The Complete Home Service Marketing Playbook

Home service marketing strategy isn't one-size-fits-all. In this Owned and Operated compilation, John Wilson sits down with Lisa Appleby and Ethan Wright of Service Scalers to break down the marketing systems, lead generation strategies, SEO, Google Ads, Local Services Ads, reviews, AI, and growth playbooks that help contractors scale from $1M to $10M+.

Whether you own an HVAC, plumbing, electrical, roofing, or other home service business, this episode explains where your next marketing dollar should go, how to generate higher-quality leads, improve conversion rates, and build a marketing engine that scales with your company.

In This Episode

•  The marketing roadmap from $1M to $10M in revenue 
•  Where to invest your next marketing dollar 
•  When to use Local Services Ads, PPC, SEO, and aggregators 
•  Why speed-to-lead dramatically increases booked jobs 
•  How online reviews impact rankings and revenue 
•  The biggest marketing mistakes growing contractors make 
•  How AI is changing SEO, Google Search, and digital marketing 
•  The KPIs every contractor should actually be tracking 

Connect

John Wilson
https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnbwilson1/

Lisa Appleby
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisa-appleby/?originalSubdomain=uk

Ethan Wright
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ethanwrighttx

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 Sponsors
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Comfort Connect

Turn one installation into years of repeat business with Comfort Connect. Give homeowners flexible payment options, stay connected after the job, and create new recurring revenue opportunities. Learn more: https://bit.ly/4wGXqSX 

Yelp

Looking for more qualified leads beyond Google? See how contractors are using Yelp to reach homeowners who are ready to book and diversify their lead generation. Learn more: https://business.yelp.com/campaign/ownedandoperated/

Profit & Grit

Running a $3M–$15M home service business? Profit & Grit helps contractors improve cash flow, pricing, forecasting, and profitability with guidance from an operator who's built and sold a $25M service business. Book your free 20-minute strategy call: https://www.profitandgrit.com

More Ways To Connect with O&O

• John's Podcast YouTube Channel
• Owned and Operated Newsletter 
• Bonus Videos From John

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John Wilson, CEO of Wilson Companies
Jack Carr, CEO of Rapid HVAC

📌 Disclaimer: Some links may include UTM parameters or affiliate relationships, meaning we may earn a commission if you make a purchase. Episodes may feature sponsors, but all opinions expressed are our own.

Transcript

Why Small Businesses Need Different Marketing

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Today we're talking about the marketing stack from one to ten million dollars.

SPEAKER_01 0:04

The first million dollar shop is just get leads. Most of your money needs to be going to filling your job board and then hiring the next tech. You have to get reviews on your GBP.

SPEAKER_02 0:13

It's so important.

SPEAKER_01 0:14

What I wouldn't be spending on is like buying a billboard or a radio.

SPEAKER_03 0:18

I think what people get freaked out about is like traffic has gone down.

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Yeah, low-intent traffic that would often like inflate numbers, like it make it make us SEOs look way better than we actually are. So in 2026, SEO is building for a user experience. The keywords are not enough.

SPEAKER_03 0:35

What's your closing thoughts on AI and SEO?

SPEAKER_01 0:37

Um so the first million dollar shop is just get leads, really. It's like you in marketing spend at least.

SPEAKER_04 0:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

Every dollar that goes out needs to come back within a relatively appropriate time frame, right? Where this is where a lot of times I'll, you know, someone will talk to me, they're doing one to two million dollars. And I kind of ask them what their marketing spend is. They're, they're, they're, you know, they're saying we're hurting for leads. And they say, okay, what does marketing look like? Yeah. Well, we have a SEO agency and we're paying them $3,000 a month and that's it.

SPEAKER_04 1:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:17

And I'm like, I love SEO. SEO leads are the best. Like let's do that, but let's do it when you can really afford to. Because if you have $3,000 a month to spend and it's all going to a delayed lead source that compounds over time, your your job board's not going to be full, right? So I always talk with people like at $1 million, if you're using a relatively uh you know consistent budget framework or whatever, yeah, most of your money needs to be going to filling your job board and then hiring the next tech and filling his filling his job. So that's

Local Services Ads: Rural vs. Big City Strategy

SPEAKER_01 1:50

like the big thing. But even when you're talking about the tech stack, like one of the big things, so obviously like LSA is great and the caveat, LSA is a lot different than it used to be. So if you're a plumber in Dallas and you have 75 reviews and you try and turn on local service ads, it's gonna be hard. You're because there's gonna be 15 people with a thousand plus reviews.

SPEAKER_03 2:10

And it's gonna be really we talked right before we went on of like there's uh this sort of like, and we've talked about this a lot on the show. Yeah, because I I am frankly, I'm kind of annoyed by it. Yes. Um, but it's almost like the more rural, the easier. There's no other people there. So there was a um, I have a friend and he was out, uh, we had like a shop tour thing. Yeah, and he and he's based out of Chicago, but his businesses are in uh Nebraska.

SPEAKER_04 2:35

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 2:36

And it's hilarious. He he buys these like two, three million dollar companies, and he is very literally it. Like there's there's one game in town and he's it. And the obvious downside is it potentially caps sure. Like it does cap the upside. Sure, like you can't have a hundred million dollar single branch. Yeah, but like if you have five to ten million and your LSA leads are 20 bucks because no one else is there, like who gives a shit?

SPEAKER_01 3:01

Do do go do that in five locations too. Totally.

SPEAKER_03 3:04

Well, that's what he did.

SPEAKER_01 3:04

He's on four now. So I uh this is like the Sam Walton approach to Walmart. So when Walmart first started, they didn't want to go compete in the big markets because they couldn't afford to. Yeah. And they uh he wanted to work in smaller communities and then grow into larger ones.

SPEAKER_04 3:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:20

And so he intentionally went to the town instead of you know, who where's the town with 500,000 people? He said, Where's the town with 50,000 people and a 30 mile race or whatever? I don't know the exact average. But it's the same idea where if he can stand up enough of those stores, then he has a a pooled revenue that is such that he can then go afford to compete in a bigger market where he can pay a premium for leads because he has all the systems and he's got the revenue backing him. So that is interesting. But um, yeah, if you're a plumber in Dallas with 75 reviews, it um gets hard. It's you're it I tell people, don't count on it. Like turn it on, try it. Don't count on it. You might get a couple leads, yeah. But if you're in um, you know, there's someone here at the at the marketing workshop and they're in like a more rural part of uh the northeast, yeah, uh New York. And um, you know, we were talking the other day and they were like, yeah, we're a little bit slow. And I was like, well, what service areas do you have turned on? They're like, oh, we don't really like to, we don't want to drive like too far. So we only have our little city turned on. It's like, well, if you're slow, just turn on the next two cities. They like tripled their leads overnight because no one else is running LSA.

SPEAKER_03 4:23

Well, I've I've used the example on this show, but like I've talked to people in different parts of Ohio and they they've doubled in the last year or two. And it's like, well, what'd you do? Oh, we turn on we turn on LSA. It's like, oh my God, that's like a you know, there so there's still parts of like the country where this works. It just is rural.

SPEAKER_01 4:42

Yes, it's it's going to be uh, hey, our county is spread out, it's a large county by area, and it has 120,000 people in it. Yeah, like with one one main city that's got you know 45,000. And it's like, but again, like you can do millions of dollars in revenue in that.

SPEAKER_03 5:00

And so that is like an example that I've given is there's a SEALA branch, and SEAL is like a large consolidator. Uh, and they do like 35 million in a population of 40,000 people. So you can do it. Yeah, they can't do it. They implement the HVAC electric. Yeah, so you can do it. So that's why I said, hey, potentially you caps your upside, because I mean, that's an exception, not the rule, but like that guy's doing, you know, a dollar per person, basically. It's insane. $10 per person of revenue. That is kind of funny. Yeah. Winning the job is great, but keeping that customer for the next 10 years is way better. And that's why we've been paying attention to Comfort Connect. It's an all-in-one application and payment platform that gives homeowners flexible ways to pay while making it easier for contractors to close more jobs. What really stands out to me is what happens after the install. Contractors stay connected to those customers and they create more opportunities for maintenance and upgrades and replacements, and then cross sales down the road. On top of that, Comfort Connect pays contractors quarterly revenue share based on the customers using the platform. As more homeowners enroll, that recurring payout can add up really fast. And some contractors are collecting more than $15,000 every quarter. If you're looking for more than just another payment option, book a call with Comfort Connect at the link below.

SPEAKER_01 6:18

So, but anyway, it's like do the basics, right? So turn on Google LSA. Yep. If you can get leads out of that, that's awesome. Um, the next thing, and this is like where a lot of agencies won't really say this because it doesn't benefit an agency, but yeah, I tell people when you're at the million dollar point, trying to pay, you know, pay an agency to run, let's say, like pay-per-click ads for you, um, you're having to pay a fee. Plus, like to run pay-per-click well, you need a decent budget to make it work.

SPEAKER_04 6:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:45

So I usually tell people like, hold off on that for a while. Like you're go get scrappy and and run aggregators, right? I I agree with that. Test test all the aggregators in your marketing. Thumbtack, thumbtack, yelp, angie, like the paper.

SPEAKER_03 6:57

No, the the I think this is back to the what's your technology. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 7:00

Because that's what I was coming back to.

SPEAKER_03 7:01

We went and we bought this company in January. Yeah. And we we basically turned on LSA. Yeah. And and like, oh yeah, we doubled. You know, there's that story that I've had, but like that was also our story too. Yeah. We went from $1,000 a month of LSA to $5,000, and but the company doubled. We went from $100,000 of revenue to we did 240 in sales in February. It's like it was ridiculous. Yeah. And um, and all of that was just filling the board, but just LSA. Yeah. The problem was we didn't have a speed delete technology in it. They were on service tight and they're using marketing pro. Marketing pro is not a speed to lead technology, it's like a maybe email and potentially text. Yeah. Potentially. Like they're very like stingy on that. And uh so we had and it takes a kind of a minute to to get the Avoka like speed delete thing set up. So I because you have to go through the TCPA approvals and all that stuff.

Speed-to-Lead, Reviews & Marketing ROI

SPEAKER_03 7:53

So it took like a month, I think. But like but now we can turn on thumbtack. Now we can turn on Angie.

SPEAKER_01 7:57

Because when someone puts on in their information, you're texting them immediately, you know, getting a notification, a call or whatever.

SPEAKER_03 8:02

I so we weren't even doing aggregators without that technology because in our minds it's kind of like wasted money.

SPEAKER_01 8:08

Uh I was talking to a shop um that's doing about one and a half million uh yesterday.

SPEAKER_04 8:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:14

And my advice to them, because of their financial situation, they didn't have a huge budget, which makes sense. And I said, you should go try the out aggregators. They said, okay, they don't, none of them work.

SPEAKER_04 8:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:24

And I said, I I'm sure some like it's very market dependent. I'm sure some of them are not great for your market. Yeah. But I've never known a market unless it's really rural where it's not offered, that it doesn't work. So I kind of asked the process. I was like, if you let's say it's Angie's and they sell you a lead and um, like what's your process? Well, we we see it come in and we get to it.

SPEAKER_04 8:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:44

Okay, how long does that take? Well, it depends on if we're online. Yeah. So it's like, okay, well, you know, if you're not calling in the first 30 seconds or texting the first 30 seconds. And I said, What if you do get to it quickly? Well, I call and they don't answer, it's you usually go straight to voicemail, leave them a voicemail and try them later. Like, do you ever call them twice in a row? They're like, Oh no, I don't, I don't want to annoy people. And I said, Well, if you called me once and I don't know your number, I'll never even see that it came in. But if you call me twice, I then it comes through and I see that I had a missed call from you, I'm way more likely to pick up. And I was asking you to reach out to me. I need your help.

SPEAKER_04 9:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:18

Um, and so it's those little things that you have to be able to do to take advantage of it. But like when you're this size, aggregators can be great and just be scrappy. Like, I'm gonna be the first, I'm I'm gonna get the speed delete platform set up. Yeah, I'm going to use my, hey, I'm the owner of the business coming to talk to you versus, you know, I'm one of I'm Joe Schmo sales. Exactly. And so um, do that, and that's gonna help you fill your job board. So like LSA aggregators, yeah. I mean, the biggest thing we talk about all the time, we don't need to to you know beat a dead horse, but get reviews. You have to get reviews on your GBP.

SPEAKER_02 9:51

Yeah, it's so important.

SPEAKER_01 9:52

Like big rep, like yeah, they're amazing. You get uh automated reviews, they help you with like setting up your profile correctly. But even if you are in a market where people have thousands of reviews around you, you can still own your backyard.

SPEAKER_04 10:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:06

For even if it's only a mile or two mile radius, um, that's a big deal if it's a populated market. And so, and those those are great. And so you need to be, yeah, calling uh after jobs, like getting the reviews again, using I'm the owner. Like I know owners that make calls at the end of every day and they their text have asked for reviews, but they say, Hey, my name's John Wilson. I run a local company here. Um, it means the world to us that one, we did a good job, and then two, that uh we're able to to know it. And it also really just helps our business. And people are way more responsive to that. Um, and so like those little things that don't scale, yeah. People are like, oh, I can't do it because it doesn't scale. You're not scaled yet. Do it. Like that's how you fast track it. Um, you know, have a basic website, you need a CRM, but like just like it's these little things like reviews, uh treating people well, servicing them well. Yeah. And then yeah, is it are they coming through LSA, are they coming through aggregators? You know, how are you getting them? But every dollar that you're spending really needs to come back to um to being a lead like in the short term. What I wouldn't be spending on is like um brand strategy. So like I'm not buying a billboard or a radio ad or anything like that, um, because it's good that people know your brand, but if you're not getting calls immediately, like I tell people build your brand through reviews and through treating people well in the first one to five million or whatever, and then you can you can worry about that. Um, the other thing I see a lot, um full-time hires too early. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:41

Um, and usually I don't know why I see that so much.

SPEAKER_01 11:44

I think just people think like I need to do marketing, and so I need to hire someone to do marketing.

SPEAKER_03 11:47

Yeah, I I yeah, there's like companies that um like I'll hear people in like the three to five range and be like, yeah, I think we need, and I'm like, what are you talking about? Like it's our first hire was at 13 million. Yeah, like it's um and even that felt a bit early.

SPEAKER_01 12:01

Well, it's because I think a lot of owners are just like, I'm not a marketing person, and so this person either has a marketing degree or they've worked in marketing somewhere. The problem is that that size, what you can afford to pay someone to do marketing, um they're they're usually maybe good at one thing.

SPEAKER_04 12:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:16

I'm really great at organic social media, I'm really great at running paid ads on Google. Yeah. But if you're trying to optimize a business profile, you know, uh do SEO on your website, if you're eventually trying to do Facebook ads or you know, general branding, like you don't really want to spend a full-time salary on a generalist.

SPEAKER_04 12:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:36

Um, not yet. Now, I'm a big fan of in-house marketing hires as you scale, yeah, that essentially agencies can partner with. And eventually as you grow, you can outgrow your agency, you can hire more things internally, but they're they're not even really, they're not even like the direct marketer pushing and pulling buttons. Yeah. They're they are strategy, accountability, they're communicating what costs budget management, what cost yeah, what is our cost per lead need to be? What what channels are working, what what uh levers need to be pulled up and down. But that's kind of, we can get into that next, but like that's five million is like not even higher that higher necessarily, but you start to think more about that. Yeah, but like an owner, a good agency um is hopefully going to over-communicate to you as an owner and and speak in plain language so that you don't have to rely on a yeah, you know, a marketing coordinator or whatever for for that early. So yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:25

On the one sort of that finishing up the one stage, yeah. We have three businesses now that are in that one to five range. And our path to five is like this is it. Like this is it. We're buying more leads, we're installing the technology to respond to those leads fast, and we're selling them. And it people really love to overcomplicate it. Yeah. Uh, and it's just not that comp and it's not that complicated. It's it's simple but not easy. Like you just need leads, and like that one plumbing company, the example I gave, like we took it over in January. It's a great team, but like they just needed more leads. Uh they did a million, like 1.48 last year, or 1. Yeah. And uh like we'll probably do four this year.

SPEAKER_01 14:12

Just with some simple but not easy necessary.

SPEAKER_03 14:15

Simple but not easy. It's it's expanding the lead budget significantly, installing the right technology, and answering the phone more. Well, and like that's actually it.

SPEAKER_01 14:25

And you also have to price right. That's another that's one more thing. Yes. Like, we don't have to talk about a long time. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:30

But you, if you We did a 30% price increase, like off the road.

SPEAKER_01 14:33

If you can't afford leads, but your competitors can, uh, there's usually a pricing issue because it is a supply and demand market. Like Google is not new to this, like they will not make a lead so expensive that no one can make money on it. But there are people like, you know, you've talked about it before. If my average ticket can be higher than my competitor, I can pay more per lead. I can win more leads.

SPEAKER_03 14:54

We I got in this discussion last uh two, well, two weeks ago. We had like a shop tour thing. Yes, maybe 15 companies uh were here, and this was a discussion. People were really focused on well, like what's your cost per lead? And it's like, who the fuck cares? Like it doesn't, it doesn't actually matter, right? So in our restoration company, cut and dry, uh, they did $150,000 last month at a massive gross margin, like 70% gross margin. It's a ridiculous business. And uh Sarah, she runs it and she's awesome. And uh like the leads are like $500. Like we've spent more than $500. What's your what your average rate is 30%? Yeah, so like okay, we close one and three, so we spent $1,500 per job. But our average think it might be six grand. Yeah. And it's like, okay, would I pay 25% for that? Sure. Yeah, sure.

SPEAKER_01 15:40

Especially with your gross margin. Like it's know your numbers and then like know what they need to be.

SPEAKER_03 15:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:45

Um, anyway, that that's a whole other conversation. But like we there's only so much a good agency can even do in terms of cost per lead because you get in trouble, you know.

SPEAKER_03 15:54

Well, people I think cost per lead's not the thing to fix. It's not. And I and people what's your ROI?

SPEAKER_01 15:59

Yes. People ask me all the time, what's my cost per lead gonna be? And I say, well, it's gonna depend a lot on a lot of things. Like you're a plumber, uh, I can get your cost per lead really low, and you'll only be doing leaky faucet calls. You'll never touch water heater for the rest of your life.

SPEAKER_03 16:11

A good example of this is LSA versus Angie.

SPEAKER_01 16:13

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 16:14

So LSA might be like $80 to $100 a lead. Angie leads might be $15 to 30.

SPEAKER_01 16:21

What are you closing? What's the quality?

SPEAKER_03 16:23

Yeah, so our book rate on Angie is 29%. Yeah. Our book rate for LSA is like 80. Yeah. So like right off the rip, it takes what, three Angie leads, which is $90 to equal one LSA lead. So it's called the stuff.

SPEAKER_01 16:36

And you're not introducing automatic competition. Like people, when they called you through LSA, they saw your brand and your reviews.

SPEAKER_03 16:42

So you already have a higher it's a little annoying that people get so it's like you are missing the forest through the trees.

SPEAKER_01 16:48

Cost per lead matters as a part of an equation. As a just like every like five other data points. It's the funnel, but we can we could go forever on that. Okay, so five million. Um, I would say it's a lot of doing the same stuff better. So up your budgets on LSA. If you found a great aggregator that works, do you have a system? Keep upping it.

SPEAKER_04 17:06

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 17:07

Um, somewhere along this path, you can start to think about introducing pay-per-click more because yes, cost per lead is going to be a little bit higher than LSA. Everything's market dependent. Um, you're gonna have to pay more for a man for you know an agency to manage it. Yeah. But like what's great about pay-per-click is you can really uh position yourself well and you can scale it. I always tell people like LSA is great, but everybody's LSA account looks the same or LSA ad essentially. Yes. It's how it's how many reviews you have. You have a couple things you can toggle.

SPEAKER_04 17:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:36

But if I am running in a market where everyone's running PPC, and when I look for plumbing, you know, plumbing Akron, and the guy's ad says plumber and acron, and mine says, you know, uh plumbing, plumbing Akron, same day service, no service fee.

SPEAKER_03 17:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:51

No, like who are you picking? Yeah, you're picking the one with a unique selling proposition. We work with some people that are in heavily private equity markets, yeah. Uh, and I'm like, guys, let's run an ad that says still family owned, still locally owned, because consumers are more and more aware of private equity.

SPEAKER_03 18:08

And so I have a friend in Virginia, and he was telling me we actually had him on the show. But he was telling he might have even said on the show.

Competing Against Private Equity

SPEAKER_01 18:18

I I this is the conversation I had with him.

SPEAKER_03 18:20

Okay, yeah. So like he'll walk up, his text will walk up to the door, and like the customers will will ask, Hey, are you guys private equity at the door? Which was really interesting.

SPEAKER_01 18:31

He was the first guy because I was talking through how ads might make sense.

SPEAKER_03 18:34

I think that I think that coast, because Len the Plumber was one of the earlier big deals. I feel like that was 2017, 2018, big freaking company. And that went pretty early. And then Horizon has been humongous over there too. So I think like the combination of those two, they're like 40 branches each. Yeah, like I I think they got, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:54

Well, people know. And like I I live in Dallas, huge HVAC market, a lot of private equity. Yeah. Like people, people are aware. Um, and you know, even like if you'll, you know, go look on like a forum somewhere, it's like, hey, who's the best whatever company? It's like, hey, you know, the joke is like, well, if they walk in with an iPad, you know, run away. Like that's kind of the joke because everyone has the same play. But yeah, what's your unique selling proposition in your market? Is it do you work with a lot in a comp in a uh an area with a lot of chuck in in a truck? Then play like the professional, timely, you know, buttoned up uh you know, uh approach. Are you in a big private equity market? Well, we're we're still family owned, still locally owned. I love that because it tells people you're family owned and you still are, which implies that other people aren't.

SPEAKER_04 19:36

Like yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:37

Those little things can really work. So PBC is great for that. You can be way more targeted on the type of customer. Yeah, and you have budget, and so you can go for it.

SPEAKER_04 19:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:46

Um, real SEO strategy, like thinking through how does my local SEO, like maybe pushing on like a programmatic type with yeah, with my with my Google Business profile, how's that gonna tie into how my website performs? Um, what content am I putting on the website? And then this is also where, depending on how good you are at getting reviews,

Scaling Your Marketing Channels

SPEAKER_01 20:03

you can think about more GBP locations. Yeah. Um, you know, on the other side of town, like however far it's gonna be. Uh, because if you're able to get to a thousand reviews or 750 reviews, whatever, depending on your market, then you can support a second one. And can you get that to a hundred reviews really quick? Well, now you have another just like awesome review source that is really it's a lot harder to do that when you're at a million because you're not running enough jobs to actually support two profiles with enough reviews.

SPEAKER_04 20:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:30

Um, so that's big. And then you really get like into um you've grown your customer list over time. And so you're doing a lot more retargeting.

SPEAKER_03 20:41

So people see, I actually think that comes in earlier.

SPEAKER_01 20:43

Well, it's it should always be a play, but it becomes more of a um, it becomes a bigger deal because the bigger your list is. Now, if you've been in if you maybe are a family-owned company and you're at a million and a half, you may have a customer list as big as you know, as you do. Like if they've been in business for 80 years.

SPEAKER_03 21:00

The company that we took over in January, they had 8,000 people on the list. And like, that's a humongous list. Like I so the the number that I've always sort of had in mind was 6,000 people in your customer list is one full-time outbounder making a hundred calls a day. Yep. Because then you call your whole customer list every 90 days and then you just restart. Yeah. Because you probably won't get a hold of them. You'll probably actually only talk to them once a year. Yep. But 6,000 is like that's enough for a full-time person to call that list every single day and that'd be their whole job.

SPEAKER_01 21:29

And so even if you don't have 6,000, when your CSR is not picking up the phone or your dispatch or whatever, like so that that was another part of our core strategy for doubling that business.

SPEAKER_03 21:38

It was LSA and literally 20 outbounds a day. Like we actually couldn't even the company was so small that uh, because it only had four technicians. You couldn't service it. I think we have seven now. But like, yeah, we couldn't service it. If we did put a full time outbounder on it, we would book eight to ten appointments a day because that's what our full time outbounders book. Like, I don't have room for eight to ten appointments a day.

SPEAKER_02 21:58

Like, we're literally too small.

SPEAKER_03 22:00

Yeah, you need to hire it's too successful. It's too good of a lead channel. Here's a stat about Yelp that I bet you didn't know. When millions of people ask AI like ChatGPT, Perplexity, or any of the others what the best home service provider is, Yelp recommendations show up three times more than Angie, Thumbtack, Home Advisor, Better Business Bureau, and Nextdoor combined. And here's why that matters to you 91 to 97% of those searches do not include the business name. The homeowner hasn't picked anybody yet, and they're deciding right now. And Yelp is where they're getting their answers. These aren't low-intent browsers. Over half of Yelp's 76 million monthly audience earns six figures and owns their home. Jose Varga started five-star HVAC on his own in Dallas, and he turned on Yelp ads, and they hit 30% year-over-year growth with $650 revenue per call. And he grew his monthly leads by a 444%. If you want to own the moment when homeowners are making their choice, then you should be checking out Yelp. Start earning your share on Yelp's 350,000 daily home service leads by going to business.yelp slash owned and operated. Is AI killing SEO?

SPEAKER_00 23:15

Short answer, no. So I've been working in SEO for the last 10 years. Okay. And this question has existed in different forms since then and probably since before then.

SPEAKER_03 23:26

What are some other forms?

SPEAKER_00 23:28

So basically, is SEO dead? Has been a question that has been kicked around the digital uh sphere for a long time. And this is just like the the modern day AI era of that question.

SPEAKER_04 23:39

Yeah.

AI, SEO & The Future of Google Search

SPEAKER_00 23:40

Personally is what I feel. So in 2026, um the key to local success in SEO is being the most trustworthy, reliable, accurate answer exactly when somebody needs it, when they're searching. That has pretty much remained the same forever. But what has changed now is the fact that AI has not killed it, but probably changed it beyond recognition. Like for me personally, if I think back to when I first started working in SEO, I would probably never have imagined this. Um, but I don't think it's a bad thing at all. Um, so before to be able to rank, you would just need Google to crawl your website or crawl your page and index it.

SPEAKER_03 24:26

Yeah. I mean, even just two years ago. Yeah. You used to be able to, uh, you know, we were doing like a programmatic project and uh it was like inputting for uh in indexing every day or something. It was kind of ridiculous. But you used to be able to like submit for indexing or something like that. Yeah. And um yeah, it wasn't complicated. No. But honestly, I don't feel like because of the rapid state of change, I haven't really been paying attention at all to how SEO works now in the last 18 months. I just I have no idea.

SPEAKER_00 24:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:54

But I used to know, I used to know it worked.

SPEAKER_00 24:56

Yeah, for sure. Um, so like I said, I think like previously, it like you say, even like two or three years ago. Yeah. What was important is your page would get indexed. And that's all that Google cared about is indexing the page and going, okay, yeah, that can go on position three, page one, whatever. AI now needs context and it needs to understand those pages in order to be able to rank them within like AI overviews, AI queries on the platforms themselves. And it's so much more than just Google scanning a page, it's about AI going in, reading that page, understanding the context, understanding the what, the why, the where, specifically for local SEO, the where is very important. Um, and what that has given us, I think personally, is a much more meaningful set of data in 2026. So previously, obviously, we report and we still do, and uh any SEO will tell you that you report on traffic figures for your clients, you report on um like conversions. So traffic figures um, I think in the past have been a bit of a false son. So you could say, hey, actually, we sent 20,000 visitors to your website, but a lot of the time, 15,000 of those are going looking at blogs and they've never taken action.

SPEAKER_03 26:04

Yeah, yeah. So we we bought a company in 2021.

SPEAKER_00 26:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:09

And they had 30,000 monthly hits. Yeah. And it was like, wow, like what you know, what's going on? And honestly, the they should what they should have done with it is sold air filters or something. Like they should have actually made use of that. Yeah. Um, because like traffic was coming from all over, but it was, yeah, blogs, because they're backlink strategy.

SPEAKER_00 26:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:27

But like their actual intent, visitors, was very low.

SPEAKER_00 26:31

Yeah, exactly. And it's um, you know, it's like it always looks great on paper and it's a great number. But when it comes down to the crux of it, if you're only sending people to a blog post and they're only getting information and like DIYing the pro the service that you're selling and taking it away, while those numbers look good on paper for like figures, actually you're not getting people that are there specifically to convert.

SPEAKER_04 26:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:54

So if we're talking about like AI overviews and like how-tos and Google keeping people on the results page, um, then what you're doing is getting a set of data where you can, you know, like quite confidently say the people that are actually coming to your site and clicking through are a potential true like lead or customer and not just some Joe Blogs looking for how to fix a dripping faucet, for example.

SPEAKER_03 27:17

I think what people get freaked out about just from like what I see from Reddit or just talking to people is like traffic has gone down. And your your thought is yes, bad traffic went down.

unknown 27:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:33

Not that it's necessarily bad traffic, but I think it was low intent. Yeah, low intent traffic that would often like inflate numbers, like it make it make us SEOs look way better than we actually are, because again, then those aren't like converting pages, those aren't who are ever going to convert.

SPEAKER_03 27:50

Yeah, that's interesting. I haven't paid much attention. Um I don't know how our like we should look it up, but uh like I'm sure our marketing manager does, but I don't know how our monthly I'm I'm assuming it dropped over the past few years, because like I think everybody's dropped. What has I does DA matter anymore, like domain authority?

SPEAKER_00 28:09

I'm gonna say so maybe controversial here.

SPEAKER_03 28:12

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 28:12

Um I don't buy into DA. So DA or like DR, depending on which tool you're using, um, is unique to like each tool that you go and so AHREs, it's not Google, it's a HRFs.

SPEAKER_03 28:25

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 28:26

So like Sumrush or Search Atlas. Um and it is like uh their formula or their algorithm to come up with that figure. If you put the same website into three different ones, you'll get a different figure.

SPEAKER_04 28:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:38

Um, and like your site can have domain authority, but domain authority isn't a measurable metric that you could say, oh yeah, you're a 10 out of 100. Um, and I think it's super easy for people to get hung up on that. When in reality, what you want to look at a bottom line, if there's just one thing is the conversions, right? I I could ignore every single other metric if conversion is going in the right direction.

SPEAKER_03 29:01

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, we uh our my cut, my like commentary on domain authority. I we're a Tref's house here. So uh so my commentary on that is like over the past couple of years, our domain authority keeps going up and we're just like we're not doing anything different. So, like what we're assuming is happening is we've ranked well in the past, and like our blogs that were low intent, like did whatever they're gonna do and got more backlinks because we have not been working that hard on it. And I think that we're just showing up in more search because of the amount of volume, and that's giving us like more credibility or something. But we're up like 10 points, like we're in the 40s and like we were in the 20s, yeah. And it's like we didn't do anything. Yeah, I mean, we'll keep it, but it is it is a bit interesting, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:50

And age domain does add into that, um, like domain authority score as well. But that um it kind of contradicts itself because you could get a new website spun up that gets a ton of great backlinks straight off the bat that isn't all, doesn't have that sort of like historical footprint um and performs really well, but their DA may still say seven.

SPEAKER_03 30:10

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. All right, so you so you're thinking that searches are down. Uh God, I wish I had my laptop and we could like dive into this a little bit. But searches are down, but it's bad searches, or not bad, but like low intent, which again totally tracks because I'm sure that um I'm thinking of my friends' websites, like we've talked about it like six months ago, maybe. And the blog, like their traffic went down, but it was all like how to fix your Navian water heater. Yeah. And it's like, yeah, okay, nobody really gives a shit about that. Like, I don't give a shit about that. Okay, and like have we seen uh I had someone on the show, um, it was Zach from Mantle, and he he's not like an SEO expert, but it was just like data. Uh, what he was finding that it was like 60% of people found their con their contractor still on Google, 20% from like referrals, uh, but it was only like three from Chat GPD. Has that like changed or like any?

SPEAKER_00 31:06

Um, this is another one that I've got a bit of a hot take on because it was a conversation I have with my clients a ton.

SPEAKER_03 31:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:13

Um, and I personally don't know anyone that uses an AI platform as a search engine. I don't know about you. Um I mean, the results are always terrible. Yeah, exactly. Um, and the they all pull their data from Google. Uh Google's got the biggest knowledge base, the most data. Um I I guess the intention is that one day that won't be the case. Um, but yeah, I don't think that um Google should be quaking in its boots as a search engine um that's going to be replaced with AI for at least the the immediate future and probably the next five, 10 years.

SPEAKER_03 31:48

Yeah. So with like sort of low intense searches down, your take is that high intense searches are still happening on Google?

SPEAKER_00 31:57

Absolutely. Yeah. So if you think of things like um looking for the best Thai food in best Thai food in Stowe, Ohio, for example, you're not going to read an AI overview. You may get a few suggestions from there, but then you're gonna go click through the profiles, take a look at the review counts, look at the paper.

SPEAKER_03 32:13

So those so that's what I've heard is like discovery happens on Chat GPT or Perplexy or whatever. But then like authentication or or like uh verification happens on Google. So hey, I was served up, like give me some tie options for this event or whatever the fuck. And then we're gonna go over to Google and like, are their reviews terrible or are they good? Uh and I feel like that's how I like I'll occasionally do that.

SPEAKER_00 32:40

Yeah, for sure. There's still a lot of distrust with the general public with AI.

SPEAKER_03 32:44

Well, it's it's because the results are terrible. Like I I tried to do, I try I tried to do this uh yesterday, and it was sort of funny because I was I logged in, I like opened up my laptop this morning and my search was still up and I was looking for like something weird. And like I never used Chat GPT to like look for places to go, but I was like, hey, give me the vibeest coffee shop in Cleveland. And and in my mind, I couldn't think of another way to word it. And because that's how I was wording it, I was like, I don't think Google's gonna do much with this search. So because I think I said vibeist, and um so I went over to Chat GPT, it was terrible. Like the the results were still were still terrible.

SPEAKER_00 33:25

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 33:26

But yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:27

Um, yeah, that level of distrust, like I think it's there with like the general Joe Blogs member of the public, people who are spending money on um digital services, so our clients specifically, uh a ton, ton of them uh don't don't buy into it, don't want it. Um obviously it's a case of you know, we have conversations about the benefits and how we, you know, how we don't just spit out AI generated content as is and we humanize and edit content. Um so that that tracks with that as well. Um another thing that's still always gonna get clicks is emergency queries. Um so if I'm like emergency plumber in STO and I'm looking for that at 9 p.m. at night, I need to take an immediate action.

SPEAKER_04 34:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:07

I'm not even looking at the AI overview. I'm scrolling straight down, finding that call button and picking up the phone, booking the job absolutely will never ever go away from um, will never be sort of like taken over by AI. Um, and then brand searches. So somebody that already knows you is typing in um owned and operated, or is typing in Wilson companies, either they may not be a new client, uh, but they may be like a repeat customer or somebody that's had a word of mouth recommendation, they know what they're looking for, they don't need the options.

SPEAKER_04 34:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:37

So they're typing that in. They're seeing the profile, clicking a button, picking up a phone.

SPEAKER_03 34:42

Yeah. Yeah, people um what we found, which in some ways it's good, in some ways it's like kind of annoying. Uh, but we'll look at our monthly reporting for our GBPs. And some of the like most of our traffic, like north of 80%, yeah, comes from someone searching Wilson. So like the good is like, hey, we've been effective at branding. And do, you know, hey, great job. You know, all that money went somewhere. The bad is like, okay, not that many people are like, we're not showing up in the plumber near me's. And I don't know if there's just not that many plumber near me's, but um, it was kind of it, it was really shocking when I first saw that because I really thought that, hey, all of our traffic is coming from, you know, emergency plumber, what hot water tank broken, you know, sort of pick a problem. And really the vast majority was like someone just looking for us.

SPEAKER_00 35:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:41

Which I don't know if that's good or bad. Like it's good and bad there.

SPEAKER_00 35:44

Yeah, I think if you're operating on a large scale, like you are, um, then it's never a bad thing and it doesn't really matter. Um, if you are a smaller company um who can't rank for those key terms, but your brand search is like 50 a month. Um, so you're getting not much, then you're like, hey, actually, we need to look at how we target brand versus brand, how we direct people um straight to service pages rather than just to their homepage. Yeah. Um, supporting like contextual content, like build that network of content around the topics of the services. Um, but yeah, for like a larger company, the like it doesn't really matter.

SPEAKER_03 36:21

Yeah. Okay. Well, like how can people drive SEO today? Like, what does SEO look like? How do you do it successfully?

SPEAKER_00 36:28

Okay. Um, so in 2026, SEO is building for a user experience. Um, the keywords are not enough. The um sort of like index and spit out a page into uh the SERPs is not enough. You need to be able to demonstrate authority and expertise. So when these LLMs are crawling your site and taking this information, they're like, actually, this guy's no, this guy knows what he's talking about, and we want to put this or serve this as a result within the LLM. Um, but again, it comes back to that contextual information and the the the AI model understanding what is on your site rather than just going, oh, keyword, cool, position three.

SPEAKER_03 37:06

Yeah. How do you think um it's just like a uh issue that we're having? I'm curious like your take on this. Yeah. We're using Webflow.

SPEAKER_00 37:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 37:20

And uh like we we did a programmatic project with serverscalers like three, four years. I don't even remember what I remember it. And uh we got on Webflow and uh Sam Thompson like pushed that programmatic project out, and I don't even know how many freaking pages, it's like 20,000 or something. Yeah, something ridiculous. And one of the problems that we had is we ran out of like pages or categories or something. Like, what do you what do you do? Um, so if you like run out of the strengths of I'm sorry, to my point, bringing it back to this topic. Yeah, one of the strengths of AI is that we can mass produce SEO. Yeah. And like you can take on a project like programmatic that, you know, 10 years ago was probably like a million-dollar project. Yeah. And Angie's list invested tens of millions of dollars into their website, and you can do it now for like not a million dollars, right? Like you can do it somewhat affordably. Um, and we did that project in 2023, and I think that was a huge part of our growth over the net like next couple of years was we hit AI hard and fast when it first came out and covered everything in the world. And now it's like, okay, we did that. Now what should we be working on?

SPEAKER_00 38:32

Yeah, sure. So I think like in uh a case like that, where you're like actually we've exhausted every service, we've exhausted every arm of every service, we've exhausted every location.

SPEAKER_03 38:41

20,000 or 17, somewhere in that range, like it was crazy.

SPEAKER_00 38:45

Yeah. If you've genuinely reached the limit of what you can uh produce in terms of like topic, um, obviously, like time goes on, there will be developments in all sorts of things. But if you are genuinely at the point where you're like, I've reached the absolute limit of this, then you just refresh the content. You add more expertise in there, you can add quotes from uh somebody that carries clout in the industry. Again, just building that trust, that authority, um, like expanding on the content, adding like um mixing up the FAQs, like researching what has changed since 2023 when those went up. Maybe there will have been a massive shift in searches for a specific keyword that relates to something that wasn't a thing in 2023. So think of, for example, if there was like a big weather event somewhere that might have, I don't know, changed a hurricane or something. Yeah, that's changed like the landscape of like a city or a town. So there is always an opportunity to refresh content and it is always like it's never a bad thing. Obviously, if you have like a really well-written thousand-word page and you're just gonna bin it off of like 10 words and a picture of like a local landmark, then yeah, but there is always room to improve. Um, the key thing about SEO is and this is like said to death, but it's obviously never done. It's never ever finished. You can never get to a point where, like, oh, my SEO is finished, I can sit back now because there is always someone waiting on the wings to come and knock you off the top spot. And once that happens, if you don't keep on top of that, then it's a domino effect and you just fall further and further and further down the surface. So um, yeah, even if you think you're done, you're definitely not.

SPEAKER_03 40:19

Yeah. As your business grows, the financial decisions get a lot more expensive. Things like hiring techs, buying trucks, raising pricing, and marketing. If you're making those decisions without really understanding your numbers, you're probably leaving a pile of money on the table. And that's where profit and grit comes in. Tyler has built, scaled, and sold a $25 million service business. So his advice comes from real operating experience. You'll work with him directly to improve your cash flow, understand your margins, and build better forecasts to make you more confident as you make decisions as you grow. One client increased bottom line profit by 11% after fixing pricing, improving job mix, and stabilizing their cash flow. If you're doing between three and five million a year and you want more clarity around your finances, book a free 20-minute strategy call at the link below. There's a company, um, and this still freaking cracks me up. So there's two companies, but one of them specifically is like they're not uh they're not a good like local plumbing company. Like they're not great marketers, they're not um, I don't know. I don't think they've actually grown in like 15 years. Like I think they've been at $2 million for literally 15 years, like which, you know, I it is kind of impressive in its own right. Uh they own page one of Google, and I do not understand how for the fucking life of me, because we have put so much work into SEO, and they still show up like top five searches for Plumber Akron. And I'm just like, that's crazy. So, like, what do you think I can do to kick them off?

SPEAKER_00 42:00

Um, so my first like first stop on that journey would be to do like a obviously like a third party audit of their site, figure out what they're doing in the background.

SPEAKER_04 42:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:09

Um, so look at the backlinks that they've got, look at how long their site has been established, look at how often they're publishing content.

SPEAKER_03 42:16

I don't think they've touched their website, like they couldn't have. The business has gone nowhere in 15 years.

SPEAKER_00 42:21

Yeah, sure. Then in that case, then I would say that um strong brand recognition. Is it well known in the area? Do people like if you say it, does some someone in the street would they know who you're talking about?

SPEAKER_03 42:32

Maybe.

SPEAKER_00 42:34

Then backlinks.

SPEAKER_03 42:35

Like it's crazy. Like, I bet I could look right now and they're still like it's wild.

SPEAKER_00 42:40

Yeah, that is wild. I'd like to have a look at it.

SPEAKER_03 42:42

I'll show you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll show you. So there's two of them. So one of them like earned it. Like they they did good, the business is good, and like I'm like, okay, like, you know, pop off. But yeah, the other one is just like, what how? How are you doing this? Um, it it it's it's really uh like genuinely wild to me. Okay, so authority now was back, probably still is backlinks, but like, you know, you're you're talking about like quoting influencers or quoting like big people in the space to drive more authority. Can you give us some examples that are like home service-y?

SPEAKER_00 43:18

Yeah, for sure. So um, if we were, for example, someone was going to write an article um about um loft insulation, for example.

SPEAKER_04 43:28

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 43:28

So um, in that article, you would want to have direct quotes from somebody. Um, they don't have to be well known, um, but as long as Google can recognize that this person is knowledgeable and is an authority on this subject. So I'm sure there's some big players in the loft insulation world that aren't well known by anyone outside of it. Um, but um, adding like expert insights from those kind of people and marking those things up in the back end um with like structured data and just feeding into that um this is useful, helpful content delivered by an expert, not just some random guy who's thrown a page up on a website.

SPEAKER_03 44:05

Yeah. Okay.