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Host Scott Lollar is a 35-year veteran of the painting industry and founder of Consulting4Contractors. The 'Success Beyond The Brush' Podcast serves as a touchpoint to painting contractors who have hustled, sacrificed, and worked hard to get their business to where it is today. Now, you need the guidance, expertise, experience, and team to make it into the multi-million-dollar company of your dreams. You'll hear stories and interviews from "Brothers of the Brush" and "Sisters of the Sprayer" who have been where you are and are charting a new course for their company's success. Listen in and go beyond $1,000,000!
SBTB Ep. 16 | How Much Should Contractors Really Spend on Marketing?
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[00:00:00]
Welcome To Success Beyond The Brush - Marketing Spend Edition
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Scott: A lot of the gurus out there are going to tell you 10%.
If you can spend 10%, and you can make the money you need to make to support that, I'm not going to argue with you. It's about the result, not about the budget, okay. But my clients are typically closer to 3%, and that just speaks to the fact that they've been in business a long time. So, I won't tell you that you're wrong if you don't tell me if I'm wrong. I would try to get it. No more than 6% if I can. At 10%, you better be growing and you better be growing fast because you got to really hold the ROI on that spend or else the only person not getting paid is you.
Welcome back for a new episode of Success Beyond the Brush. Today, Mark Black and Scott Lollar tackle one of the biggest pressure points for contractors that are heading into the spring, and that is marketing spend. Really what amount of dollars should we be devoting to marketing? So from Facebook and Google Ads to maybe newsletters or databases, lead [00:01:00] tracking, all of those things, Mark and Scott are going to break down how to stop guessing, how to start measuring and really how to make smarter decisions with your marketing dollars. So if you've ever wondered how much you should be spending or where you should be spending it, really just to know how it's actually working, then this conversation is going to be for you. So please stay tuned.
We got a great conversation today with Mark and Scott. Let's jump into it.
Mark: Hey everybody. Welcome again to another great podcast, Success Beyond The Brush. I'm your host, Mark Black, here today, again with Scott Lollar from C4C.
Scott: Hey, Mark. Good to see you again.
Mark: Good to see you too.
Spring Rush Lead Sellers
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Mark: Hey, I'm excited because it was 80 degrees here in southern Illinois yesterday.
That's a big deal in early March. Very rare. Everywhere I look, I'm seeing trees, budding flowers are coming up, grass is green. All signs are pointing that, that uh, Punxsutawney Phil is a lying little rodent and we don't have six [00:02:00] more weeks of winter. And it looks like we're going to might even have an early spring.
I'll tell you what else is coming up. A whole lot of sales calls from Angi's List and Porch and Houzz, and our phones are ringing off the hook with these pseudo marketing companies, lead generation sources, calling, Hey, we will help you get your whole year booked, you know, book with us now.
So I thought that might be a good topic. I want to dive into a couple questions, get your thought as the spring rush rolls around, obviously, every painting company's out there wanting to get their, get theirs, I guess, for market share and book their year and get a lot of marketing done out there.
But I'd like to talk about marketing with you, get your idea on marketing spend. I know so many contractors, Scott, that just spend a ton of money. They don't really know how much they should be spending. I talked to a guy the other day, spends [00:03:00] $10,000 a month on marketing, and he does not have that kind of money.
He's a million dollar company. Like, I'm not sure you should be spending $10,000 a month. I'd love to get your idea on marketing spend in general. Is there a rule of thumb that we should be thinking about depending on the size of your company or how many team members you have, for what we should be spending on marketing?
Scott: Yeah, well thanks a lot, because you're going to get me a lot of hate mail and uh, thumbs down and probably unsubscribe. So I don't know, let me just lie to you for 30 minutes and then we'll uh, we'll stay friends with a bunch of these folks. So, you know, Mark, those that listen to this podcast, know that we are not young chickens, right?
We've been doing this a while. So we used to do this when we used the Yellow Pages, and some people don't know what yellow pages are. Not that long ago my grandson saw a telephone, he said, what is that papa?
Mark: Like a wall phone?
Scott: Like a yeah. yeah. Like that. I'm like, [00:04:00] oh man, that's crazy. He doesn't know what a telephone is. He thinks that he, he thinks a phone is a, you know, an iPhone or whatever. So,
Mark: Of course.
Scott: But we obviously are in the internet age and some people think it's been around forever and it hasn't. So we understand that the playing field's been leveled a bit, right? Because everybody. Is trying to buy the same lead. Somebody could start a company yesterday and buy the same lead today that you're pursuing on whatever platform you want to do, you know? And you mentioned Angi's List.
Of course, Google, of course, Facebook, of course, all of them. You name it, you know, Google local service ads. Longevity in this business is no longer as much an advantage as far as online marketing goes because everyone has the same opportunity to buy the lead. I think that you still have to play the game, but we've said it before, more of our clients are mature and what I'm talking about is not their behavior as much as their age of their business.
Database Newsletter Strategy
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Scott: So, we would [00:05:00] recommend that people are ignoring their database. So people that have asked you for bids and even said no, and people that have asked you for bids and said, yes, that should be in your database and you should be connecting with them.
I'm going to suggest once a month. Now we have some clients doing excellent work with creating a readable newsletter monthly for their clients that is less about, Hey, call me, give me money, and more about some events going on in the community, something that they might use in their life. Maybe a home improvement technique or concept that would be generally useful.
And then follows up with a call to action like, Hey, by the way, we're still a painting company. If you need something call us. Or a contracting company, or whatever. So the newsletter is critical, and really some of our mature clients are getting 70, 80% of their work from past customers. So I understand if you've only been in business two years, that's going to be tough, but you still should not be [00:06:00] ignoring the fact that these are people that reached out to you.
Even the ones that didn't go with you, because even though they went with another company you don't know, they might have been dissatisfied and had buyer's remorse that they didn't go with you.
So stay front of mind, stay connected, and do it gently. Not too much, and not too salesy. I don't know if you have this in your life, but there are some newsletters or I'm on people's list, whether it's a professional or a, some kind of guru of some kind. I don't read all of their stuff, but I generally respect their information and they generally give me useful information.
So I stay subscribed and there's other ones that are just hammer me with daily things and constant do this, and do,
and I just unsubscribe. So you have to be appropriate in, you know, your approach there, but the newsletter is something that's critical. And if you're not doing one, you should begin doing that immediately.
There's tons of great platforms. MailChimp is the one that comes to mind, Constant Contact or [00:07:00] whatever. So that is critical and that's free or close to free marketing activity. Right?
Mark: With fairly high ROI.
Scott: Very high ROI,
Mark: Low cost high, ROI and of course that should be what all of us want.
Scott: Yeah. Now what I do see is some of the newer young bucks that are more transactional, most people aren't necessarily thrilled with what they got, maybe. And so some of those some of that database is filled with people that don't like you, so you know, you got to do a good job and, get five star reviews.
But if I give you a five star review, I'm going to be more than glad to get your email, and your newsletter and tell me about restaurant week or whatever it is. So, that's the key there is to provide value. So I'll open your newsletter. I know you're a painting contractor. So I don't need to know what your winter special is or whatever spring special.
Give me some, something that will be useful to me.
Mark: I'm just thinking there could be listeners listening who are like, yeah, that's great, but either I'm a new business and I don't have a large database. Or to your point, I [00:08:00] haven't done a great job collecting that data. I don't have a database. I have to spend money to get new customers. What do you say to them?
Scott: Yeah.
Build Your Database Automation
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Scott: So let me just say one thing is if you're that person that Mark just described, then decide today that you are going to change your future behavior and dump your contacts into one of the services that I just referenced, or whatever you choose, because you do have a database, so you can get that out of your accounting system or out of your estimating system or whatever you know, system you use.
But do a data dump, sort that a little bit, you know, get rid of the garbage and the one customer that was a nightmare that you hope never to see again and import that into a system. And then secondly is create an automation in whatever platforms you're using. Using Zapier or Make or something like that, that every future person that comes and asks you for a quote goes into your database.
So you don't have to continually do [00:09:00] a data dump, you do it once and then going forward, it's there every time. So that's one thing I would say you could do today and you should be doing that.
Google Versus Facebook Leads
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Scott: Secondly is if you don't have the repeat clientele, you're going to have to go buy your leads.
And so the big ones that we hear mostly about are Google, which I think owns the internet in a lot of ways, and Facebook. I'm well documented to not be a Facebook fan. Sorry, don't send me hate mail. I think what I would say is Facebook people are shoppers. Google are buyers. I've never gone to Facebook looking for a landscaper for my home or a roofer.
I go to Google for a landscaper or a roofer for my home. So, now if you're a person that's quick to the lead, schedules, and is a really good closer and that type of thing, I think Facebook can be just fine. And there's lots of people that build nice business off Facebook. So I'm not saying to you, it's impossible.
I'm just saying if I had 10 grand, I'd spend it on Google, not Facebook. That's me. I [00:10:00] also think that Google Local Service Ads can perform really well and there's little tricks that marketing people will help you if you expand your time that you're open and expand your availability.
Open yourself up a little bit or to weekends and, you know, there's some things that you can do to cast a wider net for buying those ads.
Mark: But you and I both know there are tons of business owners that go to do exactly what you're describing. I go to Google and they eventually, I got to put in a dollar amount, and they are literally pulling that dollar amount out of their, you know, what?
Scott: yeah. Mm-hmm.
Mark: How in the world are they determining this?
Scott: Yeah. With all of our clients, and we would ask anyone listening to do this, is to create a marketing plan. A marketing plan is just simply take a spreadsheet. We have one actually that we have a template for and list all your marketing activities down the left.
Their frequency, their cost, and who owns them. Okay. So, it can be this simple. I'm going to do the Chamber of Commerce. That's a monthly [00:11:00] thing and it costs me 500 bucks a year, plus 50 bucks a month for some lunch or something. Okay. So that's your marketing cost for that activity. You could plot that, you know, annually or you could plot it monthly.
So that's a pretty straightforward thing. So you, you could just say that costs me you know. Just make it simple. $75 a month for that activity. then you would do your Facebook, your Google, it would be your other association such that you're involved with. That could be your BNI group.
It can be your Angi's, if you want to do Angi's or Pinterest. I mean, all of the platforms can work for a contractor. I'm not here to tell you such and such won't work. All of them will work and some of them work better than others, depending on your marketplace, but determine all the ones that you're going to use.
And also in there, it could be website development, it could be newsletter, it could be all sorts of things. So put that down there.
Set Budget Three To Six
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Scott: And then, I would create a budget based on your annual projection, and I would love to be no more [00:12:00] than 6%. Now, a lot of the gurus out there are going to tell you 10%.
So if you can spend 10%, you can afford it and you can make the money you need to make to support that, I'm not going to argue with you. It's about the result, not about the budget, okay. But my clients are typically closer to 3%, and that just speaks to the fact that they've been in business a long time. So, I won't tell you that you're wrong if you don't
tell me if I'm wrong, okay. So, but I would try to get it no more than 6% if I can. At 10%, you better be growing and you better be growing fast because got to really hold the ROI on that spend or else the only person not getting paid is you. Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg's got yachts.
In fact, I just saw his yacht in Cabo a
couple weeks ago, and the boat that follows the yacht with the toys. That was great. So, you know, Mark Zuckerberg is thrilled that you spend money on ads. But you know, you better be growing or else the only person not getting paid is you. So, you know, set [00:13:00] your budget and that would be your guiding light. So instead of listening to someone, give me more, or go get another credit card that you can spend more and more. Set your budget and try to operate towards your budget and meet your budget versus just spend more to get more. That's what I would do.
Mark: And I love your example there. Because at 6%, I guess in an analogy if I were to go spend $8,000 on product, I mean liquid, primer or paint and put it in my warehouse, you better believe that I would have an accountability for where every single gallon of that went. I know what my cost was, but I also am going to track that product.
If it just disappeared one day and there's no more paint on the pallet, I would say, where did that paint go? What job was it attributed to? In the same way but not in the same way. We spend our marketing dollars that way. I'm going to buy an $8,000 pallet of marketing, and when that pallet's empty, [00:14:00] most business owners cannot account for it.
They do not know either where it was spent or how it was spent, and they certainly can't track the ROI what did I get for that $8,000?
Scott: That's exactly right.
Mark: How do you address that with your clients?
Track Leads And ROI
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Scott: All through any process that we have, we would be asking the client or the prospect as best we can, how did you hear about us? How did you find us? You know, was it a referral? Was it, you know, Aunt May, was it my mom or was it Facebook? Or was it, you know, a Google listing of some kind?
Or was it at the Chamber of Commerce? So find out where the lead came from and that's the start of your data. So that will be tracking at least your cost of the lead. So how many leads did we get for that activity? So if we spent $3,000 on Google and got a hundred leads, that's 30 bucks a lead.
Mark: Yeah, simple
Scott: Pretty simple math. And for those that screaming at their phone right now, I'm just making up numbers here. Okay? So I'm not telling [00:15:00] you that's the way it goes.
So out of your a hundred leads, if you close 50, then your cost of acquisition is $60. Okay, so. It's not just how many people called you. It's how many people called you that were the right lead. So the cost of acquisition of the client or the cost of acquisition of the job is important as well as the cost of the lead.
Now, why is it important to track this? Well, we want to know that our activity is resonating with our client. If we have a message, if we place a message out there that says whatever it says and nobody calls us, then we would know that the message didn't resonate with our target audience. Looking at this information is critical because we can pivot, Hey, that message didn't resonate, or that discount wasn't appropriate.
It didn't make sense, or, you know, you have to be looking at this data constantly because it's changing all the time. I mean, I think Google changes the rules daily, if not monthly. Right. And so, yeah. So you know, if you are not [00:16:00] looking at where your leads came from what actual ad if you're running multiple ads or multiple campaigns and what lead source it came from, then you couldn't possibly justify the spend on any of them.
You'll enjoy the ones that are cheaper. I'm sure you will enjoy that, but you won't be able to know, was this a good use of my money? Was the spend worth it?
We've reached the midway point in our conversation today about marketing with Mark and Scott, and if it's hitting close to home for you, this is exactly the kind of problem that Consulting4Contractors helps business owners solve. Scott and his team work with not just painting companies, but really any company that is situated in the service industry space, helping them develop real marketing plans and not just guesswork. That means defining revenue targets, determining how many leads you actually need a month, and building your system to track cost per lead, cost per acquisition, so your marketing dollars actually produce results for you.
If you'd [00:17:00] like help building a smarter marketing strategy for your company, visit www.consulting4contractors.com to learn more and book a free discovery call with Scott. If this episode is helping you think differently about marketing, make sure you're subscribed to Success Beyond The Brush.
Also check the show notes or video description for additional resources and links connected to our episode today. Let's dive back in to the conversation between Mark and Scott.
Cost Per Acquisition Matters
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Mark: I want to draw everybody back to pay attention to something Scott just said. He was talking about the cost of acquisition and what I want to warn people about is there's a lot of marketing agencies out there that never give you that number because they're not tracking that. They are tracking the cost per lead and, and I remember a lot of reports from various marketing agencies in the past.
They were, you had this many impressions, you know, they'll, they'll use these vague terms of you had [00:18:00] 382 clicks and therefore they just divide that number into what you spent. And they say this was your cost per lead. But that's not the full picture. To Scott's point, you should track that data to know how many leads did I get, how many phone calls? How many prospects did I get for this spend? But the more important number is the cost per acquisition. How many of those did I close? How many of those resulted in dollars in my bank account? And that's really all that matters in our marketing. What is working and where?
That's where I want to put my money.
Branding Traps Magazines Billboards
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Scott: I have a client, he's a fantastic, a guy and running a nice business, but he loves this magazine that he's in. He was actually in two of them, this upscale, shiny design. You know, you know this kind that goes to the right neighborhoods, right?
And, and he loves it. And he's spending all this money and I'm like, oh, we should get rid of these magazines. It's so much. He goes, oh, those magazines are great. You know, they, I got so much work out of them and I love them, and he just loves the magazines. I don't know, may, you know, he's probably like all of us.
We love to see our logo on something. One day we said, [00:19:00] okay let's actually analyze all the jobs you got directly because of this ad. The truth was his revenue, total revenue did not pay for the cost of the ads in that magazine. But his perception was that magazine produced him a lots of ads and a lots of work, and it didn't.
Now he still found value in the ad for branding for, you know, for other references and it wasn't such an insane expense that I just said, you're an idiot, but, the point is when we went down to brass tacks and did math, not emotions, but math, the math said, this is a terrible marketing source.
It's a terrible use of your money and you're not even recovering the cost of the ad if you took every revenue dollar you received from it. And so that's an example of a difference between what do you think is happening because of an activity versus what you actually get from the activity. And that's the part that you need to really [00:20:00] understand.
Furthermore. Mark, you use billboards? I have some clients using billboards successfully. And what do the billboard companies do? They do just like radio. They call you and say, billboards are great. Let's get you some more of them, Mark. And you're like, what do you say? How many jobs did you get from your billboard?
Now billboards are a lot like the magazine. It's a branding thing. It's kind of running. It's not that I, it's not that someone who was driving down the road and said, oh, let me jot that number down, but the point is when they call you, they say, billboards are great. I got a special for you, Mark.
Why don't we double down? I'll give you double the billboards at only 50% of the cost. And then and you're forced to be emotional about that decision versus you go, well, you know what? Let me call you back tomorrow. We're going to go look at our data. We're going to find out the cost of, how much we paid for billboards last year, how many quotes we got, and how many of those quotes we won.
And then I'll call you tomorrow and let you know how good your dumb billboards are. And the answer is most times those people that are calling you, are just trying to get you emotionally and say yes to something and afraid, FOMO, [00:21:00] If you don't do it, you're going to miss out. I'm going to sell it to the next guy.
Well, yeah, go ahead. Because that's a piece of garbage. I didn't get any work from it. Now if you like seeing your names in the lights and you want to use it as branding, go for it. I'm fine with that. But that's not marketing. That's just ego.
Mark: And it's a great discussion. We often find ourselves talking about these topics on these podcasts because whether it's marketing or many other aspects of our business, we are all guilty of running our business off of emotion. Some type of emotional reaction to data rather than a logical, well, truthfully, just having data at all, which in this discussion the billboard is a great example of that.
I have lots of people that reference my billboard. I noticed it. I have a lot of kind comments, you know, saw your billboard. Looks great. But those are generally already existing clients or friends just in passing telling me they saw my... it would be very hard for me to say how many jobs, how many dollars were created by [00:22:00] that particular activity.
Very hard to put an actual number to that. And I think sometimes people, even at Google, they almost feel guilty. I don't know, I need a little bit more work for my team. I guess I'm just going to throw some money because it relieves the guilt of doing nothing, even though I don't actually have any data for how many dollars I transferred.
Scott: Yeah, using your billboard example, it's not such a huge expense that it's a dumb expense. In fact, probably in your case, it is lower than your spend at Burger King, for instance, annually. But,
Mark: It is, yes,
Scott: Sorry, was that below the belt? My bad.
Mark: Little bit.
Scott: Ron Rice would say that's hitting down.
Working With Marketing Agencies
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Scott: So, but let me bring it back to the bigger numbers like the Google and let's talk a little bit about the marketing companies.
So when we're working with marketing companies these are not our adversaries. A lot of them, I think are not good people, and I'd prefer that you stay away from them, but there's plenty of good marketing [00:23:00] people out there doing a good job. And why I'm an advocate for marketing companies is I think it's a category that is ripe for outsourcing. I don't think you're going to be able to really hire a good true marketing person in-house that has good graphics, understanding and ability and creative, and is an expert at Google as an expert at the internet, it says expert at you know, Facebook is an expert at all the, and I don't think you're going to, I think it's going to be tough for you to really hire an agency in-house.
So you go out to somebody that does the things that you want to do as far as your marketing activity. I think it's a really good place to outsource a department. What you need to do is vet a few of them and get their feedback as to what they would do for you to achieve your goals.
Revenue Goals Lead Targets
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Scott: Now you have to have a goal in mind before you can walk it back to a marketing activity. If you just say, get me a bunch of leads. and I think we've talked about this in other episodes, but this idea that we are [00:24:00] actually advising our clients to create a budget, a revenue budget, first of all, which is what's our trajectory for the year by month, and then track back average job size, close ratio, and we can tell each of our clients before the year started, how many leads they need per month at their close ratio, at their average job size, in order to achieve the revenue goal that they've set.
So there's no guessing here. So they know I need 25 jobs in January at $10,000 each, or $250,000 and you close at 50%, you need 50 leads. It's the law of averages.
Don't be mad at me. Look it up. It works. So you need 50 leads. That's your marketing map right there. That's what we need. How are we going to get 50? Are we going to get some here and here and here? Yes, you are. But that's the goal. Not a hundred. You don't need a hundred. And there's a lot of people that I say, I just want to go faster and bigger and grow and grow.
It's like, no, no, no. Why don't we hit the goals that we've set for ourselves, and then we'll [00:25:00] reassess if we're too slow or too fast. Knowing that number and then attaching a marketing activity to achieve it is really the best way. Now, however you're going to do that is fine with me, but I like any activity that you can turn it up, like when you need some and turn it down when you don't need some.
The last thing you want to do is be dead in the water and go, crud, we have no work next week. What are we going to do? Well, you sure aren't going to start a marketing activity, then it's too late. So keeping it going and keeping that fire burning and just goose it when it's slow and turn it down when you don't need it. I just like that, you know, where you can use that kind of governor and massage it as you need it. But then I would be just tracking each of your leads, just seeing how each one works and are we achieving our goal.
Now, I was starting to talk about marketing agencies.
Hold Partners Accountable
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Scott: These are not our adversaries. These are our partners. So a partner is someone that is in the game with us, but also that we can hold accountable. So there should be meetings, and I see lots of [00:26:00] contracts that say, we're going to meet with you every week.
We're going to, and they churn account executives. So that might be a good interview question. How, what is the average time that your account executives have been with you? that type of thing. Right? So. Look at your contract, read what they promised, because there's a lot of fancy talk in there, but I see most people not deliver a lot of the things in the contract.
So get clarity about what you've contracted. And I don't expect them to deliver more. I expect them to deliver what they've contracted and then hold them accountable to those meetings. Now what do the meetings entail? Well, I sit in one every month with one of my clients and their marketing company, and they report things like website traffic, page traffic, click through traffic. What days, what spikes, where did that, you know, how many opens with a newsletter? How many clickthroughs on the newsletter? How many people click through the call to action? They talk through all the social media ads, what was the engagement?
So they're reporting all this data and we're making decisions and tweaks with all of this activity to go, Hey, did that work? [00:27:00] Why isn't that working? What happened? How are we ranking against our competitors at any given month? Are we rising in the ranking, in the preferred areas we want to work?
Are we doing better? Is our SEO seeing some result? And that is just information and data that should be discussed monthly, I think is sufficient. But you can't just let someone go for six months a year and then go, oh shoot, that really didn't work. This is a partnership. So, had a call today with a client who's very frustrated with a new agency and the comment was, I know what you want me to do.
You want me just to fire them? I said, no, I don't. What I want you to do is get on a call with them and just reset the expectations and talk through why they're not meeting the deliverable that they put in the contract. And so that's really what I think you should be doing. I'm not anti-marketing company.
I'm anti bad marketing company,
Mark: We share in some of that responsibility because us as owners, most of us aren't marketing geniuses or don't enjoy that creative component of [00:28:00] running a company. We want to just hire an outside source and say they'll handle all of it and really we offload the responsibility and say, yeah, hired a marketing company.
They know what they're doing. I'm giving them a lot of money and we don't want to think about it. But truthfully, what you're saying is there's a responsibility there to not only get the report and understand the data, but to interpret that data and know what it means to our company.
Scott: There's no question that you are responsible. And if they spend all your money and you're broke because you gave it all to them and all the freedom, then that's your fault, not their fault. A lot of times we just put our credit card in Google and in Facebook, and I don't think a lot of people are paying attention today.
I had that conversation with a client of, do you, are you aware of how much you've spent this month? In Google, it was almost $7,000, and today is the 11th day of the month. He had no clue because the marketing company is saying, spend more. I'm not getting the results. Spend more.
So the more [00:29:00] he'll spend is the better they'll do? Well, I don't think that's the right methodology because you will spend yourself into bankruptcy. So, again, we just need to have simple conversations. We spent a lot of money and we have had very few calls or not enough calls to, to substantiate this expense.
So, I think a lot of sensible people are saying, Hey, I'm okay if you spend a lot of money, but it's got to be spent in the right place and understanding where it's going, how much of it's going, setting budgets, you know, being comfortable with those budgets and living with them and being really good with handling the leads that you're getting from them.
Like handle those leads like
gold I think you're going to get a better result.
Mark: You started this podcast by talking about kind of the generational differences of young people coming into the painting company and that the culture right now is internet based. You know, most that's how people shop. That's how they find their leads. Not that we're anti internet at all.
It can be great, [00:30:00] but I do want to make sure people understand that the truth is what we're talking about isn't the age of the owner, it's a maturity of business that as your business matures and as you're capturing that data, creating those databases, wise companies and mature companies that have been around for 10, 15, 20, 30, 50 years, they have a database that is feeding them, to where they don't need to be spending six or 10%.
I know many big companies that are spending less than 1%. You know why? Because they don't need the leads, because 60 to 80% of their work is coming from past or referrals from people that they've, and they're keeping in contact. They're doing a good job of mining their database and they don't need to be out in that crazy market right now fighting for leads with everybody who has a dollar.
And looking for new clients, and frankly, I'd rather work for people I already know and trust anyway.
Consistency Beats Random Tactics
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Scott: I think consistency in [00:31:00] activity is important. A lot of people want someone else to just solve their problem, like they're the tooth fairy. And I see this all the time, like blogging. Look at some go, go just for fun. Look at five websites of people that you might know and see when the last time they posted you're going to see stuff like you haven't posted a blog in five years. You know? And there's not a consistency in the activity. You can use AI, ask AI, here's my company, here's where it's located.
Here's the revenue I'm doing now, and here's, and I'd like to grow it. Double it in the next 18 months. What marketing activity should I be doing? And AI will give you lots of ideas. But I think that we aren't consistent in the activity. Are we posting regularly? Are, is our message consistent?
Is our brand consistent? are we doing the right things all the time? And then are we analyzing the things that we do that cost us money? We see it all the time. I joined the Chamber of Commerce. I didn't get anything [00:32:00] out of it. Well, how, what did you do? Well, I went to one of the luncheons,
One, like just one. You know, like, you know, you talk, you you know, you don't know where Mark Black lives. I do, but I could tell you Mark Black is the king of his, business associations there because he wears hula skirts and takes his shirt off during functions inappropriately.
Mark: I do.
Scott: But they know him because he's always there and he is always doing outrageous things.
He didn't go once and go, ah, that's, that sucked. I'm not going back. He didn't do that. So. You have to be consistent in your activity. If you can't own the Chamber of Commerce and like go there every time they have a function, then don't do it. Do something really consistently then 10 things inconsistently.
Mark: There's obviously lots of opinions and, and, many things surrounding this idea of marketing spend, it's great to do a little bit deeper dive into knowing that data, how to interpret that data. And as always, I would recommend anybody who's out there trying to run a painting company and scale and grow a [00:33:00] painting company, needs to be talking to somebody who has a little bit of knowledge on this topic.
Do not just give Google $10,000 and think that it's transactional, like a vending machine. If I give them $10,000, I will get $10,000 worth of work. You won't.
And it's so dangerous right now. People blindly spending.
You need somebody on your side. I highly recommend you give Scott Lollar with Consulting4Contractors a call. He can help you in your marketing spend to understand this and know how to meet your goals and how to interpret that data.
Action Steps And Wrap Up
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Scott: If you've made it this far, let me just tee up the few things that I would say do. If you don't have a budget. Revenue at least, and tracking back to how many leads you need per month, do that. Secondly, create a marketing plan and a marketing budget like we talked about. And third, start tracking your leads per lead source and sales per lead source so you can get a cost of lead and cost of acquisition.
And fourth. Manage your spend and [00:34:00] make sure that whoever you're partnering with is being held accountable to their actions so that you're not giving all the money to Google and Facebook and not to yourself. So just hold them accountable. Be a good partner. Don't be a jerk, be a good partner, and be accountable for the money that you've given them to spend on your behalf to make sure you're getting back, you know, what you're investing the appropriate return.
Mark: It is a great conversation, Scott. As always, we appreciate your knowledge and wisdom. Thanks for sharing today on this great topic.
Scott: Thanks Mark. It was a great conversation.
Final Takeaway Measure Honestly
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Thanks again for joining us today on this episode of Success Beyond the Brush. If there is one takeaway from today's conversation, remember this, marketing is too expensive to manage emotionally. You really do need a budget, you need a plan. You need a way to track what's actually producing revenue for your company.
So whether you are buying Google leads, running Facebook ads, sending newsletters, or maybe you are leaning into your customer database, the [00:35:00] goal is always the same. You have to spend intentionally, you have to measure honestly, and really just double down only on what works. Thanks again for listening to Success Beyond the Brush.
Remember, if this episode gave you something practical to apply to your business, be sure to subscribe. Leave us a review. It really does help other contractors like you find us and share it with another contractor who might benefit from this conversation. As always, check the show notes or video description for additional resources and links.
We'll see you next time on Success Beyond the Brush.