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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. 6 | Where to Spend Your Marketing Dollars: Buyers, Brand, and Better ROI
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Scott: I will tell you the big mistake I see younger contractors making that are just, getting their business going. They are not communicating with their past clients.
And that's what my clients are doing. So why are you buying a new lead from Facebook, Google, whatever, when you have hundreds, and eventually maybe thousands, of happy clients that bought from you, so they know your pricing structure. They know what you deliver. They know how you work. Yet you've never asked them again to either refer someone or to buy something again from you.
This is really old data, so, but I heard this at a conference many years ago, which is often people don't do business again with you because you just simply forgot your name. I'm sure we all have had that experience where we're trying to find the vendor that we loved and it was great, but we just don't remember them.
Welcome back to Success Beyond the Brush, powered by Consulting4Contractors. The podcast for growth-minded paint contractors who want to scale smarter, lead [00:01:00] stronger, and build more profitable businesses. In today's episode, Mark Black and Scott Lollar dig into one of the most overwhelming decisions contractors face: where should your marketing dollars actually go?
With endless vendors and platforms, ad agencies, all promising results, it's easy to waste money without understanding what truly moves the needle. Mark and Scott break down how to think about marketing spend through the lens of revenue targets, lead flow needs, cost per lead, and cost of acquisition, and how to build a system instead of relying on guesswork.
Let's jump into the conversation.
Mark: Welcome to another great episode with Scott Lollar from C4C. I'm your host, Mark Black, and today we have a great topic that's close to my heart because I love sales and marketing, and that's what we're going to be talking about today from the sales and marketing pillar. We are talking about where to spend my marketing dollars.
This is a hot topic, Scott, [00:02:00] because there's lots and lots of noise out there in our industry, especially it seems like at PCA every year in the expo. It's just every other booth is a marketing booth. It feels like there is so many options for spending marketing dollars. So with dozens of options for marketing spend, the decision to where best to spend our limited resources can be overwhelming.
How do we as business owners decide where to best spend our money?
Scott: Big topic. Big topic. I hope I don't offend too many people.
Mark: Scott, it reminds me you've had some personal experiences with various marketing agencies for your own coaching organization. Tell us about those.
Scott: Yeah, well, to start at the top of the funnel, I think before you could even think about what you're going to do is to determine what you need. We're heavy on KPIs and data at C4C, so what's your revenue target? So we always do an [00:03:00] annual plan and that can, that's going to be monthly.
We break it down monthly. Some people have some spikes because they live in a cold weather climate or they have some seasonality. But what do you need for lead flow? And that's the first question, right? If you need a hundred leads a month to go out and do an estimate, or you need 500 or you need 24.
I, I just don't know. And that's a question that you have to ask and use some data. So that would include your average job size. That's important. You gotta know if my average job size is a hundred grand and my revenue goal is a hundred grand and I close it 50%, I only need two leads.
That's the math. Two leads times a hundred grand. I get one. I'm done. That's oversimplified and that's nobody's business, USA. But the idea is what do you need before you just go out and start spending money on that?
So that would be where I would start. So if, you don't know that then you know you need to find that out. from there, I think the next question would be, are we talking to a mature business, a seasoned business like [00:04:00] yours? Like a lot of the people we work with, are you a brand new business? That matters, right? So do I have to go buy every lead, every phone call? Do I have to go purchase it somewhere?
Or do I not? So that's the other question. So, let's, really start with, identifying how to spend that money. The first thing of course is you have to have a web presence these days and you have to have a good one. That includes a lot of voodoo, like SEO and keywords and negative keywords, and, those are things that I think some professionals can be very helpful. Because I think if you were a website builder, you'd be building websites.
You wouldn't be listening to this about painting. So, there's some parts there that an expert might be helpful. Now, an expert that's going to listen to you and build something that represents you. I don't think it needs to be complicated when what, as the internet rolled out and you and I were part of seeing that happen.
We're old enough, we, didn't know what you had to do and it was complex. And then you're spending all this [00:05:00] money, and I think nowadays you can do it much more simpler without an insane expense, but you also want it to be unique enough to not just be a rubber stamp of someone else's.
We actually had true story, a client that as we were looking deeply into their website, as we were onboarding them, we saw in his gallery some pictures of tractors and, things like that, like farm implements and, no one really got that deep in his website, including anyone from his company. And what had happened is the person that he had hired to do it was just inexpensive and he just copied a website he had built from someone else and just filled in the blanks for the painting business.
And in fact he wasn't thorough. There was some old pictures still on the website now. They were deep it was a learning curve and so it was just like one of those things where, like someone just copied a website and I don't think that's the best plan.
Mark: it's a great point. I do believe that websites are incredibly important this day and age, and we'll have a link in the show notes. We do have a whole [00:06:00] podcast on websites, which we'll talk more about, but I love the idea that you just brought up in the idea of an established business versus maybe a newer business.
And the fact that I think that sometimes as business owners, we think of marketing as "it's just one thing", like marketing is marketing and it only serves one purpose. Where you're suggesting that there's actually many different purposes to marketing.
Scott: There is. Yeah. So the first one is a brand, right? You're generating a brand. Developing a brand, so that when people see your name over and over, but they're not ready to paint, they know your name when they are ready to paint, right? That's a brand. A brand can also be mature or elegant or upscale, or it can be cute with a mascot and it can be gimmicky like that.
That's not my style, but it works, right? So, creating that type of thing can work. But the brand of, I see your name here. I see your name there. [00:07:00] I saw it here. I saw it there. That's part of developing your brand. We have this conversation with, as you you'll see in social media on a holiday we're recording this in November.
We just had Thanksgiving, so my company included, had a generic post, Happy Thanksgiving. We're, thankful for our clients and blah, blah, blah. Is that marketing?
Well, I technically it would fall into your marketing bucket, but are you going to, are you going to cash a check because of that activity? No, you're not.
You're putting it out there. You're getting visible. You're getting someone's feed. Happy Thanksgiving. Happy Fourth, Veteran's Day, these types of things, I think, brand you. Some people are into other things, like a lot of wraps. Critical, right? Driving billboard. There's billboards, you use billboards, right?
Mark: I do. I
Scott: and what I like about your billboard is it's electronic. So how, tell me how, some different ways you've used that billboard.
Mark: Well, the electronic aspect on one of our billboards [00:08:00] is nice, actually. I think we have two electronic billboards, but, we can change the ad quickly. So every month, we could be highlighting a different service or, service line in our company. Sometimes we run deals, we're highlighting or special, special sale on this particular product or service.
But there's no production cost like a traditional vinyl billboard which costs, a thousand to $1,500 every time they want to print one and have to put it up. There's a lot of labor involved. We can send an email and, we can also advertise several different advertisements on the same board so we could be advertising our decorative concrete services.
And then, three board changes later. It'll be interior painting services and then exterior staining application. So we can advertise lots of different things on the same board.
Scott: And also one thing you didn't mention, sometimes you use it to highlight that you're hiring right?
Mark: Oh sure, of course.
Scott: So it depends on the cost, now Mark's in [00:09:00] rural little bit rural southern Illinois, and I'm in the Chicago suburbs, putting a billboard on your way to O'Hare airport is going to be really expensive, right?
And that's not reality. So this, you can't just say are billboards good or bad. It's the cost and what you get from that spend. And I think that a lot of times this will be an activity that some owners, if they're don't keep their ego in check, love seeing their name in the lights. I love my billboard. You see my billboard? You see that? I got my picture on there. I'm famous, right? Like, well, okay, but did you sell anything? No, we've never had a call from it. But man, I love it. Okay, so those are the, things, that you have to ask about that kind of an activity.
Mark: It. It's a good point because it's from the various ways that we can spend our marketing dollars, there are ways that are really difficult to track, such as tv, ads, billboards, very hard to track where that customer called you from. Even if you directly ask them, they may not be thinking, well, I saw the billboard and that reminded me to call you.
And then there's other digital [00:10:00] ways that are extremely easy to track because they clicked a button. It's a direct sales funnel that you can measure.
Scott: And to that point, we would suggest everyone do their best to find out how the lead came to you. Right? When you called me, how'd you call me? Now, it's a very challenging to get accurate data there unless you have unique clickthroughs and some complex backend. And a lot of the marketing people really want you to use some of their stuff because what's going to happen is they want to prove their value, their worth. When you have this conversation that says, Hey, I'm thinking about hitting the pause button here. They go, well, let me tell you, I've gotten you this and that and the other, and, I don't think it's all bad.
But the challenge is to really get accurate feedback as to where the lead came from, because most people probably at the end of the day did the final click on your website. So if you have online capabilities of the form or scheduling, [00:11:00] so finding out where the lead came from so you can track your cost of lead.
Now let's just jump in there for a quickly. We would really love for everyone to have the capability of track their cost per lead. Like how much did that cost for that person to call me and ask for a quote, but also the cost of acquisition. So if you spent $10,000 on this activity and got a thousand leads, that would be pretty great.
But if you didn't get a job or you got one job and say the job was 10,000. It costs you $10,000 to get a $10,000 job. That's what it would tell me. So it's not about just the phone to ring. So, making it simpler, because I don't want to do math right now, but if I had 10 leads for a thousand each, that's, a thousand dollars per lead, right?
But if I only sold one, that's a $10,000 for the acquisition. So you have to really, know your numbers because again, these [00:12:00] marketing agencies will try to convince you that what they're doing is the best and greatest thing ever known to mankind, and you should keep doing it. And if you're not getting results, what they're going to ask you to do is spend more money on it.
Mark: Sure. I want to pause the topic for just a minute, Scott, because we understand that our listener base is a wide variety of painting contractors from the very small one and two man operation to the very large who think about this differently, but I want to address the smaller guys for just a minute because I have been that guy and there was a time in my life where what you just said would blow my mind.
The idea of not only tracking the lead, but tracking my cost per lead because I was simple. Like a lot of our listeners in their thinking about marketing. I'm going to throw some money to the world in whatever form I choose to try and get more business. And as long as my calendar is full, I'm assuming that the dollars were worth it, right?
And [00:13:00] that dollar amount can change. I, from, a hundred dollars to a thousand dollars to $10,000. I am just spending money hoping to fill my calendar and it's worth it, but it's not an exact calculation. And what you just suggested is that it is trackable, measurable, that it should be, that we should have metrics to even have that data at our fingertips, and you can help build that.
Scott: Absolutely. And it's, very doable. It's not even that hard. I do think, as I already stated, the hard part is truly understanding where the lead came from. If you're running Facebook ads but if the person tells you they came in through the website, well, it's going to be contaminated data, but doing the best you can.
And I think some of those digital ads are the easiest ones to track because there's a lot of tools, these days that you can track them. But yeah, you have to understand where to spend. Now, to your point, when you're small, you dabble, right? You're spending small dollars and [00:14:00] the first spend makes you want to throw up in your mouth.
I know, people getting to the point where they're spending one, $200,000 a year in marketing, wouldn't you want to hold somebody accountable to the results of that spend? I would.
Mark: While we're on the topic, do you want to touch on that? There's a lot of information out there as to say this is what we should be spending on marketing. What's your opinion?
Scott: Yeah. So I'll, tell you my opinion. My personal opinion is a max spend of 6%. Now, a lot of people just gasped or maybe shut the off button. I don't know. But we, I will put this caveat that we're typically working with people that are at least approaching a million and over a million dollars as far as our client base.
So, there's a little bit of a curve here, but, I think that 6% would be my max. Now I'm hearing a lot of buzz in the industry right now is 10%. I cannot tell you categorically that's wrong. I would tell you [00:15:00] categorically that if you're tracking it and you're making money at 10%, I'm not going to argue, okay?
That's all I'm all there is to it. If you can buy the lead, sell the job, produce it, and still make your 45 to 50% gp. Then I'm a believer, okay? I'm not going to tell you, don't. What I'm telling you is a lot of people aren't getting that result from their spend and they don't know how to manage it so that when they need something, they can goose it and turn it up a little bit.
And when their workflow is heavy, they can turn it down a little bit and they can monitor that. I would like you to spend as little as possible. I have plenty of clients that are spending under 3% a year of their revenue on marketing activity. Now, I'll tell you, those people are not spending it on the marketing activity that those are, that started a new business last year, right?
You don't have any customers. You have to buy them. And I'll, and I acknowledge that, okay? But I will tell you the big mistake I see younger contractors making that are just, getting their business going. [00:16:00] They are not communicating with their past clients.
And that's what my clients are doing. So why are you buying a new lead from Facebook, Google, whatever. When you have hundreds and eventually maybe thousands of happy clients that bought from you, so they know your pricing structure. They know what you deliver. They know how you work. Yet you've never asked them again to either refer someone or to buy something again from you.
This is really old data, so, but I heard this at a conference many years ago, which is often people don't do business again with you because you just simply forgot your name. They don't know your, name. I'm sure we all have had that experience where we're trying to find the vendor that we loved and it was great, but we just don't remember them.
So that would be through a newsletter style thing. Capturing their email address simply enough, right? You can automate that through a Zapier or through some kind of automation through any of your systems. Capture it in a [00:17:00] MailChimp is pretty simple to use, constant contact or whatever you want to use.
I don't really care. And then just harvest this information and send them a monthly or quarterly. We don't think monthly is too often, but a newsletter now the newsletter is something that needs to be informational and useful to them, not just, Hey, I could use some money, click here and send me some.
There should be a call to action. But our clients that are doing this well are offering several things in that newsletter, including some community events. This one's a great time of year, right? Telling them, Hey, where's the Christmas stuff happen around your local area?
What are some interesting recipes or something new or facts. Something that would add value to opening your email. If the email just says, here's a special, a discount of this or that, meh. That doesn't really add value. Now, at the bottom of this or someone in there, there should always be a gentle, hey, if there's something that we could serve you, [00:18:00] help you, bid for you, whatever.
It could be a call to action like, Hey, don't let spring get here before your painting quotes, whatever. There's lots of things you can do that are helpful still. Be first for your exterior paint job in spring. Call us now. That could be a call to action, but that newsletter is a very inexpensive, close to free.
Not free, but almost free, even if you had a designer do it. It's pretty simple to do, and I think that's what I hear lots of people, I say, they're spending 10%, 13% on Facebook and pay per click. I said, How often do you talk to your past customers? They said, we've never done that.
I'm like, that's crazy. That's simply crazy.
Mark: So walking through the math of what you just said, again, easy numbers. Let's assume a million dollar business at your calculation of max 6%. that'd be about $60,000 a year in marketing spend. If we divided that evenly among the 12 months, it's roughly $5,000 a month.
And what you're suggesting is [00:19:00] rather than spending all that $5,000 on a direct marketing source that we could have some very low cost options, like newsletters, mining our past clients, networking groups. There's lots of ways in which we can generate new business without spending all of that 5,000 or stretching that farther.
Scott: Yeah, absolutely. No question.
Mark: Well, I, would love to get your opinion. I know some of our listeners would be interested in your opinion as a professional on some of the common avenues for marketing spend. So if you don't mind, I'm going to quickly go through this list with you. Let's start at the top, which most people are spending some sort of money on Google, just major search engine when people are looking for local painters, Google Ads, ad words, your opinion.
Scott: Yeah, I like Google. Google owns the internet, in my opinion. I'm 60, just turned 61 now, so I'm not young. And Google is my preferred browser. And that's where I ask it [00:20:00] every, for everything that I am looking for. I am your customer. I have money. I don't do anything in my house, I don't do anything that I could pay someone for.
It actually is my personal strategy right now. I'd rather spend my time working is what I'd like so everything I do, I'm Googling and that owns my search. So Google, I think if you had only one thing you were going to do outside of the almost free options, like we talked about, newsletters and such, I would be personally using Google.
Mark: And then closely followed. Right behind that would be Facebook. Are you a fan of Facebook ads?
Scott: Yeah. I would spend, well, I was going to say, I would spend nothing on Facebook and I need to soften that, which is, I think a lot of things can work, and I think a lot of things can work together because I think the universe of the internet is working together and [00:21:00] feeding off each other as you're posting in different places.
So what I tell people is that google people, you know the pay per click. Those people are buyers. Facebook people were not thinking about buying something. They saw something that you put in front of them and now they're thinking about it and they weren't looking for it before.
So we, we hear a lot of these stories, which is, I went there and they thought it was going to cost $500 to paint their cabinets and we can't even buy the primer and we don't, we hear this all the time. Now if you want to talk a little bit more about qualifying, go back to our previous episode about that, some of that conversation.
But Facebook to me feels like a late night infomercial, right? Someone with insomnia or an old person that's sitting there watching Mary Tyler Moore reruns and decides to go on Facebook and, Shazam. I could paint my cabinets. I'm sorry I went southern on you. My bad.
Mark: Yeah, that felt personal.
Scott: They, straight up were not looking for a paint job.
They never were and they're [00:22:00] like, Hey, I, let me just get, let me just see if I could waste somebody's time coming to paint my double wide. Again, sorry for those that
Mark: My target customer.
Scott: I get it. I know. But um, so I think that as a general rule, and there's lots of people that are using Facebook effectively, I'm not telling you can't do it.
I'm saying if I could get you $2 million of business for 5%, wouldn't that be better than 10%? I, but so I think the difference to me though is someone that's shopping that's literally a buyer versus someone that's a shopper. Those are my two camps.
If the insights from Mark and Scott have you realizing you're not fully tracking your marketing ROI, or you don't have a clear plan for where your dollars should go, the coaching team at Consulting4Contractors can help. C4C works with painting contractors every day to build marketing systems that are trackable, predictable, and aligned with your revenue [00:23:00] goals.
So whether you need help with budgeting. Lead flow planning or understanding what platforms actually work in your market, support is available. So use the link in the show notes to schedule a free discovery call with Scott Lollar and get some clarity on your marketing strategy before you invest another dollar.
Now back to Mark and Scott's discussion.
Mark: How about our service referral agencies such as Angi, Houzz?
Scott: All of those can be effective, but probably in very low doses. Anyone that tries to get you in a long-term contract, and I have someone right now that is in a annual contract with Angi's and it's just producing nothing. It's brutal. And they would like to just, somehow, not pay them, but they do like some of the results in the summer months.
So they're hesitant to pull the plug and they're contractually obligated. So people that are telling you that this is the greatest thing since sliced bread? [00:24:00] Now Angi's as an example, we used Angi's, shoot 12, whatever. They're brand new. When you, initially it was a fantastic option because it was very low price and people are low are slow adopters.
So when you're the first thing into anything, it can work really nicely because no one else is there. Eventually, a lot of people go there, it gets diluted. Then, as Angi's did, they figured out they weren't making enough money, so they changed the monetization of it and sold to private equity and the whole thing.
So the idea is figuring out your, risk as far as a contract and then holding these people accountable to what they promised you, because usually it's a sales department trying to get you to sign up. But what's the data? And so like for instance, as an Angi's or, some of these others, they'll have their own data.
How many people clicked this and how many did this, or how many people we sent you? Again, you have to make sure the benefit outweighs the cost.
Mark: Your feeling on print advertising, like the Every Door [00:25:00] Direct, mailers, postcards?
Scott: Yeah. There's going to be some people that are going to be excited to try to sell you that. It takes a lot of that to actually get a call. I would say some of that stuff for instance at my house, I could actually never get mail again and be just fine. Nothing in there is useful to me, much really.
But things that people need often I. HVAC, maybe a mechanic. I don't know. If you're trying to build, some business in a location, I could see it. What we find when we track this data is people spend a lot of money on it and don't, get enough results to pay for it.
I would say it's probably would go into my branding bucket, not my sell a paint job bucket. Getting people to see you, it would take a long time. And so if you're going to send me a, postcard whatever, 3, 5, 6 times a year, you still have to hit me at the moment that I'm ready [00:26:00] to paint something.
And that's, if that's one every five to se if that's the one every five to seven years on my exterior, or three to five years on my interior or whatever, you just have to spend a lot of money. And so I'd rather take that money, and put it to Google, which is where I'm going when I need a painter.
Mark: Back to the topic of buyers versus having to convince somebody that they need your service.
Scott: That's right. Yeah.
Mark: Good idea.
Scott: Now I will make a caveat here. I, do like the idea of a proximity or clover leaf type of, little email SendJim is a company that exists for that reason where if I'm painting at your house, I can mail the closest a hundred or 200 people to me that can warm up the lead.
Because they can drive by, Hey, I know Mark's in my neighborhood. Hey, I can watch these guys and see how the, thing progresses. How many guys out there, with their shirts off smoking, or not, you know that. So I think that could be of a more calculated spend again, tracking it to see [00:27:00] does it work?
Mark: Similar to door hangers,
Scott: Yeah, I think door hangers are also, I know a lot of people also do door hanging. And appointment setting. I think it's a very low value activity for certain people. I would never do it. It would be very expensive if I were to do that. But I suppose if you want to hire some people, train them how to do it'd be okay.
But again, I think you have to knock on a lot of doors, put a lot of door hangers, run from a lot of dogs to really cash big checks. And that's what we're doing here, we're not trying to get you 10 grand. We're trying to get people to multimillion dollar businesses of their dreams.
So it's a lot of door hangers, it's a lot of every door direct. Man, it can it work? Oh, sure. You go get a sandwich, sports stand at the corner, you can get a job. That's not the point. The point is what's the most cost effective way to get a lead to the right customer because that's your buyer.
If Facebook gives me a bunch of [00:28:00] people, double wide and that's not my market, well then it's not an effective marketing.
Mark: Good point. The last two are linked as far as television ads or radio ads, kind of these media streaming ads.
Scott: I'm going to put them radio for sure into branding, but some people have markets where a TV ad running, like on the Weather Channel or something, can be fairly cost effective and can be potential to hit your target. I'm probably going to use it more of a branding thing like, seeing your name here, hearing it there, seeing the billboard, seeing you at Rotary or whatever, that's the branding part so that when I'm ready for a paint job or an estimate, there's only one person in my head because I've seen this stinking name or heard it.
But I have heard of people in markets, in, specifically I could tell you, well, Comcast Xfinity now, does this and I, think it, and they'll record it for you, [00:29:00] do the whole thing, and Mark, you have some experience with that.
Mark: Yes. Yes.
Scott: So, I think that it's a, it can be a fairly low cost.
Again, I think sometimes our ego gets in the way of reality and we, really like it. We like to see ourselves out on TV and it sounds good. At the end of the day, did you make any money?
Mark: We spend a lot of money on television ads. We've developed many over the years. Here's what I get. I get a lot of comments when I'm out to dinner. There's a lot of comments. Hey, saw your commercial the other day.
Scott: Yeah,
Mark: It's great branding. People know us, they remember us. We're top of mind. Has it ever generated a dollar in revenue?
I couldn't tell you.
Scott: Yeah. And also you, are actually a creative person and likable and so you typically do things that are fun. You guys have done some fun things and creative things. What I often see is people that take it really seriously and take themselves seriously and put their kids in it and their, the, car [00:30:00] dealers or the stupid jingle, it's like, I don't know, really out of all the people you could have put on your commercial, it was going to be you.
Huh? I don't think so, but, so I think it matters. And I think that's all of marketing, right? What's something that I might watch or look at? It's Mark being silly or, goofy or playing the piano or whatever it is, right? Like, oh, interesting. Like I, you just don't see anyone singing a singing a little thing here on a piano very often, whatever.
So it's entertaining, which, brings you into the success. You know, it's marketing like, Hey, I watched your, I stood there and watched the weather way past I needed to because I got in sucked into your little thing that's cool.
Mark: As, we redirect back to the average contractor, our listener out there, and they're thinking, okay, I've got this pile of money, whatever it is, a thousand dollars to $5,000, whatever it is I need to spend this month on marketing. I still think going back to what you've already said in this [00:31:00] session I'm hearing you make an argument for diversity.
That we're maybe having multiple avenues of spend and, hopefully some of those, or a good portion of those could be pretty low cost as far as networking groups. and, you, mentioned the newsletter. Possibly some low cost things like door hangers, proximity to work sites and such.
But, I guess I'm still wanting to make sure our listeners understand the difference between educating, branding and then straight up asking for a job.
Scott: Yeah.
Mark: And sometimes we just think of all that as just one term of marketing where you're suggesting we need to start with the why. We're arguing the what's and the how's.
But we really need to start with the, why do I need work for the month of January? It's December, we're about to turn into December here. I need to start booking January. Well then I need to think about how my marketing dollars, you, if I heard you correctly, really like Google as far as, [00:32:00] looking for buyers directly, pay per click.
I am looking for people who are ready to buy my service so that I can book my calendar.
Scott: Let me go up one level is we would ask everyone to create a marketing calendar annually, right? A marketing calendar is simply what are the items that you do for marketing? What's their frequency? How much do they cost? And who's going to be responsible for them?
So some things, um. You can do yourself, right? You can write a blog. AI will write the blog for you. I don't I think you should tweak it, but I don't think you should publish AI's blog because AI knows. But you know these blogs, social media posts that are organic, right? These are not people, Then there's ads. Ads are different. So ads are targeted and purchased and I think there's a little bit of science here that I would typically reach out to someone to help you manage that.
Now that part is some of the underbelly of our industry that we've seen is, if you're going to charge someone $500 a month to manage their [00:33:00] Facebook, it's not much money really.
So you have to hit a whole bunch of these people charging them five, to make a living. So what I find is a lot of these folks over promise, spend your money and then, they churn account managers and you never get a meeting and you don't know what happened. And all you know is, it's not uncommon for me to be on a call and say, oh, you spent, $10,000 last month in Facebook.
They're like, I did like, well, Facebook doesn't ask, it just does. So, so I think that just to having the accountability to say, Hey, let's just check at least once a month saying how much do we spend, how much do we get? Is the message wrong? Is the market wrong? Why didn't, this work?
Or why did this work? So that, that feedback is critical. So the marketing calendar will help you be on target and help you not be emotional when so-and-so calls and says, Hey, I've got a new gimmick. I got a new thing, or, I'd like you to spend more with me on Angi's or more with me [00:34:00] on Facebook.
You can have some science to respond versus emotional. I need more work, therefore I'm going to spend more on Facebook. Well, if the Facebook isn't in your plan or doesn't work, then you shouldn't do it. So that marketing calendar can really be helpful. And also then you can create that.
We actually have one on a, unique a Google calendar that's just for marketing where all of our marketing activity is there so that we know when a podcast hits, when a newsletter goes out. So, just saying I want to do something is not going to make it so you need to plan it and you need to allocate money to it, right?
You know that, that marketing calendar can be really helpful. Now in looking for a partner again, it's just that person that can help you get to where you want. Speaking to your question about marketing agencies, they have a system, they have a playbook, they have a process. In spite of some very bright people that [00:35:00] I've worked with and met, they still seem to have a hard time understanding this is about you, not about them.
So I hear, we don't do that, or, it's, very difficult to really get them to be responsive quickly. They're running a playbook. They, we send this out on the second Wednesday. It's not the second Wednesday. I don't know what to tell you, like, well. Tell, can I, get this done outta sequence?
No, you can't. That just not in your package. Like what I, what do you mean what my package? I need work or I need less work, or, so that idea of getting the more concierge or that, that availability is unfortunately something they have a hard time doing for the price point they've sold you, and I think that's fair to understand.
I don't think they should give you 24 7 support for the bare bones price of 500 a month or a thousand a month or whatever. So, but I think getting clear about what they deliver, what the [00:36:00] parameters are, and what you can expect and what's going to happen if things go well or not well, you know how, what's that conversation?
What we hear mostly is you have to crab at them and complain and then something happens. Hey, my Google is in the toilet. Oh, okay, let's have a call. And then your Google all of a sudden is fantastic. Then after 60 days, it's in the toilet again. You call and you complain and well, you really don't want to, I, I don't really want to be a squeaky wheel.
It's no fun. Just can we tell me what I have to do? Tell me what you're going to do, and let's just be good partners. So that's what I'm looking for. And I'm not, looking for the hype. I see a lot of stuff on social media and they're trying to get you to sign up for them because they think you're desperate for leads and. So these crazy comments I can give you, get you a million dollars in bids in three months. I guarantee it. It's just nonsense. It's just nonsense. Okay?
So I'd rather work with someone that says, Hey, we think we have a good system. We think we're experts. Here's some options, but, and here's what you have to [00:37:00] do.
And, build a relationship with someone that you can trust. Believe me, it's going to cost you more than you want. But you're going to get probably more than you will with the Earl Scheib, who lots of don't even know what that means.
Mark: I'm a creative person by nature. I love sales and marketing. This is my jam, but I recognize that most business owners are not built like that. Most business owners hate marketing. They don't like having to be creative and coming up with the social media posts all the time.
It drains them, and so they would rather hire an agency. Well, guess what? We tend to hire marketing agencies to do our marketing. It makes sense. I'm willing to spend whatever I need to spend so that I don't have to do it. I hear that all the time from fellow business owners in the painting industry and I, I love what you said, it's not that we're anti-marketing agency, in fact, there's some really good ones out there, but if you think it's a set it and forget it, write a check and they'll take care of everything you're wrong.
It is a system that needs to be managed and I think [00:38:00] Consulting4Contractors does a great job of building multiple systems in our business. And isn't that what our job is as business owners? We are managers of systems and marketing is just one. It's actually a fairly major system in our organization that has to be managed.
And I love your idea of the marketing calendar that these things are already thought out pre-planned, that it changes month to month, season to season. there are busy times, there are less busy times. We know that about our businesses, therefore our marketing plan has to be adjusted. There are some branding things that should just be happening all the time.
I, I think of my favorite organization, and you all know it. Coca-Cola. I couldn't live without it. We all know Coca-Cola, but how many ads do you see from Coca-Cola that says, two for 10 on 12 packs right now? Like most of their ads are not "we are trying to get you to purchase our product right now."
It's a polar bear cracking a cola, [00:39:00] like we know. And it's just branding. It's just recognition that we're here, you know who we are. We're building trust, we're building familiarity. And that's something that I love in our business. I don't know how much of that translates. I'm a very rural marketplace it works in, my marketplace, building that trust and that recognition and Oh, I saw your vans, I saw your billboards, I saw your TV ads.
We do a really good job of branding. Very few of our ads are, Hey, we need work right now. Please call us.
Scott: And I think that using this marketing calendar and then using, just some activity, I think it's hard to do a lot in a moment because you have a lot of other things. But I was just talking with a client yesterday that, they have a new builder they're working with. They do very little new construction but they live in a very affluent coastal area on the east coast.
And so they had a new builder come on. And the comment that they shared with me [00:40:00] was that he said, you're really more expensive than I'm accustomed to and anyone else, but the experience is simply amazing. Now, that's to me something I would use in my marketing, whether it be blogs or even post, that's the old school Sandler system of, pain.
Like, what is it about your service that differentiates you? It's the experience, it's the service. It's the live answering the person, answer your phone call. It's the on time arrival of your painters. It's the, we're not going to, ghost you or. Nate Bargatze has a thing, something I heard the other day.
He says, we hired a contractor and what contractors apparently do is deliver a porta-potty and disappear for 30 days. He's like that. He goes, I guess that's what, and he goes, that sounds like a pretty good job. He says, at least I can go to the bathroom in my driveway now. But this idea of what are the things that differentiate you more than just, here's a discount, here's a [00:41:00] cute mascot or cute name or whatever, because at the end of the day, we are hearing still stories of people that don't show up. He can't get the vendor here, he didn't come, he didn't show up. Hey, he didn't call.
Mark: Yeah.
Scott: So that to me, that's what I would be, really my brand and who, we are and what can you expect so that when someone says, yeah, I would like a great experience.
And then in your sales process you can say, well, of course it's going to cost you more than Chuck-in-a-truck. And here's the reasons why. You've expressed that's important to you or attractive to you, so you know, let's move forward.
Mark: It's a great point just in marketing in general, that oftentimes we get tied up in our own little worlds and we want to tell the customer how great we are at this or that, but our marketing needs to be from the customer's perspective, what's their pain? How are we solving something that irritates them or is difficult for them?
And that's good marketing.
Scott: Yeah. Yeah. So for those that are spending lots of [00:42:00] money, i'm not telling you're crazy or you're wrong. I'm not. And, before I get agency people giving me bad Google reviews or something, I'm not saying it can't work and I can't, I'm not saying some of them aren't really solid people, most of them are not.
They're going to take your money and leave you frustrated and when you need more work, need more leads than they provided, they're going to ask you to spend more money. So, you find someone that you can trust that helps you with the parts that you can't do. You can easily hire people to write for you.
There's tons of people that'll write blogs and copy for you. On a newsletter side, a lot of people get freaked out, like, where to start? We would suggest you just create a template, and this is a place where you can hire a one-time designer and say, Hey, design this, I want, I need, I want about four blocks, is what I would typically will start with, just get your, your logo block up there. Then there's second block that's a local event or something. So just have four things [00:43:00] that you're going to address every time. So you don't have to think about inventing this from scratch every time you don't. I need one of these, one of these, one of these and one of these.
By the way, I do like case studies. Case studies are examples of things that you've done that are challenging or common, that other people might be experiencing or will experience, how to keep my deck from peeling? Why is mold happening on my house? Whatever, can I wash mold off? Stuff that's, how did you solve that? And, so those are case studies that add value, right? And that's what Google is supposed to be supposedly is, right? They're delivering information, helpful information for people that ask for it.
That's what Google is supposed to be doing. So, just create your template and so that you don't have to freak out, like, oh my gosh, just, get it done. Hey, you. You're going to write a blog, you've got 30 days to do it, get going, you know it's due on this date, edit that thing for content.
And so those are just, doing these things regularly, I think are going to help your [00:44:00] phone to ring versus trying to throw a hundred grand at somebody and make it rain. It's just not going to work.
Mark: It's been a great discussion. We've talked about a lot of things and obviously the world of marketing is enormous. There's so many rabbit trails we could chase in this conversation and I'm sure people are interested. But I would just suggest that, if you're struggling with your marketing services or knowing exactly where to spend your money or how, it's not exactly the what or the how that we need to be talking about.
It's the why. And that's something that Scott, Consulting4Contractors, any of the coaches could help with. So feel free to reach out and they'd be happy to help you with that.
Scott: Thanks Mark. Great chat as always.
Mark: Appreciate your time, sir.
Well, that wraps up another episode of Success Beyond the Brush. Mark and Scott covered a wide range of marketing considerations from Google Ads to Facebook, Angi, billboards, print, newsletters, and everything in between, all with a focus on understanding why you're spending, not just [00:45:00] where you're spending.
So the takeaway is simple: marketing becomes far more effective when it's tied to your actual numbers, your lead flow needs, and a repeatable system. And when you understand your cost per lead, your cost of acquisition, and the difference between branding and buyer-intent traffic, you make smarter decisions and avoid wasting money.
So if you'd like help building a marketing system that fits your business, or you want guidance on tracking, budgeting, or evaluating ROI, the team at Consulting4Contractors is ready to support you. Check the show notes for links and resources. Once again, thank you for listening.
We'll see you in the next episode of Success Beyond the Brush.