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In this episode, we’re diving straight into what really matters in 2025—your brand. If your branding isn’t sharp and your marketing isn’t hitting hard, you’re already behind. John and Jack talk about why it’s non-negotiable to nail your brand this year and how it ties directly to dominating your market.
We walk you through how to set smart revenue goals and hit your targets. We also break down the benchmarks every HVAC, electric, and plumbing business needs to aim for, and why quarterly reviews are your key to staying on track.
We’ll also get into the real stuff: beating your competition, owning your zip codes, and why GMB and LSAs are still the power plays you need to leverage in 2025.
Key Highlights:
- Budgeting and revenue goals for 2025
- Benchmarking for HVAC, electric and plumbing
- Dominating zip codes
- Branding and marketing in 2025
0:00 Introduction
5:20 Budget & Revenue Goals 2025
9:22 HVAC & Plumbing Benchmarks
11:40 2025 Growth Strategy
12:57 Tracking Targets, Branding & Quarterly Reviews
15:21 Staying Ahead of Competition
17:00 Analyzing Map Density & Zip Codes
24:33 GMB & Rent Costs
26:29 Zip Code Expansion
27:10 Branding and Marketing Strategies
29:38 Marketing Focuses & Lead Gen
30:05 The Future of LSA and Google
32:05 The Best Lead Aggregators
38:01 Final Thoughts
Special Thanks to Service Scalers
Service Scalers have helped us to deliver the leads we need to scale Wilson, and their expertise in SEO, PPC, LSA, and GMB marketing has been a game-changer.
Last year their partnership helped us achieve 46% year-over-year growth and this year is going to be even bigger. If you're in the trades and serious about growth, I can't recommend them enough.
Shoutout to Quick Staffers LLC
Quick Staffers are the staffing agency bringing global talent to the HVAC and plumbing industries. They specialize in placing trained overseas CSRs, fully equipped with the best SOPs and scripts at a fraction of the cost.
Don't miss out. Get $1000 off your first placement here.
Episode Hosts: 🎤
John Wilson:@WilsonCompanies on X
Jack Carr:@TheHVACJack on X
Owned and Operated Episode #165 Transcript
John Wilson: I'm budgeting 9 million of organic growth
this year. It's starting at 30 grand a month and then it stays static at 50 grand a month. We can do much more than what we're currently doing. We're already selling memberships in these zip codes. How do we just go deeper?
Wilson just wrapped up the year. In the low 20s, and we were pumped. most of the industry did not have that same level of success. And when I think about who was a huge partner for us, like top of the list was Service Scalers. We've been working with Service Scalers for a couple of years now, and they've helped us drive best in class SEO, best in class PPC, and dominate LSA and GMB marketing.
They've been a huge partner for us, and we're really grateful for that partnership, because it's helped us to take down 46 percent year over year growth. As we think about our budget next year, we're aiming for the low thirties. And one of our most strategic partners is going to be service scalers.
They're going to help get us there. They're going to help us stay ahead of AI. They're going to help us keep our SEO relevant. They're going to help keep us on the top, exactly where we want to be. So make sure you check out service scalers. com. Sam and his team over there is just a bunch of killers. So thank you, server scalers, for your partnership.
Jack Carr: Welcome back.
John Wilson: we've caught up some of our backlog. So like a week or two ago, we had an episode air. And it was like, yeah, so we're recording right now and it's the week of Thanksgiving. So we're middle of January right now.
And I think this goes live February 4th. There we go.
Jack Carr: That's better.
John Wilson: Middle of January. January is going like really interesting. It's cold as heck.
Jack Carr: I'm jealous of that because we are still having pretty moderate weather and it's like we had one negative right now.
John Wilson: Yeah. six feet to my right. It's in the negatives.
Ooh. good for you. I'm really happy. It's actually been interesting because I don't feel like we've had a normal winter in a couple of years. It's been really just consistently cold for four weeks now the past couple years in Ohio, it's been like today's 60 today's 30, today's 20, tomorrow's 50, but I'm looking at our 15 day forecast and there's not a day above 30.
Jack Carr: So what you just described is what's going on with us. We had, one day of snow and it was like 31 degrees and then the next day 50 and then the next day 20. That's been every
John Wilson: year for the past five years for us. So this year has been crazy. So what used to happen is it would snow and then it would thaw the next day.
But we've had snow for two, three weeks now, which we haven't had happen in like literally years. and then next week it's going to be negative 10. We have three straight days of negatives.
Jack Carr: Do you guys, so for us, in our kind of moderate weather condition, or at least where we're at, what we see is, we see a little spike there, but generally the spike is bigger in the beginning of winter, and then as you get into January, February, it tapers out.
You might get a few extra calls, but Bing and then being smaller. Do you guys see that as well? Okay.
John Wilson: Yeah, but we'll also like in the negatives, we're going to see a lot of burst pipes. We're going to see a lot of frozen pipes. negative nine is cold and that's the temperature, let alone the windchill.
So that is just cold weather.
Jack Carr: Yeah, that makes sense. So your plumbing picks up, which is what we saw last year as well. Our best month. Was probably January last year when we're running with a really limited crew. No, that makes a ton of sense. We're, hoping.
John Wilson: And the colder it is, what we find is more water heaters.
It's like that freezing air, It, the wind like blows out pilot lights or causes additional condensation or so the colder it is, we see a ton of water heaters go.
Jack Carr: Yeah, That's, the same here. but once again, we haven't just, we like, I think our coldest we got was, 15 degrees this year.
16. Oh yeah. So it's just we're just not there.
John Wilson: Next week is our coldest week, three straight days in the negatives, but like this week I woke up and it was negative one.
Jack Carr: That's cold enough to break water heaters.
John Wilson: Yeah. We beat budget. We doubled our daily budget on Monday and we beat budget by 50 percent yesterday.
And today we're going to hit budget. So it's like crazy. We're having a crazy week.
Jack Carr: Congrats.
John Wilson: But yeah, January's going good and hopefully that carries into February and means that we're gonna have a real winter. Yeah. Been years.
Jack Carr: Yeah, you just have to play the cards you're dealt.
So you're talking about budget a little bit. are you on track for budget in terms of like your, what you need to hit or you on track goal for January 2025 to hit?
The revenue you'll get at the end of 2025.
John Wilson: So we, we're, two weeks in, but 2025. This is our first year with a budget. So if you're out there wondering if you can make it into the mid 20 millions without a budget, the answer is you can do I advise it.
No, but you can do it. So yeah, this is our first year with a budget, which has been, i've always been really hesitant and I gave the excuses a lot of people gave, which is ah, we're growing too fast to have a budget. That doesn't make sense. Which like I'm budgeting 9 million of organic growth this year.
So that's still a lot and I feel pretty comfortable budgeting it.
Jack Carr: What does that look like on a percentage base? So like 30 percent growth?
yeah, like it's like mid thirties. Yeah. The first year with the budget is it has been extremely helpful. And I think we've talked a lot over the past couple of months of Hey, we're doing. More check ins. We're doing weekly. We set better monthly targets. We're doing weekly check ins against those targets.
We do weekly coaching with our front line and senior leaders. We're now adding in weekly check ins on cost center managers of Hey, here's the thing that we need your team to do. We need two people recruited and hired. We need, AR to be X. We need X number of calls in and out for call center and we need X amount of leads.
So we're adding those new components to our budgeting process and just like this weekly thing. And that, I think all of these like different disciplines that we've slowly added over the past six months.
we're just consistently getting better and it's exciting because it's showing. So budgeting has been really helpful and the consistent like meeting and talking about it and progressing towards it has been a win. And like our gross margin every month for the last six months has risen by half a point to one full point like consecutively month over month.
Boom. Yes. Like we're feeling like we're not quite where we want to be like we want to be a 55 percent shop but we're in the 50s consistently now. Which we have never been very consistent about it. We've been there. We just haven't been consistent. So it's exciting to be there and be consistent.
No, that's amazing. And a 50 shop is freaking outstanding. That's crazy. We said, we did ours the other day and it wasn't nearly as Good as that. So we're, working towards that and hopefully we can get that one percent.
John Wilson: Not as good as 55.
Jack Carr: Not as good as 55.
I think we did it. It was like 47, 48. And so we're pushing to try and get into the fifties this year.
John Wilson: Yeah. We, just hit, I think our, this was our second month of like consistent fifties. We've hit fifties off and on, but like. When we started really making progress on it, like 44, then we hit 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51.
Which, I think we were like 51. 7 last month. That's awesome. like dude, every percent is hard fought.
Jack Carr: Yep. Oh, 100%. And, what's going to be interesting is to see how, you do in February. So overall, cause like February is the month where you cut and you start to try and, The discounts happen to fill the board and everything like that.
interested to see how you handle that.
John Wilson: Yeah. December really, I feel was a good example of it because we, it was moderate, it was pretty moderate. And I think that we have been like our HVAC gross margin was 53%.
Jack Carr: What's the benchmarks for HVAC and plumbing? What are they supposed to be for like a healthy business?
John Wilson: Is like 50 percent for HVAC is good. 55 is like amazing. I do know a company running like 5760 in HVAC, which is like unreal, but they're also like PE backs. So they buy like really cheap. Yeah. So they're amazing, but they do run like. It's 59, like I've seen PNLs. It's 59 percent in HVAC.
And I'm like, that is unreal. Plumbing, 60 percent is the target. That's always like the known target. 20 percent labor, 20 percent materials. Very easy to understand. We don't often hit, we have hit 60. We don't often hit 60. We are usually a 55 percent plumbing.
Jack Carr: It's interesting, because as we're starting to move on our plumbing journey, we're trying to figure that out, and that's what we've heard as well.
Last, month we ran 17. 8 percent material, and I think we ran 20
We're getting there. that's what we're trying to come back with on the back end. Now that we're really honing in on our gross margin and getting all the accounting right. We're able to see it.
John Wilson: Like 55%. Like we are overall like we obviously want to hit 60, but we're happy when we hit in the 55 we have 60 to the target.
And then HVAC, I believe the target, Why are you said that one electric is like 60 to 65 percent because it's very, yeah, it's very low material expense. So like for us, I'm just like looking at our number here, like our budget for materials is 15 percent for electric and we are targeting a 62 percent gross margin. Last month we hit 61.
Jack Carr: That's amazing. So you have two, two divisions that are blending up when you look at your whole to try and get you to that 55 percent shop. So that's awesome.
John Wilson: Yeah. In order to get to 55, like it's HVAC, like we, we know, where it's at. It's HVAC because HVAC is the one that could be 40 percent or it could be 55%.
Whereas like plumbing, we know is probably going to be 55. Electric, we know is going to be 55 to 60, maybe above 60. but HVAC is the big, unknown every month.
Jack Carr: With this, these 30 percent plus growth organically, what are you doing to try and get there this year? What's the plan?
What's the big moves? where's the silver bullets at to get there?
John Wilson: Yeah, big stuff we're thinking about this year. Is it's really the next two years growth is always like we're going to get the leads. We're going to get the people. We feel pretty confident in our process. We're making a very big push on brand this year, like big push.
I think it's probably a 450, 000 investment total. That's going to be, we've, done radio and we've done branding activities forever, but this is like a push. Yeah. So it's a meaningful part of our budget. And it went live first week of January. So it's going to like scale up.
It's starting at 30 grand a month and it's top taps out at. 50 grand a month and then it stays static at 50 grand a month. So TV, radio, billboards, the stuff that you'd expect, some social spend, some over the top. It's a well encompassing thing. We've been working on it for four or five months.
Jack Carr: When will you know if it's working? Like, when do you have your first, sit down to make sure that you're getting ROI on it? Or how are you tracking that? Because traditional spend or traditional branding is generally really hard to get any ROI on or at least see it outside of, hey, I think it's hard to see it in the short, yeah.
Exactly. I think it's hard to see it in the short term. When are you sitting down and looking at that and trying to figure out if it's worth it or not? Or if it's winning
John Wilson: like we'll basically do a quarterly review and it like we're using a couple metrics like one of them is search like how did our search our organic search volume increase did more people search Wilson plumbing in this time period, over the trailing 90 days and definitely this previous year, same time period.
Yeah, so that's, that's the first one. And then the second one is pretty straightforward. It's revenue by zip code. did our revenues increase in these zip codes?
Yes, no.
Jack Carr: That's cool. so you're targeting certain zip codes with, I know you can geofence neighborhoods and geofence zip codes. Is that how you're doing this targeting for the branding?
John Wilson: No, this is this is an all encompassing, we are covering the entirety of our service area. Okay. so that's a little bit different, but We're placing billboards in specific spots. We're doing over the top, which is like streaming and very specific spots. We're doing social spend in specific spots.
So we do have a few, like we are targeting right here's and we expect to see big changes there. but then we have some like fringe areas. Like I had an area that we did 800, 000 in. That we don't have a GMB, we don't have 800, 000 across five zip codes, but that's a lot. We have an area that we did 1. 2 million last year and same thing, like there's no, actually we, really don't know why we really did 1. 2. Like I bought a company there like years ago, but I assume it's just like our trucks are there a lot.
Jack Carr: You don't know why you're doing so well because you're not focusing on it, but just naturally organically doing well.
So you're going to try and put a little focus in there to grow those specific zip codes in.
John Wilson: Basically we have a couple areas that like our market share is not what we want it to be. And, that's the final way we're thinking about measuring this is what's our market share?
How many units get installed for HVAC? How many of them did we install? what was our actual share of this market for water heaters, for sewers, for HVAC systems, and how much of that do we own?
Jack Carr: And when you're targeting these zip codes, what kind of metrics are you looking at other than just that are you running like an SEO report to see who else is there and then what the competition would be like?
Or are you just saying, we're the best, we're just going to move in and dominate? No matter what the competition is.
John Wilson: Yeah, basically the latter, I don't know about the, that attitude towards it, but we're going to overspend everybody.
Jack Carr: So we're going to go in there, we're going to overspend and we're going to really push Wilson down, make sure that everybody knows the name Wilson Company, even if they don't use us.
But hopefully they do have some attrition. Because it's, extremely different than the way we were looking at it. So that's why I'm very interested because we don't have that kind of marketing spend. So we went the back route and just said, hey, This market has 60, 000 people in it. This is their average, the average income per household.
Who's the competition in this area? How far it is away from the main shop? And so we took that and we said, okay, if we were to move a GMB into here, that's from an underperforming area that we don't want to be in. We would dominate reviews by 4x, so the moving GMB would have four times the amount of reviews out of the gate.
And then once we took over the SEO profile of it, showed like all of our keywords that if we moved it into this area and we just did moderately okay and a little bit of spend that we would dominate the SEO. kind of marketplace for these, houses.
John Wilson: yeah. We're thinking about it a little bit differently, where, hey, we already do, like in a lot of these markets, let's say, because, it's all these like boroughs, like neighborhoods, basically.
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: Okay, so this neighborhood, there's a winner, and this neighborhood, the winner does 10 or 15 million dollars. I already do a million in their service area. I'm already there. We just don't have a GMB, maybe we're not doing mailers, pick a reason. but like we're already there playing in their front yard.
So for us, this isn't like new market that we've never touched. This is density. Hey, we already do all of this. Now we just want to do a lot more in these specific areas.
Jack Carr: That's interesting though, because so that's the same reason why we chose this area though, to even look at in the first place was this was our third highest performing zip code, and we don't have anything there.
And so we said, why? If we don't have anything there, third highest performing zip code, let's put something there and make it the first highest performing zip code. Yeah. so same thing. It's we just realized that when we moved, when we're looking at their area, from a marketing perspective, and it stems from our mindset of, we don't just don't have that, like we have our marketing spend.
We can't, go and drop 450, 000. we have to be a little bit more tight about. who we're competing against if it's Hoffman Brothers.
John Wilson: So something that was interesting, if you're watching this, if you're not watching this on YouTube, I recommend you do.
So this is our service area. So it's obviously maybe it's not obvious, but it's big. It's a core tile of the state that we're doing revenue in. So we cover a pretty big area, but I'm going to change these years. So let's go back to 2018. And my point here is, yes, we did branding activities.
Jack Carr: Look at that. It's about a quarter of the size of his last year's map. And it's really tight around Akron. And
John Wilson: I can pull it up. Like I'm just going to keep going. So that was 2018. This is 2019, a little bit more 2020. And my point here is this was pretty much all lead generation with a little bit of branding.
So in 2020, we added Cleveland. And you can see that if again, if you're following along that video, like we didn't use to go above this line. Which is like just above Akron, and then suddenly we're in 20 more zip codes because we added an entire new city. Go to 2021, and it just keeps getting wider and darker.
Because we, we're, doing more revenue densely. So this is 2021, we're now working in all of Cleveland. And basically we just used lead gen activities to get us here. And you didn't have to, You didn't have to drop 450 grand. So this one is like darker green, so we focused, we went a little bit south, roughly the same map, and then 2023.
And by the way, this is also one of the ways that we measure, this is how we measure our marketing too, are we where we want to be? So 23 was wider, but also we have a couple zip codes that are just darker, we're doing more. And then finally, last year. The widest and the most dark greens. So when we're looking at this now, we're looking at okay, where do we find, where do we find our nine million?
okay, this area here is a high, income area and I'm already doing 600, 000. There's no GMBs. There's no anything in these zip codes and we are doing 600, 000. Like we're doing a company worth of revenue inside those four or five zip codes. Okay. how do we do more? Here's three zip codes and all together we're doing like 1.2, 1.3. Same thing. No GMB, no billboards, no branding, nothing focused in those areas and we're doing a lot. and then over here it's the same thing. Like it's far away from our headquarters, which is right here. So it's about 45 minute drive, but we're doing half a million dollars over here already.
So how do we get density? So this is an interesting map because if you look at it, it's actually the entirety of the Northeast Ohio service area. And when we're thinking about, our continued expansion, we're just like, how do we get denser in some of these zip codes? So how do we, take show boards, TV, radio, and just really get a lot of thick green?
Jack Carr: Is that as wide as you want to go? Because, we talk about in two terms. You go wide or you go deep. You expand the territory out or you try to get darker colors and take more of the market share. We're expecting pretty wide already. So besides a new location outside of this, the goal now is not really to get any more zip codes.
John Wilson: We do work in every zip code in our service area that we could reasonably do work in So now that's why we're like, how do we go even deeper? They're already seeing our trucks We already have healthy homes, which is our membership in each and every one of these zip codes how do we go even deeper
Jack Carr: just answer the phone is one of those phrases that's always easier said than done I know it was hard for me in my business because the phone Always rings while you're out in the field trying to get something done or it's 8 p.m. And you're trying to get your kids to bed. I have the solution for you I'm extremely excited today to announce quick staffers your go to solution for building a high performing cost effective customer service team We are placing CSRs who have been pre trained on Proven home service SOPs and scripts the same ones that Wilson and I use in our business for a limited time We're offering 500 off your initial placement costs for the first 10 signups.
See link in the description below or head over to quickstaffers. com for more information. this is ours, very similar to yours. I think we were a little too wide, honestly, in my opinion, for where I'd like to be in, in the Nashville location, but you can see we are located right in here, this zone of dark, and then we have just a lot of light green out, but you can see down here in this location, we do 100,000, 200,000 without any GMBs, which, it's not a huge amount for, you, but for, our size, that's a, for a zip code, that's a lot of money.
John Wilson: Yeah. That's a lot of money. And then that's a one man show. Exactly. Like you're doing a one man show's worth of business and that's it, in that zip code.
Jack Carr: And then when we looked at this and we went, okay, who is in Spring Hill? Who are we, I'm giving it away, but I don't care, who are we competing against? And the answer is No one like there's no Buddy in there. So why wouldn't we double down and say hey, this is one of our top producing zip codes There's no competition Which is why we're getting them right now.
We're bleeding down is what I call it bleed through from our upper zip codes So let's put something there. Let's maximize potential and let's really capitalize and that's where our I guess 25 percent organic growth is what we're planning on getting it from but let me ask you a question So we're having trouble though finding, you know a location to put a GMB, we would have to Spend very heavily to open shop there in terms of percentage wise, we're at like 2.3 on, rent for rent to revenue percentage. If we're to buy or rent, excuse me, something down there to move a GMB into that location because they don't have the typical ability, we would be looking at probably like 3. 5 until fruition of the actual like growth happens. What do you think?
Would you take that risk to, in February to get into this? Probably not. Because like GMBs take a while to ramp up anyways. But that's my worry actually, is cause like I want it in place now so that when summer hits.
John Wilson: Yeah.
Jack Carr: But you're talking about doubling your rent, that's a lot.
No, not doubling, but like a fourth. Yeah. We found something, but it's, a lot. We don't need it, unfortunately. So I'm mixed emotions on it. And so we're still searching, it's available type of thing. And I want to pull like a straight from a rich Jordan and sub out the other half of it, like sublease, but it's just such a small office space that it just doesn't make sense.
John Wilson: I think I would just hold. Yeah. Get to May.
Jack Carr: Get some of that spring money rolling.
John Wilson: Yeah. Get that spring money. None of this. 50 degree money.
Jack Carr: That's really interesting. so you're moving into a few zip codes that you're really passionate about.
John Wilson: Yeah. So non entrance. This is actually like the first year and you saw it from the map. Like we actually haven't been trying to add new zip codes this year. We're just trying to do much more.
What was interesting for us is we, did another like version of a market share study and by trade, some of our market shares really low, like our HVAC market share is low and we're like, Oh man, like it doesn't have to be this low. Like we can do much more, than what we're currently doing.
that got us really excited about. Hey, we're already in these zip codes. We're already selling memberships in these zip codes. How do we just go deeper? And we're pumped because I think like the foundation we're building this year, it's going to, we're going to really see the results in 25, 26.
I think this is like how we get to 50 pretty quick inside Northeast Ohio.
Jack Carr: Can you, talk more about I know you've mentioned that you have some channels you're relying on for branding. is that the key that you view as is going to open up those locks? Is it like, hey, we're going to, in these zip codes, put some billboards in and we're expecting that's going to be what really turns on the ability?
Or are you just turning it off?
John Wilson: I do not think billboards are the right decision. majority of cases.
So like, billboards only work if you attach them to other campaigns.
Yeah. So like I'll see people pull billboards for one or two. things and Hey, this one's near my shop. I want it. And maybe, but like the best case for a billboard is you're running mailers or TV or radio or social and billboards reinforce the zip codes that you want. That is a good use of billboards, but billboards as a whole, like it's a tough branding exercise.
Jack Carr: They're not the triggering point that gets you to pull the trigger and make the call. The mailer is, or the. Ad on Facebook is, and they just keep you at top of mind, right? Yeah. That's the way to look at it?
John Wilson: Yeah, I'm going to give an example. There was a company we looked at a couple years ago, and they were 5 million bucks, and they were spending 500, 000, 10 percent on marketing.
And they were like shrinking in revenue. And in that same time period, we were just like going gangbusters. And I was like, what the heck is going on here? And then I randomly passed one of their billboards and they were spending huge amounts of money on billboards and that was their big thing and they were shrinking and it's like they should have been spending more in LSAs.
Yeah. Should have been spending something in PPC or mailers or it's like they were trying to like my quick take is. Use the medium for what it's meant for. And if you need leads, don't do a billboard. You need leads. You don't need branding billboard TV. It's branding. But if you're hungry today, you need leads.
If you're going to be hungry in a year, you need branding and leads.
Jack Carr: And with that, so then what's, so if you don't want me restating the question, so then what's, are you focusing more on brand or excuse me, lead gen in that area and then you're just going to support with branding or are you just.
focusing on branding in that area. And then you're going to continue your lead gen or you're going
John Wilson: to continue lead gen. This is an addition of budget. We feel really comfortable with our processes around lead gen.
Jack Carr: How do you feel about, the LSA kind of marketplace at the moment? Cause I've heard a lot of chit chat around LSA changes when they just got rid of the app.
Google search volume has been eaten up by AI search volume. what's your feeling on LSA moving into the future?
John Wilson: that's why we started focusing more on brand. we feel like I don't know what 2025 and 2026 hold for like Google. I do think it would be hard to disrupt like the Google, my business review platform is like a universal review platform.
Like to me, it's everybody uses it and every business is on it. And I feel like that's really easy. so it's hard to see the GMB side getting disrupted. It would just be easier to knock it off, but maybe I'm wrong.
Jack Carr: I actually agree. Quite a bit with that one, because it's so ingrained in our culture.
John Wilson: Every dentist, every plumbing company, every software...
Jack Carr: And you can't AI that away. If somebody said, Yeah. Hey, what's the best HVAC company in the area? And they said, Oh, probably the response, I'd probably still Google it and be like, Hey, let me like double check its reviews are good.
John Wilson: But there's, Angie's list, there's Amazon, there's all these different like review aggregation things. But GMB is the only one that is like pretty universal. Like it's not for products, but it's for business.
Jack Carr: I'm with you on that one. I just, wanted to see if you had any different insights.
Cause I, you keep hearing this. I definitely, we're
John Wilson: expecting more challenges in lead gen in 2025 than previous years.
Jack Carr: I don't know if it's going to be a challenge for you. I think it's more It's just going to be understanding what the change is, right? Yeah.
John Wilson: we think it's going to be less like, oh, you just use LSA, but we've been like, it's something we've been working on de risking for a while.
Like how do we farm our own lists? What are the lead aggregators are out there? And how much use are we making of them? Like we started beta testing lead ags like four months ago. So we're four months into it. We're not, like LSA is the standard by how we measure like lead aggregators as far as return on investment, the ROI of those leads.
LSA is the best, we get the best return on LSA spend, but Angie's List actually is not far behind.
Jack Carr: Shh, don't cut this, don't, tell people this secret. Dude, it's crazy. but and there's, it was so bad that there's, it's so bad for the contractor that all the good contractors left, but they're so good at SEO that, yeah, that they're able to get so many consumers.
John Wilson: Yeah, but what's also been interesting is guys, aside from Angie's list, there are hundreds of lead aggregators, and I had no concept. I thought it was Angie, and that was it. And there are hundreds of options out there. modernize, they just came on as one of our sponsors, and we are making money off of their leads.
it is a freaking win. Yeah, so we've been testing lead ags, for a while, and there's a ton of them, so right now we have 20 going. In addition to LSA.
Jack Carr: Yeah, so we have, one. And that one the last week, excuse me, last week we spent 1, 300 with them and they brought us 30 leads. 30 leads.
That? Yeah. For 1, 300. It was like 45 a lead. And I'm talking about water heater replacements, HVAC unit replacements.
John Wilson: once we finish recording, you can tell me the name.
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: but what I do think is interesting is you'll find these lead aggregators that aren't Angie and you're the only one.
Jack Carr: You can dominate if you have a medium sized business because what's happened is all the good large companies left for LSA and they left a bunch of chucking trucks, man in vans.
John Wilson: Or sometimes there's none at all. Yeah, aggregators that were the only service provider for like electric.
Yeah. in Northeast Ohio. So like we just get all of them. Now, the thing that is totally different, similar to how Angie works is it's not LSA. It is not someone's clicking to call and it's easy peasy. Like you have to have a really effective pipeline management. And I don't think we're there. We're not starting to get there.
but yeah, it's a lot harder. to get those leads, but they are there
Jack Carr: because it's a speed delete. So you have to deal with that right out the gate, especially if there's competitors, right? It's whoever responds the quickest on the weekend or at 10 o'clock at night is going to win that job. And then You have to get out there and then sell them or deal with the, issue.
And then there's a lot of tire kickers, a lot of shoppers, a lot of, not LSA. This is an emergency hits. We were thinking about doing a remodel. We wanted somebody out here for free to, to walk us through. So there's definitely something there that has to be done in terms of. How you and your team sift through the noise, but there's some really good opportunity on lead gen right now, or lead aggregators right now.
John Wilson: Yeah, I agree with you. LSA for us is still the standard. By which they're all measured, like LSA beats the heck out of all of them. and we've continued to just overproduce LSA, so I don't know if other people are, I guess I haven't really been keeping track of how other people are doing with LSA.
I don't know if it's still like rough or not, but like LSA has still been good.
Jack Carr: From what I've heard from the grapevine is that, it's not the way it was even last year. Like last year was still pretty set it and forget it, optimized. There's a few strategies. Now it seems that the leads are, there's maybe quarter or less, they're harder to get.
Harder to come by. and I don't know if that's due to the changes in service area and how they prioritize service area or not prioritize service area, but yeah, how they stopped deem them. There's just been so many changes to LSA in the last six months.
John Wilson: There's been a ton.
Jack Carr: In terms of algorithmic changes that I just don't even know, if you aren't following and being very active with the team, and if you're our size, like it's me, it's not, we don't have anyone else who's, running LSA. So it's I have to know that about the changes and how to navigate and what to do, how to prioritize your GMB now and all this kind of stuff.
So with that being said, it's, really interesting and, the people who we've talked about it before, like in 2019 to 2020, you set it, you forget it, you get the calls 2023 2024, you set it, you do some minor management, you get the calls 2024 2025 2026. I think it's like, Hey, you said it, you manage it actively.
And it's you have to fight a little bit for the calls.
John Wilson: Yeah. Yeah. we're adding more. Emphasis and energy than ever into our GMB. Yeah, and I think that's a lot worth. It's also like we're getting rewarded. But I think, long term I think brand is the ultimate winner. Like you always need leads but once you can invest heavily in brand it's going to win.
So we, we see our push this year as a de risk against leads. Because we know in six to nine months, next time we go through quarter one, we will have invested half a million dollars into our brand in all the zip codes we already work in.
Jack Carr: So yeah, and the proof's in the pudding. we see it here in our metro very often just because there's so many big players that you can go through and ask people like, who did you use and why? And they said, I called this guy because we hear about them all the time. And it's that's it. that's the one thing that gets people to call is that they are top of mind and yeah, it's terrible as the company is, which I'm not going to say the name.
it's like that's what draws people to it. It's very interesting, I'm excited to see any kind of concrete evidence of it working because, it's very hard to quantify.
John Wilson: Alright, so we talked about brand spend, we talked about lead aggregators, we talked about budgeting, this was a pretty wide ranging conversation.
Moving into new zip codes. yeah, we added zip code, yeah, it was good. We're gonna leave it off with our next workshop, I actually think it's already, half sold out, which is crazy. I was just gonna say. I think that's the benefit of this being our third one, is, a little bit more traction, which is awesome.
And, yeah, 30 seats, I think we have 15 signed up. should be a lot of fun. it's early April. Yes. Six to the eighth.
Jack Carr: Two. Don't look at me. April. Yeah. It's on the website.
John Wilson: Yeah. our next workshop is in April. it's going to be a lot of fun. It's a breaking five workshop. So it's a lot of the fundamental stuff on how to get over your first 5 million bucks.
Check out ownedandoperated.com workshop, to get more information and to reserve your spot. Thanks for tuning in. Thanks guys.
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