Live Show at Shed University - Part 2

Unlock the potential of your shed business as Jeff, our SEO maestro, walks us through the digital landscape where search engine optimization, marketing, and sales tango to a tune that turns heads and opens wallets. We're spilling secrets that transform those stunning, yet silent, websites into lead-generating powerhouses. From the allure of immediate paid ad results to the enduring rewards of a strong organic presence, this conversation is a treasure map to the 'three stack' peak on Google's mountain of search results.

This episode is a kaleidoscope of creative online marketing, where domain decisions can make or break your digital dominance. Join us as we pick Jeff's brain about Shedhub's strategies and Dylan's tales of ad management and videography, culminating in a toolkit that's not just theory but tried-and-true tactics ready for your business arsenal.

Feel the pulse of the market with us as we sift through digital and traditional marketing gold, from the precision of A/B testing to the personal touch of door-to-door sales.  Witness the Old Hickory dealer integration magic and the collaborative spirit that expands markets. This isn't just another marketing masterclass—this is your invitation to an evolution.

Also, find out how the podcast can be heard throughout the plain communities by dialing the number 330-997-3055. If the number is busy, just dial again! 

For more information or to know more about the Shed Geek Podcast visit us at our website.

Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube at the handle @shedgeekpodcast.

To be a guest on the Shed Geek Podcast visit our website and fill out the "Contact Us" form.

To suggest show topics or ask questions you want answered email us at info@shedgeek.com.

This episodes Sponsors:
Studio Sponsor: Union Grove Lumber

Mobeno Solar Solutions
Shed Geek Marketing
My Shed
Luxguard

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:36

You're now listening to part two of our stage time discussing Marketing and sales at the shed you, the shed University event, knoxville, tennessee. I hope you guys are getting some good information. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions. Here's part two. So the idea behind SEO becomes a very important topic and this is I really want Jeff to kind of discuss Sort of some of his expertise in that particular area. We call him an SEO strategist, but he's so much more again, I say he's a brilliant tech mind in general that I lean on constantly for that reason. But if you, jeff, if you got this website, it's here now. We need to get it on a four-lane highway.

Speaker 1: 1:25

We need to get it seen, we got this beautiful website and now I'm upset because I'm not getting any leads. What's going on here? No one's coming to my website to buy a shed why not?

Speaker 3: 1:36

Right. So if your website is not showing up, that's where search engine optimization comes in. You can launch a big, beautiful website. That's very expensive, but if nobody knows about it it's not going to do you a bit of good. Most I shouldn't say most, I would say well, well, maybe most a lot of people start their shopping journey online. Now, when I shop for a car, I go to AutoTrader to see what's out there. If I'm looking for a used vehicle, if I'm looking for a new car, I'm going to go straight to the brand's website, see if I can custom order a car there. And so the first stop for many shoppers is online. So how do you get your website visible? And that's search engine optimization. And there's all kinds of things to do, and I guess I'll sort of take you through a typical Google search. So let's say you're Pretend you're a customer, you're looking for sheds near, and type in the name of your town, the very, very top of a Google search. You're gonna see the paid ads. Right, that's what Dylan's good at. Those are important. Those are very important because a lot of people will click, but a lot of people won't. A lot of people are gonna say they're just advertising. I'm gonna go dig deeper and do some research.

Speaker 3: 3:00

The next section of Google search might be shopping, depends a little bit. You might get shopping results where you see a bunch of paid placements for a particular product. You'll also see, like your Google my business listings up there and those are very, very important. Those are important. First, say, like a 30 mile radius of around where you live, you want to. You want your business to show up in that top three results and there's certain things you can do that you can expand your range so that the Google my business shows up even in towns around you. That's probably a different discussion. And then you're gonna start getting into your natural listings in a Google search and typically you want to be in the top ten of those natural search because People don't scroll down that far.

Speaker 3: 3:59

Depending on what browser you're on, you're either gonna have to click the next button to see the next 10, 11 results or you just it's an endless scroll If you're on certain iPads or other mobile devices, and so If I let's I'm gonna put, let's pretend I'm the CEO of a shed company I Want to show up everywhere in that top ten results. I want to work Google's algorithm to make sure that my webpage is hopefully in the top spot. Maybe my Facebook page is in there, maybe I've got listings on shed hub or Sheds for sale, and those results are showing up there. You want to be the authority in that top page and the reason for that is you want to show that customer that, hey, this is the place to go. You're just seeing my stuff over and over and over and over again in the top, in the first page of Google search, and so there's a lot of different things to make that work. You know, optimizing page names, making sure that your business is associated with the service area, that you have Great content.

Speaker 3: 5:16

Links from other sites Help you rank better. That if you're getting links from other sites, that sort of consider like off-site SEO. There's a lot of on-page SEO when you're just working keywords in, working with content and making yourself an authority for your area, and that's something I work on every single day. And so, for instance, for with with shed hub, we get a visitor every 70 80 seconds to the site. In August we hit over a million impressions on Google search so, but that takes a lot of time Search so, but that takes years of work to get there.

Speaker 3: 6:05

You, if someone's trying to Sell you that you're gonna rank on page one within a few months. I'd be a little hesitant to believe that, but there are a lot of good best practices you can use To get ranking better and better and better over time. So ads I feel like ads are great. If you're a brand new shed company, ads are good all the time. But especially if you're a brand new company, ads are gonna get you in the top search right away. But if you want to be in business for years, you want to gain that credibility. You want to work on your SEO over the course of years and make sure you're the authority over time. Jeff, you mentioned something earlier you talked about.

Speaker 4: 6:50

Whenever you look at a Google page, you see generally you know your sponsored ad and it generally says sponsored in a kind of a bold right under the search bar. You have a sponsored ad. Then you have your Google my business and also you can have a sponsored ad in Google my business and then you have your organic searches, right. So in the marketing world, if you are, you have a paid ad, you're within the top three. That's Visual, without hitting any buttons on Google my business and you rank on on the first page of Google. That's called a three stack in the marketing world and that is your absolute goal.

Speaker 4: 7:25

Now we had a client not long ago ask us. They're like well, what about Bing? And and ultimately, what Bing tries to do is do what Google has already done. So you know we, we use best practices for Google on SEO and then that translates to all other search engines by default. But your ultimate goal is to, oh is to stack that main page of Google with sponsored ads Google my business, organic search. And then Jeff talked about backlinks on Shedhub, sheds for sale Could be Yelp, it could be gosh, there's, there's tons of them and and those are backlinks.

Speaker 1: 8:02

But that's the goal so Obviously, you You're seeing just the nature of the conversation sort of take place in a way that we're we're discussing Marketing and its effort into in the road to the sale as a lead generation, which I think Lynn was the first thing he said in the definition of marketing, the ideas that, like, we want to create as many leads as we can, and Dylan sort of alluded to the the frustration that you might have, as we have the same one as a marketing agency, you might have as a manufacturer, if you've got sales lots or even if you're a dealer here today that says, well, I don't know, I just rely on my best practices and I've known what I've been comfortable with for years, which is, you know, creating a referral program and having a really nice network of People that I focus on in the local community and and there's nothing wrong with that, this is not a either or situation, and sometimes I think that's where the shed industry gets hooked up. We've got the guys here from Sheds, or so get the guys here from Shedhub. Somebody would ask me, which one should I use? Use whatever helps. You sell a shed. Okay, don't get caught up on what the industry does in terms of like comparing, use whatever helps you sell a shed. Our answer and and and and what we will do is we will follow the trends that work. It doesn't matter for us who helps you sell a shed. What matters is that you sell a shed and if we can be part of that success, you kind of lean toward us as a Partner where you say, hey, you know, you kind of help me move in that direction.

Speaker 1: 9:39

Understanding Facebook a little more, I tend to believe this is my experience, maybe this is yours People insult what they don't understand, either insulted or they just completely want to refrain from it altogether. There's a lot that you can learn in both the marketing and the sales process and you'll never, probably, perfect either one. But you should always be working towards perfection. As Chris said, until you get it, until you never get it wrong as opposed to getting it right. So if it's Facebook, if it's, it, doesn't matter if another program comes up. You know Keywords, super important shedcom. That's for sale right now. A lot of you guys might not know that. If you want to know about it, huller at me. It's expensive. Oh my goodness, he wants a lot of money for it. I don't know what that would do? What would that do for your, for your algorithm? What is somebody bought? Shed calm with that, just really change everything for them. All of a sudden they own that domain and they can do so much with that because of the natural, just organic nature of the keyword.

Speaker 1: 10:42

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Speaker 3: 11:53

Yeah, so think about Zillow. It's a nonsense word and yet it's synonymous with real estate and so just because you buy a domain name like shedcom, you have to do something awesome with it Still to make it right. Yeah, so I mean, if you do your branding right, you can use any word you want and have it associated with you and your business.

Speaker 1: 12:27

Yeah, it's. It's one of those things where, wow, I mean, I didn't know there's a whole business. I mean three, four years ago I didn't know those a whole business just based around but purchasing URLs for the purpose of, you know, selling them and reselling and creating, you know, a whole intellectual property value there, you know to the tune of six figures plus you know for, like that domain, and you're thinking, wow, I mean just to to try to get in front of customers. So for those who are thinking I don't really need to embrace this, I'm calling it a post COVID era, but honestly, com's been around for a long time. People been migrating toward Retail and wanting to shop online and and I would say this, maybe this is fair People want to research.

Speaker 1: 13:16

If you remember, one of the key terms that I started out with in Marketing marketing was marketing research and a lot of times it might not be that they want to purchase Is that correct? But they want to inform theirself as much as possible about a product, where to find it, who's the authority on it, where might be the best place to go, and, to Jeff's credit, whenever you're showing up constantly, that was the really cool thing about, like when, shed's for sale and Shedhub came out and the e-commerce platform is. They were able to kind of give you the opportunity to rank without having proper SEO Immediately, and that might be why, if you work with a marketing company, that may have even discouraged you from going to those programs, because, well, dylan and Jeff and I are going to talk about how we're going to focus on creating SEO, so we wanted to work with the best. I mean, that was what was important for us. Jeff's being modest, but what he did with Shedhub is not just the best thing that we've seen in Shed SEO. It's the best thing that we've seen in SEO in any industry. That if you, you know you Google Sheds near me Nine times out of ten.

Speaker 1: 14:23

Especially if you go to an incognito window right now and Google doesn't pick up on your search history and skew it, you're gonna find, you know, a building and you're gonna see it show up on first place search results in almost everywhere in the United States. And I know it makes you nervous when I say that, because he has to rely on Google's algorithm to actually back that up and we can't control that, but typically speaking, it very, very rarely fails. So, which isn't you know, if you're selling SEO, which we are here in in marketing, it's it's not exactly something that you want your clients to be aware of, but you should want to be. If you're trying to help your clients, you should want them to have every access to selling a shed, whether you can be the one that brings that to fruition or not.

Speaker 1: 15:07

Jeff, you said something earlier said that's something Dylan's really good at is creating that. That those Google PPC ads or the meta ads or something like that. How Dylan is somebody's trying to get their message out. How is that more of a shotgun approach Versus a rifled approach with SEO and organic SEO? How's the shotgun approach of throwing out some PPC ads and meta ads and what are the differences in Google and and and meta?

Speaker 4: 15:37

Oh, good questions. So, as we started earlier, we were talking about building your marketing shed. So we're kind of coming from the angle of starting from scratch or you know, you've never done it before, you haven't done SEO or focused on it anyway. Google PPC ads, which means pay per click, so, like if you ever seen one of those, I want to say this if you ever get on Google and you type in Shads near me and you see your competition, they run paid ads. If you click it it's gonna cost some 50 cents or so, but anyway. So Whenever you run paid ads Facebook or Google it's pretty well a light switch. Google takes, you know, seven to 14 days to kind of learn your ad, but there's a huge difference between the two and I'll explain that. But I'll say that it's more of a light switch approach, shotgun approach. Seo is a long game. You know. We tell our clients don't expect to see anything for six months. Plus, there's a commitment to it and, honestly, within marketing agencies, from my experience, in my opinion SEO is probably the shadiest service to sell because you're never going to actually see, you're never gonna see the product until months later. You hope it comes to fruition, that your marketing agency is doing their job and using Google's best practices To enhance your SEO. So you have to be very careful.

Speaker 4: 17:03

There's four types of SEO. So if one person says they do SEO, you need to know what kind. So and all, just if you want to write these down. You have on page SEO everything done on your website. And Then, within on page SEO, you have something called technical SEO, then the the two things that are done outside of your website. You have off page SEO. That could be it essentially, you know, putting your business on Google, my business or Yelp or TripAdvisor or whatever it is. Those are all. That's all, off page SEO, and what you're doing is you're transferring authority from those websites into yours because it links to your website and they're a known, trusted source. And the last thing is called local SEO. Local SEO, so, yeah, so so your paid campaigns or light switch, you know you can turn it on immediately. Seo it's a long game.

Speaker 4: 18:03

And the difference between Google and Facebook. I'll start with Facebook. So, everyone in here, you get on Facebook. You get on Instagram. If you don't know, the meta is tied together. So if you have an Instagram and it's tied to your meta account, then your. Your ads will automatically run on Instagram and you should. Facebook is smart enough to determine if your Instagram ads are performing or not. If they are not, it will, you know, make pretty well All of your budget run inside of Facebook.

Speaker 4: 18:30

None of us get on Facebook. I get on Facebook to get on marketplace and and look at things that I need, right. That's what I do, so I don't do a lot of scrolling. But People don't get on there on Facebook to get sold to, right. They're not getting on there generally to look at products unless you're going to marketplace. We'll use that as an exception. We would consider Facebook. It's more of a cold lead. So Facebook is a lot cheaper than Google, but it takes a little bit more to warm them up. So on Facebook you target by behaviors, interests and demographics, as well as age. Those are the four kind of targeting parameters of meta.

Speaker 4: 19:09

All right, and now when you're scrolling, you don't get on your newsfeed to get sold to. But they know what you look at. They know your website searches, your history, they know what you're interested in. They know all of the marketplace ads you've clicked. They know if you're trying to buy a computer or if you're looking for an old Toyota truck or whatever it is they know, and that correlates if there's somebody that's offering a product that is, that is tied to what you're, what you're wanting, they will market towards you. So it's. It's a little more difficult to advertise on Facebook, but it's a lot cheaper, and so it's it does work and I think everybody's proven that.

Speaker 4: 19:47

Now, google is a little bit different. Google is more expensive, but that's because Google you would consider them a warm lead and the reason that is is because they're they're they're we're targeting via keywords. So sheds near me, that's a keyword, right. Sheds near me. So we're targeting that keyword and all these different towns and we're forcing our ad to pop up and we know they already want that service if you're doing well on your campaigns, right. So that's the difference between Facebook and Google. They are very different, but they both work very well and if nobody's ran a lead form campaign on Facebook, we see those do really well a lot of times. Folks do not want to get off the app, they want to stay on the app, and a lead form allows them to not exit the app, and they can. You can still get all of their information. So that would be my answer.

Speaker 4: 20:41

Hi, I'm Dylan from the shed geek marketing team and I want to dress a common misconception about marketing. Often, people approach us for Just one service, like social media management, where we plan and schedule your monthly posts. While this is a valuable time saver, it's just one piece of your complete marketing strategy, much like a shed with its various components. Let's simplify it. Think of your social media channels and Google my business as the foundation. Similar to the runners of a shed, they support your digital storefront, your website, which is like the floor joists, and ban boards. To enhance your marketing, you'll need tools like Google analytics, facebook pixel and Google tags, which are like the walls. These tools help track the success of your campaigns, measuring form, submissions, 3d shed creations and phone calls generated by our ads.

Speaker 4: 21:27

Now let's talk about the roof, meta and Google ad campaigns. These are the top layers that complete your marketing shed. While you may inquire about one specific service, remember they all contribute to the overall structure of your marketing strategy. At shed geek marketing, we're happy to work on one individual aspect, but our goal is to build a comprehensive marketing shed that will truly stand out in the digital landscape. If you're ready to talk about your marketing strategy that will take your shed business to the next level. Just go to shed geek comm and fill out a submission form, or contact the shed geek for more information.

Speaker 1: 22:03

Man. I really want to get into so many other details. I told you that Dylan has a pre-existing marketing business where he works with oh I don't know, he works with guys that work in powersports CPAs. He was the biggest wedding videographer in our I don't know 100 mile radius for a long time, because that's kind of how he got started. They may be still be, I think he's so busy that's kind of went by the wayside. I don't know what you guys' budgets are here, but I think he won't mind me saying this.

Speaker 1: 22:35

Even before coming into Sheds he ventured in and playing with these different areas and ad budgets enough to be comfortable to sort of understand all of this. So I mean clients outside the shed industry with I don't know trusting you with what half a million dollar ad budget annually. So I mean you really got to know where to do this so you can do all of these things yourself. Marketing is available for you to do that. Currently, what we offer and what we're, I guess, selling here today, if you will, is an expertise of like where to do that, to educate you. So what we found in the shed industry is before you can sell something to the shed industry, sometimes you have to educate, and people are on different levels of spectrum. You've got guys with doctorate degrees that could be up here giving this speech. Maybe they just don't or haven't started a marketing business. And then you've got guys at an elementary level. You have to be able to explain to everyone inside of that school sort of meet them where they are and respect them at where they are, because if they're afraid to ask questions, you may end up later saying, well, I just didn't get any results out of what you did. We hired a firm and they just didn't produce anything. Well, it could be two things they could have not been equipped to give you the success you need, or they may not have been comfortable with explaining to you the process of everything that they do so that you could understand it well enough to make an educated decision Super transparent. I mean, we're here today. Obviously it's free information. I want to save some stuff for the VIP, so I don't want to go too far because there's a reading to adding some of the value to that, but we still got a few more minutes here. There's so many things I want to discuss. There's so many things we could discuss. You said something early on. That really clicked with me, dylan about Google's a warm lead because you're targeting those keywords. You could tie all that back into branding.

Speaker 1: 24:35

A perfect example of branding is shed. Companies typically are very fragmented. Oftentimes you'll be a dealer or you'll be a manufacturer. If you're named this please forgive me, I don't know You're ABC shed company over here and you manufacture sheds and you got 10 lots You're giving, oftentimes in a consignment model. You're giving away your branding by going to those dealer networks of 10 and you're saying, okay, you're a 1099 independent contractor. We're not franchising all of your Facebook pages and the website. And if you guys want to go out and create your own website, perfect, go for it. Now they're out here branding Johnny Sheds.

Speaker 1: 25:22

And now you end up with this nightmare of branding and you say what kind of sheds are those? These are Johnny Sheds. I'm Johnny and these are Johnny Sheds, but these are actually ABC Sheds. So the customer's like what am I buying? Am I buying a Johnny Shed? Am I buying an ABC Shed? Well, you're buying a Johnny Shed.

Speaker 1: 25:42

We rebranded it, which in theory, is true, unless, of course, you're on consignment, because you don't own those right, unless you purchase them wholesale and then you can call them whatever you want and call them Johnny Sheds or whatever you want. So we really try to go through the educational process of like understanding all of what you do, whether you're a dealer who sells for a big box store, a small manufacturer, or whether you're a manufacturer who also sells for their self. We're a fan of franchising. You should own your digital assets. Dylan kind of mentioned that a little bit. We work with as many companies in the Shed industry as we can, just not one over the other. I'm just naming a few. We've collaborated with Shed Pro. We've collaborated with Digital Shed Builder, ideal Room, my Shed. We've worked with Shed Suite constantly the new Shed Suite marketing 3D Sensei.

Speaker 1: 26:39

So like you're rent-owned company, none of that really matters to us. It's not like super important to us. For us it's really important that you do your due diligence to find out. Same with your RTO, whatever it looks like For us. We'll just sort of meet you where you are and say, yes, we can recommend. But it's good that you do your due diligence, go through all these products. And if you missed it, you definitely should have went to the Phil Falls seminar at the last Shed Show. That was actually here where he kind of went through the details of all those companies. It was an excellent seminar to be at and just very informational. So if you have those questions, you're going to get them different from one to the next, but we will always be in the position that you should own your digital assets. We have run across I don't know what we've run across so far About three, three or four three.

Speaker 1: 27:28

Yeah. So if you don't own those digital assets, whenever you no longer utilize those services, your data is gone, which means your marketing company can't be as effective if you move forward. So it's very, very, very imperative that you own your digital assets, and the same for your website. We don't own your URLs. We want you to own your URLs. That way, if you get tired of our service, kick us to the curb. You don't like us. You still got your URL that you can go out and it's not held hostage. What was the one that we ran across where somebody was kind of felt like they were kind of getting taken on the hosting?

Speaker 4: 28:04

Oh yeah, gentleman was being charged, so I'll build a quick picture for you. If you have a road, then you have your property, you have an acre and then you have a house. Well, your URL, which is your dot com, that gets you to the property, then your property, that is the hosting or your server, and then the house is your website, no matter what it's built on. And there was a gentleman we ran into and he was being charged $900 a month for hosting. Hosting is generally like $600, even sometimes cheaper than that, depending on now if your website is gigantic.

Speaker 1: 28:43

This is all different but, relevant to Sheds, a little over $10,000 a year for hosting, which could have been three, four or 500 bucks a year, and he just didn't know. He didn't know what to ask. So that's why we're here today. What we're trying to accomplish is creating more just, generalized knowledge. If you want more intuitive knowledge, you're obviously welcome to reach out to us ask a question. We're going to have a VIP meeting here in just a little bit Breakout session. We'll also have the VIP dinner tonight. We're always open for a Zoom call. I want to give a few questions. We've got to about 45, so we've got 15 minutes and I know that there's questions out there. Deanna will have the microphone. If you guys don't ask them, I will, but I try to ask what might be on your mind that you don't feel like perking up and saying this is the time to ask it. So if you have a super in-depth question about videography, SEO, ads, website development, you name?

Speaker 4: 29:41

it Email campaigns print mailers automations.

Speaker 1: 29:47

We want to be stopped. We actually want you to ask questions that challenge us and make us go back and be better at what we're doing. So feel free to give it your best shot. And if you're like, hey, this is just general inquiry, I'm curious about this and I don't even know how to ask the question, maybe We'll try to work through that. Yes, sir, let's get the mic. Deanna, you care? Blue jacket over here in the third row. We just want to get it recorded, guys, we're big on content creation, so please forgive us, but all of that's been recorded.

Speaker 2: 30:23

So you made a statement earlier about, say, shed sellers or shed dealers having your competitors ads show up on Facebook. Does that mean you're targeting correctly or can you even filter out? Get it specific enough to filter out, say, other competitors?

Speaker 4: 30:45

But so was it when I said that I see a lot of shed ads on my Facebook. And what was the question?

Speaker 2: 30:51

again, I'm sorry, yeah yeah, so would you say that you are targeting those ads correctly, if your competitors targeting those correctly, or could you be more specific in those so they didn't show up, say for competitors?

Speaker 4: 31:06

So, gosh, this is a big question, man. I probably should see shed ads because, though I'm not searching for shed, for anything shed related, if I see a shed ad and I don't know that company or something and sometimes I'll see a shed ad and sponsor 10% off any customized building, use our 3D builder now I'll click on to go look at their Facebook page and then I'll be like y'all are in Wyoming, I'm in Southern Illinois. I'll even message them, be like hey, man, you probably need to restrict your radius a little bit, but I'd say that I should probably see shed ads because I look at shed Facebook pages Now when we run campaigns, so we call them our first campaigns. We would run for a company, we call them fishnet campaigns, just a real broad campaign like you were talking about. That's been successful for you. We'll run an A and B test, right? So it's the same campaign, only different targeting parameters and seeing how those show up. Well, really just seeing how they perform. That's kind of what we look at. You can even set it up to where you're spending two grand, but you're going to see which A or B campaign does best off the first $500, whichever one wins, it shuts down the other campaign and the other remaining campaign. The winner will finish spending the rest of that ad budget.

Speaker 4: 32:34

But it's very difficult. All right, let's break it down. So when you're in Facebook ads manager and you are typing in those behaviors, interests and demographics, have you all seen that Generally you pick your radius and you could do 50 mile bubbles and then you generally you know you might have 100 mile circular radius right, then below that you have behaviors, interests, demographics. The thing is, is that box? It encapsulates all three of those, and what I think a lot of just marketing agencies and people don't do is they don't look. If you type in portable building to the right, you'll see if that's an inch like something they're interested in or if they're employed by a portable building, and I think people don't read the small little paragraphs that pop up. So a lot of people you know they're targeting people that work for a portable building manufacturer and you know they definitely don't want to shed, right. You know what I mean. So I don't know if that answers your question.

Speaker 4: 33:29

Okay, anybody else, but we'll let the crickets sing Awesome. So that's it, Deanna Green polo button up.

Speaker 1: 33:42

Hello from the Shed Geek. Let's take a walk through MyShed3D. With MyShed3D, your company can simply add a 3D Builder button to its website. Once the customer clicks onto the 3D Builder button, they will enter some basic information to get started. Remember this information is captured in your Leads tab. Whether or not the customer designs a building, this is very valuable information that turns a cold call into a warm lead. Next, they begin the design of their shed by selecting a primary use, a style and a size that best fits their need.

Speaker 1: 34:16

Myshed3d has multiple styles that are available and consistent with traditional and barn styles within the shed industry. However, if you offer a customized or non-traditional style, myshed solutions can build that design for future use. We can also save on some design features that make it easy to adjust without a major rebuild or added fees for design changes. For instance, you want to offer a steeper roof pitch? Just navigate to the Settings tab, then click the Building Models, click Edit Building and just enter the new roof center height and the design changes will reflect on this style option. This will save you thousands versus traditional design changes that need to build a whole new style to match your design From here.

Speaker 1: 35:04

Simply choose a style, siting and color. Then choose a trim and roofing style and color. Next, let's add a door. That was goofy. Next, let's add a door. It is required to add a door to move forward with the design, as at least one ingress egress option is necessary. Then add some design changes for personalization, maybe some windows or a porch or some interior shelving. Next, just click Save Design and the customer will receive an automated text with all the features of the design to the email address entered at the beginning. From here they can edit the design, view the details of the design, paint out or order the shed, or click Rent On to complete the necessary steps to purchase a shed they designed with MyShed 3D. The design enters the Admin panel as a quote and this is where the manufacturer can update the progress of the design once a deposit is taken. Myshed from design to delivery. We have you covered 55,000 a year.

Speaker 4: 36:11

But in Chicago it is different. Where are we at Midwest? That's tough. It would take a leap of faith. If you're a dealer and you're making 10, 12% commission, I would at least try to spend. If you could do two grand a month, I think that would work wonders. 2,500, I think you could kill it. Now I'm talking all-in budget, I'm talking a service fee and then also your ad budget, because you can't do one without the other. You know what I mean. Does that make sense? So I'm talking all-in. If you had 2 grand 2,500, and you're an individual shed lot, shed dealer, I think you could really make a kill. Thanks.

Speaker 4: 36:59

Yeah, absolutely Deanna right back there.

Speaker 1: 37:03

What I think is really cool, too, about that question is like it certainly depends on if you're a wholesale dealer or if you're a consignment dealer, and are you working with your manufacturer? Are they working with you to co-op on some of those costs? Should they be, Is it a conversation you should bring up? They're already bringing you $100,000 worth of free inventory. They're probably like hey, spend some money, but at the same time you're like man selling. Shed is thin right now and my margins are tough, so I'm an independent dealer here trying to do all I can. I can't spend another 2, 3 grand on top of this, right. So there's a dance there. Go ahead, sir.

Speaker 5: 37:39

How would you look at people that did the old school way of knocking on doors? Knocking on doors? Talking to people in person going to businesses, getting the material in front of people in the lunchroom.

Speaker 4: 37:54

Yeah. So great question, and I think let me pull back, as we started from scratch earlier and we talked about marketing. Marketing is everything. It's the sign that you put on your shed lot, right, it's the way that you decorate your shed lot. There's a gentleman we know that was putting a lot down on a super busy six lane road in Florida and he was doing, he was going to put like six to eight sheds, beaches, umbrellas, beach balls, picnic tables and those. You know, those stay there, right, and so that was kind of part of his branding. So everything you do is part of your branding. How you speak to people, that's all part of your marketing. That's just, I guess, and I guess we should separate.

Speaker 4: 38:35

I guess we're mostly talking about digital marketing, but I, yeah, I mean, I think, if you, I think it's good to have people that do both, like Rainbow, they're still, they're still out there selling those vacuums, right? Yeah, I see people, you know they get the what is it? The purifier thing? I see it all the time on Facebook. Hey, they're in Metropolis, you know, I'll send them, I'll send them over, you know. So I think, absolutely, you know, if you see, like I probably wouldn't just go door to door. But if you see a bunch of junk in the yard or something and you're a savage and you'd be like, hey, man, we can put all this up, zero money down, 190 bucks a month or whatever and you get them interested, yeah, I mean do it.

Speaker 5: 39:16

Why I got in this business is the storage lots, the people that have the storage units. They are very huge, popular and to be a competitor with them, to try to get those people to put a shed in the backyard so instead of them paying rent each month, they can go to their backyard and get the material or their stuff or how you want to say it. That's why I was saying person to person businesses, every business, like you said in the beginning, between a convenience store to a C store, to a you know restaurant or whatever. They have a shed, yeah, and that's what I say about knocking on doors and doing an old school and I think for me it comes down to time.

Speaker 4: 40:08

So I mean I look at, I look at my time and I put a. You know, I kind of put a price on my head. So you know, I could buy a nice you know bad boy lawn mower and mow my lawn. But I also look at okay, that's my monthly payment, it's going to take me an hour and a half. I'm worth this much an hour as far as the revenue I generate. Well, it's just not worth it for me to mow my yard. So I don't know, I guess for me and it's hard, it's like I feel like I could do more by marketing online than going and spending 20, 30 minutes with one person, when I could touch a thousand people in 30 minutes with a with the proper budget. So, but, man, if you see the need right and you're involved in your community, yeah, do it Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 40:55

I don't think there's necessarily one, one way, either. This is a again, not a either or. But in addition to all of the best practices that you've seen that have worked. I mean, you know, the old church got us to the new church and I just opened up a can of worms there, didn't I? You know? I just I just you know, for me there's a ton of value in tradition and history and we should honor that. So we don't want to take away from it, we want to add to it, and that's also what I mean by my new church comment.

Speaker 6: 41:25

So yes, sir, I am a manufacturer and wanting to expand and add a sales lot. Is it economical to think that I could add, could really ramp up the marketing, as you've described this morning, and up the sales a sufficient amount, instead of opening another brick and mortar store and, by the way, you didn't call me a goober, but I'm the goober pay a $900 a month to the, to the website guy that we're about to change. But anyway, wait are you?

Speaker 4: 42:00

I am Harvey. I am Harvey.

Speaker 4: 42:02

Okay, good to meet you, harvey. Okay, very well, I don't even remember the question. Now, what was the question, harvey? Oh, never mind, I got it.

Speaker 4: 42:14

Okay, shed lot or digital marketing, here would be my quick answer is that we have a client. They do 10 mil a year. They don't have one lot, they have a manufacturing facility and you know, when they get the sheds built, they you know they're they well, they have to fit them all over the dog on place just before they go out, and so you know, you can come there and see it. It is listed, but it's all generated from online, online sales. I would, I would say, calculate. In your case, harvey, I would calculate what's it going to cost you to get that property or, if they own that property, if you have to get gravel or electricity, what's your all in costs and what's going to be your monthly costs, and then reach out to me and I'll give you my honest opinion. You know, because it's just. It just depends Do they own it? You know, and you're just like dropping sheds off or you're, you're wanting to own it. I guess that would be you said it earlier a consignment or if they're buying it wholesale, right, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 43:13

Marvin, yes, sir.

Speaker 4: 43:15

Marvin.

Speaker 5: 43:22

What about, like geo fencing and mobile conquesting? Is that fitting a marketing for a shed business?

Speaker 4: 43:28

That's a good question. Now I think let's determine what what geo fencing is. So, like Marvin, I know I know the type of campaigns that you run. You you do very well, right. So in your you are geo fencing. So geo fencing is picking a particular location and not running paid campaigns outside of that bubble. So you are geo fencing, but it definitely can, with the right tools, go a lot deeper.

Speaker 4: 43:56

You know we work with a. We're Simplify certified. What Simplify does is they own airtime with every streaming platform that there is. I mean everyone that y'all have ever seen Roku, hulu, free V, tubi Prime, and what they do is all of those generally have one, you know, up to two versions. They have like a cheaper version that has ads that you'll watch like three ads per movie, and then you have your 1899 where it's, you know you don't have any ads. And the you know, pluto and just all these different ones, espn app, and what we do with them not many shed clients, but other clients is we've got one company I used as a reference last night.

Speaker 4: 44:37

What they do is they use hydrogen to clean carbon out of engines. Right, it's what they do. So they're trying to target slow moving diesel fleets for the most part, so Caterpillar, kamatsu, case concrete trucks, so Freight Line, peterbills, just all those. And what we've done is.

Speaker 4: 44:54

The problem is is those companies don't want you to get in the industry because that'll cut down on parts. Right, because all these people that own these fleets they're buying a lot of parts. But if you start using this hydrogen service and you're using it quarterly on each machine, you're not gonna you're not gonna tear up as many parts and their revenue would go down. So they've been on a standstill. So what we've done is we've found every corporate location from like 12 companies, including all the ones I just named, and we've geofenced their building. So every device inside of all these corporate buildings have to watch their videos every day, every day Tablet, computer phones. So we're trying to warm them up to it and just become an industry name where they're just gonna have to get used to it and you know this company's here to stay. So I think that there's levels of geofencing, but you can get very specific. You know you can get very specific. So I would say yes, and I think you already are geofencing.

Speaker 1: 45:52

Hello shed sellers. Let's take a moment to discuss the shed customer and meeting their expectations. I remember growing up in the neighborhood where a certain percentage of the houses had well-manicured lawns and well-manicured homes. These were the type of individuals who felt it was important to purchase a well-constructed home or vehicle, or maybe equipment to help maintain the quality of the item. As shed manufacturers, we seek to provide a well-built, quality shed. We want the customer to feel satisfied that their hard-earned money has been well spent on a product that will last.

Speaker 1: 46:24

At LuxGuard, we believe adding high-quality rubber flooring to your line of sheds makes sense to the customer and adds value the customer can appreciate. With each year, sheds are becoming more complex. The customizations we are seeing are virtually endless. Luxguard not only gives a complimentary aesthetic appearance for their shed, but also protects the floor from spills and keeps cleanup simple. Offer your customer the customer service they seek with LuxGuard. At LuxGuard, we are committed to delivering exceptional customer service and innovative products to help our customers achieve their goals. We strive to meet the evolving needs of the customers. To speak with one of our ready-to-serve customer product specialists, simply call 336-468-4311. To see our product and view an installation video, just visit our website at luxguardcom. Luxguard the floor that lasts a lifetime.

Speaker 5: 47:20

Another question what happens when you eat too much Amish peanut butter?

Speaker 4: 47:29

We were shooting a video, I don't know, a month and a half ago and we went out to what's it called I don't know what you said, but that place, right, it's a hotel and a restaurant and they had this Amish peanut butter and I kept going back and I mean I've ate plenty Amish bread is a different ball game.

Speaker 4: 47:48

So they looked at me like four pieces in, you know, I'm just like smacking peanut butter on it and they're like you're not going to make it, so I didn't know what they meant. But that bread doesn't stop swelling, like what I'm used to. I was miserable. I was miserable all night in my hotel room.

Speaker 1: 48:03

Was it the squeeze peanut butter, like in the squeeze bottle?

Speaker 4: 48:07

No, it was the good.

Speaker 1: 48:09

yeah, mason jar, Amish peanut butter you guys have to help us out on some of that. We have to struggle through learning the different cultures. We probably got time for one more question and we'll kind of wrap it up because we've got lunch coming up. Guys, I honestly feel like we could set up here for another two hours and just feel free to talk to you or answer questions you have. We will do the VIP event here in just a bit. If you want us to go deeper on conversation, we'll just get into that a little bit more. But any other questions before we wrap up? Yeah, let's go.

Speaker 4: 48:46

Nice, let's go, let's knock them out.

Speaker 1: 48:48

She's hustling. She's like you dragged me over here to do all this stuff. I didn't even sign up for this. I know she's like what.

Speaker 4: 49:01

Which would be more beneficial a ad featuring a video or an ad with just a simple banner. Great question, I would say both of them will do their job. We do notice that our clients that do put out consistent video content they do perform better, but they're not always just running video content. I think a mixture of both is going to be the best bang for your buck. Do a test, do a video on a product that you're selling. This in-stock type of shed can be a lofted gambrel shed with a garage door. Do a graphic of it. Take a picture. Do a graphic 10% off. Then do a walk around reel and it shows the captions. We're offering this 10% off. And run a test because I'd love to tell you like an exact answer but man, this is all gosh. Selling in Louisiana is way different than selling in Idaho. We have to be careful of what we say so you don't hold it as truth, because it may not be truth in that location. Who determines cost per click?

Speaker 4: 50:12

That's a good question, man. I think it also goes back to kind of that similar answer Are you saying like, do like whoever you're marketing through? So, facebook or Google, they're going to tell us what the cost per click is. Ultimately, this depends on the population density and your ad budget, what your ad looks like and what your offering is. All of those things are a formula, right? So if you're running a campaign and then beyond that, let's just say you're at 80 cents cost per click and that's just a click to the website. That's not conversions, which we didn't talk about, a lot that we'll talk about in the breakout session.

Speaker 4: 50:54

If you're at 80 cents to get per click to get people into the website, whether it's Facebook or Google. Also, after you have at least 90 days 60 days worth of data, of tracking data through Google Analytics or Facebook Pixel, you can retarget to people that didn't click and then it'll bring your cost per click down. So you just have to start, you have to kind of start and it's going to be so dependent. We have some people that are like 14 cents a click to their shed side, some that are $1.12, but one of those has, you know, 98,000 people in a 70 mile radius and the other person has 6 million people, right. So all this stuff comes in as a factor. One is, you know semi. You know a lot of that area is in poverty, and the other one is a booming rural city, right. So it's hard to give you that exactly. I think there was one more question Awesome Lady in the back by the camera.

Speaker 7: 51:57

First of all, thank you so much for putting this on and inviting us all here.

Speaker 4: 52:02

I'll take all the credit.

Speaker 7: 52:04

This is phenomenal, so thank you so much for doing this. I work for a dealer in Northeast Ohio. He has four shed lots. He gave me one of the shed lots to run myself. We are an old Hickory dealer. We have four lots and we are on their barn dealer program. If you know what that is. I just found out recently we don't have a main website for our business.

Speaker 4: 52:29

You don't have a main website.

Speaker 7: 52:30

We do not have one that says KNKBarncom. We have no, we do not have this. And I'm like Mark, what are you doing? So he does not do tech. He wants me to answer all the emails, he wants me to do whatever with the website and I'm over here dying. I'm like where do I go from here? Because this is absolutely from scratch. What do I do here?

Speaker 4: 52:54

That's a good question. So we actually just worked through this process not long ago with an old Hickory dealer and the barn builder program is. It's a nice looking site. It's kind of old Hickory branded. I think you can just buy into that and then they'll kind of put your logo and then the sheds that you all sell, depending on what old Hickory manufacturer is around you. I think that they'll build that for pretty cheap. Is that right? Like that barn builder website program?

Speaker 7: 53:23

Well, it lists it as our parkmancom, our Kirtland location. It's, you know, knkbarn, kirtlandcom, parkmancom and those. They're four separate websites. They're not integrated. There's one for each of our lots. So if we get a main website, knkbarncom, we could list barn dealer on there and that would direct them to our main just one main website, and have them jump on the links from there right.

Speaker 4: 53:55

I would probably have to dig into the barn builder program a little more to be able to answer you. What we're seeing a lot nowadays as we kind of just we're cutting into this digital forefront where you have to run digital campaigns is that you have one main website and that website lists the locations. Okay, the problem we're seeing is determining if you know and the manufacturer is trying to make the decision on when we have this one main site, that one main website may have. You know they might have 28 dealers. You know we have a client they've got, you know they've got 28 lots and what they do is they bring those online leads in and they have an online person that handles.

Speaker 4: 54:36

Though, but what some people are doing there's two other options is that you're getting those online leads in and then, based off zip code, you're dishing that lead out to the lot that is closest to that lead. But you also know that different lots perform some better, some worse and so you don't want to give some of those leads away. So a lot of times, they'll have an online salesperson and he'll take some of it and then, depending on how you're performing, he'll give you some leads because you know you may have wasted away some, or also you could be doing very well with them. So I think that I would love to look into your particular situation and we'd be willing to do that to maybe just figure out what's going to be the best thing for you all, because I don't even know.

Speaker 1: 55:23

I just don't know it's so dependent on. Like you know, otacry is a very large manufacturer and super successful and done a lot of just really cool things. I don't know how they're maybe going to think about franchising, you know. So are they wanting to be in control of the website? Because ultimately, if you're a consignment dealer and you sign up, well, what happens if you guys split ways? They still want to own all those digital assets, probably, so, like if they're going to want to commit to a website and maybe they'll just put minimal efforts to that. But then you might have like a what I would call a mom and pop, which is I don't know. I mean, that's not necessarily a traditional mom and pop. They're doing $4-5 million.

Speaker 1: 56:01

They got a couple of dealers out there and they're like, hey, listen, I don't like tech, I don't want to do tech, but you guys feel free to do whatever you want. And all of a sudden they're signing up for all the stuff, right, and as a dealer, they're probably having like mild success, or some having massive or some having minimal success, and they're like I just paid for a website, I just hooked up with Idea Room. You know what I mean. The next thing, you know like I'm spending money on all these different things that are out there, they're like I can't function at 10 to 12% to be able to take on also the additional cost to be successful. So I need you to help me do that. And again, you know, to get a respect, what Oat Hickory's done, they probably brought you $100,000 to $200,000 for the free inventory and said, hey, go get them you know, and if you go sell a million, they're going to pay you on a million and two and three and four, and that's good.

Speaker 1: 56:50

But you're kind of figuring out your own sales process because, no disrespect to them at all, I'm sure they do a tremendous job, but perhaps they might not have traditional sales training right.

Speaker 1: 56:59

So, like you come in and this isn't a knock toward them, it's any company, here's your binder, go do the best you can and, like some people, kill it, right, and they're aggressive and I don't know what's in their mentality versus the person who says, yeah, I don't know these things, kind of sell theirself, I'm just going to set them out here and we'll take orders whenever they come in. And as a manufacturer, you know that struggle and that's where you have to be almost super aggressive now as a sales manager or manufacturer, setting up your lots to kind of ask people questions. Like you know, do you embrace technology? What's your level of understanding of it? You know, can we sit down and kind of have a question there before we just hand over $200,000 worth of free inventory because you say you're going to kill it? You might. So there's this dance. It just really depends on who and what you are and where you're at in the industry, but I'm quite certain they're going to pour into their dealers. That's what they're going to want to do.

Speaker 7: 57:57

So you think I need to check with Old Hickory before we put our own website out there to link the other ones too.

Speaker 1: 58:04

If I was Old Hickory I would appreciate it. If you did, or any manufacturer here I would say hey, before you know you go buy, you know a bunch of services that maybe we can help you. Maybe they have a way to help you internally.

Speaker 1: 58:16

Or maybe they want to co-op. See, that's the thing. We're not here with any constraints, so we can kind of speak recklessly. But it doesn't matter to me if you're Old Hickory, and it doesn't even matter to me if you're another marketing company and you say, hey, we only cover eight of the things you guys cover. Cool, we'll pick up the other two, we'll work with you, we won't work against you. So for me it's like our approach and what we're trying to create through transparency is we'll meet you where you are. It doesn't matter to us if you're a yeah. So I think Old Hickory would appreciate that.

Speaker 1: 58:47

And then if they said yeah use these guys they embrace the idea. We'd love to have that business, but I would check with them first.

Speaker 7: 58:54

Okay, thank you very much.

Speaker 4: 58:55

Absolutely. We might have time for one more quick question.

Speaker 1: 58:58

Yeah, we can probably squeeze in one more. We're pushing 12 o'clock pretty close, but if anybody's got anything,