Branding That Gets You Hired (S1.5)

In this episode, we sit down with Braedlyn McEwen, Marketing Supervisor at Boshart Industries, to break down what actually works when it comes to branding and marketing for contractors.

If you think a logo is enough—think again. Braedlyn shares how to build trust with customers before you ever speak to them, the biggest marketing mistakes contractors keep making, and how to stand out in a crowded market. From social media and websites to Google reviews and even lawn signs, this conversation is packed with practical strategies you can start using right away.

The best part? You don’t need a big budget or fancy equipment to make it work.

Whether you're just getting started or ready to take your business to the next level, this episode will give you the tools to get noticed—and get hired.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and welcome to the Contractor Elite Podcast. My name is Aidan Henry. I'm your host. Today, in this episode, we are sitting down with Bradley McEwen, who works in the marketing department here at Beauchar Industries. What we covered today is all about getting started with building a brand and an online presence if you are a contractor or someone who is starting out your business for the first time. There's a lot of tried and tested and true advice in there and a lot of stuff you might not have actually thought of. It's a really great episode. We think you're going to enjoy it. Let's get into it. Braydlin, welcome to the show. It's so good to have you here.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

Thank you for having me. I'm excited.

SPEAKER_00 0:36

Yeah, I know uh you've obviously been a big part uh in the background of helping put uh the contractor elite podcast together. And uh I know that you have naturally been a big part of the marketing department for a long time. So I'm excited about what we're talking about today. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:50

Yeah, thanks.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Yeah, I know you've you've got a lot of great stuff to share with us. So maybe uh just kind of right off the hop, for anyone who doesn't know who you are, uh, they might have seen you in a couple of videos on our YouTube channel or something like that. Maybe just introduce us. Who are you? What do you do here? Uh, you know, maybe even how, how did you get into marketing? Why do you enjoy marketing? All that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:11

Uh yeah. So I've been with Bowshar for 10 years. Uh so I actually went to school for broadcast television. So very similar to marketing. Um, I kind of wanted to be a sports broadcaster, as was the goal uh when I went to school. But then I just kind of got a job here. I live in Milverton, so it was like very convenient. I know a lot of people that worked here. Um and I was uh started as an order picker. So that was actually a good way to kind of learn what Beauchart does, the different parts, everything like that. And then I moved up to sales. And then sales was a good transition into marketing. I was young, I knew social media, that was the job opening. So I kind of was like, oh, that's a good foot in the door for different things that I could do within marketing. So once I got here, I started learning a lot of different stuff. Like I got to use cameras again, which is something I didn't do since college. And then um, yeah, I've just been able to explore a lot of different things, which has been fun here. So yeah, that's me.

SPEAKER_00 2:07

I love it. Yeah. And I I mean, I know one of the things that we love about having you in the marketing department, your background having started as an order picker and then moving into what was at the time inside sales, which is customer service now, um, that gave you certainly a level of like product knowledge and experience, but even just dealing with customers, right? You had customers you covered, what were the provinces you covered?

SPEAKER_01 2:28

I did like northern Ontario and then Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

SPEAKER_00 2:32

And so I know that even sometimes uh I'll you know just mention the name of a customer and you're like, oh, I I used to communicate with them and oh, how's Bob doing, or something like that. So um I know that that has enriched your experience. And again, I think it's just gonna add to our conversation today. So I'm excited about that. Um so uh today we're talking about branding and marketing in general for contractors, right? And so maybe uh uh kind of just to begin us off here, for contractors that maybe don't do a whole lot of quote unquote marketing, right? Maybe they have a business, um, they are kind of, you know, they've they've got a few customers, maybe, maybe even things are going pretty okay right now, and they're looking to uh take the marketing side of what they do more seriously. So when it comes to marketing in general, I suppose, um, you know, talk me through kind of uh a brand and a logo. And you know, uh a lot of people, especially in the beginning, think that um to start marketing a business just means, okay, uh pay someone to make you a pretty logo, right? But we would argue that marketing is so much more than that. So maybe just walk me through kind of what does it mean to have a brand and kind of why should contractors care about establishing a brand?

SPEAKER_01 3:46

Yeah, so like you said, like a logo is great if it's pretty, but if nobody sees it, then nobody will know about you and it it's just a waste. So marketing and and branding it is is the key there. So you gotta have websites, you gotta have social media, you gotta put your logo on a truck that you use every day and you drive around and you take to your customers. You've got to do lawn signs that say, like, I'm here, I'm working in this in this house. Um, so that's like the most important part is that you just can't stop at a logo. So, and you wanna make sure that everything is branded the same. So use the colors within your logo on your website, on your social media. Uh, make sure everything is consistent across the board and make sure nothing is too confusing. That's another thing that I feel like people put a lot of information that maybe isn't necessary or they just, you know, quickly build a website. It's overwhelming. Yes, it can be overwhelming. Social media, for example, too, you want to make sure that you are consistently posting on it because people won't, you know, why follow you if you didn't post for a year? They'll be like, well, what's the point in that? So make sure you're also keeping everything up to date. So branding is is really important. That's how people find you and want to hire you.

SPEAKER_00 5:03

And so maybe even just to dig into this a little bit further. So I'm kind of picturing two different contractors in my mind right now. Uh, one of them uh does not really do much of anything with their marketing, doesn't really care about it, doesn't invest in it, and that's fine, and they might be making enough money to be satisfied and pay the bills, and that's all that matters. And uh so, you know, they don't have a logo on the truck, they don't have any company clothes, maybe their website, if they have one, it's subpar at best. But then you've got a similar contractor, same size of company, same number of trucks on the road, that type of thing, but they care a lot more about their logo, about their social media, their website. What do you think is the difference in terms of maybe success with customers or kind of just overall, you know, uh direction and momentum of their company. What is the difference there? And why should a contractor, if maybe he doesn't invest in marketing right now, why should he care to become that other guy?

SPEAKER_01 5:57

Well, I think the person who does invest in having logos and their branding, that shows people that they care. They care about their business. They feel like they're good enough that you should hire them. They have confidence in that. Where the other person maybe looks that they're a little lazy or they don't care as much. You also like, I wouldn't know that that truck isn't just somebody else carrying their kids to baseball. Like, I wouldn't know that they are an actual contractor that I could hire. And I can't hire somebody I don't know about. So I would go with somebody that I see around my town. Now, there's somebody that I see a lot. They are a snowplow business. And what they do is they put their logo on um like lawn signs at the ends of driveways. And if you drive around this town, you see them everywhere. And who are people going to hire? Probably this person with the lawn signs everywhere. There's probably other snowplow businesses within this city, but all you see is this one. So you're probably going to go with them. And you're probably going to think, wow, if everybody chooses them, I should probably too. And I probably wouldn't do a lot of other digging into it. Now we've like talked about Google reviews as well as something that shows that, oh, if you have a really high review, why would I look at somebody else? I'm just going to go for that person. So somebody that hasn't invested probably doesn't have Google reviews or or even good ones. Then I'm not going to go with them, most likely, right?

SPEAKER_00 7:25

Yep. Well, and I mean, there's so much gold in everything you just said. And you've hit on some of the major themes I think that we're going to talk about today, which is people cannot hire you if they don't know you exist, right? And so there's something to be said for, you know, especially in the beginning when you were just starting out, to think of acquiring business more through a sales lens, right? So maybe you're knocking on doors, you're making cold calls, whatever. And those are kind of one-to-one activities that you're doing in order to try to drum up business. The feedback is very immediate and you win or lose. And that's kind of how you start getting business, right? But marketing really is kind of this bigger picture, more of kind of establishing yourself as a trustworthy company. And as you were talking about uh snowplow business, I was laughing to think about some of our listeners in warmer climates that may not be familiar with uh snowplow companies, but that's fine. We're here in the gray white north, and so we have a lot of that. But I think even, you know, you you mentioned lawn signs, right? And something as simple as a lawn sign um can be highly effective, right? Roofing companies do this a lot. Wow, look at that roof, right? And when I drive by them, you know, in my line of work as a marketer, I drive by them and I groan a little bit because I'm like, oh, that's stupid sign. But it's like, hey, it works, it gets your attention, right? Um, and I I think that's kind of the the key part of what you're saying, right? Is yeah um establishing, you know, a recognizable kind of uh brand. Essentially, there's not much of a better word for it, that people know to hire you um because they recognize you. And even again, talking about Google reviews and things, right? We do this, I'm sure the vast majority of us do this with Amazon every time we go to buy something online, right? Hey, I want to buy the thing that has 5,000 five-star reviews as opposed to the thing that has like uh 200 four-star reviews, right? We care about those uh reviews because we believe that there are safety in numbers, right?

SPEAKER_01 9:16

Yes, and people don't have time to do a lot of research anymore. Everything has changed to be fast and very quick. People don't want to spend too much time. So, what are they gonna do? They're just gonna look at a the top three Google reviews, and if it's five stars, they're just going to go with that. They're not gonna do a lot of their own research. They're not gonna try to dig to find the people that didn't do very good at branding. So you're just gonna get overlooked, you're gonna get passed up, especially if you're like in a smaller town where there's maybe a lot of you, people are just going to pick somebody else.

SPEAKER_00 9:49

So and I mean to to give a personal example of that. Um, I was looking up my my wife has been cutting my hair for a number of years now, and I'm like, maybe it's time to go to a barber and like invest in something. Cause and she's been telling me I should do that for years. And I'm like, oh, but you are free and I have to pay a barber. But, anyways, uh I live in a small town, as you know, of about 40,000 people. And I was like, Oh, I I knew of maybe two barbershops, and so I just hopped on Google Maps and I typed in barbershop, and to my surprise, there was about 25 barbershops, and I think most of them had like three chairs or more. So I'm like, holy smokes, this small kind of town, you know, middle of Ontario. I mean, it's not small for Ontario, but it's small in general, um, has all these businesses. And so I poked around, I was looking at exactly Google reviews, and all of them had generally favorable reviews. But then the next step for me was looking at pictures of work they'd done, right? So then I'm looking for because I've been to, especially, you know, when I was a kid, I went to an old school barber that uh he was probably in his 70s, like he'd retired, but he kind of kept his barber shop open out of his house. And uh he was cool, but I don't think he did a whole lot of modern styles. He definitely did not have an Instagram. That was not a thing, right? Um, and so it's interesting, I guess, just all these different thought processes that we go through when we are trying to uh choose a vendor to do work for us, right? And again, uh the the companies that did, at least for me, and again, maybe I'm biased and you can read into this what you want, but at least for me, the companies that invested in their marketing got my attention a lot more than the people who did the bare minimum to get by. And I think that once you get to a certain point in business, the bare minimum to get by is not enough anymore, right? And I think especially with the advent of social media and the internet and the digital age, uh it is in some ways easier than ever before to kind of do the bare minimum, and so that raises the the ceiling or the floor of the ceiling, it raises the expectation, anyways, yeah of what is expected of you. But one of the questions that I want to get to here is asking you maybe about common mistakes that you see uh contractors make, business owners make, anything like that. Because when we talk about marketing, it's not enough to simply have a social media account. And you've already said this, right? Posting consistently is important. So, what are maybe some of the biggest mistakes broadly speaking in marketing that you see contractors or other um business owners make? And then how do you start to counteract those things?

SPEAKER_01 12:19

Yeah, so like I said before, very confusing like social media websites, anything like that is probably like the biggest thing. If I go on and I click on somebody's website and I have no idea where I'm going, where I'm finding the information, I can't find contact, I can't find even where you are. Because I I live in a small town. So there's not always that person right here, but I want to know that they can travel to me. So even saying where you travel to, where you're out of, that's something that right away, if I can't find that information, I'm going somewhere.

SPEAKER_00 12:52

I gotta just quickly interject when I in another life, I was a wedding photographer, okay? And um, you know, usually you cover an area of maybe like five or six hours before you have to start charging people for travel in a hotel room or whatever. And it would drive me nuts when I would research my competitors and I knew this person was likely local, but you went to their website and the city, the town, the country was nowhere to be seen. And there were so many times I saw um available worldwide, and I'm like, well, aren't we all sure? If you want to put me on a plane and take me to Barbados, absolutely sign me up, right? But anyways, I I just oh it drove me nuts, right? And I think you're absolutely right that um some of those bare essential contact information pieces actually are kind of easy to overlook, right? So, anyways, I interrupted.

SPEAKER_01 13:39

You have to think of it as your customer looking at it, not you looking at it. You know all this about your business, but see it as what does your customer need to know right away. So, like what you could put on your homepage, what you should put under a contacts tab, making it as simple as possible, but then also making it branded. Because another thing is somebody might have a similar name to you, excuse me, with like your business. So it's like maybe make sure that your brand is the right color so that I know, oh, I'm on that page. I'm like in the right spot. That's the same with your social media. A lot of people say, Oh, I don't have time to keep up with my social media, but it is very simple to keep up with your social media to post. There are so many different styles of posts that you can do that you can just take before and after photos. You can do all sorts of stuff that are posts on social media, people love seeing, and that helps build your brand and show people what they like. I want to be able to be like, oh, I want exactly this. What you did for this home, I want you to do for me. And so that's what that's the biggest thing is I would say social media, you need to just take the time. It really doesn't take too much time, depending on what you're doing. Different videos, stuff like that might, but it is really simple. You can do it on your phone. Like iPhones have the capability that they've never had before, right? So it's like very easy to do it. You don't need crazy equipment, you just need you need your phone, and you need to just take the time to do it.

SPEAKER_00 15:04

Well, and I think you, I mean, you've led beautifully into kind of the next questions and and segment that I wanted to start talking to you about because um I came, you know, before I worked at Beauchard, I came from a professional photography, videography background. And so I knew how to use cameras and lights and microphones, and I knew how to make things look really polished and very, very professional and like you'd spent $50,000 on a video, right? Um, it was difficult for me, just as a human being and as a guy who was partial towards those really beautiful polished images, to start to see branding as something that was more raw and more kind of um off the cuff and more behind the scenes. And, you know, it was when I was on a parental leave that uh Beauchart started its TikTok account in some of the earliest videos. I remember someone was dancing on a countertop, right? And I'm like, I don't understand how this helps us sell product. And it took me a little while to start to be able to understand how one of the beautiful shifts that I think has really happened in social media in the past five years or so is that sort of um peek behind the curtain, if you will, right? You mentioned before and after, right? Well, in the past, I think, you know, conventional marketing uh principles would have taught you just show the finished product, right? Show how awesome of a job you can do, make it look great. But I think now more and more we're seeing time lapses and video clips and pans around the room and not beautiful audio and in a studio with microphones like we are right now, but you're seeing people that are showing a lot more off the cuff stuff. So I'm wondering if you can speak to that a bit, I guess, to a contractor, to a plumber, to whoever, like um, is it, you know, if they maybe are stuck in the way that of thinking that I was of thinking, uh, I don't have the right camera equipment, I don't have the lighting, I don't have the personality to be on camera. Can you maybe speak to that and kind of walk me through what are their requirements to have a good social media feed anymore? What does it mean to put together a good social post and so on and so forth?

SPEAKER_01 17:07

Yeah, and that's tough because with TikTok and all different stuff like that now, so many people go viral for all sorts of stuff that like it's hard to even know what people are really interested in. But there's so many different styles of videos that people like that it's like I would just recommend trying different stuff. Finding out what your specific customers and your followers are interested in. Try like a post that maybe you just created on Canva with like lots of words. And if that doesn't do well, try a real photo, try a video, try something else. Also play with when you post it. Maybe your customers are home at night and that's when they're on social media. So that's when you get the most likes or shares or anything like that. Maybe you just do stories of when you're like at the building, you don't do static posts. So there's all sorts of like there's no rule book. I think you just try for what you are, like you and your brand and your customers are interested in. And so, like, I think consistency is the biggest key to make sure that your customers know you are on it all the time. You're still here, you're still posting, you're still doing work. They can just see how busy you are when you're posting different jobs. So I would just do that. But how and when and what you post, that can all just be up to you and just play around.

SPEAKER_00 18:24

Well, and before we started filming this episode, you and I were talking about um, again, searching for a new vendor or something, right? So if someone needs to call a plumber, um, Google Maps is definitely one of the places that I've gone uh for different things like that. And we'll circle back to Google Maps in a minute. But social media, I guess, as we're talking about social media, can you maybe give me your thoughts on kind of what role does social media play in either attracting new customers or building trust with them or converting them into a paying customer? Like I think maybe, you know, my my assumption would be that a lot of uh contractors, business owners in general, it's not exclusive to contracting, um, they don't invest in their marketing because they see it as a time suck, right? We said this. I don't have the time to do that. Or, you know, I they they are fooled into thinking that, okay, to succeed on social media, you have to learn the latest dance craze in order to make video. And there is some uh validity to that, and we've seen success with that, but that's not the only thing, anyways, that we've done as a company, not the only thing we've seen be successful, and certainly not the only thing that we've seen contractors, plumbers, drillers, all those types of guys do. So um, yeah, maybe kind of just like walk me through what does it mean, you know, I'm too busy to do that. What does and what role does again social media play in actually attracting customers?

SPEAKER_01 19:45

Yeah, so there's different social media platforms too, which I think do different things. So, like something like Facebook, you can post your website, you can post all your contact information. It's essentially just like Google. When you Google, sometimes the Facebook page comes up. So that's also just another spot where people can find you, which I don't think is a bad thing. I think that just helps you. If there's tons of different places that somebody can find you, then like more than likely, more people will find you. So if you're on all sorts of different social medias, I think that just helps. Um I don't know. I think that it also just shows that you put a lot of effort into it. If you're on all different ones, you're posting different stuff on each one, or even if you're not, I think that just shows that you care enough to put it there and to get different people. And there's all different demographics that use all different social media. So that's another big thing. I, if I'm looking for somebody, I might go to Instagram now because that's just me and my demographic. But then my parents will probably still use Google or they might go to Facebook because that's where they are. So I don't think it hurts to be everywhere so that you get different people to find you.

SPEAKER_00 20:57

And even when we were talking about branding before, right? So seeing your brand as kind of this broad thing, it's not just simply your logo, it is your presence everywhere online, right? Um, I think that, you know, one of the examples I love to give is you think of buying an iPhone or an Apple product and whatever your feelings are about Apple aside, the ex anyone who's had the experience of unboxing one of those products understands that unboxing it is an experience in and of itself. I'll tell you, breaking down all that bloody paper and cardboard after and throwing that out and recycling it, that's also an experience in and of itself. Yeah, and maybe that's the solution, it's just that I never should have done that. But, anyways, you get what I'm getting at, right? That that it's not just the iPhone, the laptop, whatever that is the unique experience. It is all of the details around it. It's even down to, I'm sure, the the stickiness of the glue that they use and the plastic adhesive and all of these things, right? No detail is overlooked in that process, and I think that. From you know to to someone like Apple from the very beginning, they want to set the tone of what working with them looks like, right? And so I'm wondering your thoughts about those details, right? And I uh and I would imagine that it's easy to overlook a lot of those, but what do you feel like that kind of means for contractors again when it comes to attracting customers and looking at their brand as a whole?

SPEAKER_01 22:24

Yeah, so I think it all depends what you really want your business to be. Are you like a people person? Are you really friendly, or are you into like the luxury side of it? Like what is important to you and putting effort into those details specifically. So for like iPhones, they really care about that it's this luxury experience that you open it, it's very cool, everything's very sleek. So then they put a lot of thought into every part of that detail. But if you just want to be the, you know, neighborhood friendly guy, like maybe you would do different types of videos or you would like host a like, I don't know, townwide barbecue, or like, you know, do giveaways and stuff like that. So details can be different for every business. It depends what you value as a person and how you value your business as seen to everybody else. So you can focus on different details based off of that. So put a lot of effort into things that you find important. Like, I don't think everybody has to worry about the glue if that's not what you care about for your business.

SPEAKER_00 23:26

And and almost more importantly, I know you would agree with this, what your customers care about. Yeah. Because the level of effort you put into your branding is also going to, again, set the tone and attract a particular clientele, right? So Apple products are seen, I think, anyways, like they are common products, but they are still premium products, right? Yes. You pay a lot of money for that iPhone. I think the price of the newest iPhone goes up every year. And whether that's inflation or what, or you know, corporate greed, I'll let you figure that out on your own. But they again, like there is a threshold there, right? And they uh you are appealing to a different audience when you price your services and do these things in a different way. And I think that if your packaging and your branding and all of those details does not align with what you charge, uh, you're gonna have a rough time, right? If you show up in a dirty t-shirt that's got holes in it, but you're charging a premium price for the services that you offer, unless you are the only guy in a thousand mile radius, you're gonna have a very hard time selling those premium services when you are not presenting yourself as a premium brand, right? Um, and again, that's not necessarily to say what any con any one contractor should do. It depends on your market, depends on your business values and all of those things. But what I'm getting at here is that marketing uh can help you explain those things to people that don't know you yet, right? Yes. Um you can you can communicate things about yourself, your business, what you value, what type of work you're going to do, what the customer can expect by how you handle those details, right?

SPEAKER_01 25:08

Yes, for sure. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:09

Um one of the things, you know, I I I feel like it's a common thing, especially if you kind of uh are maybe a little bit older in age, that uh your assumption about what marketing means is maybe something like uh billboard ads or bus stop ads or ads in the local paper or the local flyer or uh you know dropping off flyers and mailboxes and things. And so, you know, in the marketing world we call that outbound marketing where we are starting with something and we are pushing it out into the world as opposed to inbound marketing, which is things we haven't even touched on yet, right? Like blogging and creating content and pulling people into you. Um so going back to that outbound marketing aspect of it, what do you uh what would you recommend if there was a contractor who thought, okay, uh, you know, my local uh newspaper is asking me if I want to buy a $500 business card size black and white spot in their uh local publication. Is that something you would recommend to a contractor is a place to start with marketing? And if that is not the place, for example, where would you recommend that a contractor start if they are listening to this podcast, think, okay, I know I need to take my marketing more seriously, but it's just so overwhelming. There's so many social media platforms, there's just so much I don't know. Where does someone start?

SPEAKER_01 26:31

So I don't think it's a bad idea to start there. I think it depends on your demographics. So are the people that you're trying to get to be your customer people that read the newspaper? Maybe your newspaper is very popular where you're from. I don't think it's a bad idea, but I would say that's not the only thing you should do. So you can do that, but you need to be doing other things. So you need to think about other ways that people can find you. Um, I think social media can be a lot for a lot of different people, but Facebook, for example, is one that I find it's very good at putting all of your information. Like I said before, it's just like a website. So that's like a good place to start. Instagram can be a little overwhelming because it's very specific, it's photo specific. Um, but Facebook, going back to that, you can do all sorts of stuff. You can um make a group, you can, you know, put an event on it, you can do all sorts of different stuff like that. You can message within it, which is also helpful. So I think I would recommend if you need anywhere to start, it would be Facebook for social media. But I would say no form of marketing is probably a bad idea. If you do a billboard because that's what you want to do, you got you found a sp a spot for it. I don't think that's a bad thing. People can still see you if you're on like a popular highway, whatever, people will still find you. I just don't think that then when they go to search for you, that they shouldn't be able to find you like on your website or anything like that. So you have to make sure that when they do pick up the phone or anything like that, you have other resources for them to find more information on you.

SPEAKER_00 28:06

Well, and I'm gonna underscore what you're saying because I think you're hitting the nail on the head, right? When it comes to marketing a business effectively, you want to be where your customers are searching for you, right? Yes. So definitely, and there's different functions within marketing, right? And and again, you know, I I don't know if I said it in these words, but marketing and sales are two different things, right? And they serve different functions, and it's important to think of them as different. But marketing within marketing, there can be a whole subset of things that you're doing as well, right? Brand awareness is uh a term that you hear a lot in the marketing world where you're not necessarily intending or hoping that this direct action is going to land you a phone call with a paying customer on the other end, but this action is going to lead to people recognizing your name so that when they go to search for you, they go, Oh yeah, you know, going back to that snowplot business. I see this guy's lawn signs all over town. Yeah, I need someone to clear out the driveway at my mom's house or something. I know exactly who I'm gonna call. I've seen that guy everywhere. He must be successful. And I think this goes back to even uh some of the Amazon reviews and things, right? We want to buy from people that are successful. We don't want to buy from someone that's sketchy and we think might go under, right? Um as human beings, you know, I think I've probably said this in other episodes, but we're more motivated by what we stand to lose than what we stand to gain. And I think all of us are guilty of that to some degree. Uh but uh with marketing and doing it effectively, I think that that's something that um you can use marketing to help combat, right? So maybe I'll I'll kind of lobby that question there. How do you use marketing to build authority and trust so that you look like someone that people want to hire?

SPEAKER_01 29:52

Yeah, so I think like you know, asking people maybe to even give you good reviews is something that like I think you just you know tell them how quick it is and like really talk it up and really ask if they would give you a good review.

SPEAKER_00 30:05

So I want to just interrupt. So you're saying that I shouldn't just assume that people are gonna give me reviews if I do a good job? Is that what you're telling me? No, you shouldn't just assume that. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 30:14

And there's no harm in asking for it, right? Like it's just like when you go somewhere and you buy something and they circle the receipt and they say, You could win this if you do the survey. It's like they told me about it. Am I going to do it? Maybe, maybe not. So you just you just ask. If they do and they give you a good review, that just helps you. And then you can thank them, you can message them, say thank you for that. Um, so that's like a big thing I feel like you just need to get real people. People like trusting people. So if they see a real name, they see a good review, um, even sharing posts or or um testimonials. So if you put a quote as your social media post about what good job you did at somebody's house, um, that really helps. That makes me feel like, oh, okay, well, they liked him, they recommend them. I could, I could trust them too. So I think that's a big thing. Like getting real people to say good things about your business, people will listen to that.

SPEAKER_00 31:13

So real people to say real things and good things about your business. You're not recommending that we just use boilerplate, uh, crappy uh well, I just gave my I tipped my hand a little there. Uh repetitive, you know, snappy uh slogans and other language that uh to market ourselves. Is that what you're saying? That we should actually do something unique and appear human. Is that right?

SPEAKER_01 31:38

I would think so. Like that's what I want to see, especially if you're in a small town, you might recognize somebody's name or something, right? Like I I would trust somebody way more if I knew that somebody I knew liked them also, right? And like going back to the lawn signs, like if I see that lawn sign, it's like, well, there has to be a reason that that person hired them. So I want to know what it is, and then that goes back to branding yourself well. If I then go to your website and you have a good, strong website, then I also feel confident in hiring you as well. So that's another thing. It's like you can do one thing, but you need other things also. You just can't rely on that one lawn sign, it's not gonna get you very far because people will then like look into it a little bit more, right? But it's a start, but then you have to back it up.

SPEAKER_00 32:26

And all the same, right? I know you would agree with this that if that lawn sign is bringing you all the business you need, then by all means, don't feel like you need to start a TikTok account or something like that, right? If what you are doing is working and you are at the capacity that you're happy with, then I mean, bravo, you've made it, right? And effectively that's all that marketing ever really needs to be. Now, part of you know why I was asking that question is such a cheeky way, is because um I'm curious what you believe our competitors can teach us about marketing. And so I know um certainly at Beauchart, let's not name names, but we, you know, tend to keep an eye on the market and what different people are doing in our sphere and whether they're immediate competitors of ours or just kind of broadly in the market, we like to know what people are doing. And so when it comes to contractors, drillers, plumbers, you name it, looking at other competitors of theirs locally when it comes to thinking about their marketing, what are some of the do's and don'ts of uh kind of analyzing what your competitors do and then what you should do based on that?

SPEAKER_01 33:30

Yeah, so I definitely wouldn't copy them fully, like I wouldn't take exactly what they're doing and do that, but I would definitely look at what they're doing well. So what they're successful in and maybe ask yourself, why are people choosing them over me? What am I doing that they like they aren't or are vice versa, and figure out how you can make that work for yourself. So even if they are a competitor, they're not exactly like you. So they might offer something different or in a different way. So find your strengths and then play on that. So it's not a cookie cutter. You can't copy exactly what they do and expect it to work for you. They're doing it for a certain reason and it's working for them. So just find what is and find a way that it would work for you. If they're posting all the time and you're not, maybe try that for once. Or like, oh, their website is really clean and mine's a little confusing. Maybe try to to do that. I don't know. Like, I would just find a way that why are they successful? Why am I not? And try to uh to match that at least, or do it better. Try different ways of doing it better.

SPEAKER_00 34:38

Well, and I like what you're saying because you're kind of talking about blending, emulating what they do well, but still doing it in your own way. And I think that um people that do this really poorly forget about the but still doing it your own way component, right? That if we get too caught up, and I mean, again, when I was a wedding photographer, I could tell you uh some of my photography heroes at the time, and I was like, I want to be like that. I want my photos to look like that, I want my business to run like that, and that was how I tackled it. And that was good for a time, and it helped me kind of almost shortcut my way to success a little bit. Obviously, I still had to do all the work in the meantime, but when I started to kind of become more established, it helped me uh be able to even articulate what I did differently than them and what I liked more. So even that act of emulating another company was actually a learning process for me because it helped me to understand, okay, here's where I really align with these guys and here's where I really don't, right? Um, and I think that again, when it comes to the details and attracting the type of customers that you would like with the way that you handle all of those marketing details and so on, um you can uh you will attract the right people and you can use your marketing to um instill your business's values in your marketing again to attract those right people, right? Um yeah, can you tell me? I mean, just a little bit more about you know when it comes to looking at your competitors and kind of trying to think about um, you know, what they do well. Are there any other maybe aside from just looking at competitors, are there any other tools Chat GBT that can help you if you are very new to marketing and don't know what to do, but you want to start making a splash? But again, maybe part of the reason you've never started marketing is because you're like, I'm just not very good with words or I'm not really good at photography or something like that. Um, how how does one start if you feel like this is just so not your area?

SPEAKER_01 36:38

Well, ChatGPT is a really good tool. Um, I don't know, I feel like not necessarily do you have to look at what competitors are doing, but any brands that you really like and what are they doing that you could just also make work for you?

SPEAKER_00 36:54

Emily, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:54

Yeah. So like I I'm sure you maybe have a friend that is good at photos and you could ask for their help or YouTube videos, TikTok is even a big thing that I know maybe you don't go on that very often, but just Googling like easy ways to take good product photos or um product photo examples, or even look at like a brand like Nike and oh, you like the way they took a photo, try, try that. Like, so I don't think necessarily what your competitor is doing, but any brand, you like it, you could try it for for yourself. Um, Chat GPT is really good for making your words, you know. Like if you're not very good at copy and you don't like to write and you're you're not confident in that, you could try it and it will help you like build a little bit better of a of a written um paragraph or whatever for your website, and that'll just like help give you a little bit more confidence that yeah, people will actually want to read it. Yeah, no kidding.

SPEAKER_00 37:52

I know what you mean. I'm not sure if uh the rain is being picked up on our microphones here, but where we are in the studio, uh there's an exterior roof somewhere above us, and uh it's a tin roof, and you might be hearing some rain noise there. But uh when it comes to ChatGPT, obviously, uh, is one of the ways that you can kind of DIY your way through some of your marketing, right? And I think ChatGPT, if you've never, if you have not dipped your toes into AI or anything like that, I understand it can be scary and it is overwhelming at first. The easiest way I would describe it to someone who's completely unfamiliar is you treat it like Google on steroids. So you ask it things and you can talk to it and message it like it was another human being, and it is shocking. The first couple times you see it, your eyes like the world opens around you. You see the world in color for the first time, right? When you realize what this technology can do. Now, of course, there are downsides to it, and there's a lot of things to be careful of. So don't uh don't just be fooled by, you know, don't wear rainbow errors, uh, rosy colored glasses when you're using Chat GPT for the first time because it is overwhelming and it's so cool. Uh, but there are some things that you, you know, best practices and things just to not hurt your brand. But aside from Chat GPT, which again, I guess the only other thing, sorry, I was just gonna interject her real quick, is not only is it good at helping you come up with copy and different things like that, which is what you were describing, which it absolutely is really well suited to do, it's also super helpful, and I think this is actually kind of one of the most like uh creative ways to use ChatGPT to your advantage, uh, is to use it as a brainstorming partner, right? And use it as someone that's very, very smart in you and your industry. And the more details you give it and the more context you give it, and the more specific you get about certain questions, the better an answer it can give to you, right? There's a whole emerging field right now, a career field of uh prompt engineering, which is essentially a fancy term for how to write a really good question to Chat GPT to help coax the best answer out of it possible. And so it's super interesting. I was interviewing a candidate for a position we have here at Beauchard the other day, and this gentleman was talking about it. I'm like, oh, that's the first time in you know the number of years I've been at Beauchard and interviewed many people that uh someone has mentioned that in an interview, and it it was cool to me just to feel like, oh yeah, this is an emerging technology. So if you're not there yet, if you're listening to this episode and you're taking lots of notes, uh, you're probably not there yet. But ChatGBT for sure is a really good, among other uh AI platforms, is a really good place to start. What I would love to ask you though is ChatGBT is a great place to DIY and marketing, you know, as we've kind of talked about the way that um especially social media has become a lot more kind of raw and unpolished, um, that makes it easier for people to DIY their marketing, especially in the beginning. What is the point that you feel like you should maybe start looking towards actually hiring out some of that help? And you had actually mentioned before, you know, maybe you have a friend who knows a little bit about photography. Well, they may not have a business, they might just be a student in high school or something. Like, should you ask them to help you with your marketing or with your photography? Like, what kind of when it comes to, you know, let's pretend that our listener here, our contractor, has a little bit of money to spend on some marketing. At what point do you start doing that? Where do you start? Is your website the place to start? Is it hiring someone to help you with your social media? Is it a logo in branding if your branding stocks like where does one start with a little bit of money?

SPEAKER_01 41:23

Yeah, that's a good question. I think logo and brand is probably a good place to start because once you have established that, you can, yeah, it opens a lot of doors. You can start to put money into the website, which you would use your logo and branding. You could start to make shirts, you could start to put that on your trucks. It just goes back to everything we said. You can't start anywhere without a logo and your brand. Um, so that would be like the best place to start if you have money to spend. I think you could probably get into like cameras and stuff like that, but with the way the technology is now on your phone, they take great photos. So that would be the last thing that I would recommend that you put the money into, unless you already have the website, you already have the good logo, you already have the branding, you're already really confident in that. I would say then you could start to get really good cameras and a setup, and maybe you start to film YouTube channels that talk more about what you do and how you do it, you do like DIY stuff or just like answer like typical questions, stuff like that, and then you could put money into that. But definitely if your website is suffering and your logo and brand is, that is where you should start.

SPEAKER_00 42:39

I would agree. I've said to people for many years that uh your website is your digital storefront, right? So if you think of a brick and mortar store, their storefront is their storefront, right? Where someone can walk in, talk to someone that works there, look around, see all the products on the wall, what have you. Well, especially in a service-based industry where you don't have services you can put on a shelf that people can walk into your location and see, um, you know, you have to find a different way to demonstrate here's what I do. And that's where I think social media definitely is a place for that. But I think if I had to choose between a website and social media, I oh man, I mean, I that's hard. I don't know. I don't want to have to choose between either of them. I think both are essential. But I think at the very least, that's maybe the the take home there is that both are essential. Your website, in my opinion, is not something that you should absolutely overlook, right? And right when it comes to um, you know, when should you start hiring someone to help you with that? I think some of that, you know, this goes back to kind of what you were saying before about try a lot of things and see what happens, right? Um, you can hire your niece or nephew to come take photos on a job with you, and if that goes really well, do it again. Bring them out to another job. If it doesn't go well, or you just don't find the photos, videos, whatever that practical, then great. You threw a bit of money at it, you tried it once, you moved on, right? And I think that's also something that people sometimes can get scared of is like um starting with marketing or anything like that, you feel like it's an all or nothing thing. Yes, right. If I'm not gonna be on 10 different platforms and have a website and a Google Analytics uh strategy and all this stuff, I can't do anything, right? And I guess I want to ask you, is that true? Is does someone have to be everywhere if they want to start at all?

SPEAKER_01 44:28

No, I don't think you have to be everywhere, but you have to be somewhere. And I would think that you'd have to be somewhere other than just one place. So two, three, but you don't have to be in ten. I would think that as long as you're just like a couple of places, it does just show that you took the time to be in those places. You've taken the time to update them, everything like that. People value that. So I don't think you have to break your back to be on 10 different things just in case somebody were to search that. You can also link back to different places, right? Like if you have a Facebook page, you can link back to your website, you can link to your Instagram, you can include different stuff like that. Um, if you send out an email, you can have all those links at the bottom so that people know exactly where you are so that they won't go to the places you aren't. They'll go to the places that you are to find you.

SPEAKER_00 45:19

I love that. Makes so much sense. It does. Quite straightforward in that regard. Do you have, can you give me an example of something that you've seen uh a contractor do really well in their marketing? And maybe it's not just a contractor, maybe it's again, it could be a brick and mortar store, it could be a service business, kind of whatever. But um there are as as I'm sure we would both agree, there are a lot of businesses out there doing marketing, some of them doing it very well, some doing it not so well. What is something that you've seen either that seemed highly effective or just came across as really awesome that you think, man, if more contractors, plumbers, drillers could do that, I think that there's there's a niche there, there's a market that's untapped.

SPEAKER_01 45:59

Yeah, so I think this is kind of simple, but I think things like giveaways or like um a day where there's like a discount or a special or different things like that. I know that's not for everybody, but you could give away like a hoodie. It doesn't have to be necessarily what service you're offering, it could be anything, a yeti, anything that maybe has your logo on it or something like that. So people love free stuff. So like that's a big thing. If they maybe don't need your service right now, they would still enter, right? Because maybe someday they will need your service. Um, and they love to get something free. So they'll sign up for it. Then you could start to maybe do like an email or or different things like that, like with their information. So I would think like that's something that's really hooked me into different businesses is when they do um a giveaway or a day where they're offering something um at a discount or a special, or like, oh, if you book this in, you can get this in return or something like that. Um so that's something that like I would recommend would be to like try playing with that. And if it doesn't go well, maybe take a break from it or offer something different, or there's no rules for a giveaway. You just kind of try and see whatever works for you.

SPEAKER_00 47:16

Well, what I really like about what you said about giveaways, and I think you're particularly talking about social media. Is that fair to say doing a social media giveaway?

SPEAKER_01 47:23

Yeah, but you could do all sorts of stuff if you have a a storefront or or anything, like you could offer it um there. I'm thinking of one business in particular, and they offer it right in their in their store. So it gets people there, but then you also have to sign up via email. So you leave your contact information, but they also you were in the store, so you were looking around. So it depends what what your business is um and how that would work. But social media is also very good at giveaways. You see them all the time. You make it that you have to share it, you have to post as your story, you have to tag them, you have to comment other people, which is another big thing um is tagging other people um to get them um involved in the giveaway. Uh so like people do them, so they must be successful, they must work. So uh try that for your business.

SPEAKER_00 48:11

Yeah, well, and the beauty of giveaways, especially where you're tagging people and asking for shares and stuff, is you are dragging more eyes to you and your business and your content. And all of that goes back to what we've probably said a thousand times is that people can't hire you if they don't know you exist, right? One of the things uh, you know, as we kind of slowly come to a close on uh this episode, this is more you touched on it, and I see it as like a next level marketing thing, but I think it would be interesting just to kind of quickly go over. You had mentioned uh getting people's email address and their contact information. So email marketing is not something that we've spent any time talking about in this podcast because I don't think that we would say right off the bat that it is uh a beginner marketing tactic, right? Maybe it's intermediate, maybe it's approaching expert, depending on what you do with it. But can you maybe walk me through if I'm a contractor and I want to, you know, think with the future in mind that okay, over the next year or two, I'm gonna build up my social media, get a website done, build my brand, you know, custom t-shirts, vehicle wraps, whatever. If they're trying to think with the future in mind and they're thinking about one day I might want to get into email marketing, can you just walk me through what would that look like for a contractor? If I'm a contractor that wants to dip my toes into email marketing, what does that even mean? What is the upside to my business? Yeah, just walk me through it. What is it?

SPEAKER_01 49:35

Yeah, so email marketing allows you to share a bunch of different information about your business with a large group of people. So you could send out a blast and it could be all sorts of stuff. Maybe you've added another location, maybe you've added a different service, maybe you're um, I don't know, really proud about a specific job, and you just want everybody to know about it. So you could ask for your customers' emails when you work with them. Um, it's also a good way to just contact them in general. A lot of people prefer contacting via email instead of phone calls with the way we are right now. Uh, so that's just a good way to um gather their information and then you can sh spread all different types. You can do your giveaway through there, you can do all sorts of different things through email marketing. It's a very quick and easy way to tell everyone about it um very fast, like without having to go individually. You can just send a blast to everybody. Um, so yeah, it's definitely not the first thing you would do, um, but it's something that you could slowly start to just gather like the emails and stuff so that when you do decide to go that route, maybe you already have 50 emails. Well, that's a start. And then you could offer giveaways where you have to sign up. So then you're getting more emails. And um, so yeah, that's something that you could start thinking about, but not necessarily something you need to do right away.

SPEAKER_00 50:57

And two of the big benefits that I feel like exist with email marketing, particularly if you are a small business owner or a business owner of some kind, is uh so the first one is just that when it comes to social media, as we know, uh you're lucky if 10% of your audience sees what you post, organically, anyways, right? If you want to dump money into it or if you go viral, those are two separate things. But assuming you don't want to dump money into every single social media post that you do, an email blast will go out to every customer that you have their contact information for, right? So as opposed to social media where that only goes out to maybe 10% of your audience if you're lucky, um, and some of the people it goes out to are not even in your audience and is kind of just uh completely random as to whether it's going to benefit you or not. Email marketing helps guarantee that the people that you're contacting are the people that are going to see that piece of communication. And then the second big thing about email marketing is you own that list. So with a social media following, we've seen this many times with celebrities that all of a sudden they wake up, they were hacked, their social media is deleted overnight, right? Um, a nightmare, not what anyone wants to happen. With email marketing, that list of contacts that you have, especially if you spent years building it up, you can keep that. Usually it's an Excel sheet that has names and email addresses. Maybe it has address if you're using a CRM, you can connect it to that. But you can take that and go anywhere. And there's lots of different email marketing services out there. Those social media platforms, you're locked in. If you have a million followers on Instagram, you can encourage them to go follow you in other places. But if your social media was deleted overnight or everyone flocked to the newest, latest, and greatest thing, uh, you're kind of out of luck because you're you're stuck with your audience in one place and you don't own it and it can be taken away from you at any point, right? Um uh the last question maybe I'll ask you here is kind of related to maybe uh one last piece of advice, or one, you know, again, if it's uh what is the next step for someone, or what is maybe a hidden secret or certain thing you've seen someone do really well. But uh for anyone that has listened this long and made it to the end of the episode, what is again a parting piece of wisdom or uh a simple hack or something, or something you've seen someone do well, a story if you want to of uh just what someone should do with all this information?

SPEAKER_01 53:16

I think just constantly be trying new things. Like what we do here at Bowshart is like we take trends and different stuff and we try to make it our own. And that's been a big success for us. So I would say don't get stuck in what you're doing or what you feel like your industry needs. Try different things because if you put in some funny content with some serious content, maybe the funny will bring people in to learn about your serious content. So I would recommend that don't necessarily think that you have to stick to what that industry recommends or or needs, try something different because people love when you're unique and and and different. Like you gotta set yourself apart somehow. So try new things. If it doesn't work, try something different. I don't think that you have to stick to one thing.

SPEAKER_00 54:10

I love that. Bradlin, this has been awesome. Thank you so much for uh being on the show and sharing so much of your marketing knowledge with us. Uh, I hope we get to do this again sometime.

SPEAKER_01 54:20

We will. We will. It was fun. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 54:24

And that is our episode. We hope that you enjoyed it. If you haven't yet, head to contractorly.co, get signed up for an account. You can watch all of our previous episodes of the podcast. Make sure that you're signed up for the weekly newsletter where you'll get exclusive content, new podcast episodes, and stuff straight to your email inbox. Also, make sure to subscribe to the Contractor Lead Podcast on your favorite streaming platform, whether that's Spotify or Apple Podcasts. And until then, we will catch you in the next one.