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This is the Branded Bull Podcast, a show dedicated to helping take your business to the next level with winning marketing and branding tips and strategies built for today's competitive world, ready for your business to make its mark and stand out from the competition. Let's get into it.

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Hey guys, Adam Fullerton here I am, the host of this episode of the Branded Bull Podcast. And this is the podcast built for green industry business owners who want to stand out, get found, and win more work. All right, today we're talking about something that confuses a lot of small business owners, especially again, in the lawn care and landscaping industry. And that's why some marketing works right away and why some of it feels like it takes forever. And this comes down to what are called short lead times versus long lead time marketing levers. And if you don't understand the difference, you'll either waste money expecting instant results from slower strategies or ignore the things that actually build long term growth. So today I'm going to break this down simply and give you pros and cons of each so you know where to focus based on your goals. So let's talk about what lead time actually means. And when we say lead time in marketing, we're talking about how long it actually takes for people, something you do today to turn into a lead or a customer. Some things are immediate, some things compound over time. And I want you guys to think of it like this. Short lead time means you're flipping a switch and leads come in quickly. Long lead time is more like planting the seeds. And of course it takes time, but grows stronger and stronger. And at the end of the day, you most likely need both. But they serve very, very different purposes. So let's start with short lead time marketing. Right? These are the things that can generate leads fast, sometimes same day. So examples include Google Ads or ppc, Facebook ad. Facebook ads, I should say lead platforms like Angie's List, thumbtack, things like that, you know, promotions or limited, limited time offers. These are things that work because you're paying for attention. And you know, to use an analogy, you're skipping the line, so to speak. You get that instant visibility. So pros of short lead time levers. Oh, like I said, immediate lead flow. It's easy to turn on and off. It's great for filling schedule gaps. It's predictable if it's managed well. However, you have to keep paying for these leads stop when you stop spending money. It can get expensive over time, especially in the green industry when it comes to certain platforms or certain ads because there's a lot of people bidding for very similar keywords. And then of course, low quality or price shopping leads sometimes make their way to your business, which is not ideal. So the key takeaway there is that short term marketing is great for cash flow, it's great for quick wins, but it's not a foundation, right? It's a faucet that you're turning on and turning off and then that's it. Whereas long lead time levers, that's about planting the seeds, right? That's more traditional marketing like we talk about. And this is where most businesses get impatient and quit way, way, way, way too early. So some examples of long lead time levers are things like your websites, your local SEO and you know, your Google ranking and your business profile, your branding and your logo, your reviews and your reputation. I mean these don't generate leads overnight typically, but they build something much more powerful in the long run. And so some of the prons pr, some of the pros of long term levers, right, is that they've compound over time, the growth compounds over time it works harder and harder for you. Usually that also leads to lower cost per lead. In the long run you have higher quality, more trust based customers and of course it builds credibility and authority in the markets that you serve. Now some of the cons is that, yeah, like we talked about, it does take time. It could be months, it could be years, not just days and weeks. And it requires consistency. It's harder to see immediate roi and of course it's easy to neglect. So long term marketing builds equity in your business, right? It's what makes leads come to you without you having to go to them and pay for that visibility like we talked about earlier. So let's talk about the website. I know we talk about websites a lot, but a lot of people misunderstand websites as well. And a website is not a short term lead generator by itself. It's a long term asset that supports everything else about your business. Your ads send traffic to your website. Your SEO ranking is dependent on your website. Your credibility is judged by your website. I mean, a good website doesn't just exist, it converts and builds trust over time. And the smartest businesses don't choose just one of these, right? They don't choose just short term, short lead levers or long lead levers. It's both. It's about combining both based on your goals, your, your budget and what you're trying to accomplish. And so you might want to, you know, again, use both of them, use PPC ads to Generate leads now while your website builds organic ranking and your SEO takes time, like I said, to generate those leads. Well, use short term levers while your long term levers are doing their job and building the credibility that you want them to build. So you want to keep improving your branding and your reviews to increase conversion, right? So you can use some of these things in the short term, but in the long term, you don't want to neglect the most important foundational elements. So another way to look at this is short term is kind of like that fuel and long term is the engine, right? If you only rely on short term, you're stuck paying forever. And if you only rely on long term marketing efforts, you'll wait too long for actual growth. So all that to say if you're marketing, if you're, if. If you are looking at your marketing right now and you want to ask yourself if you're just flipping switches or are you actually building something that's going to sustain itself over the years? Because the goal isn't just to get leads this week, right? We hear about this from you guys all the time. It's to create systems where leads keep coming in month after month after month. And that's how you grow. So think about what your current strategy is, think about your mix, and understand that these are both levers to pull based on what business looks like, based on your budget, your goals, and hey, if your phone's not ringing, short lead time levers are the things to pull, like PPC ads, whereas long term levers, like long lead levers, I should say, like your website, SEO, things like that are definitely the things that you want to invest into, but you got to give it time. So that's it. That's simple. Hopefully that makes sense. Long term versus short term. Complete different sets of tactics, completely different goals, and of course, completely different levels of investment because of the return that it could have on your business and how quick of a return you can see from your investment. So that's what I got for you guys. That's what I have. As always, this is the Bearable Podcast. New episodes every single Tuesday. Once again, I'm your host, Adam Fullerton. Visit us@braidable.com if you want to learn more about how we can help green industry businesses like yours stand out, get found, and win more work. But hey, thanks for tuning in as always and I will catch you guys on next week's episode. Take care.