You're Tracking Your Ad Spend Wrong (Here’s What to Do Instead)

Summary

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Owned and Operated Podcast

Episode: You're Tracking Your Ad Spend Wrong (Here’s What to Do Instead)
Date: March 26, 2026
Host: John Wilson
Guest: Tony Castellucci (Water Maker Advertising)

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Episode Overview

This episode tackles a critical (and often misunderstood) element of home service business growth: attribution and tracking for ad spend. Host John Wilson and guest Tony Castellucci explore the pitfalls of traditional tracking metrics like cost per lead, the challenges of measuring brand marketing, and how owners can use smarter attribution models to drive real ROI from plumbing, electrical, and HVAC marketing.

The conversation blends practical advice with candid stories, uncovering actionable strategies for scaling businesses, managing marketing complexity, and capturing profitable growth—even as the market evolves and competition heats up.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Defining Modern Attribution

• The Attribution Problem: Classic tracking—like “last-click” attribution and raw cost-per-lead—can dangerously misrepresent which marketing channels actually drive profitable calls and jobs.
• Brand vs. Demand Capture: Many leads result from a blend of brand exposure and digital clicks; giving all credit to Google or LSA misses what drove the initial interest.
  • “If you're just looking at that last click on Google, that PPC, you can really go wrong with, you know, giving the wrong credit to the wrong channel.” (Tony, 07:01)

2. Pitfalls of Cost-Per-Lead Obsession

• CPL Is Not King: Owners often fixate on cost per lead because it’s easy to measure—but not all leads are created equal, and high volume can mean low quality.
• Diverse Methodologies: How companies source and define “a lead” varies widely, making comparisons and benchmarks unreliable.
  • “Not all leads are the same. You can buy some really low quality leads, you know, different channels… so you really have to go a lot deeper.” (Tony, 11:16)
  • “I have absolutely no idea what our cost per lead is. … I do know ROI by channel, though, which I think is where everyone... should be focused.” (John, 12:04)

3. Blended and Multi-Touch Attribution Approaches

• Tracking Brand Impact: TV, billboards, radio, and truck wraps all drive “stimulus” that moves people to Google your brand—data attribution must blend digital analytics with traditional awareness.
• The Timestamp Approach: By matching inbound calls/form fills with broadcast schedule “flight times,” you can assign partial credit based on timing, not just on what the caller claims.
  • “Manual call, if they're not clicking even a tracked phone number—just, hey, phone rang at blank, you know, 9:56. It doesn't have to be exact, but down to the minute.” (Tony, 18:43)
  • “If you're going off that source as gospel, [‘how did you hear about us’]—you're in trouble … The timestamp is more important because … I’m going to audit it against everything else you're doing.” (Tony, 21:55)

4. Building a Real ROI-Centric Scorecard

• What to Track:
  • Channel (e.g., LSA, PPC, TV, Radio, Lead Aggregators)
  • Number of leads
  • Total spend
  • Cost per set/sit (appointment attended)
  • Cancellation rate
  • Quotes, Sales, Cost/Sale, Average Ticket, Close Rate
• The Goal: Evaluate every channel for not just lead volume, but conversion, profit, and ROI.
  • “The left side of the spreadsheet is like, does this channel have volume? And the right side ... is the channel profitable with that volume?” (John, 14:58)
  • “If you only cared about the five leads, then we'd probably turn it off, because I don't think we would look at more of the picture... cost per lead is just one of the 10 things...” (John, 15:50)

5. Demand Creation vs Demand Capture

• Demand Capture: LSA, PPC, and other digital—captures “in-market” leads, ~1% of households at any time.
• Demand Creation: TV, radio, billboards, canvassing—pushes new demand, moves people “on the fence” into your funnel.
  • “Your demand creation is more the traditional side… if you’re structuring the campaign right, you should be able to drill it down… and give credit where it’s due.” (Tony, 11:45)

6. Creative’s Role in Attribution

• Calls to Action Are Crucial: For traditional channels to be trackable, ads must invite immediate action:
  • “Why you? Why now? How can I afford you?” (Tony, 33:46)
• Symptom-Based Marketing: Borrow from pharma—market around triggers and pain points to pull people into a buying mood.

7. The "Elephant Curve": Channel Performance Over Time

• Diminishing Returns: Every lead source starts strong, tapers, then plateaus or declines. To keep growth, businesses must continually explore and invest in new channels.
  • “If all you do is add more channels and you have 10 channels and they're all on the elephant curve, then all you've created is a bigger elephant curve.” (John, 47:09)

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Memorable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• On False Attribution:
  “Google gets most of the credit… but really that's just like the last click that happened because someone Googled Wilson Plumbing after seeing the radio or TV or trucks or whatever it is.” — John (04:42)
• Why ‘How Did You Hear About Us’ Is Flawed:
  “Almost everyone’s gonna say Google, because that's where they just found your number. I feel like that's still sort of bad data.” — John (20:46)
• The Limitations of Digital Tracking:
  “You can't click the TV commercial, right. So you kind of gotta use GA… CRM data… Benchmarking's huge.” — Tony (09:37)
• CPL’s Inadequacy:
  “Cost per lead is one of the points of data. …bringing it down to, hey, I gave you a dollar. Give me ten or more is what we try to do. 10x the marketing spend.” — Tony (13:53)
• Symptoms Sell:
  “Big Pharma mastered this—symptom-based marketing... My drains are slow. Free diagnostic? Be there same day? Now I'll call you.” — Tony (43:02)
• The 1% Rule:
  “1% of the market’s in the market at any given time… there are 8,000 out there that have a leaky sink that could be swayed.” — Tony (41:21)

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Key Action Steps & Takeaways

Attribution Best Practices

• Move beyond cost-per-lead—use a scorecard approach tracking multiple downstream metrics and true profitability.
• Blend digital and traditional data: Use timestamps and analyze uplifts in volume after flight times for traditional media.
• Demand creation is now essential—don’t just rely on capturing in-market buyers.

For Growth-Minded Operators

• Benchmark before launching a new channel (know your existing CPL, conversion, etc.)
• Track everything possible: conversion rates, cancellation rates, cost per sit/demo, close rates by channel.
• Match inbound volume (by type/source) to relevant ad flights and adjust spends for ROI, not just volume.

On Creative & Channel Strategy

• Direct-response brand ads perform better and are more trackable than vague branding.
• Shift budgets as channels plateau—expect to always chase the new “elephant curve.”
• Don’t get wedded to your own habits as an owner—your customers are not you.

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Notable Timestamps

• 05:55: Challenges of attributing billboards and truck wraps
• 12:24: Limitations of cost-per-lead as a success metric
• 18:43: The nuts and bolts of timestamp-based attribution
• 23:09: Using benchmarking and market segmentation in attribution
• 25:26: Expanded metrics: cost per sit, cancellation rate, and their impact
• 33:44: The three essential questions for actionable creative
• 41:21: Explanation of “1% of the market is in-market” for plumbers
• 47:09: The Elephant Curve and diminishing channel returns

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Tone and Style

The episode is energetic, operator-focused, and grounded in real-world tactics—not theory. Both John and Tony favor practicality and transparent, unfiltered advice. They challenge outdated thinking, poke fun at common missteps, and share firsthand stories of both failure and success as owners and marketers.

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Further Resources/Contact

• Tony Castellucci: Want More Leads
• John Wilson: Owned & Operated

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This episode is essential listening—and now reading—for anyone serious about profitably growing a home service business in today’s multi-channel market.
Skip the vanity metrics and start tracking what truly drives your business.

Transcript

[A]

Well, today we're dialing in attribution, measuring brand is really complicated.

[B]

Billboards, things like that. That's probably the hardest to tie down to an roi.

[A]

That makes sense.

[B]

Yeah. If you're just looking at that last click on Google, you can really go wrong with giving the wrong credit to the wrong channel.

[A]

How do you get to the thing that matters the most, which like cost per lead does not matter the most.

[B]

Just about everybody we work with, they count things a little bit differently. So when you try to benchmark a cost per lead, it varies just from that alone.

[A]

How do we make sure this is right? Welcome back to Owned and Operated. I am your host, John Wilson, and this is a home service business podcast. During the day, I run Wilson Plumbing, heating, cooling and electric. And we are a plumbing, heating, cooling, electric contractor in Ohio and Indiana. And for fun, I run a podcast where I talk to my friends about how to build home service companies. Today I have a returning guest, Tony Castellucci, and today we're talking about tracking and attribution in your ad spend. This question has come up a lot in our Facebook groups and in our community. So this is going to be a really good one to unpack as you're scaling your marketing spend and trying to figure out is this marketing driving real profitable results. Thanks for tuning in.

[B]

Glad to be here. Man, it's like riding a bike. Yeah, it's like riding a bike. It's. Love the table off the couch, but upgrades keep happening pre Mike, you called

[A]

it a casting couch.

[B]

I'm just going to. Yeah, I missed the rip and I'm not used to hearing Ohio and Indiana.

[A]

So we're two states now. Yeah. So that's pretty relatively fresh. So this is what, March, what today?

[B]

Fourth.

[A]

So 30 days ago on February 4th, we bought a brand out in Indiana and we are just about to buy one in a little bit south of us.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Like in another new state. So should be kind of fun. Awesome.

[B]

Awesome.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Going all 50 soon.

[A]

At least three. Yeah, at least three. It. It is fun to like, obviously we're like, you know, 60 total days into multi location again and 30 total days into multi state.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Lot of moving parts. But it is fun to imagine ourselves as regional. We're still in the honeymoon stage where like, oh yeah, this is fun and new and exciting and I'm sure in like 30, 60 days we'll be like, why the did we do.

[B]

The next time I see you're gonna be all gray. The worst.

[A]

But right now we're still in the honeymoon stage.

[B]

That's awesome. That's awesome. Keeps. Keeps you on your toes. I'm sure. I'm sure you're busy, but. Yeah, no, I've been following along. I'm a. I'm a user of the podcast, too. I listen to it all the time. So long. So a lot of great stuff.

[A]

Great. Cool. Well, today we're dialing in on attribution, which is kind of fun.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Before we dive in, can we just talk a little bit about, like, your company and just in case other people haven't heard the other episodes. Yeah. I recommend. I think we can link to the other episodes too. They're. They're really valuable.

[B]

Yeah, no, absolutely. So I'm Tony. I'm with Water Maker Advertising. So we specialize. We're a little bit niche, I like to say. I kept saying last night, I'm like Liam Neeson and taken. Where's. I have a particular set of skills. That's it. So we are really. We specialize in traditional marketing, traditional channels, primarily video. So we'll get into that. And then, you know, we do a few different verticals. But home services has kind of exploded as one of our primary. I mean, I'd say like 80% is probably home service companies, but just bringing scale in and, you know, bringing back a, you know, marketing channels that people have time to forgot about. That's having a hell of a renaissance now. Oh, yeah. And tying it into a new world of 2026, a lot of changes. AI attribution, this subject today comes up a lot.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And yeah, it's kind of just to define attribution.

[A]

Like, attribution is. Where did the lead come from? Like tracking the lead.

[B]

Where the lead come from. And I'm investing here. You know, prove to me it's working. Get that Roas. I have the hat. I forgot to bring it again. But yeah, always tying it back to return on ad spend and ROI and then optimize. Using that to optimize as well moving forward.

[A]

Yeah, we had a. We have this series that I've been doing with Sam Preston, and it's called Clicks to Calls. And like every week or. I don't know if it actually goes out weekly or not, but every episode we unpack, like, a slightly different section of marketing. So we did billboards and we did truck wraps and next door and pvc and, you know, we just like, we're covering sort of all of it. Yeah. And attribution came up a lot for truck wraps because the. The whole, like, concept of truck wrap is we're branding our business. Yeah, but you could do that with billboards, you could do that with tv, radio, like all of it's sort of like how are we thinking about our external to the intern? Branding and attribution came up a ton because measuring brand is really complicated.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And Google gets most of the credit, right. So like hey are we got this click or we got this call from LSA or PPC or whatever. But really that's just like the last click that happened because someone googled Wilson Plumbing after seeing the radio or TV or trucks or you know, whatever it is. So really trying to unpack the branded search and like, you know, making sure you're actually getting real data. I talk to a lot of home service business owners and if you are anything like the many shops that I know, you're getting flooded with AI pitches right now, most of them sound great, but then they fall apart the second they hit the real world. The one that I've kept coming back to is Evoca. What impressed me is they actually get how contracting businesses rather run. And it's not just some AI answering service. Avoca is going to handle inbound calls, outbound follow ups, texts, web leads, dispatching, and Even coaching your CSRs inside of one system that's built for growing home service companies. And if you're on service titan, this matters. Their integrations go deep so you're not duct taping five tools together and hoping nothing breaks during your busy season. I also like that they're honest about what AI should and shouldn't do. When a call needs a human, they have a 24. 7 live transfer built in. No drop balls, no awkward customer experience. Owners using Evoca are seeing hold times basically disappear and booking rates jump, sometimes by more than 30%. And that is real revenue, not just a vanity metric. If you're looking for the one AI partner that actually helps you book more jobs without creating more chaos, this is worth taking a look. Book a demo at the link below.

[B]

Yeah, and I will say, you know, truck wraps, billboards, things like that, how they're consumed, that's probably the hardest to tie down to an roi. Depending on the channel, there's different strategies, but yeah, and I've heard a couple of those and I was talking to him a little bit about it. He's like, you might have a little bit different opinions with billboards and things like that, but all good content. But yeah, that's happy to talk about it. Last touch. Attribution has been a huge point that we've been trying to get our clients away from. And when people come to us, I mean, if you're just looking at that last click on Google, that ppc, you can really go wrong with, you know, giving the wrong credit to the wrong channel.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And, you know, throwing something out that could be working really well that, you know, you might be passing up.

[A]

So as an extreme example, which is kind of funny, I have a friend, and he was spending, I want to say it was like 60 grand a month on PPC.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

And, like, in general, I'm a fan of PPC, but, like, this is just like an interesting story. So he was spending 50, 60 grand a month on PPC, and all of. All of the data was like, hey, this is, you know, it's working, it's good, it's whatever. And then he started unpacking a little bit more, and it's like, actually, most of this is branded. So I was already going to get this click. I was already going to get this customer. Like, someone searched Wilson and I paid to show up. So he deleted it. He just, like, turned off, which I was like, let's see how this works out for him. And it did work. It did work out for him. And it was kind of funny because he started unpacking. Okay. What was happening prior to them searching that branded, you know, company searching. It was interesting. But we've invested a ton of energy into this. There's kind of. There's a lot of software now you can used to sort of track, like, behavior on our website that was helping. I don't remember the name of it, to be honest, but it was helping with our attribution.

[B]

Yeah. And it's. It's even migrated into our line of work. So, I mean, we're huge with video, and one of the biggest channels that we recommend and happy to dive into it further is broadcast TV with kind of our main channel that we use on the traditional side and even our buying platform. And we pair back the schedules. Once they're reconciled with GA and commercial runs, web traffic goes with it. And you could even drill down on where that came from, what channel. Direct leads are the best leads. Big believer in that. So brand traffic, organic search, direct to the URL, different quality of lead coming through. So, yeah, even driving it down and taking a look at that from our side of things has come a long way in the last few years. I mean, everyone's prioritizing that. So tying it all together. But, you know, we are hitting a good point because it is definitely not as cut and dry as digital channels. So you have to dive deeper. We use instead of Last Touch, actually I call it like blended because there's like really four different philosophies that we kind of roll together to tell the story of what's working on the traditional side. Because to your point, you can't click the TV commercial right. So you kind of got to use ga. We use CRM data.

[A]

Ga. Google Analytics.

[B]

Google Analytics, Yep. Google Analytics. Benchmarking's huge. Not a lot of people that. Do you know what your cost per lead is before you turn on this channel? Cost per sick, cost per sale, conversion rates, all of that stuff. A lot of those metrics are heavily impacted by traditional marketing. And you can't. It's not always easy to identify. But yeah, you turn this channel on, all of a sudden my quality, my conversion rates skyrocketing, my margins are higher. Average tickets up. There's something to that. So yeah, blending that all together is. That's kind of what we do.

[A]

We're talking about this earlier and I was talking about this with Ethan and we were talking about sort of the marketing stack, tech stack, and like what's inside that tech stack or like lead stack. I don't even know the best way to channels, I guess.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And people sort of obsessing with cost per lead, probably because that's the easiest to track, I guess. Why do you think people get so on that one thing?

[B]

Yeah, I guess it's just the most. I mean, I don't want to offend anybody. Probably the most basic. I mean everybody knows cpl, cost per lead. I mean that just comes up anytime I talk to anybody about marketing, whether you're veteran to somebody who just started a business a year ago. I don't know if they're just conditioned, but that's always the knee jerk. And not all leads are the same. I mean, you can buy some really low quality leads, you know, different channels. I mean lead aggregators, social, some of those can come through and a lot of them are junk. But there's a number of leads. So the cost per lead's good. So you really have to go a lot deeper than that. I mean, a lot of what I'm going to talk about today with the team and I think I even heard will touch on it, is I've always called it hunter gatherer strategies. But demand creation versus demand capture and the two different philosophies, even on the attribution side that goes along with it. So you know those tech digital channels are really the demand capture side. That's your lsa, that's your ppc. Your organic demand creation is more of the traditional side. And if you're structuring the campaign right, and even if the creative is structured right, you should be able to drill it down enough in that sales funnel where you'll be able to track it and, yeah. Give credit where it's due.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

All the way through.

[A]

I think something that's kind of funny about cost per lead as like a, A, A main conversation point, because Ethan said roughly the same thing.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

He was just like. Yeah, everyone, like, has, like, they know what they want for cost per lead or. And I could be the dumb one in the room. Like, I usually probably. I probably normally am. But what's kind of funny is, like, I have absolutely no idea what our cost per lead is. Like, I, I know that. I know what our restoration one is just because I think it's funny and it's like five to six hundred dollars. And I think that's kind of like a funny number.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But besides that, I have absolutely no concept at all what our cost per lead is. I do know ROI by channel, though, which I think is where everyone. That's sort of what this episode is about is how do you get to the thing that matters the most, which, like, cost per lead does not matter the most. Cost per lead is one of the, One of the points of data.

[B]

Yeah. No, I mean, I'll even draw a comparison. Like, if I'm putting together a TV schedule for a client, there's always some dog station that's in fourth place that's going to sell commercials for a dollar or something like that.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Is that the same quality as. But if I'm breaking it down on a cost per unit basis, it makes sense in that metric, but doesn't make sense strategically. And the other thing is just about everybody we work with, they source a little bit differently. They count things a little bit differently. So when you try to benchmark a cost per lead, it varies just from that alone.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Some people are giving credit all the way up. Only direct traffic that I can pair straight one to one with TV or radio, some which is high if you're not looking at other things. So that could be a $300 cost per lead if you're only looking at that. But if you follow it through, it usually drops. But to your point, the methodologies aren't consistent. So cost per lead can really skew up and down one way or the other. So. Yeah. Bringing it all the way down. Yeah. Bringing it down to, hey, I gave you a dollar. Give me ten or more is what we try to do. 10x the marketing spend.

[A]

Yeah. Let's unpack this a little bit more. So, so I get this weekly and then monthly report. And I'm just like, curious how you, how you think about this. Maybe any input you have. But. So I, we have this report. We do it internally and it's just like Google sheets. I'm sure there's software out there, but every time we've looked at it, it's like, we can just do this on Google sheets. So we, we have our. This is paid channels, but also organic channels. So two different sheets and it's going to be the channel itself. So lsa, website and then website paid versus organic. If we're running like a paid channel to the website, and that could be meta or ppc. So website, lsa, maybe Angie's List. Modernize, you know, sort of the lead aggregators.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

The number of leads, total spend, SAT leads. I think there's a cost per SAT in there. Usually I don't even look at that because what I look at is all the way on the other end, which is conversion rate, sale and roi. And really ROI is the last one. And that's the channel. That's the column I tend to focus on. So, like the, you know, the left side of the spreadsheet is like, does this channel have volume? And the right side of the spreadsheet, is the channel profitable with that volume? And what's kind of funny is it helps us make good decisions.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Where, hey, this, this, we have a chance. We have a lead aggregator. I don't remember the name, but the ROI is always ridiculous.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Like, I don't like in the 20s normally, which is like outrageous.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But the problem is there's no volume. Yeah. So we'll get like five leads a month. But like, we sell them all for like 20 grand each. So it's like an insane channel, but it has absolutely no volume at all. But I think if. And this is sort of the. Why do you. Why we track all this data is if we just had. If we only cared about the five leads, then we'd probably turn it off.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because I don't think we would look at like more of the picture. And that's why cost per lead is like, I'm sure that that's one of the 10 things in that lineup that we use to measure ROI, but like, it's just one of 10 things. Yeah.

[B]

I mean, and you know, you bring up a good point because we're seeing

[A]

that more and more.

[B]

If you're focusing on what I call demand capture the gatherer marketing strategies, we're seeing volume become a real issue. And that's where people tend to turn to us with on the traditional side is I need to create more volume.

[A]

Totally.

[B]

But then also always taking it back to that ROI standpoint. And to your point, we have clients that have all different types of that spreadsheet that you just described us. The most important thing on there is the timestamp. So if they're willing to share it, I always flood whoever's helping you with your marketing info as possible. But when a client shares and then they source it the best they can and then I get, okay, I'm going to pair this up with either the TV commercial, the radio commercial, OTT streaming, whatever else you're doing. And you're. I'm always amazed that, okay, well this was SEO. I always say SEO has never driven a lead. It's like you're there to catch it, but something pushed them there.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Unless you're really interested in plumbing.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So you know, you're. I'm always surprised when I put the commercial ran at 1224, 1226 and organically came in well then I'm odd in that down. I'm going to give partial credit to, you know that the campaign that drove it in there, even on the PPC side, it came in as a branded paid search ad. But there was a commercial or some kind of trigger stimulus that pushed them right down into it. So all works together. And you know, the one thing that we see consistently, no matter what you're doing on. On the traditional side is whenever you infuse scale into it, you putting all those digital components on steroids. So your cost per lead across the board should go down with volume picking up.

[A]

So as we're like let's. Let's talk about that another layer deep. So we've got the timestamping the leads and is that like form fill? Is that a phone call? Both.

[B]

Both.

[A]

Is there another example of a lead or. Those are the only two I can think of.

[B]

Yeah. No, just, I mean pretty much the time the phone rang or the time the form fill was hit sent is. Is what I mean.

[A]

I mean and someone's putting a tracking number like per. Do you have an opinion on how many different tracking numbers?

[B]

So tracking numbers, I like them for print. I could take or leave them for pretty much everything else.

[A]

But for website it sounds like for website.

[B]

Yeah, you can click the call there too. So it's, it's a little. Most time with mobile, but okay. Like on a, on a billboard or a TV commercial, you're still driving, you're still probably going to go in 20.

[A]

I was mainly focused on the website. I'm thinking about this like, hey, there's a stimulus to like timestamping an interaction that's almost only going to happen on the website. Is there another place that we can timestamp an interaction?

[B]

Even just the manual call, if they're not clicking even a tracked phone number, just, hey, phone rang at blank, you know, 9:56. Just to give. It doesn't have to be exact, but you know, down to the minute. Because what we typically do is we attribute traditional sources within, you know, 15, 20 minutes, which is the average recall for a consumer.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

As partial credit. So having that timestamp and then seeing what ran right before that goes a long way to see, okay, what's working, what's not.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And you know, really, how's that work?

[A]

I mean, the larger the business, the more phone calls happen. So like, you know, we, we might have 100 phone calls an hour.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

And I feel like that sounds right. I think we get like six or seven hundred phone calls a day.

[B]

And you got break it down by market. So I would pull, you know, your Cleveland market versus the campaigns that you have running in Cleveland. So it's probably not.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, 100 within that same hour there. And it also helps kind of, you know, part of the reason why we are so, so pro video is because of how that content is consumed. If you're doing billboards, radio or no billboards. Yeah, billboards, radio, even like your truck wraps. Part of the reason why it's so hard to do attribution is because you're not in a place to take action. You're most likely driving. Then you have to remember, you know, what you saw. Call it. So how long is that gap is part of it and then, you know, does it stay with you and then it's re triggered down the road by something else. So that's why, first step, we like video because usually you're in a position after digital, after demand capture to take action, where you can see just based on the ability to take action helps that attribution.

[A]

I think I like this more than. There was a company, I was listening to a podcast, this was probably two years ago, and I can't pronounce their name and I don't think anybody can. And they make a lot of jokes about that, which is Kind of funny. They, like, really own it.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

There are 30, 40, 50 somewhere in that range up in Michigan. And it's like Roan good or something. But

[B]

they.

[A]

They talked about this on some show, and I kind of disagreed. But, I mean, you know, they're. They're. They're beating me. So, you know, who knows? Yeah, but. So maybe I could be the dumb one. But what they're doing is every single call that comes in, for years, they were very religious about asking, well, where did you hear about us? And the problem that I have with that is almost everyone's gonna say Google, because that's where they just found your number. And I feel like that's still sort of bad data. Again. I would love it if somebody corrects me if I'm wrong. But that. That feels like bad data versus I kind of. I mean, it's an imperfect science, but I think I'm into the timestamp because I feel like that's a. It's one more data piece, and maybe if you combine the two, that's when you get, you know, better information. Yeah.

[B]

I don't discourage people for asking. You don't. I mean, people don't want to be bombarded with questions when they're calling for a service. So you don't want to be intrusive, but I don't have problems asking. But if you're going off that source as gospel, you're. You're. I mean, I've been in advertising a long time. I. I don't know if I've ever said I saw you on TV or saw you of X. You know, you just found you online.

[A]

Yeah, I saw you above the urinal at the local baseball stadium. Yeah, that's us.

[B]

Sometimes I say something.

[A]

That's how I know my fourth marketing strategy is working.

[B]

Sometimes I'll say something totally random that I know they're not doing just to throw it off. Yeah, no, but it's. There are some things you can gleam. Some people will say, as you know, a specific channel or program or something. You know, the marketing thing or the baseball thing. So you can gleam some. So I'm not discouraging from doing it, but the timestamp is more important because no matter what they say, I'm going to audit it against everything else you're doing and see what makes sense, what actually. What actually happened.

[A]

Yeah. And maybe, like, I was. Because I'm trying to think about, like, how to get that right, and I'm trying to think about that for our own. So if I get you know, on a. On a Monday from 8 to 9am let's say a normal amount of calls for us is like 150 calls. Like, my first sort of hesitancy with counting timestamps is like, I get 150 calls. That's a lot already, I think.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

But maybe, like, the measurement is compared to other Mondays.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So maybe you, like, pull more data in for, like, you know, what was the uplift from that stimulus? Because I'm trying to, like, how do we make sure this is working?

[B]

Well, that's part of it. Back to benchmarking. That's being a part of it as well. But then you also look for things that make sense. Like if you're getting 150 calls and 30 of them are from lead ags, well, that probably has no effect from the traditional side. So I can take those 30 out. Then you're diving deeper, and then. Okay, I'll look at paid search. But really, my first thing I go to is direct and organic.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

Now I'm diving in on those. Which probably isn't, you know, more than. No, you're right.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a good call.

[B]

So.

[A]

Because I was imagining, like, the whole thing.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Okay. And how long. How long does that usually? Like, are you measuring that, like, the next. Probably the next day or the week after. Like, what's a normal amount of time?

[B]

I have clients that have different timescales. Typically, I do it monthly because when I'm getting invoices, then I'm able to make sure that everything ran.

[A]

Invoices from, like, the.

[B]

All the stations.

[A]

Exactly, yeah. Schedule.

[B]

Because everything that you're ordering on the traditional side, with the exception of billboards that you can see, you kind of had to verify that it ran or, you know, the mailers got dropped and everything ran accordingly. So after I verify all that, that's when I typically go back and look and do that matching up.

[A]

Yeah. Okay, that makes sense. Yeah.

[B]

And I mean, even other things too, like direct mail. I have clients that are like, you know what? I don't want you. I'm. You know, they called the tracking number on the direct mail piece, so I don't even want that, you know, in the equation when I'm going through and comparing TV and radio. So, yeah, there's a little bit of conversation that we have up front on. Okay, well, what's the parameters here? What, you know, what are you considering to have an effect with what. Which. Which, you know, we have a quote. If you want something to work, it does. And if you don't, you don't. It's not going to work. Yeah. Radio is not going to work and you get on it doesn't work. Well, you do kind of fighting that pill battle. Same with tv. If you're convinced that everything's coming straight from Google and you're not open to hearing the other argument to it, it's not going to work no matter how you know much the data says it does. So yeah.

[A]

What do people scorecards usually look like that you're working with like what's the, what's the metrics? What do we track aside from like

[B]

cost per lead, cost per lead, cost per sit, cost per sale, cost per quote. So I have, you know, everybody's a little bit different. I have some people that track everything. And again, the more data you give someone like me, the better because then I can, you know, really dig.

[A]

This is really expand. We've really expanded.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Over the past, I'd say a year we've got, you know, it started off with like maybe six lines but then the cost per sit started coming up a lot more as we added more channels and then cost per sale cancellation rate turned into a really big metric for us. Okay. Because we had some channels like Meta is a perfect example. Meta cancellation rates, Insane.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So like people will get all excited about like, yeah, dude, I got like $20 leads from Metta and it's like amazing.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

How many did you go to?

[B]

Yeah, no, I look at Meta as like almost like a, like an aggregator. I mean it will move some leads through. But to your point, they could be very low end and tire kickers.

[A]

Some people can kick ass with it too. Like I do have friends like totally kicking ass.

[B]

But especially early on. I mean if you just need leads, period, by all means. Because to your point they're cheap. But when you start getting to a certain point where you are adding in more efficient channels and you're starting to focus on quality and that end ROI number, that's when maybe it doesn't make as much sense as it used to or in allocation. Maybe you scale it back and still have it there as part of it. The one that I've been seeing. More and more people are starting to track all of the basic stuff but then estimate or quote and then how much did it actually sell for?

[A]

So let's, let's hit a couple of these just to help define because I think these, some of these are unusual for plumbing H vac electric companies. I think it's very normal for like Roofing or you know, baths or something. But so cost per lead, that one's easy. Cost per sit is like. Although I've heard other people say cost per demo but like you went to the appointment.

[B]

Yeah, the appointment, you showed up, they showed up, you wasn't interaction there.

[A]

Yeah. Cost per sick, cost per demo, cost per run. I've heard it called a few different things. And the, the difference between that and cost per lead is the cancellation rate. Like how many leads canceled between that lead being a lead and then a booking and then a run. So like there's kind of a lot can happen in that time frame. Okay, and then what Cost per quote. Your Google business profiles are either printing money or they're losing it. And that's where big reputation comes in. Big reputation turns your back GBP into a true lead machine without adding more work to your plate. It runs in the background with automated posting, review generation and fast responses so that your reputation compounds over time. And this is huge. If you're multi location they make it dead simple to manage and scale your reputation across every branch so every location shows up and wins in the map pack. I'm actually using big reputation right now as I grow and scale my newest acquisitions plus so you get real insight into what's actually happening. You get to spot gaps with location, health monitoring, track reviews and sentiment and see which zip codes you're winning and which ones you're losing. Better insights, stronger trust, more calls from an asset you already own. Go check it out at bigreputation.

[B]

AI/oao estimate quote Twitter like so tech goes out. Hey diagnoses it at the, at the appointment, you know, needs a new system.

[A]

And I think that's different than cost per run because like you could be getting low quality leads. So if you run 10 leads but you only quote seven, is that, is that what that's meant?

[B]

Yeah, and I wouldn't even say cost per quote, just the quote number. So hey, you know these leads, they're. It helps you drill down to back to quality again. So hey, the leads coming directly.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

The quotes are higher and then the close rates higher on top of that. So not necessarily cost per quote, but really the quality of the quote, you know what's going through there.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Just the amount and then you know, being able to follow it back to

[A]

a sale and then sale.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And then cost per sale and then average sale, maybe per channel, average ticket,

[B]

average sale, closing rate, closing rate per channel. Yep.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So I mean conversion rate lead to sit and then sit to close. I Mean, usually when you add in a well strategized TV campaign, for instance, I mean, we're seeing, you know, 20% or more increases there. So, you know, being able to benchmark it beforehand. Here's your. What we're tracking. Here's how I track it. Here's what my benchmarks are, whatever they may be. Because like I said, everyone tracks them a little bit differently. You should see a significant lift when you start adding in some more strategic channels with scale and then back to that direct traffic being the best traffic.

[A]

So, and we, so for, for like branded channels like tv, radio, for lsa, it's like obviously pretty easy.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And I think that's probably why people get drawn to digital. It's like very, like direct.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

But so for, so if I was going to throw my scorecard at our radio ads, it would be all of the same metrics. And then the leads that we're measuring are leads that come in from organic channels. Could be. Website, could be, maybe Google business profile.

[B]

Could be. Yeah.

[A]

And then within you said 15 minutes of the flight time. Flight time being like when that ad ran.

[B]

Yes. Now, there are caveats to that. I mean, admittedly, I'm not nearly as high on radio as I was five years ago. I think radio is dying a not so slow death. And then the other part of that, even with tv, depending on what that schedule looks like, like, we don't run a lot of spots seven days a week. We run beginning half of the week, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, your high call volume days, which also helps with that because if you're buying, you know, some random radio station, you're getting a bajillion spots a week.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And it's running seven days a week. There's no, you should see vertical spikes Monday and Tuesday if you're writing a condensed schedule. So even if they're not pairing up to the minute, you're seeing those ancillary KPIs go right along with it. Where, hey, I can feel that this is moving the needle because I'm running Monday and Tuesday and my web traffic spiking, my phone's ringing heavier.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Even weeks on, weeks off. I was on this week and my traffic skyrocketed. I was off, it went down. So, yeah, all of that stuff. I mean, that's why.

[A]

So you think as you add branded, like, ignore radio, let's say it's tv and it would be, hey, we're on four channels, four stations, whatever. If in that scorecard it would be like, here's my Fox Channel or cb. What are the other ones?

[B]

Cbs, cbs, NBC, fox, abc.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Big ones.

[A]

So like. So those are the four. And then each one would have its line similar to like how I describe, like LSA and GS modernized. Is that how you think of it? And then we try to attribute by flight time.

[B]

So typically, again, I'm, I'm adding that in. I mean, if someone says tv, great, source it the best you can. But I'm looking, and I am, you know, some people, it's not a perfect science, but I'm looking at the last commercial that ran closest to it is who I usually attribute for. So you might have an instance where a commercial ran at 7:42 on Fox and then 748 on CBS. And at 7:50 the call came in. I'm going to give it to the last one. Or I even make a note that there was two within 15 minutes. But usually you could see a trend. Usually one or two stations, no matter, you know, what channel it is or.

[A]

Yeah, I think that's the point of like start conversation.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Is how do we get. If we're on four channels, how do we diagnose? And it'd be the same as like diagnosing, hey, is Yelp working for our business or not? Like, well, let's put it through these 10 things and let's determine it. And ideally we can. Sounds like you think we can do the same thing here, driven by timestamp. Yeah. And we could potentially do it by channel. But there's going to be some fuzziness because obviously like you said, like they could run 10 minutes apart a little bit of fuzziness.

[B]

But that's where you back to that. Blending different methodology. So I have my system on back end pairing up. It drills down to channel and day part and how much you paid for the commercials to your ga. So I have that. Then I'm also doing a more manual process, you know, really eyeballing and auditing the incoming leads. A big part of that we haven't, I don't think, touched on yet. For this to work the way I'm describing, you better not just be branding. You better have a call to action that is inviting people to take action because if they're not doing it, then it's not going to trigger to be able to be tracked. So when you say brand, I say demand creation. Make sure that you're in strong messaging. Why you? Why now? How can I afford you? Making them push down the funnel.

[A]

So why you? Why now? How can I afford you?

[B]

Three most Important.

[A]

All right, so questions be hot as. Yep, we're fun.

[B]

I'm Wilson. We're here. We're five star reviewed. It's about to be hot. Your AC is 10 years old. And hey, now we diagnose it same day for free. And okay, you know, finance is available.

[A]

Okay. Okay, I like that.

[B]

That's a very. Because if you're just doing straight brand, you know, Billboard, Wilson tagline, the chances of me taking action aren't very high.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Based on that. So then I'm not able to do what we've been talking about and drill down.

[A]

You know, it'd be kind of interesting. I was thinking about this as I was thinking about attribution. So my parents are kind of funny because they're too. Like, my dad watches Fox News and like he just like always Fox News. And then my mom watches anything but Fox News. So like politically standard family right now in America. I think so. I think so. I have no idea what my mom watches for news. I'll ask her. But my guess, I feel like data is becoming like easier and easier to access, especially with like cloud code. I have friends, like doing these projects with cloud code right now that are just ridiculous. Like, you would have had to pay like $50,000. Yeah. Like six months ago.

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

So what I bet you could do as far as like, something as polarizing is like, I don't know what the left version of Fox is, but like, you know, Fox on one side of the political spectrum, NBC, abc, I don't know, whatever on the other side. Yeah, yeah. It's like, it doesn't really matter, but like, pick one on each side. My guess is you can relatively easily find out who's in what camp. Just as far as like, attribute back to attribution of channel.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because Fox feels polarizing, right? Is it?

[B]

Yeah, I mean, well, so Fox News and then Fox, the Fox affiliate on the broadcast side are two different animals.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

So I'm talking, you know, the broadcast Fox, which is, you know, usually local newscasts. It's not your local news. Tries to stay more down the middle. It's not quite as polarizing as those are cable networks that we stay clear of. A, because the scale isn't there, and then B, you never want to link a brand to something divisive.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't want to get involved in. Yeah. There's a great quote from Gus Anto at Milestone and it was like, you know, seven or eight years ago and some. I don't even remember what, what happened. It was Something happened and, and it was like, you know, people were up in arms about it. And his marketing team asked Gus like, and you know, Milestone's 150 million dollar plumbing company. Plumbing, H vac, electric. And, and they were like, hey, like, I think we have to say something. I think we have to like, you

[B]

know, sure, we're standing.

[A]

And yeah. Gus is like, people don't give a what their plumbers think about whatever ex political scenario is. And I'm like, yeah, dude, like, nobody cares. Like, just let me clean your shit.

[B]

No, what's, what's the Michael Jordan quotes of Republicans buy shoes too? So you just stayed at it.

[A]

Okay, so. All right, so local news stuff is different than like big news. So. So maybe you couldn't use that data. I have to believe there's some level of like, affiliation or something you could use to pare data down. Maybe you'd only care if you're spending like $50,000, like big numbers a month. Oh, there's all kinds of tighter attribution.

[B]

There's all kinds of consumer data and emerging. I mean, on the digital side, yes, I can find out who's in market for a plumber.

[A]

It's honestly a little, you know, it's a little freaky every time we get presented with. We were looking at one last week and like you're looking at this data, wondering how the hell this is legal. Yeah, like the level of shit that people have. Like, like, you'll know their credit cards. You know, there are social. Like, we'll have like rough credit numbers and like they didn't authorize that. They didn't authorize, like. Yeah, it. Ah, man, it's crazy.

[B]

Oh, I mean, I'm, I have, you know, smart speakers in my house and I'll say something and then all of a sudden an ad's popping up my phone. I mean, yeah, everything, there's, it's all out there. So.

[A]

Yeah, well, I have a friend that put this work widget on his site and now like, it's basically IP address tracking. So like someone will visit your site and maybe this could be a way to attribute too. Yeah, but like someone can visit your site and I don't remember the URL name for like what it is, but it. I think it's a thousand bucks a month or something. So they visit your site. Upon visiting, the company gets an email of like, who's on your site. Like, literally, who is it? What's their name? What's their phone number? And that's the part where I'm like, is this legal with all this TCPA shit? What's their email address? Where do they live? Like address, not like roughly like where do they live?

[B]

I'm curious.

[A]

Here's their social media profiles. So it's freaking wild. And they're turning it into like an outbound campaign. Like hey, almost open cart style. Yeah, like, hey, you saw you're on the website. Are you okay?

[B]

I think people are still adjusting to kind of cookies going away. I mean, because that's a lot of what you, you used to be able to track when cookies were a thing, you know, as recent as what, three years ago, two years ago. So. But you know, back to just marketing, one on one, you can get super, super niche like that. But at the end of the day, if you have a service that is, you know, used and accepted by the majority of the market, that's where the scale part comes in. That's what we preach. So it's a one, two punch demand capture. You can use that capture to get really creepy with the targeting like we've been talking about, but then on the other side, bring in a 10 pound hammer and slam it to the rest of the market and generate demand yourself.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, help help smooth out slower seasons, take some of the uncontrollableness out of the, out of the lead flow.

[A]

Yeah. As companies are scaling up, anything that gets more complicated or you think they just get like tighter on tracking as

[B]

companies scale up like from, I mean we always kind of, we, we try to tell people or we preach there's really like three levels of, of marketing. They're deploy or deploy, dominate, defend. So deploy. You're starting out. So that marketing channels we kind of touched on already. Social lead, ags, ppc. I'll say you get every business, it varies. I hate to tie it to revenue number, but you'll plateau usually between 3 and 5 mil. And that's where you have to approach a more dominate strategy. Where now you're going up against the big boys. So lead channels change. Now you need scale. Now you need brand. Now you need credibility behind you. And then defend. Now you're a regional, you know, merging Wilson, you're, you're almost competing with like the Angie herself. So there's different mindsets. So as you go through that growth, that's where the lead channel changes. And then every time you add in another channel, the attribution gets a little bit more complex and you have to dive in. And a lot of what I've been talking about with, you know, even pairing up Commercial times versus inbound leads. It can be time consuming. So it's, it's a lot if you're trying to do it yourself.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So yes, it does get more complex as you grow, but kind of a necessary evil because you need to keep up and to keep the growth growing.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. On demand creation outside of like I think TV is a good one. So like we'll, we'll just define it really quick. So demand capture is local service. Ads is Angie's. Like someone is looking for this service and I think you gave me the 1% of the market is. I still quote that I don't give you enough credit. So I'm giving you credit right now.

[B]

I don't think I came up with it. But 1% of the markets in the market and any given time.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Million household market, you know, 10,000 people. Yeah. Or a plumber, you know, maybe only 2,000 are actively looking for you to be in that demand capture. But is there, you know, 8,000 out there that have a leaky sink that could be swayed whose AC has been kind of shit in the bed?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

That's the part that people miss when you're lead captures. Bottom funnel. I don't care how they got there. They're looking for your service. You got to be there to capture them. Creation is people that are on the fence are not quite ready to buy

[A]

that you're pushing down, pulling them into market.

[B]

Exactly, yeah.

[A]

And I think there's a lot of different ways to do it. Like TVs at one. So like on like sort of different spec, maybe billboards like the farthest over spectrum or truck wrap. Like it could potentially do something but

[B]

like it's pretty much pure brand.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. It's like very passive and like all the way over to canvassing, I feel like is still inside that category of like someone was not in the market and you pulled them into market to think about your, you know, roofing solution.

[B]

Yep, yep.

[A]

And then there's obviously TV rate and everything else sort of in the middle of there.

[B]

Yep. And you know, I'll even kind of go a little bit off topic. But what we've been seeing really be successful for the demand creation side, especially on TV and streaming TV is. And it's become more important now, I think because there's some pullback with the economy people don't want to spend is taking a message from the big boys. Big Pharma mastered this symptom based marketing. I don't want to call you because I need my front yard Dug up. And I want to spend 15 grand on US sewer repair, but hey, my drains are slow.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Free diagnostic or $50 diagnostic. Be the same day now. I'll call you. So being really. I mean, I can't stress the importance of the creative enough as it pertains to attribution and ROI. So.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

100%. Yeah. Big Pharma did that. I mean, you ever seen a hymns commercial Viagra. I mean they pretty. They describe the symptoms and they. So, yeah, just take a page and tell people where they need to go. Again, why you? Why now? How can I afford you?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Mixed with a good, you know, diagnosing a symptom when you're there and you have a good sales team that can explain it and. And close it and it's coming to you directly. They trust you. That brand credibility is built. It all works together.

[A]

Yeah. Demand creation feels like it's where a lot of people's heads are at. I think right now. You alluded to this. I don't know if it was pre recording or as we were recording, but 2025 is tougher. 2026 is tougher. Like, financing declines is big. H vac market is down big. This. We're just in a different, you know, environment right now.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

And. And there's less inbound demand to capture.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

And which has been a trend. You know, I've been saying that for years now on the podcast, but it's not because it's any less true. It's just. It's a trend of like, yeah, we're kind of on year two or three of like, hey, leads are weird.

[B]

You know, people got spoiled. I mean, we came out of the pandemic and it didn't drop off right away. And I think now we've returned back to kind of where you need to bring a gun to a knife fight and go after and take share in

[A]

weather, like depending on the market has. I mean, like on the. On this side of the country, like, we're doing okay, but dude, west coast is crazy.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

So people are moving way more towards demand generation.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I mean, like, any initial tips? Like if. If I've been surviving off of LSA and, you know, modernized for the past five years, and I'm can't get my phone to ring right now. What's my first couple takes?

[B]

So my first take is every marketing channel has a point of diminishing returns. So LSA is great.

[A]

I attended a talk about this, and it's called the Elephant Curve, and I loved it.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

And it was the guy that built WP Engine, I think, like WordPress Engine. Huge, huge freaking business. And I took so many pictures of this presentation, but it was the elephant curve. And this really, like, clocked for me, lead channels. And it was basically, if you look at a channel over time, it looks like an elephant. So it starts low. It's like the trunk. You get success very fast. So a new channel will just explode.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

And then it'll taper off. Taper off, and then it'll start sinking down the backside of the elephant.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Because it's going to diminish over time.

[B]

I mean, LSA and PPC in particular. I mean, there's efficient clicks and then there's not efficient clicks. So if I'm growing and I need to keep up with my lead flow or my leads are dropping off and I'm just shoveling more and more money, now I'm starting to buy more generic search terms. Now I'm starting to take flyers on some leads that may not be that great. That's where you look elsewhere. I mean, maybe that's. That's the cap. So I'm gonna go and create my own. And, you know, back to your point, I mean, people felt it for one reason or another. In 25, we had a lot of people come to us. And when things are good and I'm able. If you're able to just do, demand, capture and do the stuff that's super easy to track and grow, by all means, do it. This talk is.

[A]

You can. So it's kind of interesting. So the talk was called what to do when growth slows.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

And it had nothing to do with home service at all. It was, like, about how to build a tech business. But, like, all the lessons were roughly the same. So it's like, okay, hey, there's an elephant curve with every channel. So we're gonna. We're gonna start meta ads, and our first 30 days, we're gonna be like, holy, we just found God. Right? Like, this totally works. Works. And then it's going to taper and then. Okay, what do we do then? We're going to go find the next thing. It's direct mail and whatever, and you just keep finding the next thing. And what was kind of funny is he. He talked about that. And, like, as a concept, if you put, like, you can't just add more channels, because if all you do is add more channels and you have 10 channels and they're all on the elephant curve, then all you've created is a bigger Elephant curve because they're all going to grow fast and they're all going to taper fast. Yeah.

[B]

And the elephant moves because every time you think you have it figured out, AI comes and disrupts, you know, organic and you know, click through rates are falling through the floor because AI is taking the zero click lead. So you have it figured out, then you got to shift. So that's why back to, you know, how we started. Attribution is a huge, not only to justify what you're spending but then also to optimize. Hey, I'm starting to see this decrease. Maybe we should think about taking it over here. And so that was the point of

[A]

the talk was sort of like cost shift. What, what do you do in that scenario? And it's like there's a. I think there was three solutions. I only remember two of them. It's on YouTube somewhere. But one of them was like change the paradigm. So like for us it was new market. Was, was one where it's like this, no additional new services but like a new set of customers for the same services. Like for you maybe it's like, hey, we're all in home service. But suddenly I see an emerging market in like you know, injury attorneys or something. So same services, new, you know, whatever. The other one would be product expansion. So like we're going to go build a new product and then that's going to have its big explosive growth phase. I remember the third one but yeah, those two like, yeah, sort of clicked for me.

[B]

Yeah, I mean always be differentiating yourself. I mean I was talking to a plumber last night out on the, on the west coast. I forget which market but he's adding, you know, water filtrations exploding for them. So I mean just verticals that are right along. But hey, if you want to own something, you know, market to own it. So you know, be the expert there. You can still cover all your other services but, but again invite people to do what they want, what you want them to do. So hey, call us if you're, you know, in the market for this or X. Yeah. But yeah, always differentiate yourself. I think there's a lot of pull. I mean there's a lot of market share out for grabs. Even though times are tough, we're seeing a lot of consolidation. I mean all the PE disruption. So it's there to be taken, but continually to optimize. Drawing it back to what's working and getting into that demand creation side is a huge part of it. A lot of people forget about it got away from it for years, used to do it, now want to do it again. Everyone's a little bit different, but that's what we preach. So we're here to help. But I think, you know, at the end of the day when all else fails, turn to scale. Marketing is a numbers game to a certain extent. So I'm going to yell my message to a lot of people and some of them will be in the market. 1%.

[A]

Yeah. 1% of them.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. This is great. Any other thoughts on attribution or like sort of closing thoughts on how to do this?

[B]

Well, you know, I'd say the biggest thing is, you know, always, always vet your partners. Like we specialize in traditional. We do some other things too. We do some of the digital marketing as well. But really traditionals are staple. So if you're vetting us, we have a pretty good layout of how the attribution on the traditional side works. So if you're using somebody else or you, you know, vet them, see what they recommend. Yeah, be open to ideas. I think some people get stuck in what they think happen. I mean a business owner is a weird animal. You're not the normal consumer. So I think sometimes I don't watch TV or I don't do this or I don't. Take yourself out of it. Listen to kind of what the research tells you, what the data tells you. The more data you share with with me, the better I can help you because maybe I look at a different light, maybe I see correlations to marketing channels that you're missing. So bring in help and, and always, always, always take full advantage of the data you pay for. Your CRM is a goldmind. You just got to know how to work it.

[A]

Most marketing agencies will show you clicks, impressions and maybe even track traffic. But none of that really matters if the phone's not ringing. And that's why we partner with service scalers. They are built specifically for home service companies and they focus on one thing which is driving real high quality calls and book jobs. This is a no brainer. They're offering a 60 day money back guarantee on LSA management, Google business profile optimization and website builds. If you don't get more visibility, more calls and better leads then you, you don't pay. If you want more book jobs without the marketing headache, click the link below and book a free strategy call with service scalers.

[B]

So have someone audit that for you

[A]

or make sure that's really like probably the easiest way to start, like sort of a demand creation is yeah, you already have data yeah, demand.

[B]

I mean there's a trickle down. Hey, demand creation. I'm getting more direct traffic to your site so now I don't have to put as much click budget to branded traffic. So now that click budget that I'm using on PPC is now reallocated towards more general search terms. People search for my service and not me. So it all works together. I'm not anti digital or demand capture because I'm pro demand creation. It all works together. And once you get to that certain plateau point or you're starting to feel it just based on trends, don't be afraid to reach out and try something new. Yeah, because it's worked. I mean we're. It was a tough year for our clients too, but I think they felt it a whole lot less. Yeah, I mean we were still averaging about a little over 10x in home services as a whole. So a lot of people can't say that because most markets it was tough. But yeah, I'll take 10x as a, as a benchmark and, and go from there. Hopefully 26 easier and we can get to 20 something. Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

Oh yeah.

[B]

Cool.

[A]

Thanks for coming on today. This was good. Yeah. People want to get a hold of you. How can they find you?

[B]

Want more-leads.com There's a form. Fill there a little bit about us. Our phone number's on there.

[A]

Feel free to track the flight time of this podcast.

[B]

That's it. I'm going to be when this drops about 15 minutes. But yeah, no, feel free to drop us a line. My email phone number's on there. So yeah, happy to help any way we can and go from there. But yeah, happy to be back, man. Love it. Cool.

[A]

Thanks Tony.

[B]

Yep.