The Home Service Expert Podcast - Combining Digital with Direct Mail For 10x Marketing Results

Episode Date: June 19, 2018

Jason is the Chief Marketing Officer of RSVP Publications, a marketing agency that converts affluent homeowners into customers for local business owners. He and his team handle the direct response marketing for big brands, including Verizon, Mercedes-Benz, and Lexus. With the proven formula of direct mail in combination with digital marketing, RSVP has grown to offer their service to over 80 locations, and has been making it to Entrepreneur.com’s prestigious Top 500 Franchises list every year. In this episode, we talked about direct mail, digital marketing, hyper local...

This is the Home Service Expert podcast with Tommy Mello. Let's talk about bringing in some more money for your home service business. Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields, like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership, to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello. All right, ladies and gentlemen, I got Jason Trofe on the line right now, and he's going to

be telling you all about RSVP. Jason, how's your day going? Pretty good, man. How you doing? Excellent. So tell me a little bit about your career and how you ended up being the chief marketing officer over there at rsvp sure yeah so rsvp for anybody who doesn't know rsvp publication has been around for uh 30 plus years my dad started it and you know at the beginning with this core product is a direct mail product called a luxury card pack that goes out to the highest income earning homeowners in your area. And it goes to pretty large zones. And, you know, you'll hit 100,000 homeowners of the highest income, you know, let's say about top 20, 30 percent of the income earners in your area.

And the cost is way lower than trying to do that on your own because you're in a cooperative postcard pack. And what that is, is a stack of high gloss postcards inside a cellophane wrapper. And the front card will be some sort of a luxury offer. Let's say, for example, a Mercedes Benz. And then when you flip through the pack, when the homeowner opens the pack, flips through the pack, they'll see offers by companies like Home Improvement Services. Let's say, for example, you'd see flooring, new floors, new driveways, new roofing, hardscapes, patios and decks. And the type of homes that get it are the higher spenders, right? So the big spenders. So the kind of jobs that our clients end up getting out of this are their largest jobs they normally do, you know? And,

you know, we supplement that with our digital products, which also work well, except you can't control the amount of, you know, money that the person searching for you online is even able to spend. But on this end of it, you can't. So they kind of work in conjunction. And then we have a Facebook end of this where you can target those home values, home ownership, and income levels. Although I would add that from our experience, when we listen to the call tracking and we see the kind of leads that come in, it's less accurate on Facebook than it is in direct mail.

I think they're still sorting it out. I think you still get great leads, but we get renters falling through the cracks in income levels that are just not what they're supposed to be. So combining them and just knowing that you have to double check when it comes off of Facebook, you can still target your income levels over there. And we have a great digital ad on there where you're going to get text messages immediately that go to the homeowner and to the business owner, the local home service business owner at the same time and connect them so that they can pretty much tap to call. And it will also put the homeowner in an email drip, and it also sends an email alert to the business owner and then it's also on a call tracking number so you can you know track and listen to your phone calls that come in and what we've really hammered out is how to actually get real phone calls out of facebook which is hard

to do you know a lot of people everybody who has facebook goes in there and starts some advertising a lot of people just think it doesn't work but we put a lot of time into it past that point where it starts out where it doesn't work and now i put a lot of time into it past that point where it starts out where it doesn't work. And now, I mean, you know, we can get you 50 calls, you know, with a very limited budget and get you 50 calls a month. So it's working really well. I'm excited about where that stuff's going. And, you know, in between the deck drops, when I say deck drop, the luxury card pack is a quarterly mailer. So some of our markets, we have 81 markets across the country. So, and, you know, let's say a market, for example, would be San Diego. And some of them publish quarterly, four times a year, some of them five,

six, seven, eight times a year. Some of them, Houston, you know, like in Texas, it's more like eight times a year. And then some of the other markets go to the other side where they're going like three times a year. So it's kind of like it gets around right so in between we have a few different products that sort of fill in the gaps to keep the leads flowing and that would be let's say you do a deck drop you're in the luxury car pack and you get a bunch of your calls and you notice they're all in one area so then we would have a program there saying, okay, these zip codes are where your calls came from. It's very likely that, let's say you're an HVAC company, an AC repair, it's very likely that this is a neighborhood that was all built around the same time and they all have old AC units. So why don't we hammer this neighborhood? So we'll give you radius mailers,

let's say a five mile radius around the calls that came from there. And at the same time, digitally we'll pick that those zip codes out and make sure you're coming up in search on those zip codes in the ad, in the paid ads section. And then we'll also push you out on Facebook in that section to those homeowners. And so they're going to be seeing you in the mailbox. They're going to be seeing you, you know, with a solo piece. That's just you in just that area. And they'll also be seeing you in the luxury car pack when that comes in. And then they'll start seeing you in their newsfeed and Facebook. And then if they want to

buy an additional package on top of that, that's a Facebook advertising campaign that works sort of, you know, 10 times better than just kind of retargeting, you know, so we'll do the retargeting. But then on top of that, we have a very robust, well thought out sort of advertorial that generates a lot of interest, you know, so let's say we'll target a high income homeowner audience. And we'll have, say, a news story running that is very relevant to high income homeowners that are women, because a lot of times these decisions are made by the women in the house. So we'll have a campaign running that would be very interesting to them. And what happens is they start a conversation in the comment section. They tag their friends about it. They fill out the signup form. That lead goes to the business owner.

And the conversation around that piece gets a very high relevancy score by Facebook, which is how they charge you. The relevancy score basically is the click-through rate, how many people are watching your video, how many people are interacting with it, liking it, sharing it, commenting on it. And if that is very high, Facebook will reward you as an advertiser by dropping your price and by showing it to more people because if you're not very high it makes people want to leave not engage with facebook and facebook doesn't is obviously not happy but users not enjoying their their experience so you know want to engage with with the content you know let's say on an extreme scale when when cute little kitten videos go viral they love it and they were they reward that with low cost, but you can't convert a sale out of a cute kitty. But you can convert a sale out of, let's say,

a story about luxury home remodeling and how, let's say, we have videos on sort of things you can do to spruce up your home and make it more enjoyable day to day and make, you know, a nice real home out of it. And it gets a lot of engagement, a lot of follows. And people just watch the entire video. It's entertaining. It's educational. And then there's an execution mark there. And I like to say in all our marketing, whether it's direct mail or digital, that, you know, there's a few elements that have to be there.

You have to entertain, you have to educate, you have to execute. And that's the part where, you know, your call to action has to really drive up their need. You know, so you're kind of tickling an itch. If you're talking about something that you know the target audience is interested in, that will just sort of bring to their attention something that they have an interest in already. And then you sort of turn up the volume in that interest by pointing things out, you know, in there that would create a little more urgency or, you know, make it a much more appealing, you know, like a few ways you can do this or that to your home. And then to say, you know, then make an offer they can't refuse and then drive up the urgency

of opting in for that offer right now by giving it a limit, right? So the perfect solution to that, and there's only seven left. So it just drives opt-in and call-ins up like crazy. So I'm pretty excited about that stuff. Yeah, give me a good example.

We talked, you mentioned a lot of things there. I'm going to kind of pick that apart. I know you're really excited about that stuff. Yeah, give me a good example. You mentioned a lot of things there. I'm going to kind of pick that apart. I know you're really passionate about it, so I want to kind of stick on this topic for a minute. So what is the call to action, or in your case, the execution of a really good performing campaign? Sure. So I'd say one that's currently running right now, I just had it in my, I have it in my feed, you know, today is an HVAC one. We have a pretty large HVAC campaign that's kind of going around. And it's a new story about mold in your house, right?

So it's a story about a family. It was a real family in Arizona. And they had, you know, broken into the bathroom wall to cut out some mold. But what it did was release mold spores and the mold spores started getting your children very sick, but they didn't know it for years. And they started getting rashes. They started getting diabetes was developed in a seven-year-old or a child around that age of toddler. And just, you know, just nausea and serious health issues that they couldn't figure out, all the way to the point where doctors were telling the parents that I think it's psychological and your kids are making it up, right?

So then they actually, one, somebody had a great idea to get mold tests, and it was through the roof, right? So they moved out of the house, the kids got better. So it's a very engaging story, and it prompts them to get a mold inspection and get their ventilation, you know, cleaned out. And there's some images in there of what can happen if you don't have UV lights and you don't have, you know, you can actually, obviously you can't see what's in your air vents. So somebody has to go in there and just look. And these are all just true things. So you bring that to in there and just look. And these are all just true things.

So you bring that to their attention. And then in there, you say, we are offering free mold inspections. You get out there and you're targeting high income homeowners again. So you're developing relationships every single day. Our clients are getting relationships started with high income homeowners. And, you know, you can see the age of their unit when you get there. You know, you can test and, you know, do all the things that you'd normally do on the business end of that for the HVAC business owner that's my favorite one running right now but we have other things that are also very engaging for restaurants you know that are just sort of like entertaining reviews by you know

people who like to go into the restaurant and interview the owner and go through the kitchen and talk about how good, you know, steak dinners are there for higher end, you know, white tablecloth restaurants. Yeah. Like that. Yeah. And another thing for home improvement people, I think it works really well to put just beautiful imagery in the direct mail that have a picture of a home that's like the home that is receiving the direct mail. And it has an amazing picture of the garage doors on there that look much better than theirs. And maybe it's smart home enabled, you know, like you said, you know, you can see if, you know, right when you

walk in the house, you can see if you look at a nest on the wall, you know, they're into smart home products and your upselling starts right away. You know, so those kind of relationships are starting on a daily basis and it's pretty exciting. Yeah, that's very interesting. So you think that there's images on Facebook and there's videos. It's always better to use a video. Is that correct? Yeah, absolutely.

We run them both ways, you know, and just like because creating the media, it's obviously time consuming. But the price, the cost per conversion on a video versus a still image, we're seeing $5 per lead on a good video versus $38 per lead on a still image. So it's that important. I think's worth the media uh cost to go video five dollars for a home improvement lead like that that's kind of generic like what like a restaurant lead a home improvement lead yeah i mean that class right there is from the hvac campaign i just have hvac on the brain i'm sorry i keep going there because it's just yeah something i'm currently building like managing managing. So that, I mean, and also mobile. So mobile, $5.

Mobile and video, $5 a lead. Desktop and video, $10 a lead average. Still image, no matter, you know, what device, more in the $30 range. So what I'm going to do, Jason, is I'm going to make the video available on this podcast page so that they could see actually what kind of video is working for you. Obviously, we'll have your information on there to contact you to run a campaign for them if they're looking to do that. But at least let the audience kind of see exactly what's working and what's not. I love the fact that

you have those indicators that show what the better value is. And it reminds me of the quality score Google has. It's kind of Facebook is doing the same thing. And that's very, very important. One of the things that I've seen, and you can tell me what your thoughts on this, but anytime you can engage the audience, like what I did is if this garage door roller and this garage door roller equals 20 and this garage door roller and this remote equals 40. What does this, this, this mean? And I had 150 responses in a day.

So anytime you could ask a question and make some fun stuff out of it. Yeah, they didn't purchase from me, but they seen A1 a million times and it was free. So what have you found that gets a lot of engagement through the roof? Is there a question at the end or guess how much this costs? What is working right now in ours is telling them to tag someone who needs this or share this with someone who needs it. And it seems that no matter what I say, tag or share, sharing is harder to get somebody to do because maybe they don't want it showing up in their wall forever. So they just go to the comment section and they tag their friend. They write their friend's name in there and it actually shows up in their friend's alerts for the day. And it says that, you know, your

friend Angie tagged you here and they go look at it. Right. And then that person sees it and tags somebody that they know. And so the comment section just fills up with tags, you know, with a tag a friend that needs to hear this, you know. So like in your case, I would say, I think that that's a great call to action that you're saying. I think always addressing it, whether you're on YouTube, whether you're on Facebook, or even anywhere, I think saying, you know, if you like this video, be sure to subscribe. You know, if you know anybody who needs this, be sure to share it with them. Just reminding them, saying those words, writing those words, brings it to the front of their mind.

And if they do know somebody, like, right away, they'll think of that person who would need this because their head just automatically scans all their friends real quick. And you just kind of made them do that. It's sort of, I don't know, I feel like it's magical. Just saying things and think things you want them to think. I love that. One of the things you could do, too, I think, is say, out of three companies, we've chosen, guess how much this costs. And then have people guessing, just get more exposure on it. Yeah, that's a good one. My buddy actually does a thing.

He spends $10,000 a day on Facebook and he does debt relief. And he said, how I got my credit score from 464 to 650 in three months. And it clicks onto an article. So it looks like, and then they fill out the information to say, we can help you right at the end. And he said the average time it takes is about 29 hours, but it's way better than Google, the performance. Oh, yeah. I agree with that 100%. I mean, I think you can go into Facebook and pull out a bunch of leads on demand. It's more like on demand than Google. Google's like, you've got to wait for a search to happen, and then you've got to outbid the other guy, hopefully, and be one of many

choices that they actually click on. And if they click on more than one choice, they actually opt in or call you instead of all the other guys. It's not like that on Facebook. You're targeting people. And when you come up in a news feed, there's almost nothing else around it that is saying the same thing you're saying. So it's just so much better. And you're choosing who you want to see it. It's not anybody who searches for you. So it's so great. And then I think what really is a challenge there after that, you know, that's just the engagement. I think there's so much that happens after that that nobody thinks about that is very important. Because, you know, just like imagine if you compare it to a paper coupon.

People will clip a coupon, maybe put it in their wallet or their glove box, and then forget about it. Never use it. And that's the case on Facebook, especially more so when it's digital because your computer is just stacked with a billion things. You don't even know what's in there after five minutes. You forget you ever had it. So the follow-up, the prompting to make the phone call, the calling them first, calling them again, sending them email drips so they remember that it's there, just staying in front of them afterwards, the follow-up, you know, the old saying, fortune's in the follow-up. It's absolutely true. Yeah, that's one of the hardest things, I think, in my business is our CRM, our customer

reputation management system actually has a follow-up tab, and that's something that we've actually incorporated as a must for our technicians is if that's not filled out properly and kept up on then they actually miss out on their bonus because we lowered the commissionable items on our crm and then we bonus them each week for hitting their objectives and it's not performance based it's literally things like make sure that you're calling your follow-up tab and ours are all recorded on the back end so we can see that they did it so those little things go a long way so you know selling high ticket items is not easy for a lot of companies most companies that i consult always say well all my customers

are price customers i think that rsVP changes that quite a bit. Why do you think most owners can overcome those price objections? I think a lot of business owners, they didn't get into business sales and marketing. They got into business of home improvement, of whatever it is that their service, their home service is. And so they're an expert in flooring. They're an expert in HVAC. They're not an expert in writing a sales script and systems for follow-up and closing a sale. And so all that stuff is something additionally you need to learn. And what I like to do is listen to the call tracking, like you said,

and I know you guys do this, so that's great. But a lot of companies don't have the time and the knowledge to go ahead and even record those calls and then go back and even if they do, go back and listen to them, see who answers them and even if they do go back and listen to them see who answers them and see what they say because i listen to them and i hear them say some crazy stuff i hear we're booked up can you call back later and if that person who said that knew how hard it was to get somebody to call you they wouldn't be saying that so business owner probably wouldn't say something like that but i've even heard business owners say that and then they kind of they blame the lead generation service for, you know, bad leads or something when, when the case is that you've got a lot of calls, you just need to like

keep in mind. For me, I feel like if they're your client's problem is your problem. And if they're not converting to sale, I feel very obligated to help them get in there and stay on top of whoever answers the phone so that they know that when they get an important client, that they're asking the right questions and closing for an appointment and getting there in person. And once they're there in person, is their presentation hammered out? Do they show up looking professional with a wrapped vehicle and a good, you know, uniform on? Do they put booties on their feet when they enter the house so they don't track up and, you know, a nice house, if that's something that, you know,

applies. And when they make their presentation, do they sit the homeowner down? Do they pull out their presentation that they've got worked out and walk them, sit the homeowner down? Do they pull out their presentation that they've got worked out and walk them, educate the homeowner on what normally happens in a home like theirs with their product and how they can go through that transformation, you know, thing that you would do in a sale on a before after emotional connection with the homeowner about their home and why it's important. So that whole process there is something that people like, you know, you and I and on this side of things think about all the time and something that business owners don't think about all the time. So I think that's something that they need, they should think about.

Yeah, that's a great point. I met up with a buddy of mine who sells solar this weekend. And what he does is on every single customer, he gets a picture of the customer in front of their solar, the module on the wall with a sign with a big smile. And then he puts it all over social media. And then he also has them leave a door on a review on next door, which i think is genius and i'm working on a company strategy so many of us business owners especially in the home service industry once that item is installed i don't care if it's ac flooring gutters whatever it might be we're like okay great but the smartest people in the world in every industry ask for referrals but nowadays you could do that through reviews through going on next door through having a neighbor sign a release form saying you're allowed to use their information, not their phone number or anything, but you can just say Miss Jones on whatever street and do a really nice marketing campaign to just that neighborhood. And it's not expensive, but the fact is that customers in that area know that the neighbors got it done.

That's why signs work so well. What is your take on that? I think that, like, hyperlocal is the biggest thing that changed, you know, in the last 10 years, maybe 15 years. You know, since 2000, things used to be, in marketing and advertising, I think this is a general sort of fact. It used to be that you talked to a broad audience, right? And I think that some of the large Fortune 500 companies still do this, and that's a mistake. To talk to a broad audience and say the same thing to everybody, it's tuned out. Response rates is horrible.

But to actually go, like you said, as niche as possible. And let's say if you're in a neighborhood level, you found out that you have a hot neighborhood, meaning let's say that you're a roofer, you know that this is an old neighborhood and somebody just bought a new house. I mean, I'm sorry. Yeah, we want a new house and they need a new roof. Or the roofs in this area are 15 years plus. So you could get a 15-year roof, so you have 30-year roofs. So, you know, you could get a 15 year roots, you have 30 year roots. So if you find out this is a lot of 15 year roots, then you should be the most prominent roof roof in that area, meaning everything you're doing, whether you're reaching them on, you know, Hulu per impression or YouTube or Google paid ads or the SEO for that zip code or the direct mail

in that neighborhood, you actually address them in your headlines by the area. And in your images, you put images of your area, of their area. And then the homes and your artwork should look like the homes in that specific area. And your area code on your call should be, you know, the area code of that specific area. And don't go broad. Go niche. You know, go tight. I think that's a great way to do it right now. And you can also see you on Facebook.

You're just going to look like you're everywhere. Make sure your retargeting pixels are really on point because that's that follow-up thing is where it really starts to snowball and i think a lot of people drop the ball there too if they don't have somebody managing this for them it's uh you know it's too easy these days just you know feel like you can do it all because it's anybody's game to you use a little free login you know but you're dealing with extremely powerful software that's very deep with a lot of options. And you barely know what's even available that it can do. You don't even know. It's like putting someone in the seat of a hot rod who doesn't even have a driver's license. They're going to put around or you need to get a race car driver in there and then bet on your race car driver and try to hit the finish line with a bang. That's what I think is the best way to go unless you're, you know,

if you're not passionate about doing this stuff at night after you get off work. Yeah, I think that we've talked about this before, Jason, is I don't want to confuse the audience. You want to get a professional for this, but first thing is answer your damn phone. The second thing is book the damn phone call. I mean, I just feel like as a business owner sometimes we get this shiny light complex and we don't do the bare essentials it's like you just jump way too far ahead you guys don't have the average ticket or you don't have

the processes or a really good organizational chart once everything's good all you got to do is feed the funnel. Now, I like what Jason's saying because this stuff works. But if you're not going to book the phone calls that are already coming in from your pay-per-click campaign on Google or maybe your ValPack or whatever it might be, you know, then I feel like you don't want to dive into the next shiny object. But once you get good at that, RSVP, you know, I'm bumped into a guy that does really high end front doors, security gates, things of that nature. And he said, by far, RSVP was his best performing mailer. And he said, that's better than digital. He said, everything's kind of working together. But, you know, I don't think people realize the difference between direct response and really

building your reputation out there and top of mind so how long does it take to do more of a I guess like if you're doing billboards that you're doing tv radio those are more to get your branding out there what do you think it takes to get a good brand and what do you see if i launched an rsvp campaign in a city that i've never advertised in yet nobody's ever seen my trucks i just got into this city what's the difference between that versus somebody that does a ton of radio and tv that's been around and their trucks are everywhere well i mean i think the biggest difference between those two companies is probably the one who's been around a long time has a sales process. And like you said, to keep the kiss, right, keep it simple, stupid, like answer the phone, that's keeping it simple.

I mean, if you're not going to answer the phone, it really doesn't matter how many leads you get because you're just going to drop the ball. So like you said, if that's on your now, if you've really addressed that and you can answer questions like, what is your cost per sale? If I say this question to a business owner and anybody who's listening, if you own a business, if you can't answer the question, what is my cost per sale? Then you probably don't know a lot of other things that are falling through the cracks that you already have revenue sitting there that you're not taking advantage of. So you're probably not following up. You're probably letting a lot of things slip through the cracks and just kind of throwing a bunch of crap against the wall and seeing what sticks and not going and inspecting how something stuck and going, you know, pot committed in that specific direction. So, you know, after that, so if you have that nailed down and all other things being equal, if you're a larger organization, you got more teams, you can do more work at the same time,

you know, profit margins start to wane, you know, go back and forth there. But having wrapped vehicles obviously is a great way to keep yourself one booking professional and actually getting phone calls off the car. But again, if you're not going to turn those calls into sales, that's a big problem. So, you know, if you have, you know, 12 trucks out on the road compared to one, there's just going to be a lot more activity going on for to keep your 12 teams, your 12 crews busy, right? You're going to do a lot more business that way? Yeah, you know, I think about the 80-20 rule a lot of times.

And you talked real quick, the 80-20 rule is really just focusing on the top 20% of where your income's coming in. And it really exists in everything we do these days. But when I think about cost per sale, it takes me back to cost per acquisition. And that just means we booked the call, but maybe our closing ratio, also known as conversion rate, is not where it needs to be. So I think part of the struggle is getting really good at booking phone calls. But also, if you're giving a performance base to your call center reps, what I find is sometimes they'll book something that's really not an opportunity to try to keep their numbers better.

That shouldn't be prized. You should not be awarding them for doing that or rewarding them. So I think that it goes down to knowing your cost per sale, but also knowing what your cost per acquisition is. And if your cost per acquisition is very high variance for your cost per sale, then you're probably, your technicians don't have the right conversion rate. And that also goes to your average sale per ticket, because, you know, at the end of the day, I don't care how much I pay for that job if I made a good profit on the job. So it's important to know those numbers, but it's not to say that if we've got company A and company B, and company A pays a lot less for cost per sale, but their average ticket's way smaller, I'd rather pay more and have a much

higher ticket. So I know you read my article on that. What would be your advice to really help figure that out other than a CRM? Obviously, that's important. Yeah, I think CRMs are, everybody needs a CRM these days to keep your math straight and keep yourself off the index card and spreadsheet problem. But I think that a key element there, like you're saying, is your cost per acquisition. I'll give you a few examples. I'll give a PPC example, let's say $500 spend. Let's say a Facebook example with the same $500 spend. And let's go a luxury car tax example, and I'll kind of compare the three. Let's say in PPC, they're a little farther along for cost per action, whatever the actions you're buying. In an example, it could be a call, it could be a click, it could be an opt-in.

So in PPC land, let's say you spend $500. You're going to get, let's say you got 45. I'm going to do it in my head. I'm going to get my numbers are going to be rough. So let's say you get 45 calls. You're like $11 per call. So that's an acquisition. But how many appointments do you turn that into?

Let's say half of them. So now you're getting $20, $22 per appointment. So every time you send somebody out an appointment, it's costing you $20, $22 per appointment. So every time you send somebody out an appointment, it's costing you 20 bucks. And then let's say out of those 20, let's say 20% turn into a sale. So what are you down to like four sales? And so you're talking about a couple of hundred bucks, a hundred bucks per sale on the PPC. So let's take an order of face. So I can say $5 per lead on mobile and $10 per lead on desktop. And let's say that's what it's looking like. And then you get over to once that person calls in, how many of them book an appointment? And let's say the actual revenue compared to these things are just low, right? The kind of people you're getting for the PPC, let's say it's just, it's kind of all over the board, actually. It's usually all over. You don't know. You don't know where they are. You got to find out when you call them. So, you know, over in the more targeted range, and I think the most targeted we're finding is over in our luxury car pack. Number one, because you're hitting

100,000 homes and they're 100% they're high income earners and their high home values are the highest in your area like top 20 30 percent and the income ranges top 20 30 percent and for sure Facebook's not as for sure it's just I wish it was I still love it I still love them they're giving some of those but I'm finding tenants and funny zip codes I don't want I'm finding I don't know how it gets messed up but it does get messed up so you can still end up you know in the Facebook range spending $100. Let's say I'll give you a real example. Off the top of my head, I have, you know, it's $5, $10, right, for the acquisition.

But then for the actual sales conversation part, the appointment setting, we're up to probably $75 per that. And then for turning into a closed sale, $147. So it costs $147 per sale. And that's from Facebook. And now what kind of a sale are you getting on Facebook? Well, it depends on how accurate it was. Maybe you're only making $500 profit on that call. So you've got to weigh your options.

What's your cost outside of just acquiring business? You know, you've got other costs. You don't want to go underwater. So let's go for a luxury car pack. So now you're in direct mail and your luxury car pack is costing you, let's say, probably you're getting fewer calls because they're higher end calls. But each call that comes in, let's say the revenue on those calls are several thousand dollars compared, right? Or just several orders of magnitude higher on whatever kind of job you normally do is what comes out of that. And let's say it's costing you, let's say it's $60 per lead, per actual meeting or call.

It could cost anywhere from $60 to $250. It depends, you know, if you're going to do a kitchen remodel versus HVAC repair, it's a big difference. So it's kind of, it goes all over the place. But once you get out to the house, you're dealing with a client who is at some point, if they're interested in what you do, going to buy your higher end products. And if you know that in the back of your head, and again, going back to your sales process, you know what your upsells, you should know right off hand, when you get to that kind of a home, what your cross sells are, what your upsells are, and how you're going to follow up and what you need to mention to them

to get that top of mind experience going on in front of them that you want them to have so that they can really envision their home in an upgraded way and then make them an offer they can't refuse. And you got to get good at that. That's my take on it. And like you said, if you're speaking with people on a regular basis that have discretionary income, they do want, everybody wants the best, whether they don't have money or they do have, everybody wants the best, whether they don't have money or they do have money. It's just that when you don't have as much money, you don't have the option to get the best. And when you do have the money and you have the option and you do are always going to want the desire for the best. So if you have the discretionary income and right now

the people who are holding that are baby boomers. I mean, you know, 50, 60-year-olds plus, you've got much more money sitting there than anybody else. You know, I mean, everybody forgets about that and they think, you know, all these shiny object things. But those guys aren't engaging a lot as much in digital products. And the mail is still grabbing them like crazy. And, you know, the money is just sitting there. Maybe they have self-directed IRAs that have really accumulated or they have, you know, just like so much equity in their home that it's real easy for them to turn it into a new patio, you know, or a home remodel. And if you just spark that desire in their head, you know, what it would be like, they know that they can have it. And if you know that they, you know that about them because you know who you targeted, you know

this income range, you know this home value, you know who you're talking to demographically, then you should be sparking the desire in their head that they've already got and then adding some volume to it by making an offer they can't refuse. And I think if you're not doing that, you're leaving money on the table. I like that. You know, we offer financing, and I think a good concept that I might try out is putting a baby boomer couple that said, they'll use the, we use a company that's called Green Sky. And they can say, you know, A1 Grocers came out. It was so simple. We applied.

It was 0% financing. We financed it over two years. We didn't have to pay any interest. And we really got to enjoy our home and made these affordable monthly payments. And it's just such an easy process. And now our home is worth so much more money because everybody's home is worth more money in this economy. So I think that that goes a long way. So let me ask you this, Jason, you got a new business and you've got no employees and you've only got a couple of grand budget to get the ball rolling. I'm talking you've got to go minimum viable product here to make the phone ring.

What would you say would be top five things? Let's just forget about the budget. Let's just say you're trying to make the phone ring. You're not a big company. You haven't done a ton of marketing. Where do you start? What would you say would be your top advice just to get the ball rolling? Yeah, that's a good question. I think when you're a brand new company, are you saying you have a marketing budget? You can springboard off a budget or no budget? You have a budget, but you need direct response. You can't be doing branding right now, right? You just got here.

You need every buck to count. And you really need to figure out how to make the phone ring. Right, right. Then I would target real laser target on a specific area and hammer it a lot in every method that you know that you're good at. You know, if you're going to hire a service or not hire a service, it's a difference. But I would just, you focus on one area and don't just hit it once. Don't do a blanket thing and don't try everything. Try one thing and go all in on it, right?

So if you know one area, you know, I would find out where the money is. I'd also find out where, who needs what you have and make sure before you spend any money at all, that you know exactly where they are and how to find them. Because I think that's, a lot of business owners don't think this part all the way through, right? Who holds the money and don't offer something to someone that they don't want. So you have to find out that they have to have the money so they can't just want it. So they have to be the type of people who need it and want it. And they also have to be the people who are holding the money. And then you want to get in front of them multiple times. So whatever your favorite channel is, you know, go with your favorite channel. And, you know, if you're particularly good at making phone calls,

then that's not a bad idea like if you want to do robo calls or something like that you know that's a totally off topic thing but it's cheap and you can dial a thousand an hour and it drops a message on them and be sincere in it and do it one neighborhood at a time and do it a lot you know and then mail to them and when you mail to them remind them who you are and every single time you're hitting them. And hit the same people. You know, don't spread out so far. And go real tight.

Just keep your budget tight. And then before you even start this, make sure you work out your 360-degree sale process, not just, oh, I want to get some calls in. And stop thinking because you think you're just going to nail it after that. I mean, if you're very confident about that because you've done that for 10 years, that's a different story. But if you're brand new, you probably worked for somebody else and they had that down. They were handling some parts that you weren't handling. So don't ignore the fact that you weren't handling part of the business and make sure

you got somebody who is good at that part, as good at that part as you are at your part, because getting the call is one half the battle. Closing the sale is the other half the battle. But then how much is the sale worth is a big factor in it. So, yeah, that's where it comes back to your targeting. It's got to be spot on. The channel's got to be something you can continue to do and keep doing it and don't target outside of that area

and don't get too of that area and don't get too scattered around and try too many things and then just get your process down so that you are the number one choice for what you do and make sure you appear as such right in front of them and they can see that when they look you up on the internet they can you know if they double check on you don't let it fall through the cracks there because like one thing i've noticed is you've got to button up all these little leaks these little cracks in your phone and one of them is is having bad reviews or no reviews or a website that looks like bad like you know your your uh fifth grade son made it or something don't do that make very beautiful imagery of what it is that you do if If you remodel decks, the first thing they better see is decks they wish they had on their home.

And then they can't – if you have no star reviews or a two-star review, you better get that handled before you dump a bunch of money because you can increase conversion by 40%. I've seen this happen by 40% just by having a four-plus star rating because a lot of people look. So get that nailed down and then make sure, you know, you're going to close each sale and button up every little part where they could fall through and then show up like you're the top game in town.

And it looks like you're everywhere. If they ever hit your site, you're retargeting. That's cheap. Retargeting is cheap. So if you want to send them to your site, if you're going to text them, send them a link to your site

and put a retargeting pixel on there in google and in facebook because they're going to see you again later and make sure you're present in those places but you know if again back to channels you're comfortable with if you're not really active on facebook and you don't plan to hire somebody like our firms to do that for you you're gonna they're gonna fall through a crack there so don't open a door you're not going to be fully covering. Just keep it real tight and make sure there's no place where they can fall outside of it or have the thought that you are not the person or the best person for the job. And then you show up like on top of your A game every single time. If they call, you know if they text

reply if you get a call answer it yeah very simple stuff going back to the basics i still think your message is so important if you're going for direct response for example i talk a lot about fud fear uncertainty and doubt those are trigger points Fear, it's scary if you think about it. So noisy garage door. Call us today before something happens. And people start listening and they say, you know what, I should call. Or, you know, never worry again about leaving your garage door open. Call for a free consultation on how we could close your door automatically when you leave

but those are direct response like everybody resonates about that stuff whereas the messaging of make your home beautiful again might not appeal but maybe you have super low cost solutions to increase your curb appeal by up to 40 percent and someone moving, so if you hit somebody that was getting ready to move, and they said, how much is it to make my home look like that? And in 2017, the garage door was the number one upscale project to a home. So, you know, there's a lot of things out there that I think you could get a really, really good reaction. But targeting, by far, works the best. I mean, don't get me wrong,

but all I'm trying to do is get an appointment to get it. People don't know about this stuff. All you're trying to do is get into their home. And I've gotten remote calls where I've gotten huge tickets out of because they had no idea they had a broken spring. They thought the remote wasn't working. So analytics are a huge part of this. So, you know, we've talked about a lot of things. I love talking about technology and I love what you guys are doing at RSVP. Actually, I'm working with a guy right now in the home service space who does remodels. And I'm going to talk to him today about getting them into RSVP and a couple other things, because we got a real good deal worked out where I'm involved in some sense

because I get to make a percentage of the profit. So I think I want to go after those high ticket items. And I think RSVP gets you there. And I love the retargeting is a simple way. If anybody out there wonders what retargeting or pixeling is, all that means is if you land on a page or you hit a Facebook page, it'll just keep popping up on your wall. Or if you're on your Gmail, it'll pop up on the side or you go to a website, you might see something that's an impression. So and it's the cheapest way. It's by far on every campaign I've ever done on hundreds and hundreds of campaigns. It's by far the cheapest acquisition cost. So I'd recommend doing that.

And a lot of people say, I looked into that. I haven't done it yet. I haven't done it yet. Well, that's a mistake. You need to take action, you know. So what would you say to somebody looking to get into RSVP? What's the best way to go about doing that, Jason? Well, we have 81 franchise locations throughout the country.

So if it's in your area you should be able to find it on our website we have a new domain and then we have our old domain our new domain url is rsvpadvertising.com and all our locations are on there if you go to find my location on the top of that page then you'll see all the market areas. You just choose your location and go ahead and ring that person up, and they'll walk you through it. So it's rsvpadvertising.com. Choose your location. Call your location. So those are the three steps to get in touch with the person in your area.

And there's two things that you brought up that I wanted to actually comment on. One of them was fear-based, and I'm 100% I agree with you. The number one thing people respond to sadly, and this is why the news always covers negative news. I hate it. But the fact is people respond to fear-based things like the mold story I brought up is a top performing ad because it's scary. And then the other one from there is desire, you know, and again, sadly vanity, you know, keeping up with the Joneses and vanity that, you know, the desires that they have to live in, you know, luxury homes for practical homeowners,

you know, luxury lifestyles for practical homeowners, that kind of a thing, you know, you're making it practical for them, but you want to give them a luxury lifestyle and you tickle that itch and you will perk their interest. And then the other thing I wanted to bring up, we reverse engineered a Google marketing campaign because they were targeting businesses like ours. And what they did is it was a direct mail campaign because they know the business owners that they're targeting are not always searching for them and they don't know what to search for and they don't know how to use AdWords. That's their advertising platform. So they send direct mail pieces to an ideal audience,

and that's exactly what RSVP does. So they target a direct mail, targets them, and then they get you to go to a website, and that website drops a cookie on your browser as a business owner that follows you around with advertised with Google ads, and now they're targeting you digitally, And that's exactly what we do. And the challenge that I see with this is there's an SEO and PPC blind spot. So search engine optimization and pay-per-click has a blind spot, and it's this. There's over 615 million devices that use

ad blockers. That means they do not see ads on websites. They block the ads. And the people who use ad blockers are more educated and have more money. And those are the people you want. So only staying digital is a flaw that a lot of people are unaware of. And you want to send them directly to your website with a direct mail piece so that you can cookie their browser and follow them around and then they're more aware of you and you can follow them from there inside Facebook where there is no ad blocker. So another thing is your ideal customers aren't always searching for you online and if you're out of sight, website, you're out of mind. So out of sight, out of mind. And don't be in that blind spot. And also, you know, again mind. So out of sight, out of mind. And don't be in that blind spot. And also, again, with the shiny object syndrome, to believe that digital marketing is all that

works is a naive viewpoint that I think people tend to slip into. And you're just missing an opportunity if you don't kind of round outside of that and realize, wait, baby boomers hold all the money. They grew up in the 60s. They're not tech gurus. Who are tech gurus? 20 years old. They have college debt and not a lot of money. Don't get confused on who you're targeting. And go after the money and speak their language and know what their desires are and perk those desires up.

And then be good at closing a sale. That's my best advice. their language and know what their desires are and perk those desires up, you know, and then be good at closing a sale. That's it. That's my best advice. Yeah, no, that's great advice. Let me ask you this, Jason. If you don't mind me asking, what's a couple of good books out there that you really got a lot out of over the last few years that you'd recommend to some of our listeners?

I'd say most recently, I mean, you know what? We share a couple of books that you brought you brought up you know E-Myth was great I just bought Gary Vaynerchuk's Crushing It book you know I think that he's on to something you know he's very into personal branding and a lot of people that falls outside their comfort zone

you know meaning putting yourself out there a lot rather than a brand but I do find for myself that that has worked a lot better for me as soon as I took the faceless brand you know away from it if I a b test faceless brand marketing compared to personality it's just a lot quicker connection to the personality stuff but if you're not going to do that then I wouldn't use Vaynerchuk's stuff but I would say I have uh audiobooks is my thing. I'd say that I grew up not really being a great reader.

And I usually buy the book after the audiobook really turned me on and I need the visual in front of me. So Scaling Up was a great book. I thought that a lot of stuff about how to figure out digital marketing is in there. But Success Principles by Jack Canfield was good. Predictable Revenue, he's the one who developed the sales process for Salesforce.com. It's the largest growing sales CRM. And also platform books, platform business models. I think that I'm very turned on by platform business models.

A platform is Facebook. Google is a platform. It's something that just – it's a marketplace where you facilitate a transaction between two other parties. So Uber is a platform. But every business can be a platform. RSVP is also a platform. We're working on a technology product that would facilitate a transaction between two other parties, right? In this case, a homeowner and business. So that business model, if you read up on it,

is just very detailed scientific method approach to business and to scaling and to how much faster you can scale with that sort of a business strategy is incredible. There's something called the 55 business models. And in that book, you know, it's not that you're going to change your business model, but it will shock your mind or prompt your mind to think a little differently. And I've found tweaks in there using business models from shaving, you know, like the razor and blade is a business model that you would think wouldn't make sense to a home improvement company. But it does is they do things like, you know, they sell you the razor and blade in the first case or printers do this also,

but they'll sell it to you real cheap. You get the first one for five bucks and it's an extremely high quality product. And you're like, wow, now all I need to do is buy the proprietary blade. The only one that fits on my damn handle is the same company's blade. And now they sell you the blade for $15 a blade and you've got to change them out every week, right? So that's where they get you. That's Razor and Blade. So knowing that, if you were to switch it to, you know, what they call in sales funnels is like a tripwire sale, you're getting them in the door for free, or you're getting them in the door for $25. And then once you're in the door,

they need you monthly because they're setting up a monthly plan. Do you have a monthly plan in place? If not, think about it. Think about adding to what you sell to have a high ticket step-up process, right? So you bring them in the door for free or cheap and you're walking them all the way up

to a $25,000, $50,000 sale, but you're not pitching that out of the gate. You're getting in the door real cheap. So I think that's – I mean I could go on for a long time. I think The Lean Startup was a great book. Eric Ries, Peter Diamandis. I'm a big fan of Peter Diamandis. If you ever saw him, he's the reason we privatized space travel. You know, I'm going off on a tangent here, but he has just done amazing things.

And he's got about 18 companies. He started with some of the smartest minds in Silicon Valley on his board of directors. He's got the Google founders on his board of directors. He has Tony Robbins on his board of directors, he has Tony Robbins on his board of directors, and he's just doing global impact type of things and adding the exponential technologies to business models. And I think that's something to keep your eye on because we're in this transitional phase of history that is, you know, if you go to 200 years back when the industrial age started to sort of turn over and put farmers out of business. It's happening now, again, and it's happening a lot faster because technology has exponential speed of growth. So every time it speeds up, things that scale, scale 10x.

When things have scaled in the industrial age, also scaled faster, but it was not 10x. Now it is. So I would advise would advise you know looking into that thing and you could direct message every single person on facebook who is in a zip code you could direct message them on instagram and as long as you have all your jobs and they look real nice inside of your instagram page you just send your jobs over to a bunch of homeowners if that's all you can do and it's free and it's just kind of like the new version of cold calling. You know, the telephone put things out of business. When people used to listen to radio shows,

the television put the radio shows out of business. And the same thing, the telephone was the only way to reach people. But now you can direct message people and video chat with them. And if you're not doing that, don't get stuck on the radio when TV's around. You know, so you've got to just combine them. But since we're in this transitional phase, it's still like half the population, we're still in a place where the telephone and radio is still very present. So don't ignore one at the expense of the other because people fall into that problem too. You don't want to be so far ahead that you're just completely in a zone where you're just missing half the population.

Don't do that either. But be aware of where we're going and just maybe trying to stay 18 months ahead of yourself is smart. Yeah, that's great advice. And I think that the listeners out there need to definitely, you know, there's so much out there and it's mind-boggling. But that's why I like this podcast because people can come on and at least you're in touch with what's going on out there and you're learning new strategies and it's keeping your mind open to these new opportunities. And I think that the audience could get a lot about just being involved and hearing these conversations. Now, I think there's a lot of stuff that goes into this and there's not any clear huge winners. Every single niche, I don't care if you're in direct mail, Google, pay-per-click or Facebook, you could take just one thing, billboards.

And if you own it and you're the king of it, you'll dominate. But I think what most of us need to do is find a little bit of everything that works. But really, I talked to you before about this, Jason, is knowing your own KPIs. And if your booking rate isn't there, if your closing ratio is not there, if your average ticket's not there, you know, there's so many factors that go into it.

If your follow-up is not there, then you shouldn't even be thinking about this stuff. It's way beyond you. It's kind of like if you can't do the alphabet, you shouldn't be trying to read yet. You know, there's simple things you start with. So I think that you had a lot of great advice. So if anybody wants to get more of you, how would they contact you, Jason? Well, you can email me. You can reach me on that website. But my email is jason

at rsvppublications.com. And that's our old domain that's still very active, more active than the new domains that this year new, but rsvppublications.com, Jason at rsvppublications.com. And you can call our office even, and even ask for me if you want 813-960-77 seven. So I'll say it twice. It's eight, one, three, nine, six, zero, seven, seven, eight, seven. And that's, you know, seven, seven, eight, seven actually spells RSVP. So RSVP publications. Um, but yeah, and then our, our new domain, rsvpadvertising.com has a section where all our digital products are in there and we've got a ton. I mean, we're trying to roll it out slower, but I can tell you right now we have over 50 digital products we're already using. And it's everything from like text advertising, you know, text message advertising to like proximity, lead generation, and, you know, obviously SEO and search marketing and social media marketing, and even influencer marketing was something that we

didn't even talk about. But that's, I think, the next wave of things to come. And that's just finding people who have a lot of sort of social influence on people to talk about your business for you and with you and being very socially interactive with them. I think that's a great way to get people to be aware of you. So let's say the home you go to has, the woman in the house maybe does a lot of things socially, and she's just in all of the, you know,

maybe there's a golf type of community, and everybody knows this person. Well, you give her a free job, and you say, you don't have to be free, but you do what you have to do, is what I'm saying, to get a video with her. Get a video with her in it and say, you say, you don't have to be free, but you do what you have to do, is what I'm saying. Right. To get a video with her. Get a video with her in it and say, you know, how can we work this out? So I hope you're happy with this.

You do the best job you can do with what you do. And say, would you post this, you know, on your Facebook wall? Share it with your friends. Or would you mind, and then you also get a copy of that. You put it on yours, and then you pay to boost it to people in her area, right? To people that are going to know her and friends of her. So that is a great way to sort of organically spread and get that trusted referral that everybody wants. I think that's the next wave of, you know, kind of inundative marketing. Yeah, I like that approach.

I think that that's very, very popular and that's something that I've definitely subscribed to. So I think the moral of this podcast is there's a lot of digital marketing out there and print still works is what I would take out of this. And Jason, I really enjoyed you. You know, I was on your podcast and I'm sure I'll have you on again.

And I'd like to talk a lot more about this Facebook stuff that's going on, because I think Facebook is gathering more information, this micro-level information about people than they even realize, which inevitably data is power, and it helps us micro-target who our real avatars are. So I really appreciate you having you on today. And I look forward to doing this again real soon. Thanks, man. I appreciate it, too.

I will talk to you soon. You know, I don't know how many you're – you're up 10 locations, 10 states. But, you know, if you want to – I'd love to, you know, work out something with you that I make it even easier on you to put it in your 10 areas if you're not already. And, you know, we can just hang out and chat whenever you want. Yeah, let's do that. Let's do a follow-up call and jump on and try to get this going in all the areas. I'm definitely down to do that. Sounds great, man.

All right. Thanks, Jason. All right. All right. Bye-bye. This was the Home Service Expert Podcast. Now listen up. Do you want to dominate your market, triple the profit you make without working This was the Home Service Expert podcast. Now listen up.

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