When marketing a local service business, there are a lot of things you need to do, but more
importantly, there are a lot of things you need to stop doing.
Today, we're talking about step number two of six things you need to stop doing, when
marketing your local service business.
Let's get to it.
Hi, I'm Mike Mancini, helping you market, simplify and impact your business.
Right now, we're in the middle of our series of six things you need to stop doing when
marketing your local service business.
If you want this free PDF, I will put a link to the description area below and you can
go and get that.
Now, if you remember, in step one, we talked about you as a business owner, spreading yourself
too thin, trying to market between video marketing, SEO, blogging, email, ads, Facebook Market,
whatever it might be.
Add 10 more to that.
You're probably trying a bit of it all.
And if you want to watch that video up in the upper right-hand corner, you will see
a link to that.
But today I want you to concentrate on the second step.
And the second step is, you need to find out which one of these, is working for you and
your business.
Now, I get very, very serious when I talk about this specific topic and the topic is
tracking.
Now, please, don't close the video yet, I know you'll probably hear this from a lot
of people, you might even get lectured to, I may even do some lecturing again.
But I want to tell you a story and I want you to understand why.
I work with hundreds of service businesses, some of them are very small, single per person
operations, some of them are very large.
And the companies that I work with that are the most successful, and the ones that grow
the fastest and the ones that have the most market share, are the ones who know exactly
where their business is coming from.
And I mean, down to the penny.
They know how much time and money they're spending on their ads.
They know how much time and money they're spending on their social media.
They know exactly how much money, when they send out an email, how much that brings in.
And I know that can sound overwhelming, but it doesn't have to be.
The best part is, it's extremely easy.
But the most important thing to know about this is, once you know where your money and
your efforts are going, once you know what's working, you can take, and you can cross off
some of these ones that aren't working and you can put your money in your efforts, towards
the ones that are.
And to tell you a little bit more about that client I was talking about.
This is a guy who started a plumbing business and he started just like everybody else.
He had one truck and then he built it up to two, and he built it up to three and four,
and so on.
He built this business up to 14 trucks.
Now the issue was, is that as a plumber, a lot of the times he had to deal with broken
water mains, so they would have to dig down.
Well, they already have the equipment for this, but if they weren't digging a water
main, they literally would have that equipment just sitting there gathering dust.
So he decided, "You know what?
I'm going to start an excavation company."
They already had the equipment, he just needed to hire an employee to do it.
Now that had started to grow.
But between the two businesses, he had a lot of trucks, a lot of breakdowns, a lot of servicing
that needed to be done.
So, he hired a mechanic because taking all these trucks in constantly, was costing a
small fortune.
And then, the mechanic got all the trucks and they were all running pretty well.
In fact, that he didn't have a lot of extra things to do during the day.
So, they decided to start an auto repair company and I'm not making this up.
He started an auto repair company and started bringing in vehicles to keep that service
guy busy.
But the way he was able to do this, is because when we first had our initial conversation
about working together, I would say, what are you doing for your marketing, what's working?
And his exact comment was, "Well, we are getting 85% of our business from ads.
We are getting 5% of our business from referrals.
We're getting 8% from Google business listings."
And he was able to rattle all of them off.
He knew exactly what was working.
Now, does that mean he didn't do these other things?
Absolutely not.
But he took the bulk of his money and put it towards what was working.
He took 80% of his marketing budget, put it towards what was working and took the other
20% and he would play around with that and try other things.
So, how do you track which marketing channel is working best in your service business?
You ask.
And I can feel you, some are rolling your eyes right now.
But what I mean is, when I talk to all these business owners, we start to sit down and
say, "All right, what's working for marketing your service business right now?"
And they will tell me, inevitably, one or two things.
And they'll say, "That's what's working."
And I will say, "How do you know?"
Let me give you an example.
I talked to somebody last week and I said, "Okay, what's working for you now?
And he goes, "We're getting all of our business off of social media."
"Okay.
How do you know that?"
"Well, because whenever I do a post, the phone rings."
Number one, when the phone rings, is not a way to track it.
I can't tell you how many times I talk to clients and they say, "Well, I put a post
out there and the phone rings right when I do it."
They automatically assume that that's where it came from, 90% of the time that is incorrect.
The easiest way to track what's working in your service businesses, whoever answers the
phone.
And here's how the conversation will go, "Hi, ABC company, how can I help you?"
And the client will say, "Oh, I need to hire a plumber."
"Okay, great.
Can I ask you one thing real quick?
How did you hear about us?"
Now, the person on the other end of the phone may say, "Well, I saw/got an email.
I saw an ad on a billboard.
I looked up plumber on Google and your ad popped up."
"Okay, great.
So when you typed in plumber, did you click on one of the ads at the top or did you just
scroll a little way down?"
"Oh, I saw you in that map section."
"Great.
Thanks for being patient with us, we just like to see where our service marketing dollars
are going."
That's it.
Whoever's answering the phone, makes a note of that, that they saw us in the maps area,
which is your Google business listing.
If they say, "I saw you, I typed in plumber, and I saw you at the top in one of those ad
areas."
They clicked on that, that's an ad.
And you write this down and you keep track of where every single one of your leads comes
from.
"Oh, you got a referral from Susan Smith?
Thanks so much.
Oh, you were a previous customer.
Awesome."
Now, I know this might sound like a lot of work, but we do have a lead tracking spreadsheet.
You can have this for free.
I have literally given this lead tracking spreadsheet to over a thousand people who
have requested it.
All you do is you list in the date, the lead source, and what you do is you go down here
and you list in the sources.
Like for instance, on this example, I've got Google ads, Facebook ads, referrals, BNI,
which is a networking group, website, whether that person found out for me or my family
member, a partner, or like YouTube marketing, You put in, when you fill all these in, you
just go up here and as you get to the next box, you click whichever referral source they
came in from.
So let's say it was a referral, you can put a referral from, and you can say Susan Smith,
here's their name, their email, their phone number, how much you quoted them, did you
close the deal?
Is the deal dead or alive?
And you can track what deals are working.
At the end of the month, you can say, "All right, I got five leads from my Google ads,
we made $2,000."
How much you got in your Google ads, your referrals, your website, and you can track
where every single dollar of your marketing is going.
So, if you want that lead tracking spreadsheet, I will put a link for it in the description
area below, there's also a video that shows you exactly how to use it.
And it will actually compile all of your leads, all of your revenue, all on one page, so you
can see kind of an overview of what's working and what's not.
So are you tracking all of your leads?
Do me a favor, let me know in the comment area below, I'd love to hear.
Let me know, "Yes, I'm tracking.
Tracking some," or "Not tracking at all."
I'd love to see those responses.
And if you like videos like this, do me a favor, hit that like button, subscribe and
hit that little bell icon, so you'll be notified of when we release new videos each and every
week.
And as soon as that video is ready, if you want to see step three of what to stop doing
when you're marketing your service business?
Over to the right-hand side, you'll see that video, as well as another related video.
And remember, if you want to go download our PDF.
Thanks so much for watching, we'll see you next time.