#240 3 Marketing Mistakes That Keep Contractors Stuck Under $10M

Summary

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Owned and Operated – Episode #240

"3 Marketing Mistakes That Keep Contractors Stuck Under $10M"

Host: John Wilson
Guest: Ethan Wright (Service Scalers)
Date: September 9, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this practical episode, John Wilson, a $30M home service company owner, and Ethan Wright of Service Scalers focus on the three most common marketing mistakes that prevent home service companies (plumbing, electrical, HVAC) from scaling past the $10M revenue mark. Drawing on both the operator and agency perspectives, they break down how contractors go wrong with numbers, channels, and Google Business Profiles—and share the specific steps high-growth companies use to unlock rapid growth.

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Key Discussion Points

1. Not Knowing (and Tracking) Your Numbers

(02:37 – 10:55)

• The Mistake: Most owners see marketing as a black box—they throw money at lead sources but can’t precisely track return or pinpoint conversion gaps in the funnel.
• What to Track:
  • Leads by source (LSA, PPC, Angi, etc.)
  • Booking rates for each lead source
  • Cost per lead and cost per acquisition
  • Close rates, cancellations, job “sit/demo” rates
  • Funnel breakdown: From call to booked job to closed sale
  • Source-based ROI (not all leads are equal)
• Tools & Tactics:
  • Use tracking numbers (e.g., CallRail) via your CRM/field management software, not just “How’d you hear about us?”
  • Monitor each point in the funnel for leaks: Is the issue lead quality, phone staff (CSRs), or sales closing?

Notable Quotes:

• “You have to know your numbers through the whole funnel. If I get X number of leads, our team books X percent, our techs close X percent, and that leads to Y in revenue.” — Ethan Wright, 03:07
• *“We have lead sources we pay $400 for a lead and others we pay $30 for… ROI might be better for the $400.”—*John Wilson, 07:05
• “ROI is really what matters. If you’re getting ROI—even if it’s from an expensive lead—that’s the winner.” — John Wilson, 07:37

Memorable Example:

• A business was paying $150/month for Yellow Pages, assumed it wasn’t working, but tracked 30 leads/month—a $3–5 cost per lead. “Almost anything is easy to achieve ROI there.” (10:13)

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2. Spreading the Marketing Budget Too Thin (Too Many Channels)

(11:48 – 17:44)

• The Mistake: Companies allocate small portions to too many channels (LSA, PPC, Angi, SEO, billboards, Facebook, etc.), diluting spend and failing to maximize any one source.
• What Winning Companies Do:
  • Test several channels initially—but when one proves ROI, they “run it dry” (double down on the winner).
  • Meaningful diversification comes only after maximizing core channels and when the budget allows.
• Framework:
  • Test a channel for 90 days or 100 leads:
    1. Month 1: Did we get a lead?
    2. Month 2: Did we sell a lead?
    3. Month 3: Did we achieve ROI?
• Advice:
  • Don’t chase the lowest cost per lead—chase profitable sales.
  • Avoid the “diversification trap” until you have the budget to do it efficiently.

Notable Quotes:

• “As soon as you find that [channel that works], I think there’s this idea of diversification, but you don’t usually have the budget for it. You’re often better served by finding the channel that works, going all in on it.” — Ethan Wright, 13:27
• “If you’re not getting leads out of a current lead source, the problem probably starts with you—what are you doing wrong?” — John Wilson, 14:47

Memorable Example:

• John’s company spent $100,000/month on LSA because it worked: “That wasn’t 2021, that was recent!” (15:06)

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3. Neglecting Google Business Profile (GBP, GMB)

(17:46 – 26:16)

• The Mistake: Owners treat their GMB/GBP as “set-and-forget,” missing its power as a core local lead source and review engine.
• What Matters:
  • Quantity and velocity of reviews (new reviews per week)
  • GMB hygiene: Regular updates, products/services, Q&A, complete listings, photos
  • Strategic use of keywords/locations in responses and posts (helps both Google and AI like ChatGPT recommend you)
  • Incentivizing and holding field/CSR staff accountable for review collection
• Impact:
  • Map Pack is now the first organic result after sponsored ads–if you’re not there, you’re invisible.
  • Google weighs both total reviews and review “velocity” (how many recent reviews), which translates into visibility and more high-intent calls.

Notable Quotes:

• “On-page SEO is still important but now quality GMB is everything—it affects your LSA, PPC, web traffic, even ChatGPT searches.” — John Wilson, 18:19
• “You could have less total reviews than your competitor, but if you’re adding more each week, Google sees you as more active and trusted.” — Ethan Wright, 20:40
• “Reviews are pretty indicative of revenue. If someone’s $100 million, $80 million—you’ll see 20,000 reviews. For $30 million, maybe 5,000. It’s really aligned.” — John Wilson, 24:41

Actionable Tips:

• Track reviews/job: “If I do 50 jobs a week, am I getting 5 reviews or 15?” (19:57)
• Try team incentives: Individual payouts work for some, larger rewards (tool sets, cookouts) for teams can work better—but above all, “it’s their job to get them.” (22:13)
• Study big local players: Check their GMB for photos, service listings, reviews, coupons, and copy their structure. (25:01)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 02:37 - The need for precise, source-based funnel tracking
• 07:05 - Not all leads are priced equally—focus on ROI, not just cost/lead
• 10:13 - The Yellow Pages leads example
• 13:28 - Why “run a channel dry” before diversifying
• 15:06 - Spending $100K/month on LSA as a focus strategy
• 17:46 - The pivotal role of Google Business Profile today
• 20:40 - Review velocity and why Google cares
• 24:41 - Review count as a proxy for revenue
• 25:01 - Audit what the top local competitors are doing on GMB

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Memorable Quotes Recap

• “ROI is really what matters. If you’re getting ROI—even if it’s from an expensive lead—that’s the winner.” — John Wilson (07:37)
• “As soon as you find that [channel that works], I think there’s this idea of diversification, but you don’t usually have the budget for it.” — Ethan Wright (13:27)
• “On-page SEO is still important but now quality GMB is everything—it affects your LSA, PPC, web traffic, even ChatGPT searches.” — John Wilson (18:19)
• “Reviews are pretty indicative of revenue.” — John Wilson (24:41)

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Tone and Takeaways

The episode maintains a practical, witty, and data-driven tone. Both hosts emphasize actionable, real-world improvement, continually challenging listeners to “know your numbers,” double down on what works, and relentlessly focus on Google Business Profile management.

Summary:
If your home service company isn’t scaling the way you want, start by breaking the three habits outlined here: Blur in your funnel data, thin out your resources across too many channels, and ignore your biggest modern lead magnet—Google. Fixing these doesn't just grow your topline—it unlocks the path to $10M and beyond.

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Contact and Further Reading:

• Find Ethan at servicescalers.com or @servicescalers on X
• For more, visit www.ownedandoperated.com

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Transcript

[John Wilson]

And if you're not getting leads out of a current lead source, like the problem probably starts with you.

[Ethan Wright]

And this is probably more for companies that are in their way of scaling, they get spread really thin because something we, like we saw with you and we see with a lot of companies that scale effectively and quickly is they test different channels, but once they find the channel that works, they bleed it dry.

[John Wilson]

Yeah, I think the easy place to start is, hey, is your GMB good? It affects your lsa, it affects your ppc, it affects your web traffic.

[Ethan Wright]

If you got really focused on that channel. Yeah, that is a massive.

[John Wilson]

Yeah, you can move it. Today we're talking about the three biggest mistakes that service companies make in their marketing. I'm your host, John Wilson. During the day, I run a 30 million dollar home service company in Ohio. And today I'm joined on the show by Ethan Wright from Service Scalers. So how do you want to start into this?

[Ethan Wright]

There's a, it's an interesting, interesting perspective kind of from a marketing company, agency side, you know, and then obviously you having on the owner side, operator side, and you have figured out a really good way of working with vendors and whatnot. And so you have a lot of these things really dialed in.

[John Wilson]

I think, I mean, I think you have to, you have to in order to get big. Like there's only one way you can buy more leads. Yes, exactly.

[Ethan Wright]

And, but it's funny when you look, you know, where are the three biggest holes for someone that is struggling to scale, struggling to make marketing effective?

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

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[John Wilson]

With our call center.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

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[John Wilson]

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[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

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[Ethan Wright]

I think the number one thing and one of the things that you're best at is knowing your numbers.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Right.

[Ethan Wright]

I think a lot of times, especially when there are companies that are looking to scale but haven't invested as much in marketing or don't have as much infrastructure on their team, where they have more people dedicated to marketing, it's kind of this black box of like, I'm told I need to put money into things and then it's supposed to come out.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Ethan Wright]

But in reality, you know, you have to know your numbers through the whole funnel. And the funnel being from the first time you get someone's attention on the Internet or wherever it is on a billboard, whatever the marketing channel is to they call in. So how are your csrs booking and having conversations and what not? All the way through sales. Right. And so knowing your numbers is huge. I mean, we were in a workshop yesterday and you asked people, how many leads does your business need today? Who knows the exact number? And it was like, oh, someone raised their hand, we need like 10 to 20. You said, well, which one is it?

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

And what kind of a big difference?

[Ethan Wright]

Yeah, exactly. And so what we find is when people don't know those numbers, the answer is just, I need more leads, I need better leads. And they don't know where the issue actually falls in the funnel.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Ethan Wright]

And so some things like that are really commonly missed on actually tracking is, you know, essentially upfront lead quality and lead count. Right. So one question of how many leads do I need in a day? And again, that follows through your funnel because you have to know, well, if I get X number of leads, our team books X percentage of those, our sales team or our techs, then close X percentage of the booked leads and that leads to why in revenue.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Right.

[Ethan Wright]

And so you kind of have to work backwards through that.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Ethan Wright]

And so really knowing up front, like, what is my booking rate on the leads that come in.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Right.

[Ethan Wright]

Because you could get delivered 10 great leads and two companies could do very different things with us. And I think that comes down to like CSR training a lot of the time. What are like big numbers that you guys kind of lock in on, I.

[John Wilson]

Mean, those number of leads when. When we bring on a new lead source, like, what's the booking rate for that lead source? So there's a different booking rate for LSA versus a PPC lead, a PPC lead versus, like an Angie's List lead. So they all have different booking rates. So I, I think my quick tips on how to start getting that data is using tracking numbers. I don't remember what we use, but people were doing a ton, like, call rail.

[Ethan Wright]

There's a lot of the field management softwares.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Ethan Wright]

Tracking numbers.

[John Wilson]

Yeah, that's how we do ours. It's through our. Through our. So, yeah, get tracking numbers. So, you know, every time someone calls through our Google my business, like, we know that they call through our Google my business, or if they call through our lsa, we know that they called through our lsa. So that's like, number one is just how. How do you get the data clean enough that you can actually decipher it? So tracking numbers is the big one. You can have CSRs like, ask, like, how'd you hear about us?

[Ethan Wright]

But doesn't scale.

[John Wilson]

I don't think it does. Yeah. I don't think it works, like, meaningfully. I know companies, like, really push for that. Even big. They really push for that. But I, I think, like, I think you're trying to make something happen that. Yeah, it's kind of irrelevant.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Ethan Wright]

And that's. By source is really important, like you're saying, because, you know, cost per lead is something we can talk about too, but it. That doesn't live in a vacuum because you could pay twice as much for a lead on, you know, Google versus Angie's, but you can close 70% more leads on Google. So, yeah, the math works there.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Ethan Wright]

That's something people also get stuck on is just, I need my cost per lead. It's got to be lower.

[John Wilson]

I showed our chart yesterday, and it was. It was like, I think, eye opening for a lot of people. Because cost per lead is a consideration.

[Ethan Wright]

Yes.

[John Wilson]

But it's only a consideration because it makes ROI harder to achieve. Like, that's it. Like, that's the. That's the only thing that matters. But if you're actually getting ROI. So ROI is return on investment. And if I bought $1,000 of leads, how many sales did I get from those leads? So did I get 5,000 sales? I got five. Five times ROI. Did I get 10,000 in sales? And I got 10, 10 times ROI? But yeah, like, we have lead sources that we pay 400 for a lead and we have lead sources. We pay $30 for a lead. And like ROI could be the same. ROI might be better for the 400.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Ethan Wright]

And especially when, you know, a lot of people will just say, I need to get the cheapest cost per lead.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Ethan Wright]

No matter what it is.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Ethan Wright]

That can be pretty easy to achieve.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Ethan Wright]

If I start to opt for leaky faucets.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Ethan Wright]

Worse leads, water heater installs or lower.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Ethan Wright]

Facebook. Facebook meta. Find lead source, but usually lower intent.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Ethan Wright]

And so you're usually going to have to work them longer. You're not going to close as many of them. And so again, cost per leads, not in a vacuum. It's something important to track, like that booking rate per vendor, cost per lead per vendor. But even within that, what type of lead is coming out of each of those and what is it?

[John Wilson]

That's like sold rate is how we track. Yeah. So we do this for every lead source. So number of leads, cost of the lead, cost of total lead, cost per lead, total sales, book, job percentage, canceled job percentage, demo rate or sit rate, which is like how many of them did we actually run?

[Ethan Wright]

Yes.

[John Wilson]

So if we bought 10 leads but two cancelled, then we get an 80% demo rate, set rate. That's really good. Yeah, that's like a really good sit rate. And I don't know that we're actually achieving that. Like, like, usually it's like 30. 30% is like good. And then what's ROI? Yeah, but yeah, those are all the numbers. But it starts with like the hygiene of how do we know where that lead came from.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Ethan Wright]

So knowing your numbers and I think all. Everything you just mentioned is something people should be tracking those numbers because kind of going back to the first point is you can have a leak in your funnel that affects that last number of roi. But a lot of people just look at what was my cost per lead or one metric. And if my ROI isn't good, it must be that problem.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Ethan Wright]

But when you look at it, it could go actually great quality leads at a fine cost that are not getting booked by our csrs. Totally. People don't listen to their calls. And if you don't, you don't know who needs to be trained, what objections need to be handled. Or it can be good leads booking well sat jobs we're not closing.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Ethan Wright]

And so where in that funnel are you actually leaking from? And most people don't know that because if they're not tracking, they just kind of go, well, marketing itself. Doesn't work. Or someone yesterday we were talking to, he goes, angie's leads, I've always heard, or any of any aggregator or lead partner. Doesn't work. I've always heard that. And then you come in and you say, yeah, we still use like different aggregator partners and different lead partners and we know the cost for each, the booking rate for each, all that. And that was really eye opening to him because he's like, we actually might be able to use it if I.

[John Wilson]

Actually know my data. Exactly. And I think like a more extreme example. And then I'm going to ask about the second, but we had someone in the group and they were paying 150 bucks a month for yellow Pages.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yes.

[John Wilson]

And he was tracking that, the leads from it. And because he knew that I think it was like 30 leads a month for 150 bucks.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

Like so his one, he's getting leads at all? Because I would assume, I would have assumed no leads, just if, if I had no data. Just the vacuum of we're paying anything for yellow Pages. First assumption was no leads.

[Ethan Wright]

Exactly.

[John Wilson]

But he's like, no, we have 30 leads a month and it's really great. And I'm like, well, yeah, like at $3 or $5 a lead, almost anything is easy to achieve. ROI there. So like, yeah, that's a, that's a pretty big one.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Ethan Wright]

I told him, I was like, if I, if, if usually if people would come into that business and just do an audit really quick without the numbers.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Oh yeah, yeah.

[Ethan Wright]

They go, I would cancel that 150 bucks a month. Just throw it at sale pages.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Ethan Wright]

But he knows where his leads come from, what they cost. So that's the big one. Know your numbers by source.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Ethan Wright]

All the way through the funnel.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah, yeah.

[John Wilson]

Fascinating.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

What's number two?

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

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[Ethan Wright]

Fieldpulse.com I would say secondly, and this is probably more for companies that are in their way of scaling, but they get spread really thin between marketing sources.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Ethan Wright]

They have a, you know, allotted amount of budget in a month and they've heard, well, I've got to be on lsa, obviously, I need to run PPC too. I've got to be doing, you know, Angie's and Thumbtack because I heard great things about them. Modernize, whatever it might be. Oh, I've got the yellow pages going too. And on top of that. And you do Facebook ads. And what about my website SEO?

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Ethan Wright]

And that's fine if your marketing budget is robust enough.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Ethan Wright]

That there is enough dollar per channel to make them effective. But I so often see people who are in, you know, a sub, let's say, you know, it's a business doing a million and a half dollars a year and their marketing budget is just way more constrained. And so I always sit down with them and we look and we go, so what are you spending on? And it's usually a mix of those things I mentioned. And then even some of these, like, more branding plays, like, well, and we've also got the billboard outside of town and we've sponsored the newspaper forever. And we just look together. And it's like, you do, you know, your numbers? Usually not. And then my question would be, if you did, what's your highest ROI channel and what channel can actually scale? Yeah, because something we, like, we saw with you and we see with a lot of companies that scale effectively and quickly is they test different channels, but once they find the channel that works.

[John Wilson]

They just, yeah, you run it.

[Ethan Wright]

They bleed it dry in a good way. They're going to see, okay, if LSA works in my area, the cost per lead is great. We close a good amount. ROI is great on it. That's the budget I'm upping and focusing on and just getting super dialed in on instead of, well, you know, LSA's got 200 bucks a month to it. Pay Per Click's got 500. All these other aggregators. So it really is. Obviously you have to test things. You have to find where the ROI is. You need to track it. But as soon as you find that, I think there's this idea of diversification, which is good at a certain point, but you don't usually have the budget to, to, to diversify. And you're, you're often way better served by finding the channel that works, going all in on it, and then using that to then build, you know, hey, we're going to get reviews from the people that we work with. And so that's going to help with our SEO.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Ethan Wright]

You know, that's going to help with word of mouth. That's going to help with these other things eventually diversifying out as you need more leads as you find that you've hit a cap. But just so often people want to spread themselves really thin and it's, it's kind of short sighted or it will just take you a lot longer to achieve what you could if you, if you found kind of the best lead source and ran with it.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Ethan Wright]

Because you guys, for a long time.

[John Wilson]

Like, you know, I mean, lsa, like we just ran LSA till it's dry.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

So now it's a just like everything. Every lead source is a game that you can win. And if you're not getting leads out of a current lead source, like the problem probably starts with you, like, what are you doing wrong? So that's where I would start instead of blaming the lead source.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

But yeah, like LSA at one point we were spending 100 grand a month.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

And like that was like 2024. That wasn't even like 2021 when it was crazy. That was like recent.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

Now we've, we have since diversified a little bit, but we still like push that really hard.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

But yeah, if you find something that works, run it dry. And I, I think that people start, like when I see it happen, is they go to some seminar or they like read how they need to do their marketing plan for next year. So, you know, it's August, we're approaching Q4 and people are like, well, I gotta start planning for next year. So I think it's coming from a good place. We're like, all right, I'm doing my marketing plan.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

I'm thinking about growth next year.

[John Wilson]

I, I, you know, I'm, I'm thinking 8%. Where, where, where do I put it? So they're all just sort of like shuffling around and I think they just get lost in their own heads a little bit.

[Ethan Wright]

Well, and I mean, especially, I mean people who listen to podcasts and go to those seminars.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Right.

[Ethan Wright]

They hear you have a guest on or they hear a guest and yeah, we scaled Through Facebook ads, we scaled through pay per click. Oh, here's this great hack for X, Y, Z. Yeah. And Right. It's out of a good place. And like, the idea of diversification is a good one.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Ethan Wright]

But it only when you have the budget to actually effectively use each channel. I so often see, like, just a specific example of like Facebook ads where people want to run them and they've just got a really limited budget and they're, you know, they're paying someone to run them, so there's a fee involved. Plus, you know, $1,000 a month in budget.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Ethan Wright]

When you're running these paid ad sources, like, there's a lot of testing, there's a lot of variables to find the hook that works the visual that works the creative and you. And it constantly changes. And so people who win at those games have enough budget.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Ethan Wright]

To actually test those things consistently. But when you have such a limited budget, you can only do so much testing before you're done for the month.

[John Wilson]

I'll give my quick framework on testing because this might help people. But you can do this in one, one or two ways. You can do this with number of leads or you can do this in like, time period. So number of leads would be like, I need to buy 100 leads, and that's a big enough data set or time period, which is how we do it. 90 days. So first month, did I get a single lead? If I got a single lead, it's worth continuing into the second month. Second month, did I sell a single lead? So I got the lead and it was quality. If I sold a single lead, I'm good to go into the third month. And the third month is, did we achieve roi?

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

So that's how we think about testing as we're like, you know, we test. I. I don't even know two to four channels a month.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

So that's our framework. Do I get a single lead? Do I sell a single lead? Can I sell this profitably?

[Ethan Wright]

That's smart.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Ethan Wright]

Just giving an actual time to work.

[John Wilson]

Yeah, it works.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Number three.

[Ethan Wright]

Yeah, number three, this one. Depending on, you know, what part of the Internet you live on, it might sound like a beating a dead horse, but people still, we see it all the time just not investing in or neglecting your Google business profile.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

[Ethan Wright]

And there's a lot of ways that.

[John Wilson]

People understand how, especially in the past couple of years, SEO, it went from like, it went from on page SEO. And on page SEO is still really important.

[Ethan Wright]

And that's like when it's direct, like directing on page to your website.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

On page SEO is on the website. So like blogs, service, location, pages, on page SEO, local SEO is now this new discipline. And it started, I really think as LSA became a bigger thing and LSA and GmbH became the same thing. Suddenly, hey, is your GMB good? Became really important. And now quality GmbH is like, it affects your LSA, it affects your PPC, it affects your web traffic. Like it affects everything. It affects Chad, GPT and how you show up in those searches.

[Ethan Wright]

Yeah, exactly. And even in the past few years, like coinciding with all this, the map pack like it has, it wasn't always the first organic result. Right. There used to be a few websites that showed up.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Ethan Wright]

And then the map pack, but now it is as soon as you're past sponsored, there's your map. There's your map. And more and more people, like there are certain companies that track this, but like more and more people who are organic searchers who don't, don't click on sponsored ads, their main source of traffic for a local search.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Ethan Wright]

To find a business, whether it's a restaurant or a plumber or a, or a dog groomer, is through the Google business profile. And there's, there's a lot of ways that we see it, you know, quote unquote, neglected.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Ethan Wright]

I think one, and I think it's one that sometimes people pat themselves on the back and say, we're doing a pretty good job. But I always challenge, like, could it be better? Is just the simple practice of like capturing reviews.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ethan Wright]

And that's another number to track is job completion to review percentage and how many a week. Exactly. If I do 50 jobs in a week.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Ethan Wright]

Am I getting five reviews or am I getting 15? Yeah, that's a really big deal for a couple reasons. One, you grow your review count. That's extremely helpful, obviously for the SEO traffic directly from your gbp, but it's going to help your LSA account be more effective. Like you said, even searchers who come through pay per click, if they want to do a quick search on you to find out.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Ethan Wright]

If they're good, they're going to go to your reviews.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Right.

[Ethan Wright]

And if I see someone with, you know, 70 reviews, that's like 4.7 stars and the guy below him is, you know, 2500 and 4.9. Yeah, it's, it's a big difference. But also this idea of like review velocity, like how often, often am I collecting reviews? Because Google does care about that.

[John Wilson]

Yeah.

[Ethan Wright]

So you could have less total reviews than your competitor, but they're getting two a week, you're getting 10. Google sees that as okay. These people are doing a good job consistently with the consumers that we're trusting them with.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Ethan Wright]

And you know, a lot of people, we were talking yesterday and like, yeah, we've got some sort of incentive program. Like, we pay our. Yeah, I pay my tax $10 for a good review. And I just ask, how does that work? And they say, horribly.

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[John Wilson]

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[Ethan Wright]

You know, and, and it was kind of like, okay, raise your hand if you have something similar. Yeah, it's 20 bucks, it's 15 bucks. Is it working? No. And so figuring out specifically for your team how to unlock it is a big deal because incentivizing is great. Some people are incentivized by like the individual. Hey, you can, you know, increase your, your, your pay per hour by X amount if you got this many reviews. But some companies that we talk to, like, it works better when there's like a bigger overall, you know, reward to get. So instead of paying all your tax X number of dollars per review, it's, hey, we just bought a Blackstone and the guy with the most reviews at the end of the month gets the Blackstone or gets the Milwaukee tool set or whatever it might be. But I think, you know, Jack actually mentioned it when we were talking yesterday. But a big point was incentivizing is great, but also it's their job to get them and so hold them accountable to what you're asking. So instead of just, hey, well, we will pay you if you get them. It's go get them and let's track and make sure you're doing it. A few other things on the gbp, and we don't have to get super deep into all of it, but there's a lot of different spots on your GBP that you can be updating and filling out information and using it to get keywords for your Services and locations in it. So there's an update page, there's a products page, Q and A page. Even in the way you respond to people. You know. Hey, we, we. Thanks for trusting us with your water heater install job. We're so happy that we were able to help you in, you know, at your house in Stowe, Ohio yesterday. Like we look forward to serving you again.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Right.

[Ethan Wright]

Where can I get all those little mentions in there? So that one, it's just indexing. But two also like when you talk about chat, GBT or any of these AI models when you, when you ask them like why they recommend certain businesses. So much of it goes back to the Google business profile and they, it will scrape the actual reviews. And so. Oh, I saw that someone mentioned the area you were in.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Ethan Wright]

That you were on time, trustworthy, dependable, things like that left photos. So all those things are super important and so just neglect of gbp. A lot of people think I'm getting some reviews. We've got a good rating. I always challenge people like could you be getting more? Could you be doing more just to, to fill that out? Because it is, I mean it's such a powerful review or a lead driver nowadays. So that's a big one.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

I think the easy place to start is Google Plumber near me. H Vac near me. And whoever the biggest is in your area, like look at what they're doing compared to what you're doing.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yes.

[John Wilson]

And what, what's usually pretty interesting. And, and I'm, I'm curious how like the person that's not thinking much about their Google. I'm cur. Like it's hard for me to get in that like Met.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

Framework. But like if they're up against someone with like 5,000 reviews, like, I mean reviews are clear. Like review is pretty in like indicative of revenue.

[Ethan Wright]

Yes.

[John Wilson]

So hey, someone's $100 million or $80 million like you're, you're going to see 20,000 reviews. Someone's 30, you're going to see 5,000 reviews. Uh, so like it. It's a really like aligned. Which I think is kind of funny. So yeah, I, I would just try to copy what the big guys are doing. Like if they're giving daily updates, maybe you should figure out how to do daily updates.

[Ethan Wright]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

If they're like how are their services listed?

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Right.

[John Wilson]

How are their services listed? Are they doing coupons? How many photos? Well, how many reviews a day or week? Yeah, all that stuff like matters a lot. Well, you got big because GMB has been such a central focus for the past decade.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Ethan Wright]

And, and I. We talk with people, people all the time. It's like if you couldn't, you know, Maybe you're getting 15 calls from your GBP a month right now.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Ethan Wright]

If you could do a few things it and could double that count.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Ethan Wright]

In a reasonable amount of time. Think about what you would have to pay for 15 calls.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Oh yeah.

[Ethan Wright]

And those organic calls.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Ethan Wright]

Are much higher. Close rate, much higher intent. They've already researched you, they already looked at your reviews and so yeah, go look at like even if there's someone in your town, it's like, man, they always get people to leave photos with their reviews. They're, you know, they're leaving long descriptions with people are mentioning keywords. It's like that's not by accident. There's a way that they've trained their Techs or their CSRs that follow up of hey, your review means the world. If you could leave a picture, if you could mention your area, like people do that and I. It's something that can seemingly get lost in, you know, the sauce of just everything you're trying to do.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Ethan Wright]

But if you, if you got really focused on that channel.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Ethan Wright]

Like that is a massive. Yeah.

[John Wilson]

You can move it.

[Supporting Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[John Wilson]

Yeah, I can. This is awesome. So those are the three biggest mistakes we're seeing in service businesses. If you want to get a hold of you, where can they find you?

[Ethan Wright]

You can find us@service scalers.com or you can find us on X at the same service scalers.

[John Wilson]

Awesome. If you like what you heard, make sure you like and sub for more.