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A
How to grow your home service business. It's going to be marketing focused. It's going to be lead focused.
B
I don't think as great for Legion anymore as it once was. Everybody's impressions, impressions, video completion rate, I don't care. Can't sit on that.
A
People need to poop.
B
Absolutely.
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Branding is for cattle.
B
Branding's for cattle. I'm an aggressive dude, so I'm going to say conquest those guys. Yes, absolutely. Conquest. Foot on throat. Let's go. If you want to piss off somebody, ask for the.
A
So the latest thing that we've been working on is maximizing our LSAs, which is local service ads, and also optimizing our Google my business profiles. So what that means is we're making sure that all of our LSAs are on when we need them and they're maximized to give us the best ROI. And then for GMBs, it's been partnering with service scalers to drive way more traffic through our GMBs. GMBs are almost like the new SEO. The more you put onto that, the better the performance. So our GMBs have been consistently getting better week after week after week. And it is our currently our single most impactful organic lead channel. So we'll sell hundreds of thousands of dollars a week through our GMBs. And I think last week we got 900 phone calls. So really impactful, awesome investment. And we've been able to partner with service killers on both of those things. If you want to hear a little bit more about service scalers, check out service scalers.com welcome back to Owned and Operated. Today we're gonna be doing a special show. This is our first show in studio. So we just built out this awesome studio and I'm really excited to bring a friend here. Tony from Wanamaker, welcome to the show.
B
Appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Happy to christen the new Dig series. Yeah, it's an honor.
A
No, this will be fun, man. This will be a lot of fun. So today what we're going to be talking about is how to grow your home service business. And I think you've got a really great angle for us to approach it.
B
Yep.
A
It's going to be lead focused, it's going to be marketing focused, and we're really going to cover the gambit.
B
All right. Yeah. I'm excited, man. Lead gen is what we do and been doing it a long time, so hopefully I can drop some nuggets of knowledge and help somebody out.
A
Yeah. Before we dive in too deep, I'd love it if you just gave us a brief 1 to 2 minute on what's your background and how have you helped home service companies grow.
B
Yeah, so I'm Tony with Wanamaker Advertising. So we are a full service advertising agency. So we have clients all across the country. Home services is probably our biggest category but we do do some work for lead gen for legal, specialty, healthcare, automotive, things of that nature. But my business partner and I founded the company about four years ago and we both came from the other side of the glass. We did primarily traditional media, did digital there too. But TV is really the bread and butter of what we did. So it happened kind of organically. We had a lot of success on the other side and had enough success for customers where clients wanted us to expand out to be able to help them grow outside of the boundaries that we were confined in. So it's been a crazy four year run here and a lot of changes to keep up with and it's been a breath of fresh air for a lot of these guys. So growing primarily through word of mouth. I mean we're not afraid to pick up the phone. But yeah, we've been doing this for four years, we haven't lost a client yet. So I think the proof is all right and we just focus on, focus on results. Yeah, we'd solve a lot of problems.
A
Yeah, yeah, a lot of them. And really honed in, which I'm super excited to talk about. I don't know that we've ever talked about on this show. Honing in on conventional traditional media. So like in the conversation we're going to be diving into, I know you guys mainly cover tv, but we're going to be talking about radio in its place, streaming in its place. I'm even gonna try to force you into a billboards conversation. It's gonna be great.
B
Yeah, absolutely.
A
So let's hit for a second. I wanna talk about digital. You know, a lot of companies, I like to think of it as like the Armageddon of 2023.
B
Yeah.
A
So obviously a lot's changed in the past five years and I think you brought it up a little bit with iPhone locking down their data. So give me your perspective here over the last few years.
B
So it all started back around 2020. Apple iOS update made it super simple for somebody to turn off tracking on their Apple smartphone or tablet. They still manage over 50% of smartphones and mobile devices in the U.S. so that's a huge.
A
See, I don't feel like when that happened, I don't feel like that was that much of a thing. For our industry. Like I have friends in E commerce. And everyone was like, yep, oh my God, what do we do? I don't, I don't know if anyone talked about it for plumbing H vac, like at all.
B
Nobody talked about it. And that was just the snowball getting thrown down the mountain and it just picked up and turned an avalanche. Now Google has gotten away with cookies, which is a lot of how they track you.
A
Yeah.
B
There's federal and state level legislation through the works that are limiting what can and can't be tracked online.
A
And I think the important thing here just. And this is like, educate me.
B
Yeah.
A
The reason this matters is because it makes it harder to track your core customer, like your icp.
B
I think the best way to describe it, the best example I can give is, is pay per clicker adwords. Before 2020, I knew plumber near me and I'm searching on that. But then I also on the back end, Google knew your income, your occupation, your marital status, whether you owned a home. They knew everything. So they got an algorithm that's saying it's a quality lead and they have the intent trigger of I need a plumber. You pair them together, it's zero waste marketing.
A
Yeah.
B
You take some of that away and now there's instances where I don't know if I'm a high school student doing a project and owning a plumbing company one day or if my water line just broke in my kitchen.
A
Yeah.
B
So you can see how the quality of lead, you know, took a step backwards.
A
Yeah.
B
So you still need to be there. It's still the new yellow pages.
A
Like Facebook, you think like. Or social spend in general.
B
Well, with Facebook, Facebook's a different animal. It's hit or miss. I think it's a entry level medium. I don't know that you don't scale on Facebook. It's a part of the puzzle. It's a part of the digital strategy, lsa, pay per click, SEO, all that stuff. Necessary evil, but has gone down in my opinion, on efficiency. And that's just one. So data privacy is one, the industry itself is two, and then interruptions and disruption within the industry is three. So when I say the industry themselves, we're all guilty of it. Whether you bring in a marketing guy, an advertising agency, a fractional cmo, which is just a funny name for an advertising agency, but it's apparently a hot trend. There's, there's that and then the other part of it, we're dying breed. I mean people, I don't know if there's an industry out there that makes it harder to do business with than a lot of traditional advertising.
A
Yeah, it's kind of wild. Yeah, yeah.
B
It's super aggressive. And everybody's number one. There's different methodologies.
A
Yeah.
B
And then the disruption side, I mean.
A
It'S hard to get into that and it's intimidating. Yeah. You know, like, even radio is sort of like, obviously a lot lower lift than tv. Like tv, you have to like, bring on. You have to, you know, get someone to film it and it has to be high quality and maybe actors and there's like a lift, you know, there's a lift there and it's like, where do you start? And then radio is even lower lift than that because really you just need like audio. But yeah, yeah.
B
I think part of it is even with radio, billboards, whatever, any traditional media. I think we'll, we could probably get into this on why it's not expensive, but the entry level cost. I mean, you're, you're asking. People are asking you to spend a significant amount of money monthly. And when you don't quite comprehend what you're buying and what's all involved, it can be intimidating or like, what.
A
What do you get? Yeah, because I, Yeah, I know that's one of the, one of the things we've always heard or like, you'll see on like Facebook groups or whatever is, well, how do you measure it? Like, that's, that's always somebody's point with tv. And I'm like, honestly, this is my own perspective and I'm not even pushing. TV is like, I find it very easy to measure. Like, hey, did Brandon search go up?
B
There's tons of KPIs. We always say we run towards measurement. I think one of the biggest mistakes I think a home service company does is they don't monetize the gold mine, which is your CRM data, your inbound data.
A
Oh, sure. Yeah.
B
You pair that with the main KPIs from your Google Analytics and you'd be surprised on the correlations you can tie together. And it all works together. I mean, TV will put digital on steroids. Same radio all down the line.
A
100%.
B
Absolutely. Now you can definitely prove it works.
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think, you know, I know for us last year we had a couple, we had a couple core issues, and I'm just curious how this resonates with some of the clients you guys have worked with. But we had two core issues on when we were starting to really try to understand what our options were. So the first one was, hey, what do you do? Like, Google Drives the bus. Google Drives the bus for us. Whether it's LSA or Map Pack or SEO or whatever it is, that's still a lot of our leads. But what do you do when that volume dries up for a month? Which. That is an annual problem that we have to face here. Every Q1, it dries up. So we were like, all right, how do we handle that? How do we un. Google the business is what we called it. And we did mailers and TV and radio and events and all these different things. So that was the first core problem. And then the second one was you hit a point, which I don't know how many of our listeners have hit that or how many of your clients have hit that, but there's a point where, like, you literally just can't give Google more money. Yeah. And half for us, it happened at a million dollars to spend of like, of ad, total marketing budget. And this year we'll do like 2.2. So, like, hey, what do you do? It's like the dumbest problem to explain to somebody, but it's actually kind of hard. Is like, hey, what do you do with a million dollars?
B
Yeah.
A
And it was hard to figure out.
B
I think both of those issues, both those core issues, I think, tie back to a study. Actually, Google did it. It's called the zmod study.
A
Okay, how do I spell that?
B
Years ago, Z MOT stands for zero moment of truth. So Google ran this study, and I think they updated it a few times, but essentially it is Google admitting I am the new Yellow Pages. When people, when you have that zero moment of truth, when the water pipe just burst in my kitchen and there's water gushing, I'm going to Google to find a plumber.
A
Yes.
B
Now, that's my zero moment truth.
A
So, like, high intent. We're just going to give it like.
B
Yep.
A
Yeah.
B
But where it goes even, even further is there's it needs a stimulus, and there's your controlled stimulus, and there's the uncontrolled stimulus. Uncontrolled is the act of God. I can't Q1. I can't make pipes explode.
A
Sure.
B
But then you could have your uncontrolled stimulus, which is, you know, I'm an H Vac company. It's getting warm. I would love to talk to 10,000 people in any market across the country that have an AC unit that's over five years old that.
A
Yeah.
B
Would go and find you online. Yeah. $99 special for yeah. So that's where you can drive demand down the funnel.
A
I kind of like that framework.
B
Yeah. Yeah.
A
So z mot zmote.
B
Z0 moment of truth. Yes. Zeomity.
A
That's interesting.
B
It's old. I mean it's probably been out for 10 plus years but it still resonates well.
A
Yeah, totally. I mean I think what we found, the more you know, obviously we'll dive into this but like the, the more stuff that we did to drive off of Google and the more helped our Google where like like branded search went up and like website. We're, we have two like core sites and like web traffic is over 20,000amonth for a plumbing company. Like that's insane. But budget's also $2.2 million. So you know we're, we are pushing.
B
Funny how it works but no to your point. I mean and it goes down. I mean traditional media makes branded. The people that are only doing clients that we're getting in touch with that have only done and ever known digital.
A
Yeah.
B
Their branded traffic is you know, under 20%, under 10%.
A
Yeah.
B
You are paying for generic cost per click. So that's sky high people that are searching Wilson and not just plumber. And it's a much better lead. It can fit a higher clip, you name it. All beneficial.
A
Yeah. I totally agree. I, I think something that I've struggled with just over the years. The only reason that we moved to can we've had radio for like five years. So you know, five, five, six grand a month. I think the only reason that we really accelerated our TV and streaming and events is because we ran out of money to spend on Google.
B
Yeah.
A
And my position, I'm curious what your challenge is here. Like my position has been you can get to 15 or 20 million bucks just doing the expensive like pay for leads because brand, brand is hard. Brands hard to drive.
B
Oh yeah.
A
So like I don't know, what do you think about that?
B
You can typically you plateau and you hit a zero, you know, point of diminishing returns, profitability suffers, conversion rates suffer. There's a lot more that goes into it in my opinion than just getting that lead to call. I think that it all comes down the pipe and I mean profit's what everyone's chasing who owns a business. You know, with TV you are driving that branded traffic and you know to radio. I mean I'm a big believer that you don't just brand if you're an SMB. If you're a small to medium sized business, you don't Just brand. You can brand yourself with a call to action so you're driving additional intent and clients down the funnel. But you're also building that brand, which takes time and you got to be consistent with it. I mean, anybody who's doing knee jerk Roi gauges within 90 days, I mean, no shorter than 90.
A
Yeah, yeah. What was your. You had a line for this before. We, it was like, branding is for cattle.
B
Branding's for cattle brand.
A
What was the follow up line?
B
Oh, geez.
A
It was good, man. Whatever it was. I was like, where's my pen?
B
Oh, wait, no, it's. It's enough to come to me, find it.
A
We'll let it. We'll. We'll let it. Yeah, we'll let it linger. But branding's for cattle.
B
Branding's for cattle. I mean, everything should be focused on Legion. So that's why even on the traditional side, digital and traditional avenues are shifting. I don't think radio is as great for Legion anymore as it once was. Billboards. There's certain scenarios where it can be. You think of how you consume media now. TV and video is really emerging as a clear cut favorite. Just the way, I mean, it's a.
A
Video, like social video or just video, like any type of video.
B
I. So when I talk video, primarily, I'm talking about broadcast tv. When I say broadcast, a lot of people say, oh, TV's dead. Cable is dead. Cable, you know, even in your older demographic markets, you know, you're looking at cable penetration under 40%. When I say broadcast TV, I'm talking about the big four. ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC. Those are over the.
A
Can you explain the diff? I actually have no idea what the difference is. So, like, walk me through that.
B
So broadcast or over the air, is they. That's exactly what they are. So if you have an HD antenna in your house, I mean, I cut, I'm a TV guy at heart. I cut the cord. So I have a couple streaming bundles, but then I also have a, you know, it's not antenna anymore. It's a little sticker that goes in the back of my TV. And I get 55 stations over the air. So you'll have your local ABC affiliate, your local CBS affiliate, fox, NBC.
A
And that's broadcast.
B
That's broadcast. Okay, That's. They're over the air.
A
It's always news.
B
It's free. No, no, it's everything on that, on that affiliate. So it can vary market by market, but primarily news. You'll have your syndication, syndicated programming throughout the day. You know, NBC has NBC Staples, NBC Nightly, NBC's Prime, Fountains of the World.
A
I guess I don't understand how that's different from cable. In my mind, that's cable.
B
So cable is bundled. So that's your Comcast, that's your set top box, that's your video on demand. You know, there was this started Probably, I'd say eight to 10 years ago is really starting to escalate because people, I think a lot of homeowners saw their wireless and Internet bills going up and they had to come somewhere. So hey, I can now stream and cut this $180 7000 channel bundle that I'm getting from Comcast or Spectrum or whatever you have and get an antenna for free. Watch my local news, get my local information. So when I say cable penetration over 60% of any given market now at the good side doesn't have cable. So how are you reaching one tv?
A
But. But they do have broadcast.
B
Yeah.
A
Okay.
B
And it's free. Yeah, Broadcast. All the most broadcast have stations have their own apps. They're also they. Their signal gets picked up on the Hulu's of the world. Anything live, YouTube live, Hulu live. You're picking up your local affiliates.
A
Okay.
B
Signal. So you're getting that there as well, even if you're a streamer. And then you have the streaming part of it as well. And I'll screen from the rooftops. Streaming is not. Or ottoman is not a replacement for broadcast tv. You can't compete with the scale. It's a great supplementary piece compliment.
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now I'm just trying to like, I have like a smart tv. I have no idea we have. I have literally never watched the news. I mean maybe 30 years ago, but I, I don't even know if I get the news.
B
It's.
A
Well, it sounds like one night.
B
So the number one objection when I talk to a business owner about TV is I don't watch the news. Business owners are a different breed.
A
Okay.
B
You work long hours. Don't project yourself on the typical homeowner in any given night. In most markets across the country, you can watch. You could advertise in the 6am or 6pm news and reach 40 to 60,000 adults, 35 to 64. So the audience is there.
A
Yeah.
B
So when it comes to reaching adults over the age of 35 who probably own a home, if that's of interest of anybody listening, broadcast TV is a great place to be.
A
Yeah. I remember having this conversation like it was like six, seven months ago with my marketing manager. And again, dumb. Sounds Like a dumb problem. But it genuinely was hard. Really. God, what do we do with half a million dollars next year? And he was blown away that I don't even remember what study. If we find it, I'll like try to link it or whatever in the show notes. But it proved like bang for buck. TV like drives impressions like far and above any other mass media that we could find. And he. I don't know, like we dove deep into it because he didn't believe it.
B
Yeah.
A
And it was fascinating.
B
Break it down. I mean, the great equalizer in all marketing is cpm. Cost per thousand.
A
Yeah.
B
So how many thousands of. What's it cost me to reach a thousand people?
A
Yeah. Yeah.
B
It's hard to beat broadcast tv.
A
Yeah. Because it's like, what's a normal cpm?
B
You know, for my normal. I try to be in the 5 to 10 range with 35, 64. It depends. It goes up and down. I mean, every market's different. Competitive landscapes change that. What type of person you're after. If you want a higher income and you want to, you know, splurge on bigger shows like Jeopardy. Wheel of Fortune or the Price is Right during the daytime, those have a little bit higher cost to it. But it can vary. And there's ways to manipulate that with buying program specific versus buying a rotator and all kinds of get the weeds.
A
Yeah.
B
But to your point, there is very little avenues out there where I can go out and in 30 seconds reach a hundred thousand people in a day and then have them be in a position to take action. Check you out.
A
Yeah.
B
Go down, read your reviews, go on your page, things like that.
A
So when you're thinking about directly comparing like a Facebook spend versus a TV spend or OTT or billboards, like really anything mass.
B
Yeah.
A
CPM is like the measurement.
B
CPM's the measurement. But I also think they're back to that. You know, we talked about a little bit ago with intimidation. The amount of money that I see a smaller business spend on billboards is more than.
A
I don't understand it.
B
Yeah.
A
I really.
B
And it's more than enough to buy a TV campaign and reach.
A
Yeah.
B
You know, five times as many people for less money.
A
Yeah.
B
But I think it's just the perception that it's big time and you know it's going to be a million dollars.
A
Yeah. Tv. Yeah. I think it's intimidating.
B
But it can vary. And you don't have to. I mean, you went at it with both feet. You don't have to. You can start and it Depends on your market rank and all that good stuff. But CPM translates, so that's always something. And that's why streaming video, your YouTubes of the world and your digitally based impressions, you're looking at CPMs in the low range of probably $20. I mean you want your high non skippable full episode player OTT, you're looking upwards of 40, 50, $60. CPM broadcast 5 to 10.
A
Yeah. And the reach is still just big in broadcasting.
B
If you want to.
A
It's the biggest reach. We actually couldn't find another way to reach as many people we did try.
B
If you want to piss off somebody, ask for the net reach when you're going and buying streaming video. As for the net reach of that campaign, because everybody's impressions, impressions, video completion rate. Impressions, impressions. I don't care.
A
What, what's the difference? Like what does net reach mean? I don't know.
B
Net reach is how many different people within my demo that reach.
A
Okay, so impressions could be like I was impressed on that much.
B
The same spot five times. Five.
A
Gotcha.
B
Gotcha. We had a guy who insisted it was an attorney, it wasn't even home service category. But he insisted that he wanted to take broadcast money and fund the NoTV campaign for a three month trial. We insisted, no, that's a bad idea. But if you hold a gun to my head and dangle money in front of it, I'll eventually listen. So we did it for three months. He spent 20 grand. He reached almost 13,000 people. 35, 64 in a top 30 market for $200 in your leading new news, you will reach more than that. So $233 months, 20 grand. That's what now on the other side of that you can really target. So it's a great company. So if you want to do broadcast and then sprinkle in some high income zips, hyper targeted with streaming video. That's where the synergy comes from. But not a replacement. Yeah, I get passionate. Am I getting fired up?
A
No, I love it. I love it. I think it's great. FieldPulse is the all in one field management solution for growing home service companies. FieldPulse is designed to simplify your day to day operations by combining everything you need into one platform. It also includes integrations to help you save time like QuickBooks, desktop and online. It has a bunch of advanced tools and features like a CRM, estimates and invoicing. Good, better, best options, maintenance plans, a robust price book and scheduling dispatching. FieldPulse will transform the way that you manage your field teams altogether, it will save you time and find revenue that you didn't even know existed. Whether you're a small company that's looking to grow or a larger company Looking to optimize, FieldPulse has the tools that you need to do it. And don't just take our word for it. FieldPulse has earned over 580 glowing reviews with an average rating of 4.8 stars. That's Field EU L S E. Head to their website to learn more. Fieldpulse.com so. So digital. I think the bet and the way that we think about this and it sounds like you do too. We see any. I'm going to. I'm going to make a broad category here as a TV guy. You're not going to like it.
B
Bring it on.
A
Okay. Traditional. And that's the broad. Literally anything that's not digital for us, we see as traditional. So that's going to be like radio billboards, even ott, we kind of consider because it's similar for us in radio and the way that we look at it is it is an accelerant for our digital presence. And that sounds like how I should be thinking about this.
B
Yes and no. Yes, it will and does. I think there is way too much stock put in the last touch attribution. I think Google gets.
A
Oh sure. Yeah, they get. They do. Yeah.
B
You run a TV campaign? Yeah, I had a commercial run at 7:58 in the today show and I got a pay per Click lead at 759. Isn't that great?
A
Yeah, yeah.
B
There's a correlation.
A
Yeah.
B
So taking a step back again, the more KPIs you look at, the more you'll kind of see it flow. Yeah, but I mean, with broadcast tv, you're not running a million spots. A million commercials. Spots.
A
Commercials.
B
You're not running a million commercials. So you could easily. If you have an agency or an expert that works with you, they should be able to take your inbound leads in the spot times and pair them up and you'll see what's working, what's not.
A
Okay.
B
And it'll all correlate right to the ga. Yeah. You'll see your direct and organic traffic spike. So your conversion percentage spike. Branded traffic.
A
So like TV ad goes live. Branded search went up within an hour.
B
Yep.
A
We feel good about that.
B
Feel good about that. Great.
A
For as in, like, that's a good thing to measure.
B
That's a good thing to measure. I like to look at 20 minutes.
A
Okay. So I increments or just like the.
B
First 20 as far as inbound leads match with TV commercial. So if I get a lead calling or filling out a form, fill within 20 minutes. That's usually my default. Now some clients say, Hey, 15 or I'll give you a half hour. That's debatable. If it's a bigger purchase, you know, I'm selling my home note. Maybe they need to see the commercial, research it a little bit before the call. So you might want to manipulate that. But 20 minutes is the standard and you'll be surprised. You run a week how many of the inbound leads are coming in, you know, pretty instantaneously, but within 10 minutes, 15 minutes for sure. And you know, we have clients that will turn over everything they try to source it. So I get the, I get a kick out of that when I'm seeing SEO. SEO has never driven a lead in its life. SEO is a safety net. You're there, you're playing defense. SEO is organic. Someone is searching you. No one just wakes up and says, I just feel like searching plumbers today. Someone has to drive them stimulus.
A
I mean I wake up like that.
B
You may, you may. Normal person does it.
A
Yeah.
B
So I mean, it's funny to you kind of see how last touch attribution funnels it and then how it correlates with traditional side.
A
Yeah.
B
And it drives the bus and it puts all those digital efforts on steroids.
A
Yeah, 100%. What else should I be measuring? That was an interesting one.
B
What's that? Just the ROI.
A
Yeah, I mean, well, first 20 minutes, like I think that's, that's really interesting. What else should I be thinking about?
B
So with TV and most traditional media, it is not your first soiree into marketing. So a, you have benchmarks.
A
As in like no one starts with tv.
B
No one really starts with tv. You're not going to start upon a company tomorrow and just say, hey, I'm rip into TV. 5, 10, 15.
A
Well, controversially, you know, we talked about this before the show, but everyone seems to like do that with billboards. And I literally don't get it. Like I perceive it as like, you.
B
Know, you get a high traffic Billboard, you're talking 5, 10k a month for some, some good areas. You pair that to five different billboards and adds up quick. Yeah, but it comes off, I think just if you're not really versed in the marketing world, seems like a relatively inexpensive way to, to dive into it. And it's not the case.
A
Yeah. So nobody starts with tv.
B
Wouldn't say nobody. But it's rare. It's rare for someone to come out and just start shelling thousands. I mean, you kind of. You go through the thumbtack and the Angie's List, and you go through. You work your way up. So you have benchmarks. You know, if I'm spending the same amount of money and I've allocated it this way, and I saw closing percentage go up, inbound leads go up. Things like just regular KPIs without even getting too grand. Or then you dive in deeper. What's your web traffic doing? My branded traffic going up. Is my direct traffic going up? Is my organic traffic going up? Good KPIs there. Then you can dive in even deeper. And, you know, the days where my commercials are running, is that going up? Are the zip codes where I'm running billboards, Are they going up again? Back to my main point. So many business owners have a call center that is taking notes and stamping when that lead comes in and then doing nothing with it.
A
Yeah.
B
You dive into that, and then, even better, pair it back to a TV campaign, a billboard campaign, and start connecting those dots. It makes it real easy to cut fat and reallocate what's working easy. And so that's the biggest one. And people look at me like, it's a great idea, but it's pretty simple. You just got to put in the legwork.
A
Yeah. So operationally, closing rate, average ticket. I think those were the two you maybe. Number of leads, like, number of calls.
B
So, yes, some. I mean, we've had success with clients that really didn't see a huge increase in the number of calls, but we've seen the closing percentage get through the roof. I mean, think about it. If they see you on tv, what's higher?
A
It's higher. Like, intent. Yeah. Less bid. We noticed that when we first went live on radio six months after we, you know, went live, which it feels like that's the time frame. Yeah, we notice that, like, closing rate went up and, like, higher. Organic search. But then the people, like, the people that were searching had already done their research, and it was like a more intimate buying experience versus, you know, LSA or Map Pack. Just serves you up next to the next guy that has close to as many reviews as you.
B
Yep.
A
And it is Yellow Pages. Yeah. Yeah.
B
And I mean, if you even take it another step further, especially if you want to talk about homeowners 65 plus, they see you on TV, they feel like there's a connection there. You're talking about you know you're going to run a tire shop.
A
It's.
B
You walk into Miss Betty's house down the street. They saw you on tv and you're this famous person. You come walking in, you're sold. Yeah. You're buying. You close at a way higher clip.
A
Yeah.
B
So. And then, you know, profitability, I mean, are they, are they shopping you?
A
Yeah.
B
Are you closing on the spot? All goes into it.
A
Yeah. Yeah. I do think there's a. I'm going to go back to your sentence. Like, nobody starts on tv. There is a credibility piece with tv. Yeah. It's like, oh, these guys are legitimate. Like, everyone in my church knows that I run Wilson Plumbing. I haven't got as many comments on, hey, I saw your stuff as when we first started doing tv. It's like, hey, nice ad. And I'm like, I don't even know you are. But, but it was, it was really interesting. So I think in the mind of anybody, you're much more legitimate.
B
Absolutely. You're, you're differentiating yourself. I mean, yeah.
A
What's expensive? It's real.
B
Yeah.
A
It's like, oh, this is a real thing.
B
Yeah. I mean, usually when you out, when you all grow the lead aggregators, you jump to traditional tv. I would emphasize to go to tv, but anything's better than that. But. And I always laugh. I mean, how did Angie build her business? By buying TV ads and selling them back.
A
Yeah.
B
So makes sense. Biggest TV advertisers across the country, Google, Facebook was on Amazon, making huge investments with Prime. Picking up football games.
A
Yep.
B
You know, so it's there, it's real.
A
Yeah. That's interesting. Walk me through OTT a little bit.
B
So OTT is it's called Connected TV. It's called Streaming TV, it's called OTT over the top and it is your Hulus, your YouTube, TVs, Netflix, Disney Plus. All of that is Disney has ads. It's considered OTT. Some of it has ads, some don't. So there's I must pay for the subscription feed.
A
I must pay for the bougie Disney.
B
So there' there's subscription based and then there's ad supported.
A
Interesting.
B
So ad supported is the one. I think all of these companies realize that when you start running out of content, people don't want to pay subscriptions anymore. So back to good old advertising supported platforms.
A
Yeah.
B
So you're seeing that with like the Netflix and you can hbo.
A
I wonder what the. Like, for those that are ad supported. I know Netflix added. I'm curious what they're I just want to know the revenue breakdown, right? Like if it's a billion dollars, is 400 million of it ads and 600 or I wonder if it's even 10%.
B
You know, it's a good question. I mean a lot of it still, especially when you buy the premium stuff, a lot of it is still getting cut off the top at what they call upfronts. So every year all the big advertising agencies, the national players, the regional players meet and then they gobble up a lot of the good inventory. So yeah, that usually isn't as publicly available information, but that's where a lot of their revenue's coming from. That it trickles down like a waterfall. And by the time it gets to somebody locally, it's hard to decipher where the best quality impressions are. But to your point, it's the wild west. Everybody sells it. There's a million different OTT providers out there. Every radio rep, TV rep, newspaper rep, billboard rep probably is pushing OTT on your face. It's the new shiny toy. I look at it as the best and worst thing to TV because TV has fixed broadcast, TV has fixed inventory. So when you see your national and regional guys pulling budget out of good old school TV and moving it over to the streaming platforms, pressure on inventory for just about every station of America drops that drops the rate. So now the entry level for your SMB goes down. They can clean up and use what the big boys were using for years to build their businesses. Yeah, yeah, well, yeah. So the good part of it is with broadcast TV we were talking about earlier, you are reaching the market. There is very little targeting outside of days times program types that you can target OTT exact opposite like 24,7 million different it's on demand viewing. So I want men 35 to 50 that live in these zip codes. You know that you can get very, very granular but you're paying for and.
A
That seems, yeah, that seems like the counter argument here is I think one of the challenges not even think everyone's challenge with conventional mass me like tv, radio is well, how do you measure it and how do we, how do we target? And I that seems to be the thing that people like about OTT or social is that hey, we can pick men 35 to 60 in these zip codes and we know exactly who's being served up our Yep. Versus like anybody that potentially turns on Fox in this hour.
B
Yeah, it's, it's a dangerous, it's a danger. I mean it depends on the category. Everybody has a toilet you know, only.
A
Yeah, they do.
B
35 to 40 are taking a dump. Then just target that.
A
Well, they do probably take more.
B
There's others out there. So if you, I mean, that's the biggest thing with old school media, specifically tv. For the most TV is your scale. If I put you in any market and get and said you can be in nine out of every 10 homes and I give you 30 seconds to do your sales pitch, you're going to close a lot of business. There's a million homes in some, in most markets.
A
Yeah.
B
So you're giving up a little bit of that targeting, but you're adding in the scale. It's a numbers game.
A
Yeah.
B
Especially I mean, roofing, H vac, plumbing, you again, you can compliment the broadcast in some zip codes that you want to hone in on, but I would think there's very few homes that couldn't use your service. So multiplying that out, reaching a million, 2 million people a month, you know, it's a numbers game.
A
Yeah, yeah. I'm really curious now. How many, how many we do what, what do you think it takes, what do you think it takes to like start? I'm a, I'm a plumber. I'm 5 million bucks of revenue. Like just TV in the cards for me. What, when do you think I should.
B
Start at that point? I mean, it depends on market, so.
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, let's do that.
B
Depends on market. You know, a mid market. Cleveland, for instance, you know, assuming you're using some kind of SBA recommended advertising percentage, so like 8 to 10% of revenue, that budget's probably, probably there. Again, it depends on the landscape, but.
A
Usually.
B
I'd say 7,500ish is probably the low end a month. For a smaller market, you get in the top 10.
A
It's actually not bad because when, you know, Covid, we were doing, we walked into 2020. 2020 was our first year on video and we were like 3.8 million at the end of 2019. And we're like, hey, we gotta do, gotta do this. I don't know why I thought we had to do this, but we did. And I think we started at seven grand a month. So seven doesn't feel bad at all.
B
No. And listen, that's entry level. That's enough to move the needle in most markets.
A
Yeah.
B
One of the things that we tell clients that sometimes get pushed back, but we stand behind it. Roughly 50% of your budget should be going to scale. Old school media. Ooh, 50% of the market.
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's the pushback either which way? Have you ever had anybody be like, dude, I need to do 80% towards it?
B
When people have been. When you build your business through lead aggregators and digital and then somebody, you plateau and even though you need help, you're still, I built my baby this way.
A
Yeah.
B
And now you're telling me to, you know, take a portion of it and move it.
A
Well, I mean, totally different game too, because I think, you know, back in, we had Ishmael Valdez on the show three months ago, four months ago. I mean, in 2020, if you walked into 2020, 20, 30 million dollar shop, you could walk out of 2023, 80 to 100, pure freaking digital. Like, it was a wild time. And like not even pure digital, but all lsa. It was the most ridiculous moment in home service advertising. So I do feel like everyone is still a little hungover because they were so freaking drunk on LSAs.
B
Yep. No, I'm, I'm with you. And you know, it's not that TV didn't work as good back there, but to your point, if you could maximize it and it's easy and it's less intimidating and it's slightly easier to track just because the last touch. Attribution. I get it, I get it. But now the game has changed.
A
Yeah.
B
Between all the reasons I mentioned before and then, you know, maxing out, you know, LSAs. Yeah. And PPC. So that's where I have a lot of, you know, home service clients that have thrown up their hands. Well, shit, what do I do now?
A
Yeah.
B
Well, take it back to the basics.
A
Yeah.
B
What is the basics of marketing? How can I get in front of as many potential clients as I can for the least amount of money with the most compelling message?
A
Yeah.
B
It's hard to beat video. We're lazy. Everybody. Everyone's going to read text, but you watch a video. Hard to beat the scale and CPM of tv. Even radios to a certain extent. But radio, the big thing with me is it's too fragmented and it's how you're consuming it. You're probably driving. You probably can't take action there. You're not in your home for home service company. You don't know. You aren't thinking about your plumbing and then seeing the ad at the same time, for the most part. So, yeah, not a huge believer there. I used to be. Not. Not as much anymore. So, yeah, so it's.
A
That's 7,500 bucks a month. What do you think? Like, how much should I be Thinking about what my. Like, who else is on TV around me?
B
How much like the competition.
A
Yeah.
B
You know, be aware. I mean, I pull media monitors in every market I go. And just so I'm aware of who I'm competing with and what they're buying.
A
But I think you should define that real quick because something that was interesting to me when we. I had no idea that you could just look like you can find out who's spending in your market and even roughly what they're spending, which was pretty interesting. Yeah.
B
So radio, tv, billboards, even billboards too, I believe. Billboards? Yeah.
A
Really? That's cool.
B
There's different companies that do it, but it's a medium line, so. Yeah. All these people, they'll send in their generic rate card.
A
Okay.
B
And then they have like, stations. Yeah. So they're. How they price. Either their radio station, their TV stations, their billboards, generally speaking.
A
And it's going to be like CPM or like. Is that it?
B
No, it's not even cpm. It's just. Hey, for the new news, we charge roughly $300. So anytime that their software or monitors see a commercial run in the new news, they just apply $300.
A
Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay.
B
So they exist. Usually one of the vendors in every market will have it. You can even subscribe yourself. So it's good.
A
How much is it?
B
If I wanted to subscribe, I never really even acquired. Typically you can go to a good rep in a market and say, you know, give me the. All the AG stations.
A
Yeah, who's on here?
B
Yeah, so be aware. We always take that consideration. But I'm at the mindset where you're not competing with others. You compete. You want the growth, you want the market share. So, I mean, we had an example about a year ago. There's a competitive market. I think it was legal again, weirdly enough.
A
But legal spends, bro.
B
Legal spends. They're caseload driven, they're lead driven. It's very similar to home service.
A
It is. It's like legal dentist plumbing.
B
And what do they have in common? They have very broad customer bases, so scale was key.
A
Yeah.
B
That's where TV comes into play. But he saw one of his biggest competitors pull back and came to us and was like, should I pull back?
A
Oh, interesting.
B
Hell no. There. I mean, if okay comes, that would.
A
Be kind of fun to know. Like. Like we're in the middle of Trump tariff week.
B
Yeah.
A
Like, what happened? You know, I'm, I, I'm, I don't. I, I just want to know. I would be Fascinated with what? Like, yeah, did my market pull back? Oh, because you always, you always wonder, right. Like, you always wonder like, hey, some macro thing happened. Because I remember in Covid like the reason we actually did radio was I, I, our old accountant used to work at the radio station and she said, hey, all these guys dropped off and they're selling it cheap. And I was like, oh, really? And then we ended up securing the most ridiculous price point in history and we have kept that same price point for six years because everybody else pulled out and they just had inventory. Yep. Oh, I bet it's, I bet it's weird this week. Have you noticed anything?
B
Not much. I mean some categories like automotive, I don't know if ever really came back fully post pandemic. So I think was starting to get close to normal. And then you hit this and now you have, you know, autos really affected.
A
I mean furniture. Yeah, I mean, yes, but no.
B
I mean usually unless you're a private label, I mean you, you typically have suppliers that are us based really or you know, Amish in our neck of the woods. You can, you can, you could find and get around it. And I look at it as an opportunity. Hey, if I can get my product in here without passing it along, the consumer, sure, I'm going to go scream that from the mountains and you know, tell people to. Now is there hold back just generally with the way the market is and consumers.
A
Maybe it's a once a month reporting. It's not tight, the medium longer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like could I, could I be like, hey, what happened in the last 10 days?
B
There's a, there's a lag. But you can, you can filter it by time, you can get it monthly, but there is a lag for them to go through it.
A
Yeah. That's sick.
B
Yeah.
A
I'm real curious now.
B
Yeah, no, absolutely. And it's really helpful to know where they're at. I mean if you're owning this station.
A
Yeah.
B
And somebody's on there, I mean there's two, you know, wavelengths there. I want to go dominate his.
A
Yeah.
B
Or I'm going to defend mine or hybrid of the two. So it's good to know where it's at. But when people back off, I look at that as cheap market share. Oh yeah, you're going to steal your market share now. Yeah.
A
100.
B
Have fun saving your money.
A
Yeah. In, in the scenario you just described, like I own this station, I'm gonna, I'm gonna pull it from radio. So again, we've been on the same station for five years and at this point we own that station. Like we've been on there for five years. Everybody knows we've been on there for five years. We're on there a lot for five years. And I'll occasionally hear like I don't listen very often but I'll occasionally hear other companies on there. And I'm like, that just seems odd. It seems like a weird decision. Like I clearly own the station. What are you going for here?
B
Yeah. With, with radio, they're probably the most say hoe, like but they're, they're hoes. They're desperate for money.
A
Okay. I love that.
B
So if they can piggyback two plumbers back to back for a buck, they're going to do it. I mean there's no competitive sep at all.
A
I totally get that they're hoes. I'm on board for that. Let's keep every second of that but.
B
Them conquesting your territory.
A
Yeah. Like if should I be doing that? So if I see somebody like, so I think in our market somebody really is like doing big on Fox. Like should I just avoid Fox or should I attack Fox?
B
I, I'm an aggressive dude so I'm going to say conquest those guys. Yes, absolutely. Conquest that.
A
Yeah.
B
Foot on throat, let's go.
A
Okay.
B
There could be another side done to that and obviously it's a conversation with whoever's handling your marketing. But yeah, no, I'm, I tend to, if I can steal market share or steal some of your business, I'm going to do it every time. And typically if you have the right guys in your corner buying your tv, being strategic, you can usually buy it for less and outsmart them. Make $1 work. Like three. Yeah. Good old fashioned street fight on the Fox network.
A
Yeah. Yeah. Like what do you think that looks like?
B
What's that?
A
I think most people that are listening, like we have the unique advantage of being the largest in our market. So that's not obviously the case for most people listening. So if they weren't the largest in their market and they had 800 pound gorilla on something. So own.
B
Own one channel either one channel. But doesn't have to be one channel. But just don't be too much, don't be, don't spread it too thin. All right.
A
So don't shock them.
B
Find your efficiencies. Find your areas that are going to move the needle. Own as much as you can of those areas that are within your budget. Is that there's math to that? I mean we have metrics that we Are kind of secret sauce behind the scenes. We plot it and see. Okay, well we've maxed this out so we can expand in the program 2 or 3 or channel 2 or 3, but own something and then expand out from there. When, when most of our clients come on TV within the 90 days, it's not am I going to stay on, it's where can I expand to so.
A
That in channel wise. So like I start on Fox to own it and I want to move to what, NBC or.
B
Yeah, it's. It's different in every market or like.
A
Same, same channel, different segments. Like I want to be on morning and evening news. Like what do you mean by the expand part?
B
So this would be difficult to do if you're direct, if you're handling your own advertising.
A
Okay.
B
If you're just a business owner, this will be very hard to do because you're going to be presented each station to come in with a package and they want all your budget and this, that and the other.
A
Yeah, yeah.
B
When you work with somebody like an advertising agency like us, we will put every program and every station side by side and compare it. But not even so much channel by channel. But just where are the efficiency? Usually it'll follow one, there's an 800 pound gorilla. Some markets have two, some market F3 competitions. But you'll see not only where the audience is, but then back to cpm. Hey, I don't care if you have the number one ratings in this program. If you're four times the cpm, somewhere that's a little more efficient. So it really does vary. But typically this is somewhere. You know, I hate to keep going down, you know, the TV avenue but you know, news and sports is really the new tv.
A
Yeah, totally.
B
So find some newscasts for home service company Home Run. Find some newscasts usually.
A
What's home Run?
B
Like just Goldmind.
A
Oh, okay.
B
I mean when you're local, the local news audience is somebody who owns a home for the most part, has a family.
A
Yeah.
B
Wants to know what traffic is.
A
You know what's been kind of funny about like being on tv? And this is, this is back to like the measuring and like finding out who else is spending. Like plumbing is like kind of a. It's a red industry. Like everyone's pubs. Right. And it was, it was really funny because when we started finding out like where other people spent like I think they only spent where their brain was. Everybody was on Fox.
B
Yeah.
A
And it was, I don't know, that was just like a. I just remember that a second ago, like there was like 50 people on Fox and there was like two guys on ABC or whatever.
B
There are a lot of ways to do all marketing, really. But tv wrong. You can make a lot of fatal errors. You can get ripped off very quickly.
A
Yeah.
B
You have a good sales team and high ratings. You'll gobble up all, all of that money where, you know, it might be worth, you know, stripping the second and third PlayStation and reaching as many people for less.
A
Yeah.
B
So there's, there's a strategy behind it.
A
Yeah. That's funny. How do you think I just want to keep going back to billboards? Because I actually, I just really don't understand it. There's a, there's a company we looked at buying maybe two years ago.
B
Okay.
A
And good size company. 5 million or 6 million or like you know, in that, in that zone and full 10% marketing budget, 500 grand, which, like, that's a lot of money. Like to me that sounds like a lot of money. And 150 of it was going to billboards and like nothing. Nothing else.
B
Yeah.
A
I think billboards have to have a place. Like it has to work.
B
Yeah.
A
Somehow.
B
Yeah.
A
Like, what's your argument for, like, hey, if you're doing xx, billboards can make sense.
B
I'm admittedly not a huge billboard guy, however, I agree they do have its place.
A
Yeah.
B
I look at it more as a branding tool and you know, my stance on that. It's for cattle.
A
Cattle. Got it.
B
So.
A
And I'm not John Dutton, what am I doing?
B
Um, but to me, the best way to use billboards is either if it make, if you're getting co op or there's co op available, you max it out. So if you're getting co op for billboards. Absolutely do that.
A
Yeah.
B
But then also to make your presence, if there's zip codes that you want to own, you know, buy your billboards or bus shelter strategically in those zip codes or maximize your presence. Your HQ is in, you know, an area, but you may be in the building, can't see it. I believe we'll buy it.
A
Yeah.
B
So there's ways to maximize and be strategic, but to take that much of the budget and just go on billboards which really aren't legion.
A
Yeah.
B
Yeah. No, good luck. That's not going to work well.
A
Yeah. What I kind of liked the idea of, I like the idea that everything is the same thing. So I'm going to walk you through it. Curious what your feedback is here, but. So I think my tv, radio, billboards, mailers, website, socials should match. So if I'm running a campaign, like we have a campaign going, I think, I think in like two weeks it starts going. It's for like summer acs. Acs. Buy your ACS for me. Yeah. Here in Ohio. I think Ohio Heat is the campaign we're calling it did our shots. We're going to use roughly the same script for radio. We're going to take the actors, put them on billboards, we're going to do mailers with it. We're going to run like clippets for socials and change the banner on our website. So to me I feel like as a package it makes sense. Do you have any pushback for me on this?
B
I think all your marketing should work together. So the uniformed brand again, your branding while you're lead gen that non negotiable home run. I keep saying home run. Now that you're coming out of home run, gold mine. Whatever you want.
A
Yeah, well, yeah, when you first said it I was like, oh, this is some jargon. I don't know.
B
No, yeah, it's a super cool tv.
A
Yeah, yeah. No, there's only one way to find out. Here's my cell.
B
So in that part of it, yes, I do think that for the most part a lot of agencies and I'm not even sure how this all stemmed.
A
Okay.
B
But a lot of agencies are quote unquote marketing experts or again fractional CMOs. They like to shy away from ROI and judgment by just spraying everywhere and just hoping that something works. I'm a big proponent of dial in what's working. So you don't necessarily need to be in all those places but your budget, you might be able to maximize them all. But to your main point, uniform all day. I mean I even push back. I'm not anti vanity number or call tracking number. But if you're going to run an ad pushing your phone number.
A
Yeah, yeah. That's a tough way to use three seconds. It's a tough way.
B
You know an older person and I'm see a different number than the one I half wrote down but forgot And I'm on Google. Yeah, it gets confusing. QR codes, Come on.
A
Yeah.
B
I mean when's the last time you ever took your phone out and scanned a QR code on the tv?
A
Absolutely haven't. I also think potentially a misunderstanding of like what the purpose is. Now you're going to. I think you have a different perspective than I do on tv. I think it's. Yeah, the phone number is a bad use and like if we look at it as a whole. Like how can our, how can our TV and our mass media accelerate our are digital? Like how can we get them onto our website and how can we convert there in like a more controlled environment? I feel like that's the whole point. So like, why waste time on the phone number? I, I don't really, I don't really get it.
B
Yeah. I mean there's still a small portion that, that will call it. That doesn't hurt to be there. But to your point, I'm driving. Phone number A, it gives you more KPIs and more ammo for optimization. Yeah. B, most people are going to do that anyway. So people go where they're invited. So invite them there.
A
Oh, I like that. That's a good line.
B
Absolutely. If you want someone to do something, tell them to do it.
A
Yeah, yeah.
B
Go to my website. Yeah. Go to this page for the best specials for AC tune ups.
A
Subscribe below.
B
See that?
A
Like my video.
B
So invited. So. Yeah, no, so I mean, again, I'm not. I have clients that really want a, you know, a vanity number. But I'll tell them straight up, like, who's going to call that? I worked around marketing and TV a long time. I probably called the number on the screen, you know, one, one hand. I could probably count the time. It's hard. Yeah.
A
I mean, I don't, you know, but I think everyone's. Yeah. I'm sitting there with my phone.
B
Companion viewing. Wilson, Wilson. Boom. Done here. Go.
A
Yeah, so that's interesting. All right, so some I want to cover because I think it's just you approach this differently than I do. So I'm like. And you're smarter than me.
B
So like the first, first time I heard that.
A
Well, it's recorded to you show your wife. Walk me through Legion TV lead gen tv. I mean, you've talked a lot about how like, hey, branding's for cattle and most people are going to approach mass media, me included. Branding first. We actually attempt literally the opposite. Like our goal with our mass media isn't to drive leads at all. It's to take over mind share. So like you can do it too. Tell me how I'm wrong and tell me how we can be driving leads more effectively.
B
So when you deal with scale, you're. You're approaching it in a different way.
A
Okay.
B
So I'm a big believer that 1% of the market is in the market at any given time. So 1% of the market is going to need a plumber.
A
All right, so 1% of the people that could need an H vac replacement.
B
Or an H vac replacement, they're out there. So on every other medium you're trying to handle the Spear and sorry, I.
A
Just want to double click on that really quick so I understand it. So it's, it's of the people that actively need the service or that could.
B
Ever need the service, that somebody needs.
A
Your service, whether you're a roofer of my market.
B
Yeah.
A
All right, so if I have, there's 1.6 million people that are homeowners with the correct income, like enough income to afford my services in our service area. So in your mind, 116,000 of them at any moment are letting me do.
B
Math on the fly. But yes, to your point? No, absolutely.
A
Yeah. I'm just making sure I understand that. That's an interesting way to think.
B
It's an interesting way to think about it. And it's total. The, the thought process is totally different than digital. Digital. You're with Spear, you're hunting, you're.
A
Yeah.
B
Defense, you're there when they need you.
A
What's bottom?
B
Bottom.
A
Bottom. You're catching that search. Totally, totally.
B
Top funnel. I'm throwing a big ass net and I'm telling them, here's who I am, here's what I want you to do and here's a reason to do it. And you know, that's why I say lead gen tv, you got to have a call to action. It could be as little as you think. It could be three estimates.
A
Yeah.
B
It could be financing, it could be a tune up special. There needs to be a hook that's going to make me go from I should call them to I'm going to call them or I should go on the website or I'm going to go on the website and speak to that 1% who right now could be swayed.
A
Yeah, dude, I'm super into that.
B
Yeah.
A
That's interesting.
B
Absolutely.
A
What do you think, like, quality of content? I feel like there's a lot there.
B
So I kind of. Are you talking about just the commercial itself? Like how hot?
A
Yeah, like, you know, most people in plumbing, they know radiant. So like radiant plumbing. They're awesome. The team down there is great. They're in Austin, Texas and like they went viral with some of their like videos and they're freaking hilarious. Like they're good and it's like, I mean it's just like pure comical but like it drove some real stuff.
B
Yeah.
A
And then obviously on the other side of that you'll have like car commercial style. So like There's a guy in our market, he has 10 locations. I don't actually know how much revenue, but it's like him with a plunger and he's just like, hey, I can fix your toilet.
B
Yeah.
A
Pretty low quality stuff.
B
So like, so it's a balancing act. Yeah. So I think, you know, I slammed some agencies for pushing digital for profit. I do the same thing with production a lot of time.
A
Okay.
B
It is a profit cash cow for most production. Sure, sure, sure. But I think it's a fine line. I mean, we do business with home service companies that their HQ is a rusty shed. I'm exaggerating a little bit, but your TV commercial is your showroom. That's how you're perceived. So you want to put your brand on something that is going to portray how you want to be.
A
Okay.
B
At the same time, I see people spending 20, 30, $40,000 on this cinematic.
A
Yeah, yeah.
B
Commercial. Listen, as a, as a agency that is trying to drive ROI and it's trying to prove ROI for TV and everything else that we're touching, you're putting me behind the eight ball by 30 grand if you do that.
A
Oh, yeah, sure.
B
You can get a decent spot cut for little to no money in most cases.
A
Yeah. Like, what do you think?
B
Oh, I mean, we have tons of clients that will work in as part of the deal with the station. Hey, if. Even though, even though I was gonna.
A
Buy this and like my, my push, it might be pushback, but that would be a low quality ad and it.
B
Depends on your guidance and the collateral that you have as well.
A
Okay.
B
You have a brand guide if you have like a good logo. If you have.
A
Who's gonna have a brand guide if.
B
I, I weirdly get a lot of brand guys sent to me that honestly.
A
Is actively blocking my freaking man.
B
Because somebody's never show me your marketing because I'm like, has a brand guide because they need an internship there for the summer and it's just like some. Yes, I get those a lot, weirdly enough.
A
That's wild.
B
Which I thought the exact same thing I'm gonna have to chase down Joe Plummer for. Maybe I'm just like, that's not a PDF. Yeah, I'm getting brand guides sent to me.
A
I think what I consistently find, like, the older I get is that I'm actually just dumber than I think I am because, like, there's a bunch of stuff that we just did very late. Yeah, like, it's like, you know what? Dudes don't get their frontal cortex developed to their 25, I think. Right. Isn't it?
B
Mine's still coming in.
A
Yeah, those apparently same. Like, we just started budgeting and like, we'll do $30 million, like this year and this is the first year we've ever budgeted. And like brand guide. I'm pretty sure we got done last year.
B
Yeah, yeah. No, it's. It's up there, but you don't need it. But what I found is. It does. I mean, listen, there's a noticeable difference when you pay, but to the. There's. Like I said, it's a balancing act.
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
B
It depends what you're doing, what you want to come off, but you can do it relatively cheap. All right.
A
So you don't have your startups especially.
B
Overproduced now you're a brand here, so, I mean, you can't put your name on something that's not. Yeah, but if I'm just starting out, I've only done billboards.
A
Yeah.
B
And I don't want to skew my ROI assessment by shelling out $10,000 for my 30.
A
Yeah.
B
No, I'm going to work. We can usually steer you and write the script for you.
A
Yeah.
B
And say B roll stock images, green screen shoot. You can make them pretty good now. I mean, there's AI out there that can make spots.
A
Well, that. That was actually. My next question is, like, there has to be AI to do this if.
B
You don't want to be on screen. You can get a commercial done by AI which is weirdly good for like.
A
Like, do you know of any names of.
B
They're popping up left and right.
A
I have one, so just.
B
Probably just was poking around on. I can't think of the name off top of my head, but they're out there. Just Google them. Yeah, but you still need to have kind of the framework belt. You have to guide it. Here's what I want to say. Here's the. There still needs to be that proven flow, but can it do that heavy lifting the production side of it and making HD quality spots by just pulling images and stuff off the Internet.
A
That's wild.
B
And adding a voiceover that sounds just like me and you talking right now. It's. It's insane.
A
Huh.
B
For like 100 bucks or less, you know, just.
A
That's crazy.
B
But flip side of that, you can't film yourself. And now, whether we want to admit it or not, some of us have. You guys won't be on the screen, so I get that too.
A
I have a huge ego. I started a whole Podcast just.
B
Hey, it's your brand. If you're the brand, you're the brand.
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that. Yeah, that is interesting. Now, I want to check this out. We've been doing. We've been doing, like, conventional. So the first one we did. Well, actually, the very first time we were on TV was 2020. And what we did was. I'm pretty sure we hired someone off of upwork. It was 400 bucks, and they gave us, like, an illustrated movie. Okay, okay. He doesn't like this.
B
When. Is it, like, the whiteboard things or.
A
No, no, no, it wasn't. No, it wasn't. No, it wasn't. That. I still can't believe. All right, guys, if you're still doing that, it's 2020. It's time to move on. But no, it was like a cartoon. It was a cartoon. So it was like a fake plumber walking in and, like.
B
Okay.
A
Water blowing everywhere. And it was a thing. It was custom. Whatever. That was the first time we were on tv. Give me a thought here.
B
If you're just starting on tv, you don't. You don't get to play yet. You got to just get the chase.
A
Is that playing?
B
I didn't see it, but, I mean, here's me, here's my brand. Here's why you should call me.
A
Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Interesting.
B
I look at marketing sometimes as three phases. So you got to. You got to enter it and conquest. And then you're defending. Once you are that name, you got to defend your territory.
A
Was that all three?
B
No. And then the third is dominate.
A
Enter.
B
There's usually another adjective I use from drawing a blank, but, yes, you're entering the market, then you have to defend your turf. The market's trying to catch up. They're punching back. That's where you can be a little. Stage two is really where you can start to have fun. You can start to do some things that differentiate, like, funny, weird shit, keeps your brand fresh, that someone isn't going to say the exact same thing and try to steal your share. And then three is where you're. You're. You know, you're going out there. You're competing with the Nationals. You're competing with Angie yourself. You're not just competing with, you know, Wilson 2.0 down the street.
A
Yeah.
B
So I think.
A
I think we're in stage two.
B
You're in stage two. You're in stage two. Approaching three. You could probably take some swings at three if you want. You want to fight Angie?
A
What do you think that looks like?
B
I mean, you're morphing to a regional man. So I mean, no, that's our active.
A
Project is, we're prepping to go regional.
B
Yeah.
A
It is interesting to like your friend. Yeah, it's interesting to. It's an interesting mindset shift.
B
Yeah.
A
I'm just like, hey, who, who's, who am I actually competing against? And like, what, what should I be thinking about and caring about going regionals? Like a total regional.
B
I mean, you're, you're taking a swing at yourself in every market. I mean, there's one tent pole.
A
Yeah, yeah.
B
Market.
A
Yeah.
B
And then you're also dealing with the lead aggregators.
A
Yeah, yeah.
B
And then you have to really focus on efficiencies because using the SPEAR approach, the high CPM approach, one to one approach doesn't play well when you're showing it out times five.
A
Yeah, yeah. Our goal next year. And we're still like thinking through how to, how to do it. We're at the end of the year, we're either going to acquire someone, so if you want to be bought, give me a call. So we're going to acquire somebody or we're going to launch a new market in like about an hour away. Hour, hour and a half away. And we have like four choices. Two are my favorites and we're really thinking hard about like, what does that, what does that look like? We talked to some people that are a step or two ahead of us. One of the advantages of having a podcast, you get to bring on smart people and grill them just like this. How they enter the market is just like, wow, are we actually ready to do that? So they'll go into these markets and this is like eco and Columbus and Aaron's awesome and his team is awesome. And they're like really delivering and they're, they'll just start off in a market and spend 80 grand a month and like, period. That's it. And like mass media, billboards, like just freaking blow it up for 36 straight months.
B
I'm a big, I'm a big proponent of the, the jail courtyard approach. Find the biggest dude and punch him in the face. Just come out swinging. Okay, Again, that's where you got, you got to have your efficiency. So hey, I want to make a splash tomorrow. How do I do it? Reaching hundreds of thousands of people a time. Billboards, tv. The only thing I'll say here though, if you're multi market digital, generally speaking, you can cut and paste when you get in traditional media. Every market has nuances.
A
Oh really?
B
Billboard locations Change. Radio formats are popular and less popular. TV dynamics change with audience flow.
A
Like, yeah, walk me through it. Like, why is that different?
B
You know, Good morning America and Cleveland, you know, maybe the ABC station here sucks, but you know, in Erie, it's, you know, the ABC is the gorilla. So they're ready to. I mean, there's just little nuances where you can't just say, here's my schedule that I run in Cleveland. Go Denver. You know, it just. There's different things to it. So on the traditional side especially, you.
A
Have to be like station driven.
B
Nuances. Yes. Stations, programs. You know, there's markets that are better for billboards than others. And there's some. It's an inventory play. So you have, you know, cities that really monitor and limit the locations of billboards and how many billboards are out there. Then all of a sudden those, those prices go up. You have, you have markets that, you know, I don't know if you have it here, Lamar. It's monopoly. Oh, yeah, 90%.
A
I'm pretty sure they. Yeah, they're right. That's a check we deal with.
B
Here's what you're going to pay me. So if you have some other secondary players, that drops the price down a little bit.
A
Yeah.
B
And then digital at home, there's a lot of homes catching on. It's taking a chunk out of it.
A
What is that?
B
You know, your ability to get on gas station pumps?
A
Oh, sure, yeah, yeah, yeah.
B
So that's.
A
Yeah. Like, what is that? Is that good?
B
It's not bad. It's way easier than a billboard, which, you know, depending on the billboard, my gas station be locked into a year contract by owning a marquee billboard where I can buy a digital one down the street for a CPM based buy, like digital ad.
A
Yeah. Are those more expensive or less? The digital ones?
B
They're say a little less.
A
Just because there's no printing.
B
A little less. I mean, again, you're giving up scale. I mean, if you're buying a giant billboard on the turnpike, you're going to get all of that. Even though they're not quality impressions, you're still getting all that eye traffic where a gas station pump, unless it's like the best sheets or walla ever, is not getting that kind of kind of traffic flow.
A
But actually that would be kind of a funny way to like recruit. Like specifically Sheets. Dude. Plumbers love sheets. Now you sheets.
B
Yes. And even you want to talk. I talked about why radio sucks. Where radio is good. Is that is recruitment. That's a Good recruitment tool because where are you listening to it? Driving job to job.
A
I feel like sports talk shows would kill for that.
B
Engage listening.
A
Yeah, Yeah. I had this guy. This was years ago. I'm sure guys do it now still. But, like, one specific guy, he would listen to eight straight hours of sports talk shows a day, and I'm like, bro, are you good? Like, that's crazy.
B
I mean, I'm the same way. I listen to. If I listen to AM fm, it's sports talk radio, and then it's either Spotify or series.
A
Okay.
B
Or yes, sir.
A
I'm gonna ask a dumb question, like, what actually is sports talk radio?
B
It's just like.
A
They're just talking about, like, the game that happened game.
B
You know, drafts coming up for the.
A
NFL and there's enough content.
B
Oh, it gets repetitive.
A
Okay, okay. But I'm like, how.
B
I mean, I know we're going down complete, you know, side roads here, but I mean, if you're a gambler, you know, gambling legalized, so a lot of gamble ramifications. I think that's part of the reason why.
A
So that's like viewing where you start changing sports. Okay.
B
But that part of it, especially depending on your market. But usually there's a loyal fan base. So typically within the time of year. I mean, I would think the Cleveland Indians up here, pretty. Pretty big subject now. I want to be on.
A
Yeah.
B
On the guest. If I'm a fan, I'm not, but if I was a fan, I'd want them here. But where talk radio, not even necessarily sports talk. Right. It could be news radio as well.
A
Okay.
B
Any talk radio, I am invested in the conversation. If I'm listening, it's intimate.
A
It's. I mean, it's like a podcast. Like a podcast is an intimate experience.
B
So I'm less likely to flip over a channel when it goes to commercial. Essentially, how I look at it, if I'm on Hits 1 and they go to commercial, I'm flipping the hit.
A
Yeah.
B
Or not listening at all.
A
But yeah.
B
That I. They tease. I wait, I listen to the commercial, I come back and hear the rest of the conversation.
A
Yeah.
B
Either it's politics, news, sports, you name it.
A
Does it have, like, higher CPMs or. I haven't looked.
B
Not. I mean, it depends on the audience. It's really not as much about talk versus not talk. It's. Is the audience there?
A
Yeah.
B
If. If it's a dominant show that is well sold, then the CPM goes up. It could be a dominant show that's not well sold. And The CPM will be lower.
A
Do you feel like in media buying, I think there's a, there's a delicate balance of like CPS driving and like is it the right or sorry, CPM driving and like, is it the right audience? Like is there ever an argument for just like what is the literal cheapest way to get to a million people? I'm going to give you a scenario.
B
Go ahead.
A
This is a scenario that somebody gave to me.
B
Is there a cheapest way to get to a million people?
A
Like should you just always optimize for the cheapest way for the maximum amount of eyeballs?
B
Not necessarily. Not necessarily. If you just want to reach a million people, I mean buy a Super bowl commercial, be done. But that's. You don't have the frequency. Nobody is.
A
Oh yeah, we didn't even spot during yet. Yeah.
B
You know, I love sports, but you're going to get a very low return. That's not, that's not stage one for an @ home service company. If you're expecting the fundraiser, I am not stopping watching the game because I want to call you. Right, right. That's where first off, your friend.
A
Hurtful.
B
No offense. Yeah, I will next time.
A
Thank you.
B
Thank you. But news. I will. So, okay, so it really depends on your goals. If you just want to reach a million people. Here's a Super bowl commercial. You reached 80% of the market. In 30 seconds, you're done. But very rarely will that succeed. Yeah, there's a balance to it. Again, reach frequency, cpm. That all goes into it. Program makeup type. Generally speaking, the Price is Right is great during the daytime if you want that older crowd. Generally speaking, Good Morning America and Today's show are great options for an affluent woman.
A
And those are just like nationwide. Both of those are nation. Okay.
B
But they have their like they have.
A
Easy to identify in any market.
B
Yeah, usually there's some version. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean those programs are in every market. Those are, Those are either NBC's CBS or ABC controlled station or programs. But there's similarities. Like so I'm saying there's nuances and maybe that's they suck. But generally speaking, Jeopardy. Wheel of Fortune it that actually bounces around on different stations depending on the market you're in. But like the number one show with any demo with a plus behind it, 25 plus, 35 plus, it's like the number one show in most markets.
A
Wheel of Fortune.
B
Wheel of Fortune in Jeopardy. Still around. Sajak's gone, Trebek's gone. Still kicks.
A
That's amazing.
B
So so yeah, like prime time. Prime time's completely changed. There has been a huge shift back to what I said earlier. I mean a lot of people have taken a lot of the bigger national players took money away from the good old bread and butter and that's where a lot of people are cleaning up. Prime is now wide open. Late fringe is wide open.
A
Wide open. Isn't like anybody can advertise inventory level.
B
Again, an inventory from pressure.
A
Inventory drops. Prime tv. Not Amazon Prime. Like Prime Time.
B
No, Amazon Prime. They try to flex on their CPMs. Okay, we'll come back to reality. But like prime time and not necessarily want to be there. And then you also got to think, when are people going to call me?
A
Yeah.
B
Am I going to call a plumber at 8:30 at night watching SVU or some fire show, whatever that new show is? I just saw a teaser for. No. So you know, when am I prone to call? Probably during regular call hours. Maybe I'm just doing. And that's where creative ties. And maybe you're promoting emergency service after 6.
A
Yeah, yeah. Well, we have this like website pricing tool that you can price a system. We, we get like a lot of hits on it at post 8pm yeah.
B
And that.
A
So maybe that's like an argument for that sort of. Because nobody seems to want that slot. Or is that still prime time? What's prime time?
B
Prime time is 8:00 to 11:00pm Generally speaking.
A
Oh, I would be. I would be in prime time.
B
Yeah.
A
Is that bad?
B
What's that prime like?
A
Is it.
B
If you're running. Not anymore. I mean it's expensive, but the price has come down significantly. I mean when you think back, if you're. I mean, I'm in my late 30s, you think back to the TGIFs of the world, destination TV. I'm gonna sit down on Friday night.
A
Yeah.
B
Lineup. Because I like Boyd meets World or stuff like that. These days are gone.
A
Yeah.
B
If you're gonna watch shows like that, you're watching it on a streaming device.
A
Yeah.
B
Where it shifted as news and things like that. There's still a lot of people there, but not as nearly as it was. But to your point, like what you just said about that online pricing tool. Even going back into your biggest asset, which is your CRM data. It's conversations like this, like if we get some of our best creative and best call to actions by talking to business owners and getting their input. Hey, what are you seeing? Yeah, we had a real estate guy, a home buyer seller. Hey, I'm getting a lot of pushback because they think they have to take away all of the furniture and stuff that they leave. I'll take care of that for you. Right into the spot. Yeah, that's lights up.
A
Yeah.
B
I mean it's that correspondence back and forth. That and your boots on the ground. So, you know. Yeah, that can move the needle as well. So don't be.
A
I think that's been a big learning curve for us.
B
Yeah.
A
With like, the more we've spent, I. We started working a lot more with like lead aggregators. Angie's List, thumbsat, thumbtack, modernize. Like, the more we get into it, we, we didn't really know we had to provide feedback. We were just sort of like, okay, like we, we did the thing again.
B
You have an outgrown lead aggregator. You still, like, you're still heavily invested.
A
So our marketing mix right now is we spend it ramps and changes. In May, we are adding billboards. I think it's bad.
B
I'm not saying nothing's bad.
A
I have my own opinions and I'm still doing it. But. So like right now we spend 160 grand a month. It jumps up to 1 80, I think in May. And like just Q1's like tough time. So we, we, you know, ramped in to spend. So. But currently the way it works is 70 grand a month is lead generation spend. That used to be my entire marketing budget was the 70 grand and it was all lead generation spend. And then we've just been consistently adding on and on and on. So 70 grand is legion. And of that legion, half of that's LSA and the other half is a bunch of random shit. Lead aggregators, I mean a lot of lead aggregators then 20 to 25 grand a month is events and that includes salaries. So that's like we do door knocking. We do events.
B
Dude.
A
Roas is good. Like, it's been really interesting. Like we sold it cost gate cost 20 grand a month. Just said that. And we, we did 181 in sales off of Venice leads last month.
B
Home shows, things of that nature.
A
Yeah, home shows not door to door yet because it was snowing, but like we'll start door to door again here shortly. Like it's out of the 8th of the month and we're 90 grand into the month on event leads. It's really good. So that's been really interesting. So that puts us at 95. We spend 40 on mass media and that is going to be 30 on T30 combined of TV OTT. I think it's like 25. 5. And then we spend 7 on radio. Like 37. What's that give me? 2, 130, 135. And then the back 15, 20 is we include marketing salaries inside the budget. And then we have a bunch of softwares and like tools like our, you know, we have a tool that costs two grand a month and that's how we text all our people every day basically. So yeah, it's still a big part of our budget because like we think of marketing as like two very different buckets of hey, how do I solve my problem nine months from now? And that's like brand, that's tv. That's like making the phone ring nine months from now. And how do I solve it today? And that's lead generation.
B
Yeah, no, we, well I think we have different. One day we'll hash this out. But I would break down that wall. TV is lead generation.
A
Yeah, break it down.
B
Break down that wall. So again.
A
Yeah. How do I, like how do you think I do it? Like how do you. What does lead generation TV look like?
B
Lead generation.
A
Call now and you get thousand bucks off an air conditioner. Like is that it?
B
Yeah.
A
All right.
B
But then dial it back. High call volume days, certain programs.
A
Yeah.
B
Scale making sure that CPM is attractive. I mean, I'm really surprised. Usually once a custom, once a service client gets over, you know, three to five mil, they're dialing back lead aggregators because it's more hassle than it's worth. They don't close. They just, it's, you know, she's taking tv.
A
Oh no, see, you are right about that.
B
Yeah.
A
But you add it back in.
B
You add. So you got out of it right through and now just, you have.
A
Well, you add it back in. So like first 3 million bucks you're looking for leads anywhere you can find it. So you're turning on everything. The problem is you don't have a sophisticated sales program. You don't have trained salespeople. You don't have a good follow up process. You don't have like the mechanisms to drive a sales forward business. So you stop closing those leads or you can't rehash them as quick. But like Angie's lead, if, if you're an owner and you're doing 2 million bucks and you get a lead off Angie's List, you're going to beat the fuck out of that thing because it costs you 150 bucks. But if it goes to your call center team and you're a $5 million shop, they're not going to beat the fuck out of that lead. So you lose it and you wasted 150 bucks. But at 20 million, 25 million, 30 million, whatever, you have enough of a tech stack that you rebuild the process in and lead ags become a pretty important part of the year.
B
So you're saying I acknowledge the lead isn't as good, but now I'm staffed enough and, and trained optimoft.
A
Yeah, trained enough. And like, what are we willing to accept? Right. So like if I'm a, if I'm an owner and I'm a small shop, I don't have the budget to around and, but for us and, and they're only looking at like, I'll see this on Facebook groups a lot. Oh, Angie's List never works because the leads are all bad. Probably like, honestly, probably a lot of them are bad. But if you get a sit rate of 4 out of 10, that's pretty good. Like, that's pretty good. Like you can work with that.
B
Yeah.
A
And you can optimize around that. So I think it's just like really honing in on what's your actual. On your hat Roas. If I ignore the amount of shitty leads. Did I get an 8 times roas on Angie's. Yes. No. Did I get it on Google? Yes. No. So you do end up adding it back in.
B
Yeah. And I mean anything that's under 10x in my opinion, you know, kind of throw it out there.
A
Yeah.
B
If you're on TV and you're doing it right 10 time ROI.
A
Yeah. How do I, how do you think I measure that?
B
All those ways you talked about. Hey, I'm, I. Your commercial ran here. Here's some leads that you just mark them in the CRM. Here's where the, where it came from. Then follow it through. Did it close? What percentage are you closing at? I had a roofer in Florida. TV is double their. Their closing percentage. Double. Really double. Now he's not doing everything now on.
A
The, on the.
B
Like, on me, I am going to buy.
A
And the way we're measuring that, I'm just going to clear. It's like, is it a subdomain or is it like, is it go to this specific URL that we tagged or is it. They called within 20 minutes they called.
B
They either said they saw them on tv, which some people still will. So they are doing.
A
I don't even think we ask at this point because our attribution got so dialed we, I think we stopped bothering.
B
I mean, again, I'm a TV guy through and through. I don't know if I've ever said that. So you on tv? I mean, I will. Yeah, but not really.
A
But I also feel like this is back to like Last Mile gets all the credit.
B
Yeah.
A
Like, yeah, they saw you on tv but then like, oh, I found you on Google. So like it doesn't even feel real.
B
Exactly. So typically I say 20 minutes, but it's usually much low. Lower than that usually. Really Spot, take action. Get 1% of the market in the market. So then you follow that through and is it a perfect science? No.
A
Yeah.
B
But you can start to see, okay, I am hitting the other thing. So double the conversion rate. And then the other thing is again back to that. Goldmind. Just about every home service client we work with that is giving us intel into their inbound leads, their cost per lead and cost per conversion drops month after month. Because we're taking what doesn't work. We have a good idea what works. I could probably come into your market and make a. If you're not doing tv, we can make a splash in day one.
A
Yeah.
B
But then to keep dropping it. Hey, this station, you know, looks good on paper. It's not producing. Kick them to the curb. Let's take it and let's move it over to this station that is their evening news. Expand over here. So I mean we see consistently dropping and you know, when that lead continues to drop and gets to a certain range, then it becomes more appeasing or appealing to drop some of the other avenues that may not be anywhere close and doubling down.
A
Yeah.
B
So yeah, just something to think about. But yeah, that's Legion tv. Just keep call to action. The math, the message and, and the measurement.
A
What do you think? Like what's in nor? Because I at that point we're measuring cost per lead. Like what if I. You launch something for a plumber. You said you at one point had a Pittsburgh plumbing client, Right.
B
Okay.
A
So like how many leads would show up in that first 20 minutes for that one?
B
I mean it really depends. And that's.
A
You can pick anybody roofing anybody.
B
Yeah. I mean even with them, it really depends. You'll have a day for whatever reason, it'll be slower and you'll only see, you know, one or two spots come here. And then for seemingly now there'll be days where it just. It spikes. I mean there's still certain rhymes of reason that you can't quite account for. We have most of our home service guys doing. I mean if you're on for a couple months, your cost Per lead quality, cost per lead is probably under 250 bucks. We get you down under two. It's. It's considered a good range to be at. How do you measure. That's always a conversation and then b. And then to your point, we have a hard time. There's a, there's a car. There has to be a conversation over. Am I just trying to make the phone ring or are we focusing on quality here?
A
Okay.
B
Because the cost for conversion, I can't control it as much, but it's still important to me. That's where the return. Return on ads.
A
Yeah. So do you think twenties, five?
B
What's that like?
A
I'm, I'm just trying to imagine, mainly because I actually don't know. I'm like, really curious to rip open my own reporting and, like, find trends because I have no concept. No, but, like, is five leads in the first 20 minutes, like, good or bad or. I'm sure it depends. But, like, what do you think when I say it depends?
B
I mean, it's, it's, it's not as cut and dry as that. I mean, you're probably running hundreds of commercials a week. So every time a commercial runs, if you get, you know, two or three calls, that's, that's starting to be profitable.
A
Yeah.
B
There could be a commercial run where there's no calls. Yeah. So it's not like there's an average. It's really looking for what's working, what's not. Because again, there's so many variables with, you know, daytime that CPM might be the same as the morning, but you're reaching only 10,000 people versus 30,000 people. So then, you know, the expectations change.
A
Yeah.
B
But at the end of the month, without, you know, paralysis by analysis at the end of the month, in my 10x or higher, we had a guy in January that was 28 times his return.
A
Yeah. Sexy as.
B
Yes. Yes. He didn't take me out to dinner or nothing.
A
Wow. Wow.
B
That's what we're here for. That's what we're. No, but I mean, that's the type of calls you love to hear.
A
Yeah.
B
And you can't guarantee that every month, but that's the goal.
A
Yeah. What's the. Yeah. What's normal? Like 8, 10, 11 on TV for home service?
B
Just generally speaking, over time, I'd say probably for us, 13 ish. Q4 last year was a little weird because I think there was a lot.
A
I mean. Yeah, but politics get. Yeah. How does that, how does that work?
B
For the most part, for Our clients lead flow didn't really change. Getting people to say yes really took a dive.
A
People were really closing pockets.
B
Yeah. Yeah, they were tight. I need a new roof. I don't know if the world's going to end next month. So whatever side of the fence you're on, I don't know.
A
Yeah, I'm back to real curious about tariffs, you know, tariff week. Because I feel like that's exactly what everyone's dealing with. This.
B
There will be some holdback, but again, emergency services won't be affected. I mean, can't sit on that.
A
People need to poop.
B
Absolutely. It's raining a lot. If there's water dripping through my roof or if my toilets backing up, I can't not call you.
A
Yeah.
B
But may I not do a full bath remodel if I can hold out a month? Yeah, maybe you know something about. Yeah, hopefully it'll all end soon, be back to normal. Always does.
A
Yeah.
B
But you know, in different markets are affected differently.
A
When we first, when we first went on radio again back in 2020, one of the things we did, I still don't know if it was a good idea. So you'd have to, you have to tell me. But they were really focused, I think efficiency, like, they were focused on efficient, like costs. Right. And what they told us to do, which might actually still be what we're doing, is they said, hey, Instead of going 52 weeks a year, you should go, I want to say even spread. But every two weeks. So you take up half the month. And the idea is you feel like you own it for half the cost. Like, what. What's the take on that?
B
Big, big believer in that.
A
Okay.
B
Even with tv, if, but it depends on your, like, if you have the budget to own four weeks, you own four weeks.
A
Okay.
B
But if you only have 10 grand and really you need 20 to be on all four weeks, then people don't know you're missing, but they know you're there.
A
Yeah, yeah.
B
So you're not, you don't want. Never want to spread anything too thin.
A
Okay.
B
So if you're going to do it, do it right. And if you can only afford two weeks, that's where you start. And then as you see, and like.
A
The guy we Talked about earlier, 7, 500 bucks a month to do two weeks.
B
That's probably on every week. Yeah. No, I'm not talking every week.
A
Okay.
B
Most markets. But you don't have to be. We have guys on two weeks a month, some on three, some on all four. Yeah, it really depends on the budget, how aggressive, how much do you want, how fast do you want? It is a good way to look at it, but. And just fitting within the budget too.
A
Yeah. What do you, what do you think, what do you think about like days of the week?
B
Days of the week. Yep.
A
Yeah.
B
So generally speaking, your high call volume days for any home service company are going to be Monday, Tuesday, maybe Wednesday.
A
Yeah.
B
So I always look at, you know, front half of the week is more service, health care. Back half the week is more your retail automotive.
A
Okay. Like I'm in a car shop and. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, that tracks.
B
Dealership high on, on Saturday.
A
Yep.
B
But you know where Angie really killed it and one of her strategies for years and years and years, which she would own Sunday morning. So she would go heavy, heavy, heavy on Sunday and then heavy Monday, Tuesday. So I'm doing my research on Sunday.
A
When I got my dinner house project. I'm looking at this thing, I'm watching.
B
A little bit of sports. So she would hit that. Not expecting calls. But if you do that, you'll see your web traffic spike. People are researching you. Even though I'm not accustomed to calling on a Sunday. And then, boom, Monday, Tuesday, your funnel should blow up.
A
Yeah. What? Yeah, you off camera, you had mentioned like you can you, you track it more closely to the. I guess walk me through that.
B
So yeah, I mean, again, back digital is. That's your safety net. You're catching them. Right. That's your baseball glove. So there's different types of technology continuing to emerge. We just brought in a technology that's with our buying software that it actually plots out when a commercial, when a commercial and how much money you spent on TV or radio is on. And then versus your web traffic sessions uniques, all of that. So. And you'd be surprised. Commercial runs. Here goes your organic. Here goes your sessions. Here goes your unique visitors. Doesn't run to your point with, with, you know, two weeks on, two weeks off. We do that with some. And you'll notice, boom, Web traffic goes down flat lines. Now there's caveats in that. If you're a roof or in a hurricane hits, then you spike, you're off. But again, stimulus controlled versus uncontrolled TV runs. Boom. TV is off. Down.
A
That's fascinating.
B
Yep.
A
I mean now I want to like, we'll have to get this set up for like future stuff. But now I want to like pull up my, my website and like, I want to dive in. I'm really curious.
B
Oh Yeah. I mean, 100% I mean if you, if you have your inbound leads and again I have clients that have everything, they'll share, try to source them. You know, they'll have what landing page they came in on. That's all great and I look at it, but really the number one thing is the date and time. If it's timestamped, I can go back and audit it based on what traditional you.
A
And we're pulling that off like, like Google Analytics. What the timestamp, the like web traffic, how we, how we live.
B
That's inbound leads. That's your CRM.
A
Oh, oh.
B
If you get, if you can share web forms or any inbound leads, calls or web forms from either your call center or your CRM. Yeah, I have clients that send them to me weekly. On Mondays, the same day that I'm getting post log times from TV and radio stations, then I go back. Okay, now the station set a commercial run at 7:58 on this day and three leads came in between 7:58 and you know, 80810 minute span. So boom. I can see a correlation.
A
Yeah.
B
So that's how. And then you, you, you highlight it, you follow it through, you stamp it with the time in the station. So again you can optimize throughout. That's where you can really start to see that roi. Yes, I'm not. Web traffic is great, great KPI. Love to see what's lighting up the analytics and yeah, but when it comes down to the actual inbound leads, how many of them can I make a case? Tie back to traditional marketing is, is usually the key.
A
Yeah, yeah. You know, as we're talking about this, I, I think what, what I kind of, I already said this like how I think it's all the same, you know, the same thing and like it should all build on each other, but I feel like it's a cheap way. It's a cheap way to get more people to your website where you can control how you optimize that. And like if you approach it that way then I feel like that makes more sense to me. I mean like diving into like, hey, there's an immediate boost to traffic. Like I'm like that, that resonates as just as far as like how to tie it into like a comprehensive plan. Hey, it's all about just what like, is your website good? Can you convert once you're on your website? Awesome. How do we get as many fucking people onto your website as possible?
B
Yep, as many people as possible with a mission. You're inviting them there, they're going, listen, they're going to come. It really is as basic as branded versus unbridled traffic. If they are looking for you and not just a random plumber, that traffic is not only, not only do we see a correlation and yes they're coming when we invite them to come but now that traffic is higher quality than it's ever been.
A
Yeah.
B
Not shopping me around but yeah, I'm me right now and that's, that's really the difference. Whenever you, yeah, you combine digital, when you put digital on steroids, when you get their name out there and you're hitting top of funnel and bottom funnel, that's when a beautiful marketing baby is born.
A
Nice. What, what do you think? I feel like the pushback when I talk to my peers about like hey are you doing tv? Everyone thinks TV similar to radio, like oh that's a dead medium or I hear, I hear TVs dying, radio's dying. You know, people are cutting the cord, whatever. Like how do we, how are we thinking about the trend of, of advertising, mass media advertising?
B
The trend. If you're advertising on cable, that's dead. I think radio is dying and not so slow. Painful death as well.
A
A not so slow.
B
Yeah, no, it's escalating.
A
Really.
B
Yeah, yeah. I mean if you look at some of the bigger ownerships groups who owns AM FM radio stations, the I Hearts Odysseys and bigger groups, I mean they're bankrupt.
A
Really?
B
Yeah, they're in debt, can't get the lights on.
A
So I mean I've been dead.
B
I mean there's.
A
But not that much debt.
B
But I heard there's. There was ads running out too long ago. They're just trying to keep AM FM radio in cars. New cars don't even want to put AM FM in there anymore. So there's like government battles going on if that should even happen. So between the presentation, Sirius, Spotify, that.
A
Yeah. I don't even know how to actually turn the radio on in my car. Like I actually really don't know. I'm sure there's a way.
B
No there's a way but like it.
A
Just goes straight to Spotify.
B
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. Pre programmed. I mean yeah, same. I mean same with mine. I mean I turn mine on and either XM or Sirius or Spotify pops on.
A
Yeah.
B
Probably lucrative for the auto dealers anyway.
A
Auto manufacturers, yeah they're getting some crazy.
B
Deal backs from satellite companies but. And then it's also how you. I mean I've never been a huge proponent for lead gen with radio just because how you're consuming it, you're in your car again.
A
Yeah.
B
For recruitment.
A
Yeah.
B
It's so good for, for leads with tv. It goes back to what I said before. If you're interested in reaching adults 35 and older, probably on a home, which I would imagine a lot of home service companies do, broadcast TV is still very much alive and well.
A
Is like what's my trend there?
B
You got, I mean I'm going to say you got 10 year Runway. I mean I'm tied to it, so I hope it's 10 years. But no, there are other upgrades like 10 year Runway.
A
So that to me it is ramping down slightly.
B
The thing with tv, it is becoming more affordable based on pressure on inventory. Way faster than the amount of viewers they're losing, if that makes any sense. Getting cheaper faster than they're losing views.
A
That makes. Yeah, so it makes sense.
B
It is more efficient than ever.
A
Yeah. I mean I was surprised at price points. I mean we, we came in punching, but I was pretty surprised by price points.
B
And in my particular opinion, I don't see how you could possibly get rid of local news repress, you name it. These are. No, those four stations. NBC, cbs, fox, NBC. I mean that's how the community is learning about a lot of things. I mean digital still doesn't have that kind of push that it does. There's also new technology. ATSC 3.0 has been in the works for a while.
A
So what is that?
B
This is super nerd level TV talk.
A
I'm here.
B
But essentially they're merging. They're taking an over the air signal and then infusing it with an IP address. So at one point I'm watching the same newscast as my wife. She's downstairs getting a McDonald's ad for a salad. I'm getting an ad for a Big Mac upstairs. But it's the same sloth. I'm still buying the same inventory.
A
Yeah. Wow.
B
So that's coming down the pipe. So. Or has been in the works for a long time. It's going to be the biggest change since they got rid of bunny ears.
A
Yeah.
B
You know the old school antennas.
A
Yeah, yeah.
B
So it's, it's a big thing coming down so that I believe will prolong broadcast for even having a longer shelf.
A
Life and purely because it will keep getting funded.
B
Funded. Addressability is only going to add to that. I mean, which probably everyone's biggest knock on broadcast is lack of targeting. What if, what if you could, what if you can get hundreds of thousands of people and also micro Targeted creatives.
A
Yeah, that would be interesting.
B
So, yeah, I mean streaming is going to continue to grow. Again, not a replacement, but it's supplementary.
A
Yeah. What's the streaming market share versus broadcast?
B
First of all, PSA, 90% of the people I talk to who are doing streaming or OTT are doing it wrong when you're wasting your money.
A
All right, love that.
B
Because you're not optimizing it. It's not a scale medium, so it's not going to work.
A
Yeah, well, like what's the. I'm going to compare this to Google and Chat GPT. So like, hey, Google has 85 billion or whatever searches a day. Chat GPT has 2 billion. But Chat GPT's search has gone from 2 billion to like 3 billion in like a matter of months. So like quickly taking.
B
Yeah.
A
What's. What are we seeing for like broadcast?
B
First adoption of Stream, like how it's eaten away. It's weird because the ball continuously gets moved. The current landscape we are in with, with. Again, I'm nerding out.
A
Yeah, yeah.
B
But the current landscape we are in with streaming will not survive.
A
Okay.
B
All of these, the Paramounts, the Peacocks, the Hulu, the ESPN pluses, there is not enough content advertiser demand viewership for.
A
Them all to independently sell.
B
They're going to bundle. They have been bundling. They will continue to bundle. So what that looks like.
A
Yeah, because like Disney's like a bunch of this shit now. Like Disney's got all these different things.
B
ESPN is totally pulling off cable, so you're gonna have to subscribe to ESPN+ if you want ESPN in the fall.
A
Really?
B
So it's gonna.
A
Is it on broadcast though?
B
That's on cable. ESPN's cable. So does it come free over the air?
A
Interesting.
B
Yeah, that's a big one. I mean a lot of the people that still are clinging on to their cable bundle are doing it probably because of a sports tie in an espn.
A
Yeah.
B
Or their local sports net or for their hockey or their baseball games or whatever you have. So when that leaves, that might be the death blow. We'll see.
A
That's wild.
B
Yeah. Yep. And then even back to streaming, I mean if anyone, if, if you're doing any OTT with Comcast, any of those cable providers that also was selling streaming free tip. Make sure that you are not letting them include video on demand VOD impressions because you're serving streaming impressions to buy around cord cutting to somebody who doesn't have cap video on demand, you have to have a set top box. So it's repetitive. And I know that's been a. Been a big, big thing there, but. Yeah, no, I mean, there's, there's a million ways to mess it up. That's why I always say, you know, bring somebody in who specializes in it and, you know, really vet that person to make sure that they know what they're doing. Lead with the results.
A
Yeah. So if somebody wants to, if somebody wants to start. Start off. Budget doesn't sound that intimidating. 7, 7, 500 bucks a month. That's. That's how you carve into it. What, what does the, like, how does it work?
B
Exhaust process.
A
Yeah. Like, hey, I'm gonna know what I want. I'm gonna shoot like Tony here an email and be like, bro, let's lfg. What happens?
B
Conversation. So first, I mean, I'm happy to jump on the phone or teams or zoom, whatever, learn a little bit about you. We do. The first thing we do is we jump in and we audit the market. So I'll look at media monitors. Who's advertising? What's the competitive landscape? What's the audience makeup? What's the budget? How's the budget? I mean, really marketing overall.
A
Yeah.
B
It's not just a TV conversation. It's, you know, how are you set up? But as far as TV or any traditional media goes, you know, we do all the legwork again. We work on points. There's no. You're not paying me.
A
Yeah.
B
To do the back end work. We're big believers in, you know, putting our best foot forward. Because if the ROI is instantaneous, then you're going to stay with me a long time. Yeah. First thing, shoot me an email or a call and have a conversation. And then wait a week and I'll come back with a recommendation.
A
Yeah. And it's. Want to make your advertising. How can they find you on the Internet?
B
Want more-leads.com?
A
Yeah. It's a fucking sick domain.
B
Yeah, right.
A
Yeah.
B
Right. Some people roll their eyes every once in a while, but it's what we do.
A
No, dude, that's. Yeah, that's killer. I always respect a good. I always respect a good domain.
B
It's what we do. So no, Wanamaker was. He was famous for saying, half my advertising works, the other half doesn't. I don't know which.
A
We just don't know which. Yeah. Which half is which?
B
Yeah, so we went with that route.
A
But no, I love it.
B
A golf trophy too. And we're a golfer.
A
All right. So we mean, we covered a ton of Grounded, so we covered I mean, we covered digital and how it makes sense. We covered when to enter. We covered quality of content, how to get into media buying, how to measure which. That was really interesting. I'm going to personally listen back to this and see what we can do to tighten that up. What are your, like, final tips or takes on traditional media?
B
Traditional media, you can't compare to its scale. And I know I might have sound a little Debbie Downer on digital, but they go hand in hand. Putting your digital efforts on steroids and how to make synergy happen by combining scale with that, you know, the last touch at the bottom funnel for stop.
A
Yeah.
B
Making it all work together. 10Xing, whatever budget you got.
A
Yeah, I agree. And I'm. I'm really excited to, like, watch. I got to go check my own stuff and like. Yeah, what is web traffic in the first hour of, you know, 20 minutes? I. I don't think I've ever looked at that.
B
I can't believe the findings that I find. It's. It's under business. You guys are busy, man.
A
Yeah, Business. Yeah. Yeah.
B
You got a lot going on.
A
It's a good excuse. Thank you. I get it.
B
That's why we're here for. And I'm sure we're not the only ones. We just happen to be the best at it, but, you know, that's the slave work. Just look out for it.
A
Cool. Well, I appreciate you coming on today. This was a ton of fun. I feel like I got a master class in traditional media.
B
Thank you. And the new studio is awesome. Happy. We can christen it and kick it off with on a good note here.
A
Sweet.
B
Awesome. Thanks, John.
A
If you like what you heard, make sure you go to owned and operated dot com, hit the subscribe button below and like our video.
Owned and Operated Podcast Episode #188: How Traditional Media Drove $100K+ in Plumbing Leads
Host: John Wilson
Guest: Tony from Wanamaker Advertising
Release Date: April 22, 2025
In Episode #188 of Owned and Operated, hosts John Wilson and Jack Carr welcome Tony from Wanamaker Advertising to discuss the impactful role of traditional media in generating substantial leads for home service businesses, particularly in the plumbing sector. The episode delves deep into the synergy between traditional and digital marketing strategies, emphasizing actionable insights for achieving entrepreneurial success.
Maximizing Traditional Media: Tony begins by explaining Wanamaker Advertising's focus on leveraging traditional media channels like TV, radio, and billboards to complement digital efforts. He highlights the importance of Local Service Ads (LSAs) and optimizing Google My Business (GMB) profiles as core components of their strategy.
Key Quote (00:30):
Tony: "We're making sure that all of our LSAs are on when we need them and they're maximized to give us the best ROI."
Impact of Privacy Changes: The conversation shifts to the challenges posed by digital marketing, especially after Apple's iOS updates in 2020 that limited tracking capabilities. Tony articulates how these changes have diminished the effectiveness of digital lead generation methods like pay-per-click (PPC) ads.
Key Quote (04:08):
Tony: "Apple iOS update made it super simple for somebody to turn off tracking... there's federal and state level legislation through the works that are limiting what can and can't be tracked online."
Efficiency of Broadcast TV: Tony asserts that broadcast TV remains unmatched in its ability to reach a vast audience cost-effectively. He explains that broadcast TV offers a favorable cost per thousand impressions (CPM) compared to digital platforms.
Key Quote (19:30):
Tony: "There is very little avenues out there where I can go out and in 30 seconds reach a hundred thousand people in a day and then have them be in a position to take action."
Synergizing Media Channels: Both hosts agree that traditional media should act as an accelerant for digital efforts. Tony emphasizes the importance of measuring correlations between traditional ad runs and spikes in digital traffic, reinforcing the complementary nature of both strategies.
Key Quote (08:46):
Tony: "TV will put digital on steroids. Same radio all down the line."
Aligning KPIs with Media Spend: Tony discusses the critical metrics businesses should track to assess the effectiveness of traditional media campaigns. These include inbound leads, conversion rates, and branded search traffic. He stresses the importance of timestamping leads to correlate them with specific ad runs.
Key Quote (25:07):
Tony: "You'll see your direct and organic traffic spike. So your conversion percentage spike. Branded traffic."
Entering and Dominating Markets: The conversation explores the phased approach to using traditional media—entering the market, defending territory, and eventually dominating the local advertising space. Tony advises businesses to start with focused campaigns and expand strategically based on performance metrics.
Key Quote (62:56):
Tony: "When you deal with scale, you're approaching it in a different way."
Crafting Effective Commercials: Tony highlights the balance between high-quality and cost-effective ad production. He recommends businesses start with simple, compelling messages that drive immediate action rather than overly elaborate productions.
Key Quote (53:19):
Tony: "If you're going to run a ad pushing your phone number... it's hard. I get that."
Future of Traditional Media: The discussion concludes with insights into the future of traditional media amidst the rise of OTT and streaming platforms. Tony remains optimistic about the longevity of broadcast TV, citing impending technological upgrades like ATSC 3.0 that aim to enhance addressability and integrate traditional and digital advertising more seamlessly.
Key Quote (96:44):
Tony: "You're reaching a million, 2 million people a month, you know, it's a numbers game."
Maximizing Traditional Media ROI: Tony offers strategic advice for businesses considering traditional media investment:
Key Quote (103:33):
Tony: "If you want to steal your market share now, yeah."
Episode #188 offers a masterclass in integrating traditional media into a comprehensive marketing strategy for home service businesses. Tony from Wanamaker Advertising provides invaluable insights into maximizing ROI through strategic use of TV, radio, and other traditional channels, even in an increasingly digital-centric marketing landscape. For listeners aiming to scale their plumbing, electrical, or HVAC businesses, this episode underscores the enduring relevance and effectiveness of traditional media when executed thoughtfully and synergistically with digital efforts.
For more information, visit www.ownedandoperated.com.
Notable Quotes:
Resources Mentioned:
Note: For those who missed the episode, this summary encapsulates the key discussions and actionable strategies shared by John Wilson and Tony. To gain deeper insights and practical tips, consider listening to the full episode available on Owned and Operated.