.
It's, what did I spend in marketing this month? Yeah. How many new customers did I bring in in this time period? Yeah. And over time, my [00:15:00] budget should stay the same and my net new customers should increase. Yeah. Reducing my cac. So that's how we think of, of branded spend.
Sam Preston: Right. And the other thing in like demand creation will actually help your demand capture, um, increase because you'll do things like.
TV and radio. Mm-hmm. And have things that point back to your website. Yeah. Which increases your authority on the SEOA hundred percent. And gets you more traffic, gets you more leads. So, um,
John Wilson: yeah. It's all one like cohesive thing, but until you have enough money to just decide to blow 30 grand a month like I did on tv, like, you do need to, like digital should come first.
Yeah.
Sam Preston: Yeah. Actually let's do that. Let's, let's do a little exercise here. Um, like when to add stuff. When to add stuff. Okay. Zero to 250 a year. Right. So you just getting started, you're making maybe, um, [00:16:00] 10 to 20,000. What's your opinion? You go first. This one. I'll do the next level. If, if that were me
John Wilson: and I was starting from scratch, not like a new location, um, I don't know that I would do.
Hate it all. If I did, it'd probably be like meta, but I feel like I would be like scouring Facebook groups and next door and like knocking on doors. Like it'd be like, 'cause I don't have any budget, like what am I gonna do? And like, it's, it's actually really, meta ads are really competitive. Um, I was, I was doom scrolling on Facebook like a month ago, and I haven't been on Facebook literally in a decade.
And, um, started, yeah, like basically I was liking like high school last time I was on Facebook. So I, I like got on Facebook and I've been talking to my, uh, marketing team. I'm like, yeah, we, I think we really need to run meta. I think it's like the frontier that nobody's touched yet. Hell no.
I was like so comically wrong. It is [00:17:00] Every single I, there was companies I'd never even heard of before competing for space on meta and like just finding 'em and like, oh my God, there's another one. Yeah. So it's really competitive and I think that you can really tell the difference between good and bad on paid meta.
So we're 30 million, our budget is bigger than most people's companies. And we still approach meta cautiously because we know if our creative's not good, we're not gonna do a good job. Yeah. So if you're really small and you're like trying to invoice and run calls and do all this other stuff, like I don't think meta's the spot.
Sam Preston: I would not put a lot of money behind any kind of paid, uh, acquisition between zero and two 50. I think it's all word of mouth and Facebook
John Wilson: groups. Well, yeah. And 'cause who's gonna pick up the phone? Who's gonna book it? So like, you're gonna spend this money and you might not even be able to like, make the lead happen.
Sam Preston: Yeah. Yeah. I mean at this point you're probably still working for somebody else and this is like your nighttime job. Yeah. Or side hustle. Yeah. Or something like that. I mean, we just hired a landscaper who is [00:18:00] working for somebody else at, and he comes, uh, at nights to clean or to do my neighbors and my, yeah, my lawn.
So yeah, I think that's, that's it right there. Word of mouth. Facebook groups, Facebook groups knocking on doors.
John Wilson: Yeah. So you have no budget and like if you got a call and you're working like you're gonna lose that call that you just paid 80 bucks for. And $80 is precious to anybody. But like when you have no dollars, $80 is really precious.
This is feed my family. Yeah. And make sure the lights stay on as I'm trying to get started. Yeah. Yeah. You prob, unless you have like a considerable amount of cash sitting around an agency, this is not the right moment for an agent. No,
Sam Preston: I would not. Um, alright, so two 50 to seven 50. What's that? 50 grand a month, maybe 60 grand a month.
It's not bad. It's not bad. Um, you're doing a 10% roll means you have roughly 5K. Yeah. In, in marketing spend,
John Wilson: that feels pretty good. I'm assuming that someone's picking up the phone, whether it's an answering service or like you got somebody remote. Probably not in office at that size, but maybe [00:19:00] as long as someone's picking up the phone, I, I feel like I would start to mess around with paid.
Okay. LSA would be tough. So like, LSA takes, at least in our mar maybe there's different, you know, it's the amount prob, it's probably based on the amount of competition, but I only know my own market. It was, it's really hard for us to get an LSA kicking unless it's got a hundred reviews. Yeah. So if you don't have a hundred reviews, like it, it LSA doesn't seem to wanna work.
Sam Preston: There are some things that you can do. It's nothing like crazy. It's not magic, but like there are some things that you can do to get traction Yeah. And to get it working underneath it. Yeah. Um, but clients, you know, consistently Yeah. Report back like, Hey, whatever y'all are doing is working okay. And it's like they cross the a hundred review.
John Wilson: Yeah. Or like, yeah. I mean, crush it for you. I feel like that's the big one because LSA, what's nice about LSA, like maybe high intent is the way to talk about it because. If someone's, if someone's clicking on an LSA button, like they, their water heat is out right now. They have a drippy faucet. They're trying to get it taken care of.
It's a high intent lead. [00:20:00] Yeah. Versus like a, I would never touch a lead partner like an Angie's List or a Modernizer, anything at that size, because you don't have the tech stack. It's non high intent. Mm-hmm. You don't have a sales process. 'cause you're under, like, you don't have a, you don't have a sales process.
People, people under 10 million usually don't have a sales process at all. So I feel like you just totally flop. So you need like. And this is actually kind of one of the wonderful things about our trade. I was talking to, uh, I was talking to, well, a lot of people last year because a big problem that we were working on last year was how do we drive, how do we like, build a business on the back of, uh, cold or warm leads?
Mm-hmm. And, you know, describing that problem. Which is like a dumb problem. I was describing that problem to like, uh, like a bathroom modeler. Mm-hmm. Or, and he was like, dude, that's all we, that's all we know. Like, what do you mean you don't know how to handle this type of lead? Like, they're knocking on doors, they're at all these events.
They're like, 'cause everyone's [00:21:00] kind of low intent, right? Like, no one's like, oh, my bathroom broke. I need a, need a 80 grand remodel. Like, nobody's like that. Yeah. So. There's entire industries built on how to manage these types of leads. But in plumbing, HVAC, like I started working on that problem when we were $25 million.
Yeah. And that's why I was like, ah, we should probably figure out how to handle, yeah, like non-emergency leads. Yeah, we should do that. Uh, so like you can get pretty big just on like LSA. Yeah. So yeah, that size I'd be focusing on LSA. Maybe some Google ads. If you've got like a PPC, if you've got good landers.
That are like going to convert.
Sam Preston: Yeah, I would actually disagree with you. Okay. Uh, I would not start Google Ads at this point. Okay. Um, the, the problem with Google Ads is it is, it's a game. It's, it's not just a, you know, light switch. You turn it on, you suddenly get a bunch of leads. It's, we need data to come in and so I'm gonna be using your budget to test this key [00:22:00] word out in your market and going, Hey, it's gonna work.
Yeah. Um, so I think it's gonna take too much budget for that to really be able to scale.
John Wilson: But that makes sense. I remember when we first started on PPC, like, and this was 2016, company was like a million, almost 2 million bucks. So 2017 I think. Mm-hmm. And it was some random agency in uh. Like North Carolina.
Never heard from them again. Honestly. Uh, I think they're just like really reach back out. I actually should email them, but, uh, yeah, it was, we came in with like two or three grand a month. Mm-hmm. Um, which now like that's, that's like. It's a shocking number that it worked. Yeah. Uh, but yeah, we came in with two or three grand a month, and I remember that being a sacrifice for us.
Mm-hmm. Because we had never advertised before and like my, my dad and I were still working together and we were partners and like, it was a point of contention. Um, that's 25 grand a year out of like [00:23:00] not a big business. Yeah. Um, it was a, like, I, yeah, I remember the sacrifice and I remember like, the, this really needs to work.
And they were like, oh, it might take 60 days. And we were like, fuck yeah. We really need this to work. Yeah. So, and that was at a million and a half ish or to like 2 million ish. And I remember that being like a challenge, like having to wait for it. Yeah. So yeah, I think I can, I can understand that.
Sam Preston: So if, if you're in that like two 50 to seven 50 mark, right.
I don't want you to pay for agencies like personally, like you can, don't
John Wilson: get me wrong. We, we can. Well it's like a percentage of ad spend thing. It just, yeah. Yeah. 'cause if you can only spend two grand, but like your agency fee's like a thousand or two grand or whatever, an agency fee is like. Yeah, that's a 50%.
Yeah. That's crazy. I wouldn't do that.
Sam Preston: So if I'm, I'm between those times. I am definitely getting, I'm doing work on GGMB. Right. Go get that. You can get so many leads from that. Um,
John Wilson: yeah, I know I've said this before, but like GMB is the shit. It's so good and it's so good. And like the people, the [00:24:00] biggest people in our industry.
Are hyper-focused on their GMB and for years I, I like overlooked it and I was like, oh, it's simple. It's dumb. It's, it's like, I just didn't think it was that complicated or like serious. But the biggest people in our industry, GM B is their focus, including us. Like we invest a ton into our GMBs.
Sam Preston: Yep. It's, it's, it's so good.
So go get it. Go to YouTube and, and learn all you can. Yeah. At this point, like, I don't want you hiring an agency. Go learn this stuff because I mean, 80 to 90% of what we do, you can find on YouTube, right? We, we have for GME stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We have a couple things that we are like, we hide. That's our secret recipe.
We're really good. It, it helps us get better results for our clients, but like you can go get, you can self-manage GMB, you can self-manage GMB. I would play the lead partner game a little bit. Okay. Interesting. Mostly because you can get in. Without too much risk, you can go spend a thousand dollars Yeah.
And see if it works. Yeah. Uh, and so go, go to [00:25:00] Google
John Wilson: like Angie's list type thing. Exactly. So I think the, I think the only issue, and, and maybe it does work for that size 'cause the, there's a gap with leads. Mm-hmm. And it's like there's a point in a business where the owner is so fucking tied in. Mm-hmm.
'cause he has to be, and he probably is at half million except. And like he will nail every lead because he literally has to nail every lead He does. And then like above 2 million, once you build out a call center, like they don't give a fuck about those leads. Yeah. And it's not until you have like a real tech stack later on.
So I. I think I can get behind that.
Sam Preston: And, and, and once you get a little bit bigger, you change over to something like, and I guess we'll talk about some in the next bracket, you'll change over to something like Google Ads so you can get that cost per lead down. Yeah. From something. 'cause you're gonna spend a higher cost per lead.
Yeah. Uh, in Andrew's list. But go to Google search for your service in your area and Yeah. Scroll down to the SEL. Figure out which one hits first. Is it, oh, that's a good idea. Is it modernized? Is it Yelp? Is it Andrews, Liz? [00:26:00] You know, Thumbtack? Which one is it? That's a good idea. And then go test out that lead partner first.
I.
John Wilson: Dude, that's like a, that I have literally never done. It's a good, really? Yeah. I've never actually done do this right now. I'm gonna, uh, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. I'm sitting here like, yeah. Well, I've told people, and it's not joking. I think, and I, this might be like me coming off as like a douche bag, but I think that like mid twenties.
I, I just remember thinking that like, oh my god, 20 million. We're gonna know everything. Like we're gonna be put together like so tight. And dude, you are still like, we are still. A small business. Yeah. That is like figure, and I know that might sound unrelatable, but like we're still a small business figuring it out every day.
Yeah. Say that way. This is the part that sounds, makes me sound like a douche bag, but I feel like mid twenties is the new, like 3 million [00:27:00] I. Then that part might be like super unbelievable. Yeah. Yeah. I feel the same, John. Yeah. I feel like, I feel like it's like, it's just a bunch of like dps including me, like trying to figure out what the next step is.
Uh, and we're just like, I don't know. Yeah.
Sam Preston: Yeah. I mean, it's, it's a whole different set of problems. Yeah. Um. I mean, I can't talk about all of them, but from a marketing standpoint, you, you struggle. You start getting into a place of like, I don't know how to spend enough. Yeah. That was a real, how do we get 10 30?
Okay. You spend more. I can't, people will not take my money or
John Wilson: it'll waste it. Yeah. That was a real challenge for us last year. Yeah. It's an unrelatable challenge, but it's a, yeah, it was a challenge. I don't have that problem yet. Okay. Okay, so two 50 to seven 50. I'm doing GGMB, GMB. A lot of focus on GMB. I would say still the same stuff, like as, as the earlier bracket.
Yes. And maybe that's always assumed, but like still like door knocking. Like if you've got no revenue, you've got no pride, like go knock on some doors. Still don't have pride. But yeah, [00:28:00] I'd just call myself a durp in front of like thousands of people. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, I, I probably need more pride. Um, and then like.
Facebook groups nextdoor is a big win. There's actually a guy, and I fucking love this. He's the Lincoln, he's a plumber in my like neighborhood and he's content creating on Nextdoor. I. It's the coolest shit I've ever seen. That's awesome. It's like it's just a dude. Yeah. Like trying to build his business.
Yeah. And I don't even know his name. Like I'll log on to Nextdoor and it'll just be like, Hey, just completed this job and like taking a picture and So good. Like it works. Yeah. And it, I've never heard of a nextdoor content creator before. This guy, like he gets leads, I look at the comments and people are like, oh dude, that looks so good.
Yeah. Like, you should come out. My play says. Has this thing going on, and it's a one man show and it's an advantage that you can't do. I can't do that. You can't fuck am I gonna do with that? Yeah. Right. Yeah. And, and like I look at it and I'm like, dude, that is awesome. Yeah. And like, you're gonna, you're gonna be a meaningful [00:29:00] competitor one day.
'cause like you're doing something that's really interesting, uh, that I can't do. Yeah. And like it is working. Yeah. Um, and that's like just. Photos and like a quick story of what you did that day to the neighborhood and people are eating it up. Yeah. And that's a plumber. That's not even like the saddest, that's not even like the before and after landscaping guys.
Yeah. Like this is like, Hey, look at the pipes I put in. Like it works.
Sam Preston: The next generation of plumbers are all on TikTok. Oh yeah. While they're Oh
John Wilson: for
Sam Preston: sure.
John Wilson: Editing advice. Yeah. I mean, I think the content creator, I mean I'm one of 'em apparently, but like I think the content creator plumber is like definitely a thing.
That's amazing.
Sam Preston: So we're seven 50 to, so seven 50 to 1.5 we're doing. Wow, that feels like a good bucket. Facebook, uh, groups. Okay. We're doing word of mouth. We're doing maybe some LSA, but definitely we're playing around with lead partners. We're, and we're doing our own self-managed GBP, uh, what are we doing now?
John Wilson: I mean, that's when we added PPC. I don't, I don't like looking [00:30:00] back. I don't know if it's the right decision or the wrong one, but that's when we added PPC. Thinking back,
Sam Preston: I think this is a time where you could bring in an agency, uh, and probably should. Yeah. I, I, I would not run PPC by yourself. I think that's a bad mistake.
No, no. You will get yourself in trouble. Yeah. You could do LSA by yourself. You can. So at this point, you're either starting to throw money at LSA and get aggressive Yeah. With LSA and you can bring in an agency to do that, or you can do it yourself. And then at some point though, in that process, I think you start pushing towards Google ads.
'cause Google Ads. For the most part, it is gonna allow you to drive that cost per lead down, which you need because you need profit margins. Yeah. And you need, uh, net 'cause you, you, at 1.5, you're in a really tricky situation where you have all the problems of $3 million business, but none of the cash flow to actually solve those problems.
Yeah.
John Wilson: Yeah.
Sam Preston: And so like we want that cost per lead down as much as possible. So I like playing that game. Right, right around then.
John Wilson: I mean, that tracks that I, that's when we did it. Now, I think the quick distinction is we [00:31:00] were still really focused on like lead gen, like leads. So it was PPC. We didn't add SEO till later, which I think was probably the right decision for us at the time.
Yeah, I, I do agree. I think like I'm, I'll basically agree with anything as long as it's like, as long as we're focusing on leads. Yeah. I feel like that I'm always gonna get like, whoa, outside of that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I think agency at that size makes sense to me. We're managing spend, we're starting to, we're starting to meaningfully spend.
Yeah. You know, that's, uh. 10 grand a month, 15 grand a month. Yeah. That's a lot. Yeah. That's a lot of money. Yeah. Um, now the big mistake that I've seen people make in this zone, or like a little bit later on EE even a lot later on, like I was talking to someone when, when was it? This was like a week ago and I wanna say they were, uh.
They're $8 million. They're, they're an $8 million HVAC company. And he was like, Hey, when's it time to bring on an [00:32:00] internal marketing hire? And I think people get, like, and I've seen people try to do that at like $2 million. Yeah. And I think it's like a, it's the, it's the same mentality as like the guy who's like, I need to buy my building so I don't pay someone else rent.
Mm-hmm. They don't want to pay an agency. To manage this like thing, it's really dumb because as a percentage of ad spend, so like, let's just roll this really quick. Yeah. As a, if you've got, you have a agency or you can like, 'cause at at $2 million, you could theoretically start to think about like placing somebody.
Mm-hmm. But like there salary might be like six to $8,000 a month. I mean, even if you got it cheap, it'd be like four to 6,000 a month. And like as a percentage of ad spend, that's like 40%. Like it does the math doesn't math, it's just dumb. But I feel like people just, it's the same thing as I need to buy my building so I don't pay a landlord.
They're like, I don't really wanna pay an agency. So this guy in, in Atlanta, $8 million [00:33:00] business, that is way too early to be even remotely considering an internal hire like it that does not make sense. Mm. Like for like I, my pushback, so it depends on what it's, I need to manage, spend. Like if you're bringing in someone to coordinate with agencies, that makes more sense to me.
A hundred percent. Yeah. I think that makes sense. Or like, hey, we'll occasionally post on Facebook, we'll like send emails to our, like if you're like using a generalist. A hundred percent. Yeah. But like what we've learned with marketing over the years is like we all think of it as marketing. Mm-hmm.
There's a fuck load of stuff going on. Like there's a lot. Yeah. Like you need like a SMS expert. Yeah. You need a copywriter. You need someone who can deliver great emails that will deliver results. Yeah. And like that's like one part of marketing. Yeah. And then you have all the different paid channels.
Yeah. And like how you manage paid meta is totally different from how you manage paid goof. And like probably two different people. Like some, some people can do both, but like that's different. Yeah. You, and that's totally different from like content creating on Instagram. Yeah. Or TikTok or whatever it is [00:34:00] where you're trying to drive brand and like, these are all these different specialties.
And I see, like I, I met someone at a workshop last year, $5 million company, and they had like a marketing coordinator. Mm-hmm. And this guy was trying to get this marketing coordinator to do all this stuff. Mm-hmm. So he didn't have to pay their agency. And it's like, dude, that's like. That's a lot. That's like 15 different jobs.
Yeah. That you're asking this person to do. Like it doesn't make sense. Like each one of these has a deep level of expertise. Yeah. And all this person's gonna do is totally with, yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I see that mistake start to happen. Like, and maybe we're not in the two millions yet, but like starting to happen when there's a little bit of budget we can bring on somebody and it's like, okay, well let's cut this expense.
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Sam Preston: Yeah, I mean, uh, I've got opinions, uh, which is a good man. Lots of opinions here. I, I think you can get away with a, uh, you know, five to 8 million. I think you can get away with a marketing manager [00:36:00] if you expect. We brought on ours at 15.
I think they have a very specific role. I. One, uh, vendor accountability. Um, right. Like, like
John Wilson: scorecarding, scorecarding. I expected X leads from service scalers. You delivered me Y leads clients. What happens that have somebody that
Sam Preston: is engaged with our brands do get better results. Yeah. Um, and so, and then that's because mostly the feedback loop.
A hundred percent. So like we're sending a bunch of, uh, conversions. Um, yeah. And we're, we're optimizing for conversions. And what I mean by conversion is a phone call. So, hey, this phone call happened, we optimize it. Oh, this keyword brought for more phone calls. I'm gonna optimize for that.
John Wilson: Right.
Sam Preston: Marketing manager that comes back and says, Hey, 10, uh, seven out of those 10 calls that you sent us we're, shit, we don't want those anymore.
Oh, awesome. Okay. That, that keyword's not working. Deprioritize it. I'm gonna shift the budget over here. Yeah. Oh, now it's five outta five. We're, we're good? Yeah. Okay, great. Now I'm gonna play around here so the marketing managers that can get results back to our team. Yeah. [00:37:00]
John Wilson: Outperform. Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, you need it.
I, for like, again, we're not running PPC right now, but when we have, like if we're running PPC for electric, like sometimes we'll get people thinking that we are the electric company. Yeah. Like first energy or something like that. You know, the provider of electrical, it's a keyword problem. Like we probably, it was probably like electrical company.
Yeah. Like that was probably the key word that was being searched. We'd get the phone calls, so what we, and we will get back to the like million and a half thing, but the feedback loop or 5 million is Yeah. Yeah. We really jumped the feedback loop is one of our most important lessons that we've learned in marketing just as past year.
So we started mandating once or twice weekly calls with everybody that touches our leads. Yeah, I mean, we're call, we're talking to Angie's List twice a week. We're talking to modernize twice a week. Yeah. We're getting reporting. We're giving them feedback like, Hey, here's the leads you sent, here's what happened with them.
Yeah. So that we can like, change it and, and uh, modify it. It's really important 'cause they, yeah. I think everybody assumes, an agency just comes in and they get so mad when the agent, they're like, [00:38:00] ah, it doesn't. Fucking work and all the leads are garbage. It's like, are you talking to them? Did you tell 'em that?
And like, how often did you tell 'em that? And like, are you even listening to
Sam Preston: phone calls? Do you have
John Wilson: software? You listen to your phone calls? Yeah. And are you providing reporting? Yeah. Um, and like, do you even have access to report? And I, most of the time we don't. Yeah. I feel like that sucks. Like that.
That sucks. So, 'cause like there is demand on Google, like it's there and if we optimize keywords and if we optimize like landing pages, like we will capture it and we will sell shit. Yeah. Yeah. The, the feedback loop was really interesting to us, and especially for, especially for PPC, but like lead partners, we didn't even know you could do that.
Yeah. I didn't even like, and I'm here to tell everyone now you can do it, but like at the time, mid twenties. We're like, what do you mean you want weekly reporting? That was a totally foreign concept to us, and then we start diving into it more and more. We're like, holy shit. Yeah. Yeah. This makes a ton of sense.
How can you do a good job if we don't give you the [00:39:00] feedback that you're doing a good job? Like it's impossible or a bad job, you know? Yeah. You gotta give feedback. Like it's pure luck. Like it's lucky if you do a good job. Yeah. If you don't have the data. Yeah. And that's the same with Angie's List or anybody else.
Like they need the information.
Sam Preston: So what we do when we don't have the data is we just go back to the ones that have given us data and we look at all the keywords that have worked, and we just copy and paste them into a new market. We're like, I hope it works. That makes sense. I mean, what? Yeah. What else would you do?
And some, well, we reach out to the clients. We say, Hey, how's the calls? And they'll say, good or bad. And that's fine. There's a fine answer, but it's very subjective to how you feel. Yeah. And not actual data,
John Wilson: unless you're coming from a marketing background, that's just not gonna be on your brain. Like, it's not gonna be like, you're not gonna be like, oh, what's my convert rate?
That's all I, I just did like a glass. Uh, but yeah. So you're just not gonna be thinking about that, which in the way, five millions. You should have a marketing manager. Yeah, yeah. Or like maybe a call center manager dealing with that. Like, what do you think?
Sam Preston: [00:40:00] Um, I think they're slightly different. Um, I think you can have, and I think you can.
You can get this person offshore. Like it doesn't have to be a full on Yeah. You know, uh, a massive expense. I think you can get it for
John Wilson: No, I, well, I, I, yeah, so I'm definitely agreeing now because I, I, we have not offshore that, but I think if you're just bringing on like a coordinator,
Sam Preston: there's tons of Great Yeah.
Project managers who understand marketing or marketing managers that can hold you often. You
John Wilson: really like change the game. Like when I think about. When I think about, uh, just like my growth through the industry and like what it took and like. When to bring on certain salaries and when to do all this stuff.
Like it is totally different now. Yeah. I think for the better, like you can bring on way more infrastructure at a way smaller size. Yeah. Which like only helps support you. That's a great example of like, if you can dial in your marketing, like nothing can stop you. Yeah. And if, yeah, if you can bring on what you know, $10 million earlier than I did, like you'll beat me to 30.
Yeah.
Sam Preston: [00:41:00] Yeah. That's amazing. So that's, I think you absolutely do have one, and I know we skipped a whole section, but 5 million, I think you absolutely can go get that person and should. Yeah. And then there are two jobs. The two to 5 million I don't think is much different. I don't
John Wilson: think it's much like add S-E-O-S-E,
Sam Preston: like you add SEO, maybe social paid ads.
I think there's an argument that you should be playing around. Again, it is all budget and if you haven't, if you haven't maxed out Google and LSA keep doing that. But like I think that you want to diversify a little bit. Yeah, I disagree. You disagree? I disagree. I'd play around with it. I'd have a little like
John Wilson: couple thousand dollars discovery budget.
Let's see what happens. Yeah, I, I think the people that I know that have grown the fastest over the past eight years found one channel and beat the fuck out of that channel. Like they, they, Dr. That's us too. Yeah. Like LSAs drove results. And still drives results. It's just now we've grown large enough to be outside of it.
But that's any channel. So, and it doesn't even need to be digital. Like I have a friend who took a business from 15 to [00:42:00] 60 million on the back of Home Depot leads inside the store. Oh shit. And, but then, okay, we're at 60 million bucks. Kind of vulnerable now. Then they added in a retail exposure. Yeah, but like one channel.
Yeah. 15 to 60 something million dollars. Um, like Ishmael from NextGen, man, it was, it was LSA and PPC. Yeah. A hundred million dollars. So I feel like the longer you can go honing in on the least amount of things. The better because you're, it's just like distraction.
Sam Preston: Yeah. Well, I mean, I don't know. I think I still probably would test it out and maybe again, maybe just 'cause I'm a gambler and I'm like, I like testing it out.
Degenerate. Yeah. I mean, and, and even for my company, we, we have at Facebook Ads budget, we are going to spend that budget whether it works or not, because I want it to work because I know it works. Yeah. And so like, I think that there is an element of like you should, but. Then again, if hell saying Google Ads is working for you, SEO's working for you, [00:43:00] you can't just throw that more into ad spend and just try to get more and more out of that.
So, alright, we've got from we, so, so yeah, 2 million to 5
John Wilson: million. The new edition was SEO SEO Meta, maybe some or TikTok, you know, some paid And I, I think, I think SEO, yeah, the problem is you eventually have to do it. You gotta do it eventually. Well, SEO takes a long time, which is why I don't, it takes a long time.
Do it early on and like, the game changes every day. 'cause people are adding stuff to it every day. And, um, I think my big, my big like note on SEO is, uh, just, it's hard. Like how many pages a month are you guys doing? Yeah, like per, per client, what's like a normal amount of pages? I. 10 to 30. Yeah. Okay.
That's amazing. Yeah. I remember, like, people are still today signing contracts with Scorpion for like two pages a month. That is, it's wild. It's investing $10 a year into the stock
Sam Preston: market. You're literally never
John Wilson: gonna, you're, you're gonna do [00:44:00] absolutely nothing because if everyone's doing two pages a month.
You are not actually going at, you might as, in my opinion, you might as well not do SEO because you are advancing at the same level that everyone else is advancing. Yeah. Like you have to break the game, which is 10 to th like 10 to 30 pages a month is breaking the game.
Sam Preston: Uh, I mean, it's also a backlink conversation 'cause a lot of these places aren't doing backlinks.
Yeah. And the backlink came is changed. It used to be so different than it is now. Um, like how, like how's it changed? Uh, it's not, I mean, like it used to be that you just reach out to a blog and say, Hey, like, can we put our name? Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah. You, you're paying for that. It's, it's all bought back links.
Yeah. Yeah. Um, and so we're even, we are about to, and hopefully this, this takes a little bit of time to get out, you know, not tomorrow. Um, but we're about to launch a, a new offering. To run backlinks. Yeah, to run backlinks. So similar to the way you have a Google Ads budget and we manage your Google Ads budget, we want a backlink budget and we just manage your
John Wilson: backlink budget.
I think that makes sense. Like if, if I'm back to, [00:45:00] this is why I think I'm like kind of a durp and everybody in the twenties is kind of a durp. Like, we're all convinced it's also complicated. But then when I talk to people in the hundreds, I, I was, uh, I was talking with someone in the 200 millions mm-hmm.
And the things that he cared about was how many back links did I bring on this month, and how many Google my businesses did I launch this month? Yeah. And, and like, what's the status of those GMBs? And like that was what he was concerned about. Yeah. 10 times my size. Yeah. And, uh, yeah, I, I just feel like we all make this so complicated.
Yeah. And like, the biggest people in the fucking game, it's just like backlinks. Yeah. Like, that's it. Like that, that's gonna matter. And like, his domain mine's like 36, which like pretty good. He is like 70. Yeah. Like he's killing it. Yeah. He's, he'd, he'd kick my butt.
Sam Preston: That's amazing. Yeah. I mean the, the problem with backlinks in agencies is it's, it's a profit problem.
Right. Um, because it's a, um, if, [00:46:00] if I'm charging 2000 a month for SEO services, which we don't, um, but if I'm charging two, which there's a lot of that do, um, the, like
John Wilson: you guys are above or below that? We're above that. Yeah. Um, well, I mean 10 to 30 articles a month, like 'cause Yeah. Scorpion used to charge me two grand a month for two articles and it's like.
Fuck was that? And backlinks, we, we add in backlinks into our perch and
Sam Preston: that is a massive cost. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, so you have to direct pay for 'em.
John Wilson: Yeah.
Sam Preston: Uh, yeah. Yeah. So, uh, I mean, my link bill is nuts. So the problem is the profit margin there. So what we wanna do is kind of take that option even away. And so we have like, kinda like we're managing that backlink and then the ad spend is on top of that.
Yeah. So what I want to be able to do is have the conversation of somebody saying. Hey, you're your plumber's in Atlanta. Yeah. You're number five. We bought three grand of backlinks. Yeah. I think we'd get to number one and like that type of conversation. Oh yeah. [00:47:00] That's interesting. I was just like, okay, great.
It didn't cost me anything. I'm passing that through. Yeah. But it's within the budget of we manage your backlinks.
John Wilson: Yeah,
Sam Preston: but it's a, I think, I think two things. One, I think it's gonna be an interesting conversation for the plumber that's never had this conversation before.
John Wilson: Yeah. If you don't know what a backlink is, it does make it complicated.
Sam Preston: They're like, what am I paying? Oh yeah, you already gimme backlinks. Why? Why am I buying more backlinks? I was like, oh, it's, it's an authority. Like what's the value? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
John Wilson: I, I believe our, our authority is the highest now in market, which is kind of fun at 36. I'd have to believe it is. That's a lot.
Pretty high. And that's high for a plumbing company. Um, but yeah, now I'm really curious. Yeah. But yeah, I think, I think separating that out makes sense. And I, I always go back, I, I know I keep bringing this back up, but like. Literally people nine, 10 times my size, the the things that they're concerned about are backlinks.
And, and I, you know, years ago, like we started investing in backlinks in SEO eight years ago at this point, it, it worked. Yeah. It was valuable. [00:48:00] And like the guys 10 times my size are right. And like, when I'm thinking about when we had those conversations, like I came back. And immediately I changed my mindset around it.
And maybe this is like if you're 10 up, this is like if we're still in brackets here, like how to be thinking about this. Yeah. 'cause this is a longer play. This is like, hey, over eight years this was a good decision. But if it was like a 90 day period, this would not be a good decision. Yeah. But yeah, I came back and I was like, yeah, I mean they're right.
Like what I should be thinking about is domain authority. I should be thinking about backlinks, I should be thinking about GMBs and I don't, I really shouldn't be thinking about much else. I. Yeah. Besides
Sam Preston: that, to be clear, if you don't know what a back link is, backlink is when you have a, uh, link on another website back to your website.
Yeah. So like it's what's on credit and it Yeah. And they post a link like your URL, that's a back link. Your gmmb is a back link to your website, to your Facebook page is a back backlink to your website. So the backlink game is finding other websites that have good authority Yeah. In the space, linking it back [00:49:00] into your website.
John Wilson: Yeah. What's kind of fun is as the business has grown, we're getting a bunch of like free backlinks now because like people want, so like if, so like you guys, our is our logo on your website? Uh, I'm sure it is. I'm sure we've linked you free backlink, right? So like when you're signing up for softwares, like they play a logo game 'cause it gives them credibility of like, oh yeah, we got Wilson, or we got, I'm pretty
Sam Preston: sure Wilson website
John Wilson: is
Sam Preston: powered by service scalers.
John Wilson: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And that's a backlink. Yeah, it is. Um, so yeah, I think you get these, uh, like you can work with vendors and get free. Uh, high authority backlinks and they're working hard on driving their website up. Yeah. Um, and I think that's a part of where, like we have, we've had a major jump in our backlinks, both because we've invested, but also 'cause we invested a ton into brands.
So now we're getting referred in more spots. Yep. Uh, like I think we went to 29. From 29 to 36 in like 60 days. Yeah. Since launching tv, since like being way more out there in the community since [00:50:00] like the industry community, a lot more softwares like logoing us on their, uh, on their homepage. Cool. And those are all free backlinks.
Sam Preston: So zero to one 50. Uh, we're doing Facebook groups. Word of mouth. Yeah. One 50 or two? Two 50. Two 50. Yeah. 2, 2 50 to seven 50. We're starting to do GMB. Yep. We're starting to do some partner. Lead. Partner. So, LSAs. LSAs. Yep. 7 51 0.5. We're starting to do Google ads. Yeah. 1.5 to, um, five. We're starting to add in SEO, getting aggressive on that.
Maybe some socials depending on who, who's leading who,
John Wilson: who's running it? Me that, me. Um, like we're starting to mess with socials in the mid twenties. Yeah. Like,
Sam Preston: okay. Okay. So like, I love that. Later,
John Wilson: later.
Sam Preston: Um, five to eight, we're starting to look at a marketing
John Wilson: manager. Yeah. Um. Like I would, I would even say marketing coordinator, coordinator.
I would be cautious with the title manager. Manager. Okay. I would say [00:51:00] like that is very much like at that size you're hiring someone to like. Post shit on Facebook. Got it. That is not, that's a marketing coordinator's a generalist. Probably some kid fresh outta college. Like they're not gonna be driving your brand book forward.
They're not gonna be figuring out next steps on strategy.
Sam Preston: They're holding people accountable and they are, yeah. They're
John Wilson: getting score charged. They're helping like allocate budget, but like, they're not a manager. That's a coordinator. Quick staffers do that. Um, I don't know. I know right now they're doing CSRs.
Recruiters. Yeah. And bookkeepers. I mean, they might add marketing coordinators to it. They should, but you could do that remote for sure. Like we have a, we've had a marketing I would coordinator remote, uh, in the Philippines. His name's Sean. He's cool, uh, for like three or four years now. Yeah. And he's been great.
And he does exactly that. Like he gives us data. He like, here's the number of leads, here's how many we closed, here's some posts on Facebook. Um, Andrew call board and make sure like, yep, something has too low leads. They're, so I think, I think that's a great hire for that size, but like marketing manager, like you just don't have [00:52:00] enough budget for a marketing manager to be effective in their job.
The marketing manager is there to like manage marketing and really drive the business forward and you just don't have the money for it yet. Yeah.
Sam Preston: Okay. So five to eight we're looking at a marketing manager. The only caveat to all this, yeah, that would be more demand. Creation versus capture. What do, what do you think about, when do you do, uh, mailers?
Because every, like, I talk to so many people that swear by them and like, I've never done it before, but we were just like, Jeff, we were just talking to him. He was like, yeah, I, I
John Wilson: do this and it crushes for me. Crushes. Yeah. Well, I think, um, it's a really good question. Uh, and the like, who are we? Mailing is probably the most important.
Part of that question because I was, if I just say, fuck yeah, go do mailers, like that's really not the answer. So there's like three different people, types of people you can mail. You can mail members. Mm-hmm. Or current customers. So like people you're actively serving. Mm-hmm. That's, that will always work.
Yeah. Like that's gonna work. [00:53:00] They're actively engaged in your brand. They're giving you money in the last 18 months. Like these are real live customers that have seen you recently. Yeah. That's always gonna have a super high return. The next is lapsed customers. So I haven't seen them for two years to five years.
You will get something. Yeah. It will not be as high as active. Right. But it's a bigger list probably than active. And the third is, I have never worked with this person. Hmm. And that's like a ValPack mailer. That's like a mass mailer. That's an every door direct mail. Um, and that's a 1% conversion rate. So if you send, so you need a lot of volume.
Yeah. So if you send like my active members, which let's say you have like 200 members, so you said 200 postcards, you're gonna get like 20, 30 leads outta that. So absolutely, that totally works. Lapse customers, maybe if you send a thousand, you might get like 10 to 20 leads. So like lower conversion rate, but like still good.
They know who the heck you are. Much lower conversion rate on every door. Direct mail. Yeah, [00:54:00] so I think mailers can work in the right place. They do work. Uh, if you're dealing with like customer segments, you know, but if you are trying to mass mail your way to leads to customers that have never seen your brand or introduced to it, it's probably the wrong way to spend budget.
So would you put mailers in the 1.5 to five or five to eight? I think if you're mailing your customers, you can start pretty small. Yeah. Because like if it's only 200, like that's 200 bucks. Yeah. You know, and it's leads. Yeah. So I'll always be for anything I. Drives leads. So anytime we're like, Hey, I'm gonna do this thing and it's gonna get me leads in X amount of time, like I'm on board.
Yeah. But if we're talking about like billboards, like $2 million, like you, you lost me. Like that's, there's no good enough call to action to make a billboard drive leads. Right. Yeah.
Sam Preston: Cool. No, I'm with you. I'm with you. So fairly early on test in your market. Yeah. Go after your customers first. Go after cold [00:55:00] customers.
Yeah. Or lapsed customers and then, and then start looking at new customers. Okay. Any other, like traditional marketing? At what point do you start late doing that? Okay. Late. I mean, how late, I'll leave y'all. Start that.
John Wilson: Like we did radio on the way up. Okay. Um, we did radio on the way up and I feel like we started that at 5 million.
Might have honestly been a bit early. Yeah. Um, because when I think about that $6,000 that I spent. Like I started spending that with my marketing budget was like 20 grand a month and like there were a lot of times where we couldn't fill our board. Like it, it's just it was wrong. It was the wrong decision.
Yeah. Like all of your dollars for as all the way up to a billion dollars of revenue. Yeah. Like the first and most important thing is my board full today, tomorrow, and the next day? Yeah. Like that's it. If your spend doesn't align with that, then. Like, what are you doing? The only reason that we've added meaningful branded spend is because my [00:56:00] lead gen budget of 70, 80 grand a month fully keeps my board full today, tomorrow, and the next day.
Yeah. And I just have an extra literal million dollars to spend. So that's what we do. Yeah. Okay. So you're thinking like closer to like 20, is that you would say, my quick take is 20 million is a good time. To start thinking about branded spend tv. Other people think smaller, other think will I, I've never heard anyone say larger.
Yeah. I think I'm like the bull or the, the bear in this one. Yeah. I, I think the, the farther you can get with focusing on the least amount of channels and you optimize those channels, like you're gonna do great. And all the biggest people in the space that I know that have grown the biggest, like that's how they do it.
Yeah. They beat the hell out of the least amount of channels
Sam Preston: possible. Would you change that opinion based on the type of business, like kitchen remodel versus plumber, plumber? Sure.
John Wilson: I mean, 20 million for kitchen remodel. If you're, if you're doing it well, like, if you're not like a. But I guess it depends on like, if [00:57:00] you're like a neighborhood kitchen remodel, like maybe you never hit 20 million.
So I'm not trying to be a dick, but like I know somebody who's at 200 million in bathroom models right now. Mm-hmm. And they're here in Akron and they're gonna be on the show soon, which is really cool. That's scary. And it's, I don't know how many locations they're at. They started like two years ago.
Mm-hmm. It's freaking crazy. Yeah. I know they're having, I know. Yes, I know. It took a second for me to process. Yes. I was like, I know what, I know they're, they're having $3 million weeks. Bro. I know. And I'm like, yeah, my first $3 million month, there's $3 million weeks. Like they're way more dialed than we are business.
Way more dialed. You wanna start a kitchen remodel biscuit? Like if I, I can do it like that. Hell yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah, they're just way more dialed in than we are and, uh, which is great. They're really inspirational. So I think if you're doing that, um, like yeah, average ticket's 50 to a hundred, whatever grand, like Sure.
Like pop off. Yeah. But I don't know. They're one of the only like mass scale remodel companies that I know, but. You're doing remodel. Like that's how you should do it. Like it should be mass scale. I don't really wanna run like a neighborhood bathroom model company. That sounds really terrible. Right. [00:58:00] I would run a $200 million, like several states.
That's remodel. That feels unreal. That's so, it's crazy. No, they're doing an amazing job. Yeah, we're gonna have 'em on the show, I think in the next couple weeks. It's a lot. It's a really fascinating story. Like a couple years and they're taking down $3 million weeks. Weeks. Like four, like $4 million weeks now.
'cause they're doing 200 million, like budget's. 200 million for this year. Wow. Crazy. It's their agency. I want, I want know these people. Yeah. They, they, their C-M-R-C-M-O is like, uh, he's a baller. I wanna meet him. Yeah. We've talked, we've talked, we've talked a couple times. He's a baller. That's amazing. Yeah.
Well, I feel like we covered the whole stack of like when to add folks in, uh, like how to think about staffing, how to think about budget. I feel like this was good, a good addition to how you, how to scale your home service business.
Sam Preston: Yeah. And I think there's a lot more to talk about. So we should do this again.
Yeah. And go like maybe every, [00:59:00] every service or every like every channel. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, hey, when do you start this? What, how do you get past out of that? I think that can be fun. Yeah. I agree.
John Wilson: This is awesome. Uh, if you like. What you heard, go to own and operated.com and uh, make sure you check out Service Scalers.
Uh, Sam and his team are doing a great job. They've done a great job for us since 2021, and we've been really grateful to work with you guys. It's been a lot of fun. Like yeah, we started working together when we were like $7 million in revenue. Uh, so big change. Yeah. Big difference. A little bit of, a little bit of a shift.
Sam Preston: Yeah. Uh, he wouldn't let me run social, so if he only would've listened to me, we would've been at 50. Yeah. We could be like the kitchen remodel company right now.
John Wilson: $4 billion weeks like so. No, that makes me sick. Alright. Like and subscribe.
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