(add the transcript below)

Wasted PPC Spend & Maximize Your Summer Budget

Josh Crouch: Good morning. Welcome back to the Service Business Mastery Podcast. I am one of your hosts. Josh and Liv sitting next to me virtually is Tersh Blissett. And today we are going to be joined by a couple of members of the Service Titan team and we’re going to be talking about this is a really timely topic, too, because I just looked at the weather in Wisconsin. It’s 40 degrees today, but next week it’s going to be in almost nineties, if you can believe that. So we’re going to be talking about reducing wasted ad spend and.

 

Tersh Blissett: Maybe me in the nineties.

 

Josh Crouch: Yeah, I’m sure it’s been nineties for you already, but we’re literally it’s been nothing but rain in forties for the last week.

 

Tersh Blissett: So that sounds like an amazing place to live.

 

Josh Crouch: No, it’s not now when you have to wear sweats every single day. But we’re going to be joined live by Sarah Gerardo and Gianni Wenzel of Service Titan. These two are [00:01:00] phenomenal. They have a ton of marketing knowledge between the two of them. And I think we’re going to learn a lot about not only a new product feature from Service Titan, but we’re also going to learn a lot more about contractors and what how to reduce your wasted ad spend and maybe some learn some finer details within pay per click and things like that that contractors maybe don’t necessarily know.

 

Tersh Blissett: I’m I’m proud to say that I’ll be the guinea pig for the contractor sort of thing, because I don’t know any of this stuff so.

 

Josh Crouch: Well, we don’t run paid ads for people either. So I don’t really know any of this stuff. So but we’ll we’ll get started here and make sure you guys bring your questions live because these guys have a ton of really good information for you. Yeah.

 

Announcer: Are you looking for valuable business advice to reach that seven figure revenue mark? Do you want actionable tips to properly navigate through every business [00:02:00] challenge you encounter along the way? Let Tersh Blissett and Josh Crouch be your guide in getting you to the top here at Service Business Mastery. Tune in as they sit down with world renowned authors in business leadership and personal growth who share valuable insights about management, marketing, pricing, human resources, and so much more. Let their nuggets of wisdom gold guide you in owning a thriving, profitable and ever growing business. Here are your hosts, Tersh and Josh.

 

Tersh Blissett: Hey, Sarah. Johnny, welcome to the show.

 

Johny Wenzel: Welcome, guys.

 

Sarah Ghirardo: Hey, how’s it going? I feel like I’ve been in almost every photo of that montage. Like, I was like, oh, I remember that conference. I was there.

 

Josh Crouch: Yeah, you. Pretty much. You’re everywhere we are.

 

Tersh Blissett: Pretty much.

 

Josh Crouch: Yeah. And even more like you’re. You’ve been traveling a lot, so.

 

Tersh Blissett: Oh, yeah.

 

Josh Crouch: Awesome.

 

Johny Wenzel: Well.

 

Josh Crouch: Welcome, guys. [00:03:00] Sarah, you’re lucky that I did the intro today because I got your name right.

 

Tersh Blissett: Yep.

 

Josh Crouch: Tersh Tersh Tersh has a habit of asking people how to say their name and totally butchering it right after they said it. So.

 

Tersh Blissett: But I got it right if I’m not asked, too. So. Yeah.

 

Josh Crouch: Yes. So people that that don’t know you guys can we just do a quick like you’re 30 to 60 seconds who you are, what your experience is. So that way we can kind of dove into these topic and show them why you’re an expert in this topic. Sarah, you want to start? Okay.

 

Sarah Ghirardo: Yeah, I’m going to start. I’m Sarah Gerardo, senior marketing operations manager here at Service Titan. But I’ve worked in the trades for about seven years now. I was the director of digital marketing for a large residential HVAC company, and digital wasn’t all that I did. It’s just a nice little title. So, yeah, I’m just here to help as much as I can with the marketing pro products, but I also am the chair of Lady Titan, so a women’s empowerment group. [00:04:00] That’s another side side gig. I do. And a marketing consultant. So yeah, that’s me.

 

Johny Wenzel: Fabulous, Johnny.

 

Josh Crouch: Awesome.

 

Sarah Ghirardo: How are you?

 

Josh Crouch: Go ahead, Johnny.

 

Johnny Wenzel: Who am I? My name is Johnny Wenzel. Josh pronounced it right. I get a lot of Wenzel, so I appreciate that. So I’ve been a marketer in the trades for a decade. My focus is actually PPC. I worked at an agency, I managed the PPC team and it was in Canada, so very familiar with all four seasons. Believe it or not, we do get sun and heat up in Canada as well. I’ve been with service.

 

Josh Crouch: It’s like it’s like six weeks a year.

 

Johnny Wenzel: So sometimes it feels like seasons are really short up there. But we do have it. Yeah, I’ve been at Service Titan for a year and a half. Really? I mean, my entire career has been at this point shaped by this problem of wasted ad spend. I started [00:05:00] in E Commerce, actually, as a university student, got an internship doing ads that said, figure it out. It was e commerce and I loved it because you spend a dollar, you can see exactly how many sales you got from that.

 

Tersh Blissett: Mm hmm.

 

Johnny Wenzel: Then I moved over to the trades and advertising and saw the way it worked is we give you phone calls, we give you leads, and then kind of like, that’s it, good luck. And I felt almost, like, unethical about it. Like, am I actually helping you? And I just like spending your money without knowing what’s going on and ate away at me enough to where it’s like, okay, I think we need to see if there’s a way to solve this, a way to prove our why and find out what’s working and what’s not. Which led to some conversations with Service Titan, who had the same vision. And so I’ve been with them for the last year and a half trying to solve this problem.

 

Josh Crouch: Awesome. So we’ll start with a with a super [00:06:00] loaded question. I’m sure there’s not just one, but Sarah, let’s start with you. So what would you say in on the paid ad side, you see as one of the biggest. The biggest questions that contractors don’t ask their provider.

 

Sarah Ghirardo: I think they’re not asking any questions sometimes. Right. And that’s the problem. It’s like they they come in, they’re like, I need a vendor. And I was the same way. Like, my experience is internal marketing, right? I was inside of a business running their brand. And when I came into that business, this is what I’ll tell you how I learned. And I had to learn quickly. I had an agency that at that time in 2012 that wasn’t performing, they were wasting my spend within the first two weeks and I had large spends, I had five locations. So wasting that spend and then asking for me for more budget, I had to learn as to what was happening. And I learned that we weren’t de party. [00:07:00] I learned that we had traffic coming outside of the United States. We’re in California like that didn’t even make sense, like, but it wasn’t managed. And what you know, and it was measured, but the measurements that were coming out, no one understood them and they didn’t have time to ask the questions as to what does this mean in terms of conversion, like what’s actually happening, how do we innovate, how do we make this better? And and I think that there wasn’t a true partnership with the agencies.

 

Sarah Ghirardo: And the agencies are experts. I don’t want to know it all. I want to know enough to innovate and to partner with the right people so that I could have those conversations. So that’s kind of how I learned. I just I was like, Oh, no, I’m feeling forward right now. I stepped into a giant bomb and I’m like, What do I do? I’ve got to learn. So I literally Googled it and and yeah, and then took a lot of classes, you know, [00:08:00] and been to a lot of conferences just to continue to learn what’s going on. And I just think that we’re just not asking enough questions and knowing our numbers and and holding someone accountable for what’s going on and having real conversations with people because your agencies are right there and they want to help you so much. I mean, look at you all. You’re out there talking and educating people on different topics. That’s. That’s meaningful.

 

Tersh Blissett: So what what questions should we be asking? Like for somebody who hasn’t gone through the trainings and everything else, like, what’s the number one question? I should be like, all right, we should know this this answer.

 

Josh Crouch: Maybe like a top three, because I’m sure there’s not just one that you’d want to ask, but like if you had, if you guys both had like a, like a perfect list of a couple questions that somebody who literally knows almost nothing, they know where the ad shows up. They just don’t know what it does, how it gets there or anything. What kind of questions should they be asking? [00:09:00]

 

Sarah Ghirardo: What does my market look like to. And you can ask any vendor this, right? They can give you a competitive analysis. They can give you market saturation. They can give you that information. But if you don’t know your numbers to that market, that data that they’re going to give you, you’re going to be like you’re going to take their numbers and say, oh, all of that’s true, right? You need to know your capacity numbers and forecast for your marketing spend and kind of have a general idea of what you want to spend. To my my question would be, do you know your numbers internally to be able to give to a provider, right. And say, hey, I shouldn’t.

 

Josh Crouch: Do PPC because everybody else is doing it?

 

Sarah Ghirardo: No.

 

Josh Crouch: Because that’s what I see. I see that I’m like everybody says I got to be on PPC.

 

Johny Wenzel: Because it’s.

 

Sarah Ghirardo: Google and you’re scared of Google and you’re like, I should be on all of Google products. Like, Yeah, sometimes, but sometimes not. It depends on your market in your area and PPC, you saw the decrease in spend. [00:10:00] Now you’re going to see different things happen as the market shifts. So my question to to any owner would be, do you know your numbers enough to have a conversation with any vendor about my budget, about what’s my market saturation? That’s what the first I’d ask them, tell me about my competitive analysis. Tell me about what you’re seeing about my business in the audit and then, okay, give me a couple of days so I can go and research all those things that you gave me in the school report and say to myself, Is this right? Right. I don’t have to trust everything that you’re saying. You’re a vendor and we’re not there yet, so do your research. That’s like my main thing. It’s like. Do you know your numbers enough to even go out to vendors and say, yeah, which.

 

Johny Wenzel: Numbers?

 

Tersh Blissett: But which numbers is it that we should know?

 

Sarah Ghirardo: Your capacity, your the weather, you know, like their budget. Like, what’s your your budget? Your capacity?

 

Johny Wenzel: Like, how much.

 

Josh Crouch: How much how much can you [00:11:00] how much are you setting aside to spend for that month or that whatever?

 

Tersh Blissett: If I sit in a dollar or so.

 

Josh Crouch: You probably.

 

Johny Wenzel: Shouldn’t. That’s not enough. You’re all going to hate by the end of this. Yeah.

 

Tersh Blissett: I love playing devil’s advocate.

 

Johny Wenzel: Johnny.

 

Josh Crouch: What. What questions would you tell contractors to ask? What would you add to that? Because I’m sure you have something just based on your experience.

 

Johnny Wenzel: Yeah, I’ve been I’ve been on both sides of it. More more on the agency side. And I mean, honestly, I have yet to meet an agency that is truly malicious. They all have good intentions. They all want to help you. But. I mean, life happens. Sometimes they lose an employee or they take on too much work. And there’s just so much different so many different priorities that they’re trying to balance. And sometimes that your business is the one that gets pushed to the bottom of the pile. The [00:12:00] squeaky wheel does get the oil. So, first of all, consistently asking questions like you just got to ask a lot of your agency if you’re worried about bothering them or offending them. And a lot of people are like, No, I bother my agency all the time. Like, Good for you. You’re actually getting probably a lot of attention on your account if you’re not reaching out to them regularly. Like you’re probably getting forgotten for for a lot of a lot of agencies. And again, it’s they have good intentions, but they’re just kind of jumping from fire to fire agency. Life is crazy that you need to light a few fires for them to make sure that they they give your account attention. So first, ask a lot of questions regularly, and I find the most valuable question to ask. I actually I was speaking at Pantheon Service Titans user conference a week or two ago and I asked a room of 300 people, how many of you know your ROI on PPC? [00:13:00] And out of 300 people, about five people put up their hands. And of those five, only half of them were telling the truth.

 

Josh Crouch: So they haven’t they think they have an idea, probably.

 

Johnny Wenzel: Yeah. But like 99% of people admittedly have no idea what their ROI is on PPC.

 

Josh Crouch: Why do you why do you think that is? Out of 300 people say 150 were doing paid ads. Maybe not all of them are doing paid ads, but so few actually know there are. Why why do you think that is?

 

Sarah Ghirardo: I think it’s because they’re owners and that’s not their job to know it. Right. Like that’s why you have an internal marketer to to give you those high level numbers. And if you can’t afford it, that’s fine. Your agency will tell you. But like have those conversations with your agency. Well, do you have the data to show me enough of the conversions and me looking back at that revenue to match it, you know, that’s why. I mean, I don’t understand. Having an agency is so great because I [00:14:00] don’t want to do it all. But having a partnership that sees my data and I can give my data back to them, that makes more sense because data makes us smarter. So yeah, that’s what.

 

Johny Wenzel: I don’t know.

 

Josh Crouch: Well, having those trends and that transparency both ways, I think is huge because if data is locked down on the agency side and they don’t let the contractor see it, or the contractor doesn’t let the agency know how they’re performing. That’s when I think you get run into a lot of problems where it’s like we’re kind of guessing, everyone’s guessing and nobody really knows the truth. And that that leads to well, they’re not being transparent with me. I’m going to go move on to the next person or the next one or the fourth one in four months. And you never really get that.

 

Sarah Ghirardo: Yeah, you can’t do that with agencies like they’re consistent. You need consistent. You need that data. If you think about it, to build your campaigns, they have a template, everything is a template and they have their own proprietary stuff. But really it’s not about that. It’s just about like, [00:15:00] what’s the conversion like, what’s happening in the back end so that we can both work together? And yeah, when there was only five people that raised their hand, I was like, Oh no.

 

Johny Wenzel: Like.

 

Sarah Ghirardo: A tier.

 

Josh Crouch: You freaking out in the back of the room?

 

Sarah Ghirardo: I was I hit my boss and I was like, Did you see that? Only five people raise their hand? And I was like, what do we do?

 

Josh Crouch: And I’m sure you know your numbers, right?

 

Tersh Blissett: Oh, yeah, yeah.

 

Johny Wenzel: It’s number six.

 

Sarah Ghirardo: You’re on it.

 

Johny Wenzel: I got it. Yeah. I mean.

 

Johnny Wenzel: If I can add to that, the reason that we don’t know is there’s this culture. I said when I when I joined it, it was we provide leads as the agency. And that mindset has just been like persisting in the industry, mostly because of technical limitations. It’s it’s hard to have that exchange of information between the agency and the the marketer and the shop. But technology has changed a lot [00:16:00] in the last ten years, and people just need to change with it. Unless you have someone listening to every single phone call and manually attributing everything, which there’s still a lot of human error there. It’s there’s been these limitations and that’s what we’ve been working at as the CRM. We kind of have the ability to break that at Service Titan. It’s why we’ve what we’ve been working on. But again, it’s not malicious, it’s just the agencies haven’t had a way to do it. In the past, Zapier didn’t exist. And unless they have an in-house team of engineers that can build advanced integrations, it just hasn’t been possible. So.

 

Johny Wenzel: A lot of you better.

 

Josh Crouch: She better not be saying that about me. She is. She talked plainly.

 

Sarah Ghirardo: Saying that about you. The other day she sent me a video and she was like, You’re too smart. Can you just like not, you know.

 

Johny Wenzel: Say, okay.

 

Tersh Blissett: But she’s [00:17:00] right. A lot of times it’s agencies are are saying terms that are almost proprietary to their agency. And so we get as a contractor, you get a report and it’s a really fancy looking report. Look, it looks amazing, but I don’t understand what it means. And it’s like you had this many impressions, you had this many clicks, you had this many whatever. And then you’re like, then you have they throw in a special word that’s their own word that they’ve made up for their agency. And it’s a massive number and it’s like, Oh, wow, we did a really good job, but I didn’t make any money. So was that.

 

Johny Wenzel: You know, but.

 

Sarah Ghirardo: Contractors did the same thing with search, right? We’re like, Oh, we don’t want you to search for a capacitor.

 

Johny Wenzel: Yeah.

 

Sarah Ghirardo: Right. And so we changed the names. And it’s confusing, but it doesn’t have to be confusing. You can ask. There’s tools and tips to [00:18:00] be like, Oh, this is what this means, you know? But really, you know, the story of the call. And if you think of the data points as a story, then it’s a little bit easier to tell yourself. I went out to Mary’s house, right? And Mary saw my billboard. And so that’s a marketing conversion. Yeah. Think about this. I want you to think it as a story. Mary went out, she saw my billboard, she really liked it, and she went home and she was like, Oh, no, I need to turn on my AC. Well, she turned on her AC there was a clicking noise and she needed to call someone. She remembered your billboard, your top of mind, and she called you conversion point in there, right? Well, when she called you, your sister didn’t answer the phone or did answer the phone or it was abandoned. Those are all KPIs inside of there and they’re all missed or they’re all opportunities. Now then we continue it. Now does the technician so we book the call [00:19:00] yay! Like that’s awesome, but it’s not going to run for 2 to 3 days. And so there’s a potential of cancelation rate. And so there was another KPI and then if it does run now I’ve got my technician out in the field and there are multiple KPIs with my technician.

 

Sarah Ghirardo: Do they set a lead? Do they? What price are they setting it at? What? You know, all of these things like you can go all the way down to install it and then back again for the customer journey. So all of these measurements are parts of what we wanted to bring out with the ADD solution, and not all of those specifically, but when you look at your data, that’s how you look at it. You look at it as a story of the customer journey, and then it makes more sense to you because you were actually there doing the customer journey, right? Like your CSR answered the phone, they were a part of it. And if you explain that to someone on a human level, then they start to understand like, Oh, I need to deliver a remarkable experience and that helped or conversion opportunities every part [00:20:00] of the way increase because you know PPC is because you waste so much money on PPC and it’s hard to convert. When they do convert, you have to capture it. And I think that was the point that I was getting to is that those are the numbers that you need to know because it’s not just do I have revenue attached to it? It’s. Am I making the conversion happen? Right?

 

Johny Wenzel: Yeah. Yeah.

 

Josh Crouch: So, Johnny, you were kind of brought in because of your experience to help with this product and develop this and develop a way for contractors to better understand their spend on PPC and attribute things the right way. Can you can you dove into the product a little bit for us and just kind of tell us what what it’s going to help solve or at least what you guys are trying to solve.

 

Johnny Wenzel: Yeah, absolutely happy to. And so before my time at Service Titan, I had built kind of a prototype of this. And really what it does is. [00:21:00] So right now, the way that usually it works within a Google ads account is you can see conversions, which are phone calls, maybe form submissions, maybe live chats. If you’re more advanced, you have that set up and you’re optimizing towards that. And this is a big cause of wasted spend because Google more and more is becoming automated. It’s becoming self driving in that you control the product. And. That’s the materials that you have to deal with. All it knows is get you more phone calls, get you more forms, submissions. That’s all it knows. And most importantly, it doesn’t spend all that budget. Most importantly, it doesn’t know that this type of phone call tends to lead to a $10,000 install job. And [00:22:00] this type of phone call leads to like an inspection fee that rarely closes. It just doesn’t have that visibility, but it’s still making all these decisions, trying to do get as many phone calls as possible. And so there’s there’s so much waste when its algorithms are pumping out phone calls that aren’t turning into anything. You’re getting an $80 cost per lead cost for conversion, and those conversions aren’t going anywhere. You’re wasting $80 every time the phone phone rings.

 

Tersh Blissett: So that’s where I watch those KPIs in that the marketing spend there. And then I see that it comes from a PPC and then the call gets dropped or it gets canceled. That’s where I know who who’s had to go chop like, oh, you didn’t convert.

 

Johny Wenzel: Chop your head. No, it’s going to happen.

 

Sarah Ghirardo: I mean, people think about search, right? Like people go to search, to [00:23:00] search for options. So there are so many options out there that sometimes they’re just going to not choose you.

 

Johnny Wenzel: Yeah, a lot of shops, even if things like that.

 

Josh Crouch: Yeah. Well, even if they do it and honestly because we so we use call rail for all of our, all of our clients and stuff like that now. So we’ll go in there and, and usually when, if there’s an issue like someone’s like, well I need more leads, I’m like, well, let’s go listen to your phone calls. And I usually uncover quite a few things in there missed calls, calls going to voicemail, unanswered stuff like that that I’m like, All right, let’s, let’s have a discussion about this. But this types of things, having those things in place like it’s 2022, if you do not have an overflow answering service, I don’t care who it is. I don’t care if it’s your mother, like somebody to pick up the phone and say, hi, we are this company. You need to have something in place. Like no more voicemail. Voicemail. Like as [00:24:00] soon as voicemail clicks over, people hang up almost every time.

 

Tersh Blissett: But here’s the thing. Like, how many times can you have an after hours service or an overflow service? Answer the phone and say the wrong name. And it’s like, Oh, I’m going to stab the next person that does this. And it’s not a difficult thing to say.

 

Sarah Ghirardo: You know what is happening over there?

 

Johny Wenzel: Tersh like we’re coming to visit. We need.

 

Josh Crouch: To feel that you.

 

Tersh Blissett: Wake up in the morning and you just choose violence.

 

Josh Crouch: Yeah, that sounds like today.

 

Johny Wenzel: Today is the day.

 

Josh Crouch: Today is the day.

 

Johny Wenzel: It’s going to happen. Don’t happen. Yeah, yeah.

 

Tersh Blissett: No, but it is frustrating when you do have that. When you have that phone, when you’re when you’re listening to these calls and they’re saying, yeah, this service is superior, like, are you serious, Emperor? Emperor is the name service emperor. Like, why do you have challenge with that? And like then I just get uber mad [00:25:00] whenever I hear stuff like that. And then the person is like, I think I called the wrong number. Click.

 

Josh Crouch: Yeah, well, that’s a little deeper problem. I don’t know if we have enough time.

 

Tersh Blissett: To solve, obviously, that that topic touched a nerve.

 

Josh Crouch: Yeah, everyone’s quiet. Like, I don’t know what to say. Tersh.

 

Johny Wenzel: Glad you got that off your chest.

 

Tersh Blissett: Oh, yeah. I appreciate you all listening.

 

Sarah Ghirardo: I really do. Yeah. Mental health is very important, and.

 

Johny Wenzel: We’re here for you.

 

Tersh Blissett: Connie says we’re here for you.

 

Johny Wenzel: So.

 

Josh Crouch: So back to, like, tracking this stuff. So you guys are developing. So, like, call rel. We have what’s called dynamic call tracking, dynamic number insertion, which I don’t know if one of you guys want to take a stab at like a really short explanation for this. I always end up with, like, a two minute explanation because I don’t really know how to explain it in like 15 seconds. So I don’t know if one of you guys can explain that super quick, that if people don’t know what that is or they’re not familiar with the term, they can understand it because it’s just otherwise it’s just another [00:26:00] acronym throwing around that nobody has any idea what it is.

 

Johny Wenzel: Johnny.

 

Johnny Wenzel: Yeah, it’s a.

 

Josh Crouch: Take that one.

 

Sarah Ghirardo: You know how I talk?

 

Johnny Wenzel: Yeah. So, I mean, like, what the service type product is, is Google doesn’t know your business. What we do is we feed it revenue, actual revenue data so that it has a smarter signal to go off of. And DNI or call tracking is the mechanism by which all of that happens. So what it is? Oh, man, how do I do this in 15 seconds and not minutes?

 

Josh Crouch: Okay, you can take 2 minutes. That’s fine.

 

Johnny Wenzel: Okay, let’s see. 60 seconds or less. So really, what what call tracking does. And for the record, we built our own call tracking solution. But some people really like theirs, like hall reel or one of the other options out there. And we’ve we’ve allowed it so that people can bring their own and integrate it into our [00:27:00] system so that they can, because a lot of agencies, they have like whole workflows and reports built around like a certain provider so they can connect with their own or they can switch to ours, which is included with the marketing pro product for free. I guess marketing is not free, but if they sign up, there’s no additional cost for for call tracking. But what it does is we need a way to connect what happens on the website to what’s happening with the phone call. It’s another gap where they don’t talk to each other. And so what we do is we have a script on the website that shows a unique number to every visitor and captures all of the Web session information that includes the source that they came from. Was it Google? Was it being probably wasn’t being was it be.

 

Josh Crouch: Excited when you say Bing like that. Bing does get some traffic. Duckduckgo has actually been growing. Duckduckgo has [00:28:00] been growing quite a bit as well.

 

Johnny Wenzel: Not every year.

 

Josh Crouch: Google is, but it’s still growing.

 

Johnny Wenzel: Great. But like in the kind of the code of the website, you can see all the information of where did that visitor come from? They came from Google ads. You can see the ad, the keyword, the search term, the device, all of that data that actually is on the website hidden. And we when they call the number, so we replace whatever phone number is on the website with a unique number for that visitor, assign it to all of that data. And when they call and you create a customer for that, your name, address and all of that, we can assign. Here’s the Google Click information. Here is the ad campaign ad group, the cost of that click, all of that information. And as a result, we’re able to push revenue [00:29:00] back in the Google ads. And then for our solution and service type, you’re able to see. You know, impression data and revenue data and booking rates and all of that kind of side by side in a single table, which allows you the visibility as a business owner or marketer to know what’s going along, going on along the whole customer journey. And it allows marketers to see what’s happening after they’ve generated the lead.

 

Josh Crouch: No, that’s nice to have, especially from the marketing side.

 

Sarah Ghirardo: Yeah. Like, why do you really want it, Johnny? What’s happening with data? What’s happening with attribution? What’s happening with privacy right in the world? Like it’s getting more limited. And so that’s why you want more data, you want more attribution because you need to know the customer journey and because it’s only going to get more limited as time goes on. So. That’s why I would want it.

 

Josh Crouch: Yeah, yeah. Well, then it [00:30:00] helps me just knowing that stuff and seeing that data with that tracking script, you know, which keywords people are typing in, you can optimize a lot of different things. And that’s a whole nother segment of like going really deep into the PPC side of things where you can really get into the ad copy, the landing page, all the different pieces of the ad that work together to, to serve it to a customer. But as far as like that call tracking script, how do you guys and we didn’t talk about this beforehand, but do you guys have a way? Because I know there’s there’s contractors out there that their agency does not create separate landing pages. So they’re using their primary website there, their service pages or location pages for their PPC and their organic traffic. Is is your guys’s platform going to be able to segment that if they came on organic search versus a paid search? [00:31:00]

 

Johnny Wenzel: Yes, it will. That’s kind of the magic of it is you don’t need that’s good enough. You actually don’t assign a number to all of your campaigns anymore. We automatically do that for you with the call tracking.

 

Tersh Blissett: Josh and.

 

Johnny Wenzel: Josh again.

 

Tersh Blissett: This is my impression of Josh. I’m going to ask a 30 minute long question. Josh says, yes.

 

Johny Wenzel: Sure.

 

Josh Crouch: Are you telling me I should get to the point a little faster?

 

Tersh Blissett: No. You did a great job, Josh. You did an amazing job. Good job.

 

Johnny Wenzel: So with is it such a good question? Only needed a single answer, right? Yeah.

 

Josh Crouch: I literally limited it down to like it’s yes or no, Johnny, tell me. So as far as like when it gets into like the data because Sarah, I know you’re a big data proponent and John, I’m sure you’ve seen tons of data. Where [00:32:00] would you say if you had to give like one or two suggestions to any contractor listening to this of how they can like. Common areas where agencies might waste some money because maybe they don’t know the industry as well in ways that they can make a subtle hint like maybe we should do this, or maybe just something to give them, so that way they can talk to their agency or whoever’s running their paid ads if it’s someone they know or whatever. I hope that question makes sense. I started rambled on again for another 20 minutes, but.

 

Tersh Blissett: It wasn’t the same thing.

 

Johnny Wenzel: Yes. Do you want to? I feel like I’ve talked a lot. Sarah, do you.

 

Johny Wenzel: Want to.

 

Sarah Ghirardo: Know? I would love you to talk a lot. Keep going.

 

Johnny Wenzel: Okay.

 

Sarah Ghirardo: You’re welcome. I look great with the mug. I’m just going to stay here with my mug.

 

Johnny Wenzel: I forgot mine. It’s. So I spoke at a conference a few years ago, and I was, like, feeling super bold that day. And I said, any one of you show me your ads [00:33:00] account, and if I can’t save you $100, I will pay you $100. I was way overconfident.

 

Josh Crouch: That’s the type of conference we all need to go to, right?

 

Johnny Wenzel: Yeah. I should have said. And you have to pay me that $100 maybe. Would have made something, but probably ten of them took me up on it. And I like within 5 minutes saw $100 of waste like so quickly, so easily. And that was without looking at the new even. There’s just so many simple things. So. I mean, just if the if the agency doesn’t have any visibility into operations, if you can do that through software, like great. If you aren’t doing that, then like regular conversations with one client that we had, we had like a shared dock that like they would populate certain information and it would alert me whenever that was done. So I can make like real time [00:34:00] changes and. Talking about capacity, for example, where they were really booked up. And so I would turn off their poor performing campaigns so that we can focus the last few capacity slots on. The high performing. High ticket campaigns that that kind of conversation seasonality kind of knowing. When it’s the shoulder season and how to approach it. So just an understanding of what’s going on in the business. I mean, I hope you don’t have this problem, but if you have a CSR who’s just like really struggling, maybe your smaller shop up in it’s their shift like say maybe maybe pause some ads or the budget because I don’t think we’re going to close that many. I mean that’s that’s a far fetched case that probably.

 

Sarah Ghirardo: That is so far fetched.

 

Tersh Blissett: I don’t think so. I don’t think so. Not even [00:35:00] the slide. It’s good for.

 

Sarah Ghirardo: You in the call center. We have discussions.

 

Johny Wenzel: Yeah.

 

Johnny Wenzel: That’s the call center is perfect, right. Like when it’s after hours, maybe don’t run ads during after hours because our call centers. Oh, wait, maybe that’s wasted spend. Let’s focus the budget or. Online Tersh mom is answering.

 

Johny Wenzel: So yeah, absolutely.

 

Sarah Ghirardo: I would say yeah. I would say you can start with looking at the call capture rate, you know, like look at your call capture rate, see who who’s answering the phone for us. We directed all digital calls to a digital speed lead team. Right? Because they have a different conversion, they have a different conversation and they’re calling for different reasons with digital. And so you’ve got to be able to capture that quickly and if not follow up on it even quicker. So you can start there and then once you really like once you [00:36:00] have the data in front of you on that, that new dashboard, you can start to say, Oh, let me go into the weeds a little bit. And that’s the whole thing. It’s like you can just see your data and it’s transparent and it’s transparent to the agency and it’s transparent to, you know, to you as a customer. And so that’s what we want. We want transparency because it brings the marketer up to actually be a marketing pro and it brings the agency up to say, Oh my gosh, I know I can look and say seasonality is happening capacity. You don’t have the capacity. But we always had those conversations with our agencies about, hey, you got to turn it down. Missing ten people, you’ve got to turn it up. I don’t have any calls. Right. We think that PPC is like a lever that we can go up and down it. But what I’ve learned is that it’s about consistency and yeah, if you want to add more budget, but don’t expect it to be like, Oh, you’re going to [00:37:00] bring in 5000 more calls because you just threw in 5000 more dollars. It just doesn’t happen like that. We have to have strategy in our marketing and our advertising in order to to understand that the continuous flow is what we want, not the ups and downs. So.

 

Josh Crouch: Yeah, that’s a great point. We have a question from Leslie, so I’ll put it up on the screen and then I’ll read it. Just so for people that are listening, she asks, What would you say about an agency that doesn’t allow the client to have access to their own ads account and they can only see a separate dashboard created by agency or by an agency. I’ll jump at once.

 

Johnny Wenzel: Yeah.

 

Johny Wenzel: So.

 

Johnny Wenzel: I see both sides of it because the agency I used to work for had that policy is what we don’t want the client to have access. To the account. And there two main reasons for that. One is, once it’s built, there’s pretty easy ways for you to download it. [00:38:00] And then import it into a new account and then run it live.

 

Josh Crouch: And so if there’s like proprietary, like just stuff that you got really good at doing that maybe other agencies aren’t doing and negative keyword lists and stuff like that, you’re saying that some of that stuff, you kind of trying to keep that in-house a little bit. So that way it’s not just downloaded and can be sent out to whoever you want. Is that what you’re saying?

 

Johnny Wenzel: Well, we’ll send sent out. Or you could just fire the agency and now you have the account that they built fully. It’s Google and the person paying owns it. So you technically own it and so the agency can’t do anything about it. The other is there’s a fear of someone read only access. This isn’t the problem. But going in and making changes that can really affect your strategy as the expert. And so I understand that. However, I always fought against that and said they should have access because [00:39:00] I think you should embrace visibility if you have the kind of relationship where you’re worried that someone’s going to steal your stuff and like spread it out in the world or just like steal what you built and fire you like as an agency. You don’t want that person as a client. Like if that’s the kind of person they are, like, you’re not going to want to work with them for the next few years. So cool. Let them go. And I’ve seen cases where it gets held hostage, where it’s it’s like being in a relationship or a marriage and saying, like, you’re never allowed to look at my phone just like that at all.

 

Josh Crouch: That’s Pandora’s box right there. Somebody somebody just got hurt. Some of these feelings are.

 

Johnny Wenzel: Maybe not the best, best analogy, but if [00:40:00] you’re not willing to show your phone, then there’s probably a reason. Right. And so just having a trust relationship between the client and the or between the contract agency I think is important. So that’s what I would say to that question.

 

Josh Crouch: Okay. As far as. So I guess I’ll take that question a little further. So because I and I hear we don’t run paid ads. I think, Sarah, you may know that we don’t run paid ads. So for me, this is more of a question for those that do paid ads with other companies. But what what about because I’ve seen that there’s there’s I don’t know if it’s strategies out there or whatever where clients will pay the marketing company and that marketing company pays Google versus paying Google directly. Do you guys have any thoughts on that if they have an agency that has that’s doing that? And I guess I don’t know why that is. [00:41:00] But do you have any thoughts on that? Why why that might be and maybe some. Would that. Would that concern you as a contractor that your your bill is going to a certain marketing company and not Google directly?

 

Sarah Ghirardo: Would that mean that I don’t own my own data? Would that mean that I don’t own my own content? I’d have to look at that that service language agreement. Right. What does that mean in terms like I have to ask more questions to know more? You know, I can’t make an assumption that they are buying on behalf of me because they might have more leverage to buy. Right. But even just as an agency, they could have if they’re a Google certified agency, they have more leverage to buy Google products than I do. So, yeah, that would just. Johnny, what would you do?

 

Johnny Wenzel: Yeah. Typically it’s the way that agencies charge is percentage of spend. So if you spend $1,000, maybe the rate’s [00:42:00] 15% or 20%. So if you give them $1,000, they pocket 200. Spend 800 on media. And so for like simplicity of billing, it tends to be the case that that’s why they’ll do it. That being said, if that is the arrangement, like you should ask for either access to the account or like ads, invoices sent to you. Again, I haven’t been malicious agency yet, but it can be mistakes and it should be 20%. But if you see a Google and the other side of it actually is sometimes it’s hard to spend the budget at certain times of year ever since maybe you gave them $1,000. You’re expecting 800 of that to go towards media. They were only able to spend 600 of it. Where’s the other, other 200 or whatever. Yeah. And they may have a strategy of what we’re going to roll that over to next month and [00:43:00] have that be applied. But you need to be on top of that just to make sure that it doesn’t get lost as.

 

Tersh Blissett: Long as that’s clear ahead of time. Because like I had one one time where I was spend $2,500 a month and we didn’t have any ads running like where the heck is all this money going? Like, it didn’t make any sense to me. And they’re like, Oh yeah.

 

Sarah Ghirardo: And then you’re B Right. Like, so what is really getting run?

 

Tersh Blissett: Yeah. And so they, they were, they, they told me later on, well we were, we’re adding it over here, we’re adding it in this area. That’s fine. But I wish I would have known that before now. Like, I shouldn’t have had to ask for that information. You should have told me that’s what we were doing. But either way.

 

Josh Crouch: Yeah, it’s just that transparency and I think that’s what we’re all looking for is, is transparency in the world of marketing and contractors, because there’s so much lack of education on the marketing [00:44:00] side, because, look, most of the business owners are really good with tools in their hand, but they’re they’re not marketing wizards or that’s not how they they’ve they gathered all their experience in the trade. So learning this stuff, all the KPI’s, all these acronyms, all these different things can be very overwhelming and take a lot of time and effort to learn. So I think it’s just asking, just like Sarah point out, really ask a lot of questions. I don’t know if maybe it was Johnny, I don’t remember, but just ask questions all the time. And it’s okay to ask questions. If your marketing agency gets annoyed by you, you probably don’t have a good partner and you should probably look for somebody else that doesn’t get annoyed by by simple questions and stuff like that. Is there anything on the paid side of things or on the ads product through Service Titan that you guys we didn’t touch on that you guys want to talk about? Good. We [00:45:00] did a great job.

 

Johny Wenzel: Boom. My might drop. Yep. That you know that.

 

Josh Crouch: Or your coffee ran out and you need a refill. So where’s the bus place for somebody? If. If let’s say they have service and they want to reach out and maybe be part of the open beta, or they just want to learn more about this product. Where should they go?

 

Sarah Ghirardo: They can just contact Johnny like directly. His phone number is. No, I don’t know.

 

Johny Wenzel: I was.

 

Josh Crouch: Just say sure, he dropped his phone number down at the bottom so everyone can text and Johnny.

 

Sarah Ghirardo: And I number that you can see will be on his landing page. If you can find that, we’ll send you a link to where you can sign up for the ads beta. If you’re on service type or if you want to find out more information, we will follow up with you in regards to that. But it is available and if you have marketing pro full suite, that is, you know, it’s a start. It’s a start to learn your data. It’s a start to bring something in, to [00:46:00] look at the attribution, to get a little bit closer to the customer journey. And if you are an owner, you know, just my suggestion would be to continue to have great conversations with your agency, know that they are not out there to get you. You know, we’re working with agencies that service titan to have them become certified in in marketing and and really know the business in terms of your capacity, your seasonality like your numbers, because that’s so important for both of us to leverage that power in partnership together. So, you know, just have those awkward conversations where you’re like, you know what, I don’t know what I’m doing and be okay with that. I’ve had many of them. Josh You know, I messaged you on Facebook and I’m like, I don’t know what I’m doing.

 

Josh Crouch: So believe me, it’s a two way street. So awesome, guys. Well, this was this was great. We had a lot of lot [00:47:00] of really good stuff in the comment section and stuff like that too. We didn’t we didn’t get to all of them. I don’t think we missed any questions that we Tersh.

 

Tersh Blissett: Not that I’m aware of.

 

Josh Crouch: Okay, so if there’s anything else, Sarah and Johnny are usually very approachable through social media and stuff like that too. There is if you are a service user, there is a marketing pro Facebook group that Sarah drops a lot of industry related knowledge, both from Service Titan and from a lot of other really good sources. So if you guys are not in that group and you have service type, check that group out and feel free to ask any questions to any of us and we’d be happy to help you guys at least point you in the right direction if we don’t know the answer.

 

Sarah Ghirardo: Yeah, right.

 

Johny Wenzel: Yeah.

 

Tersh Blissett: Thank you, John and Sarah, for coming on the show.

 

Josh Crouch: Thank you, guys.

 

Sarah Ghirardo: It’s great. You’re not going to say may the force be with you because that would be five.

 

Josh Crouch: Josh, that’s five times today. Yeah.

 

Johny Wenzel: See you guys later. Goodbye.

 

Announcer: Thank [00:48:00] you for listening to this episode of Service Business Mastery Podcast. Now that you are equipped with essential business advice from this impactful conversation, you are one step closer to becoming the successful owner of your dreams. If this episode has been helpful to your business journey, don’t forget to subscribe to the show. Leave a rating and share it with other owners as well. Visit Service Business Mastery Podcast to learn more.