23 - Your Competitors Aren’t Better. They’re Just Easier to Find | Nate Fischer

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Selling in the Dwelling, the Go-To podcast for the in-home selling and remodeling world. I'm your host, Alan Langer of the Seven Secret Sales Academy. We got a really interesting and exciting guest coming up for you today, and Nate Fisher. And I'm taking this to kind of the other side of the realm here because we've last few podcasts we've talked specifically about selling. Prior to that, we talked about leads. But this one uh is going to be very interesting to everyone out there because it's not only how to get leads what we're gonna talk about, but also the marketing behind that. So before I bring on Nate Fisher, two quick housekeeping notes. The podcast website is sellinginthedwelling.com. Do me a favor and send me a question. You go to the Ask Alan button in the top right and send me a question. And if I read your question on an upcoming episode, you will get a free Selling in the Dwelling t-shirt. And if you don't mind, like and subscribe to the podcast and leave a review, that helps us out a lot. And also, our title sponsor is paradigmbendo.com, the best software for the in-home sales, uh, the experience the customer's getting in the house. So, more on them later on. So, Nate Fisher from Local Optics. Thank you for joining me from Lake, beautiful Lake Tahoe today. How are you, my friend? Doing great. Thank you for having me, Alan. No, no problem. So I I was mentioning to Nate before we got uh got the recording button going that I think the last time I was in Tahoe, I was about 12 years old, and I still remember it, and I'm 60 now, so um beautiful part of the country. So I'm a little I'm a little envious that you're sitting out there right now. How's uh Lake Taho treating you right now?

SPEAKER_01 1:55

It's beautiful, it's hard to beat. It's got uh amazing summers and fantastic winters if you like to ski like I do.

SPEAKER_00 2:01

Yeah, exactly. So all right, well, well, Nate is the uh chief uh technical officer at a company called Local Optics, which has it's been around for over a decade or so. And what they do the very simply is they help your company get seen. And really from a local standpoint. And obviously, there's a lot more behind that than just saying, hey, they help you get seen. So one of the the when you look at their website, I love the tagline, your competitors aren't beating you with better skills, they're beating you with better visibility. What does that actually mean to you in local optics? And and if I'm a small business owner, even a contractor with a large business, what what does that actually mean to me and why should I be interested in that?

SPEAKER_01 2:43

Yeah, it I think at the at the end at the end of the day, it's very simple. It means that there is a ton of business that people are going to Google and they are looking for local services. They're typing in contractor near me, window siding company near me, glass cleaners near me, all sorts of uh services. In fact, it's billions and billions of dollars of business is flowing through Google. When they type that into Google, there's a number of different uh what we call inventories, whether that's Google Ads, whether that's local service ads, whether that's the Map Pack or the organic listings below that. And we really specialize in a number of those inventories, particularly the organic section, as well as the maps, uh, as well as local service ads. So it's uh essentially making sure that your business shows up in front of potential consumers or customers at the right time, which is when they're searching for your exact product or service.

SPEAKER_00 3:39

So let me okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna play dumb consumerslash maybe dumb business owner here. We we grew up going on Google, typing in Roofers near me, and the little map comes up on the right, right? That that that changed a little while ago. Instead of just having a list, it's now the map. And then the companies are under that map, right? Those are not sponsored. Am I correct? Are those the map things that are not sponsored, or they are sponsored, and you got to scroll below the sponsors if you want someone?

SPEAKER_01 4:08

Great question, Alan. Those used to not be sponsored. Now Google is injecting some paid sponsorships within there. It can be hard to see. But through AdWords, you can do a location extension, you can show up there. But generally, three out of four of the spots or some large percentage are going to be organic listings, which means they're not pay-to-play. They have earned their spot there in Google's algorithm.

SPEAKER_00 4:33

Okay, so that's my next question. How the heck do you get into those top three or four spots organically? You know, you say you they've earned the spot. Tell me, as a business owner, is there something I can do to get in that spot, or or do I have to hire a company to help me, or is there a combination of both?

SPEAKER_01 4:51

Great question. I think it's a combination of both. At the end of the day, you need to have good business principles. You need to be providing good products and services, you need to be keeping your customers happy. Uh, and then you need to marry that with some technical nuance or technical implementation. So you have uh your website, even though we're talking about Google Maps, and that is your what we call Google Business Profile, or that's what Google calls it now. Used to be Google My Business. Uh, I remember that. The health of that is related to your website. So you want to have clean technical foundation from an SEO perspective. You want to have pages that talk about the services that you provide, potentially about the areas that you provide them in if you're multi-location. You want to have a fast-loading website, you want to have the necessary uh conversion elements, uh, a pretty clear call to action, whether it's having a customer submit a form to get a quote, to schedule an appointment, uh, or more frequently to be able to easily call you uh from a mobile device is very important as well as most traffic is mobile these days. Uh and then you you've got other processes, right? You've got uh review generation is very important. So, how are you ensuring that you have a consistent flow of hopefully positive reviews to your Google business profile and to some of the other places? If you're a lawyer, you're gonna have uh a couple of specific industry websites that people can leave reviews on. A lot of companies will have a Facebook business page. Uh, Yelp pages are very important. There's a lot of nuance there. But really, these days, it's a very holistic approach that you need to be taking. And I think most companies in most markets, especially the tough markets, are having some combination of internal marketing support alongside specialized vendors. So you'll often see a vendor that specializes just in LSA or the local service ads with a vendor that specializes just in the Google Map Pack optimization. And then sometimes you'll see that vendor being the same one for the organic SEO of the website. Larger companies might have different vendors for all of those channels. But I think it's definitely a mixture of doing all of the things, having an understanding internally, even if you're not running marketing internally as a business owner, you definitely need to understand what are the numbers you should be looking for, what are the KPIs that are being tracked, how is attribution being done? And so that you can at the very least hold your vendors honest and ensure that you're getting an ROI on your marketing spend.

SPEAKER_00 7:29

So I'm putting myself back in the shoes of the business owner. I'm a business owner myself, but not at obviously with my sales training, but not with you know contracting. However, I think it's kind of the same thought process. I don't have time to sit there and go through 20 different vendors to try to pick one. I might delegate that to someone. What would you suggest to a business owner that, okay, I need to hire someone besides, I mean, obviously, local optics does that, and I and I'm going to encourage people to do that. But if I'm looking for a vendor, is there maybe two or three things that I should be looking for right out of the gate that would make me know that, all right, this guy's legit? Or should should I just be, all right, let me try five and have five sales calls and and see how it goes?

SPEAKER_01 8:12

That's a great question. There's some nuance there. I think at a high level, it's very similar to how a consumer is going to be interacting with your business. They're going to be looking at your reviews. They're going to be looking for proof that you're capable of doing what you say you can do, uh, sometimes in the exact industry, especially in digital marketing, you'll see specialized or vertical specific marketing agencies. Uh, it's a lot different to be running campaigns for personal injury lawyers than it is for garage door companies. And there's some shared skill set, but there's really a lot of nuance down when you get to the nuts and bolts of any campaign. So I think looking for case studies, uh, looking to talk to happy customers that have been working with this particular agency you might be talking to. Uh, and then at the end of the day, it's really incumbent to have the proper tracking setup to know that your marketing spend is running at a positive ROI. So whether that's got home service companies that you serve as Titan and you're able to kind of trace the marketing spend through to actual jobs and the revenue that's hitting your bottom line, that's very important, whether it's using call rail or call tracking metrics or one of these platforms that's able to uh understand attribution across a variety of channels. That's important. And then I think the most honest answer is that if you take the world's best marketing agencies, they're not batting 100%. So even if you've done all of your diligence, it's still incumbent on you to hold their feet to the fire, to ensure month after month, quarter after quarter, you are getting the attention that you deserve. Your campaign is running profitably. It is very much a two-way street, just as much as your agency should be working hard for you. Uh, you should be working hard to ensure that they're staying honest and profitable, quite frankly.

SPEAKER_00 10:07

Yeah, it's a great point. And I've got a bunch of questions popping in my head because I'm thinking about my listeners here and what they would ask. And I think one of those there's two questions that I want to ask. I want to save the, I think the more important one for the second. The first one, you mentioned websites before and SEO tracking or what whatever uh, you know, you're you're doing the Google search and and the Google showing up on the map section is gonna be, you know, have a lot to do with your website. But I see so many websites, I spoke about this with with with a guest a few podcasts ago. So many websites, especially contracted websites, look exactly the same. You can change the name and and and the what they do on 10 different websites, and it would all look exactly the same. And to me, I I don't know, that it just seems to be just making everything so blanded and everyone's exactly the same because it's built for SEO, it's like, you know, best roofing company in in Saskatchewan. You know, that's the SEO sentence where a human wouldn't talk like that, or a website wouldn't talk to a person like that. So is that something that's still helpful, or should companies be leaning a little more toward making websites more unique for their brand rather than for SEO?

SPEAKER_01 11:18

That's a great question. Uh definitely there's like a base recipe where we as SEOs know that there are a number of check boxes that you want to check for the algorithm, which is for Google. So just like you described, there's certain keywords that you kind of always are are covering. There's an economies of scale that you'll see with agencies that do websites where they are essentially working off of templates most of the time. And so that kind of shows up with exactly what you said. A lot of websites look the same. There's an element that there's been a lot of studies happening for 20 plus years at this point where people are tracking what are the website layouts that actually have conversions happen most often. And so it's kind of this swirling mixture of feeding the algorithm, of we have industry knowledge that certain formats convert higher than others. And so people lean to those. And so you kind of do have this homogenous result that all these websites look the same. But I think as you dig into the real winners across every given market, you'll see that there's an art to having uniqueness of your brand, of your voice, of you as a company, uh, and being able to weave that through your website and your marketing and your copy. And so uh it's definitely a challenge, especially just being honest. I'm a very technical-minded person. I would be happy to deploy uh very standardized templates for every single client. But I do know that consumers are looking to connect with humans. At the end of the day, we're all humans. I specialize in very technical things, but people that are making the phone calls are humans that have lives, that want to be talking to other humans, that want to feel like they're doing business with somebody in their community, that they could be helping somebody locally. So there is certainly a human element that the most successful brands do weave into this very technical, templated world that we live in.

SPEAKER_00 13:18

Yeah. I mean, obviously it's got to be some sort of of marriage there that's gonna work for both. So uh yeah, that that that that it's all fascinating to me. All right, so here's the big question. You know, I can't, I can't, it's almost like I can't go through a podcast today without mentioning AI. You know, it's just it's just, you know, it's everywhere. So when you say when people Google us, I've heard many times now that Google is is going down and AI searches are going up. But now Google has Gemini, so it's kind of the same thing. Uh like, isn't Google becoming Gemini or Gemini becoming Google search? So if someone is now on Chat GBT saying roofers near me, how does that affect? Because now they're not getting the map thing anymore. You've got a you've got an AI search bot going through a lot more than Google goes through, correct?

SPEAKER_01 14:08

Yes, it's this is a great question. And and I think anybody that's turned on their TV or pulled on their computer in the last couple of years has seen the advent of AI. I think most honestly, we're in the middle of some human consumer behavior shifts as it relates to AI. Uh, one of the most important things to understand is AI introduces what we call zero click, where rewind before AI, you go to Google and you type in whatever company near me, and you have to click through into their website or into their business profile, and then you call them. Instead, AI just cues you up with that answer. What's the best lawyer in Lake Tahoe? Boom, AI gives you a list and the phone numbers to call, and you no longer have to click through the website. So it's certainly something that we as practitioners are watching very carefully. I think as of right now, it's a very day by day, week by week, month by month scenario. Uh, it's new technology, it's a complete paradigm shift to how things have been for since the advent of the internet. So obviously, we're very interested in how this is all going to shake out. If you look at the numbers, is ChatGPT an important place to be paying attention to? Yes. Does AI optimization mostly map to what good SEO is anyway? Also, yes. And I think as of right now, the data shows that the lion's share of leads are still coming through traditional Google search. It's 99% of your leads are still going to be coming through Google. Uh now, is that changing every month? Yes, bit by bit, ChatGPT is now having billions of searches a year. Uh, so it's it's definitely something that we're watching closely. But as of right now, it's the same things that you do for a successful SEO campaign, you'd also want to do to be visible in AI. And that's very standard things. Make sure your business is listed where you'd expect it to be. If you're a home service company, make sure you're on Yelp, make sure you're on Home Advisor, Angie's List, Thumbtack, Facebook, any local chamber of commerce places. It's just all the standard things. Make sure your data is clean and consistent. If you've moved offices, make sure you're cleaning up that data on the internet. Try not to have multiple different addresses available for your office. If you've changed phone numbers, make sure you clean that up. Uh, make sure your registration at the state level or your licensing is matched to the data that Google sees or that the public sees on the internet. It's really just best practices still at this point. And then same thing I mentioned, make sure you're getting positive reviews. Really, what you want to do is have both the internet and Google understand who you are, what you do, and where you do it. And hopefully that you're doing a good job doing it. If you're focusing on those things, you are going to have success. And you might need to have an SEO agency or some technical component to kind of address those checkboxes we talked about a little bit ago. Uh, but really it's just good business is going to result in online visibility if you have the technical foundation in place.

SPEAKER_00 17:21

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SPEAKER_01 20:17

Definitely. I think a big change that occurred that we saw within the last couple of years is local Reddit threads popping up.

SPEAKER_00 20:24

So you're Yeah, it's Reddit's becoming giant.

SPEAKER_01 20:27

It is becoming giant. Now it looked like it just got tanked back a little bit within the last month, which is probably a blessing for some companies. Is Reddit very often trends negative with their sentiment? Yeah. Um, especially for bigger brands. Bigger brands never farewell on Reddit. So I think it's very important to be understanding the what the discourse is like around your brand in your local Facebook groups, on your local Reddit page, uh, on next door, all of these places where the AI crawlers are able to get their fingers and essentially they're just trying to suck up all data possible. And so whether it's local bloggers that happen to be talking about your company and service, whether it's local Reddit threads. So if you're a garage door company, go into Reddit and type in, or go into Google and type in garage door company my city. So I would type in garage door company Tahoe. And if you see Reddit threads of people saying, Hey, I had a bad experience with my company, then you can expect that to be bubbled up by AI. So what you want to do with that is, I mean, at the end of the day, you want to provide people with good experiences and try to prevent those threads from ever happening. But uh responding in line, fixing issues that are identified, making sure that people understand you've you've fixed those, or maybe there was a misunderstanding and you can explain it. Sometimes asking your local community, you did a good job, maybe nudging somebody to pop into. That Reddit thread and say, hey, actually, I had a great experience with Joe's plumbing. Uh these are all the things that are becoming more important as the searcher's behavior is changing. And now we have uh computers that can just write to people and tell them, no, don't do business with Joe's plumbing. So it's definitely very important now.

SPEAKER_00 22:21

Wow. And the and the other thing I've been seeing is like the, you know, the buyer is changing completely. The buyer is now becoming completely research-minded. You know, there's so much research happening before they, not only before they, before they even contact a company, they're doing the research. I saw a recent study, I think it was by Cornell, saying that the typical consumer today is has completed 83% of their buying journey before they contact a company, which is just shocking to me. Like they're literally saying, okay, I've done all my research. I'm down to these three companies, I'm going to buy from one of these three, and then they contact the company. Prior to that, people were just like, you know, remember the yellow pages and all that crap? You know, that was just like, let me bring a company over and then have them talk to me. That's out the window now. And if you don't know that, you know, especially for the sales reps listening to this, the the reputation of your company is preceding you before you get to the door. You have to match that reputation or fix it. Like if they're calling you and you're it's a little iffy, you need to know that going in. Would you agree with like the consumer right now is so ready for that sales, ready for talking to someone much better, much more than they were even five years ago.

SPEAKER_01 23:34

Yeah, absolutely. It's crazy how much information is available to people. It it's years ago, back when I started, and even within the last decade, you could create a brand and a website, tahoplumbing.com, and you could just rank by the nature of the words being the same that people are searching, and somebody will call you and do business with you, and that's it. Now it's very much a review-based economy. People are looking across a number of platforms. They're maybe asking their neighbor for a referral, they're looking for pricing, which is can be a can be a hotspot, especially with some of a lot of companies don't want to put their pricing. They'd rather have a consumer call them because they know that they get them on the phone, they have a better rate of closing them. Maybe their pricing is higher and they need to explain why. Quality's better, this, that, or the other. And so I think we're probably going to see a lot more transparent pricing over the next year for a new articles and industries.

SPEAKER_00 24:36

Yeah, I mean, I actually have a side company. Here's a little quote from my own side company called quoteboat.net, where we have a pricing widget for window, window and door companies. Because I I've been saying this for at least five years that transparency builds trust. And if you're not transparent up front about everything, especially pricing, I think you're losing appointments rather than not getting them, or, or, or rather than losing them because, oh, it's too high. You know, I'd rather have my rep go to a customer who knows the price range, saw my reviews, likes my company. That's a lot easier sale than someone who brings me over and I got to convince them that my windows are so expensive. And I I know that that's an old school sales thought process, but I think today, you know, why go to a house to a to a customer who can't afford your windows? That's just a waste of time. Like they literally just can't afford it. I used to sell Renewable Anderson Windows, and I can't tell you how many times. Lovely couple, nice house. They just couldn't afford 50 grand in Windows. They just didn't have the money. They couldn't get approved. That was a waste of my time. That could have been taken care of up front, possibly with some transparency on the website.

SPEAKER_01 25:40

Yeah, and there was a fun little surprise delivered to the industry where Google is now sometimes using AI to call companies and ask their CSRs for pricing or whoever answers the phone. The AI wants to get the pricing so that it can then be delivered to the customer and they'll go call five different companies at one time.

SPEAKER_00 26:02

So AI is doing that.

SPEAKER_01 26:03

AI is doing that. That is uh something that is occurring actively.

SPEAKER_00 26:10

Oh man, this is fascinating stuff. All right. One more, I'm gonna ask you one more quick question before we get to the Ask Allen segment. Let's say I am a part of a larger national company. Renewal by Anderson, Pella, Marvin, you know, the bigger companies, but they have locations all over. And there's a million companies like this: Rebath, you know, Jacuzzi. They're all they're all they're locally owned, but they're part of a national part. Do they still have to do the same local stuff that you're talking about? Or can they, I know they're going to tap into the brand nationally, but what do they got to do locally? Anything different?

SPEAKER_01 26:44

It's a great question. So a lot of we we spent a lot of time and I've worked with a number of franchise systems, uh, and some sort of mixture of HQ owns some percentage of them, franchise Cs owns other. At the end of the day, yes, we're all playing in in what's known as the local algorithm, which when Google identifies plumber near me, that pulls what we call local intent. And so Google knows that that searcher is looking for a local service, product, or brand. And so at the end of the day, you're playing in the same algorithm. You want to have the same things I've already touched on, good technical SEO health, good reputation. A lot of the bigger players do benefit from the overall brand equity, where if you have really healthy top co-branding and you have lots of reviews across dozens or even hundreds of locations, that's gonna make it easier for every single location to rank. But also you want to make sure that you are doing all of the other things I mentioned. And sometimes that doesn't occur across franchise systems. You want to make sure that, number one, back to providing a good product or service, not using slimy or high pressure sales tactics that result in bad reviews, uh, monitoring what the discourse about your local office is in the local environment, whether it's next door, Facebook, Reddit, things of that nature, all of the things are the same. Uh, one of the things that large systems benefit from is they can aggregate data and they can have vendors that they're able to benchmark across each other. So if they're like, hey, our SEO vendor that's working with companies in the Southwest is actually generating leads at a much lower cost per acquisition. Maybe we'll introduce them to our northeastern offices and have them swap out their vendors. So lots of benefits from being within a franchise system or a multi-location system. On the flip side, there can be a lot of pains where sometimes corporate will have too many controls. They won't let offices make updates to their website. They'll force particular vendors or services that might be going well in some parts of the country, but not going well in other parts. It's just because you're selling doors or windows in San Diego doesn't mean that that's going to be the same as selling doors and windows in the Northeast. And so there's a lot of nuance. And so it can be definitely a double-edged sword where it can be very powerful. It can also be very constricting and very painful to work through. And I've seen it on both sides of the fence many times over the last 20 years.

SPEAKER_00 29:24

Well, I I I can give you a personal example that when I sold at Renewal, especially in the beginning, this was, you know, years ago, but you know, I I'm one of those go-getter type salesperson. I generate a lot of my own lead and stuff. And one of the things I did was I created my own window guy well uh website as a sales rep. I think I called it Rhode Island Window Guy or something like that. And I got leads from it. And I, you know, I would post before and after pictures and how to winterize your window, all this kind of stuff, you know, basic stuff. And this was again 20 years ago I was doing this. Well, corporate got wind of it and they called the owner of the dealership and told me to shut it down. And to his credit, first of all, he called me in and he didn't know it was there. He goes, What the hell is this? I'm like, hey, I just sold six jobs last month because of it. He goes, Really? And it was, it was actually, I thought it was a pretty decent website. I did it myself. But the corporate, because it wasn't corporate branded, they wanted me to shut it down. And he actually, to his credit, backed me up. It was Matt Esler. And he's like, No, I'm not, I'm not, I've got a rep here who I he's, I wish I had 30 more reps like him doing this. He goes, he's getting out there and he and he's you know busting his butt trying to generate his own business. So I actually they compromised. I had to put different logos on and stuff like that. Um, but they were like, no, you got to shut this down immediately. So I know exactly what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_01 30:40

Yeah, yeah, that's definitely uh very much depends on the DNA of corporate. Uh sometimes they'll be so in tune with that that if you do a little bit of research, some very large brands deploy interesting strategies where they have their corporate website, and then in every market, they might have a service plus city website that's also funneling leads. And so now they're taking up two spots of the inventory in Google search. And so there's all sorts of clever things going on if you look under the hood. Actually, Renewal by Anderson themselves ran a very interesting strategy for a long time, making sure that they showed up in a number of positions in Google search in a variety of markets, and I'm pretty sure that ended up working out pretty, pretty well for them.

SPEAKER_00 31:25

Yeah, I'm sure they they are a marketing machine, no, no question. And by the way, no, no, no disrespect to renewal by Anderson. I love them. I worked for them for 15 years, but it was funny because their knee-jerk reaction was, oh, we got to shut this down right away. But they they've come a long way, and but you were you're right, they they are everywhere and they are very, very specific on what they're doing for sure. So, one final question before we get to the to to the end of the podcast. Does the Google Alder algorithm, even if you're a nationally known brand or not, would they do they um prefer, like do would they recommend a local company over a national company? Or since you're in that area, it doesn't matter?

SPEAKER_01 32:05

It's a good question. It's it's pretty nuanced. Uh part of the algorithm is trying to spread leads around and not concentrate them to one company. Uh another part of their own.

SPEAKER_00 32:14

So that's a specific that's a specific algorithm that they really okay. I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_01 32:18

That's that's part of their philosophy, definitely. Uh they also are ensuring that they optimize for sending their customers, which are people searching on Google, to businesses that are going to provide a good experience. So businesses that are going to answer their phone, businesses that have good reviews. Um, you know, they have a lot of a lot of things to balance at their scale. They're trying to solve everybody's problem across the entire globe at the same time. And so there is a ton of nuance, but uh there's definitely room to play for all sorts of companies as long as you're doing doing the good things, even though there's only a few spots that show up at the top of Google. There's tons of different product and service category keywords that people might be using. You might rank for some, but not the others. Uh there's there's all sorts of nuance here. But in general, yes, you can you can still show up regardless of what size company you are, as long as you're doing the the good things correctly.

SPEAKER_00 33:21

All right, well, that's a great segue into our question. You heard the choir singing, and that means it's time for the Ask Allen segment of the podcast. And like I mentioned many times, I get questions all the time, and I put them aside waiting for the guests to answer it. And this one is literally made for Nate Fisher. This question came from George from Cheshire, Cheshire, or I think it's Cheshire, Connecticut, right in my neck of the woods here on the East Coast. So George writes, I am a local window and siding company with four sales reps. So he's not that big, but that's a decent four sales reps, is pretty good, and a great reputation. But I am struggling to get noticed over the big boys. Uh, speaking of big boys, they are always outmarketing me. I love that term. They are always outmarketing me. Besides simply throwing more money at this, if you have someone on who can talk about creative ways to gain more exposure and ultimately more leads, I'd love to hear their take on how I can compete in what is a very saturated market. So that is George from Cheshire. Nate, how would you answer George's question?

SPEAKER_01 34:26

It's a great question from George there. And we we've seen PE enter a number of verticals and they come in with what feels like endless budgets. They jack the cost per acquisition up, especially on AdWords, where you used to be able to buy leads for, let's call it 10 to 20 bucks, and now all of a sudden within a year, PE comes in and leads are 80 to 90 bucks.

SPEAKER_00 34:50

And PE, just for the folks that don't know, it's private equity, I'm sure you're talking about.

SPEAKER_01 34:55

Yes, definitely.

SPEAKER_00 34:55

Sorry to interrupt, but I just wanted to make that clear. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:58

Yes, the the big pockets of private equity that are so graciously rolling up all of our industries and uh have what feel like endless budgets. So that's uh a pain that I've felt with almost probably every customer and client of ours over the years. And I think one way to deal with it is that you there's what we call multi-channel marketing. So the the biggest ones you can think of SEO, Google AdWords, LSA, but then there's also other channels. You can buy traffic from Yelp, you can and set up Facebook ads, you can buy uh performance marketing channels where you're paying per lead, like eLocal. So becoming multi-channel is very important when you're dealing with PE. You might not be able to compete on AdWords, but maybe if you turn on Microsoft ads or Bing ads, you're able to get some lead flow through there. So essentially testing multiple channels, super important. Uh, making sure that you have a really tight process around reputation and review generation is super important. So every job that you do that you think you have a happy customer, converting that into a positive review. And then not only that, but amplifying that review, putting on your website, making sure you're putting on your Facebook page, all of these things are extremely important in the world of having to compete with larger capital competitors like private equity-backed firms, making sure that you have competent SEOs involved, even if you are uh in a market that is saturated for local SEO, there is a part of the algorithm that's proximity-based. So if I'm searching up here in North Lake Tahoe, that is going to provide different results, even if I'm putting in the exact same keyword, if I drive even 20 minutes to the west. And so ensuring that you still do have a good foundation and you're able to capture that hyperlocal search where you have somebody that's around your office in your service territory. That's super important. And then really just having the best playbooks possible. So delivering service is outside of my wheelhouse. I touch everything digital, but really we're living in a very integrated market. The customer journey is very integrated. It's not just digital and then our job is done. It's making sure that you're doing everything on the digital side to ensure that a customer is prepped. They've seen good reviews, they've seen positive reputation. AI has said that you're going to do a good job, and then they call you, you're happy, you're delivering a good experience on the phone with them, you're delivering a good service fulfillment, they're happy, and then you're getting a review, and then you're publishing that review online and just kind of creating this machine that marries your digital activities with your real world activities and feeds back to itself. Um, that's really the best way that you're going to compete in highly saturated markets. And then there's also um other things you can do, right? There's you're getting creative database reactivation campaigns. So you've probably been around for a while, you have a CRM, maybe you're not reaching out to old customers, but you should be. You can use AI for your benefit instead of having AI maybe work against you. You can use AI systems that can send messages out to your old contacts, and maybe you're offering a discount. Maybe you're just kind of saying, hey, listen, it was three years since we last did service, just checking in, seeing how you're doing. You can do all sorts of mailer campaigns. It does generally I've seen work better in commercial B2B uh engagements versus mass consumer. Um, there's local Facebook campaigns can work really great. Even if you're competing with big players, if you're running Facebook ads and you have a good Facebook ad vendor and they're putting in maybe a seasonal coupon or some sort of special discount to get leads through the door, um, that's something that even the smallest companies can can compete against the larger players on. You're not gonna see the same cost per acquisitions that you might see in a saturated AdWords market, for instance.

SPEAKER_00 39:10

Yeah, and I'm gonna before I'm gonna give my two cents to answer George's question, but you just said something, Nate, that I think is so under underutilized in this industry is talking to your existing customers, the low-hanging fruit, especially if you are a contractor who does multiple products. If you're a roofing, siding and window guy and you you have a thousand roofing company, roofing roofing customers, and you don't let them know that you do roofing and siding. I mean, I it boggles my mind how many contractors don't do this. And it's a simple thing. It's mining your existing customer database. And like you said, now AI can do it for you. And I guarantee you you will get new work. It's just gonna happen because they don't even know. Oh, I didn't know that the the roofer I used five years ago does Windows. I didn't even know that. And now you now they do. So that's a great, great point, Nate. But here's how I would answer George's question from my standpoint, coming from the sales world. You have four sales reps, George. Are all of them on their own personal social media telling everyone what they do for a living? Are they on their Instagram or Facebook account saying, hey, we just did, you know, Sally Smith's house and look how beautiful her roof is and a before and after picture. I gotta tell you, Nate, I do so much training and I will ask a group of a hundred sales reps in a room, who here has social media? All 100 raise their hand. Okay, who here tells everyone on social media what they do for a living? 12 raised their hand. And I'm like, why are you hiding what you're doing for a living? You should be shouting from the rooftops that you sell windows because you never know who's look who's looking at your post. Or maybe your aunt Tilly looked at your post and her neighbor needs windows. Oh, call my nephew. She wouldn't have thought of to do that unless you posted it. So, George, utilize your four sales reps. Get them to start posting before and after pictures of their jobs on their Instagram and on their Facebook. And I guarantee you'll get some traction from that. That would be my answer to George. So uh would you agree with that, Nate, as far as something that would help?

SPEAKER_01 41:09

No, it's a great answer. It's uh absolutely just the same way you want to tell Google who you are, what you do, and where you do it. You also want to tell the humans that are potential customers, previous customers. Um, that's just one of the best things you could possibly be doing. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 41:26

All right, Nate. Well, we're running out of time. This has been really fascinating and awesome. And I think you dropped some really uh golden nuggets for everyone. So if people want some help and they don't want to be doing all the stuff themselves or hiring uh an intern to do it, how do they find local optics or find you? Where do they go?

SPEAKER_01 41:42

Great question. Localoptics.com is gonna be your best route. If you'd like to get a hold of me directly, you can email Nate.f at local optics, and I will usually respond within about a day, maybe sometimes two if I'm traveling. But uh yeah, definitely happy to uh take a look and help anybody that needs it. It's uh very technical and changing world these days with AI.

SPEAKER_00 42:06

Sure. So it's Nate N A T E.f as in Fisher at localoptics, L-O-C-A-L optics, O-P-T-I-C-S.com. Check them out. I guarantee you'll you'll you'll get some uh great information to help your business grow. And Nate, I really want to thank you for being here. This has been some terrific information, and I hope everyone uh takes this to heart and and hopefully uh contacts you and you can help some some of my listeners. And speaking of listeners, I want to thank everyone out there for joining me on this episode of Selling in the Dwelling. Remember to visit the website, sellinginthedwelling.com. Leave me a review, give me a like, and send me a question. You'll get a free t-shirt if I ask your question. And visit paradigmvendo.com forward slash dwelling for the best software you're gonna find in the in-home selling industry. That's it for now. Thanks everyone. We'll see you next time on selling in the dwelling. Take care.