If you’re trying to grow a home service business, your marketing budget is one of your biggest bets — and biggest risks. In this episode of Owned and Operated, John Wilson and Sam Preston host a no-fluff Q&A tackling real contractor questions on lead generation, paid ads, and when to actually bring in an agency.
They break down how to allocate marketing spend at every stage — from $1K/month up to $200K — and what it really takes to get traction with LSA, GMB, and PPC. You’ll learn how to play offense with your best-performing lead sources, why spreading your budget too thin kills momentum, and how to ride your winning channels like you stole it.
If you’re struggling to get leads from PPC or Google Ads, they also cover how to fix campaign waste, when landing pages are the problem, and how top operators manage their media vs lead-gen mix to scale past $10M.
Whether you’re just getting started or dialing in a multi-location growth strategy, this episode is a tactical deep dive into what’s actually working right now.
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💼 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.
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🎙️ Host:
John Wilson → https://x.com/wilsoncompanies
🎙️ Guest:
Sam Preston → https://www.linkedin.com/in/sampreston/
OAO 232 Transcript
John Wilson: [00:00:00] We think about leads. Lot
like it's kind of an obsession. So we're obsessed. If you're really relying on organic leads to drive traffic, I feel like that's kind of playing on hard mode. If you can just go buy the lead, you just go buy the lead.
Sam Preston: Don't spread yourself too thin, like don't just do everything.
John Wilson: I think you should always aim to cap a channel. So when you find a channel that works, you wanna ride that channel like you stole it,
Sam Preston: then I think you could probably bring in an agency to start doing some of that. But also like make sure the fee that they're charging you actually makes sense,
John Wilson: like our budget.
Painfully is $200,000 a month.
Welcome back to the owned and Operated podcast. I am your host, John Wilson. I'm the CEO of Wilson, a home services company in Ohio. We have roughly 160 team members and are on track for about 30 million bucks this year. I have Sam Preston, the CEO of Service, scalers, which is a digital marketing agency for home [00:01:00] service companies on with us today.
Welcome back to the show,
Sam Preston: also 160 team members and close to 30 million. Close. Close, close, close,
John Wilson: close.
Within 25. Yeah. You know, so around there. Yeah. So
Sam Preston: yeah. Uh, we're doing q and A today
John Wilson: to today. We're doing q and a. Yeah. So we had, um, so a Facebook group. Uh, make sure you join the Facebook group. It's really good. We have like a, we're, we're about to hit a thousand members, let's go. And Facebook group has been labor love.
We started it about a year ago, and it's just slowly growing and we've been hyper selective about who we let in there. And very liberal with who we kick out, uh, so that it stays quality. Like I'm in some of these groups where it's just like nonstop vendors, nonstop all this stuff and like this is just contractors trying to solve stuff.
Yeah. So I think it's really good. I think it's a really great group, really great community.
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Sam Preston: Yeah, you even have other like marketing companies in there. Um, that really add value. Every single time someone has a marketing question, they go in and they answer really good questions. It's not some bullshit, it never feels like, you know, we're competing for hey, who [00:03:00] can post their stuff the most.
Like, it just feels like, come in, ask your questions, we're all here to help.
John Wilson: Yeah, no, it, it, it feels really good. I think we've, uh, it's probably one of the things we've done the best is just like keeping that group clean and, and like high trust. Yeah, it's a, it's a really good group. Alright, so today, so we posted a question in there.
We said, Hey, Sam and John, you know, a couple, a couple total ballers, you know, that we are, uh, are, are gonna talk on the show. What do you want to know? And we got, uh, we got some really good questions. So we're gonna rip 'em today.
Sam Preston: Yeah, let's do it. Um, I get two questions that are very similar, but two different, it's budgeting questions, uh, and two different levels.
So I'm gonna start with the lower one.
John Wilson: Okay.
Sam Preston: Uh, and then we'll go to the next one. So, uh, Jim? Yeah.
John Wilson: I think I would say like, yeah. Who, who asked the question? Mm-hmm. And then,
Sam Preston: yeah. What is it? Let's do it. Yeah. Jenna Harris, uh, how should a smaller company, less than 500 k [00:04:00] stand out spending one to two KA month, uh, to get biggest bang for their buck?
So I think that's two, you know, one to $2,000 of a, you know, uh, marketing spend. And my first thought would be is don't use that on an agency. Oh, hell no. You just, you're just not gonna get very much out of that, uh, relationship. Yeah. So don't go at, at that level, don't go agency. We wanna do all the things that we can do, uh, grassroots.
So yeah, go to YouTube and try to learn everything you can on LSA and GMB. Right. Yeah. 80 to 90% of what we do as an agency to run other people's accounts. You can learn on YouTube. Uh, there's great videos out there. Go learn it and start doing those actions. And the third thing I would say is, um, get into Facebook groups.
Um, I know a guy who has like a next door and that's all he does. Yes. His marketing. And he just completely owns next door for this local area. Yeah. And absolutely crushes it. So, um, do the [00:05:00] things that the bigger companies. Can't do well. Yep. Um, and be small. And I would probably sink the one to 2000 on either ad spend in LSA or, um, lead partners.
Probably
John Wilson: that's, I mean, that's just a tough amount of money to work with. Um, yeah. But I also think like innovation comes from lack of resource and there are companies out there that like run circles around me. And my extremely capable team, and they are a 10th of my size, or maybe a 20th or a 30th or a 40, like small and nextdoor is one of those great examples where like you can really do something interesting in grassroots that would take me a much larger investment.
Yeah. Uh, TikTok Organic would be really interesting. I see TikTok Organic clean [00:06:00] up. Um, next door, like content creation I think is super underutilized. There's a, there's a plumber, uh, in Akron and like, I, he's doing amazing and it's like one fricking dude and he just like posts pictures of the jobs he does every day.
He's like, oh, loved working for Nancy over at wherever. And people eat it up.
Sam Preston: Yeah.
John Wilson: And it's a plumber, right? Like he, he's doing an awesome job. And, uh, so like, I think my take would be. What, yeah, exactly what you said, but just a bigger emphasis on content creation in a way that I can't do it, because I think that would resonate with people, and I think if you're in the Facebook groups, if you're in the next door, to me, that's a more valuable use even than LSA.
Yeah. Yeah, because I think part of the problem with LSA is minimum reviews. So maybe it's like a thumb tack or, uh, yeah, the 33 miles a thing. I, I don't know. I would, I would be figuring out. Like basically I agree with you. I just added a little bit more color. [00:07:00]
Sam Preston: Well, to just kind of push back on you, uh, on the LSA thing, um, LSA is pay per lead.
If you're not getting leads, you won't be paying for it. Your biggest issue with the momentum there is getting traction to begin with, and so yeah, because you don't have enough reviews, you won't get traction, but you also won't be paying for anything. So I want you to get started right now because if it does start working, it is a really good way to.
Push up into the market. Yeah, granted, you are right, like it is going to be a harder game. Uh, and you may not get anything. So you'll probably set your budget for like, I don't know, a thousand a month and you probably won't use that at all until it does start working and you just want to be ahead of the game.
What you don't want to do is be like, oh, I need LSA leads now 'cause we're getting bigger. I've gotta feed my techs. Um, they're hungry and they're just bored sitting around their hands and I don't have enough leads. What do I do? Oh, let's start LSA now. We, you know. Yeah. It's the, the, the tree thing, right?
When's the best time to plant a tree 20 years ago, you know? [00:08:00] Yeah. Second best is today. So, uh, get started now and say when you can sense
John Wilson: that makes sense. I think we're both pretty aligned. Don't do an agency, uh, buy some direct leads and do things that I can't do.
Sam Preston: Yep.
John Wilson: Yep.
Sam Preston: Yeah, that makes sense. Um, Robert, it's kind of that.
Thank, thank
John Wilson: you, Jenna.
Sam Preston: Jenna, you're awesome, Jenna.
John Wilson: Thank you, Jenna. Thanks, Jenna. Also hope you kill it. I can't wait to hear your question when you're like, how should a smaller company, 5 million, like I'm pumped. Like, yeah, give us like every couple months, tell us how it's going.
Sam Preston: Let's go, you know, uh, that, uh, that $2,000, I don't know if that would get you into Breaking five, but like, you know, like, feel like that would be a great place to use some of that money.
Yeah, it could be, uh, is go learn. Um, yeah, go learn. Go learn. Uh, Robert Brooks. Where and how can I spend five to 10 KA month on leads if LSA has only given me zero to one leads per week? So that exact kind of scenario I'm [00:09:00] talking. Yeah. Yeah. First off, Robert, thanks for the question. Appreciate you bud.
John Wilson: Thanks. Thanks Robert. Um,
Sam Preston: second is like, Robert
John Wilson: just sent me a really cool dashboard. Oh no. That rips data out of, uh, ServiceTitan and I think he said Housecall Pro. Okay. Yeah, Robert's a cool guy. Everyone should talk to him. Cool guy.
Sam Preston: Robert, Robert. Um, appreciate it, man. Um, yeah, five dig. 10 K is again, kind of that hard spot, right?
So, um, you know, again, if you're on that lower end, 5K, again, I'm very tentative to want to give my money to agencies because like, you know, you say you give them, you know, a thousand dollars or 2000, well then you only have about $3,000 for ad spend. And that's, that's fine. You can do something with that. I almost want to do things that, uh, give me more for that money.
Yeah. And so I tend to want to put that money in LSA to lead aggregators. Um, and just try to figure out where [00:10:00] can I go and get my, uh, leads from, um, and test all those different lead aggregates. I've got a friend who, uh, swears by an Angie's List. He spends, I think 25 KA month on Angie's List. He's some of his best leads.
Um, and they literally will not let him spend any more money. That's nice. It's like you've, you've literally maxed out for your error. We, we can't. You know, we can't do anything more. So like there are plenty of lead partners in your area. Find one, test it out, see if it works. If it doesn't, try another one.
I think that's, you know, that lower that 5K. Once we get close to that 10 K mark. Then I think you could probably bring in an agency to start doing some of that, uh, work for you, right? Like you're, you're probably around that 1.2, $1.5 million mark. Yeah. Um, I wanna start bringing in some agencies to take care of some stuff that we can't do, uh, at a volume that you can't do.
So maybe that is like your GMB or running your [00:11:00] LSA, um, if you're only getting one to zero leads a week. Say a week, uh, yeah. Per week. Um, you know, I would say that I wanna know what you're actually doing from an LSA standpoint. 'cause it, LSA is a a, a cycle. Uh, it wants to see that you're getting phone calls, you're answering those phone calls.
Those phone calls are turning into appointments. Those appointments are turning to five star review, uh, book, you know, uh, book jobs and closed jobs. And, uh, five star reviews if you continue that cycle. Um. You can get really good results. In fact, I think we have a review on ours that said we went from one, uh, one LSA lead a, uh, a month to one a day, uh, in our first 30 days with service givers.
Um, and again, like most of what we know and what we do, you can find on YouTube and just go do it yourself. So if you're on that lower end, do those things.
John Wilson: We, uh, I'll, I'll take a little bit of an opposite. I I totally agree on the LSA thing. Um, like yeah, fix your LSA like. [00:12:00] I, I think that's the first part.
Either do it alone or, or like, yeah, partner with Sam or something to do it. But like fixture, LSA, like that is a, going to be a great source of leads. Um, I first started working with an agency when my budget was six. So to me, like five is like, okay. Yeah. That, that makes sense. Um, yeah, like five's a lot of money, you know, that's a lot.
Like, that's 60 grand a year. Uh, and like for, for us, like we were a million dollar business. Uh, so 6% of our revenue is a big investment. Um, and I had never done it before. Like, I, I remember, I actually have the book somewhere in my office, I think, but I bought Google Ads for Dummies back in 2015 or 16 or something.
Yeah. And I tried to run those ads for a little bit and then like, I think I did from like a thousand to 2000 or 3000, um, I tried to like run Google ads, like it wasn't good, dude. Oh, it wasn't good. And, and I, I, so we brought on an agency [00:13:00] at like six and um, it was scary, it was intimidating. Uh, never done that before, but you know, like growing a business is just every month you're gonna do something you've never done before.
So. And like yeah. Making an investment in marketing, like businesses, like literally only grow when you get more leads. Yeah. So I don't know. I think if you're, if you're committing $60,000 uh, a year, I think you should be thinking about how to, how to get some support on that is my take. Yeah. Especially when there's no one inside the business that has ever done it before.
Yeah.
Sam Preston: I would say that there's certain things that I definitely wouldn't. Pay. If you only have that much, I probably would. I'm not starting on a, a big SEO campaign. Um, maybe something small, but like I'm probably, I wanna do things that I'm putting money in and it's giving money out. Getting leads. Yeah.
Directly. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, leads, phone calls, um, lead parts. And
John Wilson: that's something [00:14:00] that doesn't change. Something that doesn't change. I mean, even now, like our budget painfully is $200,000 a month for marketing. Oh my God. And, um, sorry. Like so much. Yeah, you too. So much of it is focused on like, put money in, get laid out, put money in, get laid out, and I, and it seems like that's always the highest and best use no matter where you are.
And some of the bigger mistakes that I see is like, oh, our budget's big enough, so I'm gonna do this now. And like, we've fallen, we've fallen, trapped to that too. And I just think like, focus on the lead.
Sam Preston: Yeah, I mean, I think at some point you do get big enough to where you need to start focusing on like future, you, future John.
Like what is John gonna need? And, uh, you know, at 35 million. Yeah. And how do I, how do I start working towards there? So like, I think that there are some things that if you are big enough, you should probably start investing in things like [00:15:00] SEO, you know? Yeah. It's a bigger game. Uh, AI is, you know, a, a very different game from a marketing standpoint.
Yeah. That I think you should start getting into, but. It's probably not between that five and 10 k uh, mark, unless you just, you're gonna start trickling in a little bit of SEO so it has a slow burn. Um, but even then you're not really keeping up or catching and or passing your competitors. So at this rate, I'm focusing on anything that's gonna be able to help me pro produce a lead quickly.
John Wilson: If you've been listening to the show for a while, you know that we've been big fans of service scalers. One of the things that they just dropped that we are really excited about is a pay lead program. So what they help you do is they help you directly gain access to leads and scale up your lead partner program.
Go to service scalers.com and say we sent you. Yeah, that makes sense.
Sam Preston: Um, and
John Wilson: then, thanks Robert.
Sam Preston: Robert. Uh, [00:16:00] one of my favorite people in the entire world, Jeff Bates, uh, I actually met him at the Breaking five.
John Wilson: I love, I love a good Jeff Bates, dude. He came down and did an interview. Uh, I don't think it's aired yet, but yeah, he came down and did an interview with us and, uh, yeah, I'm pumped.
Sam Preston: I'm gonna be love a good Jeff
John Wilson: Bates.
Sam Preston: Yeah.
John Wilson: Yeah, it's good.
Sam Preston: Uh, Jeff Bates, it's awesome. Uh, and he said like, Hey, what should a marketing budget look at like 1, 3, 5, and 10 million, uh, for a single trade? Um.
John Wilson: Ooh.
Sam Preston: Yeah. I feel
John Wilson: like I have, I have like new opinions on this really.
Sam Preston: I wanna hear. Tell me.
John Wilson: I, I'm, I, so like, I talk to a lot of people, right?
I just talk to a lot of people. I have a podcast. I talk to a lot of people. And, um, I am finding, so historically I have been a four to 6% of marketing, like, of revenue company for marketing. So. That's like good. And we've been growing and I [00:17:00] think like conventional wisdom is 10%. I'm starting it. I'm starting to see single trade businesses in the teens.
Mm-hmm. Often interesting. And I'm not saying, I'm not saying that people should do that. 'cause the Jeff's, Jeff's question is, what should a marketing budget look like? And I'm not telling you that's what it should look like. I'm just telling you what I am seeing. Yeah. I think it's, I think it's fascinating and.
Now there's a couple similarities in every time I look at this, so I'm a big fan of like, let's get all the data, let's talk to as many human beings as possible and let's put together, actually, I should honestly do a video on this because I, at this point, I've talked to 80 on this exact question. Mm-hmm.
What is your mix between media and leads? Mm-hmm. And that is a fundamental question. And if like,[00:18:00]
there doesn't seem to be an exact right or wrong. No. Like people have opinions, but as I, as I dive into who's spending the most, the most is being spent by companies that have a much larger media brand, like a branded spend than lead gen. Consistently.
Sam Preston: Interesting.
John Wilson: So I'm seeing companies with like. These are not small budgets.
These are like millions of dollars a year budgets. Mm-hmm. Spending 15%. Uh, Sammy from Apex Pros in Columbus has been saying, he said this on a few podcasts recently. He's like, yeah, I spent 15%. Now they're growing like crazy, but they're spending 15%. Yeah.
Sam Preston: Which is a.
John Wilson: That's a lot of money. Yeah, that's a lot.
And I'm, I'm not saying it's right or wrong, I'm coming from the perspective of four to 6%. Yeah. Now, this year we made a big investment and we moved up to eight. Yeah. And that was like, [00:19:00] uh, I don't know. Yeah. So like seeing people double that is like, holy shit.
Sam Preston: I was, I was saying holy shit. The other day, uh, I was a power washing company.
And they were spending, uh, a hundred thousand dollars a month Facebook ads and $200,000 a month in Google ads. Profitably. Amazing. Really? Well, amazing. Amazing. And I look at that and it's a single trade. It's not like it's, yeah, it's not like you guys, where it's like literally we can take care of your entire house if you wanted to.
Like, one thing that I was like, yeah, I didn't think you could even spend that much in, in one local area. It's not a franchise. We're not talking about like national company, one area. And they're absolutely crushing. Um, and so like you can, you know, we talk about like. $5 million budgets, or $5 million company, or $10 million company.
My couple, you know, hot takes here is don't spread yourself too thin, right? Like, oh yeah. Don't just do everything. I
John Wilson: totally, totally agree. Totally agree with this.
Sam Preston: Find what's working for you. [00:20:00] It's not gonna be the same thing that works for John. It might be. Find what's working. Like where are you putting money in it?
It's coming at, at a, coming back to you. Yeah. The cost per lead that allows you to sell jobs consistently at a high volume, uh, with enough profit margin to continue to grow. Um, yeah. And then keep pushing that limit. Just keep investing more money in those same channels. Don't do one channel. That's a big mistake too, right?
Google AI switches changes things up. I don't know. And that'll put you in bad, bad position. Don't I
John Wilson: think I disagree. I think really like. Man, one, like I think you should always aim to cap a channel or like close to cap a channel. And I think I agree. Like, hey, find the thing that's working, but like it should only be one or two things.
And what a common thing that I see is like, Hey, I spend three grand on LSA, uh, that seems like a lot. So I'm gonna go add this new thing for three grand. And I'm, and in, in, I'm sitting here like, [00:21:00] dude. You're spending three grand and it's fucking working.
Sam Preston: Yeah.
John Wilson: And you're trying to take, like, you're trying to not give more to your winner.
Like you give more to the winner and you bet on the fastest horse. So when you find a channel that works, you wanna ride that channel like you stole it. Sure. Like you wanna run that thing into the ground. So like for us, that was LSA. Now it's a different time today than it was in, you know, early 2020s.
But like LSA, we were spending 90 grand a month at our peak with LSA. Yeah. And that was the one single 3source that we had for leads was LSA and organic.
Sam Preston: Yeah. No, I'm, I'm with you. If you're, if you're spending underneath, call it 20 grand a month and a single channel Yeah. And it's working, just keep pushing that budget.
Um, and in fact, like the number really doesn't matter. As long as you can keep putting money into an ad channel, uh, whatever that is, I don't really care what it's, yeah. Whatever. You can put more money in a channel, it continues to give you a return. Keep [00:22:00] upping that every week, every month, whatever that is, and yeah.
Don't get yourself siloed into one channel like you should, but then you should also take a percentage of that, call it 5%, 10%, call it a discovery budget and go test something else out. Should you do this if you only have three grand a month to spend? No. Right. We, we, everything's discovery right now. We just need to find something that works and dump all our money into it.
Um,
John Wilson: yeah.
Sam Preston: Should you do that? I mean, maybe,
John Wilson: maybe you get to your first like 30 grand in one channel and then you start thinking about it. But dude, I like. I don't know. Like I, I have friends that spent not on LSA, but like with PPC, like they ran PPC up to 90 or a hundred thousand dollars a month before even thinking about another channel because it's like, did you scale the channel?
Yeah. Did you, did you scale it? And at 10,000 a month you didn't scale it? Yeah. 20,000. You didn't scale it. There's still more to go 30, 40, 50. Like I think you start thinking like you might be at the cap of what you can get [00:23:00] above 50 or 60 a month. Yeah, not a year, but like a month. So if you think you're at capacity for leads.
The answer is you're probably not. Yeah. Like you can run that thing like you stole it.
Sam Preston: Yeah. Uh, I mean, I'm with you. Definitely. Like, I don't know, we probably have different opinions on like when to make that change and, which is great. Like, you know, whoever, whoever's listening to this run it. We disagree.
You probably disagree with us. Run your business the way you want to. Um, I think that you want to continue to invest into it, but like quickly, I want to, I wanna, as soon as possible, get to two to three channels that are working. Just 'cause I wanna diversify my risk, right? Like, I don't want Google Ads to go away, which, you know, it's been going for like, it's kinda like the s and p, you know, 500.
Like, it's literally been working for the last a hundred years, probably not a hundred. Um, yeah. So like, just keep investing, it'll be fine. Um, but also like. I like, I like just multiple channels, right? Like it's kind of what we're doing over here at Service Scalers, right? Like I have one lead source that works really [00:24:00] well and then I'm also like, ah, hey, how can we just test this one out?
Like, let's see what else we can get at it.
John Wilson: Alright, so for 1, 3, 5, and 10 for a single trade. Um, I think that a single trade, you're probably gonna be running pretty close to like an 8%. Yeah, you can go above it if you need to. Um, we have the benefit of like, cross trade referrals, so that's probably how we're able to drive a lower cost budget.
We also, even more importantly, uh, have really sold members, and members becomes a really big part of your marketing strategy later on because it means that you, like, there are some companies that are 40, $50 million and they don't market at all, like 0% marketing budget because they're just like calling their members.
So it's crazy, but members is like an owned lead source, so that's how you should think of members. It's an owned lead source. Uh, so I would say eight to 10% you, but there are people running 15 and if you can do that profitably and you're really trying to take share, like I guess go for it. But, um, if you can't do that [00:25:00] profitably, which I think I feel like a lot of people, I could not do that profitably, right?
Uh, like we're a 15% net business now, so I would go down to seven or 8% net. And I still have debt and stuff out to, you know, that we have to pay. So like, I don't think I could run 15 if I wanted to. Yeah,
Sam Preston: that's the, the beau beauty of being a smaller business. Right. You just like, you have some of those things where you can do things.
Yeah. You can do things that bigger companies can't do, uh, sometimes. Yeah. Um,
John Wilson: agreed. Cool. Thanks for your question, Jeff. We love you,
Sam Preston: Jeff. You're awesome. Yeah. Uh, leaf Martin. Has, and I think it's kinda like trans is a beautiful transition. Says I'm new. Yes. But strictly commercial electrical. So one trade service.
Okay. Uh, doing 6.5 million last year and want to get into residential market information on the marketing, uh, with, uh, almost no residential presence would be helpful for us. Um, oh yeah, I think
John Wilson: Leaf, I went through this. We just, we just did this two years ago [00:26:00] now. A little different 'cause we had plumbing and hvac.
But we were electrical construction and we pivoted to service. Uh, so two, back in, back in 2022, we did $200,000 of electrical service. In 2025, we will do six and a half. Let's go. Yeah. So it was like 200 to six and a half in three years. Feels pretty good. Um. So, yeah, so what we have learned is electrical does not have the same demand that plumbing and HVAC has, and it is much more dependent on bought leads.
So the way that we think about leads. One of the way we think about leads a lot, like it's kind of an obsession, so we're obsessed. But one of the ways that we think about leads is, um, for a [00:27:00] given business unit or service or trade, how many of those leads are organic and how many of those leads are bought on a daily basis.
So we measure it daily, we measure it weekly, and what that means is if I need 10 leads a day. How many are going to come in from my customer base and how many are going to come in from ll uh, like P-P-C-L-S-A, like a bot lead source? I had to pay for that lead and electrical of all of our business units has the highest percentage of bot leads, which okay, that's fine.
It's got a great average ticket, so like we have no issue with that. We're able to do it profitably. But what that tells me is it's just a little bit less demand, which is something that everybody knows in general. So what I would be encouraged, what I would all that to say, that's kind of exciting because if a company, if you're really relying on organic leads to drive traffic, which there's a ton of trades that [00:28:00] do that, um, I, I feel like that's kind of playing on hard mode if you can just go buy the lead.
You just go buy the lead. Like, it, it's, it's, it's like not that deep, right? Hey, most of our leads, it's like 40 or 50% of our leads are bought instead of organic. So to me, what that tells me is, and a startup electrical service company can meaningfully compete with me. 'cause I don't have that much of a moat.
I don't have that much organic lead flow. I buy most of my leads and anyone. Can just go buy leads. It doesn't take, it's, it's not like rocket science. So I, I think that's my take here is like you're in a really good position because all this takes is money, right? Right. It doesn't take a 20 year advantage.
It doesn't take a $30 million company. This takes a credit card and a budget of a couple grand a month.
Sam Preston: What's your split on residential when it comes to like emergencies versus like projects?
John Wilson: I [00:29:00] don't, I don't. I think we're a good use case for that question. Like we're basically, we're service and replacement, so like we don't do new construction.
We don't really do remodels. Like 100% of our revenue is service and replacement
Sam Preston: revenue. So someone's calling in saying, Hey. I, I'm having electrical issues. Yeah. Come check. Yeah. So what I mean by that is like, of course, that that's all gonna be paid for leads, right? Like Right. Because someone's just literally like, Hey, I need an electrician.
I have no idea what's going on. I just don't have electricity now to half my house. Yeah. Um, yeah.
John Wilson: Which again is great. Like, that's like such an advantage that all that means is you can just go buy the lead. Like there's no secret sauce here. Yeah. Which I've, you know, that's amazing. Like, so, uh, leaf, the answer is like, go rip it, bro.
Sam Preston: Yeah.
John Wilson: Like go fucking rip it. Like, so yeah, I would just buy leads and don't overthink it.
Sam Preston: Yeah. Next three years, you can go from six and a half to 12, right? If you're on John's direction. So [00:30:00] go get it.
John Wilson: So what we did is we had a $4 million construction company with a 200,000 service and the construction company, it was 2022.
So inflation, just a bunch of stuff, that 4 million of construction went to zero. Hmm. But what we did was we grew service. It was the, I will never be able to replicate this again in my life, just so we're on the same page. We took service from one person to 20 at the same time, at the same pace that construction was going from 30 to zero.
Damn. And we were able to move labor from one side to the other and match. Supply and demand and like probably the most outrageous level of execution I've ever pulled off in my career. Uh,
Sam Preston: it's too good to be actually on purpose.
John Wilson: Like literally, yes. Like we took, we shut down a $4 million business and we turned it into a $6 million business, and we did that in the course of a year.
Geez. Like [00:31:00] that's crazy. That is. Anyways, so that, yeah, so that happens. So when you have the construction side of the electrical business, you can use that pool as a labor source. Cool. Um, which I think is a big win.
Sam Preston: Love that. Love it.
John Wilson: But yeah, I don't, I don't think I could ever replicate that again in my life.
Sam Preston: Great question, leaf. Great question onto, we've got four more and I think we've got like six minutes. So. Uh, let's, we got this, we got this. We got this. Yeah, we got this. Brendan Grant asked, is PPC dead? If not, what to focus on to increase conversions? Uh, other than optimizing landing page, if you don't have a real brand awareness yet.
One is PPC is not dead. The majority of our clients are hitting. We call it on track. So, uh, you know, just to give a little insight on our business, 75% of our PPC clients are hitting on track, meaning they're hitting the lead volume, uh, cost per lead that they need to make PPC successful.
John Wilson: That's a lot.
That's a lot. Gosh. That's a, and that includes a lot. That's, that [00:32:00] 25%
Sam Preston: includes people that are hitting a, you know, a $90 cost per lead when they want a $75 one or, you know, oh, nice. Someone who literally gets started today, like that kicked off today. They're already off track. Until we prove that they're on track.
So there is like some Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, and I kind of expect that number. So we went in the last three months from 65 to 75%. And I, my, my goal is to push that towards 85. So PPC is, and, and just to be transparent, there's also some of those campaigns that are just not working and it's, you know, we, we are testing and trying to test our way out of those.
So, uh, not coming on here trying to say I'm perfect, you know, sometimes it just doesn't work
John Wilson: out well. 75%.
Sam Preston: Yeah. But I feel pretty good about 75%. It's not dead,
John Wilson: honestly. Yeah. I am surprised by that. Yeah. PPC is not dead.
Sam Preston: Yeah. But it is getting, I think it's getting a little harder. I do think that it's harder to start in as a smaller company to get in and break in, um, just because it's works so well and these bigger companies are willing to outspend.
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We'll uncover what's holding you back and lay out a path forward. No fluff, no corporate finance speak. CFO made easy.com. It's time to grow with clarity. Yes. Yeah. There, there's that. And it's complicated. Yeah. Like the whole second, the whole second part of this question is how do you increase conversions other than [00:34:00] optimized landing pages?
Like one that's complicated. Like if I look at, uh, if I look at LSA, put money in, get laid out, right? PPC is like, there's a lot going on there and, and you know, like. Paid search in gen or paid in general. Like it's the same with meta. Like if I'm gonna go run meta ads, uh, I also have to optimize the landing page.
I have to optimize a bunch of stuff there. So like there's no, I think my overall comment here, whether it's Meta or Google, if you are, if it's not a direct lead, like that customer, you swipe for 50 to $150, you get a lead. And if they get sent to your website, which is gonna be meta. TikTok, Google, I'm sure a lot more you will have to optimize your landing page.
Yeah. Like you gotta do it. That's a part of the deal. And that's part of why on one hand, yes, it's harder on the other, there is some alpha there [00:35:00] because who's gonna do it? Yeah. Like that's hard work. It's like a whole other step, a whole other kind of a lot of steps.
Sam Preston: PP C's, like one of the only services that I think that you should never bring internal, um, you should always agree.
Be working. I agree with, with just 'cause it's too hard. Um, I agree with this and so, uh, I'll say this and I know we gotta move on to the next question. I was, uh, I brought in to consult on a, on a. On a PPC campaign, they were spending a hundred thousand dollars a month in PPC, uh, for a service. Um, and they were doing really well, but they're like, Hey, how can we get this better?
The first thing I did was I pulled all the keywords over the last 90 days that have not converted, and I matched them to their search terms. And I basically found $10,000 of what you would call wasted spend, meaning they spent $10,000 over the last 90 days on these keywords that did not drive, uh, leads or uh, or uh, revenue for them.
Yeah. And I pulled this up to 'em in front of 'em. I said, Hey, I can save you $10,000 [00:36:00] right now. We can kill all of these ca keywords. So the problem though is they are perfect keywords. This is the looking for your service in your area, keyword. Um, and so, uh, PPC does get interesting sometimes it is just a game of continuing to optimize on your keywords Yeah.
And find things and remove things. Yeah. And sometimes it's like, hey, you are going to have to spend, you're gonna have a percentage of your budget that doesn't actually turn out. Um, yeah. And you have to figure out why and just keep playing the game.
John Wilson: It's, yeah. It's experimental. It's experimental. Like we're doing this a lot with Facebook ads right now, and it, I mean, it's the same thing.
Like I, I don't think there's any getting away from this. Like, you need good landers and they have to convert. Like Yeah. If, if, and if you don't wanna do that, then like, go buy leads. Yeah. Like, I think that's the answer. But like, if you wanna scale through Meta or Google, you do have to care about landing.
You do have to compare, like care about what that, those pages look like and how they, how they're optimized.
Sam Preston: Yeah. A [00:37:00] hundred percent. Next question. That was
John Wilson: a great, that was a great question. That was a great question. Thanks Brandon.
Sam Preston: Thanks Brandon. Uh, James Stone, how to assess which marketing company to partner with.
There are a couple of well-known names in the home service space, and I'd be curious in how to truly identify best in class before you work with one. Um, I'll say a couple things. One, case studies, reviews. All can be bullshitted, right? Like there's so many times I get on a a, a competitive's website and I'm looking at like, things that they say, and I just like, no, they're lying.
It's like, yeah, this is not, this is not right. Um, so I have a couple things that to me are super important. Um, and the first thing is, is that you own everything. You know, I don't work for, work with an agency that they take it off your plate and work in their accounts. And the reason why is 'cause you can't hold them accountable.
Right? Yeah. Because they own it. You can't look inside the tent and go, Hey, what, what keywords have you been bidding on? You know how, like, so [00:38:00] we want, you wanna keep it, keep ownership of it. Uh, 'cause you wanna be able to remove the agency, move on from them if that is a situation that that happens. Um, the second thing is make sure the fee.
They're charging. You actually makes sense. Uh, I get all the time. Yeah. Yeah. It's wild how much people will spend and how, how the, the, the cheap one. So, uh, we, you know, let's talk PPC for a sec. Our, our fee is roughly two grand a month, uh, minimum retainer to run PPC. Uh, some people hear that and they go, oh, damn, that's cheap.
And some people hear that and they go, wow. Like, that's so expensive. I would never spend that. Truly, we are kind of in the middle of the pack for that service. Uh, on, I don't even know.
John Wilson: I don't even know if you're in the middle. Like, and I'm not trying to like Selfer, you know, I'm not trying to fluff you up too much just 'cause we're talking here, but like, we were paying Scorpion nine grand.
Like, [00:39:00] I don't even know. Like that's insane. That's that's a
Sam Preston: lot.
John Wilson: Yeah. It was 30% of ad spend.
Sam Preston: Which that's insane. Like the most we get, I think is like 10% of ad spend. Right.
John Wilson: So I, I think a lot of, a lot, you know, I, I've seen into some of these contracts.
Sam Preston: Yeah.
John Wilson: And they're like big companies. This isn't like, this isn't like, hey, I'm a small company with a $2,000 budget and 1000 of that is retainer.
So 50% ad spend, these are companies with 40 or 50 grand a month budgets.
Sam Preston: Yeah.
John Wilson: And 30 to 40% is going to management fees. Yeah. And that is insane. Yeah,
Sam Preston: well thanks to John. We are now $2,500 a month at minimum. And, uh, um,
John Wilson: but it's crazy. I like it was nine grand a month to work with Scorpion, but yeah, it's crazy.
It's crazy.
Sam Preston: Um, yeah, so, so that's our, our basic pricing. Right? There's 2000 a month. Yeah. Um, to manage it. Yeah. Uh, I see companies trying to sell other [00:40:00] companies at like $500 a month. To run your PPC and I just don't understand the math. I know what it takes to pay my PPC campaign wizards, if you will, to go run your campaigns.
And it's a lot of money. So like in order for them to be able to run that profitably, they've got to be working with like 60 to 80 clients and they just don't have enough time in the day to go manage that. Um, so. I would just really encourage you to look at the price, make sure it's fair. If they're charging you too less or not enough or too much somewhere, bet, like maybe it is worth it to go pay nine grand a scorpion.
If they get you the roas like, yo, I, I'll, you know, it's, it's the old adage like, I will pay whatever it takes to get me a good enough roas. Right? Um, and so like find something that is actually works for your business and your return.
John Wilson: Yeah, I struggle with that one. Uh, so like on the contractor side, what I would be self-select, what I would be selecting for is do they understand my industry?[00:41:00]
Yeah. What is their actual average, uh, customer size? I think that's important. Like I was talking with someone and they were like, yeah, our ideal customer is 20 to $30 million. Um, yeah, I bet. Like, I bet. But their average customer was actually like three. Yeah. And so like, if I, if I engaged with them, they wouldn't know what to do.
Yeah. With my account. So I, I just think like that's important. You should do, you know how to handle businesses that look exactly like mine?
Sam Preston: Yeah.
John Wilson: Size, scope, services. Um, I'm a big fan of asking for, uh, like, Hey, can I talk to some clients? That's something I've gotten better at is I've, uh. Like selected more.
Now, obviously they're gonna send you like clients that fucking love them, but I still think you can ask like probing questions like, Hey, well talk to me about this and come up with some good interview questions. But I would try to interview their other clients [00:42:00] and, uh, I mean, Facebook groups, like, look for Rex, you know, ask your friends, like who are they using?
Sam Preston: Yeah. Yeah. Your friends won't lie to you. Hopefully not. Yeah.
John Wilson: And now I would ask, I, I would add to this, um, I. This is something that I'm like, think a lot about Before you take advice from someone including me, you need to ask or identify is this, is this person capable of giving me good advice? There's a bunch of bullshit on the internet and anyone can say anything and they have to be able to back it up.
And so like really just like be cautious who you're talking to. Be cautious who you're listening to. Uh, this is something that I've gotten better at. Like, I'm in a lot of peer groups and group chats and Facebook groups and, and like people will just say stuff Yeah. And, and like, Hey, yeah, I spend 15% on marketing, or I do this and, and then like, I wanna know more.
Like, okay, well like [00:43:00] walk me through how you're doing this thing. 'cause I'm not doing this thing. I wanna understand how you're doing it better than I am. Uh, but ask probing questions about the businesses before you take advice from them. So for me, like at this point, we're really cautious to take advice from people that do less EBITDA than us, either in dollars or percentage.
Yeah. If you are doing, I have a lot of people in my life that are single digit profit people, like low single digit profit people trying to tell me how to run our business, and I'm like, we're five times your profit. Mm-hmm.
Sam Preston: Yeah.
John Wilson: So I don't know, like, I don't know, like yes you do a few million dollar more in revenue, but like.
We are a better run business than you are. So, so just be cautious who you take advice from.
Sam Preston: Yeah, a hundred percent. Um, um, okay, I think we got one more. How?
John Wilson: Yes.
Sam Preston: Mark Mag.
John Wilson: Mark Mag. Welcome Mark. How important is ranking [00:44:00] top three in Google Map Pack? For local service businesses,
Sam Preston: I would start with, go listen to the last podcast that we just maybe listen to the last, maybe the next one.
But like we, I go into big time like, Hey, this is like how AI is changing and how it's gonna affect you. And map pack's gonna be bigger than it is currently. Um, yeah, it is currently super, like our take
John Wilson: is yes, our take is important now and even more important in the future.
Sam Preston: Yeah.
John Wilson: Yeah, I agree. I, I totally agree.
I think like, I really think one, one of the best things, like one of the best bang for your Buck investments. Is your GMB. Yeah. Like it is just so powerful and if you can keep driving that forward, like our GMB is still one of our biggest sources of leads. Yeah. Like, and it's so much, it, it's crazy, but we, we've spent a ton of time and energy on it.
Sam Preston: Yeah. I mean, like hot take. I think that at some point you might end up starting to spend more money, uh, on optimizing your GMB and efforts to optimize your GMB [00:45:00] than SEO. And right now that's flipped. Like you're gonna spend more on SEO, but we already
John Wilson: spend, yeah, we already spend thousands on our gmmb. We spend thousands of dollars a month on our GMBs.
Yeah. Like a hundred percent. Yeah. So like, yep. I We might have already passed it. Yeah. But for us, like, yeah, I know you already said this, but GMBs is local, SEO. So like it's in the same bucket for us, but it's very specific to GMB. Yeah. I wanna say it's four or 5,000 a month. It might even be more like, we spend a lot.
Top three we're driving insane amount of leads and we're still growing. So worth the investment.
Sam Preston: And again, like the way AI is going to be searching in the future is, yeah. Is gonna be based a lot on reviews and your ability to drive quality reviews. Yeah. How you're able to optimize your GMB and stuff like that.
So I would 100% be investing in that.
John Wilson: We have one more and I'm just gonna answer it really quick. Oh yeah. Yeah. Just 'cause we literally only have one more Justin Beam. I recently had my website redone and leads have kind of fallen off.
Sam Preston: Uh, so Justin [00:46:00] Beam, uh, I would say it's probably specifically it, it's probably a link issue.
Uh, so when someone rebuilds your website, um, one of the most important things to do, specifically if you have good SEO going through is to make sure that URLs say the same. Um, so it'd be, you know, the Wilson Company per page,
John Wilson: per service, per blog. Yeah. We did this when we switched off a scorpion. Because they, they took our website, so I had to rebuild the website in like 48 hours and we spent a ton of time on like matching links.
Sam Preston: Yeah. So like if you're just like all of a sudden dropped, it's because what you used to rank for and Google search, people are clicking on it and it's not coming to that same page. It's going to ran like a page that doesn't exist anymore. So Google. Deking you, so you're not getting the search volume. Uh, and when people are clicking onto your page, it's not going anywhere.
Um, so you wanna keep those URLs the same and that way the content stays the same. That's, that's most likely the answer. Um, there's a couple other ones or indexing and stuff like that, but like if [00:47:00] you drop traffic overnight, yeah, it's probably that. Or you shut off your ads. I totally
John Wilson: agree. Which is good.
'cause it's solvable. Yeah. Now the way we solved this is we used Chrome's. Lookback.
Sam Preston: Yep.
John Wilson: So we, Chrome has this lookback or way back, I don't remember what it's called, but it's like a way back feature where you can look at what a website used to look like and you can look at the old links from any period of time.
So like Google indexed your site, they saved it. You can look two weeks ago, five years ago. You can actually pull the old URLs, uh, off it and rematch it. So that's how we did it when we went through this.
Sam Preston: Yeah, exactly. That's exactly what I would do. Um, you should have like a site map of exactly what it is.
Yeah. Um, and so that's like the first thing we do when we build a website is we take on your current website specifically one that already has good FCO. If you don't have good SEO, we don't care. You don't care, you don't have any traffic. But if you do have good SEO, we don't wanna mess that up because you'll be mad at us.
And I don't like being, I don't like people being [00:48:00] mad at me. Um, so yeah. Uh, we wanna match up the URLs to make sure the traffic keeps coming through. Uh, or you could do redirects if you really do wanna change to the structure for whatever reason. Uh, you can redirect old page links to the new ones.
John Wilson: Awesome. This was great. I feel like we covered it well. I think we covered it. Um. So, I mean, thanks everyone for tuning in and thanks everyone for asking questions. I felt like that was good. I feel like we solved some good stuff. Yeah, we're about to, we're doing these 30 day series, which I'm pretty excited about.
And what the first one is 30 days to Double Your Profit. The second one is 30 Days to Double Your Leads. Whoa. Let's go. I know, I know. Let's, so like every single day for 30 straight days, we are picking one single as like LSA. Map pack. Mm-hmm. PPC meta 30 days, and we're gonna rip into every single one of 'em for like 10 to 15 minutes and just open up our experience with it, talk about how we're [00:49:00] doing it, and like talk about things to avoid and how to make it win.
Because at this point we do like, we do all of them, right? Yeah. We spend two and a half million dollars a year. We do it all.
Sam Preston: Yeah.
John Wilson: So, uh. So, yeah, that's gonna be really cool. And that airs, um, September 1st.
Sam Preston: Let's go. Let's go. I should have sub, I wanna subscribe so I can watch. Yeah, it's good. It's good. Cool.
John Wilson: Uh, alright. If you like what you heard, please give us a five star review. Uh, make sure you link and like, and sub and check out owned and operated.com for more.
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