EP103: High Value Marketing Strategies With Marc Levesque

Yeah. I mean, yes and no. Yeah. It depends on the crowd, I guess. But yeah, there's some people who are pretty committed to growing their businesses and like, Hey, maybe I can get some hacks from this guy and, you know, figure out some shortcuts and, you know, get some results and others. It's like, Oh no, another marketer. Stay away. So yeah.

I usually get called out there within seconds of the phone. So yeah, I'm in that, all Quebec. So that French, you hear some French in there for sure.

absolutely. I'll give you the Cliff Mills version. I don't want to take up all our time here, but 50 or so years ago, I date myself here, age myself. I used to work for a software company and that software company used to... a cell technology into large, you know, media groups, media companies to essentially aggregate data from all these different media mining platforms. Yellow Pages, for example, was a customer. And so they had thousands upon thousands of customers. And so in the running campaigns, they would need technology to make reporting easier. So I was on the cell side of that technology. And through that, I got to see how digital agencies worked. And there's a lot that I liked about the business model and there's a lot that I disliked. And fast forward a couple of years, I got the itch to start my own agency and we jumped into business myself and my co-founder. Our goal was to start a PPC agency and do things differently than they were being done at the time. And well,10 years later, here we are. We've reinvented ourselves probably twice within that 10 year span. We've got a nice... successful business owner and we work exclusively with home improvement contractors today's home service or proven however you want to call it but all sorts of contractors you know all sizes and we help them to scale their businesses as you said more predictably and more profitably so just taking the pain out of out of growth yeah just started started this company out of just a desire and interest to be a business owner

10,10,10 years. Yep. 10 years.

Yeah, there are many, Brad, as you know, probably. And I'll say that, you know, there's people fall short at different levels based on where they're at, right? You could be a startup and just, you know, you set off into a direction and it's the wrong direction to begin with from an marketing perspective, that is, right? You could also be a three, four, $5 million company and just be making all sorts of mistakes. So I think there's all other ways to do things wrong. The question is, you know, where are you at? And, you know, how can you avoid those mistakes? I'll say generally not having a focus is one of the biggest issues for most businesses. And it's normal, right? Even ourselves,10 years ago, we thought we were going to do this one thing. Cash flows everything when you're small and you got to pay your bills, people to pay. You have a tendency to want to say yes to everything. And so naturally, you don't want to limit yourself. You have a tendency to want to go wide. And that in the long run hurts you because you appeal to no one. You can't create. It is difficult to become known as a specialist for one thing if you just go really, really, really broad. So I mean, that was us 10 years ago. We offered every marketing service under the sub to any business. So we've worked with mom and pop shops, large manufacturers, distributors, e-com brands. eventually you ask yourself okay who's my customers all the improvement space okay that that holds true right if you're in business providing services to people well it's difficult to compete with you know if somebody needs let's go with a roof replacement for for example somebody needs roof as a homeowner i'd probably deal with someone who only does that compared with somebody who does you know bathrooms kitchen oh happen to do roofing too specialization the focus i'd say is one area um and then after that it has a lot to do with just being on a set of numbers the metrics having you know a plugin that's mapped out holding yourself accountable to that plan sort of working backwards from your revenue goals i think people are quick to jump into things but don't properly engineer you know how they're going to get there so there's just a lot of unpredictability once they get started and it's tough to you know recorrect and get back on the course if you're I don't know if that's a little ambiguous or vague. Generally, I think it's a lot of planning and strategy that's lacking.

Here's different ways to go about that. You know, somebody two years in probably already has, you know, some understanding of where they would want to focus their time. You know, if we have conversations with, with a potential customer, having these, these type of talks and. realize that, hey, this company is offering too many services here. And they unfortunately just don't have the budget to market everything. So we do need to focus. And we say, well, you know, often times people look to the marketers, what should I do? We're going to turn around and ask questions like, well, what do you have the capacity to deliver? Like, what is your team best at delivering? Do you prefer doing bathrooms or kitchens? Prefer doing roofing or siding? Like, what do you enjoy doing? What is your team great at installing? What do you have an easier time, you know, past couple of years? Fulfillment, logistics has been a nightmare for a lot of businesses, right? So what do you have an easier time ordering, warehousing, pricing standpoint, leak times? Where do you have nice margins? And some people will say, hey, I love the one day up to shower conversion business because I made it out in a day or two. Whereas others like, hey, I'm design built. I don't mind spending a couple of weeks on the job site. delivering something world-class and you know i charge a premium for it but so i think the contractor has the answer to a lot of those questions on the flip side you could talk to a marketer and say well if we want to get specific you can look at you know market you know trends keyword research and say well in this market where what is there more demand so so that's pretty neat because you can look at your geography and say well should i do this service or this service use a search at the platform we'll give you tools where you upload a list of all your keywords And they'll tell you more or less what kind of demand. That's something marketers should be able to help you with. Everybody could follow you, what it could cost to advertise those terms. But I'd say it's a combination of both. You got to look at the hard data, the analytics. Also, internally, what do you enjoy doing? What do you have the capacity to do? Where are your markets? Where does it make sense?

And you're absolutely right because you could have a, You know, you're a remodeler, you focus more on design, build, really, really custom projects. As you say, you could have a wildly successful business on your hands doing, you know, a dozen or two dozen jobs a year. You don't need, you know, that much lead flow because you're only looking to close a couple dozen jobs. So it's very different. You can rely heavily on word of mouth and referral if you're doing that. But the tough to shower, you know, the one day bath guys. You talk to them and they see themselves as sales and marketing organizations and they have their numbers dialed in and they know, you know, this is what I need in terms of lead flow. This is what I got to spend to make that happen. This is the rate at which I'm going to set appointments, close, et cetera, et cetera. Right. So they've got that funnel pretty well dialed in.

So, I mean, just sort of building on kind of the last question, I would say focus, but internally. So companies that are scaling, you know, as a business owner, it's normal when you're early on in your career that you wear multiple hats. At a certain point, you got to start taking some hats off and start delegating, right? Because that's where, you know, you'll really move the needle. You have people focused on one thing. So you get in operations directories, you got people running sales and then, you know. It becomes easier to grow a business. I would say that is one big, big component. So having focus. Again, correlation with success, I mean, it's very difficult to improve what you don't measure. So again, being able to start sort of with the end in mind. So you start with your goal. You know, any successful business owner that we talk to, they know their numbers. So they know where they're at. They know what they're pacing for. You know, hey, this is the runway we're on. We're going to finish the year here. You know, all things considered. God willing, but they have those numbers mapped out so they know where they're going to need to spend money. They know what it's going to cost them with all of their different lead sources to acquire leads and customers. So they're just very analytical, very data-driven and a lot less emotional. And so what that does is when you need to make decisions, decisions can happen a lot faster because you have the data right there in front of you. It's black on white and you take emotions out of the equation. And what that affords you is the opportunity to be more selective in terms of the projects that you want to take on. And that's something that I think plagues a small business owner. They don't have that engine to drive leads and sales and deliver work efficiently. And so there's a lot of waste and inefficiency. And so they're not all that profitable. So they end up trying to compete on price because they want the job. They don't have the opportunity to, they can choose the job they want because they're lacking lead. downward spiral, right? So successful business owners have created momentum by, you know, just excelling at all these different components that are so, you know, you get lead flow dialed in, you close, you deliver, you get those closed deals and start generating referrals and you get more word of mouth. Now you're seeing a better ROI on your marketing. And I mean, that just compounds and compounds and compounds. And the last but not least, they're not the cheapest. You know, if you're trying to compete purely on price to win, yeah, it's a losing proposition. Those are some of the things that I would see. Rarely will you see a really successful business that says, oh, we are the cheapest in the market. That doesn't happen. And then they'll always have a handle on their numbers. And they're able to correct, of course, if ever they veer off, if ever there's a downturn in the economy or whatever. You saw it.

Exactly what I'm saying, right.

Yeah, it's

I think it is very important because... As you get to the point where you can start delegating and offloading some of the tools, you're no longer not delegating the tool, but the task, you need to understand how things work. Because whether it's personnel in-house or you're outsourcing, you don't want anyone pulling, you know, fast ones on you. So you've got to understand it. I think it starts with you. You know, you start off by being able to do a little bit of everything. You get it, you grasp it. And after that, you start figuring out where, you know, you get the highest ROI on your tot. And so you start delegating the rest. You can call people's bluff and say, hey, I've done this before. I know what it is. This is not good here. We've got a problem, right?

for me that's an easy one brad i i truly believe that there's a lie that you can draw kind of right down the middle because There are certain things that I don't care what size you are, whether you've just started off and you're new to business, you've been doing this for years and years and years, there's certain things you'll never be able to outsource effectively. There's things that only you, internally, the people that make up your organization, your company DNA, you just can't outsource, i. e. social media, organic content. If you're not, and again, someone argued, say, oh yeah, you can batch content, you can have crews come and do that, and then you get your content for the year. Yes. Obviously, we can argue the point until the sun goes down, but largely when you're a bit smaller and you are limited in terms of marketing dollars, budget, you have to wear that marketing hat and do some pictures calls. And that's okay because some of these things are hard to outsource, hard for another company that's not there day in, day out, in your market, helps ease the climate, the weather, first, understands all these different dynamics internally. Only you understand. and or your people. So to convey and communicate that, put that message out there to the world, especially organically, through social, no one can do that better than you, you know, in a genuine and authentic fashion. I think that people should, you know, stop trying to look for that company that's going to knock it out. There are some great companies out there that can handle content on your behalf, but it's also challenging to outsource that, right? you know, and you hear the stories, you hear people, oh, I hired this company in my blog post, but my blog posts are so generic. They don't mean anything. No one reads stuff. You know, okay, they're geared for SEO, but they provide little to no values. It's like, so I think, yeah, things you do yourself, stuff, you know, in advertising, for example, yeah, you can spend money fast. So if you get in there and you get too aggressive, I mean, you can, you can, you can burn money in no time. So, I do think that there are certain things that should be, you know, it's okay, learn it, try it, do it. But at a certain point, you do want to be able to hand that off to professionals who could kind of scale it beyond what you're able to do. Because professionals, well, hey, that's all they do. They test it at a different rate than you can do. You just don't have the time to devote to it. It's not your full-time job. It's something that you add into the mix. Yeah, that's what I'd say. Certain things you do yourself, certain things you outsource, anything to do with your brand, humanizing your company. you know, recruiting, that's got to come from within. And the very, very technical stuff, you seek out, you know, expertise and professional help to ensure that you avoid costly mistakes.

Yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah, you've got to look at that opportunity cost and it is different for everyone and everyone's in a different cash flow situation. Yeah, these are questions that people need to be asking. Absolutely.

I don't think I can disagree with that philosophy. I think it's the whole, you know, done is better than perfect kind of mindset as well. It's like, yeah. Off because you don't have, you know, you don't have the budget. You're not able to get the right site that you want, or you can't hire, you know, the experts yet. I do think that something is better than absolutely. And, you know, sometimes people get to the point where they are doing something, but they are limited in budget. And so they've got to make concessions and they've got to pick and choose between. what they can and can do. And again, I think there just comes down to being able to comprehend, you know, what's going to drive value for me in a short period of time, what's going to take a little bit longer that he can make educated decisions there. But, but yeah, something is better than nothing. Absolutely.

I think we're all a little victim of that. We've all got websites that are dated that have been neglected.

Yeah, I mean, having the right expectation going into it is number one. You've been talking about websites a little bit and, you know, far too often we hear, especially when people are newer to the trades, a lot of people associate the website and, you know, the size of the website, how much you stand on it, how professional it looks. I mean, yeah, these things all do have an impact. But a website alone is not always going to make or break your business. So to your point, I think it's a good idea to just have something. And it doesn't need to be perfect, but have something. But yeah, just don't mistake a website for success because a website's a storefront. No traffic, no leads, nothing's happening. So I think you got to get really, really, really analytical. Paint yourself a picture of what success looks like. What are you trying to achieve and accomplish? And I know it's not about money, but when you're in business, you don't have a generating revenue, you're not profitable. You don't have much of a business. You won't be able to employ people and scale and take care of your family and all these other things. So you need to get clear with respect to what you're trying to achieve. If you're just starting, okay, what's going to be your goal? What's that objective? You're looking at what you're selling, what the average size of your job is. How many jobs realistically can you deliver throughout the year? That sort of thing. And so you're working backwards. You start from the revenue goal, figure out three jobs you need to deliver to make that happen. Based on that number, you're going to need leads. Now, based on your ability to close, some people are phenomenal at sales and they've got great salesmanship, ability to handle leads when they come in, follow up with prospects, close deals. Others are terrible at it. you know, close rate for one may be very different than another, but that's got to be factored into that equation too. So if I realize that, hey, I need to close 20 jobs this year, if I close at 20%, great, need five times that number of leads. So what do I need to do to get, you know,100 leads this year? And if I'm working year round, great, that's, you know, is that eight with something leads a month? That's nothing, you know what I mean? So get really, really, really concrete with what you need to happen at a micro level. And then, That's your focus. Hey, I got to drive eight leads this month. And then after that, you can even put a price to it because you know what your average job size is. You know what your margin, you know, baked in there. So you know when you can afford to spend on those eight leads. So back to that correlation question before, you know, all the successful companies, they know, hey, I could spend 8% of cost over revenue to acquire a customer or 9%,12%, or 3%, whatever the number is. But that's their threshold. That's their limit. And so there you go. They'll put money into marketing, right? If they're at $2 million and their goal is to get to $4 million, they're going to try to spend their $4 million business, drive the lead flow that they need, close that volume of leads. And the beauty about doing it this way is that once you've got those thresholds, you've got something to benchmark. So as you start investing dollars into all these different marketing sources, avenues, options. If you're measuring them adequately, you'll be able to see what your cost is for each. So I know there's a lot of people doing the word of mouth and the referrals, and that, firstly, is the holy grail. That's what you want. That's the end game. Get more referrals for word of mouth, but don't build your business around it. It's predictable. So you want to almost force or create an engine that is going to be conducive to more referrals for word of mouth. On the front end, you're putting money into something, right? Into Shalcia and Proclaim. SEO, to your website, summits door dock, I mean, flyers, mailers, you name it. But all these things are geared to get your visibility, traffic, you get leads. Then after that, you got to know what to do with them, right? So going off on a tangent here, Brad, but that's just, it could make it predictable. Start with the end, work backwards, you get your audio numbers. After that, you've got something to bring money to things that you can say, hey, looks like I'm acquiring leads and customers for far less money. source and in. If there's room to spend more money, maybe mailers, I'm just crushing it in my market. Hey, let me dump more money into mailers. You're like, can't do you? You're great. Where should I spend my money now? Well, let's go to my next second most affordable lease money there. When you get analytical like that and you're just very calculated, there's less guesswork. And I'd say that's what would be promised.

Yeah, exactly. And that question that you brought up is great. And you have to dig a little bit there because sometimes people will say, you know, where did you, where'd you hear about us? They'll say, oh, I Googled you. Okay, well, why didn't you Google us? Or would you click on? I've had people tell me, I literally will ask customers what they actually clicked on. Where did you click? A little excessive, but nonetheless, this is a company that was, you know, hell bent on figuring out exactly, you know, where. And then so the homeowner would say, well, I saw a truck on the road. And then I remembered the name and then I Googled the name and then I clicked on an ad. So you're like, oh, okay, cool. So there's some attribution there. We give some benefit to the truck rat. We spent money on that. We know they Googled us. You oftentimes don't know. Homeowners sometimes can't make the distinction between a paid ad, a local service ad, the map pack, the organics. Right. But I think it's a little tricky, but anyhow, yeah, great question to ask.

You could, yeah. So when it comes to, first of all, if you have no website, sometimes the quickest thing to do is to just get yourself a landing page, right? Because it's going to be more cost effective for you. You'll get that done a lot faster, you know, less content to kind of come up with imagery and all that kind of stuff. So a landing page is a homepage that totally worked for you for, you know, short periods. We do a lot of paid advertising at WebRudder, right? We spend a lot of dollars in Google and Facebook and all the, you know, paid media platforms. And when we're buying traffic, we will send traffic deliberately to landing pages. So if we deliberately send our paying money to acquire traffic, we want to make sure that that traffic has a high likelihood of converting. In other words, capturing, you know, the homeowner's info so that you can then, you know, follow up, set an appointment, that sort of thing. So we'll send somebody to a one pager that talks specifically about the service they were looking for. So if, for example, someone did a search on Google for a window replacement, you know, company, and they saw an ad for a window replacement company, naturally we'd want to bring them to a webpage. talks purely about window replacement and positions you as the expert in the local market for window replacement. So a landing page eliminates the need for the homeowner to have to click through and figure out what's what, write the right page. Everything is presented to the customer so that they don't have to go out of their way to find the information. So that would be the benefit of the landing page. Now, people may find you. Get to your landing page and not necessarily convert right away. So what happens is over time, people, they'll retain that name and they'll do a search for your brand. They'll find you afterwards and then make their way to your website. So there's all sorts of ways that people can find you online. Whether you send people to the landing page or website, it's really going to come down to what is the source of that traffic. Typically, if you're paying for your traffic. paid me a platform, do you want to send it to a landing page and focus the narrative, the conversation around what the intent was? If people are finding you automatically, they'll find your website, right? So

absolutely. So if you have the resources and typically a website will, you know, to some extent be comprised of landing pages. So think of your most, you know, fundamental, like basic website. You'll have a homepage, you'll have an about page, you'll have a contact page, and then you have some service pages, potentially a blog. The service pages should in essence be a series of Latin pages. So if you are a remodeler that provides, you know, a variety of different services, you should have one page for each service. But on that page, here's the problem. Most websites where they fall short is the service page on the website. doesn't usually have everything that it should have in order to convert that visitor into a lead, right? So they'll have some pictures, maybe a bit of text, but it's missing the call to action. It's missing an offer. It's missing a form, a visible form. It doesn't talk about whether you offer financing or not. It won't have all the social proof in the form of customer testimonials and before and afters. And there's a lot that you can... put into a landing page that could increase the likelihood of somebody saying, hey, this company looks awesome. I need to talk to that. But far too often, page on a website wasn't initially designed with that purpose in mind. And it's oftentimes not the contractor's fault. Web development design company, they'll create a website made up of a couple of pages. And when they get to the services, okay, they'll create a template for that service. And then every other service, they reuse that template. And if, you know, structure of that page isn't great, well, now you're just multiplying the problem by however many services you offer. There's just oftentimes things missing. And last but not least, on that service page on your website, you have a navigation in the header, you have a navigation in the footer with tons of different links, things that sort of detract from the conversation. So you're now giving the homeowner options to click away, click through, and people get distracted sometimes. And, you know, you don't want to give anyone the option. If you're looking for windows, come to the window page. Now I'm giving you three options. You can call me. You can fill out a form so that I can get back in touch with you via email or phone or whatever. Or maybe I can start a chat with you online. Those are the three most common conversion mechanisms that should be on a landing page. So consider that when you're tweaking your website.

Yeah, so that is going to come down to the frame of mind that the homeowner is in when they're on their path to purchase. For example, if I am... finding a home remodel and I want to redo my kitchen and my bathroom and I happen to live in a very affluent neighborhood where homes are really expensive and this project is likely going to set me back potentially a couple hundred grand, right? I am likely not going to Google somebody, call the first person that I see and book them to come in and do the job. I'll probably educate myself a little bit. You know, what options are available to me? You know, who are reputable companies? What kind of work have they done in the past? What does entertaining a project like this even look like? Am I going to have people living in my house with me for six months? As we go through this project, I don't know any of this. It's foreign to me. So what am I going to do? I'm going to educate myself. So in that scenario, yes, having long form sale of copy. A lot of people say nowadays, oh, people don't have time. People don't read. I think that's a load of bull. People do read and copy is very, very impactful. And from a marketing perspective, oftentimes the most neglected component. So, yeah, there's, and again, it comes down to testing. You can't just, you know, hey, this is going to work better. Well, we don't know. Maybe a short form page with just everything above, you know, the folds so someone doesn't need to scroll times out without perform. Other times, maybe a lobber page. But if I contrast that whole remodel, you know, very expensive design build, long sales cycle, you know, long delivery process, if I contrast that with, say, a restoration company. I have a fire or water damage. I'm Googling someone and I'm calling. I don't need any long form sales page. I'm not educating myself. I'm not trying to figure out how this stuff works. I didn't need somebody to come and dry out my basement.

Down to intent. Is it likely that the homeowner is going to allocate that much time to understanding and figuring this out? It just depends. How committed is that homeowner learning and figuring this stuff out?

Yeah. And just something to add to that. I think people get caught up in the marketing world. It's you hear a lot of, oh, test, test the layout, test the colors, tests, you know, all these different things that in the grand scheme of things can result in some improvements, but largely what's going to have the biggest impact. It's, it's your, it's your copy, your message. Most importantly, above all, it's your offer. Yeah. Yeah. It's not a marketer with that. Like, have you. the business owner come up with a compelling offer that is going to set you apart from anyone else in your market. Something that's going to make the homeowner say, oh, wow, this is insane. This is cool. No one's doing this. This is unique. Or this is like, what's going to get someone to stop and say, wow, this is like, this is it. So the offer is probably the most important component to test. It's not the color of the button, where the button is. Yes. You'll record, you know, session recording and heat mapping and check out all the technical stuff to see how you can bring some improvements to the page. Beyond that, what's your offer?

And who controls that? It's not the marketer, right? Yeah. So you got to get creative, right? Look at your... Study your competitors, understand their pricing. What are they doing? What's their value proposition? How do they communicate? How do they market? How do they deliver the service? And then anything that you can do that could set you apart or position your service as a notch above pre and exclusive, something that's going to just get somebody to say, yeah, but with these guys, I get this. That could have a huge, huge impact on what you derive from the same marketing budget. Come up with a good offer.

That's customer service. It's customer experience. Latitudes. Yeah.

But I like your point, though, about basing it on data. If you can identify pain points with the common, you know, and sometimes that has to do with, I don't know, re-emodeling. People spend in a home or the cleanliness after the job or all these little things. Maybe it's you're coming out with some kind of a guarantee or something that it's positioning. And that's what marketing is at its core. It's messaging, it's positioning, it's, you can, you can have one offer, but positioned in 10 different ways is perceived different. It looks like 10 different offers, but you're doing the same service at the end of the day, you know?

Yeah, and sometimes that add-on bonus is a surprise. And then that's how you get that review, and that's how you get that referral. And it's little things like that compound substantially.

right. So short of seeing the account or without much context, I mean, the name of the game in search is always relevancy, right? You want to lower your cost per click, but to an extent, right? Because you should be willing to pay as much as you can afford for a keyword that's going to drive you a lead, which will turn into a sale. It's not about getting the cheapest keywords, right? Because you can identify keywords that won't cost you a lot, but they also won't get searched all that often. You're not going to get much volume from them and they won't result in increasing your lead flow substantially. It's leveraging keyword tools to do the keyword research to identify what keywords could drive traffic at a reasonable cost. And of course, you have to know what your conversion rates are on the landing page side of things, right? Because fundamentally, you want to know what can I afford to spend on Visitor? Because I know that my landing page converts to 10%. So if my click cost is $10, great. Every $100 I spend, I got a lead. It's that black and white, right? So now if I can optimize my campaigns, and I can get a visitor for less than 10 bucks, which we use to, there's a lot of things that will factor in there and you're just winning. So it's, it's keyword selection at the end of the day. All it is, it's keyword selection. I would say that more importantly than click cost. The only metric we truly care about is customer acquisition cost, right? I'll spend 50 bucks on a keyword, right? You know, if, if I was to say, Brad, you know, which, which keyword do you want me to bid on? The one at $25 or the one at $50? Actually, you'd say, well, $25 because it's less. But what if the keyword is $50? Every two clicks on that keyword, you're resulting in a lead. That's $100. But the $25 keyword based on the intent, blah, blah, blah, you need eight of those clicks. You're $200 a lead. So you're double the cost, right? Same thing with leads. People come in and say, well, how much are, what's it going to cost me to drive leads? Well, you're asking their own question. It's not about the lead. I could sell you a lead for 500 bucks, but if that lead is going to close, you'll spend 500 bucks, right? So if you say, which lead do you want,50 bucks or 500? All up to that should be, well, at what rate will those leads convert? So in terms of optimizing the campaigns for search, the way to Google Bing, it's all about relevancy. So it's making sure that your keyword is well-themed, well-grouped, tight ad groups that is going to trigger ads that are really relevant to what the query was. that's going to increase the click-through rate. So when that ad appears, the person searching for that keyword that you're bidding on, very relevant with that search, clicking on it at a high rate. You've got a better ad rank. Your quality scores are better. Google is giving you referential treatment. It's costing you less to advertise than somebody else because you're not wasting real estate on Google's front page. Google's in the business of making money, right? If they're showing your ad, no one's clicking on it, there's an issue. And Google doesn't like that. They're saying, hey, this advertiser is telling us he wants to bid on these keywords. We're showing his ad and it's not getting clicked on at a rate that we're happy with. He's got a really low click-through rate. So we'll let you continue to advertise there, but we're going to charge you a premium. And that's essentially how search works, right? Well, I hope that helps. And, you know, in terms of reducing costs further, I'd urge individuals to pose that question to just get an audit done. We do free audits all the time and we can... figure out if there's ways to lower those costs.

absolutely, Brad. I took that. So yeah, first off, I hope this was valuable, helpful for the listeners. I know you got a great show and a good group. So hopefully we're able to bring some value here. In terms of services, we just touched on an audit. That is, I think, number one. If anyone's spending money and they're unsure of whether or not what they've got is in good standing, if it's driving results, is there potential to scale or whatnot, just get a second opinion. And we like to help, we like to put value out there. And so for us, it gives us a lot of context. So if somebody is looking for potentially a new vendor to work with from a marketing standpoint, we always want to know these things up front, right? So an audit is good for both sides. You know, we can look at an account that provides a lot of insight and we're very transparent with that. So if things are great, we'll tell you. If things are terrible, we won't sugarcoat it. We'll tell you. So an audit would be a first place to start and we can audit, you know. paid advertising accounts on the Google side, Bing side, Facebook side, we cannot have landing pages. We are largely a paid media company. Last year in Q4, we launched SEO as a service. We don't offer websites, so we don't design and build websites. The extent of what we do from a design and development standpoint, our landing pages for our paid advertising campaign. The way the agency is growing, I suspect at some point in the future, websites will make its way onto our roster. But for now, we're a paid advertising company. And so we work with companies that are, you know,5 million looking to get to 10 and beyond. And we also work with companies who are in startup mode and who've never done any of this stuff before. So we have programs that can, you know, cater to both needs. And, you know, if you're looking to get started, what you don't want to do is make all kinds of costly mistakes. We have a program where there's like a one-time investment, no ongoing, you know, recurring fees. That makes it a lot easier on cash flows. It's a good way to get started with paid ads. And then as you scale, normally people transition on to another program where we have ongoing monthly management fees. There's a lot more time being invested in an account largely because of testing, right? So that's just at a high level of some of what our services look like. But if anyone has questions or just wants to talk, book a demo with someone from our team and then we can, you know, pop the hood open, see what's there, provide you some, you know, some insights and feedback that we're always happy to help. Go to webrunnermedia. com. There's a demo button there somewhere in yellow. And that's how they get in touch with us.

Yeah. Thanks, Brad. Yeah. We don't care about budgets because a lot of agencies take a percentage of what people spend. We don't. We go with fixed fee model. So it's very, very transparent. And we try to hold ourselves accountable to revenue, right? So if somebody is putting money into something, well, there has to be a certain ROI on there. And we usually try to tie into CRM so that we can bridge the gap between what's being spent and what's happening on the revenue side. And that's where a lot of... People fall short on the data and the analytics side, right? So when you could spend money, you know, that is driving leads that are driving sales, it becomes easier to know where to put those marketing dollars and where to stop putting those marketing dollars. So that's a big part of it too.

Oh, good question. I just picked up some books last week. I have them there. I'm reading the Bezos Blueprint. That's one just started. Another one called The Top Like 10, but I said I'm reading. I haven't started them, but those are next on my docket. Books I've read recently. I like John Worlow. He's a guy who wrote the book called The Automatic Customer and Built to Sell. So just learning a little bit more about mergers acquisitions, exits. I think when you talk about growing a business, having an understanding of what options. are available to you in terms of like exits, even though you may not have the intention of exiting anytime soon, understanding how that game is played, I think is super impactful for, for business owner. So.

Thank you, Brad. I had a great time. This was a lot of fun and I appreciate you having me.