The Art of Building Trust in Marketing with John Jantsch

You know, so many people think marketing stops when you get the sale.

To me, you know, the real opportunity is after you get the sale to focus intentionally on

all the ways that you can upsell and retain customers and, you know, get them to be kind

of your new lead generation sales force.

Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs

and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership, to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello.
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Now let's go back into the interview. All right, guys.
welcome back to the home service expert. Today, I got John Jantz with me.
He's a expert in small business marketing, business consulting, and search engine optimization. He is the founder and president of duct tape marketing.
He's done a lot of stuff, Sparklab consulting, trade full, full podcast bookers a lot of great stuff on here he's built he's been a trusted advisor to small and medium-sized businesses for more than 30 years specializing in marketing strategy consulting and advertising he's also the author of seven books including duct tape marketing the referral, and the host of Duct Tape Marketing Podcast.

His blog is recognized by Forbes as one of the top five for small business marketing.

Yeah, here he is.

John, how are you, brother?

I'm doing great.

You know, you stick around long enough, your bio and all that stuff just gets longer, doesn't it?

Yeah, no, absolutely.

You know, in business, one of my mentors, Al Levy, taught me there's two things that the owner should never stop doing and paying attention to. And that's know the financials like the back of their hand and marketing and marketing by far, by far more than sales, more than anything for me.
Marketing is everything. I love marketing.
Yeah. And I'm sure you've seen it.
I see it all the time. How many business owners don't really feel like they understand marketing.
So they just kind of abdicate it to an agency or something. And you know, they, they re it's really how you kind of find yourself spending a whole bunch of money, not knowing what you're getting for it.
Yeah, no, it's interesting. Cause I was talking about greenfield growth versus everybody and their brother right now is talking about greenfield growth.
And I'm kind of skeptical for most companies talking about it because I asked them, how big are you in your own market? How much market penetration do you have? And if they're not above like 20, 30, 40 million, depending on the industry, what's the point of expansion? Yeah. But let's just start out a little bit, John, by you started this company in 1986.
Tell us a little bit about your history, why you got into business, what you're excited about in the future. So, you know, I went to work right out of college, actually, for an ad agency, and I really enjoyed it.
But I was like, I want to do my own thing. Any dummy can run a business.
So I jumped out with any real plan. I knew I could hustle work.
And that's what I did. I got some big clients, little clients, big projects, little projects.
I got a couple, ironically, remodeling contractors, smaller businesses, kind of some of the folks you work with. And I really enjoyed working with them, but they were hard.
I mean, they had the same, I don't, I've been sort of classically advertising agency, big budget, you know, trained. You know, a lot of small businesses certainly don't have the budgets, but don't even really have the attention span, you know, for marketing.
And so I really said to myself, I got to figure out how to work with these guys because I really enjoy working with the owner of the business who's writing the check to pay you. For me, it was just a lot more fun.
So I created at that point, I said, look, I can't do this the traditional way. So I said, look, I'm going to create a system where I can walk into somebody and say, look, here's what I'm going to do.
Here's what you're going to do. Here are the results we hope to get.
Here's what it costs. You want it or not.
And I found out pretty quickly. They did want it because, you know, still today, I think one of the hardest things for a lot of businesses to do is to buy marketing services.
you know they're all over the place there's some new new hot thing you know this week and so they

they really get confused. And so the fact that somebody was going to come in and say, look, we're going to install a marketing system.
It's going to start with strategy before tactics, and you're going to know what it's going to cost, I think was kind of music to their ears. And so I built my practice pretty quickly that way.
And then started attracting other agencies who saw what I was doing and said, hey, we want to do that as well. It actually coincided with my first book, Duct Tape Marketing, where I basically described my system.
And so today we have about 400 agencies that we've licensed the duct tape marketing system to that, that use our methodology. And then I do still have the agency.
And so we work with, you know, dozens of small to midsize clients kind of almost as their fractional CMO is what we've started to characterize it as. I love that.
You know, a lot of people can't afford a CMO or even a VP of marketing. And they come to me all the time.
They're like, what would you do if you were going to start over again? I'm like, man, that's a loaded question. I got your book.
I don't know, I think four years ago, and it's full of like gold. Let's start here.
You've been recognized as the world's most practical small business expert. So what do you believe sets your approach apart from others? I mean, what's the secret sauce in the formation of the plan for these small companies? Well, I still sometimes wonder, but so few marketers do this.
It really still is a differentiator. I mean, if somebody hires us, somebody comes to us and says, I need a website.
We're like, yes, you do. But first, we're going to develop a marketing strategy.
We're going to truly understand your ideal client. We're going to actually create a message that not only resonates, but promises to solve a problem for that ideal client.

We are going to create a complete end-to-end customer journey from the time somebody gets to know you to the time they become an advocate. And we're going to pick the tactics that make only the most sense for attracting that ideal client.
So with that kind of framework, we can look out and say, okay, here's what the next 60, 90, 120 days needs to look like. Then we're going to move to the next stage and we can tell you what the next 60, 90, 120 days need to look like based on what we've got accomplished, based on where you're trying to go with your business.
And so just coming at it from that approach rather than what most marketers do is they walk in and say, what do you need? Sure, we do that. Here's what it costs.
And, you know, I'm sure that your listeners are a lot smarter than a lot of business owners, but most business owners don't know what they need. So the idea that you're going to let them tell you what, you know, as a marketer, as a marketing agency, what they need, you know, is kind of silly.
And so the fact that we come in and very much direct, we bring leadership to the organization, we bring a plan and a strategy for, you know, what the next year of growth is going to look like is still today, to me, it's the only way to do it, but still today a great differentiator. So when you sit down with a client, you know, let's say it's a plumber or a jack or electrical or garage doors we're all pretty similar well there's demand versus non-demand you know like like windows and um yeah gutters and stuff like that usually is non-demand um well let's say you get a demand type industry do they fill out a questionnaire like what where do you you know seo is important do they have a good? Does it load at the right speed? Do they claim it to my business page? TV, radio, billboards, mailers.
It's just, it goes on and on. Yeah.
So, yeah, we, you know, first thing we want to do is establish a baseline. Where are they today? What have they been doing? What's worked? What's not worked? What do they need to keep doing? What do they need to stop doing? That's like phase one.
And then we have very much, we have actually, we call it the customer success track. We have stages for that.
And each of those stages have milestones. You mentioned Google business page.
They haven't claimed that. That's in the foundational stage.
We're going to make sure that milestones accomplished because we know that if we get, say, that foundation, all those milestones, all those things, boxes checked in the foundation stage, then we can actually move them to the next stage. So a lot of times people will come to us and they say, run ads for us so we can generate more leads.
Well, your website's terrible. If we spend money and send people to your website, all you're going to do is waste money.
So first, we've got to fix the website. First, we have to figure out how to convert leads.
Then we can actually start spending money. So we run people through those stages because we know that if we get their foundation fixed, we know what the promise is now of being able to generate leads.
And then we can move to the next stage, being able to convert more of those leads. Then we can move to the next stage, actually turning more of those clients into repeat clients and referral clients.
And so there is a linear kind of process to this that we move people through. We don't just come in and say, we're going to do SEO every month for the rest of your life.
Is there a software that you guys, obviously there's a CRM. Sure.
But is there any type of software

that you guys throw into the mix

or just whatever CRM they're on?

Yeah, I mean, we're fairly agnostic to that.

I mean, I'm not going to come in

somebody that's using HubSpot

and has spent $50,000 installing it

and say, no, you got to switch to ours.

But if somebody, and shockingly,

a lot of businesses don't use a CRM

or they're using like BuilderTrend or something that, you know, really doesn't have marketing functionality in it, we'll switch them to something like ActiveCampaign. I mean, they need something that will help, you know, they can have pipeline, they can send emails, they can actually use forms and people can sign up for things.
So they need a basic, you know, marketing automation CRM platform. There are probably a dozen that would do the trick.
What are some uncommon milestones? Obviously, claiming your Google My Business page is an easy GVP. Is there any other like ones that are like kind of an odd that you guys recommend? I always tell people to make sure you

invest in the BBB, even though the BBB might not make a lot of sense, but it makes your profile, makes Google know that you're a real person, like a real company. Yeah.
Yeah. I'm, I'm with you.
I mean, the BBB has been around forever and you know, it's, I don't know what value it has, but, but frankly that's just an example of what we call a trust marker. So, you know, let's say you belong to Nary or a local chapter of your chamber or some, I mean, just having a lot of those trust building elements goes and then just communicating them, goes a long way for that.
That buyer today is out there, they're out there doing their own research. They're out there, you know, kicking the tires, looking at who's out there, looking at who's got social proof, looking at who's got reviews before they ever really call us or fill out a form on our website.
So as much as we can do to, you know, make our online and offline presence, you know, build trust is really, I think one of the core jobs of marketing today. Love it.
You got brand versus marketing. Yeah.
And I see a lot of people on the side of their trucks. It's got everything they do.
There's no real message that pops. Yeah.
You know, it's, it's like, they're the worst reps you've ever seen. They're lettering if you're lucky.
And then, of course, your manufacturer will pay for them if you put their brand on the side of it. You're literally marketing their brand.
They're driving around their billboards, basically. How important is the brand being correct? Well, I think it's really important, frankly.
I mean, you know, a lot of people can, you know, take that maybe too far.

But just having something that says, here's who we are. Here's who we are consistently.
You know, we've been around for a long time. Again, a lot of the brand component really just goes towards building trust.
the fact that that they've seen your trucks around they see your yard signs you know, those are all things that go a long way towards somebody saying, well, yeah, we should just call them because other people seem to, you know, be calling them. Reviews, another great example.
That, you know, for home services businesses, absolutely crucial. You know, you've probably made a decision about whether or not to call somebody based on, you know, they've got 3.4 stars as opposed to 4.5 stars.
A lot of us are making that decision every single day. Yeah, I agree.
I see this all the time. Yeah.
Many small business owners are looking for the ways they can scale without overextending themselves. And I see this all the time.
And they asked me if radio works. I say, yeah, Yellow Book still works.
I go, but you got to be consistent. And, you know, I've worked with the Wizard of Ads before.
I went and visit him and Roy Williams, and his whole notion is, you got to, do you know who that is, Roy Williams? Oh, yeah, sure. Sure.
So you got to spend a, it's a small fortune to hit. His belief system is if you hit the radio with 50% of the population, men and women, boys and girls, doesn't matter your race or gender or age, they got to hit, they got to hear you four times a week.
And if they do, over the course of six to nine months, your brand will be the number one in your category. What is your thought on TV, radio, billboards? Those are more of a branding play.
Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, it's tough when somebody is just getting started, you know, because you need to hustle and get some business. But particularly as an organization grows, starts to grow.
And, you know, because as you said, those things cost a lot of money. There's no question you can dominate your market by, by just the fact that people see you everywhere.
That had, that goes a long way. I mean, especially in the home services businesses, you know, we're not, we're not filing away, you know, that person that could fix our roof until we need a roof fixed.
And, you know, at that point, it's like, who have I heard? Whose trucks have I seen? You know, whose billboards have I seen? What direct mail have I received? That all just keeps us top of mind. And it's hard sometimes because, you know, you don't have a lot of people driving or calling your business saying, yeah, I saw your billboard and I want you to come on out, right? So it's hard sometimes to measure the impact of that spend.
But I think there's no question increasingly having a sort of an omnipresence in, in the market is how you really build a lot of trust, but it's also how you stay top of mind. Love it.
You mentioned that being a self-reliant entrepreneur isn't about isolating yourself, but about trusting your own judgment. So the question is, how can entrepreneurs balance self-reliance with seeking advice or inspiration from others without losing their own sense of direction? Yeah.
So just for context, I wrote a book called The Self-Reliance Entrepreneur, which is essentially,

it's not a marketing book. It is a kind of an entrepreneurial, almost self-help book.
You know, it has daily readings, you know, about kind of what it's like to, you know, it's easy to have a lot of self-doubt to, you know, get down on yourself to, you know, listen to or watch what know see everybody else doing and, you know, try to follow them. So the idea behind that book and really all the messages and that is that, you know, you got to be true to yourself.
You got to do what, you know, you believe is the right thing and, you know, not try to, I mean, obviously there's going to be a lot of people in business that are going to help you that are going to be a to be a part of your success. Um, but you've got to really, uh, you've got to have the vision and, and kind of mission for your business.
And then you got to stay true to it and, and not, you know, not sit there and worry every day. Is this going to work? Yeah.
I think, you know, someone asked me this morning, like how many consultants it took me to be successful. And I'm like, I right one pretty early on but yeah you know my good gut feeling wasn't always the right feeling because when i was younger in business i was like grow grow grow grow grow i was more worried about revenue than profit and profit really what's the machine that allows you to reinvest into the company no question no question so in your book um the duct tape marketing you have a size the importance of making small business simple effective and affordable i'm just curious what's what's the you kind of went through the the milestones a little bit but when you're starting and you've got attribution, you've got the right setup.
The first 90 days, I guess, is if you're first, if you're really small, just going through this checklist, you claim this page, you're advanced verified for Google, your load speed, your website, but what's some simple strategies to make the phone to start to ring? Or is it just a culmination of everything, kind of an omni approach? Well, I think ultimately it is, but you know, you can't do everything right away, right? As much as you'd like to. So ultimately you want to build momentum by adding this one.
And then this one, I tell you what I've done with a lot of businesses getting started is you go out there and find a couple of players that are, that are serving your same market. So for instance, I had a painting contractor.
The guy had been around for a long time, but he started his own practice or his own business. And so I had a couple other clients, electrical contractor and an HVAC contractor.
And so I went to them and said, look, these guys do great work. Why don't you guys co-market together? So what we did is we came up with a flyer, for lack of a better term, that every technician when they went into a house would actually pass out this flyer.
And it had all three of the company's info on it and a coupon for giving them a call. And so what happened was this you know, this, this painting contractor went out and

really, um, hustled and got that flyer into a lot of places and started making not only his own phone ring, but the other guy's phones ring. Um, and consequently, you know, he was getting calls now because the HVAC contractor had like six guys going in 10 houses every day.
Um, and so, you all of a sudden it's like, you know, I, I trust my HVAC contractor. If he says this painter's fine, I'm going to call him.
So, so doing that kind of stuff doesn't really cost much. You know, it takes some relationship building, but that could be a great way for you to really, you know, kind of hit the ground running.
I love that. I love that.
I've

tried doing some stuff, but never the leave behind. The question always is, are you guys

really going to leave it behind? Sure. And there's got to be checks and balances for that.
Yeah.

We could start calling afterwards, checking to see if they got the brochure. Well, a lot, you know, I've done this more than once and, you know, we finally started incentivizing them.
So the thing have the coupon would have codes on them um and it'd say you know what was

you But, you know, I've done this more than once and, you know, we finally started incentivizing them. So the thing would have the coupon would have codes on them and it'd say, you know, what was the code on your coupon? And it was like, oh, that's that's Bill's code.
And so all of a sudden he got, you know, 50 bucks. So now he's like, I'm going to pass these out.
Yeah, no, that's the hardest part is attribution. I've got 7,000 call tracking numbers now.
Yeah, yeah. But, you know, technology's changed a lot over the last 10 years.
It makes it easier to track where people are calling from. No question.
No question. Yeah.
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That's freedomevent.com. All right, back to the episode.
So let's see here. The concept of getting to know, like, and trust you is central to your system.
What are some actionable steps small business centers can do to, to get this, this trust with their audience? Yeah. So the idea is that people go, when they're getting ready to buy, they typically go on a bit of a journey, especially even now.
I mean, that trend of kind of the buyer doing a bunch of research on the front end, because they can, you know, the technology has made it easier for them to get info, is that, you know, we want to guide that person, you know, because you've probably done this before. The more somebody trusts you, the more willing, the more willing they are to pay a premium, right? I mean, if you trust, like I know everybody trusts these guys, everybody uses them.
I'm going to pay more, but I know it's worth it, right? I mean, we've all kind of done that or we know it's going to be a better experience. So the idea is instead of just running ads, you know, we've got to link got to link all three of these things together.
Let's say you run an ad. First thing somebody's probably going to do is go to your website.
What do they see when they get there? Is there a message to solve their problem? Are there, you know, trust markers like banners and testimonials and reviews? You know, so you've got to realize that, that people are, people are their own research. And the more we can do to intentionally, you know, guide that and build the trust, having case studies, having portfolios, those kinds of things have to be a part of the journey.
You know, a lot of people stop at, oh, we just need to run an ad. Well, you run an ad and you're probably going to attract that person that says, I'm looking for the cheapest deal out there.
But you run an ad and you send some of your website, you have lots of reason, lots of resources there to build trust. Then all of a sudden, they're going to be less price sensitive.
Yeah, 100%. And I'll tell you, I used to be very price sensitive as a consumer.
And now I'm definitely looking for someone that can get out there the same day. And what are the reasons why they compete? And I started to realize it more from a consumer.
And I'll tell you, without owning a house with stuff going wrong all the time, it's a bigger house. Now I'm starting to learn how to make ourselves like, man, I saw the plumber just in the last six weeks, seven times.
And I'm like, dude, some of this stuff, I'm like, come on. Like everything, I feel so nickel and dimed.
And I'm like, I wish you just charged me for everything. Give me all the options up front.
Check everything. Tell me everything you think is going to go wrong.
Yeah. Because now I feel like, you know, it's $1,200 here, $5,000 there, $2,000 there.
It's like, what the heck? I don't know. I like to buy the best now.
I will say that. And I'm like, give me an option for everything instead of just telling me what's wrong today.
Yeah. Tell me everything I can possibly get.
Well, and I know you teach this as well, but certainly the folks in your industry that you serve, I mean, the ones that are really excelling, that are really profitable, they spend as much time teaching their techs and their sales folks how to upsell in the sales environment than they do on their marketing. Because quite frankly, there's a whole lot more profit in that upsell quite often than there is in the come out and fix my leaky faucet.
Yeah. So let's dive into that a little bit.
Marketing a little bit versus sales, because I would argue people need to know who you are and you need to book the phone call first. But then as a technician gets out there, I mean, you work with so many companies in the past, how much do you talk to them about sales training and the art of the sale and all that stuff? Well, it's a big part of it because again, the customer journey, you know, doesn't just end when somebody says I want to buy it's, you know, the profitability in an organization is, you know, in some cases, you might lose money.
You know, I know some companies are getting better at it. You might lose money on that first call.
But, you know, you spend all that money to get in the home. And now it's, and you don't do anything to say, to make sure that you're going to come back next year or next week or next month.

You don't give people, make it really easy for them to refer you and incentivize them to tell other, you know, their friends, neighbors and colleagues about you. That's part of the whole journey.
You know, so many people think marketing stops when you get the sale. To me, the real opportunity is after you get the sale to focus intentionally on all the ways that you can upsell and retain customers and, you know, get them to be kind of your new lead generation sales force.
When you're asking for a referral, what's the best way that you've found to do that? Well, it depends in a lot of environments. I don't think there is one best way.
One thing that we do a lot of training on folks is to present it up front. Hey, we know you're going to be so pleased with what we did here today that, you know, we're going to call you up, make sure that everything worked out.
And then we're going to ask you if there's any, you know, have any friends that would need this kind of result. So setting the table, the expectation early on is one simple thing you can do.
Staying top of mind, all your past customers, sending them something, sending them a gift certificate says, hey, here's a $100 gift certificate, one for you, one for your friend. If you pass this out, you're not only referring us, but you're helping them, you're giving them something.
And by doing so, you know, you're going to get something in return as well. So that's something you could do, you know, quarterly, every past customer, you know, just quarterly get in the habit of mailing them.
Because, you know, the thing about referrals is they happen when people need them, you know, not when we need them. And so, you know, just staying top of mind and saying, you know, asking for referrals, making people know that, you know, there's a reason for them to refer you is part of what happens, you know, with then when somebody, you know, when their garage door breaks, you know, it's like, oh yeah, I was just talking to my neighbor about that.
Love it. You know, there's, there's this everywhere you look you look i mean i just had my guys out in town the private equity guys private equity um basically deep pockets are getting in and yeah they don't play it around man they they know the one thing i think they have that most people don't is they they got the bucks and they got the analytics they they've got a proven tried tested methodology they got the best relationships with google they're willing to put buku bucks in

this stuff they're willing to pay for team endorsements and and the best wraps and the newest trucks and the latest technology what's the best way to compete if you're smaller and you're worried about that yeah i mean that's there's no question that's tough you know because we you know we talked about you know they can flood the airways and you know that about that? Yeah, I mean, there's no question that's tough because we talked about they can flood the airways and that kind of thing. But one of the things I think the smaller business probably has to compete on experience.
I'm guessing that those folks also don't always hire the best technicians, don't always do the best training. It's all about getting the phone to ring as opposed to the experience um so that's really going to be your your competitive advantage is that you go into the home and you've got a trustworthy uh trained uh you know gentleman or woman you know that is uh you know able to represent the the brand um effectively and that that a lot of people really underestimate that You look at a lot of Google reviews and a lot of times they don't even mention the company name.
You know, they mentioned Rusty, you know, who came in and fixed my boiler, you know, because that's, to them, that's the face of the company. Yeah, you're giving me all kinds of good ideas here.
I love this stuff. Yeah, so that's the funny thing is we leave reviews for people, not companies necessarily.
And I think it's important for the technician to ask and ask for that review. Yeah, I had a garage door, a couple openers put in recently.
And the guy, as he was wrapping up, he did a great job, really personable guy. And as he was wrapping up, he said, you know, my company does this kind of goofy contest.
If I get reviews, you know, they're going to buy my wife and I dinner at this fancy place. And, you know, so if you, you know, wouldn't mind giving us a review.
I mean, he made it so personal. I was like, what kind of schmuck's not going to give this guy a review? You know, again, like I said, he did good work.
He was a nice guy. Um, but, but just that little twist of, I can help this guy get dinner rather than I could care less about the, you know, the big company.
Um, but I can help this guy get dinner. I, you know, I just think that kind of making it real personal, um, you know, was really effective approach.
So I gave him a review for sure. Taking more notes.
Um i like you know i there's a couple ways to do it i had jeremy minor in here and he's like you know he he kind of laughs and he goes you know i want to be back and going to the office and i'm going to be talking to my boss and if i don't have a review i might be fired um if i don't have a review with my name in it from your call would you mind helping me so i don't get fired and it's kind of like a playful little joke but sure that works uh yeah yeah what are all the mistakes when you when you talk to somebody and you're like oh my gosh you are bleeding Where is the biggest stakes that you see at marketing? Probably the one I see the most is because a lot of small mid-sized businesses, they're really strapped for people, for time, for resources. And yet they're trying to spread themselves.
You know, I got to be on TikTok and I got to be on this and I got to be on that. So they're just kind of spraying stuff everywhere.
And there's really no focus on, you know, a couple areas that are going to make a big difference. So I always, I quite often try to get people to say, look, you need to be on Instagram and you need to be on LinkedIn.
And you need to be, you know, going out there and really working for reviews, for example, and just put a whole bunch of effort into those three things. I'm just throwing out as an example, as opposed to trying to do everything and not really doing a very good job with any of it.
What do you think? Social media, have you found, does it compete like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, X, all of them, do those compete

with traditional TV radio billboards, do you feel?

Oh, I think they do in a different way.

I mean, just like everything,

there are people that don't go to Facebook ever

and there are people that are on it every day

who don't watch television or don't listen to radio.

I mean, so it's tough to just say,

this is better than that.

You're gonna reach a different market.

And I think the real key is, are you tracking the results? Do you have a plan? Are you tracking the results that you're getting from one channel or another? And, you know, continue to double down on what's working and, and, you know, at least experiment on something or cut, you know, something that's not working. I mean, that's, that's the tough thing.
You get a lot of folks that are doing eight things. They have no idea what's actually working.
Business might be good, but they're not sure why necessarily. And that's the real crime, right? You're wasting a bunch of money on stuff that's not working that you could be doubling down or tripling down on a channel that really is working if If you just had the metrics.
You know, a lot of people, I feel like there's a pendulum swing and it goes, I've got great leads coming in. I just, I'm not booking the phone calls.
I don't have the right technicians. I got a top grade.
And then sometimes it's like, I got all the great technicians. I need more leads.
When I do need more great people, I feel like the biggest mistake is people just, they go, let me run an ad. One ad on Craigslist or Indeed or Glassdoor or ZipRecruiter or Monster or CareerBuilder.
Is there a way to figure out a way to market for consumers as well as market for great people to come in, I don't know if it's radio or social media

or what, but do you know what I mean? It's like, we're trying to hit both. Yeah.
So one of the

things that we try to do, and, and, you know, after the pandemic, you know, a lot of, a lot of home service businesses, you know, just really were struggling to get people. And so there's a couple of things there.
You need to think about

demand generation or pipeline of people the same way you do of customers. So it needs to be

something that you don't just go, oh crap, somebody left. We need to hire somebody.
And then, you know,

like you said, you run the ad. It needs, you need to constantly be talking about how, what a great

place it is for you to work at. You need to get your team involved in talking about the fact that, that your brand is a great place for them to, uh, to work.
And so, you know, that kind of messaging all the time about, you know, top company to work at in this city, you know, the, all the employees, you know, sharing, you know, awesome time they had at the company picnic, you know, that kind of stuff just sends subtle messages to, you know, folks that are out there. You know, there's a lot of people out there.
They're not really happy where they are right now. Um, but you know, there's, you know, they're not necessarily looking at ads, um, but they might be paying attention to what's going on out there in the market.
So the key thing there really is just constant. Even if you don't have an open position, you should be trying to attract the A players at all times.
Do you like endorsements? Is that something that you've seen any of the people you've worked with successful? It's almost like you're borrowing their credibility. Yeah.
I mean, I think it can work in a lot of industries. You know, I think that, I think that it can go, people can go overboard too.
I mean, you know, you get these, they pay, you know, pay these supposed influencers on, you know, social media to talk about their product or service or something that people don't care about it. They're, you know, they're just getting paid.
I think it's pretty obvious to people that that's the case. But I think that the right kind of authentic endorsement, so somebody, let's say a remodeling contractor, does great work for somebody on the local football team.
And that person's like, I love these guys. It's amazing what they did.
I would have I would have them back into my house, you know, anytime I need something fixed. I mean, that can be a super powerful endorsement if it's real.
Yeah, my buddy, I was just at his house last week. He's got this snow whitening and he had Rob Gronkowski as his first kind of, he got him to invest in his company.
Then he had the Kardashians. And now he said he's got 26,000 Tik TOK influencers that post every day about his product.
And they're doing, I think he's doing like 150 million a year with the teeth whitening stuff, but you're right. Is, is it authentic? Are they just getting paid to be an influencer? And look, I'll listen to influencers if I could see the products real.
I mean, it's not necessarily buying it because this guy's got it but i if i'm gonna buy like fitness like like products hopefully the people are in shape you know what i mean like it's got to fit the brand yep yep yep no question um how do you usually like to because the question i I get this question probably 10 times a week is how do I pick an agency?

You know, there's a lot of different agencies out there. What's the best way they bill me the more I spend.
So they're kind of incentivized to bill me on pay-per-click. They're going to take 15% of whatever I spend.
So like, when you think about it, how do you, how do you qualify an agency? And then what's the right way to be, to expect them to build? Well, so there's a couple of things that, um, the, the first one is, is, you know, I, I always tell businesses, you need to be talking to agencies that are at least talking about developing a strategic plan, you know, as opposed to just saying, yeah, we do this, uh, we're the best at it and that's what we're going to do for you. So, you know, is that the right thing, right? So somebody who's going to take the time to actually research your market, research your industry, and have a plan that they can show you how they're going to execute.
Clearly, being able to demonstrate we have proven results for other people like you is going to be a piece of it. And then the last one is, and I don't, I don't know about you, but I, you know, we run into lots of folks that work with agencies and they said, yeah, they sent us a traffic report once a month.
We had no idea if it meant anything, if we were doing anything. So you definitely want an agency that's going to tie metrics to what your overall business objectives are.
And I think that's one of the knocks I have with a lot of marketing agencies is they really just want to do the things they know how to do. And the first thing we try to do is understand, like, where are you trying to go from a business growth standpoint? How can we measure your cost to acquire a new customer? You know, how can we measure your repeat business? Because that's, to me, that's the only true way to see if you're being successful.
And it's, you know, when we've been able to work with organizations and they let us have that kind of almost P and L access they never fire us because, you know, we're actually able to demonstrate to them exactly what they're getting for the money that they're spending. So there needs to be a little bit of transparency as well on the company side.
There does. There does.
But, you know, if you've got a company that's not asking for that, that's not asking you strategic questions, that to me is probably a little bit of a red flag. It feels like everywhere I look, there's like white hat labeled SEO companies that the white hat out to India or the Philippines or Ukraine or somewhere.
How do you spot those guys? Well, there isn't anything necessarily inherently wrong with that. I mean, you definitely want to know what they're doing.
And that's one of the challenges, I think, especially at SEO. A lot of people look at it and go, oh, it's really technical.
I don't get it. And so then they don't know what people are doing on their behalf to get them results.
So you definitely want to know exactly what somebody is doing. The fact that they have a team in the Philippines is not necessarily a bad thing.
In some cases, they can actually get you more output for your money, you know, working with folks in other countries. But you definitely want to make sure that the work is quality and that they can tell you exactly how they're getting you those results.
You know, I talked to some of the largest companies in North America and we talk about return on ad spend, Roaz. Some of them, it's so high, but SEO pulls their numbers down dramatically.
SEO is one of those things where it's earned media. It takes time, effort, and energy.
My domain authority right now is a 64 on Ahrefs. That's A-H-R- it's website ranker you type that in it's free you see what what your website is and you know what my major goal is that i hit the number one spot for the the search words that matter and it's hard to believe that i can get pulled down to below 10 percent with how much money we spent.
And some of it's going after general search terms, and some of it, what we found was, is our trucks and our billboards and our yard signs and our TV and our radio, and those things start to multiply. People start searching us by name, which isn't much a search.
Yes. But when they are searching a generic search term, I mean, for for example the private equity company i work with works with this company called little sleepies and they're they're just kids sleeping pajamas and they generate an ungodly amount of money uh but they're so good at ranking number one and is that some people say seo is dying what is your take on that so it's going to be around for a long time especially for local service businesses uh you know like all the folks that are showing up in the google maps but it there's no question it is dying for general kind of information types of searches because the search engines are are giving the answer so you know it used to be you could write an article about you know the five best types of searches because the search engines are giving the answer.
So, you know, it used to be you could write an article about, you know, the five best types of air conditioners to install in your home and people who were trying to find out like what kind of brand should we be looking for? What kind of unit should we be looking for would find your content? Well, now Google is just saying, here's the answer as opposed to sending you to that blog post. So for those kind of that kind of general information traffic is almost dead.
I mean, you've seen people having 30, 40 percent drops in their organic search. But for that high intent, who is the best HVAC contractor in Seattle?

Because I'm getting ready to hire one of those.

There's no answer to that that Google can give, other than showing them, you know, here's the companies and showing them the Google Maps listing, showing them, you know, the rankings and reviews. So the most high intent searches are still going to, especially for local businesses, are going to be with us for a long time.
But there's no question we're losing a lot of that, you know, long tail kind of educational search organic traffic. Yeah, that's another question.
I'm just drilling you here with tons of questions. One is, I get this a lot from on the stage is, will chat GBT and some of these AI, will they become a major platform for search engines? Like I use chat GBT all the time to make tables and do all kinds of like, what I mean by tables, like I'll say, I want to see $200 million at 20% IRR over the course of 10 years.
And we'll spit it all out real quick. Right.
But I never used it to find a local brand or a local restaurant or say, maybe a local recipe, maybe like a recipe. But, you know, people are always, what is AI going to do? And is it going to destroy SEO? Is it going to destroy pay-per-click? Is it going to destroy what Google is today? Where do you see AI going right now? Well, I don't think it's going to destroy pay-per-click, but it's already eroded general search traffic.
No question. Because if you do a search on Google today, there's a good chance that it's going to return an AI result in the top result that is going to give you the answer.

You know, what it used to do is give you here's three websites that we think have this answer.

You know, go knock yourself out and go to them.

Well, now it's just giving you the answer. So all that traffic that used to go to those websites that spent a whole bunch of money and time ranking for general search terms, that traffic's going away.
I won't say it's dead, but it's going away. And so being in some of the places, what's also happening is it's changing search behavior.
So it used to be Google was it, right? I mean, but now a lot of folks are going to the perplexities of the world and ChatGPT has searched now. They're going to TikTok.
TikTok is actually a huge amount of traffic that is people searching for how to do stuff on TikTok. So what it's really going to do, I think, is it's going to require us as marketers to spend more time in some of these, figure out where our clients are searching, where they are getting their answers now, and spend more time in some of those places.
Reddit is another one that, you know, that I'm afraid, you know, people are going to have to, you know, invest in spending some time on because a lot of the, you know, a lot of questions that people have are coming out of Reddit content. So it's, it all really leads to marketing is just going to get harder.
That's what I believe. What are your thoughts on Quora? You've ever heard of Quora? Yeah, sure.
Quora's good. You know, again, the problem with a lot of those sites is you got to invest a lot of time and energy to have any kind of impact on them.
What do you think about Upwork and Fiverr and just finding a pro at a source? I mean, I haven't really done much with Fiverr, but we have used Upwork to place a lot of marketing folks

in our clients. And if you do a good job of writing the job description, writing the requirements,

you know, analyzing the people, we've had really great luck finding some very talented people

who in a lot of cases wanted a certain situation. They wanted to be able to take their kids to school and pick them up from school.
So, you know, a traditional job wasn't going to work for them, but 20 hours a week, they were, you know, very, very experienced, very talented, not that expensive. And so we've, we've had a lot of luck.
If you, you got to spend time investing upfront in finding the right person and interviewing and hiring the right person and then training the right person. But that's like any, you're not going to have success probably in any position without doing that.
You know, there's just, I've done some stuff on Upwork and you get everybody from $3 an hour from Bangladesh up to like $280 per hour.

I guess it depends on the project.

Is it a one-time project?

What are you trying to do?

And I don't know if there's a right answer here.

But is there any specific guidelines you have to kind of figure it out?

Because I say, look, sometimes depending on the result, they tell you –

people will rate them, and they'll tell you how much they spent with them. And I think it's verified.
I don't know. There's a way to get around that.
It seems like they do a good job of keeping it into a closed loop. But, you know, if I need a project that's going to take 20 hours and it's 200 bucks an hour, I might just spend the four grand and just get it done right away instead of having a nightmare.
I don't know. Your first point is absolutely correct.
I mean, if it's just a one-off thing, you probably can find a lot of people to do it. And if cost is a big factor.
But if you want to have any kind of long-term relationship with somebody because you're going to have this need over and over again. We hire a lot of people there part-time that we have probably half a dozen folks we've hired off of Upwork that are now full-time employees.
So it's a great place to actually do, you know, it's kind of like start part-time, we'll try you out. So it's actually kind of nice way to do that as well.
I love it. Well, we're coming here near the end here.
Is there a couple books that really changed your life in the home service or the marketing or, you know, a lot of us talk about Michael Gerber or, you know, even Rich Dad, Poor Dad, or even books like Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich, or, you know, there's a lot of great books out there, but is there any of them that really stood out to you over time? Well, you know, you mentioned the E-Myth. That certainly was one that I read, you know, early on in my career and had a lot of impact.
I'm a big fan of Peter Drucker. He doesn't necessarily write for the home services.
He was a management consultant that worked with very large companies, but he was very systems driven. And I'm a, you know, that's really been a big influence on me is the idea that marketing is a system.
And, you know, we've got to think about it that way and not as just some, you know, group of random acts. I love that Peter Drucker yeah and then

what

if someone wants to reach out to you, John, obviously you buy your book, Duct Tape Marketing, but what's the best way to get a hold of you? Sure. Well, I've got tons of resources as well as just descriptions of what we do, how we work with folks.
It's all at ducttapemarkcom. That's D U C T T A P E marketing.com.
That's the best place to go. Awesome.
And last but not least, we talked about a lot of stuff here. Lots and lots of stuff.
We were all over the place. And that's a good thing because this was really, I think marketing is the lifeblood of any company.
Go ahead and just anything we didn't talk about, anything that just you feel compelled to close us out with and let the audience know about, I'll give you the closing. So we talked a little bit about AI and I'm not a fan of just like, oh, AI hype, it's going to change the world.
But it is going to dramatically impact how we go to work, who we hire, how we manage, how we lead. And so, you know, don't take a nap on it and say, oh, I'll figure it out once it, you know, once it gets here.
You know, it's here and it's changing, you know, how you bid. It's changing how you manage all the processes in your business.
It's certainly changing marketing. So look at it, study it, take some lessons, take some classes, not because you want to want AI to run your business, but so that you can actually understand the full potential.
I got one follow up question. Do you think the people that leaned in the best and dominated AI, do you think there's going to be

very few winners and a lot of losers? I mean, is that where we're looking?

I mean, maybe initially people will feel that way, but I think ultimately AI is going to be plumbing. I mean, it's going to be built into everything.
You know, every everything that we do in marketing will have an AI interface.

You know, every every bit of software that we all use to run our companies today will all be run by AI. Half of it will go away, quite frankly, because there's a lot of redundancies in that.
So it's just going to be baked into everything. And so, you know, I don't think there's this risk that if you don't

master AI and be like a first mover that you're toast. But I think initially,

there will be some pretty significant strategic advantages to folks that are out front.

Awesome, John. Well, I've got pages and pages and pages of notes here.
So I know this was a

great podcast. I really appreciate your time today and look forward to connecting in the future.
Awesome. Appreciate it, Tommy.
Thanks. All right, my brother.
Thank you. Hey there.
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