For Home Services Contractors Who Want MORE From Their Business...
Everything You Need To Know To Become The #1 Business In Your Local Market
The Real Cost of Using Shared Leads
(And Why It’s Far Greater Than You Think)
The Real Cost of Using Shared Leads
(And Why It’s Far Greater Than You Think)
If you’re a home service contractor who relies on shared lead services (to any degree) – this may very well be the most important message you discover this year. It’s very likely that you may be unaware of the short and long term implications of using these services that are stunting your growth, and causing frustration and lower cashflow than you deserve.
First off, shared lead services provide a valuable commodity for many new businesses. They allow you to simply pay for the opportunity to connect with potential customers on a pay-per lead basis. Granted, you’re connecting with the same person that the lead company sold to all of your competitors as well – but nonetheless it is an opportunity – even if not a great one.
As a rule, you should never stop investing in any customer acquisition channel that is driving profit for your business.
A lot of times, companies turn to these types of services because they think they have to – they assume (incorrectly), that their larger competitors have the market locked down – because they go online, and they literally see the competition everywhere. So, problem #1…
and you see them on social platforms etc.
They have a strong online presence – great reviews, and an overall great appearance. You may think that this is impossible for a company like yours to achieve, so you don’t even bother.
But that’s a mistake.
Showing up like the “big boys” isn’t as hard as you might think – but we’ll get to that later. Right now, what we want you to realize is that a very small part of their online presence (if at all), is tied to getting leads from a shared lead service.
Have you wondered why the most successful companies focus on building their own brands and not handing over their hard earned marketing dollars to shared lead services?
Well, it’s simple really.
There are lots of reasons, but we’re going to focus on the most critical ones here – and we’re going to let you know what you can do about it.
So… let’s jump right in.
First off, the most obvious challenge with relying on shared leads, is – well… they’re shared leads.
Let that sink in for a moment…
When you subscribe to these services, you’re basically telling the lead company:
“Hey, I don’t mind paying for leads that you’re going to send out to all of my competitors too. I don’t mind having to chase down people who filled out a form online, and who have no idea who I am, or why I’m calling. I understand that in many cases, the lead may not even know that their info was just sent to half a dozen people who will be chasing them down like telemarketers. And I don’t mind having to cut my prices to win the job – since it’s exactly what my competitors will be doing. Oh – and I don’t mind that if I do win the job, and perform amazing work – that the customer will likely tell their friends about your company and how they were able to beat me up on price because they used a lead service.”
Wait – that can’t be right. No business owner in their right mind would ever say any of that – would they?
Apparently – yeah – they would. And if you’re buying shared leads, even if you’re not saying it out loud,
where you chose to invest your marketing dollars screams it loud and clear.
Ok, so what else…
Well, as we touched on a moment ago – the next challenge with these leads is that they’re often most concerned with price over quality. We work with contractors who have built their business on quality workmanship, and are not willing to compromise the quality of their work to get a job when bidding against one man shows working for beer money.
Yep, you're actually paying someone who is making it harder for you to get the jobs you're paying for.
We’re going to pause here and let that sink in for a moment…
[Cricket sounds…]
Ok, enough with dramatic effect. You get it. But here’s just one more for good measure…
Did you know that these lead companies actually charge you more for leads that are specifically searching you out, and looking to hire you. Yeah – they get in front of your own listings, to capture these leads, and then charge you more to connect the lead with you. That’s insane. They’re charging you a premium for sneaking in front of your already interested prospects, and connecting you.
Woah… not cool.
Interested In Talking With A Member Of Our Team?
How The Fastest Growing Home Services
Companies Are Winning Online
How The Fastest Growing Home Services
Companies Are Winning Online
And what they don't want you to know
What we’ve uncovered over the last 9 years is that there are only a small handful of activities responsible for driving business growth through the internet – especially when it comes to home services companies. When you focus on just these things – you can out-market the “big players” for a fraction of what they’re spending.
The 80/20 rule has never been more accurate than when it’s applied to marketing your business online.
The 80/20 rule has never been more accurate than when it's applied to marketing your business online.
When you focus only on the things we’ll be sharing with you below, you’ll have the key players wondering how they heck you’re stealing their market share – and where you even came from (trust us – it happens quickly – and they’ll take notice).
Okay, let’s cut right to the chase – we’re not going to tell you that marketing your business online is simple – that just isn’t true. we also wouldn’t expect you to tell us that what you do is simple.
Now… it may be easy for you and your team – but that’s because you’ve likely spent a lifetime learning all of the ins and outs, and tricks of the trade to get outstanding results, in the shortest time possible, and for the fairest price possible – right?
Online marketing is the same…
For us, of course it’s easy – but it’s not simple. It’s “easy” because we specialize in working with very specific types of businesses (anyone in the home services markets – meaning roofers, pavers, landscapers, plumbers, water treatment companies, etc. ).
It’s “easy” because we’ve spent the last 9 years (and millions of dollars in ad spend), testing the consumer behavior for these markets across more than half of the country. We currently help some of the fastest growing businesses in 25 states across the country (and that number is increasing rapidly).
All of this testing, and working very closely with companies to help them grow rapidly, has given us unique insights into what actually works – and what doesn’t. We’ve used all of this data, and time to create systems that act as a springboard for launching new clients into rapid success.
We do a competitive analysis for every new client we work with.
It’s important to understand the landscape before launching a new marketing campaign.
This means we look at a lot of “big businesses” each week, and we analyze their marketing strategy, and client acquisition methods.
And then we figure out how to beat them. Simple (but not easy).
In our opinion, most of these larger businesses waste about 50% of their online marketing budget. But there are a few key drivers that every one of them get right. These are the things that have allowed them to hold the dominant place in their market.
When you sneak in and beat them in even just a few of these key areas, you’re going to start getting a feeling of what it’s like to have real, significant, and affordable lead flow (trust me – it’s an awesome feeling).
More importantly, you’ll start generating lead flow for your own business – and I’m talking about exclusive lead flow – inbound lead flow. This means customers are calling you – chasing you down to get a quote, and have work done.
If you’ve ever experienced this in your business, then you already know that everything in your life improves when your business is doing well, and you don’t have to worry about where the next job is coming from.
Trust us- your biggest competitors don’t worry about that – and neither should you.
There’s no reason why you can’t become the company that everyone else wants to be like. The only thing that’s been holding you back is how you’ve been investing your marketing dollars.
If you want to become like the most successful companies in your market, you need to start thinking like they do, and start playing the same game they play (at least when it comes to how you show up online).
And to really win – you just need to focus on doing only the things that drive results – ignore all of the other zero-return marketing efforts that we know they’re wasting money on – and you’ll actually beat them at their own game.
So – what are the most important parts of an online marketing strategy for a home services contractor that wants to scale, and dominate a market? Well, we’ll tell you.
Focus on just these things, and your company will grow (remember: simple things done well, will get a far better result than complex things that remain unfinished). So here’s what you need to focus on:
Make sure your business shows up in one of the top ad spots on page one of Google. This is done using Google’s paid advertising service known as “Google Ads.” Now, running Google ads effectively is part art, and part science. But luckily for you, we already have proven campaign templates for your business.
If you’ve tried ads before with little to no results – we promise you – Google Ads work, but you just need to know exactly how to set things up. We’ll talk more about this below.
You need to get your Google My Business page ranking in the maps 3-pack. There’s a lot of things you can do here – citation listings, linking strategies, geo-tagging images etc. (We could go on for a while here), but don’t worry – we’ve developed a process that we follow to get our client’s ranked time and time again.
It’s not as complicated as it may seem
Also, you have to run remarketing campaigns for people who have expressed interest in your business. This is one of those “multipliers” we use to drive conversion rates through the roof, and to keep your business top of mind for those more savvy prospects who are trying to figure out who the best business in their area is.
You must show up everywhere, all the time, for these prospects – and that’s what an effective remarketing campaign is all about. We can make sure you look like the “big companies” – even if you’re just a small team.
Run a brand name search campaign. This is a no-brainer. You need to make sure your business is positioned in the #1 position of page one search results anytime a prospect searches out your actual business name. You definitely do not want your competitors (or worse – a lead company’s), listing to show up before your company when people search you out directly online.
You must drive prospects to a direct-response style offer and tell them exactly what to do. This is a major factor to success. You should always drive prospects to highly relevant landing pages that don’t require them to read too much, or click through a website to take action.
A good direct response experience will have a great offer (related to exactly what the prospect has expressed interest in); it will have social proof for your business (testimonials, reviews etc.); it will be mobile responsive (60-80% of visitors will be on their mobile phone); it will have click to call functionality; load lightning fast; be secure; and will look professional and build trust in your company. And it must elicit an action from the prospect – most often to call you directly.
We have developed very specific landing pages for each of the markets we work with. Our best performing pages get over 70% of visitors to call your business (versus 2-3% for an average website).
And the last critical piece you likely need to work on, is maintaining a high Google review score (4 stars plus), and you should work towards having more reviews than your largest competitor.
We have tools and systems to help with this too – and they’re all very easy to manage. We know you’re busy, and everything we do is built around providing a nearly hands-free experience for you.
So, that’s it. Just 7 critical factors to moving toward being the dominant player in your space. You’ll notice there’s no talk of a website or social media marketing or any of that. These things do have their place – don’t get me wrong. But we can scale any business to becoming the #1 player in their space with just the items above. We do it every day.
Ignore everything else you see your competitors doing, and just pay attention to what we mentioned above, and you’ll see where 95% of their best new customers are coming from. Now… your job is simply to beat them in these areas – that’s it. Don’t make it any more complicated than this.
Interested In Talking With A Member Of Our Team?
Why Online Marketing May Not Have
Worked For Your Business In The Past
Why Online Marketing May Not Have Worked For Your Business In The Past
And how to easily fix it forever, this time around
Alright, you’ve made it this far, so you already have a very clear understanding of exactly what to do (and what not to do), to position your business everywhere your best prospects are looking for the products and services you offer.
And you already know the secrets to outperforming the biggest players in your market – meaning, you can out-market them, and generate much higher return on your advertising dollars than they would even believe possible – which is awesome.
But… this is usually the point when we’re talking with new potential clients, and we hear something along the
lines of:
“Yeah, that’s all well and great, but I’ve tried xyz before, and it just didn’t work for our business.”
And our typical response is this:
“That’s totally understandable – and I’m pretty sure I can tell you why. Let’s start with a few questions…”
And that leads us into a deeper conversation about their previous strategy, that usually gets a lightbulb to “pop” in their head, and then in a moment, they totally “get it.” It’s awesome to see this happen, and the business is typically never the same once you, as an owner, really understand how online marketing works.
Google Ads Work - Plain And Simple.
Here’s a quick example. We talk with a lot of contractors who say they’ve “tried” Google Ads in the past – and it was a waste of money.
We then drill down into their strategies, phone scripts they were using, landing pages they promoted etc. – and what we find (in nearly all cases), is they weren’t really using the tool at all. They were just scratching the surface (and burning a lot of cash in the process).
Position Your Home Services Business For Success
You get it, right?
When it comes to positioning your business online, you shouldn’t ask your friend for help; you shouldn’t work with a general agency; and you definitely shouldn’t try to do it yourself.
If you already know that – then you’re halfway there. You’ve most likely seen the results from some of your own customers who tried to do a job themselves – only to have to call you to bail them out when they finally realized they were in over their heads (we’ve heard tons of very interesting stories from our contractors) – but we digress.
If you already know that – then you’re halfway there. You’ve most likely seen the results from some of your own customers who tried to do a job themselves – only to have to call you to bail them out when they finally realized they were in over their heads (we’ve heard tons of very interesting stories from our contractors) – but we digress.
So if you've tried in the past to take control of your online marketing, and the
results were less than stellar – we want you to know: it's not your fault.
Reasons Why Google Ads Haven’t Worked Before
Let us share with you the top 4 reasons why it most likely didn't work, and then
we'll tell you exactly what to do about it, so that next time you try – it does
To be honest, running these is better than nothing at all, but it’s very, very unlikely that you’ll actually be able to run profitably, or at any scale. Using a tool like this, vs leveraging the full platform would be the same as taking a top-fuel funny car (made to go super fast, in a straight line, for 1/4 mile), and trying to win a race with it by competing in the Indy 500 – where cars go super fast, in circles, for 500 miles.
You have literally a 0% chance of winning. And in less extreme cases, if you’ve run campaigns in a full account (not using smart campaigns), you’re most likely following all of the “recommended actions” for your account – and still seeing miserable results. Well, this is because you’re following advice without understanding the deeper data.
Google is in the business of making money with their ads – a lot of money ($147 billion last year alone). So although they want you to succeed, their primary objective is to run a profitable business.
We’ve heard it said, that taking advice from Google on how to manage your ad campaigns, is like taking advice from the IRS on how to file your taxes. All we’re saying is, that you probably want someone who knows what they’re doing running your ads. That’s a simple fix, right? Ok, moving on…
The second reason you may have had some challenges with your online marketing, is that you had a “general” agency working on your marketing strategy – or worse, you had a service-focused agency helping you.
You know the ones – they’re the “best” at running ads, or SEO, or citations etc. Main point is that they try to convince you that the service they fulfill is the end-all, be-all, best way to invest your marketing dollars.
In this case, you should turn 180 degrees, and run (fast). First off (and we’ll cover this more in the next point), you never want to rely on just one service to promote your business. But besides that, agencies that focus on their service, over your market are destined to fail.
Knowing how to do SEO or how to run Google Ads as a skill, is great – but for the same reason working with “general agencies” is a bad idea – it’s more important to know how to leverage these services in specific markets.
The market dictates what works, and what features you need to leverage. As a really simple example: the look and feel of the creatives you use for a roofing company is going to be wildly different than for a water treatment company or a landscaper.
You need to know what creatives, what messaging voice, and what keywords (and negative keywords) perform best to the very specific customer you’re targeting. And the customers for these two businesses (believe it or not), are significantly different, and respond to very different types of messaging.
You need to know what creatives, what messaging voice, and what keywords (and negative keywords) perform best to the very specific customer you’re targeting. And the customers for these two businesses (believe it or not), are significantly different, and respond to very different types of messaging.
If you’re working with a general, or service based agency, they’re going to need to figure all of these things out (and spend a lot of money doing so), because you may be their only client in that market and geography.
Guess who pays for all of that “figuring it out?” You guessed it… you do. And it can sometimes take months (like 6 or more months), to start narrowing down these things. That’s months of wasted marketing spend, and massive lost-opportunity costs. You’re slowly falling behind, while your competitor is stealing your would be – should be customers.
So, again – this is an easy fix: only work with agencies who have experience in your market, and know your customers.
Ok, this next one is overlooked by many businesses – and the best way to get a handle on, this is to think about your own buying behavior.
The challenge may be that you simply didn’t understand the importance of multi-touchpoint marketing (until now) – or, you simply didn’t leverage the power of being omnipresence.
First, let’s clarify what we mean by multi-touchpoint. In a nutshell, it just means that more often than not, prospects need to see your business more than once before they make a decision to buy from you.
How often have you seen an ad for a business, and decided to work with them immediately? Probably not very often – especially for high-value services like you provide. The reality is, we often need to see a company multiple times (the most popular stat is 7 times), before making a buying decision.
For our contractors, we find it’s usually more like 3-4 times. After a prospect has seen your business 3-4 times, they start to have “faith” that you’re a legit business, and that perhaps they can trust you.
We’ll talk about another major factor to trust building in the next point, but just be aware – you won’t get the majority of your would be best customers to reach out to you, if they only see your business once. And even if they do reach out – they may not give you the job.
So, multi-touch just means you show up a few different ways for prospects.
What about omnipresence? Well, that just means you show up, not only a few times, but in this case, in a few places (ideally everywhere your prospects go).
All of a sudden, there’s this sense that – “Hey, these guys must be legit – I see them everywhere!” – and that prospect is 100x more likely to reach out to you for a quote request, or to simply enlist your services. This is just how the internet works – so you need to be sure you show up everywhere – one platform or strategy is not going to get you the results you need. You need to leverage them all – show up everywhere, all the time. We’ll share a bit more about how you can do this quickly, and affordably – in the next video.
The other major factor we see that may have prevented you from getting measurable results online, is that you didn’t have a compelling enough offer and/or you didn’t have enough positive social proof.
These are two highly critical factors to creating a successful marketing campaign. It stands to reason that your marketing message needs to be compelling enough to get prospects to take action; it needs to stand out in a crowded marketplace; and to simply be different than what everyone else is offering.
We often see business just “copy” the offers that the “leaders” are using – but this simply doesn’t work. You want to set yourself apart – so take the time to create an offer that you yourself would take – even if you weren’t familiar with your business. And a quick note on social proof.
We all make decisions about a company based on what others have to say about it. Don’t kid yourself about this – you know it’s true. So it’s your responsibility to make sure that you get your happy customers to leave reviews for your business – online, and in the most important places (like Google and Facebook).
We have systems to simplify this process, and to give you an opportunity to get in front of any customers who are less than 100% satisfied before they leave a review – but you don’t need anything complicated here.
Simply ask your customers if they’re 100% happy with your work – and when they say “Yes!” immediately ask them to go online and post a review on your Google business listing. Let them know it would mean a lot to you (because it really will). Ok, that’s the last one…
These 4 “reasons why” account for about 95% of cases where we do some digging when a new potential client says “oh – I tried that before and it didn't work”.
At the end of the day, there’s a big difference between giving something a try, and really putting something to work for your business.
Ok, so knowing the problem is one thing – but how can we actually fix it?
That’s a great question – and we’ll cover that below.
Interested In Talking With A Member Of Our Team?
How To Become The Dominant Player In Your Market
How To Become The Dominant Player In Your Market
Without breaking the bank
At this point, you most likely have a good idea of what needs to be done, but are still a bit confused about how to actually do it. Which is completely understandable – you’re not a marketer – that isn’t what you’ve spent a lifetime honing your skills around. But fortunately – we have. And we’ve developed a program that allows any home or commercial services company to “plug in” to the success we’ve been able to achieve for our clients.
Inbound Service Leads is a sophisticated marketing system that works to position your business at the top of search engines WHEN, and WHERE your best prospects are searching for the services you offer.
Many of our contractors are showing up in 3 or more placements on page one of Google and other search engines, for their most profitable search terms – meaning they own 30-40% of all available “prime real estate” for their market.
This is how they become the dominant business in their market and essentially become… well… untouchable.
And the best part…
It requires nothing more than a 20-minute onboarding call with our team, and a few minutes each month to review account performance with our account managers. That’s it.
Our system has been fine tuned over the course of nearly 9 years through constant testing – and by spending millions of dollars in advertising – so we know exactly what works, and where it works, for the markets we service.
We work to place your business in multiple positions on page one search results – fast – which nobody else can do. For many of our best clients, we have them showing in 4 or more of the top 10 search results on page one of Google (and other online properties). Nobody else can do this like our team.
The largest companies in your market most likely have in-house marketing teams – meaning they’re paying anywhere from 2-5+ employees, anywhere from $50-$150k/yr (each), to make sure their company is showing up ahead of the lead sharing company’s ads, and ahead of every one of their local competitors (meaning you).
Inbound Service Leads was developed to eliminate the need for that incredible overhead (and management headache) – and to allow businesses who don’t yet have those types of resources available to get in the ring and win.
Truth is, you don’t need an in-house marketing team to win online – not any more. You can essentially “plug in” to our proven model and launch your business with a multi-position online strategy in days – and at a fraction of the cost (with no additional management headaches).
You don’t need a large team that you need to train on your business, products, or services. The contractors we work with are extremely busy. And that’s why our onboarding process consists of a 20 minute phone call. That’s all we need of your time. Remember, we already have highly-proven models for your industry.
We’ve spent millions of ad dollars over the last 9 years, and the truth is – we probably know your ideal prospects search behavior better than you do. Our goal is to reduce your headaches, while providing much more profitable and consistent lead flow.
Starting from scratch, or working with a general agency – or an agency that does just one thing (like SEO, or Google Ads etc.), is the fastest way to burn your marketing budget. Listen, if you’re looking to get out of relying on someone else for leads (i.e. the shared lead companies), and you’re finally ready to start marketing your own business directly, then you need to start with proven data and systems.
We have contractors all the time that say: “I’ve tried that and it didn’t work…” – but then they give ISL a shot. And voila! All of a sudden they have consistent lead flow, higher quality appointments with no bidding wars – all for less than when they tried it alone.
There are lots of agencies out there who will run ads for you, or do SEO, or anything like that.
The problem with these agencies is that they each only focus on (or understand), one thing – the service they’re trying to sell. Real marketing campaigns that drive revenue for your business, combine multiple strategies, that work in concert with one another to gain a multiplier effect.
If you try doing any one of these things on their own, you’re likely to get very disappointing results.
But combine them in a strategic, multi-channel approach – and that’s where the magic happens. Also, with all of these other agencies – they focus on the service (SEO, Google Ads etc.), and not on the industry. Our approach has always been to focus on the industry, and the behavior of your best prospects first. This is where the gold is.
Maybe you already know this. And maybe that’s why you keep going back to the shared leads companies – because it all just seems so complicated, and so expensive.
But it doesn’t have to be…
The ISL system was specifically designed to keep all that complicated stuff under our responsibility. Honestly, it is complicated – but that’s what we’re really good at.
The ISL system was designed to make it ultra easy for you, as the business owner to put the power of multi-channel, omni-present marketing to work for your business.
Because we’ve refined this process, and optimized and streamlined every element over the last 9 years, because we’ve templatized the vast majority of proven winners, and because we only work with very specific verticals, we’ve managed to make it extremely affordable.
Our system costs less (far-less), than the average salary of even a single, lower-level marketing person. You get the power of an entire “best in the business” marketing team, for less than the cost of a single, in-house team member. And let’s face it – no single person could do what we do, and they’d never be able to keep up with the online trends that change almost daily.
After our 20 minute onboarding call, the only thing you’ll need to do once we push your new marketing system live – is to make sure someone is answering the phones, and booking appointments. Seriously, that’s it.
And our system is incredibly flexible.
We can target very specific job types; go after residential and/or commercial projects; adjust volume on the fly (for seasonality or workflow challenges), etc.
We know what challenges you face, and we’ve developed processes to make sure we’re always working in a way that gets you the results you need at any particular moment.
No “one thing” can get you the results you need to finally take control over your own lead flow, and build a solid local presence.
You need a “System” – and that’s exactly why the Inbound Service Leads program was developed – for businesses like yours that want to grow, but don’t want to deal with all of the headaches of running an online marketing strategy.
If you’re tired of being the second (or third) place business in your local market, and you’re ready to start taking on the serious players in your space – then we should talk. We specialize in helping home service contractors who are serious about growth… who are serious about taking on the “big-boys” in their space… and who are ready to finally stop playing small.
If you’re ready for serious growth, and want to leverage a tried and true, proven model, to get you there quickly – then I’d encourage you to click the “Let’s Talk” button below, to schedule a demo of the Inbound Service Leads Program.
Please note, we don’t work with just anyone – so please don’t apply if you’re not serious about scaling your business. We’re a small agency, and we like it that way. It allows us to take a very personal approach with every business we partner with, and we’re not willing to compromise our level of service and attention to client success. Because of this, we can only take on a handful of new clients a month – so I encourage you to take action now if you’re tired of playing small.
We look forward to learning more about your business, and hearing about the difference the ISL program has had on your business and your life.
