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[Music] foreign [Music] I'm going to give three examples of Legion setups that will apply to different companies and I want to just preface it by saying like to quote the great drizzle there ain't no rules to this game there are no hard and fast rules there's nothing like that you can do that you're like doing it the wrong way because it's all about the inputs and outputs like what are you putting into it what kind of sales are you getting from the back end of your business and so I'm going to start out with what I see as the ideal lead gen setup when it comes to a construction business or a contractor and we're going to use a pyramid because it's like the food pyramid you know the FDA I think it is they say that we should eat 12 loaves of bread every day and then eat some vegetables and stuff and so on and going up is less and less when it comes to local lead gen I put the most important thing at the bottom the thing that should be biggest priority to you or maybe you can think of it an order of priority so like one two three and so on and I'll kind of bounce around during this video and just kind of talk off the cuff but for an ideal Legion setup this is a company who who has already gone through the process of setting up their online presence they've probably been in business for 10 or 20 years so they have a good book of clients they've been doing everything right this is what it looks like so on the bottom we have referrals and repeat business and this could be referrals from customers it could be referrals from subcontractors general contractors Associates friends it doesn't matter the most mature and healthy businesses in construction are getting a good amount of their new customers or their new jobs from repeat business and referrals and if you've been in business for five or ten years and you're not getting referrals that's a huge red flag that you aren't doing things good enough you should be getting a big chunk of your business through referrals I have clients who they get 80 percent of their new jobs through referrals some of them are 50 a lot of people come to us with no marketing whatsoever so then they're getting 100 of their jobs from referrals but if you're getting zero percent that is a red flag and you need to do something about that because that's not going to work out for you and I'll explain more about that later on let's say that you are you've got the referral things going I would say the next thing you should do if you haven't done anything else and and what this mature company would have done is their offline marketing and I'm talking about fundamental stuff here like uh t-shirts you could do like truck wraps or signs uh yard signs business cards like all the stuff that you can use to promote your company in the real world you should have all that stuff on lock if you're a one-man show you only need like a couple shirts a couple hats some business cards but when you show up to somebody's house you want to look professional you want to look like you represent your company whether it's just you or whether there's a thousand of you and a note about this is it goes up in importance the more customers you deal with if you're a remodeling contractor and you have three clients per year having a shirt is less important than your if you're an HVAC salesman and you talk to three people before lunch if you're constantly making new first and Impressions all the time you want to be branded you want to look as good as you can if you can't afford the truck wrap yet get some shirts get some hats so maybe your truck looks like but when they answer the door you look good and so offline marketing it would be the next thing the third one up is your online presence so now we're talking about your website what people see when they Google you do they see I do have a Google listing do you have any reviews does your website look professional do you even have a website when most of my clients come to me this is where we start because they've already covered these other things a lot of people will come to us after being in business for 20 or 30 years and they only ever get referrals and they're ready to take control of their marketing expand maybe referrals have gone down whatever but they already have their shirts and their branding altogether and they're starting with their online presence so again that's like websites Google listings the stuff that I talk about on this channel like ad nauseum so the next one up is advertising and so the reason this one is way up here is not because it's more important than these it's because it should come after if you should it's like uh stepping up the ladder only after you have a solid online presence should you start advertising particularly online that's like Google ads local service ads Facebook any kind of advertising even if you're advertising on the radio because people hear about you and then the first thing they do is they go to Google and they type you in and if you have a online presence then you're just going to be losing people right off the front end so you're paying for them to find you or hear about you but then you're losing them immediately because when they try to look you up there's nothing there and so that's why online presence comes before advertising if you're maxing out your online presence then the next thing I would look at is advertising and we would look at Google ads Facebook ads we look at whatever is going to work best for your business for most contractors out there I would look at Google guaranteed local service ads first and then either Google ads or Facebook ads depending on your business but the local service ads are really good I've got another video you can check out where I explain what that's all about but if you are entering the advertising game I would check out local service ads so let's say that you you've got your online presence maybe you invest in SEO like people are able to find you on Google organically and then you started running Google ads local service ads Facebook ads you've been doing that a couple years you you're kind of hitting the ceiling with that you can't really you want more customers you want to put more money into your marketing but you can't really get any further at that point and only at that point do I recommend buying leads so when I say buying leads this could be like Angie leads Angie ads porch Thumbtack all of those lead reselling companies I would only after doing everything else would I look at buying leads and I would be really really careful to try not to compete with myself elsewhere if you're running Google ads and you start paying Angie ads you're paying them to compete with you on Google ads and make your Google ads more expensive and then you're buying those leads back from them but they're also selling them to other to your competitors so you don't really want to buy leads in the same area you're running Google ads because you're just making it more expensive for yourself but like I said there's Nuance to all of this stuff and there's no like perfect way there's no like Ironclad rules to this it depends it's different for every business every Market every situation it depends what your competitors are doing it depends on how much demand there is in your Market how many people actually want your services but in general this is what the ideal setup looks like you're getting a good amount of referrals let's say 20 of your new customers are bringing in an additional customer every year that that's really important when it comes to like advertising online or investing in your online presence because with advertising these days there's a lot of companies out there who are willing to not make any money on that first sale some of them are even okay losing money on that first sale so they might be running Google ads and they might be competing with your ads but they might be offering this customer something that you can't because they're willing to not make any money on the front end because they know that they're going to get those referrals and their repeat business later and that's going to more than make up for the front end loss and that's becoming more and more common in this industry it's already super common in like e-commerce and these other online Industries but this is starting to hit the Home Services industry and so you need to be aware of it so referrals and repeat business should be one of your main priorities and most of it is just making sure that your customers have the best possible experience all the time but then again keeping in contact with your other your old customers if you do kitchen remodels call up a client a year later check in hey how's everything going going as the kitchen are you still loving it do you know anybody that else that would want our services be okay with keeping the relationship going with your clientele looking for ways to keep offering them services in whatever business you do and getting referrals for them that's going to make everything else that you actually put your money into later more effective for you if you don't have T-shirts a good brand presence if you knock on someone's door and they're confused about who you are and why you're there you should really work on that but you need t-shirts you need hats you need business cards if you can you want to have your signs on your truck like you're driving around your truck or van all day if you have a big sign on there with your phone number and your website like that's advertising all day every all the time your online presence I have a million videos about this but people are going to type your name into Google so go type your own business name into Google and see what pops up you want to be the whole first page you want to have more positive reviews than your competitors you want your website to look professional to make people feel like you're trustworthy your website needs to introduce you and who you are if it looks generic like every other competitor website out there then you're just wasting your time with it because it's not your generic ass website that makes your business special it's you so you should be all over your website if you're doing all those things right then you then I suggest to getting into advertising you want to keep expanding you want to get more customers in your area advertising there's multiple ways to do it and then if you have to you can buy leads so what do you do if you're already maxing all of this stuff out you can either move into a new market or start acquiring your competitors and taking on their book of clients now most of you aren't even close to that point because you're not maxing out any of this stuff but if you are interested in something like that feel free to reach out to me I talk to companies that are trying to do that kind of thing all the time and the big guys the ones that are growing like super super fast in the multi-millions per year they're doing all this stuff and they're acquiring other businesses and they're moving into new markets with the same Paradigm looking at this there's really not a lot of other ways to get customers like you could do mailers you could go knock door to door which is something I'm going to talk about in a moment but in general this is the lead gen game when it comes to construction take a picture of that understand where you're at in here and feel free to leave a comment if you have a question or a thought on this whole thing so let's look at a different example I was going to start from absolute nothing today this is kind of the pattern that I would follow all right so if I was starting from absolute scratch today and I had nothing I had no branding I had no shirts I had no business cards I had zero clients I have no website I have no money all I have is a truck some tools and the will to survive right the first thing I would do is I would look into my personal Network so I would make sure that everyone I know in real life and online knows who I am who I am and what I'm doing I mean everyone that knows me knows who I am but not all of them know what I'm doing so I just go on like Facebook I'd say hey everyone I'm uh I'm a carpenter now I'm doing bathroom remodels who needs their bathroom remodel if you hit up enough people you're gonna find somebody that's willing to talk to you and that's all you need is a conversation to get started once I max out my personal Network I would go door to door and this is a major one for me lately because I'm getting into the real estate game and I've been doing a lot of door-to-door sales door-to-door door knocking cold knocking whatever you want to call it I'm knocking on doors of people who have no idea who I am and I'm trying to spark up a conversation about buying their house it's a very very difficult thing to do what would be way easier is to go knock every door on a road and say hey I'm doing Mrs Jones flooring down the street she's really excited here's a picture of it are you have you been thinking about getting your flooring redone or do you need your flooring redone or do you know anybody that does if you don't have any jobs go knock a hundred doors and I could almost guarantee that someone's going to hire you as long as you look somewhat professional and you're friendly but always have a business card to leave or something and don't just take easy no's for an answer if somebody's like no I don't want my four redone sure well what about in the next year or so no well do you know anybody that might no okay well if you get a few no's in a row then move on but go knock on some doors I just gave this recommendation to a client of ours he's on the online presence part we just finished building his website and doing all that and he's starting to get projects through his website but he wants more and he's still working with a shoestring budget so I told him today I was like hey man schedule 20 minutes after every day and go knock on all the doors on the road that you're working at and say hey I'm doing Mrs Jones floor down the street thought you might be interested in something that's not the same I'm in your neighborhood I live three minutes from here if you knock every door in your neighborhood you're going to get some jobs out of it and you're going to get referrals if you're like a nice person you leave a business card or a flyer or something there's zero chance that you keep doing that and you don't get work so a lot of people watch my channel who are really struggling they want to do Facebook ads and they think that building a website's the end-all be-all answer to all their woes go just go knock on some doors get some jobs save some money and then you can start playing all these other games the rest of the way up on this one is kind of the same this is the offline let's say that I knocked 100 Doors I got three jobs I made a little bit of money now I'm gonna go get some shirts made some hats some business cards some flyers whatever I want to make it so when I knock on someone's door they clearly see that I represent a company that I'm a professional that I'm here to offer them something valuable so all the offline marketing stuff let's say I get 10 more jobs I save some money that's when I moved to the online stuff that doesn't mean you shouldn't start your Google Business listing immediately day one this is like rule number zero day one equals start your GMB you literally all you need is a name and an address and you can get on Google and that way every single person that you talk to is a possible review you know if I was really hustling and I needed to make some happen I'd go door to door I'd say hey do you need your floor redone and then they'd say no and then I'd look around and be like do you need that garbage over there moved out or what about this what can I do for you that you're willing to pay for I would find anything maybe I would help them for free as long as they were willing to give me a review on Google because that one review on Google over the next five years could be worth tens of thousands of dollars to you reviews is something that you can be gathering from everybody that you encounter going door to door is about as fast a feedback as you can possibly get because you can go on Wix like many do and you can design your own website and spend dozens of hours doing it and watching YouTube videos about SEO and doing all this and after six months you'll probably have zero feedback no one still will have seen your website you wouldn't have gotten any jobs from it and you'll be sitting there wondering did I do it wrong does my market suck what's the problem that doesn't happen with door-to-door you go door to door you go knock on 25 doors you're gonna get really quick feedback if everybody looks at you once and tells you to get the hell off their property you probably have something going on with your appearance or maybe you're just in a really shady neighborhood I don't know but the point is you get really instant feedback and you get better at presenting your offers because if you can't sell somebody face to face you're never going to be able to sell them online and you'll probably have no idea what kind of branding or Mark marketing to do on offline either yeah if I was starting from scratch I'd be going door to door 100 percent next we've got advertising just like before and then at the top I've got referrals because if you're starting from nothing it's going to be a while till you're getting referrals but it doesn't have to be if you go door to door you bang out a few jobs you make people super super happy you'll get referrals from people that you didn't even do any work for if you're friendly enough and they like you let's look at another example this is the final one this is a company who is afraid to go door to door for whatever reason or just doesn't want to and this is a path that most people these days seem to try to take and for some it's successful and that's why I'm including it for I'd say 9 out of 10 people this way does not work but for one out of ten it seems to be all right so these are the ones that start with buying leads so this is like the Angie leads the Thumbtack the porch all those kinds of things I have many clients over the years who started their business buying leads none of them recently everybody that did this successfully did it three years ago and Beyond but I'm sure that it's still possible occasionally things to note if you're buying leads like you're going to talk to a lot of people you're going to get a you're going to call a lot of people you might not talk to many of them but if you get if you buy a hundred leads let's just say you buy a hundred leads at forty dollars a piece you spent four thousand dollars you might talk to 25 of them on the phone so my clients that buy leads now they tell me they reach about one out of six one out of seven but let's just be generous and say that one out of four you're actually able to reach on the phone so you get 25 conversations let's say you're able to close 20 of those so you get five jobs so you spent four thousand dollars to get five jobs what will really matter is how much profit you make on those five jobs let's say you make five a thousand dollars profit per job you turned four thousand dollars into five thousand dollars it's probably not good enough for you right hopefully you're making like two or three thousand at least per job so that this will become a 15 and now turning four thousand into fifteen thousand that might work for you these numbers are going to be different for everybody how much they charge you per lead depends on your area and how many other contractors there are buying leads Angie and all these gigantic corporations they have algorithms to figure out how much to charge you they buy it from one company they mark it up they sell it to you like that's how the lead resellers work I put this in here because it is possible if you are going to try this route I highly recommend not signing any long-term contracts get them to give you a trial run before you commit to anything long term otherwise you'll be locked into it especially with Angie ads because they lock you into a multi-thousand dollar monthly fee at least with Angie leads it's like a membership fee yearly membership fee and then you pay when you buy the leads so you can pause those like every two days or something like that to keep those from going in topic for another story but some people start out by buying leads and then they work their way up the rest of the chain the offline the online the advertising and like I said earlier if you're starting to advertise on Google ads be mindful that if you're buying leads and running Google ads you're probably competing with yourself you're double dipping in the wrong way by buying leads from companies who are advertising on Google ads you're making your own Google ads more expensive so if you're going to do both try to augment one with the other so if I was running Google ads in a 10 mile radius around my city maybe I would say I only want to buy leads beyond that 10 mile radius that way I'm not competing against myself if that makes sense and then up here I got referrals this would hopefully you want to make referrals go further down this list of your source of new customers but again if you're starting from brand new and you're buying leads then you probably don't have a lot of book of clients to or a large book of clients to get referrals from but no matter what you're doing like referrals and reviews should be like your top priority get referrals get reviews if you put a lot of attention into both of those and you can find ways to make those two things happen over time your business will grow you'll have an easier time getting customers and you won't have to do a lot of BS things like buy leads from lead reseller