Under $5M? Marketing Isn’t Complicated (Here’s the Playbook)

Summary

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Owned and Operated – Under $5M? Marketing Isn’t Complicated (Here’s the Playbook)

Host: John Wilson
Guest: Sam Preston, CEO of Service Scalers
Release Date: February 3, 2026

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Overview

In this episode, John Wilson welcomes Sam Preston as part of the “Click to Call” series to discuss a core question for home service business owners: If your electrical, plumbing, or HVAC company is under $5 million in annual revenue, how should you approach marketing—and, critically, when do you actually need to hire an internal marketing manager or team?

The discussion breaks down exactly when, why, and how businesses should bring marketing expertise in-house, dispelling myths around marketing complexity at sub-$5M scale. The conversation is tactical, direct, and at times brutally honest—providing actionable advice for owners mired in the complexities of marketing and agency relationships.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Is Marketing Really That Complicated for Sub-$5M Businesses?

• John’s Hot Take (00:05):
  • “If you're under $5 million, marketing is not complicated.”
    • John challenges the narrative that small home service businesses need sophisticated marketing in their early growth phases.
  • “You can roughly buy your way to pretty big... You can cross into eight figures revenue without very fancy marketing technique.” (14:01)
• The Simplicity Principle:
  • For most businesses under $5M, the playbook is buy leads (via channels like LSAs, PPC), ensure response speed, and stay focused on customer acquisition.
  • Complexity arises only as the business scales, the number of marketing channels multiplies, and more diversified lead sources are required.

2. Why Do Owners Want to Go In-House with Marketing? (06:36)

• Good Reasons:
  • Control: Full control over execution and speed of change.
  • Speed: Ability to quickly update promotions, budgets, or creative without agency lag time.
    • “Speed is a really big one.” (07:30)
  • Focus: Freeing up executive time otherwise spent micromanaging agencies.
    • “Filling the board every day… That’s the most important thing. Nothing else happens if the board’s empty.” (08:23)
• Bad Reasons:
  • Frustration with Agency:
    • Reacting to dissatisfaction (instead of assessing business needs or budget readiness) usually ends in hiring the wrong person at the wrong time.
      • “Frustration is not a good reason, especially if your budget’s small.” (11:59)

3. When Is the Right Time to Hire Your First Internal Marketing Manager?

• Consensus: When Your Marketing Budget Justifies It (12:16):
  • 10% of total revenue is a solid benchmark for marketing spend.
  • If most marketing dollars would be swallowed by a manager’s salary, it’s too soon.
    • “If you’re a million-dollar company spending $8,000 a month and hire a manager at $5K/month, you only have $3K left for leads—not a good idea.” (12:16)
  • John’s example: They waited until $13–14M in revenue and $80–90K monthly spend, but Sam argues you can look sooner—probably at $4–5M.
• “It’s a complexity problem, not a size problem.” (14:01)
  • If your growth is simply about boosting LSA spend, you don’t need an internal hire.
  • Once you’re juggling multiple lead sources (LSAs, PPC, SMS/email, etc.), have real campaign complexity, or need rapid strategic pivots—it’s time.

4. What Should a Marketing Manager Actually Do? (24:28)

• Expected Duties:
  • Manage marketing budget and agency relationships
  • Oversee and optimize PPC, SEO, email, SMS, and social campaigns (but not necessarily execute them all directly)
  • Drive daily/weekly tactical actions to keep the lead flow steady
  • Hold agencies accountable with clear metrics (leads, CPL, budget targets)
• What They’re Not:
  • Not a one-person army: You can’t hire a single person to write copy, shoot videos, build landing pages, run PPC, manage SEO, and create TikToks.
    • “This is the biggest mistake… they assume they can just hire this one marketing person and they can do everything… Not really.” (17:22)
  • Not a pure creative/branding person: Home service success comes from direct response skills, not just graphic design or brand-building.

5. Who Makes the Best First Marketing Hire? (24:28, 29:10)

• Ideal Profile:
  • Direct response marketing background—especially affiliate, performance, or “eat what you kill” environments (e.g., mortgage or insurance lead gen).
  • Experience running and optimizing paid campaigns or account management at an agency, even if not in home services.
  • Strong focus on measurable lead generation and ROI.
• Who to Avoid:
  • Those strongest in “ethereal” or branding/graphic design; you need pragmatists, not just creatives.

6. How (and Where) to Hire: Domestic vs. Offshore (31:29)

• Domestic Search:
  • Post roles on LinkedIn and Indeed (“I personally like LinkedIn better.” (31:29))
  • Titles: Marketing Manager, Paid Lead Specialist, Direct Response Marketer
• Offshore Talent:
  • Latin America (Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica) is a goldmine for affordable and talented marketing managers/project managers.
  • Use agencies like Quick Staffers (recommended by both guests, (35:09))
  • Vet with practical video interviews (Loom) and use personality/skills tests (KOBE test).
• Poaching from Agencies or Other Home Service Operators:
  • Prior agency experience is a plus and these hires often hit the ground running.

7. Owner’s Ongoing Role (21:26)

• Don’t Abdicate Marketing—Even if You Hire:
  • “This is not an excuse for you to not be good at marketing or customer acquisition. There is nothing, in my opinion, more important in your business than being good at customer acquisition.” (21:26 – Sam)
• Owners must remain actively literate in marketing strategy and metrics, even as they pass tactical execution to others.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• John Wilson on Simplicity:
  • “If you’re under $5 million, marketing is not complicated.” (00:05)
  • “It’s a complexity problem, not a size problem.” (14:01)
• Sam Preston on Common Mistakes:
  • “The answer is no, one person can’t do it (all). Even within all of marketing, I’m good—but my PPC wizard makes me look dumb.” (19:47)
• On Hiring for Direct Response:
  • “The people I see that do the best are some version of direct response marketers... It’s a very direct outcome: I do X, I get X. That is a perfect candidate for this role.” (24:28)
• On What’s Actually Important:
  • “The more I’ve been good at is finding people that are really damn good at their specific service and allowing them to do this for other people.” (20:14)
• On Owner Responsibility:
  • “You must know (marketing) if you want to get to the next level. At some point, it won’t be the only thing, but you want to be good at that before you hand it off.” (21:26 - Sam)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:05: John’s unpopular opinion about marketing simplicity under $5M
• 06:36: Motivations for bringing marketing in-house (control, speed, focus)
• 12:16: When does the math work for hiring a marketing manager?
• 14:01: Complexity, not size, is the real threshold for internal hires
• 17:22: Debunking the ‘one person can do it all’ fallacy
• 24:28: Who to hire: skillsets and backgrounds that actually work
• 31:29: How and where to hire: domestic, offshore, agency, or poaching
• 21:26: Sam’s plea: Owners must master marketing before delegating

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Final Takeaways

• Marketing under $5M is rarely as complex as owners think; don’t over-hire or over-complicate.
• Evaluate your agency relationships and your internal workload—don’t assume frustration justifies an in-house pivot.
• Only hire internally once your marketing budget and channel complexity truly demand it; until then, work closely with agencies and stay hands-on with the basics.
• Seek out direct response and data-minded marketers when you do hire, not pure creatives.
• Even as you delegate, never abdicate your responsibility for understanding and driving customer acquisition.

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For more in-depth resources and upcoming training events (“Booked Solid,” March 2), visit ownedandoperated.com.

Transcript

[A]

I have an opinion that people won't like.

[B]

Hot take from John. Let's go.

[A]

If you're under $5 million, marketing is not complicated.

[B]

It's super easy to do my job. You can just. You can do this.

[A]

I said people are gonna like it. Today we're talking about hiring an internal.

[B]

Marketing team, but I really think the first hire is a marketing manager.

[A]

If you're expecting somebody to be sprinkle some Jesus juice and your total budget's $8,000, I'm like, okay, I want to.

[B]

Speak directly to you, owner. This is not an excuse for you to not be good.

[A]

I assume one person can just do it all.

[B]

And the answer is no. As an agency, we prefer to work with a marketing manager versus the owner.

[A]

I'm deeply insulted right now. Welcome back to Owned and Operated. I am your host, John Wilson. I run a plumbing, H VAC and electric company in Ohio. And for fun, I run a podcast where I talk to my friends about how to build home service companies. Today, we're continuing our series Click to Calls with the CEO of Service scalers, Sam Preston. Welcome to the show.

[B]

I am so happy to be here and honored to be called one of your friends.

[A]

We're buds. We're buds, bro. You just got to accept it. If you are new to the Click to Call series, I'd make sure you check out the past couple and if you have any questions, like, throw it in the comments. We're really, like, guiding this series through user questions. Uh, so far, we've talked about how to budget for marketing, how to think about that, where to spend it. We've talked to LSAs. I don't know if we've talked to PPC yet. We talked Google business profiles. Um, so we're just, you know, every time we do one of these, we're breaking a little bit more down on how to build marketing as a primary discipline in your home service business. So it's worth a listen.

[B]

And what I hear that LSA episode's kind of going crazy right now.

[A]

Yeah, that one popped the hell off, to be honest. Yeah, it popped. It really popped off, which was pretty cool. Yeah, I mean, it's fun to do these like me on my soapbox for a second. When I started this podcast five years ago, I always wanted it to be the resource that I never had when I first started off in my journey of growing our home service business. And there was just so much I didn't know. And it took me, like, seven or eight years into owning this business to feel like I knew what the hell was going on. Like, I had no idea. And, and it just took a long time and like stuff like Google business profile and like how to like when do you hire a marketing manager? Which is today's topic. How do you manage LSAs and how do you spend a million dollars on leads? Like, I don't know. I just didn't know. So I think it's really fun and I think it's really cool that we're able to. It's exciting that the episode's like popping off and doing really well. It's also just baller that we can create content and talk about something that is genuinely helpful to the industry. And I just think that's like a fun way for me to get back. So I'm grateful for everyone listening, but know that I'm really excited that I'm helping you.

[B]

I mean, I was literally talking to a guy last week who I just met and he has a $7 million business and he was, he asked me, so what's really difference between LSA and ppc? I don't, I don't really know. I'm like, you're a $7 million business. You should re like, these are two really legit marketing channels. You've got to know the difference. So for me, selfishly, I get to educate people on marketing services on how they can handle this and how to think about all the different marketing channels and driving leads and growing your business, which is what I really love doing.

[A]

For too long, I was letting the wrong marketing agencies set my money on fire and their marketing looked pretty good. On paper, the reporting was attractive, but at the end of the day, it just wasn't driving leads. That's why I started using service scalers at Wilson. Service Scalers is a marketing agency built specifically for home service companies. They focus on the channels that actually drive leads, like targeted ppc, local service ads, SEO, Google business profile. So that you're showing up in front of your customers that are actively searching. They'll help you see exactly what's working so you stop wasting ad dollars on low quality leads. Right now, they're doing something crazy and they're giving the opportunity for one entrepreneur to get up to 12 months of marketing on them. So that's up to $100,000 in services for the right operator. If you are serious about tightening up your marketing in 2026 and want to see what this could look like for your business, go to service scalers.com and book a free strategy call and let them know that I sent You. All right, so today we're talking about. I'm gonna. I'm gonna give this two titles. Your first marketing hire or hiring an internal marketing team. But I really think for most people listening to this, the question that I get a lot, or I'm in a bunch of these group chats or Facebook groups or whatever, and it always goes something like this. I'm annoyed with my agency. I'm going to go hire a marketing manager. And I'm like, okay, let's dive a little bit deeper. Like, first off, hey, maybe right, like, if your agency is Scorpion. Yeah, yeah, like, be annoyed. But you know, the people that I'm talking to that are like, yeah, I'm ready to. I'm ready to do this. They're spending like $8,000 a month total on marketing. And I'm like, my guy, you cannot introduce. I mean, you can, but it would be a very stupid idea to introduce a marketing salary at that size. So I think the things we're going to be talking about today is why do people go in house in the first place? When is the right time?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And like, what's a good reason how to find that person when it is the right time? Like, who are they? What's the. What's their resume look like? What's the background? And finally, like, what do they do? What do. What does a marketing hire actually do in your business? What can you expect? And what can. Frankly, what should you not expect? Because if you're expecting somebody to be. Sprinkle some Jesus juice and Your total budget's $8,000 inclusive of this person's salary. Yeah. You're not. No insult. Bang your leads. Right. Like, you just gotta pay for some freaking leads. Yeah. If you're not watching on YouTub it, we're salt bang actively.

[B]

I'm doing hand gestures for everything.

[A]

John's talking about lots of hand gestures so far. We're only two, three minutes in. Yeah. Okay, so first off, why do operators want to go in house? Like, why do people want to in house? This discipline.

[B]

I mean, I can tell you from perspectives. One is control. You. You just.

[A]

Control is a big one.

[B]

Hire the person to do the job and not feeling like you're paying for. For a portion of somebody else's as they're working at an agency.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

In which case I've done this in my own business where we have different marketing channels, where I hired internally and I failed three different times in finding the right person. So finally I went to an agency. So sometimes it's not as simple as just hiring that person. But the main reason I wanted to do that was cause I wanted to control that person's time.

[A]

Yeah, I think, yeah, control's a good one. Do you have any others? I have two others.

[B]

Aside from that, I think there's a perception of cost.

[A]

There is a perception of cost. I wasn't even thinking about perception of cost. So control is a big one. I totally agree. Speed is a really big one. So that was a pain point that we had, you know, six, seven years ago. We really struggled with speed of change. So hey, I want to. We're doing this coupon we got to add to the website. Well, how do we do that faster? We have this SEO idea. How do we help execute on this fast? How do we increase our budget? How do we. The board sucks today. So speeds are really big. Big, really big reason. And I, in my mind, if your budget is enough, which we will talk about, when is the right time? Control and speed are good reasons. Yeah. Like I like those reasons. A bad reason is frustration with agency. So I'm going to re pivot that to focus.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

When Brandon and I, Brandon's my partner and president. When we were like, hey, I think we're ready for an internal marketing hire, we were probably 13 or 14 million dollars of revenue. Even if you have an agency which like we have agencies today in addition to like an in house director of marketing. Maybe I'll talk about my, my marketing team stack here. But we have agencies, we have an in house team and it's like a pairing together. But what we were really wanting is like Brandon and I were spending a ton of our time on marketing because we had to fill the board every day. Like that's an executive function, is that's the most important thing. Nothing else happens if we don't have the board filled that day. No sales. No, nothing happens if the board's empty. Yeah. So it was us like directly managing agencies, it was us drafting SMS campaigns, it was us drafting emails, managing LSA budgets, trying to figure out how to make Angie's list work. So focus on was a big one and I think smaller operators, it turns into like frustration.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But like really, it's like there's just a lot to do in marketing. It's kind of like one of the most important things.

[B]

Daily.

[A]

It changes daily. Yeah. It changes data. It's hard to keep up with.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So yes, speed, control and focus are the good reasons to. I, I don't even want to say go in house because nearly every significantly sized operator that I know of uses in house paired with agencies in some capacity. Like they're using mail agencies, ppc, SEO. There is an agency somewhere in the mix because it changes all the time and marketing is like specialty driven. So I, I'm going to be cautious with like when to go in house. It's more like, when do you, you know, when do you bring on that first?

[B]

Yeah. And you mentioned y' all went in at 13 million. I feel like that's a little high. I would go sooner. We personally, as an agency, we prefer to work with a marketing manager versus the owner. Yeah, we love you owners. You know, we love you.

[A]

I am deeply insulted right now.

[B]

But you're busy and you've got a lot of fires put out. You've got to figure out so many.

[A]

I mean, this is focus. This is focus. This is like, this is a great reason to bring on that first marketing hire doesn't have to be a manager. It can be a coordinator. But someone should be. This should be their focus.

[B]

Because if we as an agency come to you on Tuesday and we say, hey, we need these two things from you, and then three days later you get it to us on Friday and then we're implementing it on Monday, suddenly you're like, hey, we're like, yeah, what the hell? It's been a week for two weeks. Where are we at? We're like, well, we need that information. Whereas a marketing manager, we tend to get responses really quickly and we can iterate much faster, get results faster, which for us, the faster we can get quick wins and leads in. In the door, the better off the relationship's going to be. So we tend to like with working with marketing managers over owners. Some of you owners are phenomenal, but.

[A]

You really, at some point, you're the best.

[B]

You get big enough, y'. All. Yeah, y' all are the best. At some point, you get big enough to where you shouldn't be spending your time on where to put the budget. You should have a budget set and you should have a marketing manager that's going, oh, yeah, the cost per lead's better over here. Let's shift the budget that way. Oh, it's over here. Let's go this way. We're having. We don't have any calls coming in or any leads or any appointments booked for today. We need to get that. So let's. Let's throw more budget into this emergency situation. Red alert and get some more leads in.

[A]

I think the next natural one is. Okay, got it. Those are good reasons. Frustration is not A good reason, especially if your budget's small. So when is the right time? You know, you said 13 was too late. When do you, when do you think the right time is?

[B]

Yeah, and you can, you can, you can back that up into a number. So, you know, we, we talked about this in the last episode when we talked about budgets. But let's say we're going to go with the, the, the very basic answer of spending 10%. If you're a million dollar company and you're spending, excuse me, $8,000 a month on marketing services and you hire a marketing manager just for easy numbers, let's call it five. Well then you only have three left to go into leads. That's just not a good idea. So I think it's closer to 4 to 5. And even then I think that you, I think that's probably a good place to be like looking for them. Do you think of that?

[A]

I have an opinion that people won't like.

[B]

Those are the best. Hot take from John. Let's go.

[A]

So here's the opinion that people, that people won't like. I had this opinion. I shared this opinion with like a friend of mine who, he's the, he's a marketing. I think VP of marketing is the title for a private equity firm that has 20 different brands. I was like, hey, this is my opinion. Like, what do you think?

[B]

What do you see?

[A]

Not just what do you think, but like, what do you see across 20 brands? Like, that's a pretty big, like, amount of feedback that you can get on this opinion if you're under $5 million. And I've shared this like in the past. Marketing is not complicated. It is. This is the unpopular opinion. This is not this, you know, it's.

[B]

Super easy to do my job. You can just, you can do this.

[A]

It's. I, you know, I said people are going to like it. The reason is like, you can roughly buy your way to pretty big. Like you can get, you can get pretty freaking big. Like you can cross into eight figures revenue without like very fancy marketing technique. Sure. Now it's like someone needs to know what the hell they're doing. So like you still have agencies, you still have like experts, you still have to do stuff. But my point is it's not super complicated. So when, when I think about like, when's the right time to hire somebody? To me it's like a complication problem. If, if all you're doing, and I say this in like the best way possible, if all it takes for your business to grow is spending more money on lsa. You do not need a marketing coordinator or manager or anything out there. Like you just don't. Because it's not complicated. Like it's one singular thing. It. So for me it's a complexity problem. Hey, when do you have, when do you have like a lot of different, probably channels going on? When are you emailing frequently? Like that takes a person or AI, I guess. When are you smsing campaigns? Very often. Do you need speed to lead stuff? Like, do you need to really step up your level? Are you an eight figure business? I think that's a good way to think about it. Another way I like to think about it, if you think about how does, how does an agency charge?

[B]

I mean there's a handful of ways we charge. We tend to do a, a flat rate based off of the level of service that you're, you're needing.

[A]

You could probably roughly back into like a percentage of spend.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

So like, yeah, so that's a way to think about when's the right time, what is my percentage of spend? So that, you know that example that we gave where someone's like, hey, I'm spending $8,000 a month right now. Well, if, and my agency charges 10% or 15%. Okay, well if you hire an in person marketing coordinator or manager or whatever you want to title that, that's 70%. Like the agency is a better deal than 70%. Yeah. So I'm a big fan of can you beat 10%? Yeah, like if an agency is 10% or 15 or 20% or whatever that like percentage of spend is, can you beat that efficiently? And that's when the math started to really make sense for us, was, hey, I'm spending significantly more on agency fees than I would spend on the three or four people that I would have to hire. Because it's not one. Usually three or four people I would have to hire to do this.

[B]

I mean, think about SEO in general. Like the SEO strategist, the person that's just a wizard at SEO is a really expensive hire for me. And then I go find somebody who's good at backlinks, and then I go find somebody who's good at content, like just writing content. And then I go find somebody that is good at building out landing pages and development. So like right there, it's just four hires for your little SEO package.

[A]

This is the biggest mistake that I see people prepping to hire for. They assume that they can just hire this one marketing person and they can do, hey, they can do Our social media, they can do videos, they can do funny tiktoks. They can also manage PPC budgets and they can, like, create SEO content and draft emails and, like, not really. And that was a tough learning curve for us of like, oh, yeah, okay. Like, I have this guy who's like, really great. He's amazing his job, but he does not do. He does not replace everything that I had. So the number that we chose, I think we divided spend at like 80 or 90,000amonth. And that's when, hey, this is a lot of money. 10% of that is nine grand. Can I bring somebody in, reduce a few of my agency fees, Keep the ones that he cannot replace and he. His background, we could talk about, like, how to pick backgrounds, but the ones we kept were SEO and PPC. But yeah, it was like 80, 90 grand a month. It was a lot, a lot of spend before we started, before we brought on that 4 first real marketing hire. So I think a percentage of spend is a really good way to think about it. And back to, like, it not being that complicated. It's not that complicated like an agency. If you're not trying to do very complicated stuff. And if you are talking frequently with your agency partner, you can get a lot done. Chris Hoffman, like, years ago, probably two years ago on Twitter, talked about. And it was really, like, helpful for me, treating your agencies like an employee. Like, are you talking with them often? Do you have scorecards for what success looks like? Do they have a target to hit, number of leads, budget, cost per lead? Like, whatever the target is? Like, have you set that target? Have you communicated about it? Or are you just reacting? And the reason why it was such a good learning for me is because the whole journey up into the 20s, we were just reacting. Like, we only called our marketing person when the board was light. And like, what are they gonna do? Like, it's too late. We should. We needed to do that two, three days ago when the board was starting to be light. And so, yeah, I think that's the when. And those are some of the mistakes that I know we lived because we made those mistakes. But I see that a lot too. Where they assume one person can just do it all.

[B]

Yeah. And the answer is no, One person can't do it even. Even within, like, all the market. Like, I'm good at marketing. I really am. And if you compared me to my PPC wizard, you know, yeah, like, she makes me look dumb a lot. And same thing with my SEO person. Like, they'll come in.

[A]

Did you See how fast I agreed to that? Yeah, yeah, no, yeah, you. I totally agree.

[B]

Yeah, I'm good at this. And I realized the more what I have been good at is finding people that are really damn good at their specific service and allowing them to do this for other people. And so even within that, it's hard to be good at PPC and SEO and, like, it just really is. Yeah, I would say it's. It's kind of like a diet, right? Like, you know, you want to lose weight. It's not hard. It's very simple. Eat less, move more. It's. It's very much like that. But at some point, you want somebody to come in and go, oh, hey, we just want to adjust this one thing. We just want to change this one thing and the way you're doing it.

[A]

So that you can talk about macros now.

[B]

Huh?

[A]

Is this about to become like a fitness show? Dude, I am here for this. I mean, we did start off. Yeah, Flexing.

[B]

Flexing, yeah. Owned and operated is about to be owned and operated.

[A]

Jacked edition.

[B]

Yeah, that's where we're going with this.

[A]

More like click to yoked.

[B]

We need a really good transition into that. So here we are.

[A]

Yeah, this is it. This is it, everyone. We are now a bodybuilding show.

[B]

Now, with all this, I do want to make a very clear. I want to speak directly to you, owner. This is not an excuse for you to not be good at marketing or customer acquisition. There is nothing, in my opinion, John, correct me if I'm wrong. I have been wrong at least once in my life. But there is nothing more important in your business than being good at customer acquisition. You must know this if you really want to get to that next level. At some point, it won't be the only thing that you need to know. Like, at some point, you need to figure out how to scale yourself as an owner and get yourself out of the weeds of managing the agency and holding them accountable. It's still your job. Like, you're still managing them through a marketing. Marketing manager. But that is the number one thing, is you want to be good at that and then put somebody in place to own that.

[A]

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[B]

I think that you go a couple different directions here. One, if you are paying too much for one specific service and you want to cut those costs, I think that that is a place where you can go and hire one specific person to manage one thing. In those cases you're probably looking at offshore talent. But I really think the first hire is a marketing manager. I think it's somebody that's job is to manage everything that you are already doing because it's going to make everything more effective. You when you hire that market, if you hire the right person, if you hire the right person, then your, the channels that you've been using and dominating and winning should get better. Your PPC should get better. Your Facebook ads, your TikTok ads, your whatever it is. You should be better at managing the budget, getting a better cost per lead through these channels because you have somebody whose job is to hold agencies accountable and to make sure that that budget is going into the right channels to get you the most leads that turn into a return.

[A]

I think, I agree. I think people start with a coordinator. My problem with a coordinator is marketing for our businesses isn't complicated like I've said, but it is expensive. And like if a lead is $70, like somebody has to really care. And if you're spending a hundred thousand dollars a month or $80,000 a month or 50 or like whatever it is, you're in entrusting someone to manage that budget, I mean that's essentially what they're managing is the budget and the process. And the problem with the coordinator is you've sort of like gone halfway in between. Like you don't have the expertise that you had at an agency, maybe you have more focus, but it's also a lot of money and you're giving someone control over probably hundreds of thousands of dollars and with, with the guidance that you probably don't have right like you probably aren't like owner probably isn't like this rock star marketing guru. So I think that can be a little bit dangerous. And budget control I definitely think is a manager higher. That's why we waited so late was we, we kept budgeting control. Like we had a few people help like emails and stuff. But like that's a very different thing than like controlling a million dollars I think when what to look for. So with a coordinator, like obviously you can do it but coordinators are usually just going to coordinate. So they might be sending SMS campaigns, email, maybe around arranging some outbound calling reporting. Like they can handle like reporting by lead source. So they can, they can handle a lot of that stuff. Budget control is probably going to go to a manager. Like if you're talking about real dollars, that should probably be managed. And the candidate that you're looking for, the people that I see that do the best are some version of a direct response marketer. So that can look a few different ways. I've seen it a lot in affiliate. Like someone that can really like affiliate for the layperson is like someone on Instagram says, hey, check out this, I don't know, Kohl's coupon or skincare product or whatever the hell. And then there's like a link in the bio and they get paid $5 for that affiliate link. And the reason I like that so much is because there's a very direct outcome. Like I'm going to perform this action, I'm going to talk about something and brand it. I'm going to pay for ads to go to this page. And when someone does something, when I sell them that product via my TikTok or webpage or whatever it is, I get paid a commission. So it's very similar to how home service works. We're going to invest money into a lead. We're going to drive that lead to our phone number, we're going to drive it to our website, we're going to drive it to our socials. We need something to happen there. They're going to book the call, they're going to do something and the outcome should be revenue after selling it. So I found that that has really worked and for our business. But for friends, businesses who've also hired that type of background, very direct response. I do X, I get X. That is like a perfect candidate for this type of role. The candidates that I think tend to struggle are more ethereal type of marketing. So we, we were like, I've talked with people that are probably really talented in the right setting. It's just like this isn't the right setting. And they were really good at like graphic design. They had an incredible sense of design and they could do branding like nobody's business. And that certainly would be helpful. But that's not going to drive the business today, tomorrow or the next day. No, the same way that like a direct response type marketer would and that, you know, if you put up like a position posting on. Indeed, direct response marketing could be a way to put it. Affiliate marketer. You could put a lot of different ways. But you will probably get people that like we've had a lot of people apply to marketing positions over the past. Like for like, hey, paid lead specialist. Like that'll be the title, paid lead specialist. And we'll get videographers who are probably incredible at their craft, but that is a very different thing. Yes, they've touched marketing. Yes, they've been around it. But managing a million dollars versus not is. Is different things. And knowing the outcome, how to measure it, how to tweak it to drive better performance. So that's what we've seen as being successful.

[B]

I like it when somebody, for a marketing manager who has had experience in running campaigns or working with a team that has run campaigns, that's not too hard to find if they've worked at an agency before. Somebody that has been a part of a team that's run Google Ads and SEO can translate really well. And I would even say it doesn't necessarily have to be in home service because, oh yeah, service is, you know, like you say, it's not. It's not overly complex in comparison.

[A]

It's just expensive.

[B]

It's just expensive. So somebody that has, yeah, I mean.

[A]

Guys that I know were like affiliate or like, hey, mortgage affiliate brokers was really interesting. I have a friend that hired somebody out of that industry. Insurance was interesting. Like, hey, I have to go market this insurance company and like I only get paid when someone buys their insurance product. Like, that's a. That guy's gonna eat what he kills. Like, that's a perfect candidate.

[B]

Right? Exactly. That's going to work really well. People that have. Who have had almost a. I think you could do really well with somebody that has account management experience. So somebody that's worked at an agency that has worked directly with clients, they may not have the exact experience on running a paid account or a SEO campaign, but they have worked with those teams. So they know how to ask the right questions, they know what they're looking for. It's very Similar to when I'm looking for a website project manager, I don't need them to have the development experience. In fact, I don't really want them to be developers. I want them to be able to look at the developers and go, what do you need to make this happen? Great, let me connect those two, which might go into the coordinating. But I think the big thing you want to get away from is the more visual design manager, somebody that just wants to help you with branding. We specifically want somebody that understands the lead is the only thing that matters. How do we get more of those? And I can work with other companies or if that's not working, I'm willing to get my hands dirty and go do it myself.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, I totally agree.

[B]

One of the questions you might be asking is like, where do I go and find this? And I think depending on like where you're at in your business, you, you might go a couple different ways. One bucket is to just throw on ads. And I personally, I'm going to, when we throw on ads to go find marketing talent, we looked at, we look at LinkedIn and indeed I personally like, like indie or excuse me, LinkedIn better. So go on to your LinkedIn. You'll see the For Business tab. You drop that down, it says hire on LinkedIn, you want to go through those steps to hire somebody if you are looking in, if you're, if you're, if you're looking for somebody, like I want to go a little bit cheaper and more affordable but still get good results and you're looking offshore. Latam is really talented right now for finding marketing managers, people that have experience managing campaigns. You can find really good project managers there. I like Brazil, I like Colombia, I like Costa Rica. There's a couple different places there that you can find really talented team members there. You can run LinkedIn ads, have some conversations. My suggestion, if you're going to do this, or at least here's what we do is when we're running these ad, these LinkedIn ads, we will then go through and try to find the people that are really qualified or kind of qualified. And then we asked them to give us a loom video. In that loom video, we want to know who you are. We asked you three questions on how you are going to attack this specific position. Like if you're looking for a marketing manager, tell us about a time that you were managing a budget. How do you, in a situation when there's not enough leads, go get more leads, leads, things like that. And then the last question Is like, well, what are you looking for in a company? Once we get all of those, I then want to look for one. Do I want to work with this person? Is their, you know, communication good enough to be able to work with? And then we go into the interview process. We ask them even tougher questions to try to weed out people that are just pretending people are just fluffy. And at that point, we then, we then look to hire. The only thing I have done with a lot of success is the copie test. It's like a quiz where it figures out kind of like a personality test, but it's more about how you work. And I have found that when I have people take this Kobe test, K O B E, it is really successful on finding me the right person to do that. Now, that's if you're looking, hey, I want to go hire this person. The other two places I would look, one is agencies. You can find a lot of really good talent there to go, you know, get from. And the other one would be other home service businesses. These, again, will be like your main, like, marketing people. I. I would not hire like a director of marketing for your entire business. Your hopes to really, like, grow your company in a big way and completely own it. I think that's. That's a completely different story than just a marketing manager. Come manage your budget and your relationships with your clients or, excuse me, your relationships with your agencies.

[A]

I think I'm gonna give a plug. My. My buddy Jack runs Quick Staffers and they do a good job. We actually just hired an assistant controller from Latam out of there, which was really cool. So good spot to look. If you're thinking about offshoring and you don't know where to start. Good spot to think about.

[B]

100%. I've actually heard a couple of clients say really good things about Quick Staffers. Do they do marketing managers?

[A]

I think so. They started in the call center and we have like, I think four, three or four call center reps from them. And then we asked them to help us locate assistant controller and they did. Like, the candidate was frigging awesome. We hired him yesterday. So I would assume they could do marketing manager. I don't really know, but, like, those are the only two that I focused on right now. But worth A shot, 100%.

[B]

What I've liked, from what I've heard on clickstaffers, is the people that you get are already trained to do the job. So it really is like kind of a plug and play type of situation, at least for the call Center. We like working with companies like that because we know that their SDRs, their call centers already trained, which is a big problem that we, we've come up against all the time is driving leads and not knowing what happens afterwards or, you know, being sent to just a random admin who's never been trained to turn that into an appointment. That's where it's like, that's really hard for an agency to overcome. Insert marketing management, insert somebody that already has that experience to help take that to the next level. I mean, that's what you want.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. Good, good spots to start for sure. Are you still missing calls after hours or losing leads while your team sleeps? That's why we work with Avoca, AI owned and operated's exclusive call center partner. They answer 24, 7, sound like a real human, and plug straight into your CRM to book jobs, send quotes and even revive old leads. There are plenty of AI call centers out there, but we trust Avoca because we've seen the results firsthand. More book jobs, less wasted spend and no more missed revenue. See it in action at the link below. Start winning more jobs today with voca.

[B]

Only a plug I would just throw in there is that we are holding a event early March. Right now, dates will be probably live. By the time that this podcast goes live, we're looking at like the 2nd of March where we are going to hold an event. Actually, I don't know if you know this in your building. I've been working with your team.

[A]

Kristen told me yesterday. Did she? Great. She's like, oh yeah, by the way.

[B]

Yeah, we just been working with Kristen this whole time and it's called booked solid where we're going to come in and teach everything, everything we possibly can. So we're going to teach you everything about ppc, lsa, gbp, budgeting to, you know, how to hire your marketing manager. All of these topics in person, in details where you can ask questions so that you can figure out what, what the heck is ppc? Like, how should I be thinking about this? How do I get the most out of this? How do I set up my marketing in a way that builds out a funnel so I know how to get a return on my ad spend? We're going to be doing this. It's going to be two days, no fluff, really trying to get into the nitty gritty. So would love to see you there. And if you have a marketing manager, that'd be a great place that bring them as well so that we can teach them the different things. If again if they have don't have specific experience in one of those categories.

[A]

Yeah, the name is dope and apparently I'm pumped to see everybody. So sounds like fun.

[B]

What are you doing early March? John I'll be in your area.

[A]

Well thanks everybody for tuning in today for click to calls. This has been a lot of fun. I'm really glad that people are getting like a bunch of help out of this. This is one of our most asked questions is when is my first marketing hire? What's the right time? Who am I looking for? So I hope we answered a bunch of those questions today. If you have any more questions on this topic or any others, make sure you comment it below. We do read them and we are building this series based off of listener feedback. Also make sure you give us a five star review review wherever it is that you listen to podcasts and hit that like and sub button. We are super grateful.