Bloq Marketing | Digital Marketing For Home Services

The Power of Automation to Cut Costs and Enhance Customer Engagement

• Eddie

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Unlock the secrets to thriving in the HVAC industry with insights from our special guest, Eddie, as he reveals how diversification and strategic pivots can revolutionize your business approach. Curious about how to stabilize your revenue outside the sizzling summer months? Eddie discusses the rising challenges in customer acquisition due to skyrocketing advertising costs on platforms like Yelp and Google and offers a compelling case for branching into plumbing services. Learn how integrating this less seasonal service can create a more reliable income stream, whether you choose to dip your toes in with drain calls or dive in headfirst.

But that’s not all—we also explore the transformative power of marketing automation. Eddie sheds light on tools such as Marketing Pro and Logic, which can streamline your processes and bring down customer acquisition costs. Gain practical strategies for enhancing customer engagement and lead management by blending traditional methods with cutting-edge technology. Plus, discover how maintaining accurate client information and offering personalized follow-ups can boost customer loyalty, especially with enticing membership perks. Don't miss this deep dive into the strategies that can future-proof your contracting business.

Bloq Marketing | Digital Marketing
info@bloqmarketing.com
Downey CA, 90240

www.bloqmarketing.com

Speaker 1:

Hey, eddie, what's up? So thank you for making the time to stick around and do this podcast, and I think this podcast is going to be very important because we want to tell the audience how the HVAC, specifically the HVAC industry, is doing. So my question to you, eddie, based on your experience and the claims that we have, how is this industry doing right now?

Speaker 2:

well, maybe I'll be completely honest with you. Right now everyone is panicking. Okay, I think how, man, the cost of leads is crazy. To acquire a new customer is just getting very expensive. A lot of the contractors didn't really have uh, you know, they were not diversified and the different type of campaigns that were bringing in the the new customers. For example, most of them were just depending on yelp and and google.

Speaker 2:

I mean, they don't know anything else like uh, you mean the, the ads, uh, for both of them exactly, yeah, so I mean the, the ads and also, um, yeah, the ads pretty much the advertising side of it. So when you're used to just, you know, putting 20, $30,000 and I worry about you, know what was going to come out of it, it was a lot easier. But yeah, no the, we are going back to the basics and, you know, going again. We already did an amazing job. We already have our customers and our data. So how can we offer more of our services and how can we cross services?

Speaker 1:

Okay, Well, I think, just generally speaking, and I know that the HBAC industry is not the only industry that is being affected affected, obviously, you know, economically, we know that the economy right now is not doing well in in all um spaces of different types of industries. And because we've seen it right, we we've. Recently, we had a chat with um, uh, a floor, uh, power washing company. What did they say? What do the ladies say?

Speaker 2:

It goes back again, I'm not getting what I was getting last year and I'm spending twice. What do I do, panicking that there's no solution? I guess I mean they're mine, but there's a solution. I mean, if you have a strategy because that's what it is, I mean, running a business you don't always want to be reacting, you want to be proactive, you want to be ready. Yeah, exactly. And that's the same problem that our contractors have, because we only I mean they're only ready for the summer. What happens after the summer? The summer is only six months, I mean, and that's on a good summer? Yeah, I mean, and that's on a good summer, you know, six months of good business, but then what happens? The rest, the other six months, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Slowness, and I mean, aside from, obviously, the weather not complying. I mean, well, what can we do, right? The weather, yeah, because I mean think about it this whole, since I want to say maybe November, the beginning of the year, it's been cold, it's been raining, it's been cloudy, so it hasn't uh been. I guess it's not helping the the, the h-back and obviously all these other industries.

Speaker 2:

But uh, I know that there's an industry that can help them. You know which one? Yeah, yeah, actually, are you talking about the plumbing side, exactly? And have you noticed that? I mean we're getting a little bit more customers? I mean more customers, I mean more leads coming in?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, for plumbing. That's true. That's true and, I think, well based on the like. For example, our current, our recent client, honesty Plumbing, shout out to them, uh, their book a month ahead, and so that tells us that that that um, industry isn't being affected as much as the seasonals because, again, obviously everybody uses a restroom, everybody, you know, washes dishes or whatever, and uh, those services are, are like, like the, if you go to the store, right, what are you buying? Your, your your usual consumption, you know items. So I see plumbing being that way. So what is your recommendation with the HVAC? I mean with should they merge or should they?

Speaker 2:

but I mean, there's a lot of things that could, that you can do. So you gotta be a little bit more strategically when it comes on to the services that you offer, okay. When it comes on to marketing is the same, okay, and then the only thing that changes is is gonna be the promotions. But you know, setting up the campaigns works the same way. You know, either Yelp, google, whatever the case might be. So whenever you're doing plumbing plumbing it's a little bit different when it comes down to the type of services that we can offer. Yeah, okay, so a lot of the contractors that we're working, they are getting into plumbing now, so they're trying to introduce the plumbing services. Some of them are going all in, meaning you know they're putting the investment, you know they're they're advertising, and some of them are just, you know, adding one or two different services.

Speaker 2:

Let me give an example in the plumbing and the plumbing side of it yeah, so you already set up for the HVAC. So what is it that you can offer? Well, we already have our service. Remember the service when we did the campaigns for them? We also have the estimates, okay. So, on the service, instead of just going and at try to be, you know, at the drains, at the plumbing side of it. Just work and focus on two different services. Okay, one of the main services that is gonna get you inside it's gonna be drain calls. Okay, because what happens? I mean, have you ever had a you know something being inclogged on?

Speaker 1:

yeah, of course. I mean, yeah, I think, uh, that's one of the main problems that every household has. Even I remember in our house the same thing. Um, you know those, especially the ones for the sinks, because you, you, you and the toilets, especially if you have kids, that's how they do they. They dump in, uh, what is it? Uh, toilet paper in there and be, and some of the toilet papers are not. No, it's those cleaning wipes. Those cleaning wipes are the ones that mess up those pipes. But, yeah, I think that's the main service that HVAC contractors should. What is it add? But before we get to that point, what do you think that contractors should focus right now? What they currently have, like, what strategies should they focus or execute? I know that they're doing Yelp, they're doing Google Ads, but what is another, you know, I guess, marketing solution that you use?

Speaker 2:

Well, let me give you a perfect example. Right now I'm working with this company. They're probably a $3, $4 million in revenue. One of the things that we did first, they're using service titling. Service titling is the best tool when it comes down to running reports. So the first thing that we did, we went and we really not from the from the top down from, but we went deep. So I wanted to know exactly what was, uh, actually what was working.

Speaker 2:

Okay, because if you're spending twenty, thirty thousand dollars, you want to know exactly what's bringing in the opportunities not only the opportunities, but we also want to see how efficient we are in converting those opportunities into book deployment. So that's the first thing. So once you have that information, then now you can make a better decision on what is it that you're going to fix, because if you don't know what's broken, how are you going to fix it? And it goes back to the basics. I mean, set up your campaigns where you are communicating, you are giving the customer the right message at the right.

Speaker 2:

Your campaigns where you are communicating, you are giving the customer the right message at the right, at the right time, because if not, you have, like those people trying to do emails. Uh, email marketing. Email marketing is gonna work if you have the right message at the right time. And I mean, you've been doing email marketing, yeah, not only for the plumbing, but also for the mortgage side, right. Commerce, too-commerce, too, yeah. So what do you think is the the real reason why we are successful versus other companies that are not doing email marketing right?

Speaker 1:

Well, for example, it all boils down to to the service and, like you said, the timing. In the mortgage industry, for example, what I've noticed is that many are looking for those fix and flip loans because everybody's either renovating a house or for themselves, or renovating a house to sell Okay. And and also those one to four units Because why, especially right now here in California, especially in LA, they're they're building a bunch of those apartment complexes, the residentials, so that's huge and also having that helps contractors and plumbers get in the house once they do their vendors package. So I guess for the HVAC contractors it's true what you're saying they should focus on reconnecting again with their clients by doing not just a traditional once a month email.

Speaker 1:

It's better to do a five-day email drip, like we've done, because we don't have to worry about on a weekly basis or a week before, prepping the emails so the next week we can blast it. It's better just to do the five and then let the system because we do have the logic soft to blast those campaigns automatically and we're just waiting for the results. We're waiting to see whether there were clicks, there were bounds, because in the beginning all we need to worry about is that data to be warm because it's cold. Even if it was six months ago, it got cold. It's like when you get a lead, what kind of message do we get? Oh, get to the lead right away, because otherwise it's going to get cold. So same thing with those contacts with those customers. I think it could help them.

Speaker 2:

And what do you think will be the? I mean, based on all the different campaigns that you have done, what do you think will be your number one campaign, the one that works?

Speaker 1:

For the HVAC and everything that we've done, it's always been service and maintenance, service and maintenance.

Speaker 2:

Can you elaborate on that? What do you mean?

Speaker 1:

it's always been service and maintenance. Service and maintenance. Can you elaborate on that? What do you mean? Well, on the service, because everyone still, regardless, they still need someone to go to the house and diagnose their system or the furnace or whichever right. And the maintenance, because you want at least to have this sense of security, knowing that at any moment, if your system breaks down, you know you'll have your contractor or the company that installed the system ready to roll.

Speaker 2:

I agree with you. I think, right now that we are getting into, the weather is actually picking up, so you need to have that unit of service. So that's what you mean by. Yeah, especially right now. So, right now, we know that unit of service. So that's what you mean by.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, especially right now. Okay, so right now we know that winter's gone, that's it, we're in spring. This is the best time to prepare for the summer because, regardless of the situation, the summer, once it peaks, it peaks. We know that. I know a lot of people say that California, everything is good weather here and there, but in reality, when the summer hits, it's just unbearable. You need to have an AC system, especially for people that work from home. You need that regardless, because sometimes I do work from home and I need my AC system. So it's not a lecture anymore, right? It's not Now, it's a necessity. It's not like before, because things are just changing dramatically these days, mm-hmm.

Speaker 2:

So and let me take it back also, because we were talking about what is it that we're doing? And you mentioned logic, soft soft cloud. So we already have at least six years, you know, working the bugs out of the system, yes, and and, and that's not nothing complicated. So, for example, now that I'm working with companies that have a little bit more data, I noticed that all the companies are using Service Titan. Have you noticed that? Yep, okay, yeah, exactly. And going back to Service Titan, so Service Titan is trying to do everything. They even have a Marketing Pro module I guess that's what they call it, what they call it. So one of the things that I've seen that that, uh, how that works is whenever you already have the customer. So, once you have the customer, marketing pro is the best tool to be able to, uh, re-engage but do the contractors use it?

Speaker 2:

it's a little bit complicated for them, so you have to jump in there, yeah so they hire me to go in and set up the, the marketing pro, and then run it for them when the idea is for them to be able to do it for themselves and just forget about it. But that doesn't work. So now one thing that, uh, that I do give them. I mean they're really good once the customer is already in the database, right. But what happens when the customer, uh, is just the lead? Okay, what, what do we do to nurture that lead better? Uh, so that way we can increase customer acquisition? I mean, actually, we want to lower customer acquisition cost and we want to increase our bookings, yeah, okay, so logic has been able to do that for us. I mean remember when we started using logic and the mortgage, how that it was helping those guys uh, nurture their, their, their deals. I guess in in that space they call them deals yeah, yeah, yeah, their deals there, I guess in that space.

Speaker 1:

they call them deals. Yeah, they're deals. They're deals, that's true. But just like the HVAC contractors and the plumbers, they have their premium system With them. It's lending-wise, but again, lending-wise allows them to get all the necessary information so they can close those deals and try to do whatever they need to do. But the logic does help them to what's important get those deals in, so those opportunities, and then from there they work them. So I'm thinking that both plumbing and HVAC and I'm pretty sure other other industries are in there as well, and you think they need the help to obviously get that marketing pro up and running right.

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah, definitely. So the difference between, I guess, what they have. I mean, it's a beautiful software but it's very, very complicated. Okay, so let's say, you know, I just want to remarket my database. Well, with them it's a process. You've got to set up an appointment with someone who's going to walk you how to set it up and then, after that, you got to create the art pieces. They already have some templates, but the templates they have are very, very organic.

Speaker 1:

They it doesn't even brand the, the company when the templates you mean, like the um, uh, like anything that's marketing right, like emails, for example.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so let me give you an example. So they have templates for email. So, let's say, if you want to do an email piece for uh, for a tune-up, they already have all the copy, they already have all the the images. You set it up, you create an audience, and that's one of the things that I do like, uh, love about them. You create an audience, uh, so you can narrow it down to okay, I won this customer who has a unit that is 10 years old and that we didn't sell the, the maintenance to yeah, okay so once you have all this information now, the message could be a lot more clear and it could be more precise.

Speaker 2:

Right, okay, now the reason why I like our software is because I'm managing the leads. Okay, they're not customers yet. They're coming in and it's a service titan, but after that everything gets messy. So the difference between that is that we have created and we keep it simple. We only have two pipelines. Okay, and it's the same thing that that I'm doing, that you did on the mortgage space. So it's only two pipelines. One is the hot lead pipelines, and what we're doing, we adding more layers to the way we manage our leads, so that way we can book more like, for example, by campaigns, right.

Speaker 1:

So if? Um, there you go. So if, if, let's say, I'm doing Yelp ads, that's one campaign, or about one layer, like you mentioned, facebook ads, ppc, organic and so on, yeah, okay and not only not only we adding the stages, but we also adding the automation.

Speaker 2:

so now one of the things that we're getting, it's a well, we do a follow-up. So let's say, you know, we get a customer that came from Google ads. Okay, they submitted a form before. We were limited because they'll come in after hours, but now, if they come in, there's going to have been a followup. The followup is going to ask the customer when they want to book what we have available and it's also connected to our calendar.

Speaker 1:

So the followup? Who does the followup? The obviously.

Speaker 2:

AI right, ai, it's something that it's coming, but right now we're doing it manual. So we have phase one and phase two. Phase one is just everything that is manual. We go in, we teach the customer on how to add those layers to the way they manage their leads. We add a little bit of automation and the end result is that we get booked appointments. Now. It's not that we have to chase them. Now we get booked appointments, so that's something that is changing the game.

Speaker 1:

Okay, I think, I think still at the end of the day, like you mentioned in the beginning, these contractors, they still have to go back to basics right. I know that automation is great, but if the combination still exists there where automation and outbound calling can actually help them and and are they, are the contractors also doing like door-to-door?

Speaker 2:

you know what. It's funny that you mentioned that. So, first, going back to the basics, yeah. So one of the things that we did, we went back to the basics meaning, okay, so we already have our customers in our database and I see our customers, let's say, if you have six thousand out of six thousand, maybe a thousand are your customers, because only a thousand are actually, you know, doing business with you. The other ones are just customers that you did, uh, an interaction with them, but they didn't. Your process did not turn that, uh, you know, client Right, okay, or the other way. I'm not sure which one is it.

Speaker 1:

It kind of sounds right because I mean those are all the leads that came in and asked for questions. Or you know pricing, you know the people that always shop around are the ones that are like I mean they have the right, but you know those are the ones you really can rely on. I mean they have the right, but those are the ones you really can rely on. But yeah, it kind of sounds right that $1,000 out of $6,000 makes sense, that that's the customer base.

Speaker 2:

So now how can we interact with them and do it the right way? So that's the reason why we decided to implement our logic system not only in the mortgage but also in the plumbing and HVAC Right. So the success that we had so far, like I say, we have increased bookings. We are doing a better job at managing the lifespan of the lead, all the way from a lead into a transfer to an appointment. Once it becomes an appointment, then, yeah, service timing is the best tool to be able to give you all the extra whistles and bells. But for lead management and if you want to keep it simple and get everything going right away, then logic is this is the right software.

Speaker 1:

I mean and I'm just giving you my point of view from from a marketing, uh perspective, plus the experience that exactly, yeah, and experience in the industry I mean now that that um we know what the h by contractors out there can um can do at this moment reconnect with their database, obviously using a five-day email drift.

Speaker 1:

I think those are good and I don't think they should just do it in one month, it should be continuous. So, for example, one of our recent customers, just One Call, shout out to them as well. They started with us this past month. So we did a five email drip campaign, the different services with different I'm sorry, different campaigns with different incentives, and my opinion is that, even though we already did the first 30 days, and whatever results we're going to get back, because we still need to see the results the following month now we can actually focus on the emails that had the most opens, because we expect no clicks, we expect at least opens. And you know, either, if we get clicks, great, but if we didn't, we we can still focus on the opens because that's going to tell us whether, uh, these were um campaigns, that that were campaigns that people were interested and if they were, we can push them the following month.

Speaker 2:

uh, back to back, you know, uh, throughout the month and I agree with you and one thing that, um, I want to add to it because, like I said, now we have to do a little bit more work than we did before. Uh, before there was a lot more money in in the market and people you know were willing to buy, yeah, so what it means that we are adding now it's a little bit of outbound, okay, so you got to work, mainly like you mentioned. Um, if people open their emails, then we do an outbound. Yeah, we call them. Either there are our customers and if we are, if we did a good job and we earned the right to call them, then let's do a follow-up.

Speaker 2:

Hi, mr smith, how you doing? I'm just following up on something that we already have done and, by the way, and this is the opportunity for you to introduce your new service so, by having everything right from the beginning, all the way to the end, you're going to be able to make it a lot easier for you. So just go back to the basics. If you guys need help, what should they do? Evie?

Speaker 1:

Back to the basics. Well, once they, let's say, we connected with them, we can start providing them. Well, first of all, they need to have the information about the client. Yeah, all right, and, for example, if they had an installation six months ago, a mr customer. By the way, if you become a, you know, sign up for a membership. You'll get these, you know, incentives throughout the year, and so on. Okay, thank you again for watching this video and don't forget to subscribe. Hit that like button and give us a, send us a comment and any help that you may want. We'll be happy to help you.