The Contractor OS Step 4: 10 Marketing Faucets That Generate Leads

In this episode of Contractor Cuts, Clark and Emory break down Step 4 of The Contractor Operating System: Marketing and Client Acquisition.

They walk through the 10 marketing faucets contractors can turn on to create a steady flow of better leads — from referrals and Google Business Profiles to websites, social media, trade partners, paid ads, and local networking.

This episode covers:

• why word of mouth is still the foundation of contractor marketing
• how to use your Google Business Profile to win local search traffic
• what social media is actually good for — and what it’s not
• when Meta ads vs. Google ads make sense
• why your website matters more than most contractors think
• how to build referral channels through architects, designers, realtors, and niche partners
• why marketing should be a system you build over time, not something you start when work dries up

If you want more leads, better clients, and a smarter marketing game plan, this episode shows you where to start.

Struggling to grow your contracting business? The Foundations Program is designed to help contractors break free from the chaos and build a business that runs smoothly. You’ll get a customized training program, 1-on-1 coaching, and access to a full paperwork database—including contracts and the Client Engagement Agreement. Join the Foundations Program today! 🚀

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Transcript

Welcome And The Operating System

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome to Contractor Cuts, where we cover the good, the bad, and the ugly of growing a successful contracting company.

SPEAKER_00 0:13

Welcome to Contractor Cuts. My name is Clark Turner. And I'm Emory Pipkin. Thanks for joining us again this week. So today Emory's sitting in for James because we are shifting over to doing some marketing and client acquisition. And Emory is uh a maverick when it comes to marketing. So we have we have him in on this one. Um, but today we're gonna talk about um step number six. I'm sorry, step number four in our seven-point operating system. Uh uh in the operating system, we've got vision instruction number one, number two is job description, job roles. We know what you're doing, we know what your employees are doing. Step number three is your core process definition. Um, we're documenting every core process of what you need to be doing to operate the company. Uh, and now we go into step four, which is marketing and client acquisition. Uh, this is where uh we kind of have different levels of this, right, Emory? So we we walk people through from um really what they need to do if they're starting a company all the way through paid ads, how are we, you know, Meta and Google and all of that. Um so today we're gonna kind of walk through that. Emory's gonna take us through, and we're gonna focus on our 10 faucets of marketing. And we call them faucets because we want to be able to turn them on and off to where we have some and kind of control which ones we're turning on. So of these 10, you're not gonna hit them all. We're not you're gonna have five, six, seven, eight, maybe that you use. Two of them won't be for you, maybe four of them won't be. And so we're gonna walk through them today. Um kind of in order as there's not really a set rhyme or reason. Some of these are kind of more up front, and we'll talk about that. And some of these are as you start growing, like the paid stuff. Um, but we're gonna walk through kind of our 10 faucets that you can turn on. If you're listening to this, take some notes, kind of find one or two. You're like, dude, I want to do that. I want to do that. Write it down and let's make a game plan to get those executed.

Word Of Mouth Starts With Delivery

SPEAKER_01 2:10

Yeah, I mean, there's definitely some foundational ones that everyone needs to have, yeah, no matter what. Um, and then of course, there are some optional ones as we go along further into this. Uh, but you know, just starting off, the first one is gonna be one that I think most people are very familiar with, and that's word of mouth. Yeah. Uh, word of mouth is your foundation, it's where you start. Um, you know, a lot of people don't think of it as marketing, but it really is. And it's it's where you sort of propel everything else that you do. Um, if people aren't recommending you to their friends, to their neighbors, you have a foundational problem that you need to address.

SPEAKER_00 2:46

Well, and this is why the marketing is step four, not one. Yeah. Right? It's not like I got to get everyone in the door and start start doing work. Now let's figure out some good processes. You're not gonna get that word of mouth if you don't have a good product that you're putting out. And we always talk about the two products, the the kitchen that they're receiving, the new build that they're receiving, the secondary product that's almost more important is the client's experience of receiving it, the communication, how they're how you're leading them down the road. And so until you have that set up, when your, you know, your sister has a friend that needs a renovation, and they're like, um, he I like him, I want to support my brother, but I don't know if I really want to put my name on that for my friends, then we're not there yet, right? Yeah, and that that's the friends and family you're talking about, the word of mouth that we need to build is kind of the the base layer of marketing.

SPEAKER_01 3:39

Yeah, because I mean if if people aren't gonna recommend you, they're not gonna review you well. Um, and it's it's if you even if you have you know 10, 20 leads coming in and none of those people recommend you to other people and they're not gonna use you again, you know what I mean? It's just like eventually you're gonna reach a spot where you've kind of saturated your market and no one wants to work with you. So um definitely having that foundation of referrals, people recommending you, a high level of client satisfaction is the basis for any successful marketing in this industry, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_00 4:12

Yeah. And and I mean, you can live on organic word of mouth alone. Oh, yeah. One man shows do that all the time. Everything else we're gonna talk about is how we pile on top of that. How we go from that base level of, yeah, I got some organic growth because you know, we did this person's house and their neighbor saw and their neighbor wants us to do their house. That's the organic stuff that should be happening. If that's not happening, we got a product issue, yeah. We've got a delivery issue, we've got a client experience issue, but that's kind of the main baseline that has to be there. Uh I I've seen guys come into the industry and they they have that going. The first year is booming. By year two, it's not booming. And that's because people like this is the wake-up call. People don't want to suggest you to their friends and family. Yeah. Right. And if that's the problem, then we need to go back to the first three steps of job description, vision, where we're headed, how we're delivering the product, what's the project management process, the 10 steps that we're walking through? What's the product quality? How are you managing your calendar? Why aren't you communicating? Like all of that stuff that we need to solve to really turn up the marketing. Uh, and it's step four because until those first three things are perfected, there's no, it's wasting money and time to try to do marketing beyond that.

SPEAKER_01 5:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:30

Um, so yeah, the friends and family, getting referrals after a job, kind of doing uh having systems in place of where we're asking for, hey, you know, we live on live on referrals if you have anyone that you need. Um, that's a great place to to start, the friends and family referral network.

SPEAKER_01 5:47

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 5:47

All right. So what's what's what's something else we could be doing? What's another faucet?

SPEAKER_01 5:51

So one of the next most important parts of marketing, and again, I think we're gonna start with organic marketing. So the first few things we're gonna talk about are just free things.

SPEAKER_00 6:01

Yeah.

Google Business Profile And Local SEO

SPEAKER_01 6:01

Things you can do without spending any money, it's just time and effort. Um, and so the next part of this is organic web traffic. And what I mean by that primarily is your Google My Business profile.

SPEAKER_00 6:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:13

Um, if you don't know what a Google My Bus Business Profile is, if you go to Google and you search contractors near me, and there's a map that pops up with a couple boxes of companies uh with reviews and uh photos, and uh you'll be it's it looks very different to your regular uh search you know entries that show up. Um so it'd be it was pretty easy to spot where your Google My Business is. That is super important, in my opinion. Yeah. Um mainly because a majority of homeowners nowadays go to Google when they don't have a contractor in their you know referral base, right? If no one's they don't have a contractor that's being recommended to them or have one that they've used in the past, they're going to go to Google to search for ones in the local area.

SPEAKER_00 7:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:03

Um, and the only way for you to show up is for you to have a Google My Business profile that is polished with you know reviews, with your service area, um, with uh the keywords put in to explain what services you'll provide. Um, there's a lot of different interest intricacies that go along with your Google My Business profile. Uh I'm not going to get into all of them. But at the end of the day, you want to make sure your service area is correct. You want to make sure that you've got a solid amount of photos uh and that you're getting reviews.

unknown 7:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:37

Because reviews are a huge part of this. Uh that's how Google primarily ranks you against competitors in your area, is by reviews. So it's really important to get those reviews if you want to show up and get jobs for free, basically.

SPEAKER_00 7:49

Yeah. I mean, we could do a podcast once a week for the next two years on this alone, yeah. On how to do this. I mean, there's going into like AI optimization, um, to where, you know, chat's suggesting you when someone's looking for stuff, because that's kind of the new Google. Um, but but there's a lot of um intricacies with this. The the main thing we want we want to drive in is Google My Business, a good website that's um professionally done, looks, looks uh put together, kind of shows what you're doing, has a lot of contact spots where people can reach out quickly. But this organic web traffic that we're talking about, not only people finding you, but a lot of times it's oh, someone suggested your company and they go and their neighbor goes and searches it. And if you're a ghost online, then you're gonna lose that client.

SPEAKER_01 8:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:39

And you've spent the time and effort to get that referral, to do so well in that job that someone's suggesting you to say, oh yeah, they're awesome. Their name is, you know, triple A exterior renovations, you should check them out, and they go to search for you, and it's a ghost, you lost that lead. Uh it's a lead that that that's just gone. If if they can search your name and it pulls up in Google and you kind of pop up on the Google Maps because you're you're utilizing the Google My Business profile, they can see your reviews, it's verification. They're gonna read the all of the reviews you have, they're gonna look at the one stars and see your responses, like all of that stuff that has to be maintained. Um, if you do it well, that is really kind of outside of word of mouth the best secondary thing you can be doing to capture those.

SPEAKER_01 9:27

Yeah, for sure.

Yard Signs And Neighbor Outreach

SPEAKER_00 9:29

Um, the next one down our list is uh I kind of move this up from from another spot because it kind of fits into the next move. Okay. Um, but yard signs, job site visibility, and physical marketing. Um, this is probably the cheapest spend per conversion. Um, you know, yard signs. We we kind of have two different yard signs. We have one that is four by four post wooden that we built that has a really nice sign on it. Those we're putting in the ground on our large-scale projects. Uh, if we're gonna be in a house for a three-week bathroom, we're not doing that. We're putting the the yard signs that are just kind of the stakes that you put in the ground. Um, we've we've you capture neighbors all the time on that. Now, again, you gotta have a good product, right? If someone says, Hey, how's that renovation? I saw y'all, y'all were doing something. I saw the sign. Like, do not use these guys, then we got a problem, right? But really the yard signs and job visibility and those types of physical uh marketing that you're doing, shirts for the guys, that sort of thing, is really a kind of boosting, it's a little gas on the flame of word of mouth. Um, you're, you know, it's it's it's not expensive to have some yard signs. Uh, one of the biggest things that we do uh and that we push is we don't do door-to-door sales, but every single project that we're on, we're gonna meet at least five neighbors, one on each side and the three across the street. And what we want to do is walk up to them as our project manager, have a business card or a door hanger leave behind, and we're not selling our services. This is our Trojan horse uh approach. You walk up and you say, Hey, just want to let you know we are doing a kitchen renovation across the street. My guys are gonna be running saws outside, we're gonna be parking on the street. If we get in your way, if we block your driveway, if we're running saws at 11 o'clock at night, here's my business card, call me. I want to make sure that this renovation is enjoyable for the whole block, not just my client. So if there's anything you need, here's my number, give me a call. If we're bothering you in any way, help me make sure that that this is a really good experience for the whole neighborhood. That in and of itself, the client's like, oh, interesting. Y'all do kitchens. You want to give me a bid? Like, you don't have to ask for this for for the marketing at that point. Yeah. They're like, this guy gets it. They care about, like, if you care about the neighbors, how much, how, how well are you gonna take care of my house? Right? So leave behinds, neighborhood, like door hangers like that. Um, if I'm going door to door selling, hey, do you guys need any renovations? People are like, no, no, no, no, thank you. But if you're going and introducing yourself as a hey, we're working on the street, I want to make sure that if there's any issues, disturbances that happen, if some guy runs a saw on my job site after hours and when we shouldn't be, I want you to call me, send me a text, let me know, and I'll make sure that I take care of it.

SPEAKER_01 13:16

Yep. Uh one thing to note as far as physical marketing goes is you need a way to track it. Yeah, it's probably the hardest thing to track because there's no metrics, there's no data, it's just out there, right? So uh one thing that I would suggest if you do go along with that strategy, is having a way to know where your clients are coming from. Yep. So you can say, oh, well, those signs we put out did work, right? Or those leave behinds we made did work. Um, because the last thing you want to do is spend time and money on an effort for marketing and then not know if it worked or not.

SPEAKER_00 13:50

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 13:51

Right. Um, so that's that's just a little tidbit there.

SPEAKER_00 13:54

Yeah. Uh that that's really good. One one thing we've done also, we're actually about to do again in another neighborhood, is we did one house, we did like a$200,000 kitchen and bathroom thing that on a property. One of the neighbors across the street landed that one, did some work for them, did some work for someone else. We had someone that was like four miles away that goes walking every single day, and they walk past that house, even though it's four mile, it's an eight-mile round trip that they walk, and it just so happens they walk past our sign. We're starting a quarter million dollar renovation of their basement because of that. Um, and so we in this one little neighborhood area landed five projects in the last six months. Uh, and so what we're doing is we're gonna go back to those clients and say, hey, I know we've we we've been done for a couple months, we're about to do a little bit of a mini marketing campaign to anyone that wants us. Would you mind me putting a sign out for another week and a half in your yard? Yeah, that's fine. That's fine. And then we'll put five signs in five yards on a Monday, and at the same time, we're gonna drop mail outs to the entire neighborhood. Hey, we're working in your neighborhood, let us know if you need anything. And the logo matches the signs and it all is succinct. And now we got another 400 people that are driving through their neighborhood, and all of a sudden we have five signs out in their neighborhood, and we've got, and they get they get home and they open up their mail, and they got a piece of mail from us saying, Hey, if you need anything, we'd love to give you a free estimate. You know, we're we're working in the neighborhood on multiple properties, you know, that that sort of thing. It is killer. If you can get that owning a neighborhood, you can really, really get a lot of work done. So all right. Move on. That's that's my that's my favorite one. You could do the rest of them.

Social Media As A Trust Portfolio

SPEAKER_01 15:36

That's my uh all right. So getting back to sort of the organic digital marketing. Um the next thing on here is social media. Uh a lot of people think social media social media is the end-all be-all. It is the thing that they need to put the most time and effort into to get famous or to go viral. Yeah. Um, and at the end of the day, for contractors, it's not as important as most people think. Um majority of clients aren't gonna find you there. Um, there's no real way for people to search contractors near me on Facebook and they don't really do that. They go to Google for that.

SPEAKER_00 16:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:13

Um, the only real benefit social media has for you is if you're posting regularly uh and you've got good good quality photos, uh, the people who follow your account, which are usually just your immediate friends and family and you know, extended friend group, um, uh are gonna keep updated and it's gonna remind them every now and again that, hey, you exist and maybe you'll get a few jobs um from that. The the main benefit, in my opinion, is guerrilla marketing on social media. And what I mean by that is there's a lot of Facebook groups in different communities. Um, for instance, uh one example could be like uh, you know, we're in Roswell, Georgia right now. It could be the Roswell mom's group.

SPEAKER_00 16:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:59

Um and we've seen this tactic work plenty of times in many different locations. Um, but finding one of those groups that you can get into that has a ton of people in the local area, um, and obviously not join as your company, but you know, join as yourself or uh if your wife or husband is in any of these groups, yeah, and search for you know, people asking for advice on contractor recommendations, or um, you know, if you're looking for, you know, recommendations for decks or exteriors, you know, anything construction related that could maybe lead to a lead for your business. Um, identify those and suggest yourself. Yeah. Or have you know your wife or husband suggest you. Um, and so you don't want to do it for, like I said, from your business account, people see that and they're like, oh, this business is just promoting themselves. It doesn't mean as much. Um, but if it's an outside person promoting you, it carries a lot more weight inside these groups. And you want to have your page built up to a spot where if people come check you out, they're gonna be like, Oh, this is a real company.

SPEAKER_00 17:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:58

Checks out. Um, same thing goes along with when you start running meta ads on Facebook and Instagram, people are gonna come check out your account. Yeah. You want to make sure it's it's at a solid place.

SPEAKER_00 18:09

Um, yeah, for the for the free organic social media, um, what one of the things I I did when I was a one-man show is my wife, like you mentioned, joined the mom's groups around. And she's probably in five different moms groups um throughout around Atlanta. Um, and anytime that anyone was like, hey, we're looking to do a kitchen, anyone have a contractor they like, she would post and then come back and post again and just be like, hey, use use this company, they're awesome. Uh, and and really it I would feel the effect of it. I would almost get like two, three phone calls. I'm like, where'd this all come from? She's like, Oh, I posted on Facebook, right? Yeah. But she's not posting, hey, use these guys, but she's responding to people asking. Yep. And that's that's more of the like referral base.

SPEAKER_01 18:53

Yeah, it's like the word of mouth psychology.

SPEAKER_00 18:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:55

It's uh it's not the same as you know, a community of you know, people face-to-face, close, but there's something about those groups that people just trust inherently.

SPEAKER_00 19:04

No, um the other thing that we we do social media for, and it's less on the marketing side, but the organic social is it is your it's your book of work you've done. Yeah, it's your portfolio. It's your portfolio so clients can come see you. So like like Emory mentioned a second ago, even if we're doing paid ads, the next step of someone clicking on a paid ad is checking you out. And if you've got three posts and one was uh happy uh new year from two years ago, and the one before that was you and your kids, they're like, ah, this is a one like the uh this isn't big enough for me.

SPEAKER_01 19:39

That's why I say bare minimum is once every two weeks. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:42

You want a bare minimum once every two weeks. I mean, just so people can look and see. Because I mean, the last thing you want is someone checking you out and like you haven't posted in a year.

SPEAKER_00 19:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:51

And then you've got you know 20 followers and they're like, oh, yep. Is I mean, you could be your your Google My Business page could have 400 reviews and you've been in business for 20 years, but that one person went to your Facebook and it didn't add up to what they were expecting. And I mean, it's all about first impressions. Um, that's that's where the majority of this stuff sort of boils down to is what is the potential client gonna think when they interact with my company for the first time. That's right. Um, whether that's your website, your digital profile, your logo, it kind of goes into all that different stuff. Um, but yeah, so wrapping up social media, I'd just say make sure that you at least post once every two weeks. Once a week is optimal, uh, more than that, if you can. Um, but don't spend a ton of time on it. Because again, it's a digital portfolio. It's more than likely not going to burn you leads. It's just going to clarify to people that you are a real company and establish that trust.

SPEAKER_00 20:44

I've seen coaching clients come in and they're usually one of two extremes. Either they don't have a single thing posted and there's nothing, or they are like trying to be the next TikTok star and they're doing like selfies, walkthroughs of every job site. Like, there's a happy medium where I'm capturing job sites. We we pay a professional photographer once we finish a really nice project. We're gonna send them out there and take photos so we can use it on social. Um, but I don't need you to be posting daily from your job sites. Um, you're not gonna go viral. Like it's just not gonna happen.

SPEAKER_01 21:17

Well, I mean, even if you do go viral, how many of those people are in your area that can actually use you? Yeah, right. Like that's the argument that I always have with people that uh, you know, are are like that, where it's like, okay, I understand you're making cool videos. I'm not saying I don't like reels. I I actually do support you know the occasional reel that people make videos about their job sites, educational stuff, cool stuff. Yep. I don't I don't mind that. I think that actually does help. But if your intention is to make that your full-time job to go viral, the ROI is not there. The people who are watching it more than likely aren't gonna be able to use your services. Yeah. So it's like, why invest the time and effort into it? That's right.

Paid Ads And Market Targeting

SPEAKER_00 21:55

All right. So number five and six are very similar on on the list. Um they're both paid. So walk us through paid web traffic. Um, what does that look like? And you can kind of combine those together if you want, but but lead us through those, Jimmy.

SPEAKER_01 22:11

Uh so there's two different types of web ads, uh, digital ads that that we kind of talk through, and that's Google ads and meta ads. And by meta ads, I mean Facebook and Instagram. Um, those are the two primary digital ad sources you're gonna be using. Um, and I think there's different instances that you would use each. Yeah. Um it really all depends on your area. It depends on um what you're trying to sell, it depends on who your competitors are in your area. Um, there's a lot that goes into marketing that is more about thinking through your area and the data around you. Yeah. Um, and what I mean by that is if you are in a rural area. Area, you're one of four contractors in the 100-mile radius. Um, you don't have a lot of competition. It's gonna be very easy for you to sort of dominate that market. Uh, you could probably um spend a relatively small amount on each different ad service and completely dominate that area. Um, on the flip side of that, there's probably not as many people in the area, and there might not be as many people that are actually going to social media or going to uh SEO, sorry, going to um Google to find people, right? So it's you always got to weigh the pros and cons of each thing when we're talking about marketing and understanding your market, doing market analysis. And I know that sounds like a lot of work, um, but at the end of the day, what you want to do is put yourself into the brain of your client and understand what they are looking for? Where are they finding me? Um what area are they located in? Is there a particular area in my you know remote or my location that I don't want to work in? You know, is there a place that there is it's really hot and there's a lot of like high-end houses that I really want to work in? Uh identifying as much information you can helps with all this stuff because when you do build ads or you hire someone to build ads for you and run them, as much information as you can provide, the better it's going to be. Yeah. Um, so the first step in any paid advertising is understanding your market and understanding where you're going after, basically.

SPEAKER_00 24:27

Right. And it's like there might be a really high-end area of town that is like really, really ritzy and lots of money. It's like, oh, I want to go after that. But it might be an area that all new construction over the last five years. Yeah. Right. I'd rather go after an area that was a 20 to 30 year old homes that are it's it's fluent, uh, affluent enough that they've got cash and they're ready to go and they've built some equity and they want to do a renovation or addition. Um, but the house is old and it needs some help, right? And so though thinking through that and who we're gonna target, who's our target demographic and mark that we're going after, and then we're gonna A B test um different things where you're putting out two different ads, and this one got a lot more clicks than this one. So I'm gonna take that one, I'm gonna make two of those variations and keep keep going over and over till we find a couple that really hit, and then we're gonna dump cash on that couple, you know, two, three, five grand a month just towards those specific ads uh that are working the best.

SPEAKER_01 25:28

Yeah, the uh the last couple things I'll say about paid ads is a couple things to note. If you are in a a high urban area, right? If you're in an area with a lot of people, a lot of different contractors, um, especially ones that have been established for a long time, more than likely they're gonna be spending a lot of your competitors are gonna be spending a lot of money on Google ads. Um, and it's going to be very costly for you to break in through them. Get to the top. Um, because Google's gonna promote the people that they think are paying the most or that are paid the most, basically. Um, so that's one thing to know for Google ads. Meta ads, I like better for companies with a smaller budget and companies in bigger areas because it allows you to sort of be the only person you're stacked up against. Yeah. Um, because when I don't know, most people, you know, you probably have Instagram or Facebook. When you're scrolling through and you see an ad, nine times out of ten, the ad the company is the only uh there's only one company in that ad, right? Like you, there's not comparing you to anyone. Um, versus on Google ads, you are compared against five, six, seven different companies. Um, because when you, like I said, when you search contractors in my area, first thing that shows up is that the sponsored Google My Businesses, and it's like one, two, three, four, five, six. Versus Meta, you are just seeing the company that has pro uh posted that ad. Um, and if you you know you use Facebook or Instagram for a little bit and try to notice that, you'll you'll see what I'm talking about. Um, but for meta, it's usually cheaper to get into. You're not competing with anyone in the immediate ad space. Um and it's also, like I said, just it's just it's an easier entry into the ad space. Um, so it does take a little bit more work because you gotta do photos. It's it's a lot different in terms of how these things work. And uh I mean, the last thing I'll say about these ads is that if you don't know what you're doing, please do not try to run these yourself. Both Meta and Google ads are you can get so complicated with how you do everything. And if you just say, Oh, I'm just gonna do it, uh, I'll I'll figure it out. You're you're more than likely just gonna waste money.

SPEAKER_00 27:43

Throwing money.

SPEAKER_01 27:44

Um, so whether you do a class online, whether you find someone in your area um that can run those for you, always make sure that you know what you're doing before you start throwing money at these ads because you can and will waste money if you're not prepared.

SPEAKER_00 28:01

Yeah. And if you come into coaching uh with BroStruck, you get a every six months Emery does a full marketing assessment on you. So we start with with anyone in our growth or executive program. Uh part of the onboard in the first couple months is Emery's gonna do a full assessment of your your web presence. Um like if someone's looking for you, how how are they finding you and what do you look like to them? And then it's an every six months, let's check in and do it. If you need something, hey, month three, hey, we're looking at running ads, can you help me? Uh we we don't do a ton of ad running for people. We we have, um, but for the most part, we're kind of consultants on it and and help you make a game plan and understand what you should and shouldn't be doing. So yeah, definitely if you're interested in in the coaching or the support from Pro Shuck360 in any way, reach out and we can have a conversation what that looks like.

Website Quality Drives First Impressions

SPEAKER_01 28:49

Uh so the next thing I want to talk about is website. Um website is probably in the top three of importance of anything that we've talked about here. Yeah. Uh mainly because it affects everything. Um Google My Business. If someone goes here, Google My Business, they're gonna click on your website more than likely. Um, social media, someone goes to your Facebook page, there's a probably a pretty good chance they're gonna go to your website if they want to contact you.

SPEAKER_00 29:18

Even if a neighbor refers you. Like that's everyone's gonna check you out.

SPEAKER_01 29:21

If you run ads, if people look up your name, I mean there's so many, it affects everything in the digital space, your website. Um, and it goes back to what I said earlier about your first impression. If you do not have a professional website and you are targeting professional high-end clients, they will not they will go past you. They won't even consider you. Um, you have to build your website for the audience that you are looking for. Um, a lot of people like to build things in the image of what they like. Um, for instance, you know, you you build a website that you think looks cool.

SPEAKER_00 29:58

Showing off what you like.

SPEAKER_01 29:59

You build a logo that you that you think looks awesome. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:02

Um but I love woodworking. So look at all of this really high-end woodwork I did on this project.

SPEAKER_01 30:07

Exactly. I mean, you could be like a big, you know, let's say you're a big sports fan and you model your uh your whole company off of like a sports logo, right? Or sports colors, your your local sports area, and uh you model your website, your colors, everything after it. And you live in an area where people maybe don't really care about sports, right?

SPEAKER_00 30:28

Um or cheer for the other team.

SPEAKER_01 30:29

And the majority of, yeah, or cheer for the other team, right? Um, you know, maybe uh you know, you're you're in Auburn and you build an Alabama themed contracting company, right?

SPEAKER_00 30:40

Like something like that where As I'm wearing my University of Georgia teacher. Yeah, yeah, right.

SPEAKER_01 30:45

I mean, that's just an example of you you want to build everything in your company towards what you think your clients will like. Yep. Um, because like I said, they're going back to the sports, you know, if if your clients are all high-end uh people who who you know maybe don't care about sports, or you know, maybe it's a sports team from a different city that you're in concurrently that they'd have no connection to, um, it's not gonna help you. They're not going to connect with you on it for most more than likely. Um, so you if you're doing high-end new construction where people are spending, you know, 500 to a million dollars um building homes with you, your website better be immaculate. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like it has your website has to match the product that you are pushing because that's the expectation. Yeah. That's the first impression.

SPEAKER_00 31:35

We we all we always say, like, a part of the onboarding when we're doing the coaching, and uh we we said it on this past retreat and back in January. You're from the first contact looking at your website until the final invoice, we're telling a story and we're building that story in our client's brain as to who we are. Yeah, and so anywhere along each of those steps, you can really drop the ball and not get that referral. But from that first contact on your website, they're like, oh, these guys are these are legitimate, this is a legitimate company. Yeah. Uh I'm gonna take the next step. Or, okay, they have three misspelled words in the first paragraph. They're not a high detail company. Like they're that's subconsciously being planted in in your client's head by what they're seeing online.

SPEAKER_01 32:17

So yeah, I mean, and another thing to note too is that we are so used to being online now, we're so used to websites, we're so used to, you know, almost every website that we look up is clean, polished. There's a certain expectation there of, and if you have a broken website or one that's not polished, maybe one that you just threw together, people are gonna notice it immediately.

SPEAKER_00 32:42

2004.

SPEAKER_01 32:43

It's not gonna like just they're they're not just gonna look past it and be like, oh you know, they're gonna notice it. Whether they they could still continue and you know message you or whatever. Um but the the last thing I'll say about the website is you shouldn't be afraid of the website. And what I mean by that is it can be very daunting to approach creating a website for the first time. Um a lot of people do want to go the route of building it themselves because websites are expensive. And if you're just starting, you don't want to spend five, ten, fifteen thousand dollars on a website. Um so if you do decide to build your own website, go to YouTube. I'm serious, go to YouTube, spend as much time as you can looking through how to build a website on whatever platform you choose. Um I personally use WordPress, Wix is good too, um, Squarespace. There's a couple of other ones that are pretty easy to use, but really spend some time watching videos. Um, and honestly, when you're watching the videos too, you'll know really quickly whether or not you think you can do it or not. Uh it'll kind of like make it up in your mind. Like some people will be like, oh yeah, I understand this, let's give it a try. Some people will be like, I can't even remotely begin to understand this. And and that's totally fine. You you need to know that. Yeah. And even if you did you don't decide to build your own website, the more knowledge that you have about websites will help you when you do go to someone eventually to say, Hey, I need a website, and you can kind of explain to them what you want, what you want it to look like.

SPEAKER_00 34:24

Um we we Pro Shuck does build custom construction websites. We've got a really kind of deep knowledge as to how to SEO it and make it to where it's it looks very professional. I mean, we're but it's five grand-ish uh depending on what I mean. There's it goes up and down from there depending on what you want. Um, if you're just getting started, go to Wix, spend some time, get something there. Once we save up some cash, let's throw some money at getting a real optimized website and we'll we'll help put it together for you. Or if you have someone else doing it, we'll help coach on that. I mean, that we're consultants on that side. So yeah, that's it, have something over nothing. It's not hard, especially in today's AI world, to build something semi-decent on your own and then save up some cash and get a real professional one done that's that's really optimized for your area and for what you're doing.

SPEAKER_01 35:13

Yeah.

Referrals From Architects And Partners

SPEAKER_00 35:13

All right, the next two things on our list are very similar against number seven, number eight, but they're different. So uh let me cover those. Number seven is trade partners and referrals. This faucet architects, designers, realtors, people that are saying, Hey, I know these guys, I've worked with them, and they're awesome, you should use them. These are really kind of if I was if I was ranking, these are pretty close to top of the list after some website and organic and that sort of thing. I'd rather you have four architects that you're talking with that are sending you jobs over having a social media page. Having trade partners that were referring clients to you, that people don't shop. If your real estate agent says, hey, use this company to paint your house, you're not shopping. You're like, that's who they said to use. They're the professional, I'm gonna use these guys. Um, so having those relationship-based referrals or something that really allows you to um have people feeding in. So a way to get these, right? Some guys are like, how do I find architects that give me stuff? Well, as soon as I get a job that might need an architect, I'm gonna go shop five architects and say, hey, tell me about how you work. I've got, I'm looking, I'm expanding, I'm needing an architect on our on our team, and I'm making those connections with four or five of them. And I might, if I get a project, I'm gonna find two and send two to send my first project to both those guys and say, hey, give me an assessment of what you're looking at doing. But I'm trying to make those relationship connections to build my team because I will need an architect in the future and a designer in the future. But also now there's four or five guys that I've called and talked to that might refer business back to me. We've got plenty of architects that just send us stuff like, hey, use these guys because for them the headache is I don't want to refer a contractor and my and they screw my client, and now the client's blaming me because what my contractor did. So I always lay that out in that conversation. Hey, I like for a real estate agent, I know your reputation is the most important thing. So when you refer people to me, that's the mantle I carry that I need to make sure your reputation is held high. Uh and so that that's a great faucet if you have a good reputation and can start building those relationships where you're referring stuff back and forth.

SPEAKER_01 37:23

Yeah, I mean, it goes back to the word of mouth that we talked about at the very beginning, right? Like you have to have a quality product and it helps you with everything.

SPEAKER_00 37:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:30

Um, and I think one thing that you said was like if you have these relationships, a lot of the digital stuff becomes obsolete. Um, and it's true, right? Like, uh, you know, if you're buying a house and your realtor's like, hey, I suggest using this contractor, and they just give you a phone number.

SPEAKER_00 37:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:49

They're just gonna call that phone number. Yes. I mean, there's I mean, there's some people obviously that'll look you up and vet you.

SPEAKER_00 37:55

And if someone spent 10 grand with an architect and the architects like use these guys, yeah, that's who they're using.

SPEAKER_01 38:00

The majority of the time they're just gonna call you and and they're not even gonna vet you, right? But some people will, and you know, that's why all of the marketing that we're talking about today all adds together. Yes, it's all just one big wheel that builds, spins, and and helps everything helps everything.

SPEAKER_00 38:16

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 38:16

Um, so yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:17

Uh number eight, very similar to seven, but uh it's a little bit different. So we it's strategic partnerships and niche channels. So this is uh property management companies, HOA, specialty. We do A to Us, we do age in place. I work with the 203k lenders. Um one big strategic partnership we had that we actually did marketing together was a uh a lender that specializes in barn dominion funding. There's not a lot out there that do that. Um, and so we we got with her and did some co co-marketing of like, hey, she will fund it, we will build it. What ideas do you have? Like, what do you want done? Um, to where it was something where any job that she had, any time that someone came to her, like, hey, we're looking at building, we want to see how much we can get approved for. She's like, great, here's a contractor you should use, right? And so, and vice versa. Hey, you're looking when we have a client coming in looking to do a barn a minium, I'm like, hey, who's doing your financing? You should use her. Because for both of us, if I know how she works and she knows how I work, it makes both of our products better to where I can help handle that relationship with the lender because I've got a relationship there, or and vice versa. She knows the contractor and she knows that I'm gonna give her the paperwork we need. So having those type of partnerships, you can co-market it together, you can um it really kind of tag team uh clients. Like I said, VAs. We do a lot of uh VA loans. Uh, we got lenders that love us because we know the hoops and the red tape and what we got to jump through to get to get it done. And so they're always like, hey, use these guys, they're they're the best for me, right? Because they they love having that having that that partnership and that that niche niche channel. All right, we got two more. Number nine, networking and local presence. Um, you which this is kind of higher up on the list in terms of kind of the the word of mouth. Um, but this is Chamber of Commerce, the B and I groups, the um, you know, getting in, you know, and again, this kind of goes back to your original point. Uh, I've got a client that is in a small, small town that we're doing, you know, I'm pushing him towards doing not small, he's a medium to small town, but he wants to own kind of an area. We're sponsoring the baseball team, right? Uh we're we're getting a sign out and we're doing he did the uh the parade that that their town, little town does, and he had a float in the parade. In Atlanta, I'm not doing that. I'm not sponsoring a baseball team day one. I'm not getting in parades day one. That's a lot of money and a lot of time for one very localized um push, um, billboards and stuff like that. That's that's a lot of cash for a single localized push, but it depends on your market, like you were talking about earlier with the other marketing, like who am I trying to go after? Yeah, and how do we get my name out here in this community?

SPEAKER_01 41:03

Yeah, I mean, that's a good point. If you're like I said, if you're in a small town, Google My Business and all these other digital things we talked about may not be that effective.

SPEAKER_00 41:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:11

Because people just that's not how they find contractors. They're they're fully word of mouth focused. They care about who you know and you know, your reputation. And if that's the case, and sponsoring, you know, a baseball team or putting up a billboard or you know, sponsoring the local farmers market, you know, stuff that we traditionally would push against because you know, realistically there's more bang for your buck on Facebook. Yeah, there's more bang for your buck on these paid ads that that are are tried and vetted, but it all depends on your circumstances. It all depends on your market, it all depends where you're located. That's why I say information is the most powerful tool in marketing. Yeah. Because if you don't know your market, you're just gonna lose money.

SPEAKER_00 41:49

And that's that's honestly one of the one of the best parts of partnering with us as pro at ProStruct is Emory don't care about your face looking famous on a billboard. We care about getting you the most jobs. And so you might we've had guys wanting to do marketing a certain way because they want to they just want a billboard or they just really want to have this. And so it's like, let's make a strategic plan around that. If you want to spend two grand on a billboard, cool, do it. I don't care, but that's not gonna get us the return that we're looking for. Let's spend that here, let's try it here, right? And so having a an outsider that doesn't have the emotional attachment to what you want, but more of what's the best for your market in your area, that's where we suggest you you where you should spend your cash on marketing.

SPEAKER_01 42:30

We've had vice versa too, where we've suggested that someone sponsor a baseball team or do a billboard or just you know, it like I said, it all depends on the market.

Local Networking And Commercial Bid Lists

SPEAKER_00 42:38

That's right. Last one on here is more for commercial. It's the bid list, uh requests for proposals, the RFPs, and commercial channels, uh, plan rooms, bid platforms, owner direct uh invites, repeat commercial clients, and public bid lists. There's all sorts of that. There, I mean, we can go down deep, deep, even for non-commercial going into uh a lot more commercial, but going into like bidding on military things and government accounts. Um, there's all sorts of bid rooms that you go and apply. Um, so there that's a whole different channel. Um, you know, it's it's very uh a niche niche channel for the people that are in that world. Um, but it's it's definitely one we want to put on the list as it's a a great faucet to have um to be able to turn on and get work from. All right, those are our main main channels to go out after. Um Mark Emory, final closing words. If I'm if I'm if you're giving someone advice, what what is the what is the best advice at this point? Um and again, everyone's at different stages, yeah, but how are we pushing them up the marketing ladder to to professionalism?

SPEAKER_01 43:48

Well, it all starts out with your base. And your base is basically all the organic stuff we talked about. So, first things first, you want to have word of mouth, you want to have people recommending you. Um that's obviously probably one of the harder things on this whole thing to accomplish, uh, mainly because it's all focused on you. You have to provide a good product, right? Yeah. Um, so that's gotta be number one on your priority list. Have a good product where people will recommend you. Um, number two is like I said, the organic stuff. Go ahead and make a social media, post every once every two weeks, share it to your friends, just build that up.

SPEAKER_00 44:25

Yeah.

Practical Priorities Plus A Clear CTA

SPEAKER_01 44:25

Um, you know, make a Google My Business page. It's free, it's not that hard, it's super easy to do. Just just have it. Even if you don't have a bunch of reviews, just have it on there. Yeah. Um, and then a website. You're gonna want a website that's less organic because you have to pay for it, obviously. Um, but it's something you should strive to have eventually. Um the other thing I will say photos. Uh something I didn't necessarily cover during this whole thing, but photos help everything. Yeah, everything, everything that you're doing online, everything that anything you Print out any flyers you make, anything like that. Like photos are king. You have to have some quality photos. And I'm not saying you can't use your iPhone every now and again to snap some good photos, but if you have a backlog of 20 to 50 professionally done, really good photos, it can take you so far. Yeah because again, it goes with the first impression thing. If your photos look like crap, your work's gonna look like crap. If your photos look awesome, your work's gonna look awesome. Yeah. Right? It's all about perception and quality. Um, and so it's it's really, really important to remember that always try to get really good photos of your really good work.

SPEAKER_00 45:40

Yeah, if you're gonna spend money anywhere, yeah, pay 300 bucks, have a photographer go hit three of your job sites out. Even if you're not using it now, yeah, right.

SPEAKER_01 45:47

Or let's say you're working on an investor job and they're gonna flip it.

SPEAKER_00 45:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:51

Say, hey, I know you're gonna bring in photographers to come snap photos of this place to list it.

SPEAKER_00 45:57

Yeah. Can I go in half with you and can I throw you a hundred bucks and share me the share those photos with you? Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 46:02

I mean, there's there's creative ways to get it, but the last thing you want to do is build something absolutely amazing and then take it with your iPhone and it look like crap. Yeah. Or maybe like your iPhone like eight or something, right? Like have your one of your crews take the photo and like, no, you want to take advantage of the quality work that you've created and get really good photos. It helps everything.

SPEAKER_00 46:23

That's good. I I think also like a bigger, bigger zooming out for me too is like marketing isn't something you start when you're out of jobs. Yeah. Right? It is a constant build of momentum that we're that we're creating. So if I need work tomorrow, I'm too late to start marketing. Yeah, uh, marketing is a well-or-oiled machine that you have to build and test and check out. And every city is different, every area and town is different, every personality and style and what you do. Like there's no cookie-cutter way to do this. Yeah. Um, so it just takes time and effort, starting with what Emery said, with the website and Google My Business and trying to get the the base founding foundation blocks in place, um, and then growing from there and kind of having a strategic thought monthly on what are we doing next? How is that growing? How do we get the next round of uh of people hearing about us? So well, cool. Thanks for joining us, Emery.

SPEAKER_01 47:26

Yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_00 47:27

Uh, if you guys want help with any of the stuff, if you want to meet with me or if you want to meet with Emory, reach out, go to contractorcuts.com, book a time. We give free 30-minute consulting if you want help with anything or thoughts around anything. Um, or if you want to hear about coaching and what that entails, set up a meeting. I'd love to tell you about it myself. So thanks so much for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

SPEAKER_01 47:47

See you.

SPEAKER_00 47:48

Bye.