The Art of Building Trust in Marketing with John Jantsch
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You know, so many people think marketing stops when you get the sale. To me, you know, the real opportunity is after you get the sale to to focus intentionally on all the ways that you can upsell and and retain customers and, you know, get them to be kind of your your new lead generation sales force.

Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields, like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership, to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now.

Your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello. Before we get started, I wanted to share two important things with you. First, I want you to implement what you learned today. To do that, you'll have to take a lot of notes, but I also want you to fully concentrate on the interview. So I asked the team to take notes for you. Just text NOTES, N-O-T-E-S, to 888-526-1299. That's 888-526-1299.

1-2-9-9, and you'll receive a link to download the notes from today's episode. Also, if you haven't got your copy of my newest book, Elevate, please go check it out. I'll share with you how I attracted and developed a winning team that helped me build a $200 million company in 22 states. Just go to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast to get your copy. Now let's go back into the interview. All right, guys, welcome back to the Home Service Expert. Today, I got John Jantz with me.

He's an expert in small business marketing, business consulting, and search engine optimization. He is the founder and president of Duct Tape Marketing.

He's done a lot of stuff, Spark Lab Consulting, Tradeful, Podcast Bookers, a lot of great stuff on here. He's built, he's been a trusted advisor to small and medium-sized businesses for more than 30 years, specializing in marketing strategy, consulting, and advertising. He's also the author of seven books, including Duct Tape Marketing, The Referral Engine,

and the host of Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. His blog is recognized by Forbes as one of the top five for small business marketing. Yeah, here he is. John, how are you, brother? I'm doing great. You know, you stick around long enough, your bio and all that stuff just gets longer, doesn't it?

Yeah, no, absolutely. You know, there's in business. One of my mentors, Al Levy taught me there's two things that the owner should never stop doing and paying attention to. And that's no, the financials like the back of their hand and marketing and marketing by far.

By far, more than sales, more than anything for me, marketing is everything. I love marketing. Yeah, and I'm sure you've seen it. I see it all the time, how many business owners don't really feel like they understand marketing, so they just kind of abdicate it to an agency or something. It's really how you kind of find yourself spending a whole bunch of money not knowing what you're getting for it. Yeah, no, it's interesting because I was talking about

greenfield growth versus everybody and their brother right now is talking about greenfield growth. And I'm kind of skeptical for most companies talking about it because I asked them, how big are you in your own market? How much market penetration do you have? And if they're not above like 20, 30, 40 million, depending on the industry, what's the point of expansion? Yeah. But let's just start out a little bit, John, by you started this company in 1986, right?

tell us a little bit about your history why you got into business what you're excited about in the future so you know i went to work it right out of college actually for an ad agency and i really enjoyed it but i was like you know i want to do my own thing anybody any any dummy can run a business uh so i you know jumped out with any real plan i knew i could hustle work and that's what i did you know i got some big clients little clients big projects little projects uh

I got a couple, ironically, remodeling contractors, smaller businesses, kind of some of the folks you work with. And I really enjoyed working with them, but they were hard. I mean, they had the same, I don't, I've been sort of classically advertising agency, big budget, you know, trained, you know, a lot of small businesses certainly don't have the budgets, but don't even really have the attention span, you know, for marketing. And so I really said to myself,

I got to figure out how to work with these guys because I really enjoy working with, you know, the owner of the business who's writing the check, you know, to pay you. You know, it's for me, it was just a lot more fun. So I created at that point, I said, look, I can't do this the traditional way. So I said, look, I'm going to create a system where I can walk into somebody and say, look, here's what I'm going to do. Here's what you're going to do. Here are the results we hope to get. Here's what it costs. You want it or not? Right.

And I found out pretty quickly they did want it because, you know, still today, I think one of the hardest things for a lot of businesses to do is to buy marketing services. You know, they're all over the place. There's some new new hot thing this week. And so they they really get

confused. And so the fact that somebody was going to come in and say, look, we're going to install a marketing system. It's going to start with strategy before tactics, and you're going to know what it's going to cost. I think it was kind of music to their ears. And so I built my practice pretty quickly that way and then started attracting

other agencies who saw what I was doing and said, hey, we want to do that as well. It actually coincided with my first book, Duct Tape Marketing, where I basically described my system. And so today we have about 400 agencies that we've licensed the duct tape marketing system to that use our methodology. And then I do still have the agency. And so we work with dozens of small to midsize clients

kind of almost as their fractional CMO is what we've started to characterize it as. I love that. You know, a lot of people can't afford a CMO or even a VP of marketing. And they come to me all the time. They're like, what would you do if you were going to start over again? I'm like, man, that's a loaded question. I got your book. I don't know. I think four years ago and it's full of like gold.

Let's start here. You've been recognized as the world's most practical small business expert. So what do you believe sets your approach apart from others? I mean, what's the secret sauce in the formation of the plan for these small companies? Well, I

I still sometimes wonder, but so few marketers do this. It really still is a differentiator. I mean, if somebody hires us, somebody comes to us and says, I need a website. We're like, yes, you do. But first we're going to develop a marketing strategy. We're going to truly understand your ideal client. We're going to actually create a message that,

that not only resonates, but promises to solve a problem for that ideal client. We are going to create a complete end-to-end customer journey from the time somebody gets to know you to the time they become an advocate. And we're going to pick the tactics that make

only the most sense for attracting that ideal client. So with that kind of framework, we can look out and say, okay, here's what the next 60, 90, 120 days needs to look like. Then we're going to move to the next stage and we can tell you what the next 60, 90, 120 days need to look like based on what we've got accomplished.

based on where you're trying to go with your business. And so just coming at it from that approach, rather than what most marketers do is they walk in and say, what do you need? Sure, we do that. Here's what it costs. And, you know,

I'm sure that your listeners are a lot smarter than a lot of business owners, but most business owners don't know what they need. So the idea that you're going to let them tell you what as a marketer, as a marketing agency, what they need is kind of silly. And so the fact that we come in and very much direct, we bring leadership to the organization, we bring a plan and a strategy for what the next year of growth is going to look like is still today

To me, it's the only way to do it, but still today a great differentiator. So when you sit down with a client, you know, let's say it's a plumber or HVAC or electrical or garage doors, we're all pretty similar. Well, there's demand versus non-demand, you know, like windows and gutters and stuff like that usually is non-demand. But let's say you've got a demand type industry. Do they fill out a questionnaire? Like, you know, SEO is important. Do they have a good website? Does it load at the right speed? Do they claim their support?

My business page, TV, radio, billboards, mailers. It's just, it goes on and on. Yeah. So yeah, we, we, you know, first thing we want to do is establish a baseline. Where are they today? What have they been doing? What's worked? What's not worked? What do they need to keep doing? What do they need to stop doing? That's like phase one. And then we have very much, we have actually, we call it the customer success track. We have stages for that. And each of those stages have milestones. You mentioned Google business page.

If they haven't claimed that, that's in the foundational stage. We're going to make sure that milestone's accomplished because we know that if we get, say, that foundation, all those milestones, all those things, boxes checked in the foundation stage, then we can actually move them to the next stage. So a lot of times people will come to us and they say,

run ads for so we can generate, you know, more leads. Well, your website's terrible. If we send if we spend money and send people, you know, to your website, you know, all you're going to do is waste money. So first, we got to fix the website. First, we have to figure out how to convert leads, then we can actually start spending money. So

We run people through those stages because we know that if we get their foundation fixed, we know what the promise is now of being able to generate leads. And then we can move to the next stage, being able to convert more of those leads. Then we can move to the next stage, actually turning more of those clients into repeat clients and referral clients. And so there is a linear kind of process to this that we move people through. We don't just come in and say, we're going to do SEO every month for the rest of your life.

Is there a software that you guys, obviously there's a CRM. Sure. But is there any type of software that you guys use?

Throw into the mix or just whatever CRM they're on. Yeah, I mean, we're fairly agnostic to that. I mean, I'm not going to come in somebody that's using HubSpot and spend $50,000 installing it and say, no, you got to switch to ours. But if somebody and shockingly, a lot of businesses don't use a CRM where they're using like builder trend or something that, you know, really doesn't have marketing functionality in it.

We'll switch them to something like ActiveCampaign. I mean, they need something that will help. They can have pipeline, they can send emails, they can actually use forms and people can sign up for things. So they need a basic marketing automation CRM platform. There are probably a dozen that would do the trick.

What are some uncommon milestones? Obviously, claiming your Google My Business page is an easy GVP. Is there any other ones that are kind of odd that you guys recommend? I always tell people, make sure you invest in the BBB, even though the BBB might not make a lot of sense, but it makes your profile, makes Google know that you're a real person, like a real company.

Yeah, yeah, I'm with you. I mean, the BBB has been around forever. And, you know, it's I don't know what value it has. But But frankly, that's just an example of what we call a trust marker. So you know, having, you know, whether, you know, let's say you belong to nary or, you know, a local chapter of your chamber or some, I mean, just having a lot of those trust building elements.

And then just communicating them, you know, goes a long way for that. You know, that buyer today is out there. They're out there doing their own research. They're out there, you know, kicking the tires, looking at who's out there, looking at who's got social proof, looking at who's got reviews before they ever really call us or fill out a form on our website. So as much as we can do to, you know, make our online and offline presence, you know, build trust.

is really, I think, one of the core jobs of marketing today. Love it. You got brand versus marketing. Yeah. And I see a lot of people on the side of their trucks. It's got everything they do. There's no real message that pops. Yeah. You know, it's like...

They're the worst raps you've ever seen. They're lettering if you're lucky. And then, and then of course your manufacturer will pay for them. If you put their brand on the side of it, you're literally marketing their brand. They're driving around their belt billboards. Basically. How important is the brand being correct?

Well, I think it's really important, frankly. I mean, you know, a lot of people can, you know, take that maybe too far. But just having something that says, here's who we are. Here's who we are consistently. You know, we've been around for a long time. Again, a lot of the brand component really just goes towards building trust.

The fact that they've seen your trucks around, they see your yard signs, those are all things that go a long way towards somebody saying, well, yeah, we should just call them because other people seem to be calling them reviews. Another great example

that you know are for home services businesses absolutely crucial you know you've probably made a decision about whether or not to call somebody based on you know they got 3.4 stars as opposed to 4.5 stars a lot of us are making that decision every single day yeah i agree i see this all the time um yeah many small business owners are looking for the ways they can scale without overextending themselves and

I see this all the time and they ask me if radio works. I say, yeah, yellow book still works. I go, but you gotta be consistent. And you know, I've worked with the wizard of ads before I went and visit him and Roy Williams. And his whole notion is you gotta, do you know who that is? Oh yeah, sure. Sure. So you gotta spend a, it's a small fortune to hit his, his belief system is if you hit the radio with 50% of the population, uh,

men and women, boys and girls, doesn't matter your race or gender or age, they got to hear you four times a week. And if they do, over the course of six to nine months, your brand will be the number one in your category. What is your thought on TV, radio, billboards? Those are more of a branding play. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, it's tough when somebody is just getting started, you know, because you need to hustle and get some business. But particularly as an organization grows, starts to grow. And, you know, because as you said, those things cost a lot of money. There's no question you can dominate your market by just the fact that people see you everywhere. That goes a long way. I mean, especially in the home services businesses, you know, we're not we're not.

filing away, you know, that person that could fix our roof until we need a roof fixed. And, you know, at that point, it's like, who have I heard? Whose trucks have I seen? You know, whose billboards have I seen? What direct mail have I received? That all just keeps us top of mind. And it's hard sometimes because, you know, you don't have a lot of people driving or calling your business saying, yeah, I saw your billboard and I want you to come on out, right? So it's hard sometimes to measure

the impact of that spend. But I think there's no question increasingly having a sort of an omnipresence in the market is how you really build a lot of trust, but it's also how you stay top of mind. Love it. You mentioned that being a self-reliant entrepreneur isn't about isolating yourself, but about trusting your own judgment.

So the question is, how can entrepreneurs balance self-reliance with seeking advice or inspiration from others without losing their own sense of direction? Yeah.

So, so just for context, I wrote a book called the self-reliance entrepreneur, which is essentially, it's not a marketing book. It is a kind of an entrepreneurial, almost self-help book. You know, it has a, has daily readings, you know, about kind of what it's like to, you know, it's, it's easy to have a lot of self-doubt to, you know, get down on yourself to, you know, listen to, or watch what I, what you see everybody else doing. And,

you know, try to follow them. So the idea behind that book and really all the messages in that is that

that, you know, you got to be true to yourself. You got to do what you believe is the right thing and, you know, not try to, I mean, obviously there's going to be a lot of people in business that are going to help you, that are going to be a part of your success. But you've got to really, you've got to have the vision and kind of mission for your business. And then you got to stay true to it and not, you know, not sit there and worry every day, is this going to work?

Yeah, I think, you know, someone asked me this morning, like how many consultants it took me to be successful. And I'm like, I met the right one pretty early on. But yeah, you know, my gut feeling wasn't always the right feeling because when I was younger in business, I was like, grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. I was more worried about revenue than profit. And profit really, what's the machine that allows you to reinvest into the company? No question. No question. So in your book, The Duct Tape Marketing,

You emphasize the importance of making small business simple, effective, and affordable. I'm just curious, you kind of went through the milestones a little bit, but when you're starting and you've got attribution, you've got the right setup,

The first 90 days, I guess, is if you're first, if you're really small, just going through this checklist, you claim this page, you're advanced verified for Google, your load speed, your website, but what's some simple strategies to make the phone start to ring? Or is it just a culmination of everything kind of an omni approach?

Well, I think ultimately it is, but you know, you can't do everything right away, right? As much as you'd like to. So ultimately you want to build momentum by adding this one. And then this one, I tell you what I've done with a lot of businesses getting started is you go out there and find a couple of players that are, that are serving your same market.

So for instance, I had a painting contractor. The guy had been around for a long time, but he started his own practice or his own business. And so I had a couple other clients, electrical contractor and an HVAC contractor. And so, you know, I went to them and said, look, these guys do great work. Why don't you guys co-market together?

So what we did is we came up with a flyer, for lack of a better term, that every technician, when they went into a house, would actually pass out this flyer. And it had all three of the company's info on it and a coupon.

you know, for giving them a call. And so what happened was, you know, this painting contractor went out and really hustled and got that flyer into a lot of places and started making not only his own phone ring, but the other guy's phones ring. And consequently, you know, he was getting calls now because the HVAC contractor had like six guys going in 10 houses every day. And so, you know, all of a sudden it's like,

You know, I trust my HVAC contractor. If he says this painter's fine, I'm going to call him. So doing that kind of stuff doesn't really cost much. You know, it takes some relationship building, but that could be a great way for you to really, you know, kind of hit the ground running.

I love that. I love that. I've tried doing some stuff, but never the leave behind. The question always is, are you guys really going to leave it behind? Sure. And there's got to be checks and balances for that. Yeah.

Checking to see if they got the brochure. Well, a lot, you know, I've done this more than once and, you know, we finally started incentivizing them. So the thing would have the coupon would have codes on them. And it says, you know, what was the code on your coupon? And it was like, oh, that's that's Bill's code. And so all of a sudden he got, you know, 50 bucks. So now he's like, I'm going to pass these out.

Yeah, no, that's the hardest part is attribution. I've got 7,000 call tracking numbers now. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, technology has changed a lot over the last 10 years. It makes it easier to track where people are calling from. No question. No question. Yeah.

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and exclusive bonuses, plus 20% off VIP. Go to freedomevent.com now. That's freedomevent.com. All right, back to the episode. So let's see here. The concept of getting to know, like, and trust you is central to your system. What are some actionable steps small business owners can do to get this going?

this trust with their audience yeah so the idea is that that people go when they're getting ready to buy they typically go on a bit of a journey especially even now i mean that trend of kind of kind of the buyer doing a bunch of research on the front end because they can you know the technology has made it easier for them to get info um is that you know we want to guide uh that person um you know because you've probably done this before the more somebody trusts you the more willing the

the more willing they are to pay a premium, right? I mean, if you trust, like I know everybody trusts these guys, everybody uses them. I'm going to pay more, but I know it's worth it, right? I mean, we've all kind of done that or we know it's going to be a better experience.

So the idea is instead of just running ads, we've got to link all three of these things together. Let's say you run an ad. First thing somebody is probably going to do is go to your website. What do they see when they get there? Is there a message to solve their problem? Are there trust markers like banners and testimonials and reviews? So you got to realize that people are doing their own research.

And the more we can do to intentionally, you know, guide that and build the trust, having case studies, having portfolios, those kinds of things have to be a part of the journey. You know, a lot of people stop at, oh, we just need to run an ad. Well, you run an ad and you're probably going to attract that person that says, I'm looking for the cheapest deal out there. But you run an ad and you send some of your website, you have lots of

of reason, lots of resources there to build trust, then all of a sudden they're going to be less price sensitive. Yeah, 100%. And I'll tell you, I used to be very price sensitive as a consumer. Yeah. And now I'm definitely looking for someone that can get out there the same day. And what are the reasons why they...

they compete. And I started to realize it more from a consumer. And I'll tell you, without owning a house with stuff going wrong all the time, it's a bigger house. Now I'm starting to learn how to make ourselves like, man, I saw the plumber just in the last six weeks, seven times. And I'm like, dude, some of this stuff, I'm like, come on, like,

like everything I feel so nickel and dime that I'm like I wish you just charge me for everything give me all the options up front check everything tell me everything you think's gonna go wrong yeah because now I feel like you know it's 1200 bucks here five grand there two grand there it's like what the heck I don't know I like to buy the best now I will say that and I'm like give me an option for everything instead of just telling me what's wrong today yeah tell me everything I can possibly get

Well, and I know you teach this as well, but certainly the folks in your industry that you serve, I mean, the ones that are really excelling, that are really profitable, they spend as much time teaching their techs and their sales folks how to upsell in the sales environment than they do on their marketing. Because quite frankly, there's a whole lot more profit in that upsell quite often than there is in the come out and fix my leaky faucet.

Yeah. So let's dive into that a little bit. Marketing a little bit versus sales, because I would argue people need to know who you are and you need to book the phone call first. But then as a technician gets out there, I mean, you work with so many companies in the past. How much do you talk to them about sales training and the art of the sale and all that stuff?

Well, it's a big part of it because again, the customer journey doesn't just end when somebody says, I want to buy. The profitability in an organization is in some cases,

You might lose money. I know some companies are getting better at it. You might lose money on that first call, but you spend all that money to get in the home and you don't do anything to make sure that you're going to come back next year or next week or next month.

You don't give people, make it really easy for them to refer you and incentivize them to tell other, you know, their friends, neighbors, and colleagues about you. That's part of, that's part of the whole journey. You know, so many people think marketing stops when you get the sale. To me personally,

You know, the real opportunity is after you get the sale to focus intentionally on all the ways that you can upsell and retain customers and, you know, get them to be kind of your new lead generation sales force. When you're asking for a referral, what's the best way that you've found to do that?

Well, it depends in a lot of environments. I don't think there is one best way. One thing that we do a lot of training on folks is to present it up front. Hey, we know you're going to be so pleased with what we did here today that, you know, we're going to call you up, make sure that everything worked out. And then we're going to ask you if there's any, you know, have any friends that

that would need this kind of result. So setting the table, the expectation early on is one simple thing you can do. Staying top of mind, you know, all your past customers, sending them something, send them a gift certificate says, hey, here's a hundred dollar gift certificate, one for you, one for your friend. If you pass this out, you know, you're not only referring us, but you're helping them. You're giving them something. And by doing so, you know, you're going to get something in return as well.

So that's something you could do quarterly. Every past customer, just quarterly get in the habit of mailing them because the thing about referrals is,

They happen when people need them, you know, not when we need them. And so, you know, just staying top of mind and staying, you know, asking for referrals, making people know that, you know, there's a reason for them to refer you is part of what happens, you know, with then when somebody, you know, when their garage door breaks, you know, it's like, oh yeah, I was just talking to my neighbor about that. Love it. You know, there's, there's this,

Everywhere you look, I mean, I just had my guys out in town, the private equity guys.

private equity uh basically deep pockets are getting in and yeah they don't play it around man they they know the one thing i think they have that most people don't is they they got the bucks and they got the analytics they've got a proven tried tested methodology they got the best relationships with google they're willing to put buku bucks in this stuff they're willing to pay for team endorsements and and the best wraps and the newest trucks and the latest technology

What's the best way to compete if you're smaller and you're worried about that? Yeah, I mean, there's no question that's tough because we talked about they can flood the airways and that kind of thing. But one of the things I think

the smaller business probably has to compete on experience. I'm guessing that those folks also don't always hire the best technicians, don't always do the best training. You know, it's all about getting the phone to ring as opposed to the experience. So that's really going to be your competitive advantage is that you go into the home and you've got a trustworthy, trained, you know,

you know, gentleman or woman, you know, that is, you know, able to represent the brand effectively. And that a lot of people really underestimate that you look at a lot of Google reviews and a lot of times they don't even mention the company name. You know, they mentioned Rusty, you know, who came in and fixed my boiler, you know, because that's to them, that's the face of the company.

Yeah. You're giving me all kinds of good ideas here. I love this stuff. Um, yeah. So that's, that's the funny thing is we leave reviews for people that not companies necessarily. And I think it's important for the technician to ask. Yeah. And, and ask for that review. And we had a, I had a garage door, um,

a couple openers put in recently and and the guy um as he was wrapping up he did a great job really personable guy and he uh as he was wrapping up he said you know my company does this kind of goofy contest if i get reviews you know they're gonna buy my wife and i dinner at this fancy place and you know so if you if you you know wouldn't mind giving us a review i mean he made it so personal i was like what kind of schmuck's not gonna give this guy a review

So, you know, again, like I said, he did good work. He was a nice guy. But just that little twist of I can help this guy get dinner rather than I could care less about the, you know, the big company. But I can help this guy get dinner. You know, I just think that kind of making it real personal, you know, was really effective approach. So I gave a review for sure. Taking more notes.

I like, I like, you know, I, I, there's a couple of ways to do it. I had Jeremy minor in here and he's like, you know, he, he kind of laughs and he goes, you know, I want to be back and going to the office and I'm going to be talking to my boss. And if I don't have a review, I'm,

I might be fired. I don't have a review with my name in it from your call. Would you mind helping me so I don't get fired? And it's kind of like a playful little joke, but sure. That works. What are all the mistakes when you, when you talk to somebody and you're like, Oh my gosh.

You are bleeding. Where is the biggest stakes that you see? Probably the one I see the most is because a lot of small midsize businesses, they're really strapped for people, for time, for resources. And yet they're trying to spread themselves. You know, I got to be on TikTok and I got to be on this. I got to be on that. So they're just kind of spraying stuff everywhere. And there's really no focus on, you know, a couple areas that are going to make a big difference. So I always, I quite often try to get people to say, look,

You need to be on Instagram and you need to be on LinkedIn and you need to be, you know, going out there and really working for reviews, for example, and just put a whole bunch of effort into those three things. I'm just throwing out as an example, you know, as opposed to, you know, trying to do everything and not really doing a very good job with any of it.

What do you think? Social media, have you found, does it compete? Like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, X, all of them. Do those compete with traditional TV, radio billboards, do you feel? Oh, I think they do in a different way. I mean, just like everything, there are people that don't go to Facebook ever. And there are people that are on it every day who don't watch television or don't listen to radio. I mean, so it's tough to...

to just say, this is better than that. You're going to reach a different market. And I think the real key is, are you tracking the results? Do you have a plan? Are you tracking the results that you're getting from one channel or another? And continue to double down on what's working and at least experiment on...

something or cut, you know, something that's not working. I mean, that's, that's the tough thing. You get a lot of folks that are doing eight things. They have no idea what's actually working. Business might be good, but they're not sure why necessarily. And, and that's the real crime, right? You're, you're wasting a bunch of money on stuff that's not working that you could be doubling down or tripling down, you know, on, on a channel that really is working. If you just had the metrics. You know, a lot of people, I feel like there's a pendulum swing and it goes, you know,

I've got great leads coming in. I'm not booking the phone calls. I don't have the right technicians. I got a top grade. And then sometimes it's like I got all the great technicians. I need more leads. When I do need more great people, I feel like the biggest mistake is people just, they go, let me run an ad, one ad on Craigslist or Indeed or Glassdoor or ZipRecruiter or Monster or CareerBuilder.

you know is there a way to figure out a way to market for consumers as well as market for great people to come in like i don't know if it's radio or social media or what but do you know what i mean it's like we're trying to hit both

Yeah. So one of the things that we try to do and, you know, after the pandemic, you know, a lot of a lot of home service businesses, you know, just really were struggling to get people. And so there's a couple of things there. You need to think about demand generation or pipeline of people the same way you do of customers.

So it needs to be something that you don't just go, oh, crap, somebody left. We need to hire somebody. And then, you know, like you said, you run the ad. It needs you need to constantly be talking about how what a great place it is for you to work at. You need to get your team involved in talking about the fact that that your brand is a great place for them to to work. And so, you know, that kind of messaging all the time about, you know,

top company to work at in this city, you know, the, all the employees, you know, sharing, you know, awesome time they had at the company picnic, you know, that kind of stuff just sends subtle messages to, you know, folks that are out there, you know, there's a lot of people out there. They're not really happy where they are right now. But, you know,

There's, you know, they're not necessarily looking at ads, but they might be paying attention to what's going on out there in the market. So the key thing there really is just constant, even if you don't have an open position, you should be, you should be trying to attract, you know, the A players at all times.

Do you like endorsements? Is that something that you've seen any of the people you've worked with successful? It's almost like you're borrowing their credibility. Yeah. I mean, I think it can work in a lot of industries. You know, I think that...

I think that it can go, people can go overboard too. I mean, you know, you get these that pay, you know, pay these supposed influencers on, you know, social media to talk about their product or service or something that people don't care about it. They're, you know, they're just getting paid. I think it's pretty obvious to people that that's the case. But I think that the, the, the right kind of authentic endorsement, you know, so somebody let's say a remodeling contractor, you know,

does great work for somebody on the local football team. And that person's like, I love these guys. It's amazing what they did. You know, I would have them back into my house, you know, anytime I need something fixed. I mean, that can be a, that can be a super powerful endorsement if it's real.

Yeah, my buddy, I was just at his house last week. He's got this snow whitening and he had Rob Gronkowski as his first kind of, he got him to invest in his company. Then he had the Kardashians. And now he said he's got 26,000 TikTok influencers that post every day about his product. And they're doing crazy.

I think he's doing like 150 million a year with the teeth whitening stuff. But yeah, you're right. Is it authentic or are they just getting paid to be an influencer? And look, I'll listen to influencers if I can see the products real. I mean, it's not necessarily buying it because this guy's got it. But if I'm going to buy like fitness, like products, hopefully the people are in shape. You know what I mean? Like it's got to fit the brand. Yep, yep, yep. No question. Yeah.

How do you usually like to, because the question, I get this question probably 10 times a week is how do I pick an agency? You know, there's a lot of different agencies out there. What's the best way they bill me the more I spend. So they're kind of incentivized to bill me on pay-per-click. They're going to take 15% of whatever I spend. So like, when you think about it, how do you, how do you qualify an agency? And then what's the right way to be, to expect them to bill me?

Well, so there's a couple of things that the first one is, is, you know, I always tell businesses you need to be talking to agencies that are at least talking about developing a strategic plan, you know, as opposed to just saying, yeah, we do this. We're the best at it. And that's what we're going to do for you. So, you know, is that the right thing? Right. So somebody who's going to take the time to actually research your market, research your industry and have a plan that that they can show you how they're going to execute.

Clearly being able to demonstrate we have proven results for other people like you is going to be a piece of it. And then the last one is, and I don't know about you, but we run into lots of folks that work with agencies and they said, yeah, they sent us a

traffic report once a month. We had no idea if it meant anything, if we were doing anything. So you definitely want an agency that's going to tie metrics to what your overall business objectives are. And I think that's one of the knocks I have with a lot of marketing agencies is

is they really just want to do the things they know how to do. And the first thing we try to do is understand like, where are you trying to go from a business growth standpoint? How can we measure your cost to acquire a new customer? You know, how can we measure your repeat business? Because that's, to me, that's the only true way to see if you're being successful. And it's, you know, when we've been able to work with organizations and they let us have that kind of almost P&L access,

They never fire us because, you know, we're actually able to demonstrate to them exactly what they're getting for the money that they're spending. So there needs to be a little bit of transparency as well on the company side. There does. There does. But, you know, if you've got a company that's not asking for that, that's not asking you strategic questions, that to me is probably a little bit of a red flag. It feels like everywhere I look, there's like.

white hat labeled SEO companies that the white head out to India or the Philippines or Ukraine or somewhere. How do you spot those guys? Well, there isn't anything necessarily inherently wrong with that. I mean, you definitely want to know what they're doing. And that's one of the challenges, I think, especially at SEO. A lot of people look at it, go, oh, it's really technical. I don't get it. And so

then they don't know what people are doing on their behalf to get them results. So you definitely want to know exactly what somebody is doing. The fact that they have a team in the Philippines is not necessarily a bad thing. In some cases, they can actually get you more output for your money, working with folks in other countries. But you definitely want to make sure that the work is quality and that they can tell you exactly how they're getting you those results.

You know, I talked to some of the largest companies in North America and we talk about return on ad spend, ROAS. And some of them that it's so high, but SEO pulls their numbers down dramatically. And SEO is one of those things where it's earned media. It takes time, effort, and energy. It's like my domain authority right now is a 64.

um, on a H refs that's a H R E F S it's website ranker. You type that in, it's free. You can see what, what your website is. And you know what? My major goal is that I hit the number one spot for the search words that matter. And it's hard to believe that I can get pulled down to below 10% with how much money we spent. Um,

and some of it's going after general search terms and some of it what we found was is our trucks and our billboards and our yard signs and our tv and our radio and those things start to multiply people start searching us by name which is a much search yes but when they are searching a generic search term i mean but for example the private equity company i work with works with this company called little sleepies and they're just kids sleeping pajamas and they generate an ungodly amount of money

But they're so good at ranking number one. And some people say SEO is dying. What is your take on that? So it's going to be around for a long time, especially for local service businesses, like the folks that are showing up in the Google Maps. But there's no question it is dying for general kind of information types of searches because the search engines are giving the answer.

So, you know, it used to be you could write an article about, you know, the five best types of air conditioners to install in your home. And people who were trying to find out, like, what kind of brand should we be looking for? What kind of unit should we be looking for would find your content? Well, now Google is just saying, here's the answer, as opposed to sending you to that blog post.

So for those kind of that kind of general information, traffic is almost dead. I mean, you've seen people having 30, 40 percent drops in their organic search. But for that high intent, who is the best HVAC contractor in Seattle? Because I'm getting ready to hire one of those HVAC.

there's no answer to that that Google can give other than showing them, you know, here's the companies and showing them the Google maps listing, showing them, you know, the rankings and reviews. So, so the most high intent searches are, are still going to special for local businesses are going to be with us for a long time, but there's no question. We're losing a lot of that, you know, long tail kind of educational search organic traffic. Yeah. That's another question. Yeah.

i'm just drilling you here with tons of questions one is i get this a lot from from on the stage is uh well chat gbt and some of these ai will they become a major platform for search engines like i use chat gbt all the time to make tables and do all kinds of like what i mean by tables like i'll say i want to see 200 million dollars at

20% IRR over the course of 10 years and it'll spit it all out real quick. Right. But I never used it to find a local brand or a local restaurant. Maybe a local recipe. Maybe like a recipe. Yeah.

You know, people are always what is AI going to do and is it going to destroy SEO? Is it going to destroy pay per click? Is it going to destroy what Google is today? Where do you see AI going right now? Well, I don't think it's going to destroy pay per click, but it's already eroded, you know, general search traffic. No question.

because it is, you know, if you do a search on Google today, there's a good chance that it's gonna return an AI result in the top result that is going to give you the answer. You know, what it used to do is give you, here's three websites that we think have this answer. You know, go knock yourself out and go to them. Well, now it's just giving you the answer. So all that traffic that used to go to those websites that spent a whole bunch of money and time ranking for general search terms,

that traffic's going away. I won't say it's dead, but it's going away. And so being in some of the places, what's also happening is it's changing search behavior.

So it used to be Google was it, right? I mean, but now a lot of folks are going to the perplexities of the world and chat GPT has, has searched now. They're going to Tik TOK. Tik TOK is actually a huge, huge amount of traffic that is people searching for how to do stuff on Tik TOK.

So what it's really going to do, I think, is it's going to require us as marketers to spend more time in some of these, figure out where our clients are searching, where they are getting their answers now and spend more time,

in some of those places. Reddit is another one that, you know, that I'm, I'm afraid, you know, people are going to have to, you know, invest in spending some time on because a lot of the, you know, a lot of questions that people have are coming out of Reddit content. So it's, it all really leads to marketing is just going to get harder.

That's what I believe. What are your thoughts on Quora? You've ever heard of Quora? Yeah, sure. Quora's good. You know, again, the problem with a lot of those sites is you got to invest a lot of time and energy to have any kind of impact on them. What do you think about Upwork and Fiverr and just finding a pro at a source? I mean, we have a, I haven't really done much with Fiverr, but we have used Upwork to place a lot of marketing folks in, you know, with our, in our clients and,

And if you do a good job of writing the job description, writing the requirements, analyzing the people, we've had really great luck finding some very talented people who in a lot of cases wanted a certain situation. They wanted to be able to take their kids to school and pick them up from school. So a traditional job wasn't going to work for them. But 20 hours a week, they were very successful.

Very experienced, very talented, not that expensive. And so we've had a lot of luck. You've got to spend time investing upfront in finding the right person and interviewing and hiring the right person and then training the right person. But that's like any, you're not going to have success probably in any position without doing that.

You know, there's just, I've done some stuff on Upwork and you get everybody from $3 an hour from Bangladesh up to like $280 per hour. What,

I guess it depends on the project. Is it a one-time project? What are you trying to do? And I don't know if there's a right answer here, but is there any specific guidelines you have to kind of figure it out? Because I say, look, sometimes depending on the result, they tell you, people will rate them and they'll tell you how much they spent with them. And it's, I think it's verified. It's, I don't know. There's a way to get around that. It seems like they do a good job of keeping it into a closed loop, but you know, if I need a project that's going to take,

20 hours and it's 200 bucks an hour, I might just spend the four grand and just get it done right away instead of having a nightmare. I don't know.

Your first point is absolutely correct. I mean, if it's just a one-off thing, you probably can find a lot of people to do it. And if cost is a big factor. But if you want to have any kind of long-term relationship with somebody because you're going to have this need over and over again, we hire a lot of people there part-time that we have probably half a dozen folks we've hired off of Upwork that are now full-time employees.

So it's a great place to actually do, you know, it's kind of like start part time. We'll try you out. So it's actually kind of nice way to do that as well. I love it. Well, we're coming here near the end here. Is there a couple books that really changed your life in home in the home service or the marketing or, you know, a lot of us talk about?

Michael Gerber or, you know, even Rich Dad, Poor Dad or even books like Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich or, you know, there's a lot of great books out there. But is there any of them that really stood out to you?

Over time. Well, you know, you mentioned the E-Myth. That certainly was one that I read, you know, early on in my career and had a lot to a lot of impact. I'm a big fan of Peter Drucker. He doesn't necessarily write for the home services. He was a management consultant that worked with very large companies.

uh but he was very systems driven um and i'm a you know that's really uh been a big influence on me is the idea that that marketing is a system and you know we've got to think about it that way and not as just some you know group of random acts i love that peter drucker yeah um and then um what if someone wants to reach out to you john obviously you buy your book duct tape marketing but uh

What's the best way to get ahold of you? - Sure. Well, I've got tons of resources as well as just descriptions of what we do, how we work with folks. It's all at ducttapemarketing.com. That's D-U-C-T-T-A-P-E marketing.com. That's the best place to go. - Awesome. And last but not least, we talked about a lot of stuff here. Lots and lots of stuff. We were all over the place and that's a good thing because this was really, I think marketing is the lifeblood of any company.

Go ahead and just anything we didn't talk about, anything that just you feel compelled to close us out with and let the audience know about. I'll give you the closing. So we talked a little bit about AI and I'm not a fan of just like, oh, AI hype. It's going to change the world. But it is going to dramatically impact how we go to work.

who we hire, how we manage, how we lead. Um, and so, you know, don't, don't take a nap on it, um, and say, Oh, I'll figure it out once it, you know, once it gets here, you know, it's here. Um, and it's changing, you know, how you bid, it's changing how you manage all the processes in your business. It's certainly changing, uh, marketing. So, um, look at it, study it, um,

Take some lessons, take some classes, not because you want AI to run your business, but so that you can actually understand the full potential. I got one follow-up question. Do you think the people that lean in the best and dominate AI, do you think there's going to be very few winners and a lot of losers? I mean, is that where we're looking? I mean, maybe initially people will feel that way, but I think ultimately AI is going to be plumbing.

I mean, it's going to be built into everything. You know, every, everything that we do in marketing, we'll have an AI interface. You know, every, every bit of software that we all use to run our companies today, we'll all be run by AI. Half of it will go away quite frankly, because there's a lot of redundancies in that. So it's just going to be baked into everything. And so, you know, I,

I don't think there's this risk that if you don't master AI and be like a first mover that you're toast. But I think initially there will be some pretty significant strategic advantages to the folks that are out front. Awesome, John. Well, I've got pages and pages and pages of notes here. So I know this was a great podcast. I really appreciate your time today and look forward to connecting in the future. Awesome. Appreciate it, Tommy. Thanks. All right, my brother. Thank you.

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So if you want to learn the secrets that helped me transfer my team from stealing the toilet paper to a group of 700 plus employees rowing in the same direction, head over to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast and grab a copy of the book. Thanks again for listening and we'll catch up with you next time on the podcast.