Why Your Marketing Feels Random and How To Fix It!
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Speaker 1: 0:00
What's up, lemonheads? Welcome to another episode of From the Yellow Chair. I'm Crystal and we are talking today about why your marketing feels random and, most importantly, how to fix it. And so I know that many of you know, from the Yellow Chair is the podcast for Lemon Seed Marketing, where we talk about all things branding and strategy and community involvement and advertising that we can for your home service business, and Lemon Seed's job is to help you bring that to life. So we are passionate passionate about understanding your marketing, understanding strategy, and today we're digging in deep. So grab your lemonade and let's sip some lemonade, all right, guys. So today we are going to dig in deep as to why your marketing feels random.
Speaker 1: 0:55
Why do you feel like you're throwing spaghetti against the wall and like you think it's sticking? You don't really know, crystal. I hear that all the time on sales calls, people get on there and they're like I mean, I think I'm doing a good job. I mean my business coach told me this, or I heard y'all say this, but I don't really know what's working and I'm not creative. I'm way, way, way. I hear it. I hear it all the time. So right now, I think contractors feel as if they're doing marketing but they aren't really seeing the results. They don't feel settled, they don't feel organized, and I think it's because you guys are lacking real strategy. You're lacking a true marketing plan for your business that involves all of the pieces so the branding, the advertising, different tactics, differentiation of content, your actual allocation of budget being done correctly. You're just lacking real strategy and I know that this weighs on you. I know that you wake up like I don't know what's happening.
Speaker 1: 1:54
I'm going to have to lay people off and I'm telling you this. We're going into a season for those of you that are HVAC contractors that are listening we're going into a season where weather is going to give us a false sense of security because we may, we should listen. I live in East Texas and if it's as hot as it's been so far, it's going to be a hot one, and again, the only people excited about that are heating and air conditioning people. But for my plumbers, my pest control, my roofers, my you know power wash companies that are listening all of you you know we don't want the weather to be an excuse or a validation for why we are performing. We want to make sure that we have a very healthy strategy that is powerful and open to interpretation so that we can pivot when we need to pivot.
Speaker 1: 2:40
So let's jump in a little bit and let's talk about our mindset. So one of the biggest things that I think contractors do that hurts them is their mindset is I'm spending money. I should be able to measure it directly. We all know like say it with me friends we cannot measure every form of marketing. We can kind of get a direction, we can see impact, but to measure dollar for dollar is extremely hard on lots of tactics and a lot of times when you're seeing true measurability, it's not even true point of acquisition, meaning it's not even where you actually gain to the customer. A lot of times it's where the customer chose to actually click, which, for those of you that don't care that much, that's good enough, right? My boss used to say that's good enough for the girls I go out with. But at the end of the day here, what my goal for you is to understand that when we have a real strategy and we have a real plan, we have tracking in place, all of a sudden you just have a better confidence. You just have a better understanding of what the heck you're doing.
Speaker 1: 3:42
But so many of you right now are like this is me, this is me. I have a website, I'm listening to my coaches, but do I really have a strategy? So let's talk a little bit about some like key talking points that I really wanted to focus on today and the mindset of teaching yourself to be open to trying things and measuring everything as a whole. So this whole two plus two equals five idea. So my premise behind that is you know, independently, certain advertising tactics may not appear to be working, but when you layer them all together, you're killing it. So that's kind of where that comes from that mindset that, okay, marketing is marketing, it's always changing, it's always pivoting. I can be flexible, I can know where my dollars are going and I can have expectations, as long as they're realistic expectations.
Speaker 1: 4:37
So we're going to talk about creating a cohesive and intentional marketing plan that actually supports your business goals and not everybody else's. So one thing that we're going to do we're going to start telling ourselves we are not all the people in social media, we are not every contractor, we are not in all of their markets. We don't operate the same. Every company deserves their own strategy, their own brand. Nothing cookie cutter. If you can buy it off the shelf, odds are. Remember. I want you to think about this if marketing could just be bought off of a shelf, then everybody would be doing it, but people won't do it. People won't do what it takes to grow your business. So let's, let's get into it. So signs that your marketing is reactive and not strategic.
Speaker 1: 5:23
Um, looking up and being like, oh my gosh, I don't have the boards filled for next week. You know I need calls today. Well, are we going to have times of the day when, times of the year that we need more calls and it kind of comes in waves, like maybe weather really smacks us, you know, or rain comes in or something. So we need to have a strategic plan. I say the bare minimum is a quarter at a time. So you should be looking at three months at a time, at all times, of what your marketing is.
Speaker 1: 5:49
What am I doing this month, next month and the month after that? What is my campaign? What is my strategy with tactics? What is my budget? What is my creative looking like? Where am I putting it? Have I communicated with my vendors? What is my call scripts look like? All of those things are your strategy to the actual. So you know, one of my biggest pet peeves right now theory, well theoretically. Well theoretically can like kick rocks, because theoretically lots of things should work. Theoretically, budget should be simple to do, but in the practicality of it all it's not. It's not super to read, it's not super to understand, it's not super to build, it's super easy to build out.
Speaker 1: 6:33
Practicality comes down to you just getting in the trenches with your marketing. That's what it comes down to you getting in the business. You know Lemon Seed was built for this as that counterpart that's in the trenches with you. You know so, like everybody else, all your vendors are like on the outside of the trenches, like, hey, so we're doing a good job, just keep digging down there. But we us up here, we're killing it right, we're killing it for you.
Speaker 1: 6:58
And you're down here like shoveling poo and you're like, okay, whatever you say, well, lemon seed, I was like man, I want to be down in the trenches. I don't really want to be shoveling poo, but I'm here to be down in the trenches with you, of like, let's get these vendors under control, let's see what's working. Let's make sure that we're casting vision for what our campaigns are so that we are strategic and not reactive. Don't y'all get tired of that, like I know I do, even at LemonSea. I get tired of okay, I gotta get more leads, I gotta get more leads. How do I get more leads and I really am always working on building out a constant, consistent flow of leads and new customers but also, how do I make the most of those existing customers? And so I really want you to understand the purpose of a strategy.
Speaker 1: 7:38
So if you can't tell me right now what is your marketing strategy, and if it involves only your website company, only your paid ads, that's a simple strategy. But that's not a cohesive marketing strategy. That's an advertising plan. That's not a marketing strategy, right? The difference between marketing and advertising is marketing is the sum of all of your advertising and your brand and your involvement with community, and all of those pieces together is how you're marketing your company. Advertising is well, this is what I spend on PPC, seo, direct mail. Those are advertising. So many of you have an advertising plan, but you do not have a marketing and branding plan. So that's the first thing that I think we really could do.
Speaker 1: 8:23
Of why your marketing feels random is because it is. You're, just like you know, flying blind. You know throwing darts in the dark, whatever little analogy you want to use there. So that was number one. You'd be looking for signs that your marketing is reactive and not proactive or strategic. So get strategic.
Speaker 1: 8:36
Number two how can you align your marketing with your revenue goals and capacity? So I have good news and I have bad news, right. The bad news is it takes money to make money, and scared money don't make money. So when you're sitting back like how did this guy move into my market and just dominate me in like two years? Well, he spent more money than you, friend. The odds are he spent more money than you. He got more intentional than you and he went.
Speaker 1: 9:01
We went for the jugular, which I ain't got a lot Like. I hate to admit it, but it's kind of my jam. My jam is to kind of, you know, get in the weeds. I'm here for it, I'm competitive and I'm driven. I tell you right now that scared money don't make money, meaning we've got to get out there. We've got to set a budget that's aggressive.
Speaker 1: 9:20
If you're like I can do 2% of my revenue goal and you're doing a million dollars, we don't have enough to do much with. You might as well put all of that into one tactic. I'm not telling you to dream up money that doesn't exist, but what I am telling you is the more you can invest in a complete marketing strategy. So notice what I said there investing in a complete marketing strategy, not necessarily a different advertising tactic. Right, we need to invest in strategy of coordinating all of those different vendors. So does your website vendor and your PPC vendor and your social media vendor and your direct mail vendor and your radio vendor. Are they all talking? Is someone coordinating all of that together, and are we working on what our revenue goal is? So if our revenue goal for next year is $5 million and that's a big lift over last year, a 30% lift over 2024, then odds are we need to get more aggressive.
Speaker 1: 10:18
We need to know what our cost per lead is, but more than that, I want to know what your average ticket is on service, your average ticket on repair or repair and service. I want to know what your average ticket is on install because, listen y'all, I hate to break it to you, but we're a team in this thing, so, like you and I, we're like doing a three-legged race, lemon Seed and the vendor. We're in a three-legged race. Just, some of y'all don't want to give me any of your leg and y'all are like, just carry me on your back, marketing, I'm going to jump on your back and you run finish line when really what I need, what Lemon Seed specifically, and what your marketing needs, is that balance. I mean, that's really what I need. Is that balance of that third leg there, that of that three-legged race, really helping me push no jokes there?
Speaker 1: 11:04
I know some of y'all have your mind in the gutter, but listen, you need to run your race and so know your revenue goals, know your capacity. No lie, no lie. I'm going to tell y'all what contractors tell me. Contractors right now will say I need more calls, crystal, I need more calls. And I'll say, okay, what if we did an outbound strategy? You know what they're going to tell me. Well, but my CSRs are too busy to dial out. Okay, hey, I need more plumbing leads, okay, well, so let's do a water heater, let's do a drain clearing, a drain cleaning. What do we want to do? Well, I really don't. I mean, my plumbers are like they're working till four and five o'clock every day, okay, so. So something is wrong. Either their average ticket is too low, your call count's too low, or we just don't have control over capacity.
Speaker 1: 11:43
But all of that comes into play in the overall success of your revenue growth and the growth of your company. So again I go back to like you of your revenue growth and the growth of your company. So again I go back to like you can't just get on marketing's back and whip it all the way to the finish line of the Kentucky Derby. We got to be like we've got to be a partnership here. You know, you and your marketers, whoever that is for you. You got to be a partnership and you got to all be going at it together, going at that same goal together.
Speaker 1: 12:08
And so I think that is another way that your marketing and just feel super random is you don't have a goal, you're not tracking goals, you're not tracking your average ticket. To know, hey, this advertising tactic generated 30 leads. That doesn't feel like a lot. But if I would have hit my average ticket and my average conversion? So let's say I'm flipping, you know heck. Let's say some of you are terrible at this game and you're looking, you know 10%. So five calls. And if you sold half of them. Let's say you're only closing at 50% you would have sold two and a half systems, that which, most of the time, should have made your money back, at least not counting all the extra things that you get the membership agreements and things. So you got to be able to back into that stuff, okay, the other thing that I think we can do to help our marketing feel more organized and not so random is creating that marketing roadmap, that what are going to be my promotions? This is what people love about Lemon Seed most of the time.
Speaker 1: 13:00
What is my theme, my campaigns, my promotions, what platforms am I putting it on? Some of you are like you know what I'm going to do today, this, or y'all are only doing one thing. So you only got to worry about your PPC. Oh, of course. So I don't believe in anything else, I just do PPC. Or will I kind of do social media? Odds are you don't, odds are you don't do it. So when we really get in there and we start creating an actual roadmap like again, remember those quarters at a time, or three months at a time go ahead and plan out what your theme is going to be Like you're hey, you know, am I? Do I have a dog mascot where I'm going to say, fetch savings? Do I have a lightning bolt where I'm like, charge up your comfort this summer, right, like what all can I say? Am I a plumbing company that has a mountainscape and so I'm going to be playing off this mountain man thing? What are the creative pieces that you're going to put out into the market? So that's important.
Speaker 1: 13:59
What kind of promotions is a gift with purchase? When they purchase a new system of any kind Water heater, new re-pipe what do you do for those people? So, when they get a new system from you, are you doing a gift with purchase? Like here's your new ringless or a smokeless fire pit, here's a new TV, here's a vacation voucher, here's all kinds of stuff that you could do like gift with purchase? Is it around financing? What are your promos? Make it make sense for yourself.
Speaker 1: 14:31
And then, what platforms? Like, where the heck are you going to do this? So one day I had a client tell me yeah, I mean, we ran this promotion on financing and nobody did anything. So I was like, okay, well, where was it? Well, it was on my website, okay. Where else? Well, nowhere else, okay, I don't know about y'all, but I do not go peruse heating and air conditioning and plumbing websites and roofing websites at night for fun to go see what your offers might be Something, y'all. A website is like a landing spot, right. So something, somewhere really needs to drive me there. It could be my search engine search, but is it direct mail? Is it something I see on social media? Is it a flyer? Is it a referral? Is it an email that I got? What is it? But something's got to send me there.
Speaker 1: 15:16
So many of you are just not doing enough of that to where you're not even bringing any awareness to who. You are, right, so that may be a reason. You have no roadmap, no strategy, no themes, no promos, no platforms. You just don't feel organized. So that's another thing, right, that's another one. Like, I'm not organized, I'm loosey goosey out here and I just do what feels good. Well, you know what doesn't feel good Not having a consistent lead volume, that doesn't feel good. Not hitting revenue goals does not feel good.
Speaker 1: 15:44
The other reason that you guys may be feeling like everything feels random is your messaging lacks consistency and frequency. There's two things that are going to make us win with our advertising dollars. Consistency and frequency. How much can we do it and can we make sure that it's the same? So for those of you that are doing Facebook ads or you're doing radio or you're doing television or you're doing direct mail frequent and consistent messaging, frequency and consistency. So I had a client the other day say hey, what do you think about this radio campaign? So they were buying radio that was like two a week or something and they were like man, this is great. I was like this is not great, it's not frequent enough. Now we can fix the consistent messaging, but frequency matters. How many times people interact with your brand definitely matters. So don't forget that's magic y'all. That is a magic piece of your content being consistent across all platforms.
Speaker 1: 16:40
Like, don't sleep on that, Don't sleep on that, right. And then another thing is many of you are tactic forward instead of brand forward. So y'all know Lemon Seed's whole strategy, our whole entire strategy around how we structure marketing plans, is brand forward, meaning we're going to put our brand out there and everything that we say do, how we comment, what offers we have, everything is branded. And so you've got to make sure that you're thinking about your brand and then your ad spend Because, remember, marketing is the sum of all of those things added together. So don't skip out on that. Don't skip out on your messaging and your brand being included. All of a sudden, you're doing things that are way off brand. Your colors aren't matching, you've got wild graphics, everything's very.
Speaker 1: 17:28
Some of y'all also think that you need to put every piece of content that you know of Like we take American Express and follow us on Facebook and we are, you know, veteran owned and operated. You think all of that has to go on every piece. It clutters it up, and so people can't. They don't know what what information is important. They don't know how to pull it. They don't know what what information is important. They don't know how to pull it, they don't know how to absorb it, so they just like scroll past it or throw it in the trash. So don't overcomplicate those things. Be solid with your brand.
Speaker 1: 17:56
If you've got a call to action and then put tracking on it which is the last thing I was going to mention about why you feel like things are random because you have no tracking in place to measure success, you get lost in the weed with these vanity metrics of clicks and all these things. Listen, trust me when I say you will do yourself a favor when you start setting clear expectations and boundaries for how your marketing per tactic should perform. How I measure success for a billboard and how I measure success for PPC drastically different. How I budget for Google LSA and how I budget for a billboard and how I measure success for PPC drastically different. How I budget for Google LSA and how I budget for a billboard campaign drastically different. And so you have to start educating yourself enough or partnering with people that are educated enough to help you understand how to be cognizant of a reasonable expectation for performance. So I need to have clear guidelines because you don't want to wake up and be like, literally again, things that contractors say I could do a whole episode on this. But things contractors say I launched a billboard two weeks ago, no one's called me, yeah, so that wasn't the expectation, that wasn't how it should work.
Speaker 1: 19:07
Billboards are designed to just expose, constantly exposing people in your market to your brand. But again, set clear expectations and you will set yourself up for success. So tracking numbers, monitoring your organic growth so the more branding that you do, the more direct keyword, the more direct searches your company should have Meaning. If the name of my company is Crystals, heating and Air and I'll launch a billboard campaign and I'm doing over the OTT, I'm doing radio, I'm doing social media, I would assume that people searching my name they're just looking for my phone number. I'm growing, that's growing in, so you know back in the day if we could have recorded how many times your name got searched in the phone book. That's what we're trying to build now. And listen, ai is coming in and everybody's all scared and doing all this stuff. I think user experience and I think user generated content and I think really personalizing your messages and your brand is where you're going to win this game.
Speaker 1: 20:04
So I wanted you guys to walk away today knowing what were these key things that made you feel so disorganized. So if you start feeling like your marketing is reactive and not strategic, if you start feeling like it doesn't align, like you don't know if it's helping you hit goals, you don't know if you're at capacity, you need guidance there. You need a business coach, right? Also, creating a 12-month strategy marketing roadmap that really helps you feel organized with your advertising tactics Again will make you feel organized and not so random, making everything centered around your brand and the campaigns that support your brand, instead of just wild spending and messaging. Get a lot more intense with that, intentional with that, and then measure, measure, measure and don't just measure with your heart. You're not making a cake with your grandma. Measure with actual, true numbers and metrics and you really will win the game there.
Speaker 1: 20:58
So, guys, I really encourage you today start building a brand with purpose. Start feeling more organized with your marketing. Organized does not always mean that we're going to win, but it means we'll know when to pivot sooner and we'll be able to move faster and more quicker, if you will, towards success. But listen, it's a game of chess that you sit down, you never get to get up. Marketing's ever evolving and always changing. So here's the good news I would love to work with you. If you have been considering like I need a marketing coach, someone to help me get organized, someone to help me feel solid and help me navigate through, like I'm getting a new website and I want to launch social media, or I've got a new brand, I just don't know how to launch it, call your girl. We're excited to work with you. So if you've really enjoyed this episode of From the Yellow Chair. Please go, leave me a review. Thanks for listening. We will catch you next time. Bye.
