EP:51 The 7-Step Marketing Method With Matt Thibeau

Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. Thanks for asking. Yes. You know, five years ago, I graduated from university. I didn't really know what I wanted to do too much with my life. I knew that I enjoyed marketing. And I was lucky enough, right when I graduated, I got a job actually at a construction company. And I was their sole marketing department. So I was hired as their one-man show to help them basically grow their business with online marketing. And through that experience, it was pretty tough, but I did learn a lot. And I was very lucky at that time as well to get a mentor who helped me learn a lot about digital marketing, specifically with construction companies. And so after about six months working there, that was my only job that I've ever had. Paid off my student debt, lived at home with my parents, you know, just eating, eating, you know, like the noodles and all that stuff. And really, I came to a point where I decided, you know what, I want to start my own marketing agency and specialize in helping construction companies. And so I went out there, I worked with a bunch of different companies, as you know, anyone who's starting off, they're going to work with a bunch of different clients. But I always found that the construction clients were where I always had my greatest successes because that was kind of my niche that I started out with. And so I just went further and further into working with contractors, learning more about their business, learning more about what works, what doesn't work. And so for the past five years now, I've been working with contractors. And so I've really learned what works and helps them grow their business and what things are, quite frankly, a waste of time. Today, really what we do is we work specifically with contractors, helping them with their marketing. And more recently, just helping them with their sales too. Just helping them book estimates, helping them qualify leads better, and just helping them becoming more of a business strategist these days. So yeah, that's really, that's the business.

That's a great question. I think what I see most what contractors... do with their marketing is they don't really do anything at all. So a lot of contractors have this belief that like, you know, referrals are enough, we don't really need to do any intentional marketing. If you do good work, then the business will grow itself and you'll grow things over time. That's a really good way to catch yourself either in, you know, a bit of a lull when things slow down, or you're not going to be able to expand your company as well, right? That only works so far, like when someone tells me that. that usually means that they're either a small team or they're not really trying to grow that much. And also what you also have to understand as well is that that might work as well when the economy is doing great. But when things slow down, how are you going to acquire customers at will, right? When you need that cash coming in, right? And so that's the biggest mistake I see. Other than that, I would say the next thing is that a lot of contractors... never take the time to really differentiate themselves. And we can, I know that you're also an expert on this, Brad, I love a lot of your philosophies on this, but a lot of contractors get stuck into like discounts and fighting over all these jobs with all these other contractors. And they're just constantly stuck in, you know, you talk about the hamster wheel and just the crazy cycle or whatever you call. And it's very much that, you know, as they never really get to the point where they can actually differentiate. and be able to increase their prices.

Yeah, I mean, a lot of contractors, what I see is that they kind of do reactive marketing. So, you know, they kind of they get to a point where they need some more jobs and they're freaking out. OK, we need to, you know, we need to drum up some business. So then they go to Facebook and they start, you know, spamming groups and sharing stuff to all these different groups. And they're really not doing anything with intention. And what you have to realize is that marketing is like farming. You have to be ongoingly. farming and your leads, right? You have to ongoingly be putting in the work on a consistent basis. It's not something you can just jump in, get some quick wins and then jump out. And, you know, so there needs to be a long-term strategy involved there.

Oh, absolutely. I've actually encountered that sometimes. In fact, my parents had a renovation done by a gentleman and his company was at that point where it was like it was growing very quickly. He needed a project manager. He really needed one because it was like he was trying to come in and out, manage the team, but then he would go off and do like sales, you know, it was just too much. So absolutely, you can grow way too fast. And so really the happy medium is to be able to sell those jobs, but also grow your company at the same time. And I think you and I both know that right now that can be difficult to be able to hire people as you're growing and make sure that everything is all growing at an even rate, right?

Yeah, absolutely. So like I said, when I was You know, years ago when I was working at this construction company and they basically just threw me in there and they said, OK, like, get us some leads and make us some business. So I was pretty much just throwing everything to the wall. You know, I had no idea what I was doing. I was fresh out of university. I had a couple online businesses, but nothing too crazy at that point. And so I was just trying all sorts of stuff. And so the seven step marketing method was the revelation, I guess you could say, that I had when I looked back. when things finally did work, I said, okay, I actually did these seven things. And that was all that we focused on. And so I basically turned it into a step by step formula that anybody can pick up this book and read it and be able to model it and use it in their business. And so if you'd like, what I can do is walk you through the seven steps.

Yeah, absolutely. So step number one, like Brad, we were chatting a little bit earlier about, you know, contractors struggle with differentiating themselves. Like they're always having a hard time with, you know, charging what they're worth. You know, sometimes I'll see in Facebook groups, someone will say, something like, you know, like, who can help me with a bathroom remodel? And then you read all the comments and people are like, I can do it for you at an affordable price on time, blah, blah, blah, or whatever, you know, it's like, don't

Right, right. So it's like, people are like, I can get this done on time and affordable and blah, blah. And it's like hundreds of comments. And it's like, guys, if you're all saying that, like, you're never going to be able to make any profit. I know that you're big on that, Brad. And B is that you're never going to look any different than anyone else. So really step one, what we do is we help them define a niche that they're good at and that they make the most money from doing. Right. And so a lot of times what happens with construction companies is that they introduce a lot of complexity, right? Okay. I want to, I want to grow my company. So now we're going to offer this whole new service. We're going to offer this service, this service, this service. And what happens is every time you add a new service, you're adding a different set of new systems, new protocols, all sorts of new complexities. And so in the end, what ends up happening is the contractor is running around like a chicken with his head cut off, basically, because he's trying to manage all these separate little businesses within his business. And so step one, what we like to do is define a niche that they have very good systems and operations for. Maybe they have really good employees or sub. contractors in that niche, right? And then it's the most profitable for them to they know their numbers, they're able to, you know, make good profit from it. And so we define that niche, we focus in on expanding just that area of their business first. And then the second part of step one is that we help define a unique selling proposition. So a lot of contractors, what they'll do when they try and get people's attention is they'll do like a discount offer 15% off, I just did a video in my group about this. where I was reviewing a landing page, you know, and they're saying 15% off role services. And what happens when you do any kind of discount offer like this, Brad, is basically you start attracting people who are looking for a deal, right? You start attracting people who are just looking for the cheapest possible price. And so what we do here is we introduce some kind of offer that's value-based. Maybe it's an extended warranty. Maybe it's some kind of bonus that's included. But we want to focus on value instead of discounting price.

I haven't, but that sounds cool.

Yeah, that's the end of the first step. And really, just to close that loop is like, people will say, oh, we offer higher quality. We're more expensive or whatever because of our higher quality. But you can't just say that. You need measurable quality is what I call it. That's why I like the extended warranty is because you're standing behind your quality and your work, right?

Yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah.

absolutely. So the second step is collecting reviews and reputation management. So, you know, sometimes when we're working with clients, it's either, there's a couple of different scenarios. The first scenario is that we're doing damage control. So they've got... They've neglected their reviews, they've got some one stars, and they didn't put really much work into building up, you know, some more five star reviews. And, you know, I think before I go even further here, some contractors might be thinking to themselves, like they might be kind of, you know, like, oh, reviews, like, are you serious, man? But the thing is, is that reviews really do matter. And we've had a discussion about this, is like, these days, now, when people are looking to work with someone, if they don't know much about the product or service they're buying. You know, it's like if you're going on Amazon, you're looking at two different products. One's a one star review and one's a five star review. Most people are going to pick the five star review. And so contracting is no different. And homeowners are looking at your services and your company in the same way. You know, so some contractors, like I was saying, is like they were doing damage control. Others is that they're doing some, but they don't have a systematic approach to actually get reviews on demand. And then other contractors kind of boycott and they say, you know, I don't want to be on there because I don't want to think about reviews and all this. So they don't have anything. They don't have any listings or anything. And I think that, you know, that can really hurt you. And so really the second step is building out a systematic approach to getting reviews so that you don't have to be worried about if you get a one-star review from a crappy client or whatever, and you're not scrambling to get more reviews. You've got tons of these five stars. And also just having a systematic approach so that you're not asking or begging, I should say, homeowners, you know, and then say, hey, can you leave us a review on Google? And then they never do it. And then you're following up with them sheepishly after like two or three weeks in an email, you know, hey, can you leave us a review? These are all things that can easily be fixed. And so in step two, I really walked through some strategies and some softwares of how you can start getting reviews in an easy way, but also ethically.

Yeah. So then the third step is building out a simple landing page. So some people might not be familiar with that term, a landing page. Basically all it is, is it's a one page little website. And what the job of this little website is, is to generate quotes. Like there is no other real purpose of a site. You don't have a blog on there. You don't have some of the other things that a normal website would have. It's really just one page. And the only option on there is to contact you or to exit out of the page. And the reason for that is that it's been proven the more decisions you give someone to make, the less likely they are to actually do that. And so if you give them very little decisions where it's only, okay, contact us, pick up the phone or send us a message or just exit out if you're not interested, then they're a lot more likely to contact you. And so on this page, we love to show before and after pictures because we find that that sells. Contracting is a very visual business, especially remodeling, painting, flooring, these kinds of things. If we can show some very dramatic before and after pictures, you're basically demonstrating your skills. When someone sees that, it's proof in itself that you are actually a very good contractor because they can see with their own eyes. Okay, like I'm seeing on the left, like crappy floor that's all scratched up and on the right, beautiful floor that's refinished and super nice now. So we have the really nice before and after pictures. And then we highlight that unique offer on this page. And then we also have the customer testimonials at the bottom. And then we've got three ways that a lead can reach out. So we actually have... a phone number on there because some people are more extroverted. They like to pick up the phone. Let's just get it over with and go. And then other people want to go through the contact form and submit a form so that you can pick up the phone and contact them and book the estimate from there. And then other people, and I find a lot of contractors will neglect this, is they want to go through some kind of chat box and chat with someone, ask some questions, and then be coaxed into then giving their information for a quote. And I like doing these three different forms for a landing page because it appeals to different personality types. People will often forget that like we have introverts in this world who don't want to pick up a phone and talk to a scary contractor. So a lot of people will opt for the form or through a chat box. And so this is really the overview of the landing page.

I'm recommending the second, the latter there. So a website, your main website is really a place to send people to maybe see more of your portfolio. Maybe as an educational center, right? Like you've got a frequently asked question section on there. You've got a whole bunch of other information. And yeah, people will stumble upon your website and, you know, submit for a quote through there. But really the landing page, you got to see that as a sales tool. It's a sales tool that's used for direct response advertising. What does that mean? It means that it's for advertising pieces of when you're paying Google, when you're paying Facebook, when you're paying for any ads. You want to have the most control possible and you want to make it very specific. And so you mentioned something there. You said, should I have multiple landing pages? Well, if you're advertising for multiple different services, of course. So if you're just advertising for bathroom renovations, then you would just have a bathroom renovation landing page. But if you want to do bathrooms, basements, kitchens, whatever, then I would recommend a separate landing page for each different niche and a separate set of ads for that. And so when you're paying like two, three, five, $10 per click to get someone to a website, you want to make sure that it's very specific, that you can control everything that's on that site, and that you can actually see the data that's happening on there. And so that's why we use landing pages, that they're a sales tool so that we can have the most control possible. I hope that makes sense.

Oh, absolutely not. Your website is very important because it's a main tool that you use for branding yourself, for using as an education piece. So your website is a very important asset to have, but landing pages are for a different use. Right.

I think that would be overcomplicating it. That would be a little bit overcomplicated. So I would just make it go to a contact form or a different part in the website that's dedicated to bathrooms. The landing page is really just a page that's dedicated for just advertising purposes. Gotcha.

It would be tough for handyman.

Yeah, that's a lot of management for sure.

So now that you've got this landing page, we got this great offer, we have the niche set up, you're building out these reviews. Now we need traffic. We need people to actually come to this page, right? And so my favorite forms of traffic for that first off is going to be Google ads. And the reason for that is because Google ads, people are already searching through Google, like best basement renovator, my city, whatever, right? And so we want to be taught one of the top five results in Google ads when people search that. And then what's really neat about Google ads too, is we can remarket to people who don't become a lead. So let's say, you know, someone types in basement remodeler and you're bidding for that keyword. ad shows at the top results in Google for that. They click it, they go to the landing page, and then for whatever reason, they get distracted. They don't submit for the quote. Maybe someone messages them, they start talking to them, and then they forget about it. We want to be able to remarket to those people. So what a Google ads allows you to do is to show ads to them all over the internet that follow them around. Maybe you've experienced this before. And basically, I describe it as a virtual salesman who follows up with them and says, hey, you still interested? You still interested? Because the reality is, I think it's like seven or 12 times to follow up before you get the sale or the exposure that you need. And so that's really what this is, is this following up and just saying, hey, like, do you still want that quote? And so that's the step with Google Ads. There's a whole bunch of things we could talk about Google ads. I think I could spend probably hours talking about it when it comes to picking your keywords, all sorts of things. But Google ads, in my opinion, is one of the best, most effective, and most quality lead sources you can get.

Well, man, I've recently found that all of these platforms are just getting a lot more strict, right? And so let's say, for example, we had a client who said, hey, can we link to this page? Like, so we can set up a separate URL and then it will redirect to our website. so that it will give people the illusion that it's a different company or whatever, because he was trying to dominate every single listing on Google. So he wants to set up multiple accounts so that it would give an illusion of different ads for different companies, but it would all link back to his company. So he wants to kind of experiment with like dominating the top search engine with different ads. And that's against Google's policy. There's a bunch of stuff that's against Google's policy. You can't redirect to a different website. You know, lately, Google has actually been like suspending accounts for literally like no reason. And it's been frustrating, honestly. And I think some of that is due to COVID. I'm not sure. But really, when it comes down to Google ads is they just want, they just want the best experience for their customers. So that's their philosophy. So you just have to think what would make it the best experience for someone who's searching for these services? And how can I be the most helpful to them without being deceptive without, you know, using any kind of tom flurry or whatever so yeah

And then before you know it, you sold your kidney.

So paying for Google ads is great because that gets you immediate results, right? Like you're up there within hours, but it's really important to start building a long-term asset that you're not going to have to pay ads for. And so we were talking about reviews. This ties in with local SEO. So people often ask me, Matt, where's the best place to start posting my reviews when I start? And the best place is to start with your Google business listing. Because this business listing, like, if you take one thing away from this, like if you just build up a bunch of reviews on your business listing and focus on that, you will get business from that you're going to get phone calls from that in your local area. So what we do in this step here is we build up the reviews in your business listing, and we optimize your, your Google listing for the keywords that you want to target. So let's say it's basement remodeling, right? And so we put the keyword basement remodeling and your city in the description. We put that in your services. We just optimize the listing for those keywords. And then the last thing that we want to do is we want to build up citations. Sounds super boring, honestly. Basically what it is is that we just want to make sure that other websites are linking back to our listing with all the same information. So a common mistake that I see a lot of contractors make is that they'll change their address at some point. They'll change their phone number at some point. And their address on Yelp is like a certain address, but their address on their Google business listing is a different address. This is going to hurt you when it comes to your local SEO. You want across the internet, all of your information to be the same. So your phone number, your hours, your location, all of that information needs to be the same. So then Google will look at that and be, hey, this is a trustworthy company. All their information is the same. We're going to rank that higher. Because we want to provide the best possible service to people who are searching.

Yeah, absolutely.

You need to do it. If you want to get results from local SEO, then you need to be verified because what that's going to do is tell Google that, yes, we are located in this area. And when you do that, then there's going to be a radius around that area that you're going to be more likely to show up for. So you absolutely do need to verify. And that comes like a postcard in the mail, or you could do other forms of verification. I've actually found that like verification sometimes can be very annoying as well, though, too, because it's like sometimes that postcard doesn't come in. So you have to like wait, send it again. So, but yes, being verified is very important.

Are you talking about like those little recommended things that come to service?

Yeah, that's a whole separate thing. That's like Google guaranteed. That's it. Yeah, exactly. Where basically, you know, you sign up for local service ads. And then you actually get verified through Google as Google guaranteed where you send them all these documents. And that's actually not as big of a thing in Canada right now. It's more of a thing in the US. And it's more of a thing for certain types of niches like plumbing, electrical, these types of things. If you do a plumbing or electrical or HVAC, that's definitely something you want to look into. And those are called local service ads.

Yeah, for sure.

So then after that is like what I like to do is when now people are going to be requesting quotes through this landing page, right? You're going to get a ton of traffic coming through here. And so as people are submitting for these quotes, I like to personally set up some kind of email confirmation and follow up system. So as people are submitting these quotes, it's really important that you send them an email that's automatically sent to them when they request for a quote that says like, hey, like we received your request for a quote, we're going to get in touch with you within this timeframe. By the way, like check out some of our social medias, check out some of our portfolio, we're going to get in touch with you soon. Sit tight, Brad. And the reason that we want to do this is that you really want to put your foot in the door because people are going to be requesting multiple quotes from different contractors. And so we want to hit them with an email as fast as possible and say, hey, sit tight. We're going to get in touch with you. And that's also an opportunity for you to maybe send them a video. Like if you have a little link there, you could do some really cool stuff. I know that you're big on this kind of stuff, Brad, where you could say like, hey, like welcome to our company. This is how things work. But you could really systemize this process. So that's the next step.

I think that was the sixth one.

Yeah. So the last step is social media management. So I recommend for contractors, they'll usually ask me like, Matt, what platform should I post on? What's the most important? What should I be on? What should I not bother with? Should I be on TikTok? Should I be here? Should I be there? And to start, what I usually recommend is Facebook and Instagram. And the reason for that is that they're very visual platforms. You can post pictures on there. And what I recommend is that you post just before and after pictures. Like contractors are always asking me, Matt, what should I post on social media, though? I don't know what to post. And really all that you need to think about when it comes to social media is I think of it as a proof feed. And what I mean by that is you want to be showing consistent proof over a long duration of time that you know what you're doing, you know what you're talking about, and that your customers are happy with your service. And the last one that not a lot of people do, and some people, quite frankly, are uncomfortable with. is showing proof that your company is actually growing and becoming more successful. And this is a very important last step because the reality is, is that if people get the sense or some kind of intuition that your company is going downhill or that you're going through some hard times, whatever, they're going to lack certainty. And when they lack certainty, they're not going to be as comfortable to reach out to you and get you to do something. I've often had this experience before where I was considering working with someone, whether it was a coach or something like that. And I didn't move forward. Then afterwards, I analyzed and said, why didn't I move forward? Why didn't I work with this person? The reason for that was I noticed that they were jumping around from opportunity to opportunity or maybe something was happening in their life that I knew about. And it just didn't give me that certainty. And so really, I like to use social media as a way to build certainty. and demonstrate proof of knowledge and proof of happy customers.

That's a good way to say it.

Yeah. And another cool thing, too, that you can do to do proof of knowledge. is make little videos pointing out some mistakes that previous contractors made. Like that's a really good one too, is if you can make a little video and say like, hey, like just wanted to show you guys this was done by a previous contractor and they skipped this step or they didn't do this or that or whatever. If you're at our company, you know, we always do it like this, blah, blah, blah. Just so you guys know, anyway, have a good day. Like that kind of stuff works really well too because you're showing, you're pointing out some stuff that other contractors do wrong. And that you're doing right. And so that instantly positions you as an authority, like, okay, we really know what we're doing here, you know?

Yeah. I'm not saying to like call out specifically a contractor, but. Gotcha. Yeah, like just saying like this was like another contractor did this, you know, not a good idea to start some wars, but.

Sure. Yeah. I mean, it's always important to be able to point out just that like what was previously done wasn't done correctly. Right.

The best way is to hit me up on Facebook, Matt Thiebaud, T-H-I-B-E-A-U. Or you can go to my website, savantmarketingagency. com. There's a bunch of information on there. You can watch some client success stories. You know, I also want to give away, Brad was saying a special giveaway for this podcast. I want to give away my book so you can read it. It comes in an ebook format and there's also an audio book included in there for you too. So if you go to ContractorMarketingBook. com, you can get yourself a free copy.