The Home Service Expert Podcast - Getting Ahead of The Competition with Voice Search and Google Guarantee

Episode Date: July 19, 2019

Lorne Sederoff runs a successful SEO agency. As the head of development of the Google Guarantee Program at Search Kings, he is a certified expert at anything and everything there is to do about Google for marketing and lead generation, from its algorithms to its features. In this episode, we talked about Lead Generation, the Google Guarantee Program, Voice Search...

So right now we have 50% of people have done a voice search in the last month and it just continues to grow. Okay. So what's going to happen when someone goes into their home and their toilets overflowing and they say, Hey Google, I need a plumber. What is Google going to do when they can't serve up a PPC ad, when they can't direct people to look at Google My Business reviews and when there's no website, right? The machine is going to actually have to provide a great experience

to that person in duress. And what are they going to do? They have to choose someone who's close. They have to choose someone who's doing a good job so that the customer gets a good experience. And they have to choose someone who's open and ready to serve the job. So as we see it, Google Local Services is going to end up being the voice search directory because it meets all those criterias. Google can trust the company, the company's getting reviews, and the company's open for business.

So when the customer says, oh no, my toilet's flooding, okay, Google, I need a plumber, Google's going to turn around and say, okay, I have ABC Plumbing. They are 2.5 miles away, and they have availability today. Their star rating is 4.9. Would you like them to come? 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.

Welcome back to the Home Service Millionaire. My name is Tommy Mello, and I've got a guest that's coming back. He's from Canada. His name is Loren Seteroff. And this guy runs a very, very successful SEO. They do SEO, they do PPC, they do everything there is to do about Google because Google's the number one spot that Lawrence from Search Kings, he does digital marketing. He's the head of the development at Search Kings. And they've got a lot of stuff they're gonna update us on as far as the Google Guarantee Program.

They work everywhere, United States, South Africa, Canada. They won every award in the book for just being the best at what they do. And what I love about it is they don't charge you a percentage of your spend, which seems to me like it's asked backwards when you spend money. They're incentivized to spend all your money. So they've got a great thing going. And Lorne, excited to have you on again today. Thanks, Tommy. Great being back with you. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Today, we're going to talk a lot about lead gen, about the Google Local, the Google Guar're going to talk a lot about lead gen, about the Google

Local, the Google Guarantee Program, a little bit about voice search, and what Search Kings is able to do for the listeners out there. And it's very powerful stuff. So first of all, tell me a little bit about what's been going on since last time I had you on the podcast and how you've been. Sure, Tommy. So I think that was almost a year ago. Basically, what was going on was back then Google Local Services was being tested in 1730 cities, roughly, in those five core verticals, the plumbing, HVAC, electric, locksmith, and garage door. So for the last 12 months, we've been working really closely with Google and with our partners to grow this program. And so what Google was doing all this time was testing the onboarding process, as well

as the lead quality and the customer satisfaction across those cities. And basically, what they have determined over the last 12 months, which were're on the front lines of, we know, is that the call quality is good. The customers are finding good pros to take care of them. And that if you're Google Guaranteed, you get to be top of page. If you get reviews, you get the leads. The program is working. It's endearing itself to customers because Google Guaranteed companies are becoming the trusted companies in the city. So that's what was going on for all those months. And basically now, Google has identified 14 industries or verticals, as they call them, that they're going to launch nationwide. So as of now, we're May 1st because Tommy Mello gets informed on the first day. That's, you know, my promise to you is 14 verticals, roofing, pest, movers, restoration,

you name it, are all nationwide eligible now. You know, first come, first serve. First guys on are the guys who will dominate. And I'm sure, Tommy, you were early on at the beginning, so you could attest to that. Yeah, for those that are listening in the other industry. So it started out with AFAC, Plumbing Electrical, Grosvers, and Locksmiths. Locksmiths and Grosvers are notorious for just spam. So they do an advanced verification, but it's opening up to all 14 verticals. And I can tell you, everybody that I've talked to, and me being the primary person,

is this the cheapest acquisition cost you could get? Google, I don't even think is making money in the beginning on this. I'll tell you one thing, Lauren, that really bugged me is Pinkerton, which is the background check. Have they done anything to get that going a little bit more, get through that process? Yeah. So it isn't pretty. When you go through the front door of Google and try to get through that Pinkerton background check process, it can be a nightmare. I actually had people call me that were on with you and I last time who called and they said, okay, I tried on my own three months. I have no idea what's going on. So there's ways to improve that process. How you fill in your forms with Pinkerton is a very specific process so that they don't lose your package. So we've

worked with Google to improve that process. And yeah, I mean, it isn't perfect for us. It's, you know, it's a little bit of a, that's what we're here for. You know, the harder it is on your own, probably the better for Search Kings. And we're happy to help. But yeah, Pinkerton's, it's not pretty. It requires a little bit of back and forth. And it's sometimes hard for someone to get an update on their account if you're trying to deal with Pinkerton yourself.

You know, there's so many different companies out there that do this stuff. I've been forced to use, and I don't want to talk bad, but it rhymes with Reach Local. Gannett owns them, so we've got a pay-per-performance deal. And I've heard upwards, they've taken out of certain accounts 40% of the ad spend. I know Yodel's up there between 20% and 30%. Tell me a little bit about your monetization model because I love it. And I'm not getting paid to endorse you right now, but you're one of the few people I've had on the show that I actually have been like, yes. I mean, I love hearing people's stories

and hearing what they do, but I mean, you guys are legit. We've worked with you guys for a long time. Everybody that's worked with you loves working with you. Tell me a little bit about how you guys figure out the pricing model and how it's best for the consumer being the business owner? Absolutely. So for starters, at the core of what happens here is it's got to be best for the

contractor. So when you're working with us, we set a price for our service. If we're doing Google local services, it's going to be one price. If we're doing Google pay-per-click, it's going to be a combined price. Those are really our only services, the Google marketing. But no matter if you're growing at 15% or 20% per quarter or you're staying the same, your budget in Google should move. Some months it should go up, some months it should go down. You might hire a bunch of techs or open up a new location and you want to double your budget. Well, that's exactly what we're here to help you do. But the point is, is we charge a flat management fee

because our job is pretty much to manage your campaign. Your job is to turn those leads into revenue. So we shouldn't generate more profit for search kings or more revenue for search kings based on how much you're spending. If a company is spending $50,000 and another company is spending $4,000, we may end up charging those two companies the exact same thing. So a flat management fee is the most honest approach to managing any Google spend, because we have to spend the money on the contractor's terms, not on Google's terms, right? Like if you don't want jobs on Sunday, well, then your ad should be off on Sunday and you shouldn't pay a penny.

If you're working with a marketing company that's charging you a percentage, well, they don't love that because then they're making no money on Sunday. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And that's what I agree with. And I've had a lot of tax consultants on here, Lorne. And first thing they say, which I think is unbelievably true, you should let Lorne and his team take a look

if you are paying somebody else and at least keep them honest. And I like to shop my insurance. Every single thing I have from my phone bill, which we just switched to Sprint, I got a $25,000 credit. But the deal is I shop everything several times a year. And when it comes to this,

I always see these guys, they act like they got the secret sauce. And hey, I use this guy, he's local, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Let me just tell you, I know for a fact that Lorne and his team talk to Google. They know what's coming out. They work heavily with them. Everybody says they're a trusted partner of Google, but I think that's a bunch of hogwash. They hand that out a little bit. Tell us a little bit about your relationship that you guys have

with Google and how you're able to get things through the door because you're upfront and ethical about it. Yeah. So first off, Google has partners and they recognize those partners with badge status. So there's Google partners, it's a blue badge, and there's Google premier partners, which is the red badge. If you're looking for a marketing company, you want to be with a premier partner. That means we have access to training and development and Google is constantly changing. So that's their model. They're engineers. They're constantly changing their products for the better use of advertisers and customers. As a premier partner, we actually get insight to those changes so that we're able to help our clients through that process. So that's, and in the Google guarantee process, that's been really unique because

we are one of the premier partners in particular in the home services vertical. So you have premier partners that are focused on car dealerships and law firms, et cetera. Our niche is home services. So when Google prepares Google local services, that's exactly where we fit in once again, because those are our clients. We understand that phone calls that don't turn into revenue are a problem. Because we're not talking about $100 million companies usually, we're talking about people who have three or four trucks, and their wife is answering those phones, and they got to make money. So we need to be working to get that phone call to turn into profit. That's our niche, the home services. So that's how we have access to Google. And then once the onboarding process comes, we just became experts in exactly how to onboard our clients and work with our partners to make sure there's no mistakes on the way in. There shouldn't be three months to get Google guaranteed. Depending on the vertical, two to five weeks.

That's our number. Anybody that's listening, at the end of this podcast, we're going to tell you how to get a hold of Lorne. And I'm going to tell you right now, just don't hesitate. Don't do it tomorrow. The minute you're listening to this podcast, go to the end and freaking contact Lauren and get this stuff done because it's by far the cheapest acquisition cost you're going to get for a lead. And what I love so much, Lauren, about pay-per-click in general, which is different than the local, I love it that I can teeter-totter

it. And I know it's not great to do this all the time, but if I'm packed up and my schedule is full, my capacity is taken, I turn the campaign really low. And if I need jobs, I turn it up. And we're in 12 states, 14 markets, and it's just nice to... Or 20 markets, I'm sorry. It's just nice to be able to do that. And there's certain times where I need to have jobs. I sent some of my top technicians to Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, some of my newer markets. And Google is the only thing that I have other than a little bit of Bing's all right, but it just doesn't get you the volume. Ben, your experience, how people could kind of just be able to fluctuate the capacity on which they spend on Google. It's huge, right? Because both in Google local services and in pay-per-click, the phone calls still cost money.

Whether it's $100 phone calls or a $30 phone call, you have to have a live person answering that call. So when we work with our clients and we get those phone calls coming in, we listen to them to say, okay, it's taking six rings and the person's answering the phone saying, hello, rather than saying, A1, how can we help? Right? So that customer experience, you can really dive deep into with ads. You turn your ads off when you don't have people to answer the phones. You increase your budget at times a day where you really need calls. You increase your budget in those markets that you really want. For you guys, if you knew that there was homes that were 12 years old, they might need replacements anytime soon,

we should up the bids in those zip codes so that we start to bring in customers in specific communities. That's the level of expertise in pay-per-click. In Google Local Services, you don't have that flexibility yet. You're targeting the whole city at the same price, whereas pay-per-click, you can be way more strategic. Okay?

That's powerful. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. And for me, it's really been the saving day that I'm able to do that because there's a lot of places that are open Sunday and you get calls on Sunday and that goes to waste. You know, lead gen has gotten a bad name. I have a company called A1 Lead Generation. You know, my lead geeks company with real estate leads. Everybody cringes when we talk about lead gen and there's people are popping up out of the woodwork to do lead gen and it's gotten a bad name. Tell me a little bit about what is your theory and perspective on lead generation? Where we at Search King stand on lead generation is getting the phone to ring

is the very first customer experience. And from that point on, everything's got to be measured. So phone call quality coming in, those phone calls have to be scored. Are those good phone calls? Did they lead to revenue? Okay, step one. After that, those CSRs and those folks answering the phone calls, those calls have to be recorded. They have to be able to be developed. You know, there's professional development for those people. So we have the insight to say, okay, the leads are coming in. Let's listen to these 10 phone calls from last week together.

And how did Sonia do on these calls? After that, matching revenue to leads is the next step. And then where we go next is, did you get that positive customer review? Once you get that review, now you've done all the ingredients. You throw all of those in the oven and you bake them. And what you're supposed to come out with is a customer for life. So that lead gen model should be working towards the goal of a lifetime customer. And what's the value of a lifetime customer? And how much would you pay to secure a customer for life? That's what lead gen has. But if you're a company that's just taking in phone calls and churning,

you're really never going to get ahead. Because if a phone call costs $100, and you're only able to get a $79 service call out of it, and then you don't get your sticker on that door or on that furnace, well, you're going to have to keep paying $100 for every phone call. So lifetime value is super important. And all those steps from the phone call, through the CSR booking it, through the happy Google review, it's all part of the puzzle. It is. And that's one of the things that I talk about in my book is the KPIs and the phone calls

just the beginning. And I actually had an advertiser come to me about two years ago and say, dude, you're not going to be successful at this campaign. I need to pause it because you're not answering the phone fast enough. And that's really, really insightful thing. So I just love Google just because the customers seem to be the old customers from the double truck phone books. They're the people that just, they're kind of like, they're not going through their ValPak and their coupons and looking for a coupon. They're the serious shoppers. And our average ticket tends to be a lot higher with Google customers. And believe it or not, Bing customers are really, really good because they tend to be

older people that just use Internet Explorer that's preloaded on the computer that comes with Bing. Tell me a little bit. What is your experience on Bing versus Google and as far as the customers? It's a 7% to 10% market share, but you're right. The person who's looking is demographically older, right? They're sitting at their computer and they don't even realize that they're not on Google or they're on Bing. So they're defaulted in there. But we run Bing campaigns for many, many of our PPC Google Ads customers because we just want to see if we can get a cost per lead in there that's equal or better to Google. The problem is it's not going to fill your trucks. You just don't have the volume or the capacity of search to get enough leads, but it's complimentary and it's a good complimentary

piece. Yeah, I like Bing. It's just like you said, it's a good complimentary piece. Yeah, I like Bing. It's just, like you said, it's a good add-on. It's like the icing on the cake. When we talk about Google's algorithms, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but in my head, I'm counting four. You've got the normal pay-per-click, which used to be the three ads at the top,

which it still is sometimes. And you've got your Google guarantee. Then you've got the original local algorithm. And then you have the regular organic. Is that the four that, am I getting those right? Yeah, that's basically your page. And then you've got to factor in your display. When someone's looking at the weather

or they're looking up the sports scores and those ads pop up on that page, that's part of Google's network for display marketing. Those banners, we consider that more branding and advertising than it is in the moment customer acquisition. That's like retargeting, right? Isn't that what they call it? Yeah, the remarketing.

Or you can do display, which is based on interests of the user, right? A guy who likes golf is going to see websites more often or ads for companies associated with golfing because Google knows his search history, his profile, right? I know there's a lot of stuff going on, Lorne, right now with Facebook and privacy laws. Is that coming into any effect right now with what Google's doing?

You know, the only place that I can speak to with any expertise, because Search Kings only works in the Google ad space. So we work in the PPC and we work in the Google local services where I think, and maybe we'll touch on it shortly, is what is Google going to do around serving ads when it's a voice search? That's sort of a contentious piece right now that I think is being developed behind the scenes. And we'll get to voice search if you want to chat about that. Yeah, definitely.

I got a whole section here because I love voice search and that's how I search. And you've got Siri, you've got Hey Google, which, oh, my thing's going off right now. And then you've got, what's her name? Alexa and all these different things. So tell me a little bit, what kind of feedback are you getting from some of your customers that are recently just added onto the platform for Google Local?

Yeah, so there's basically two experiences on Google Local. And the first one is a client who's getting into a market that already has other Google Guaranteed companies in it. So one of the, you know, in Garage Door, one of the 50 cities already, or in Pest Control, one of the 30 cities, or Restoration, et cetera. If you're in the market six months after it already launched,

you're sort of chasing the game. Because what happens is those companies that are Google Guaranteed, they build credibility in the algorithm. Because what happens is those companies that are Google guaranteed, they build credibility in the algorithm. They get reviews, they answer their calls, so they're getting a positive experience for customers. They start scoring higher. So the new company that joins the party

is having a hard time getting as many leads as they want. They need Google pay-per-click very often because they need to supplement with both programs. But the programs complement each other. In a market that's relatively new, so if you're going into Birmingham right now in any of the verticals, you're going to be the first guy in town. So you're going to be at the top of the page in Google search almost exclusively as a Google guaranteed company until everyone else turns around and realizes the race already started and they got to get in it and they're chasing you. So early adoption is the best strategy to get ahead and to get these leads. Because as you know, these leads are way cheaper than industry standard leads for one-to-one. Outside of that, the generating leads is definitely

the thing talked about most with our clients. How do I get more of these? How do I get more? Other than that, the call quality is great because calls less than 30 seconds are not charged. So you're getting rid of a whole lot of nonsense calls. You can also dispute or decline leads if someone's trying to solicit you or they call you when you didn't want your ad to show. So you can get rid of a percentage of your calls by disputing them to Google. You get rid of those less than 30 second calls, you're left with a sweet spot. Now a sweet spot where in typical lead generation, maybe one in four calls are producing revenue.

Here, it's higher because when you get rid of those under 30s and you get rid of those disputes, you're talking to a person one-on-one who called you for something you provide. So you should be able to close at a 50-plus percent rate. Yeah, interestingly enough, I'm pretty close with CallCap. I know Susie over there and she told me the average home service company is booking 45% of the calls. And that's crazy to me. And it really depends. Obviously, that number is relative depending on if it's just you're counting leads or if you're counting every single call because if you're talking about customer callbacks and solicitors, I can see it dropping significantly. But I really think a lot of people don't even answer their phone. I mean, I've called air conditioning companies, plumbing companies, roofing companies. I've called people off a Craigslist for small stuff like faux painting for my columns at my Scottsdale house, and they don't even answer. I mean, the one thing I'd give to people is if you're going

to spend money on anything, make sure you have somebody that's good answering your phones. But I want to dive into voice search because it's a thing of the future. I think inevitably with AI coming out, that it's just going to change the game. I think AI is just going to be,

they're going to start answering the phones. Everybody's seen that where the Google answers the phones for the haircut and it sounds just like a person. And it's going to be a huge disruption. China's working on it. We're working on it. It's kind of like the race of the moon here, but it's just powerful stuff. And they know, you know, Amazon, I'm an Amazon certified pro. When you order springs, it says you want them installed. And then we go install them and it makes us take a selfie. It knows where we're at and make sure that each guy has got a background check. I mean, they know exactly how long it takes us to do certain things to the point that it's almost scary. And I've talked about this before on the podcast is

they're grabbing so much data and microdata that they can tell it's going to become an Uber-like feature to get your home fixed. And tell me a little bit about voice search and how powerful it's becoming and what your take is on the future. Absolutely. It's a race to the moon. I love it. It's a race to a screenless world, right? Because for all this time, Google and Amazon and everyone's experience has been based on a visual representation of their product. So what's going to happen when there's no website? So right now we have 50% of people have done a voice search in the last month and it just continues to grow. Okay. So what's going to

happen when someone goes into their home and their toilets overflowing and they say, Hey Google, I need a plumber. What is Google going to do when they can't serve up a PPC ad, when they can't direct people to look at Google My Business reviews, and when there's no website? The machine is going to actually have to provide a great experience to that person in duress. And what are they going to do? They have to choose someone who's close. They have to choose someone who's doing a good job so that the customer gets a good experience. And they have to choose someone who's open and ready to serve the job. So as we see it, Google Local Services is going to end up being the voice search directory because it meets all those

criterias. Google can trust the company, the company's getting reviews, and the company's open for business. So when the customer says, oh no, my toilet's flooding, okay, Google, I need a plumber, Google's going to turn around and say, okay, I have ABC plumbingumbing. They are 2.5 miles away and they have availability today. Their star rating is 4.9. Would you like them to come? And if you're not in that algorithm, if Google's not looking for you, how are you going to get phone calls when people aren't looking you up online? So the issue here is voice search is becoming more and more prominent across home services. The stats are going up every month. What do you do? Do you invest in an SEO website? My opinion here is you make sure you're Google guaranteed

because when okay Google is deciding who gets the leads, you need to be there. I just had to unplug my Google thing because it was going off about a plumber. Yeah, someone's on their way. The closest Google guaranteed company is showing up. You know what? This is so cool. And Google's so smart. They thought about this stuff. They give you a guarantee. The whole guarantee. Tell me a little bit about what you're guaranteeing to the customer when you become a Google guarantee.

So what Google's guaranteeing is that they're going to back this company. So if ABC Plumbing comes out to the home and the job was booked through the Google guarantee lead, then what happens here is Google's part of the relationship in that if the relationship is good, it's the customer and the plumber. Great. But if there's a problem and the customer feels ripped off and they contact ABC Plumbing and said, you dug up the drain and you never put it back together, still not working. And the company says, okay, well, we need to come back and charge you again. The customer can go to Google, and they can explain the problem to Google.

Google will mediate. And what that means is they're going to call us if we manage you, or they'll call you yourself as a client and say, did this customer call you to try to work out the problem? And if the customer never contacted ABC Plumbing, well, then Google closes the claim. But if the customer did contact ABC Plumbing and ABC Plumbing basically brushed them off, well, then Google will compensate the customer for up to $2,000 lifetime. So whatever the bill was, Google will compensate up to a max of two grand lifetime.

Here's the thing, Tommy, over the last 16 months with way more than a thousand clients, we have seen three customers complain. And in all three cases, the claim was not processed because the customer didn't try to resolve it with the company. Google doesn't want to play mediator here in home services. They're engineers. The guarantee assures the customer that if all else fails, Google will back you in this situation. Very, very powerful.

And I always say, and correct me if I'm wrong because this is an old stat, but 70% of every job tends to be for home service, phone online, and correct me if I'm wrong, because this is an old stat, but 70% of every job tends to be for home service, phone online, and 70% of that is Google. Obviously, there's Yelp, Angie's List, HomeAdvisor, there's a million other places, but that's half of your marketing dollars, right? I mean, should be going towards Google. And what do you say to somebody, and I've asked this question, I might have even asked you, but they say, I've tried this Google stuff and it just doesn't

pay off for me. Yeah. You know, we get that question literally every day. It's the same as when I try to paint the basement walls in my home, or I try to put in new tiling in my house. I tried. And the look I got from my wife was one I should remember the next time. Hire an expert.

That's what she looks at me. You can see it through her eyes. That's our position on this. You can spend a ton of money and see very little return when you try to do something like Google marketing by yourself or with a company that may be managing one, two, 10, 20 accounts because they're learning on the fly. That's not a professional. A professional company has been there, done that,

knows exactly what to do, but is also working on experimenting to improve performance. So there's a lot of AI experiments going on that Google offers, but also at the account level and with the technology that we have at Search Kings, we're testing optimization strategies all the time.

There's no way to do that on your own. The same way as a guy comes in and finishes my basement in three weeks and it looks amazing, well, it would have taken me six years and it would have looked terrible. Google won't mind you trying on your own because you're just going to leak money into their coffers. Our position is don't spend those dollars on Google's terms. You spend them on your terms,

the times of the day, the locations you want to target, the keywords that make sense. Because if you target the wrong terms, you're going to blow through your budget. And our clients can't afford to lose money. Yeah. I'll tell a quick story, Lauren. This story reminds me of the company that I used years and years ago. I won't go into details. But they came back to me and said, we've literally lowered your acquisition costs so much, 10 times the volume you were getting before. And they're right, they did.

But when you looked at every single phone call, what's so nice about ServiceSite and Advanced CRM, whether you're using, there's a million different ones, Zoho, I like, there's ServiceMax, there's some really good ones out there that have this kind of features to be able to track marketing, but they. There's ServiceMax. There's some really good ones out there that have this kind of features to be able to track marketing. But they were all remote control calls.

And half of them called up to want to buy a remote. And our average ticket was crap. And we looked at what we had before and we were producing so much more revenue. Yeah, the search terms were more expensive. But I think people are fooled saying they're just misled by these companies. I remember my mom called me. This is before she moved out here. So pre-2012. And she goes, Tommy, I'm ranked the number one realtor in Sterling Heights.

I said, well, what's the search term? She goes, what do you mean? I said, they've ranked you, but nobody's searching for that search term for Sterling Heights, Michigan. I'm like, there's no search volume for that. They rank you for something to be able to tell you that. And I just think a lot of these companies do a lot of misleading. Am I right?

Yeah. I mean, it's all about the transparency, right? What kind of reporting are they showing you? Because it's your money. And the way we do it is your credit card goes straight into Google. So you can actually see what you're paying for. Because if you're paying a company 10 Gs and they're taking 25% and putting the rest in,

you don't have transparent reporting because you're only spending 7,500 and what's that going towards? So you should be paying Google directly on your credit card. And if you're going to hire a company, have them manage the money on your behalf and pay them to manage it, not the percentage. I don't know of any other company that just charges a management fee except for you guys, but it's amazing what you guys do. And the best thing about you guys that I'll say is the communication is always open. There's never been a time I've tried to get a hold of

you guys and failed to do so. And there's always an expert willing to walk through your campaign and guide you through it, as well as the advanced reporting you guys give. Give me a few unusual approaches to helping small businesses that maybe some of the listeners out there could take and do this week, this month, and really begin to see results if they take some action? Interesting. I think the first thing is we have to be a trusted advisor. And in that trusted advisor role, that's the job of the account manager, is to hit on some sensitive points. So the first sensitive point is, what on some sensitive points. So the first sensitive point is, what are some problems in your business right now? What's keeping you up a little bit? So we identify, is it a bottleneck of tech acquisition? They can't find enough techs. Or

their CSRs need more training. What is it so that when we're getting phone calls coming in, we're fitting into that first puzzle of trying to alleviate problem number one. Problem number two in that trusted advisor role is how are those phone calls getting handled? We need to make sure that that's number two. And above all, number three is what's the most profitable part of your company and your business? Because we got to move your budget around. Some things are going to be lost leaders. You might be acquiring customers for $300 and your service job is only about $150. So is that a customer acquisition strategy?

If so, are we okay with that? And that transparency needs to be in place so that we can say, this is how much it's costing to acquire a customer in service. This is how much it's costing to acquire a customer in installs. How many of those service jobs are moving across to installs, right? So by knowing where's the profit in your business model, now we support that. And that's the trusted advisor role that I can tell you, we do a ton of training with our staff on, is to say our job isn't just to get you

the best cost per lead. It's to fit into your business and help you grow, right? By actually looking at what's important to the business owner and fulfilling that, if an account manager's job is to make you spend more money next month, you don't have a trusted advisor. You've got a guy with his own self-interest

driving the bus. So the trusted advisor of an account manager is to say, what's in Tommy's best interest? Tommy does a ton of converting service leads into installs. So how can we build that process? Yeah, sometimes you find some honey holes. I mean, look, my most profitable thing,

and anybody that's listening, I'm going to give out a little gold nugget, is I fix the initial problem. If you fix the roof, fix the gutter, fix why they called you out. And there's certain things that happen mentally when you get something new, when you replace something, when you get a new car, when you get a new roof, when you get a new patio set, when you get something new, when you replace

something, when you get a new car, when you get a new roof, when you get a new patio set, when you get a new paint job. I'm able to convert a lot of my service, fix the job and apply that service, the $700 ticket towards a new door, which is three grand. And obviously three grand comes down to $2,300 if we apply that. But the deal is you're not making a percentage. People always say, what's your profit margin? Well, my material cost is 11% in service.

It's hovering between 35% and 40% in new install. And when you look at that, you say, well, obviously, you want service at a 10x multiplier. But that one customer is giving me a lot more money and profit for install. So I like what you said there is the people that are listening, if you could take a service call and turn it into a new air conditioning unit, roof gutters, whatever it might be, there's a lot of money in there. And I actually sat down with Ken Goodrich at his location here in Tempe, Arizona, and all the smart companies, they tag on their service agreements.

They tag that this is... We've talked to the customer. Next year, they're probably going to want to replace this. So he sends out his top salesman that gives the best demonstration, talks about efficiencies, talks about not wasting good money to fix this. And it's amazing what you could do when you were able to take a service call and switch it to a new install. So that's a little gold nugget for you. But you've got a really good program. It's affordable.

It works. You've got the first thing that people say, I've got a sheet here. Let me just check this out. When somebody's looking for a contractor, they say, did they arrive on time? Did they have quality references? Did they reschedule your appointment multiple times? Are they organized? And did they supply an accurate professional quote or a bid? You guys are not in the home

service space per se. You're in the Google space, but you guys do all those things. I mean, we could cross them out here. You always answer on time. You get back to people. You've got tons of quality references. And if anybody contacts you, and I'm a reference, but anybody else could contact you. Do you always reschedule appointments? No, you've never rescheduled an appointment with us. Are you guys organized? Absolutely. You couldn't run a business your size if you weren't. And do you supply an accurate bid? Well, you know, you are upfront about your cost to manage it. So those are all very transparent. If somebody wants to talk to somebody other than me about a reference, how would they

go about that? So first off, where does everyone go? They go to Google to find out about a company, right? So when you check out Search Kings, as of today, we have 643 Google reviews. And we're not in people's homes. We're helping them have profitable marketing campaigns. So people should read our reviews and see what's going on at Search Kings.

That's what we pride ourselves on. We take good care of our customers. So you can reach out to us. I would love to know, Tommy, if people reach out. I want them to let me know they came through you. We want to take good care of them and give them a little bit of a, as much of a discount as we can.

And they would reach out to homeserviceexpert at searchkings.com. We're going to make sure that we take good care of your clients and your references, your referrals. Well, what's cool is when we talked before, you said you're going to do something special for them, a little bit of an extra discount if they sign up. And I, you know, when I asked you originally, just so the listeners know is, is there anything special we can do for the listeners

for the home service expert? And you said, yes, we'll create an email and we'll get them a lot of extra. So I appreciate you guys doing that. And I'd love to hear of the experiences as the people, the listeners out there do this, but it's not a question of if you're going to do it, it's when you're going to do it. And there's no better time than now, because what is your theory on what's going to happen as all the professionals get on this platform? I mean, the cost has got to go up, right? Yeah, I would say the next two months, let's just keep things real current. I think between now and July, 2019, you are going to see the early adopters jump in across the 14 verticals. And after those two months, what's going to happen is then the

next curve of those people who think they're the early adopters, but they're really not. They come on a little bit later. They're going to jump on. What's going to happen though, is what's already happening in Dallas and Phoenix in the HVAC industry, there's already 50 Google guaranteed companies. So it's too late to get in. So I think over the next year, Google will collect their directory and they will potentially close cities because they'll have enough Google guaranteed companies in there. And as far as where the price goes and the structure of this, I don't know yet. The price is very low right now for leads, way lower than pay-per-click. So I could see that potentially going up, but I'd be guessing. For now, I think what Google is focused on is acquiring the right companies who get on early and then they're going to figure out how do we get ready for voice as number two. That's my take on where

this is going in the next three to six months. All right. Here's something that I'm going to throw out there. If someone's listening and they just can't afford to do this right now, call me up, email me. I will pay for it. I will coach you and we will make a ton of money together because it's so cheap to get these phone calls. And you got to monetize them though. You got to book the phone call. You got to work on your conversion rate and your average ticket. And I don't really want to go down that road right now, but you guys got to check this out. I'm not kidding. The link is homeserviceexpertatsearchkings.com. It's not plural, homeserviceexpertatsearchkings.com. Lauren's got 643 Google reviews that you should

read, but someone calls and they want to talk to a similar company because you guys got the whole gamut of home service. That's something you could definitely put them in touch with, right? An expert in their field. Yeah, 100%. All 14 verticals are open. So we are onboarding across them all. And yeah, references are huge. We're members of some key organizations and would be glad to provide references on our work. And no better reference than Tommy Mello. That's true. So this is cool, man. Off the wall question. There's a lot of people that do window washing and Christmas lights is becoming bigger as far as a listenership. Is there anything as far as power washing, window washing, Christmas lights in those 14 verticals? Window repair and car windshield repair, both. Okay, perfect.

Christmas lights, no. Let me ask you, I always ask the same question about books, but is there any random books that you've read recently that you recommend for the listeners? Yeah, I think for us, The Trusted Advisor was really important by Charles Green because it infused for us the message that we are advisors to our clients we're not just managing campaigns and increasing bids and looking for negative keywords we have to be business advisors so charles green for that and then we like to get pumped up extreme leadership

by jacko wilnick is all about just going out there and kicking butt as though your life depends on it, you know, and trying to help as many people as you can by being a leader in the field. Awesome parallel between the real world and the business world. You know, what's cool. I just read esteemed leadership and you know, I got a company in Canada. We started advising. We do a little bit of advising now for certain clients that want to be consulted. And you know, I got a company in Canada. We started advising. We do a little bit of advising now for certain clients that want to be consulted. And, you know, we got this guy in Canada and he resurfaces wood floors. Is there anything on the Google Guarantee Program? Would that just be general flooring?

Yeah, flooring hasn't come in yet. So we're watching for flooring, you know, roofing, pest control, movers, carpet cleaners, restoration. Oh, man. I'm going to give you so many referrals. Do me a favor. Email me that list and I'll make it available on our page for you guys of all the 14. And then, yeah, listen, Lauren, this is amazing. Is there any other things that you wanted to discuss and leave the listeners with that we haven't touched? No, I think it's a matter of you should get Google Guaranteed as quickly as you can. If you want Search Kings to do it,

we have a process to get you Google Guaranteed very quickly, smoothly, okay, without any headaches. If you want to wait in line at the front door of Google, it's sort of like trying to finish your basement by yourself. You're going to probably get it done, but I'm not sure if you're going to get it done the way you want. Well, listen, I can be a bigger advocate. I think you guys are upfront, honest, you're easy to work with. And this will be the final question. If somebody is using a company and I'm going to use the word satisfied, they're not raving fans. What kind of audit can you perform?

You know, just to keep the other company honest, what does that process look like for the listeners? Well, first off, we don't want to get in the way of a good relationship. If you're happy with your SEM provider, then there's two things. One, let us just take care of Google Guarantee for you. We're the experts in that and you stick with your other company. Once we've earned your trust that we actually do what we say we're going to do, wouldn't that be nice? And you're happy with us, then you might say to us, can you audit our PPC account? When we audit the PPC account, we're not going to hammer you guys. We're just going to explain to you, here's one or two things that you should go get your

PPC company to do. Or here's a bunch of things we would do if we were running this campaign. So auditing campaigns is something we're happy to do to make sure you know how we would do it before you ever change over. But I do like the first step of just let us get you Google Guaranteed. Sometimes we work with your marketing company to do it so that it gets done properly.

And then you can decide, do you want to hear more of what we have to say? So a lot of companies out there, Valpak, MoneyMailer, I have nothing bad to say about any of these huge chains of companies, but they all sub it all out. They're making money on a subcontractor relationship. You're going straight to the source when you go to Lauren's team. So I can tell you, yeah, I've already got that taken care of. A lot of people are saying,

yeah, that's already done. I've already got that. Let them look at it. Let us make sure that it's right. Make sure you're getting the reviews. You've got a system in place. It never hurts to get a second opinion and it's worth it. So, Lauren, I got to tell you, I appreciate you jumping on. I think you're awesome. You keep me up to date what's going on with Google and I appreciate it. You got it, man. And just make sure if your listeners want to jump the queue and get in line quickly that they mention you. So we take great care of them and love to share good news with you soon. Okay, that's homeserviceexpert at searchkings.com. Just like it sounds. Thank you very much, brother. Have a great day. If you're really trying to kick butt on Google and get on Google Guaranteed Home Services,

you need to call my friends over at Search Kings. Just go to homeserviceexpert.com forward slash search kings. That's homeserviceexpert.com forward slash search kings, and they'll help you get found on Google.