← Profits with Pajak
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- [00:01]
John Pajak
So I get a call from a lead that I paid for. Guy's asking about lawn service. It sounds promising and within about 30 seconds I realize he's in Illinois. We don't service Illinois. So now I'm sitting here thinking I just paid for this call and that wasn't a one time thing. We were getting leads from towns. We don't service people asking for services we don't even offer. And after two months and $2,200 spent, we got one customer. We got one customer from all those leads. If that sounds familiar or if you're thinking of trying Google local surface ads, you need to hear this.
- [00:37]
Naylor Taliaferro
Today's episode is brought to you by Yardbook, the all in one CRM for your lawn care business. And as an exclusive partner of this podcast, you can get started today and begin simplifying your business and maximizing your profits. Sign up now@yardbook.com the link is in. The show notes time now for Profits with Paycheck, an essential podcast for you in the green industry who are looking to unlock the full potential of your business. Hosted by John Pajac, your certified financial coach, the show features in depth discussions with successful entrepreneurs, thought leaders and industry experts. Providing practical advice and proven strategies on financial planning, operations, marketing and sales. Profits with Paycheck has valuable insights and action steps that you can implement today for creating long term success. Now here's John Paj.
- [01:41]
John Pajak
Welcome to Profits with Paycheck, the podcast where we talk about business strategies and financial insights for the green industry. I'm your host John Pajak and today we're going to be talking about something that a lot of you have either tried or thinking about trying or have been burned by local service ads, also known as LSA through Google. And I'm not gonna, I'm not coming from this like as a theory, I'm coming from this with experience. We ran a two month test inside my lawn care business and we spent $2,200 and we got one new client from that. So today I'm gonna break down how LSA actually works, why it looks attractive on the surface, and most importantly, why it may not be a good fit for your business model. Because if you're not careful, you're going to think you have a lead problem, but what you really have is a targeting problem. Now what is Google lsa? Let's break it down simply. LSA through Google is a pay per lead platform. It's not pay per click, it's not impressions. You basically pay when someone calls you or someone messages You. And on paper, that sounds good, right? It's no wasted ad spend. You're only paying for real leads, and that's the hook. But here's what they don't emphasize enough. You're not, you're not paying for qualified leads. You're paying for activity. Now, this looks really good on paper. And this is why a lot of guys jump into it. You know, Google guaranteed badge. You know, it builds trust. You know, you show up at the very top of each search, which is excellent. You know, I'm not, you know, there are some benefits to this that I really do not want to like, throw shade on, okay? Because you know what, to be honest, it could be the fact that maybe I didn't set it up properly or the people that I had working on it didn't set it up properly. So I'm just going to tell you what my experience is. I'm not going to try to be too, you know, vicious, but because there are good things about this. Like when you get that Google guaranteed badge, you literally are at the very top, the tippy top of the search pages, okay? Now anybody that has, you know, they're high intent buyers, you know, somebody that's just like, I'm just looking for service right now, you know, that's, that's a good thing, you know, because it's like, boom. I don't want to scroll. I want to like, look, this is Google guaranteed perfect. Call it. You know, basically it feels like, you know, you turn it on and the phone rings and I'll tell you what, it does ring. That's not the problem. The problem is who is calling. Now let me give you our raw numbers, okay? Because we did a two month test. Our total spend for both months totaled out to $2,200. Out of all those leads that called us, one was a conversion one. Now let's just call, let's just call it what it is. That's a $2,200 cost to acquire one customer. That's for me. That means that client, it's going to take at least two, two full seasons to recover from that. Okay? Now maybe I have, you know, I've talked to some other people and they said that their results were very different. But I got to think about what that means in our business, right? If, if a client is worth, you know, anywhere between 500 and $800 a year, you're basically upside down immediately. Even if they stay for multiple years, that is still a long time to recover the cost. Your ROI is multiple, multiple years. That should not be the case with a lot of our other marketing strategies that we have. They are, you know, much less. Okay. We are profitable within the same season with that client. Okay, but here's the thing. Before we, we keep going. Here's, here's a quick reminder. If you don't know your numbers, you're, you're going to get destroyed by marketing like this. You need to know your cost per acquisition. Cost per acquisition, acquisition. Why can't I say that today? Your cost per acquisition, your average client value and your break even point. Because without that, everything looks like it might work. But in reality, you're really just kind of, you're just kind of gambling. Back when I was getting my lawn care business off the ground, I was juggling routes, invoices and customer notes with paper and prayers. It was chaos. Until I found Yardbook. Yardbook gave me the structure. It helped me track chemicals, route efficiently, invoice faster, and most importantly, it helped me grow a profitable business. If you're tired of duct taping your systems Together, go to yardbook.com and sign up for free. And if you're ready to go premium, use promo code PAYJACK to get your first 30 days on me.
- [07:03]
Naylor Taliaferro
Are you mowing lawns, running crews, and still wondering where all the money went? You're not alone. Naylor Taliaferro of LCR Media has been there. And that's exactly why he created Profit Accelerator Live. Join Naylor and expert speakers John Pajak and Eric Triplett for two powerful days of hands on workshops designed specifically for lawn care and landscaping business owners in Richmond, Virginia, June 26th and 27th. This isn't a conference where you'll sit in the back and take notes. You'll leave with an actual business plan in hand, knowing exactly what to charge, how to manage your time, and how to attract better customers. Tickets are just $299, but right now you can bring a partner or a fellow business owner free with our two for one special. Tickets are just $299, but right now you can bring a partner or fellow business owner free with our 2 for 1 special. Only 75 spots are available and they will fill up fast. Use the link in the show description or go to profitacceleratorlive.com to secure your spot today. Put more money in the bank and more time in your schedule with Profit Accelerator live.
- [08:16]
John Pajak
Equip Expo 2026 is coming up October 20th through the 23rd in Louisville, Kentucky. If you're serious about growing your business, this is where you need to be. We're talking live equipment demos, the latest technology, and thousands of contractors all in one place, sharing what's actually working right now. And here's the deal. Tickets are normally $120, but right now you can get them for $12.50. When you use promo code PAYCHECK, that's 50% off the already discounted early bird price. But this deal expires May 31, and prices go up after that. So don't wait on this. Lock in your ticket now get in the room, and I'll see you there. Use promo code payjack. The link is in the show notes. And grab your ticket today. All right, let's get back into it. And now maybe I'm going to say this. Just because it doesn't work for my business doesn't mean it can't work for yours. Because I started to realize the big problem was bad targeting and wrong leads. Because using the Google lsa, this is where everything fell apart for us. We were not getting leads in our core neighborhoods or our established routes. Instead, we're getting. We're getting leads from Illinois. You know, we're. We're close. We're on the Illinois Indiana border, but we just. We only stay in two towns that are in Indiana. Now, that might be something very unique about my business. I used to service seven different towns in our community, and now I only do two. And obviously, anybody that's looking up stuff on Google, we could kind of narrow that down a little bit. But at the same time, it. There's still a very high chance that you're not going to hit the target areas that you want, because it's. It's a little bit of a broader tool. It's like carpet bombing versus, you know, a laser. You know what I mean? You know, we're getting leads from towns in Indiana that we don't service. We got leads asking for services that we didn't offer. Because the thing is, they, you know, they were calling us for mowing, and they're calling us for, like, tree removal and things like that. And it's like, no, no, no, we do not do that again. You know, but, you know, we were paying for leads that we couldn't even sell to. And that felt exactly like the old days when I used, you know, HomeAdvisor and Angie's List. And I forget there was another one. I forgot that we tried out. And it was. It was. It was not good for us. It's good for the company that we're working for, but it Wasn't good for us. But, you know, it seems like this is the same problem, just a different platform. Just, you know, 10 years in the future. It was basically volume without precision. And that's how I felt. And maybe again, maybe there's some tools that are in there that I'm not aware of and I shouldn't be bashing it. But I'm just telling you what my experience is. And it's not. This is not to tell you not to use that service. It's not to tell you to not use Google lsa. It is to make. It's just to give you a realistic expectation of, you know, what an established company in an area. We've been here, this is our 10th full season. We've been in business for over 11 years now. And the thing is, we're just trying. I just want to make sure that you might want to consider. You need to consider this before you start, you know, putting this into your marketing. Okay. Again, like I said, really good thing. You get that business Google business approved badge, whatever. That puts you at the very, very tippy top of the search engines. You know, the only thing that is beating that out right now is the AI summary. And that's something else we could talk about later. But, you know, in $2,200 is not exactly chump change to spend on marketing and you get such a low ROI on it. So I'm thinking, you know, here's probably the core issue, you know, of why this doesn't work for route density businesses like mine. I think LSA is built for whoever is available. Go get the job. While my business is built on route density, efficiency and controlled growth, those two things often don't align because, you know, in my world, I want 10 lawns in one neighborhood, not one lawn 25 minutes away. You know, and I don't think LSA really cares about my route at all. It cares about filling the inquiry. People are looking for a service. Hopefully it's the one that we provide. I was able to get some of those charges reversed because I'm like, look, these are. They're asking for arborist work. We don't even do that. We don't have it listed anywhere that we do anything with trees. So. Oh, okay, we could, we could fix that. Okay. But anyway, it. Again, this. This is about serving the people that are using Google to find the service that they're looking for. So what happens? You basically ended up with scattered leads. You get a lot of wasted drive time because of that windshield time. You're going to have lower profitability. And it's just going to, you know, lead to frustration. So again, do, if you're considering this, do some more research. Find out everything you can about the way they do it. That is something very important, no matter what it is, you know, it could be, you know, I've been burned on, I shouldn't say burned. I've experimented with so much different types of marketing and I, I just, you know, some of it's trial and error, some of it's just, you know, you're going in depth, you're doing a lot of AB testing, ABC testing, B2C testing, you know, trying to find out what works. And I'll tell you, if it's something that you know, you're going to turn on this, this floodgate. It's not even like a switch. It's like when it happens, you're going to get a ton of leads coming into you. But again, are they the right leads for you? You know, if you're. Now if this is probably a great thing, if you're a landscaper and you only do installs, you need that kind of flow. You're not going to target one neighborhood. You're going to find the people that are looking for those services. Okay. But you know, if you're using, if you're, if you're, your service offerings are mowing or doing applications, it may not be the best bang for your buck. Okay. Hardscapers, landscapers, septic guys, you know, septic pump or pump guys, you know, things that are more like one off projects that still, I mean, they still. Irrigation companies too. I mean, even though you still have some return work to do, like a septic pump guy, right? He could come back, you know, once every couple of years to pump out a septic tank. It's still recurring, but it's a very long span between recurring services. Irrigation. It might only be three services a year. They come in, they test your backflow system, they check all your heads. Maybe they, they have a program where they come back in the middle of the season to make sure everything's still working properly. And then at the end of the year they do their blowout so that they prep your system for the winter and nothing freezes and explodes, right? But you know, that's like three visits within a season and it's not, it doesn't matter if you got the next door neighbor. It's nice if you do, but you know, you could actually afford to have, have a little bit more drive time. So anyway, the things that worked has worked better for us is neighborhood targeting. You know, we focus on subdivisions that we already serve. You know, we build density, we increase efficiency, we email upsells to existing clients. And you know, I've already talked about this, you know, I had one email and it's generated over $20,000 in added revenue for the season. And there was no new customer acquisition costs. You know, we've offered add on services and the, there's a difference. And let me clarify this. Somebody mentioned this to me about add ons and upsells and I'm. My vision of an add on service is something that you could add on to an existing visit. Okay. Something you could do, something very simple that you could do that's going to add more value and raise that average ticket up while on the same visit. Now an upsell that might be, that's probably going to require a separate visit. Okay. But either one is good because you know, for, we're getting more frequency on that property, you know, coming more for more visits, we're spending a little bit more time on it and we're ultimately charging a little bit more money. This is good for your business. Okay? Stay within your wheelhouse. You know, any kind of upsell that you do, make sure it's something that you already offer. It's like technically a core service that you do, but it might, it's probably not going to be done at the same time that you do your other stuff. So anyway, when you do the, either the add on services or the upsells, you're basically increasing your average ticket instead of chasing new leads. And that's what I found, has worked really well for us without me having to rip all my hair out or the remaining hair I have out. But again, I just wanted to mention, you know, that Google LSA isn't bad, but it's not built for every business model. And for my business, for my lawn care business, it didn't, the, the targeting didn't seem to align, the leads were not qualified and the cost per acquisition was way too high. And at the end of the day, more leads does not mean more profit. Better leads do. Okay. So I just, again, this is not like a, I'm trying to slam it but you know, I, I was looking at our books and I'm like, man, this is, this was a stinker for us. This, you know, maybe. And it was our first shot. You know, again, I could be at blame for this. You know, maybe I don't understand LSA enough to make it work properly. So I'm not giving up on lsa, I'm just. Now I've got a little bit more. I'm a little bit more cautious about it. And if I wanted to bring that up, because there's a lot of guys that are just getting into marketing that don't understand different ways to market their business, ways to advertise, ways to get new clients, new way to get new leads coming to them, whether it's through their website, their just people calling them, whatever it might be. This, again, it has great potential, but it could be a very expensive way of, you know, you turn on the fire hose here and you get saturated with it. And if you're not, if you don't have a lot of things put in place, if you don't have systems to, you know, onboard new clients the right way, this could be a really expensive journey for you. And I don't want this to turn you away from marketing because marketing is what brings in sales. Sales brings in new money, which is the lifeblood of the business. So this is more of a cautionary thing. I'm going to do a little bit more testing this year. Last year we did that for two months, and then I cut it off because of our other marketing expenditures and everything were working very well. We're getting a really good ROI from our existing marketing plans. So I just kind of put that on, on ice for right now. And then I want to kind of go through it and make sure that I'm giving it a fair shot. Because, you know, just like baseball, you're not out after one strike. You know, it, it takes a few times. You know, we're going to maybe tip off a few fouls. We're going to have a, you know, get a couple strikes. But that doesn't necessarily mean you throw it out. You know, it's like, oh, wait, now I understand. Now he's going to throw a speedball. I could hit those all day. Bang. Okay, now I get it, right? So I'm not trying to confuse you on this, but I just want to just send out a little bit of caution as this has not really been a great fit for our business model. But again, does not necessarily mean that it's a bad way of marketing. I just haven't figured it out yet. But I really. As we're closing out here, here's what I'd like for you to do. I want to take, I want you to take a look at your current marketing, if you have any at all, and ask yourself, is this bringing me the right customers or just more customers because those are two very different things and one of them is going to make you money and the other is going to drain you. So again, always track the cost per acquisition. Not all leads are good leads. And your marketing has to match your business model. You know that when like for us, that route density, it beats that random growth every day, all day. And again, focus on increasing the value before chasing volume. Okay, so with all that said and done, if you have any questions, I'd love to hear them. I love it when people call in or we're gonna actually have the call in show on the Lives. So when we're doing our YouTube live, the Instagram, the Facebook, when we're streaming the show, if you've heard this one on your favorite podcast library, just, you know, tune into our live show and ask. You could ask questions like this. I'd be more than willing to go into more depth with this. So keep on the lookout for those. And as always, God bless. Keep pushing through and we'll catch you on the next one. Thank you once again for listening. If you've enjoyed the show, please leave a review and share it with fellow business owners. Your support means the world to me and helps keep the show going strong. I want to give a special shout out to our friends at Yardbook. Their continued support has been instrumental in bringing this podcast to you week after week. If you haven't checked them out yet, visit yardbook.com and see how they can give you the tools to streamline and manage your lawn care business. Also, don't forget to explore the resources, resources and upcoming events that I've collected just for you in the show Notes. These are curated to help you stay ahead in your business with the latest tips, tools and networking opportunities. Whether it's a new tool, an insightful article, or an event you don't want to miss, I've got you covered. Until next time, keep pushing through and God bless.