The Sharpest Tool™

Tim Flynn, founder of Winters Home Services in the Boston area, started out like most other plumbers: working for someone else. During this time, he learned what not to do.

When he began his company, he had only one truck. But as he learned more about the industry, he saw an opportunity to grow his business by creating an exit strategy for retiring plumbers. From there, he built up his fleet from one truck to 21 trucks.

Tim sees a lot of poaching happen in his industry. His solution to this problem has been taking the time to train, teach, engage, educate, and invest in his employees.

“What’s the lifetime value of an employee? I was taught a long time ago if you train people they could leave and go work for somebody else. But what if you train them and they stay? The lifetime value of an employee is worth way more than the lifetime value of a customer.”

If you take care of your employees, they will take care of your customers, and it will come full circle.

Top 3 things that are important about online marketing and that he has learned over the years:

What matters is how many leads you’re getting from your online strategy. If you want to increase your staff and grow your business, increase your calls and improve your conversion process and rates.

Tim defines a good lead as someone who finds them online and clicks to call. He credits the quality of their leads increasing due to the quality and amount of their reviews.

He calls reviews “the new word of mouth.” Incentivizing his staff to ask for reviews has worked well to improve their online presence.

Discovering What Marketing Support You Need

Tim’s advice is to invest in a good website and good people. He had worked with many marketing companies before he hired Scorpion. He was constantly changing his marketing tactics and spending more and more money. Now, with Scorpion, he spends less, doesn’t have to change his tactics, and doesn’t have to worry about hitting his budget.

“I finally got what I wanted from my marketing company… get specific about what you want.”

While the marketing support has been crucial to gaining quality leads, Tim has made sure his staff is well-trained in how to close those leads.

“I think that how to deal with people is the biggest piece of training you can get… because it’s all about the person, it’s all about the customer.”

Matt Eckhart is the Director of Business Development in Home Services at Scorpion. He works with home services business owners to formulate strategies that help them reach their goals.

In his role, he often sees seasonality as a big challenge for home services business owners.

“It’s really about showing up at the right time with the right messaging for the type of season they (your consumers) are in….”

Whether you’re in plumbing, HVAC, roofing, or pest control, it’s important to adjust your marketing strategy to take advantage of the off-season in a smart way. Matt emphasizes that often, business owners might not realize that providing preventative messaging and information to your audience during this season is good for both you and the consumer.

“This is where we kind of come in and say ‘Hey look, traditionally this is your slow period: it doesn’t have to be’.”

Seasonality needs to be part of your overall marketing strategy.

Matt shares that he usually sees business owners making at least 70% of their revenue during the busy season. However, relying on this income stream can cause you to lose revenue if variables like weather get in your way. Intentionally planning for the slow, off-seasons can provide security and diversification of your revenue.

Shifting and adapting your marketing during the off-season to where people are spending their time may mean investing more of your marketing budget in social media platforms, in addition to your more traditional marketing. Sharing preventative messaging to your consumers on these platforms consistently makes your brand more memorable and builds consumer trust.

In addition, with the right seasonality marketing, you can keep your service technicians busy year round and maximize your efficiency in the busy season.

Matt says that providing these preventative measures really does bring a lot of value to people and smart consumers will notice this.

Don’t stop what you’re doing during the off season. Don’t shut off and give up. To succeed and win business, come up with a strategy to stay in front of the people who need you.

Peter Harabedian is the Vice President of Corporate Marketing at Scorpion. Daily, he works with a team to market the agency, execute initiatives, and support the acquisition of new business, with a focus on delivering an outstanding brand experience. 

“In a nutshell, branding is what people are saying about you or your business when you leave the room. It’s that thing that lasts… or shows up before you do.” 

As the business, you are in charge of creating the experience and shaping what customers think about you, but every customer will respond a little bit differently. The experience also has to do with how you respond to their response.

Branding isn’t just your logo or colors. It’s every aspect of your interaction with the customer, from their call in need, to whether your technician shows up on time. All of these aspects are equally important. 

Peter emphasizes the power of first impressions and how they set the tone for a brand experience. You want to be in people’s brains ahead of time. You should be thinking of how you can remove stereotypes they may have about your industry and replacing them with positive impressions of your brand. 

At Scorpion, part of their process when working with their clients is helping them create a uniquely striking impression for their customers. They send these USI’s to new customers and people they need to rebuild trust with if a mistake has been made.

A certain part of your customer’s brain becomes dedicated to your brand, so it’s hard to shake first impressions. 

“So that’s the goal, is to have your brand… to control that spot in someone else’s brain so that it’s harder for your competition to take that out of their mind.”

Storytelling has been the largest form of communication throughout human history, and it’s an effective way of teaching. We like hearing stories. As a business, when you tell a story, you are engaging with your customers and prospects by creating a powerful emotional and educational tie.  

Shape your storytelling around the needs of your brand audience, and the pains and roadblocks they are encountering. 

Create trust by providing a positive experience. The companies that do it right truly succeed and their brands stand out in people’s minds as a result.

Peter highlights the importance of having a clear purpose to define your company’s USI. You want to cut through the noise and differentiate yourself. It can be something small, but knowing who your customer is will make it effective. 

Giving your customer the peace of mind that you will take care of their problem, putting them at ease that they can trust you in their home, and then following up goes a long, long way. 

Brendan Hughson is the Director of Business Development at Scorpion. In his role, he works with business owners and marketing directors daily about their goals and where they want to take their business. With 10 years of experience running a plumbing company with his father, he’s an expert in what it takes to run a successful business in the home services industry. 

Brendan emphasizes how real the challenge is to just be on the same page. When you’re not, this is where tensions start to flare up during the workday. 

“It’s really sitting down and seeing where your strengths and weaknesses are, and creating a business plan around that.”

Each person is going to be passionate about what they value. It’s important to understand what that passion is, respect it, and find the right fit for your passion within the business.

Families can split up if they don’t take the time to understand each other and how they best fit into the plan.

Brendan’s tips for planning include:

Whether a young technician is family or coming from the outside, Brendan says it’s important to start them young. This allows you to shape their skills and help them develop good habits. 

However, the craftsmanship industry is struggling right now because fewer people are interested in the trades.

“As far as appealing to potential technicians in the future, I think it’s really just involving the trades more in school. When I was in school we had wood, metal, automotive, and now we don’t have that.” 

He points to the fact that our society often looks down on the trades as a line of work. As a nation, he emphasizes the need to showcase the trades as not only something that is necessary, but something you can make a great living at. 

It’s not a bad thing to get your hands dirty. 

To appeal to younger technicians, Brendan highlights the following:

He shares the example of one of his clients who holds a competition among her techs every month to see who can get the most reviews. It breeds competition and camaraderie, benefits the company, and the employees win things like Amazon gift cards and days off.

Who is going to keep the name alive? Make sure you have a clear path of where you want the business to go. The moment you open your doors is when you need to start planning for who will run the business or continue the family legacy when you’re gone.

Corey Quinn, CMO at Scorpion, jumps right into explaining marketing jargon and why understanding the difference between B2C and B2B marketing is crucial.

With B2C marketing you think of companies that sell soda, mobile apps, and cars.

B2B marketing is not something you typically see on TV or on the radio and is often promoting products or services like software, consulting, or home services like landscaping or plumbing. Another major difference is that it often involves a longer buying and selling cycle than B2C.

The Cycle of Buying

This cycle has different stages that the consumer or business goes through before buying a product or service: researching, analyzing, and then making the purchase decision.

Corey shares how Scorpion works to understand the process that their target customer or business goes through so that they can market well and be discoverable in their buyer’s journey.

Customer Research

Once they do the customer research to understand who the customer is, they are able move onto persona development. Corey shares that this is where they create an idealized version of their buyer, including their pain points, background, education level, information sources, and communication habits. From there, Scorpion orients their clients marketing to that ideal customer or business.

At Scorpion, they understand their buyer by doing interviews and asking questions like:
What were you doing before you started marketing with Scorpion?
What made you know that you needed to make a shift?

Other ways you can compile that customer research include online research and surveys, but Corey emphasizes the value of interviewing the people you want to sell to.

Targeting Leads

Now that you have your customer research and know what messages they need to hear and when, it’s time to create content marketing that is problem and solution focused.

Corey shares how connecting to the challenges and pain points that your ideal customer or business is experiencing allows your business to grow in authority, trust, and revenue.

Jill Wilson, PR Director at Scorpion, is excited about one of their most recent Public Relations efforts, their new original series “Get to Work”.

This unscripted show follows Jill and her co-host across the country as they visit their clients and do their job for the day.

Their most recent trip to Austin, TX for Episode 4 involved investigative plumbing. She shares how experiencing and filming a day in the life of their clients gives her team a better understanding of their clients. It also allows them to create new video content for their clients to use in their marketing mix which is incredibly valuable.

The Value of Video Content

Jill shares that everything gaining traction and attention online right now is video. The focus is really highlighting video content.

Lead Generation and Retention

Everyone does their research now, whether it’s for their next meal or their next roofer. Videos allow the customer who is researching your services to connect with you faster and build trust faster.

Because video is able to capture your brand and the people behind it so well, this differentiates you from competitors and also helps increase the quality of your leads.

Tips for Creating Video Content

If you’re intimidated by video, don’t worry. Remember, you can control what goes in the final cut, and the editors are there to make you look good. That being said, Jill shares some tips for you to take with you in front of the camera.

Nicholas Bosco, Scorpion’s Director of Marketing, loves working with his talented team to help businesses grow through building brand identity.

Why is branding important?

Many businesses don’t understand the importance of brand, and therefore bypass it in order to invest in other strategies. However, Nicholas is quick to emphasize how crucial branding is to establish the foundation of who your business is. Branding tells your story and connects you with the audience that needs to hear what you have to say.

Nicholas shares the example of Harley Davidson as a brand that was told they would go extinct. And look at them now. They were able to build a lifestyle brand and set themselves apart from the competition by selling not only a motorcycle but an experience. That’s the power of brand identity.

You want to create a client experience for your demographic that aligns with your business goals and mission and perform consistently to cultivate brand loyalty. If you think of Coca-Cola, you aren’t just thinking of a brand, you’re thinking of a memory or an experience associated with the product. Sharing your story through brand identity makes you more than just a plumber… you are a safe place that your customer knows they can rely on for their needs.

Reputation feeds brand identity.

You’re not only attracting consumers with your brand. You’re also attracting employees. The quality of your brand determines the quality of the employees, whose performance influences customer loyalty.

Brand identity:

As the Director of Marketing, Holleigh Taufer works with her marketing manager staff who are taking care of Scorpion’s clients. She gives advice, offers a fresh perspective, and helps the managers think in futures for the client.

She also works closely with Google to help Scorpion clients set up Local Services ads. Previously called home service ads, Local Services ads are a new paid service Google is rolling out.

What are Local Services ads?

In fact, Google background checks the business, business owner, and employees of the business that is applying to place a Local Services ad. Not only that but if the job isn’t done right, Google guarantees to give the consumer up to $2000 toward the project to get it done right.

Why your home services business should get involved now.

> “The number one reason in my book is that the lead cost is super low -

The process has several requirements and can take around 4 weeks to be completed.

Tips for making the process efficient:

Google right now is focused heavily on local businesses right now. People are searching “near me,” 34 more times than they were two years ago. This is why Local Services ads are so timely and will help your business gain more quality leads.

How do you get in the top 3 spots for Local Services ads?

As a Senior Internet Marketing Manager at Scorpion, Will Haddad says he loves working with his team and smart business owners to support their home services businesses.

As technology evolves, the ball is pushed forward in marketing, and it’s important to constantly develop new strategies to get results and stay on track. Voice and Artificial Intelligence are specifically creating huge change today and transforming how we interact with the Internet. Will predicts that voice is the future.

Time

This is exactly what these smart devices and home speakers are doing and why they are taking off.

5:26 “It’s a huge invasion of privacy and humans are just going out and buying these things and putting them in their house to save time. It’s proving how valuable that is to us.”

Privacy

Soon, they won’t just be devices in our homes, but they will become an integral part of our home that connects all of our devices and technology, from voice search and phone calls to heating and cooling.

11:20 “The evolution of search is artificial intelligence predicting what it is that we’re going to need and anticipating our need before we need it.”

While this brings up the obvious privacy debate, Will says that the more we limit the information we give, the less time we will save. However, he is quick to emphasize that on one side, this data is incredibly valuable for marketing, but on the other we still need protection.

Create Marketing Connections Today

Will encourages business owners to be everywhere and engage in all of these new apps and technology if that’s reasonable. It’s important to be adaptable and test things out, and that’s where an agency like Scorpion can offer invaluable guidance, strategy, and results.

Voice is the future. Start utilizing this technology now so you can help consumers discover your business and save time.

Whether you’re a plumber or a technician, you might not think about leadership as a crucial piece of your business. However, this is a key factor in the most successful home businesses. They are guided by someone who has purpose, vision, and a desire for their team members to be happy and inspired. A true leader’s employees are proud to be a part of the business.

Stand Out Leadership

It’s always about the person, and this is not easy. You have to work on it every day.

4:32 “You may be the greatest plumber or the greatest roofer or the greatest HVAC (worker), however, how do you inspire others? How do you inspire people to come work for you? Do you work with them well? Do they want to work with you? And that’s a different challenge.”

People stay when you create a culture that they’re fired up about.

Leadership vs. Management

Mission Statement and Vision Statement

If you have a mission and a vision, but your team isn’t on board, it will be tough to achieve. You need to make sure your team understands the “why” behind those statements.

Challenges

Final Takeaway

Talk to your employees. Talk about your vision. Talk about how they fit into that and then listen.