Hey, welcome back to another HVAC Success Secrets Reveal with Thaddeus and Evan. He's Thaddeus, I'm Evan, and we got our guest on today, Mr. Eric Thomas. If you don't know, he's kind of a big deal. He was listed in the top 40 under 40 this year in the ACHR, news magazine. He's the founder of Rival Digital and also the host of the Smart HVAC Marketing Podcast. We had a phenomenal. conversation today. Thad, what was your favorite part of this episode?
We talked about some of the mistakes that contractors made this summer. And one of them was about something that somebody once famously said is dead, but they are not in fact dead. And it was memberships. But we also talked about how to get better at getting more into your business. And also, if you pay attention very closely, Eric said a number of members per million dollars in revenue, which is a key key thing, Eric, how about yourself?
Yeah. My favorite was, just hitting on something I'm super passionate about, which is local marketing, local brand marketing, community involvement, stuff like that, just because we are heading into, I mean, we've already been here, but we're heading into even more of a time where. It's time to, to go on offense and, be the go to provider in your local community. So local branding, local marketing, all that good stuff, rather than just waiting up for the phone to ring on lead gen.
For me, it can be summed up in two things, this entire episode, which ironically enough is the. Topic of Eric's new book, which will be launching this winter. So keep your eyes and ears open for that. But it is step one, how to get people into your ecosystem, into your funnel, into insert analogy here, step to get people to do something. And I loved how he summed it all up right at the end of the episode. And these are things that you absolutely need to be doing in your business.
Every month of the year, it is a nonstop event. So make sure you pay special attention to that. But of course we want to hear from you. What was your favorite part of this episode? Leave it down in the comments down below and enjoy the show. Welcome back to another HVAC Success, Secrets Revealed with Thaddeus and Evan, where we have good conversations with good people and any good conversation worth having, worth having drunk. Cheers. My friend.
Cheers. Tongue twisters today.
Oh boy, it's been a day. I'm not used to doing the show this late.
You go. It's because you're probably already been drinking for the last two hours.
Maybe when when you're in Rome at the cottage, having a good time.
Yeah. Looking at the lake.
Absolutely. Delightful time. today we've got on an old friend of ours. He is a Red Robin aficionado. So if you ever need to get a good whiskey river burger, he will point out exactly where you need to go. He is a brand new father. He is a member of the top 40 under 40 club released just recently from HR news, he's also the host of the smart HVAC marketing podcast and the owner of rival digital marketing, none other than Eric Thomas. Eric's an old friend of ours. We're in a mastermind together.
We chat all the time in regards to marketing and. And picking each other's brains, what we're doing with clients, what's working and what's not working. Hey, we make fun of clients sometimes and the choices that they make. And that's what we're going to be doing today is diving, looking and through the summer looking at what it was that, that we noticed in terms of mistakes from a marketing perspective on our side, mistakes from an operator's perspective.
And what it is that we're helping clients fix on their end. That's going to be a lot of fun. Also diving into a topic that Eric posted yesterday in regards to something that he learned right away in university about marketing and what it is, it's going to be the premise of a new book that he's got coming out. This fall and winter. So excited to be having him on the show today, especially as a new father of a brand new baby, only 14 days old, who was a little milk drunk this afternoon.
excited to have you on Eric.
Yeah, And like those who have been listening for a long time know that we don't generally have a lot of marketers on or really any random marketer. It's individuals who we have had a conversation with and that we know Like, and we trust them and their process in terms of what they do, because at the end of the day, there's a lot of shady marketing companies out there, of which on purpose media and rival digital are not those companies, by the way.
So excited to be able to dive into some marketing topics.
Absolutely.
And of course, today's show would not be possible without our sponsors. And in no real particular order, Profit Rocket, RealTime 360 and Chiirp and On Purpose Media, that's us Chirp is an ultimate automation toolbox for Home Service Pros. One thing I like, direct integrations, they have drop down menus. So like, Service Titan, Housecall Pro, Jobber, et cetera. Automates text messages, emails, ringless voicemails, direct mail, rehash program, it goes on and on and on.
Be like Dave. Sign up and in your he added 42, 000 in revenue and his business just was Chiirp. Cassie signed up and added 80, 000 in revenue. In her business, just with Chiirp in the first two weeks. If you want 25% off, check it out. chirp.com/hssr
Love it. And of course we've got realtime 360. Are you tired of juggling multiple marketing tools and agencies owning all of your logins. I know both for Eric at Rival, as well as for us, this is something that we talk about often and the difficulties that we have sometimes dealing with marketing companies because they own all of our clients, old shit, and we want to make sure that we say goodbye to the frustration and that you.
as business owners can take control of your marketing with Realtime 360. You can streamline reviews, automate social media, engage customers with live chat, and more importantly, track all of your success with reporting all in one place, join the revolution and power your success with RealTime360.
.io
That's the website that I go check it out. And of course, once you've got all this happening, if you're an HVAC owner and you are starting to grow your company, not just top line revenues, but bottom line profits, you got to check out the Profit Rocket Blueprint. It's been out for over a year now. And he is the blueprint has helped over 300 businesses grow in the last year.
So if you want to join any of those businesses, you can learn what Victor used to scale his business from zero to 50 million in just over four years. It covers everything from setting up your P and L's SOPs for all your positions, call scripts, marketing plans, call processes, and so much more. So go check that out at call profit rocket. com. And while you're there, you may as well sign up for the profit rocket growth summit, which is happening this September 27 to 29 in Austin, Texas.
There's so many amazing speakers on the agenda, including me, Amanda Triolo, Marcus Tim Grover, Lance Bachman, and so many more, including our guest today Eric Thomas you'll get to see him podcasting live on stage there as well. So go check it out at callprofitrocket. com.
Welcome to HVAC Success Secrets Revealed, a show where we interview industry leaders and disruptors revealing the success secrets to create and unleash the ultimate HVAC business. Now your hosts Thaddeus and Evan.
What up, Eric Thomas,
What's up, man. I was getting like some real flashback to good days when I saw those AHR clips. Oh, wow. Oh, gosh, good times.
It was a fantastic time. Absolutely. Eric, welcome to the show, man. Thanks for doing us a solid and hopping on. We appreciate you and all the work that you're doing and a special thank you to your wife as well for taking the time to allow you to step away from fatherhood for a little bit.
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for the opportunity to be on the show today. I'm super excited to enjoy some fatherly beverages and talk shop with some, with some, of my friends.
There we go.
And it's okay. If you forget what you're talking about in the middle of a sentence I feel you in any parent who's ever been through it with a two week old child. Feels you as well.
Man, we've got that white noise machine just like constantly running. So the baby will be sleeping and like it died last night and I hadn't, I swear the house had never been so quiet. It was just like, Whoa. It was crazy.
What's funny is after you've had the white noise machine in your room for however many months, your, your kid's going to be in there. You're going to want to buy your own for your own room and you can don't want to have it running because that's what happened in our house. We're like, oh shit, kids out. We're like, Oh fuck. Let's go get another white noise machine for our own room.
Yeah, I could see that. Cause it got, it got so quiet. I was like, I can't do this. I'm about to go crazy that's funny.
Love it. All right. So you're two weeks into fatherhood biggest realization in the first two weeks, and I am curious as well, did at any moment, you're like, Oh shit, what the hell did we just do?
I would say your biggest, biggest realization was just like how amazing and how cool the birthing process is Like, man, that was, that was like. And everyone was like, yeah, it's such a special moment. You're going to love it. But like, you never really actually realize it until you're like there. And it's like, happening. And I was like, mass of the head start and I was like, oh, I started watching. I was Like yo. So that was that was cool.
Another thing is that they go to the bathroom a lot, that's for sure. So, definitely, yeah, I've been changing a lot of diapers. So definitely gotten a little bit outside of my comfort zone there at any moment did I realize what were we doing?
You're like, oh, fuck.
Yeah, I would say, yeah in the hospital there for a second, like right after he had, he'd had a procedure done boy. So, and like, it was There was some took his diaper off. He started peeing up in the air and it goes, you're just like, I was like, what do we do There's pee going everywhere. It's like, I was like, and there's no one there to help you It's just like us. And I'm like what do we do about this Do we just let him pee and clean it up after?
Pretty much throw down the newspaper and let them go.
Wait, until they shit all over the place and they get shit on the wall and their dresser and down the dresser and on the carpet and the closet door all in one go and then wait until they they take a shit on the carpet and turn around and crawl through it all the way through the carpet before you realize it and then you have to get out the carpet cleaner and clean your carpet.
No, that sounds awful. He did have a blowout at the doctor's appointment on Monday this past week and like his whole outfit was ruined. I was like, Oh shoot. And we didn't have a, like, I don't know what we're doing. So we didn't have like a backup pair of clothes in his diaper bag or anything. So we were like, all right, bud, you're just going to be rolling around in your diaper for the next two hours.
Things that you will never repeat as mistakes.
Yeah. Hey, what's the best part about being a circumcision doctor? You get to keep the tips.
There we go. That's a good one.
Oh, Evan, sorry, let's dive into I guess summer, right? It's August 30th. Summer's coming to a close not quite there yet. Already done depending on the market where you're at. Here in Canada, it's like we're already getting our furnaces ready. That's actually not that bad yet.
It's still kind of warm, but you know, we're coming up to a close in looking at that in looking at some of the things that I guess you've seen from your clients and your customers what are some of the Biggest learning opportunities that an HVAC business can say? Oh shit, we should have done this better that you have noted and you've seen
I think I'll probably be preaching to the choir about this one, but I think that everyone like, for the past three years has just generally dropped the ball on, on maintenance memberships, club memberships. And it's literally, it's no coincidence, man. Like the clients that we have that 50, 60, 70, a hundred plus percent have at least a thousand club members for every million they do. They're just rocking and rolling. They've got enough levers to pull.
And then the ones that are day by day, I need calls. I need calls. I need calls. You go look at their club membership and they're just like, Oh, I've got like 150. I think 300 haven't talked to him in two years. So I think that, yeah, the membership thing is, is huge. It's just the ones that for some people, it was just enough to keep them break even with distributors saying that. box sales are down.
30% in some markets, some markets more, some markets less, but like the clients that we've seen, even if they're up 1. then they're actually up, depending on the market that they're in 31%, maybe 21% just because of the way that things have been going. So yeah, club memberships is has been a huge thing that we, we've seen for sure. And it's just like making sure that you've got a strategy in place to talk to them and keep them. Engaged and active and, needing your service.
So from those those clients that are up 40, 50, 60, a hundred percent I'm curious, have you asked them what some of their best practices have been? And even from the podcast that you run too what are some of the best practices that you see those guys using within their business to generate the membership sales at a significantly higher rate.
Yeah, I, think so actually this is going to be a topic of discussion at profit rocket. Cause one of our clients is on the podcast panel Brody Pinnell out in Los Angeles. And like, he's crushing it with just even this year in general out in LA where they've had the mildest summer and years like, dude, we're in August and all summer, we've still been running their heating and furnace campaigns on Google Ads.
Like it just, we never turned them off because they just kept performing because it was 65 degrees there, 70 degrees at the most. So but I think one is, always getting when you're in the home for something, it doesn't always have to be a box sale or a change out or installation or something. It could be as small as a repair, no heat, no cool call, but they're capturing that and they're turning it into a membership and what they're doing.
I'm not certain if this is entirely what Brody's doing, but this is what a lot of folks That we're seeing do is when they call, when they're getting dispatched, the dispatcher's going ahead and prompting them. On that club membership. You're like, Hey, make sure you ask Evan about our comfort club while he's there. And then when Evan shows up, they're Like Oh, tell me about this comfort club. They told me to ask you about it.
Boom. And you can just go straight into the, into the spiel or whatever it may be. and I know that chirp does this too I think.
Yeah, I was just about to mention that. I know one of the things that you can do with an integration with chirp into your CRM software, depending on what it is and how you have it set up is you can actually say we'd actually look up to see if there are a club membership or not.
And when they do the on the way texts or the confirmation tasks more specifically the on the way They can actually distinguish between a member or non member and say hey be sure to ask about our comfort club membership And get 10 off your repair call when our tech shows up or if you're offering the discount, right? I should mention that not everybody's offering that discount.
For their membership some are some aren't but great way to be able to do that And if you're ever wanting to tour that That software, by the way, to be able to add this in here Well, guess what? You get 25% off your first three months chiirp.com/hssr. How's that for an extra plug there, Ryan Fenn?
Yeah. And. another thing I know this, I'm probably not out here providing any like innovative or, or game changing ideas. I'm sure a lot of people know this already, but I just want to drive the point home again is with those members, just getting them on a monthly plan, rather than having them pay for the whole year up front that way you don't have to call. For renewal, whenever it comes time for that, that membership to renew just for retention purposes.
and also it kind of turns you somehow into a subscription type business, so to speak. And I'm sure everyone listening to here has a million subscriptions. They have no clue about just hitting them for 8.99 a month.
Right but that is a legit thing, right? You think about people in the monthly amounts that they pay that they're like, oh, it's only 10 or, oh, it's only 15 or it's only 8 here. You're like, fuck, use a gym membership. 60, 70, 80, 90, depending on where you're at, and people will pay it and not ever go to the gym because, oh, it's only, it's only 90 a month. It's okay. Right?
And now you've, but then when they time that they go, and so leveraging and utilizing that, but it also becomes sticky too at that point, because if they're actively looking at their credit card statement, Which maybe they're not but if they are now, they see your business name. They see your business name. They see your business name. They see your business name. They see your business name. and now it's a branding play on top of everything,
Well, and so let, lemme flip that around though, because if you constantly see them on your credit card statement, that's not a good feeling that you're associating to the brand name. So from a marketing perspective how is it that you can then flip that around so that they feel good about this every time they see it every month.
That's yeah like times are pretty tough Right, now. So like, you could say if you're going to pay up front I think if the membership that I'm a part of with our company annualized would be like three 50, three 60, something like that. it's a homerun sales opportunity for your maintenance tech or for your dispatcher, whoever's talking to the customer, be like.
It could be 3.80 a year or it could be 1.89 for this maintenance visit or you could just pay 8. 99 today and get the maintenance visit included that they're going to come do because once you become a member at 8.99 a month, then it's included in that service. So take your pick. Do you want to pay 8 or 380 today?
Right here's a pricing hack, by the way, is 897, It's like some people were like, fuck, I know this is something I've been on for like a kick for a long time is when you end it in seven. And Walmart does this, by the way. And like a lot of the big box stores, they'll put it at, like, if you look at their pricing, pay attention to it next time. A lot of numbers end in seven. And the reason being is if somebody hears 9.99, they're like, oh, $10.
So if they hear, oh, 9.97, Oh, 7.99 a box and stuff, that's fine. Right. It's just this, it's two cents, but it's a subtle shift in the consumer behavior too, in terms of the pricing aspect.
I'm curious if doing something with even your branding within your point of service system so that you change the name from just like. Ben's heating and cooling dot, and here's your maintenance bill to peace of mind, maintenance from Ben's heating and cooling. So now it's associating more of a positive thing than a negative thing with that charge.
I wish I knew, but that's, that would be, that would be smart. Like if I go look at my credit card statement and paid 7 for peace of mind, I'd be like, okay, I'll keep paying that 7.
Right? Well, it's the same thing as email marketing, right? When you see that in your inbox every time, what is the association that you want people to have to your brand? When they see it in their inbox, they want to know that you're adding value to them. They want to know that there's information behind it. That's going to be valuable for them to click on and check out. Right. They don't want to be annoyed by it. So what is it that you're sending people?
How are you putting that subject line in that email? Cool. So maintenance being a big thing. and by the way, one thing I want, I want to point out that you referenced too, was these aren't new ideas. Well, for a lot of things that we talk about here, they're not going to be new ideas because you should be weary of the person that's trying to sell you new ideas. Right. Jim Rohn has a quote. He said, be weary of the salesman touting newly manufactured antiques. Right.
There's no new ideas to success. They're old. It's how well are you implementing them now? And are there ways that you can implement them even better now.
Dude who's crushing this right now is Stephanie and David from anchor heating and air. Like everything they do. Is leading people to become a comfort club membership or giving back to the community. They're not on there talking about, please buy a new heating And air conditioning system or like begging for leads. They're out there saying, Hey, look, we're sponsoring the pre party at Chris Stapleton. Hey, look, we're over here at this softball field doing this thing.
Hey, look, We're doing the parade of homes. they're everywhere. And it's all leading towards the captain's club. And. So they're, they're building their maintenance base. But they're also involved in The community building that brand. And that's another thing that so many people have overlooked. And look, I love digital marketing and I know you guys do too, but I do feel like people have definitely over they definitely like, overturned into digital marketing.
A few years back where it was like, eh, branding, whatever. Let me get some of them sweet leads boy. Let me get some of those, let me get some of those leads off of Google and Facebook. and so it became like Some people put too many eggs in that. basket and they forgot like, Hey, you need to be putting door hangers a six pack six to the left to the right across the street. You need to be doing your yard signs. You need to be dropping direct mail out here.
You need to be putting your banner and left center field at the high school baseball field. People seem to have forgotten that in the pursuit of these amazing, perfectly qualified install leads off of Google.
I'm glad that you that you mentioned that because you look at branding in their in Jordan Harrison forget about branding in their local market chiming in on our Facebook group. Look, Evan and I came from the branding world, right? We used to sell print ads and magazines that went to high end neighborhoods. In even there was a company that they're through North America and branding was big play.
But doing branding the right way and you look at what, well, first off anchor has a Dan Antonelli brand And you don't necessarily need a Dan Antonelli brand. He's the king of all Kings when it comes to that. But having a really dialed in brand, right? Don't have a fucking white van, red and white lettering on it.
Snowflake in A flame.
A snowflake and a flame that's red and white and just your logo on it. That doesn't do anything. That doesn't pull anybody towards your brand. But when you have that, and when you start to do those things you don't necessarily have to go after that install market on Facebook. I know there's been some posts coming out lately, and I'm glad that we're kind of on this topic, because this is what I think about of giving away a free air conditioner and bringing in a whole bunch of leads to that.
Okay, that's great. But are you going to actually document that process? Are you going to get the videos behind that? Are you going to show the goodwill that you're doing with inside of your community? Are you going to make a story about it, right? And when you can make this story and we can connect these brands and you can do those sorts of things, now you don't need as much of that install traffic on Facebook. You don't need as much as that Google traffic from your Google ads.
You still need your SEO because you still want to be able to show up for when people are searching for you, but when they. Do search for you. Here's what branding does. Familiarity. Now they search AC repair near me and they see we'll use anchor heating and air as an example, right? They search AC repair near me and they see anchor heating and air as one of the three on the map pack or one of the three in the SERP results, the search engine results, below the Google Maps, like, hmm.
I got familiarity with that. Okay, well, I'm gonna click on it and here's what it does to the digital efforts. It actually drives your costs on digital down. You actually pay less on your digital because there's that brand familiarity. What you can do and see Jordan creating video content around that brand right now you take these these things of Hey, we're over here at this event. Hey, we're over here at this event. Hey, we're over here at this event. You record it. Get out this guy right here.
Do a recording selfie video or even filming some shit. Put it out there. Keep that content also somewhere else, not just on Facebook. If you can set up for your lives, So if you do a live or like a story that it saves to your phone, you can then take that, that content, spin it out to somebody like a Jordan Harrison. Or somebody, I don't know Eric, if you guys do the social videos at all or not, we don't It's chaos. Jordan, Jordan is phenomenal at what he does. Right.
But now you can, then what you do is if you want to actually put some dollars behind this shit. Boost it or put in a video views behind it. Right. And so now video views or reach campaign is actually more effective on Facebook in terms of your dollars going further to get that out and people soak that up. Right. and now you, you're spending, yeah, you're not getting direct leads on Facebook, but again, that's part of your overall branding strategy. Somebody who does a really good job of this.
And Victor has even said this too, is that he actually moves his budget up and down depending on the time of the year. So for him in California when he was with Absolute Airflow, he actually increased his branding in the winter And decreased his digital. And that flipped come summer. He decreased some of his branding, increased his digital because he's created that brand continuity across the board throughout the wintertime. Right.
and so, like you look at the seasonalities of markets and I know I'm going on a long rant here, but the idea was here and I've been, this has been a long buildup in my mind of things that I've been seeing on Facebook is that we know that in certain markets, the demand just isn't quite there over the, winter, but you still have to spend the money and heck, let's use this recession as an example, or impending recession, or no recession is in your mindset.
However you want to spend this historically. And they've tracked this since World War II, by the way. And I haven't looked at the data since like 2010 or 2014. But historically, people that continue to spend money in a recession come out 200% of their competitors, right? Because they remember that brand familiarity. They might not be ready for your services right now. but, they're going to keep in mind when they are ready for your services.
And if you've been front and center for them the entire time, they're going to remember that shit.
Yeah. they say the best time to buy is when there's blood in the street and there hasn't been a bloodier time in the streets than probably 2008 than there is right now. And like we'll see some folks are going to, we're going to try to cut back some of our costs. So we're going to, we're going to pull this back. We're going to pull this back. The people that blowing up the 70, percenters that are hitting it year over year blowing up.
They're like, Hey, put another 10, 000 into Google ads, but another 10, 000 in this Facebook campaign. Let's do this. They're pulling lines.
They're pushing the chips in. they're not pulling out.
They're literally, they're like, fuck it. I'm going to pull out a line of credit and set up more. campaigns for brand awareness and stuff like that. Because their competitors are getting scared and they're pulling their marketing dollars back. And so it's like that now's the time for sure. Like if you're listening to this right now and you're like, Ooh you're getting a little a little timid about the shoulder months, you gotta roll the dice. That the demand is going to come back around.
You think that these people really are going to go without a heating or an air conditioning system in their home? No. So yeah, you might lose 70, 000 right now. And it might be kind of tough for a little bit, but when that demand comes back around and your cash register and your phone are ringing off the hook. You're going to be so glad that you doubled down when it was tough.
Absolutely. Well, there was a guy that I had cold called back in 2020. So we had just started our business. We were just up and running. Plus I was still running the magazines on the side, double dipping here and there had to pay the bills. But I called on this mobile tire company. And he's like, I've got no more money to spend right now because I just went all in on every TV station. He spent 500 per TV station in the market for three months of advertising.
And they came out and shot commercials for him. It was the greatest deal in advertising history because it was COVID. What was everyone watching? They're all watching the local news. He got so much. Traffic from that. It was absolutely unbelievable. I applauded him to the moon and back and he had never been busier because everyone wanted to get their tires changed, but nobody wanted to drive to the mechanic. Right. It was unbelievable timing. So absolutely.
When there's blood in the water take full advantage of it. Right. And then what's his name? The old investor, dude, why can't I remember his name right now?
Warren Buffett.
Warren Buffett. There we go. Thank you. Right. Be fearful, when others are greedy and be greedy, when others are fearful, something like that. Right. Be fearful when others are greedy. Yeah. But yeah, that's exactly it. So maintenance memberships, that's a huge one. What was another one that you noticed this summer that guys really missed the ball on in terms of. Taking full advantage of the call volume that was there when the heat was turned up.
So yeah outside of the, maintenance and the local branding well, this is, tough one. Because people keep saying search demand has been down. And for a while I was seeing that and I was feeling that, and if you look at Google trends for different things, you can see that there was certainly a dip in, in different areas for sure. So I, feel like a lot of people missed the ball on trying to like, just drum up their own demand so to speak.
Cause like, I just feel like so many people are like, look, I'm going to give you my dollars and you're going to make my phone ring. All right. Ready? Set. Go. But that's not always how easy it is. Like, it's not all like, yes, it was like that in 2019 and 2020, 2021. You could, you could say, Hey, digital agency, here's 10, 000. Kick, make my phone ring. But that wasn't the case this year. So I think a lot of people were like, all right, we're going to wait on this demand.
We're going to wait on this demand and it never actually showed up. And meanwhile, you had other people out there who were. Generating their own demand and they were doing a great job. So yeah, so outside of maintenance and local branding, I think demand generation, a lot of people miss the ball on that. And it might honestly be because it hasn't been something that's needed. Everyone's always just.
Put their hooks out in the water and waited for people to bite rather than going out and actually trying to cast a net and see what they can pull into the boat.
Well, and that's, I think what's really fascinating about the market that we're in right now is that, and I don't know about you and your client base for us, I would say probably at least 85% of our clients have started their business after 2008. We've got a handful that are really old, like 40, 50. We've got one client that's 99 years old, but they haven't been punched in the mouth yet. They don't know what that is really like where the market completely pulls back from what it was.
So. For those businesses that, that don't know how to generate demand, right? It can be a real struggle.
And that's the thing we have a private Facebook group for our clients and I put, I shared a book with them in there. It was the old gorilla marketing book, hopefully everyone's read. But I was like so many people have forgotten on a blank on the author. So many people have forgotten just like the bread and butter of guerrilla marketing. Jay Conrad Levinson guerrilla marketing is the name of the book. And that's the thing.
Like the people, I think that were in business before 2008, like they understood that, like, okay, I can't just sit on my ass and wait for the phone to ring. Like we got to get some people rolling. We need to go paint the town red with our brand. We need to go knock on some damn doors. We need to go do whatever it takes. We need to go. Start washing cars in the food line parking lot. I don't care. Just doing something to get a lead.
And so that's the thing, like the people who understand guerrilla marketing and went on offense when it got tough they definitely had at least a, a summer that they could keep everyone paid and run it on the roads for.
Absolutely. Did you notice that for some clients, they were desperate for the calls. So they tried to get more out of every call that they possibly could spend the time going over IQ, going over duct work with every maintenance call that they did have in May and June, but then when the heat finally showed up in July And August. All of a sudden they were just trying to run as many calls as they could, and they stopped maximizing them.
Yeah. And when you know, what's, what's funny is during May and June, when people were doing that, we saw so many one star reviews coming through. Because. People's money was it was a little bit tighter and people were trying to maximize those calls and it Maybe it was desperation, maybe they're just trying to maximize the call.
I don't know what it was, but it turned into this company's just trying to sell us whatever they can sell us and I had never seen more, we have Zapier set up for every Google review that comes in for a client that sends us a Slack message. I've never seen so many one star reviews in my life as I have during May and June of this year. From people and it was all about price and it was all about, well, I looked on Amazon, this capacitor was only 12 and they quoted me 4.99.
Well, and that's being poor at communicating value,
What are y'all's thoughts on people like rebranding? Like What a run capacitor actually is. I saw a conversation about that recently where they were like, what do you call a run capacitor? And they like changed the name of it is that something y'all have seen people do pretty well?
To be honest, I haven't heard of anyone doing it, but that's brilliant in my mind. Because again, it's reframing what it is that. that a client sees and what their perspective is, right?
Yeah. It goes back to like that comfort club or that peace of mind credit card charge. Like you were saying. I'm just gonna find that Facebook post. It was pretty, It was pretty interesting.
I'm going to go out on the other side of things. and I don't think you should. and the reason I don't think you should is if you communicate value, and you can communicate that to your clients to be able to build up the and you see that in the responses to those 1 star reviews, like, you charged me 300 for a 12 part and replaced it in 30 minutes, right? But if you communicate the value and you show up and you Do those extra things and they see you in your community, right?
And even like, I'm going to assume that this is Stephanie Postel right here. She hasn't given the permissions in our slider Facebook group, which is okay. By the way, Stephanie, we've been actually going back and forth in the comments. It's kind of funny. We also don't sell parts. We sell services, right?
And so, maybe you put a, and I'm going to go out on a limb and something that I learned from the passenger elevator industry, Evan is that there was a markup on parts and there was an insane markup in parts. Like I'm talking like. 300%, 400% on it. And even labor was even that high too. And like you're talking, it was nuts. Labor was even higher, but what we ended up doing instead of saying, okay, well, instead of trying to charge your insane markup on parts, we'll put it on our service.
We'll put it on our hourly rate vis a vis in this example. And now when you can actually sell the service, you can just sell the experience. Now, when your, when your people showed up, when your tech showed up and not say, this is the case in those one star reviews that you're mentioning, when they show up, there's a nice, there's a nice van outside. There's nice uniforms on they put booties on when they go in the house. I don't take the shoes off or if they want to take the shoes off. Great.
But usually booties, right? They do all these extra things that go above and beyond to give a good experience when they're in the house. I bet you those. One star reviews based off of price go away,
Oh yeah
Well, I will go on the flip side and I will say, I am a big fan of rebranding it and to quote Jerry Stiller in Zoolander, when you've got a really hot brand you could wrap shit in tinfoil and sell it to the queen as earrings. When you were that hot, when you've got that much value to add, you no longer are on the same playing field as everyone else in your market. So why would you sell the same product, the same idea as everyone else in your market, right?
You can rebrand it as something that does add more value, but it's including a capacitor as part of it.
That also goes back to what Stephanie said, too, about the we don't sell a part. We sell the service. And so you don't put your outlandish. It's a 12 part. I'm charging 150 for the part on their line item. It's a 12 part. I charge you 24. I'm marking it up. Yeah. You know what I am, right? Or you mark a 50% up I get overhead, but your labor and your service makes up for it.
Right. that's the part that they're really paying for is the service.
Well I might get in trouble for this one, so I will try to be gender neutral.
it's okay. Josh crouches HR. He's tuning in on Evan's feed. And he's enjoying the HR stuff.
Did a sales training way back in the day and the trainer was like, look, you don't have to be the most talented or the most interesting. He was like, all you got to do is just be the hot girl at the dance or the hot boy at the dance. I don't know who's listening or what your preferences are.
He's like, you ever noticed like the hot popular girl at the dance is usually like the least interesting person once you get to know them versus like someone else who's like super interesting, straight A's, plays the violin, can do a double back flip, all state softball player, but everyone wants to be like this one person. You can be that person, your company can be.
The hot guy or the hot girl at the dance, so to speak, and everyone can be like, I want to work with them because they're the sexiest company in town. And they've got the nice trucks and they got the text messages and they don't put me on hold. And it doesn't take seven days for them to get to my house. And then you can charge whatever the fuck you want. Once you're in that position I know you said swearing is encouraged. So that was my, my test and I passed, I guess.
But when you get to that point where like, everyone's like, ah, I don't care about these three companies they already know there, you can see it in Google search console. We can see it with anchor heating and air anchor heating and air isn't out there dog fighting over AC repair near me. People are going straight to Google and typing in anchor anchor HVAC anchor heating and air anchor air conditioning.
And it's because people have already seen it, they've seen the vans, they've seen them at the bar, they've seen them at new realm brewery. Everyone already knows who they want to work with. And that's, when you get to that point, you can call it a starting component or you can call it whatever you want. You don't even have to say this is a. 400, 12 capacitor. It's a starting component. And this is what makes your air conditioner run. And they're going to be like, okay, I trust you. Cha ching!
Cash register.
I do want to circle back to that topic specifically referencing Google ads. However, I would be remiss if we did not. Put in the random question generator. Hey, look at that. Our first ever LinkedIn comment on our live. There you go. Random indeed. So our random question generator brought to you by On Purpose Media, where we are also your local HVAC marketing experts, just like Eric.
And Hey, if this conversation is, resounding with you, reach out to us, reach out to him, either way, you're going to do yourself a service. But if you ever want to know if your marketing is. It's all screwed up and you just want a marketing analysis and say, Hey, no obligation.
By the way, we'll look over your shit, tell you what's working, tell you what's not give you some pointers, hit us up onpurposemedia.ca for slash marketing dash analysis to really get your marketing analysis done for you. All right, Eric. It's a question you get to choose one, two or three. You do not get to actually know what the questions are. Until you choose what door you want to open. So do you want to open door one, two, or three?
I'm going to go with number three and that's only because actually I'm not going to say why, but door number three.
I'm actually going to cancel door number three because I already know the answer. It's not even random. It's what's your favorite restaurant, Jane? We already know it's Red Robin.
Yeah,
That is not hidden anywhere.
So I did not, I don't choose these random questions. And so it's kind of funny, but you gotta, you gotta rechoose. This is the first time, by the way, in the history of our show, I've made somebody rechoose a question. Do you want door number one or door number two?
I'll take door number one.
All right. What is one food you cannot live? I will add an asterisk to this. It cannot be anything from Red Robin.
One food that I cannot live with or Without
Without
Pasta. I love pasta. Like spaghetti, stuffed shells, ziti. Oh, tear me up. Lasagna. I'm all in for some pasta.
Pasta is definitely tasty. I actually had some for lunch and I was like, that is a perfect al dente pasta. I like it more on the al dente side versus like the non al dente side. I don't know what you really call that. But all right bush So, coming back into branded search and I actually saw a report today from one of our clients, he actually is a carpet store not an HVAC company. So we do other things outside of HVAC marketing as well.
And his branded search terms were about a fifth of the cost per conversion. And conversion is loosely modded on Google ads as anything that you can track online. We don't send the, lots of complexities on how you can do that after the fact, but branded search terms being a lot less, what are your thoughts on having a branded campaign on Google ads?
Oh, I love it. Well one, just, just brand protection because there's, plenty of people out there that are going to try to poach your traffic from you.
Especially man, like if you're running radio ads with like the wizard of ads, like we've got a client here locally, that's like, they're, they're definitely putting the nice looking coin into the pocket of the radio station and just so that they can drive that branded search and like that branding campaign is, it has to be there because all the other local companies are going after their branded name.
Oh, and that's my favorite too, is showing a client how many companies and which companies are bidding on his brand name. Oh,
Yeah. at the very least for brand protection but you can also have some fun with it too. Like we've seen when we do a branded campaign that like matches their radio or their TV ad, the conversion rate goes up a little bit which is pretty cool because then you're getting that memory recall Their radio at like Miller's here in Virginia beach, the radio ad talks about like, don't get franchised over, call Miller's instead, or something like we'll send a real tech, not a selling tech.
So when someone goes on Google and searches Miller's home comfort, it says literally, it's like, don't get franchised over, call Miller's instead. That's the Google ad. And the people see that and they're like, Oh, I just heard that in my car. So yeah, I'm a big fan for sure of those branded search ads.
What you also said something to like brand continuity, right? Like, the 1 message goes into the other place, which goes into the other place, which goes into the other place. Speak a little bit more on brand continuity.
It's huge. Especially like with, the messaging it's got to be consistent cause they, everyone's got a different number here, but you know, they say it's like seven to 11 touches to some of the, someone will remember your brand So like if on purpose media or rival digital saying on Facebook, Hey, we'll build you a website for your HVAC company and then I go over to Twitter and say, Hey, I'm going to build a website for your video game store GameStop. It could cause confusion.
So it's making sure that you've got that same messaging, that. same, just kind of nice, consistent, cohesive look and feel everywhere you're at. And that's like, I put a blog article up about this a while ago to like even things about like, like on social media, like your cover image, making sure you got a consistent cover image everywhere, making sure your logo is consistent, making sure you're just, what you're talking about is, is consistent.
Of course, you know the medium's different and the size of the graphic and on Instagram, it might be a real but on Twitter, it might, or X, it might be, something else or on Tik TOK, it might be something else. So yeah, it's going to be different.
It might be a video, it might be static image, but the message has got to be the same, like with anchor heating and air, we're just going to keep on giving them love when you get on their Instagram, it's a little different than their Tik TOK and their Tik TOK is a little different than their Facebook, but it's all about talking about the Pearl promise and there's comfort in being anchored. And so there's a ton of brain continuity there.
It's just the way That the message is delivered can be changed up a little bit.
No, I love that. And it's incredibly essential to have the continuity there so you can keep the branding going. Very well said. I know we're running a little short on time, here, so I want to get, you got to get back to dad and here in a bit, you got a book coming out this winter. And I'm really, really excited for It I'm excited to promote it, help you boost it in every way possible. But you shared a lesson yesterday on Facebook that you took from your junior year at Western Kentucky.
Which I mean, I remember when Western Kentucky turned into a D1 school and they finally came on to NCAA. Football there on EA sports and, me and my buddy were playing as Western Kentucky trying to win a national championship as them. Cause it was the greatest challenge in the world. But you did share that. your professor shared a message saying marketing is giving the right. people, the right message and the right offer at the right time. Simplifying it even down to get people.
Is step one and step two is get people to do something is step two. So elaborating a little bit more on the book what inspired it. I know we kind of touched on that here with your professor, but, really how it's going to help people moving forward And understanding what marketing really is so that they can grow through this next season of the economy.
Yeah. So yeah, the book it's called the best idea wins, which is actually the tagline of our podcast. And yeah, it was inspired by that digital marketing course I took in, college get people to do something that's it's, it's a two section book and of course there's seven or eight chapters per section. But what I've seen over the past year and a half or so is that people just want to go straight to. Getting people to do something they want them to call. They're rushing the call to action.
And that's why we're seeing so many people struggle right now is that they are completely forgetting to get people, which is literally like this is just like tying a bow up on this entire conversation here. It's like, they're not getting club members. They're not getting attention in the marketplace by being omni present in their local market, they're not doing the gorilla marketing. And so, so many people rushed to.
Getting the cash register to ring getting people to do something, call fill out the form book online that they completely forget step one. So really the whole premise of the book is just like, you can't get them to do anything until they are. Already mentally bought into who you are and what you can do for them. But then also they have to at least know who you are first.
So first half of the book is just a lot of different tactics and ways to generate brand awareness, get people to know who you are, get people in your club. Or your tree house, so to speak. And then step two of it is getting them to actually do something once they're following you. And once they're in their club.
I love it. Well, and that's the difference between top of the funnel, middle of the funnel, bottom of the funnel marketing, right? And having offers at the top is so essential to just getting people into your ecosystem so that you can continue to market to them in other ways that are far more efficient and cost effective.
Exactly. Well, and look like the people listening to this now, like we're, we're all marketing agencies here. We don't ever just like you said, we'll do a free assessment. You didn't say we're going to take over your SEO, your PPC, your social media, your website, your email marketing. We're going to track your phone calls. You didn't pitch all of that. You said, we'll just do a quick free assessment for you. that's about as perfect of a top of the funnel offer as it gets for what we do.
And it's the same thing with, with heating and air companies we're going to do just a whole house plumbing inspection, something easy. You're not going to go. Say, hey, Mrs. Jones, give me 26, 000 so I can come rip up your slab and re pipe your entire house. You're gonna say, hey. 63 drain inspection. So sorry. I kind of went on a tangent there.
No, but you're right, right? One of the things I was going to say, And like these numbers are kind of open to interpretation, but you know 3% of active are 3% of people are active buyers. They want to get, it now, right? They, they're looking, they're actively searching for. a solution to their problem. 17% of people are info gathering, so they're researching what they need and what they want. 20% of them are problem aware, meaning that they know that they have a problem.
they don't know what the solution is. Obviously the next step is their information gathering because they know they have, they know there, there's a solution And they're actively searching for it 60% of the people out there though, they're not problem aware. They don't know they have a problem, and they don't even know there's a solution out there, right?
And this is where that previous conversation, you talked about, like, tying a bow on it, talked about branding, talking about all these things that were, we've mentioned throughout this podcast come full circle that, okay, well, there's 80% of the market out there that Isn't ready to actively buy your product.
They don't even know your product exists, but if you do the legwork in the beginning, if you do that the branding, if you, and then you position yourself while online now, when they get to that 3%, fuck, you're going to capitalize.
So I got a question for you then, Eric. So yes, the inspection offer the tune up offer, those that's low hanging fruit, right 49 tune up all day long. What offer can you get that would be even above that? Or what offer would you give, or would you suggest to a client that would be above That if they could do it or you could execute it with them would be just the bee's knees that wouldn't cost people anything, but would start to capture information.
Oh, like outside of like a tune up. I love inspections. Because an inspect, like a tune up, you're going to do something a maintenance, you're going to do something. You're going to, you're going to clean something. you're going to actually physically do a job. An inspection is someone with a flashlight saying, Hey, Congratulations. You don't have a cracked heat exchanger. You're not going to die from carbon monoxide poisoning. and that's like, you can get that as cheap as you want it to.
And just go look at it and make sure that everything's good to go inspections are good. actually I've got one. That by the time this airs, when is this going to air?
Well, now.
Do you guys like, does this go on like Spotify or anything
Oh yeah. It'll be out either by Monday.
Friday or Monday.
So one, one that we've come up with lately, that's pretty exciting is the bofo. Which this isn't like a top, like a low hanging fruit one. This is more middle of the funnel, the Bofo, buy one flush one. And so you buy a club membership, you get a water heater flush for free. So you're getting the club membership, which in some people's club memberships includes like plumbing, but like most heating and air companies also do water heaters as well. But they might not do full service plumbing.
So the Bofo is huge because you can get the club membership and possibly a water heater out of it. So the, the Bofo is a good, the Bofo is a good one because you can get a, at the very least you get a club membership.
What are your thoughts on buying guides?
Buying guides like
So like a PDF download that they could get for questions to ask for getting an AC replacement or questions to ask for an AC repair or a plumbing call or a drain cleaning things like that.
Oh, that's tough. I go back and forth when it comes to gated content where it's like, give me your, your name and email address and I'll give you this checklist. Like sometimes, like we have a guide on our website and it'll be like, sometimes I just give it away. And then sometimes I want the email address. I've never noticed a spike in conversion either way. From the bottom of the funnel, so to speak.
So I think it's great because the homeowner of the homeowner is going to find out the answer no matter what, so they can either get the answer from you or they can get the answer from Angie's list or home advisor. And so if they get the answer from you, they at least are going to be. Getting into your, into your wheelhouse. And if they go get the answer from Angie's list, and they're going to be thinking that this new heating and air conditioning system is only going to cost them 4, 500 bucks.
So I think guides are definitely great. And you can make it pretty simple with just name, email, phone number or just give it away for free.
Or just give it free. Yeah. absolutely.
Yeah. Either is fine. That's the thing, like, it doesn't matter if you get their email or not, because if you provide enough value, like we were talking about earlier, if you provide enough value and you build yourself up as a topical authority enough, then they're going to end up doing? business? with you, one way, or another. so
I wonder if you're doing a, it's just off the cuff. This is drinking thinking. This is why we drink on the podcast, doing a retargeting campaign on Facebook or YouTube on top six things that HVAC companies don't want you to know when you're thinking about replacing your AC. And then having them subscribe to that, get an email to them now they've got the PDF of it or the video of it or whatever.
Yeah. No, I think that's, I think that's brilliant. Something like that.
There you go. So for whoever, this is, I don't know who it is. Cause I'm not logged into the Facebook group cause my computer would crash.
Jason Julian.
Right? I know I have a problem. This is why I'm watching you guys and trying to implement as much as I can. So whoever that is, let's implement it. What's Jason.
Yeah, it's Jason.
All right, Jason, we'll implement it, but yeah, doing something like that, where you can follow people around and offer something that they're going to subscribe to for free, especially because, and you run Facebook ads at your agency. Right.
It's something that we're not amazing at, but we do try it. Yeah.
Yeah, it's hit or miss. And let's face it, the follow up is the hardest part because so many people click the button and put in their information and say, yeah, I'm interested. And then you call them 30 seconds later and they're like, I didn't click anything. I didn't fill out a form. But to follow up with something like that I wonder what the conversion rates would turn into.
Yeah. And that's maybe another Chiirp plug, but
Right? Retargeting with Chiirp! Sweet. No, the book is going to be great. I'm so excited for it I'm excited for the party at HR in Chicago. The book launch party that you've already pre invited us too. So I'm excited for that.
We'll see it. I'm, looking right now. y'all think that. we're going to be like going to some rooftop in Chicago.
Why not
Now, dude, there's a perfectly good Red Robin franchise in Chicago.
All you can eat fries. We got bottomless fries for everyone.
Talk about branding continuity right there.
Yeah. It's, on brand. It's cost effective.
Right. Hey, like if you guys have taken some value out of today's conversation, you ever want to reach out and have a conversation with Eric. I know he even said it, he didn't even want to plug anything. He just wanted to come onto our show as a guest, but we're still going to do it anyways eric@rivaldigital.com can blast them on this cell phone, 757-639-040. If you want to check out his podcast, smart HVAC marketing, rivaldigital.com/ podcast. Check them out.
My friend. We got one final question for you here before you run. What is one question that you wished people would ask you more but they don't
Oh for marketing sake, like for agencies or,
anything, but this, the floor is yours.
Personal business. It don't matter.
I think two parts, personal side, I think that we should all just show a little bit more grace to each other. Just out in the world. So maybe just ask people everyone's always like, how you doing? Oh, I'm doing great. How's business? Oh, business is great. When's the last time someone asked you, Hey man, are you happy? No one ever asks you that. Like, are you happy? Like, let's actually talk about some stuff.
So I think that like maybe next time anyone listened to this, next time you see a a pal or a buddy and you're Oh man, how was work this week? Oh man, it was fine. It was work. Like, I don't know, maybe just actually check in on them. See how they're doing. From a marketing side, I think that contractors should ask more often outside of who owns the website, who owns the hosting, who owns my Google ads, all that stuff, you should also ask like, who's actually doing this work.
Because we've seen recently a lot of like, you're talking to like a one man band and there's like a gaggle of freelancers out here doing all the work. And so next thing you get into the back end of the site and there's just like 12 different. Random people from all over the world touching your website. So it's not always a bad thing that they've got a freelance network doing the work, but it's good for you to know that way who's responsible if something breaks or if something succeeds.
I love it. Hey, Eric, you happy right now?
I am very happy right now? A little slap happy, I'd say. Happy. Nonetheless.
Still riding that new dad.
I'll ask you again in about a month or so and see if postpartum depression on the dad's side. It's real on both sides, by the way. If it's still there and by the way, if anybody is, whether it's Eric or anybody that's listening female, I can't, I only understand what my wife has told me.
There's definitely other resources out there, but if you're a new dad, And you're are in that postpartum depression, dad world definitely do hit me out because I've been there I've done that and it was actually worse on my second kid than it was my first kid by the way. So yeah, it's interesting. That's a whole nother conversation, but I will say that to anybody out there.
I love it. when the honeymoon phase resides and you still haven't had a good night's sleep in the next three months then yeah, definitely we'll have some conversations, bud.
But I am also glad to know that you're happy right now, by the way.
Absolutely. Love the barstool hats hat too.
Oh yeah. There we go. One bite. Everyone knows the rules.
Sweet man.
I got a shirt that matches it. It says Saturdays are for the dads and on the back of it. it's like a beer can with, he's like, it's like the beer cans, like the dad. He's like pushing a lawnmower.
Love it.
Pretty cool or he's working on a truck or something like that. Good times.
Can't wait to hang out with you again, my friend in Austin in, yeah, not even a month now. Yep. It's going to be a good time. Congratulations on all the success. Congratulations on top 40. Was super super proud of you for hitting that and yeah, man. I love, love the work that you do. That's why we had you on the show today. And thank you so much for contributing to our audience today.
Yeah. Thank you so much for having me on and keep up all the good work on y'all's end as well.
So we, man, until next time.
Perfect cheers. Well, that's a wrap on another episode of HVAC Success Secrets Revealed. Before you go, two quick things. First off, join our Facebook group, facebook.com/groups/hvacrevealed. The other thing, if you took one tiny bit of information out of this show, no matter how big, no matter how small. All we ask is for you to introduce this to one person in your contacts list. That's it. That's all one person. So they too can unleash the ultimate HVAC business until next time. Cheers.