Live Show at Shed University - Part 1

 Ever wondered how a chance snowstorm and an RV can lead to profound insights on shed industry marketing? That's precisely where our adventure begins as Dylan Street and I, Shannon Latham, reminisce about our snowy escapade to Knoxville, setting the stage for an episode that's as unpredictable as the weather. We unpack the story of our professional journeys—mine from the sales floor to the marketing sphere, and Dylan's from the world of heavy machinery to the heart of the shed industry—highlighting the transformative power of effective communication and the importance of truly understanding our audience.

Peek behind the curtain of shed design and industry collaboration with us. We explore the innovative My Shed 3D tool, which empowers customers to customize their dream sheds with a few clicks, and discuss Shed U's role in fostering a collaborative dealer network. Our personal tales interlace with the shared narrative of community and growth, reminding us that at the core of our bustling industry lies the simple goal of serving through selling. This episode is a toast to the technology that's reshaping our trade and the communal spirit steering us toward collective success.

Strap in as we chart a course through the maze of marketing strategies that can turbocharge a shed business in the digital age. From capturing lead details with pinpoint precision to differentiating our approach to sales and marketing, we tackle the Idaho client conundrum—swamped with leads but starved for sales—and the solutions that flipped the script. And don't miss our practical guide on navigating the often-treacherous waters of Facebook advertising, the usefulness of Google Tag Manager, and why data is the new currency in our tech-savvy marketplace. Join us, and you might just find the digital marketing keys to unlock your business's potential.

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

My Shed
Digital Shed Builder
Shed Hub
CAL

Transcript

SHED GEEK: 0:36

Thank you guys. How about Chris Pittman? Give him a hand, guys, be sure to. I don't know if there's a bigger name in sales than Grant Cordone. I'm sure there's some that are probably more favorable. But to come out of that camp, chris, you've definitely done great. Chris is the one that said something. Believe it or not, guys, I had this tan pair of slacks ready to go. I got my Air Force Ones.

SHED GEEK: 1:07

Dylan was talking about those of you that are sneakerheads, you'll know, kyle might know, matt might know, but everybody else is like what are you talking about up, driving down in our RV to stay here? Let me tell you something a little fun. Knoxville doesn't normally get six to eight inches of snow, which is also why you see about 40 tickets purchased, probably 40 to 50, as I understand, that aren't here, haven't checked in or may be here tomorrow. Outside of also, the travel was sort of tough, but we're actually parked on top of the University of Tennessee parking garage right now in our RV, because it's the only place we could get. That's a full covered sheet of ice, so lots of fun. We thought we'd get a hotel room, but let's take the RV and that worked out about like the movie. So thankful for the opportunity to be here.

SHED GEEK: 2:02

I want to start by discussing communication, even before we even introduce anybody. How can I do my possible best, on stage here today, with our speakers, to communicate with you effectively? How do we know that communication is taking place? Can anybody give me an answer to that? How do we know that we have communicated something to you today that has helped you Anybody? Shout it out, don't be afraid, because I'm a big audience participation kind of guy, so feel free to just warm up to being here at the event and talk to me like I'm your neighbor. How do we know communication has taken place? What's that? It's already full. So you're taking notes, so you're obviously focusing on that. I heard somebody say something recently that really struck a chord with me. They said communication's only taken place once you've comprehended the communication that's existed, because I can tell you something all day long. But if you don't take it and put it into motion, if you don't actually use the communication that's taking place here today, then I don't know if we've served you as best we can. How can we communicate today? That's what we're here for is to talk about education. So what the Shed U event is is trying to continue your education so that you will be more informed and better at what you do. James 1.5 says let any man who lacks knowledge let him ask and he'll receive it. So, okay, let's introduce the speakers. So I'll start with myself, shannon Latham, shed Geek Podcast. Some of you have listened to it, a couple of you have been on the show probably. I'm happy to answer any questions that you have related to Shed Geek, its brand, the branding and just the extensions of what it's becoming. It's been a really awesome ride.

SHED GEEK: 4:08

Worked in Shed Sales. I actually started with a company in West Kentucky called Graceland Portable Buildings in the purchasing procurement department. Good friend of mine was in Navy intelligence, ended up working for Graceland and became a pastor and we were just kind of what I like to say roughnecks whenever we were young and he invited me to church and that changed my life. And then he invited me into the shed industry and that's changed my life. So since then moved into sales sales management. So since then, moved into sales sales management, ended up working in RTO for a bit and now find myself in the most obscure place of marketing, which is a place I never thought that I would be. So that's what we're here today to represent, and I've got two guys on the stage with me and I could introduce them, but I'll tell you what I'm just going to. Let them go and give a little thought for, as I say on the show, who they are and what they do. So, dylan, you want to introduce yourself.

DYLAN STREET: 5:06

Yeah guys, my name is Dylan Street. I'm from Metropolis, illinois. If you don't know, it's the home of Superman. My mom actually lived on Lois Lane for like seven years. It's quite interesting, but born and raised there, so I like to say that we sleep in Metropolis and do life in Paducah, kentucky. So western Kentucky, southern Illinois, it's where my roots are.

DYLAN STREET: 5:28

And as far as me in the shed industry, I've never actually wanted to get into it, but it keeps always drawing me back somehow. So when I first started, I was a logger, a heavy machinery operator, and then I was a logger for years and I started doing freelance video work some years ago. And then when I jumped out on my own, shannon and Kyle they were selling for a company called Summit and they had an extra room in there. So I moved in there and that's when I jumped out in faith and started working on my own. Now when I did that, you know I didn't. I didn't understand the shed industry. I didn't. I just didn't get it right. I just didn't fully comprehend all the legs of it and what made it the shed industry. So I did get to know different people. We did some really cool films for some different companies. I remember Dave was SmartPay. He flew me up to Lancaster and we did a film with him. So I've always been part of it but I just never saw myself in it. So it's always kind of had this just I don't know just this pull on me throughout time and I guess eventually that I gave in and I really enjoy it.

DYLAN STREET: 6:38

And I will say that in the shed industry in and I really enjoy it. And I will say that in the shed industry, of course, as you know, I'm the president of Shed Geek Marketing. So you know we do all the accounts and figure out you know what angles that we should figure out where the manufacturers want to go and grow, and then we figure out a plan on how to accomplish that. And so in that I will say that bringing on or onboarding a shed company, you know sometimes it can take months. Like you plant a seed, you let them know you want to work with them and you may not hear anything for months and months. But I will say that it may be it's probably the hardest clients to get but they're the most loyal clients to have. And you know it might be a weakness, but I'd say that my relationships, you know, with all of our clients we just become really good friends, sometimes even best friends, and I enjoy that. We shot a video with Marvin Raber in central Indiana not long ago and then, once we got to know each other, he asked me to come speak at a school completely Unshed related, but I don't know. I just really enjoy the industry.

DYLAN STREET: 7:42

I think that we've kind of figured out where the industry is at. We're kind of moving into this pre-COVID era where digital marketing is almost a must if you want to keep the leads coming in, and so we've just figured out a way that we can keep bringing leads in as we move into this kind of digital era. So very excited to be here. Appreciate everybody that came. Hopefully some more people will start rolling in. And I'll pass it over to Jeff.

JEFF HUXMAN: 8:11

Hey, good morning everybody. Jeff Huxman, I guess my path into the shed industry is probably very atypical. I grew up in Wisconsin. This six or eight inches of snow we've got outside here is pretty normal this time of year for Wisconsin, so it's kind of entertaining to see days afterwards. A lot of the sidewalks aren't shoveled here in Knoxville, but hey, that's all right Anyhow.

JEFF HUXMAN: 8:42

So I grew up in Wisconsin, went to college in Wisconsin, taught myself coding in the late 90s. The college I attended, you know, the internet was brand new. There wasn't a whole lot of computer courses at the college I went to, so I taught myself. And then I had a long stint as a wildlife video maker, documentary filmmaker, worked for companies like National Geographic and Animal Planet. And then I married into Southern Ohio about 17 years ago and about the age of 30, I moved there 17 years ago and about the age of 30, I moved there and there was zero demand for video production and I met some Amish folks who were needing some marketing services and they hired me to do some Photoshop work and brochures and things like that.

JEFF HUXMAN: 9:36

And then one day they came to me and said hey, we bought a shed company, can you do some marketing for us there. So I started working on some pamphlets and literature for them and then they were like, hey, jeff, you used to code, right. And I was like, yeah, well, we've got all this inventory out here. We don't know where it's going, we don't know how much we've made and we don't know how to's going. We don't know how much we've made and we don't know how to keep track of it. And because we're Amish, we can't use a computer. Is there something that you can do for us, code wise, that can be done over like a phone and a fax? And so I created something called ShedHub, which was initially just inventory tracking system that can be done over phone and fax for this one company.

JEFF HUXMAN: 10:25

And then over a year or two, we realized that, hey, there's no two-sided marketplace like an auto trader or a Zillow for the shed industry. So we created something called shedhub. com together Some of you here might be using the platform and so that was basically a marketplace that I helped create with a number of other people, and I've sort of gotten to know a lot of different people in the shed industry through that. That's how I met Shannon and Dylan and in terms of what I do with Shed Geek Marketing now is you know, shed Hub has a lot of SEO search engine optimization so that people who are selling sheds across the country can show up on Google searches and other internet searches. So that's sort of how I lend my expertise to Shed Geek marketing and that's sort of why I'm on the panel today to help talk tech a little bit.

SHED GEEK: 14:03

sThank you, jeff. Yeah, gosh.

SHED GEEK: 14:06

So what you see right now is what I like to call a collaborative effort. There's a lot of talk about collaboration, a lot of talk about competition. I give the shed haulers a lot of credit. A lot of those guys really started on this kick of. You know, sharing is caring. Together is a little bit better and we don't have to be each other's enemy. There's sort of a higher calling to our life, even before our business and as this industry continues to mature, that we can work together, that you can work together even across the country with other shed dealers who are seeing success and you want to pull on that success to try and learn the best you can. And that's kind of the emergence of, I think, sort of where ShedU is rooted is trying to create maybe somewhat of a dealer network I'll let Matt speak on that more but sort of a dealer network to grow, learn and be better and for us to all come together and kind of put down our shield and sword for the day to communicate and make for a better customer experience overall. So Jeff's work with Shed Hub and Dylan. What he didn't share is Dylan has a very successful marketing company, even outside of where we developed Shed Geek Marketing, probably I don't know 30 to 50 clients with very large ad spends and ad budgets. So he understands the industry well and he understands marketing well enough outside of that.

SHED GEEK: 15:42

So what I failed to share with you was outside of the Shed Geek podcast and I always thought this was fun. Is I like to tell people a little bit about myself, and I missed that part over here. It's my wife. We've dated since I was 15 years old, so we've been married now for 24 years and you may see a younger, much skinnier, better looking version of me walking around with the gimbal and the camera around back. That is my youngest son, troy, who's 19. Ambitious, and I love to brag on him because this kid ended up with a 4.2 GPA on a 4.0 scale. So I like to say, if I'm not smart, at least somebody from my loins ended up being smart. So thank goodness. So be sure to just say hello to them if you have any questions Outside of that. Really simple.

SHED GEEK: 16:34

We also live in Metropolis. I live right down the road from Dillon. We operate the Shed Geek podcast twice weekly, every Wednesday and Thursday. We have a show we're coming up on getting ready to close in soon on 100,000 listens. Year four will start March 1st and that's sort of just been an effort of a lot of different people in the industry, some of them in this room and really it's just to talk about Sheds, it's to tell your story. It's to tell the history of the Shed industry and to really just bring together a community. I think that's really the heartbeat of what the Shed Geek podcast is. Outside of that, I'm pretty boring. I spend all my time in my office pretty much on a computer anymore.

SHED GEEK: 17:18

On the phone On the phone. I log a lot of hours on the phone, I'm sad to say, but I do, and that's just building community and conversation and connectivity with the industry and maybe even connecting others, when at times it has no benefit even to myself. You're welcome to ask any questions. Deanna has a mic, so we'll go around and do that here in a little bit, once we sort of finish with our presentation. Outside of that, I don't really have anything to add. I am the owner of the world's second largest air guitar collection Thank you for those who got that and I actually have the world's first largest seashell collection and you've probably seen some of the work. We keep it scattered on beaches all across the world. So that is. Thank you, nate, for that joke. It's just, nate from Burnett's Affordable gave me that one and I really appreciate it. So I want to build. Well, let's see. I want to start with this.

SHED GEEK: 18:23

There's two forms of businesses that exist in the world. This is what my college teaching taught me. Does anybody know the two forms of business? There's only two. What are they? Two that I know of? Don't be afraid to shout it out. What can you sell? You can only sell two things, products and services. If you are a shed salesperson, which one are you selling? Thank you, you're selling both, and there's a ton of people who really get caught up on product information and I think that's awesome, because Dylan probably heard me for a lot of times when he was sitting in that office in there quizzing myself. And even Andrew Woods God bless his soul just passed with LP Smart Siding about. You know a 10-year and 50-year warranty and everything that I could possibly think of and know from the product.

SHED GEEK: 19:16

But, what I felt like I was struggling on was the service side, and I really had to tap into sort of my roots, and that really came from of all places, of all places. Our little town of 6500 has the Midwest's first casino. It was brought there by Merv Griffith back in 1990, the owner of Wheel of Fortune, and they were doing that to try to help a starving community. Little did we know it would maybe have an adverse effect, right? So you know, at the time I'm 11 years old, so I don't really understand the politics and all those things. But what I did learn is that I needed to work, needed a job, and I grew up in a town of 150 people, so there's even less work. Right, we got hit with the same thing as all America did, with industry leaving and I'm left without a job and a declining economy. So I go to work at the casino and I'm very staunch. I just come from being a supervisor to jail. Yeah, I know that sounds crazy to think about, but it's the truth. And what I learned there was that they were intense on their customer service, and so one thing, if I could understand anything about the casino that they taught me that I'm appreciative for is that they're very, very purposeful on their customer service. What happens, what product do you leave with once you've went to the casino? Nothing, in most cases, nothing at all right, but you're not walking out with anything tangible.

SHED GEEK: 20:43

So I really had to learn how to service the customer. I mean, it was really important. We had meetings beforehand that we would talk about. That was called a buzz. What's the buzz? What's going on? You know, like we had to find out what's the promotion of the day, what's the newest thing, the latest thing happening. We'd have to participate in games like two truths and one lie. We'd have to. Everybody would have to be involved and they'd have to be engaged. And if you're just really super grumpy, like I was, you'd have to carry a smile in your back pocket because it was mandatory to smile. So it was nothing for me to hit those doors and just ah, there we are. How's it going today? Mr Jones, my name's Shannon. If you got any questions, just let me know. I'll be happy to help you. So you really learn how to be just like super intense on focusing on the customer. And it sort of changed my life, because it began to change like who I was as a person, I went from this grumpy jail administrator type to all of a sudden learning how to care for people on the most basic needs. Where's the restroom? It's not right down there, ms Jones. It's just walk this way with me, ms Jones, and we'll take you down here and I'll make sure that you get there safely or whatever. You had to focus on serving the customer very, very, very intentionally.

SHED GEEK: 22:02

Then I get to the shed industry and the shed industry's got what we like to call order takers, and we've got order makers. Does anybody know what I'm talking about? How many of you own a shed company? How about that? Let's start there. So how many of you have? Well, maybe you don't want to share this, but I'll tell you what. Let's just see, just testing my shed knowledge here, if this sounds about right.

SHED GEEK: 22:25

You have a dealer lot. How many of you have a dealer lot? You got 5, 10, 20, 30 dealers. How many times does it go like this You've got number one and you've got number two, always competing for first place. Let's say you've got 10, 15 lots. Number one and two are competing and you're like man, these guys are great. If I just had number one and number two always oh man, we'd be killing it. But then number two through number eight seem like they're fairly interchangeable. Oh, this is great. They're probably putting up $400,000, $600,000, whatever it is a year in sales. And you're like. You know what I could really exchange from number two to number eight in most cases. Now, this might not be your perfect situation, but in general. And then number nine and ten are always struggling, always struggling. Never can seem to come up with anything and, to be honest with you, you're always on the hook on whether you want to let number ten go or not anyway, but you won't, because you're the shed industry and you're so kind that you really want to put the effort into them. And that's why you're here today. And that's why they should be here today is because they're trying to learn more. They're trying to understand what is possible. I want to start with that what's possible?

SHED GEEK: 23:37

You've heard the story before, maybe if you've listened to the podcast, but I'll tell it again. I definitely remember the first time I went to a shed lot and on that shed lot was a 20-year veteran of selling sheds and I said, hey, they've hired me as the new sales manager. I'm trying to get my feet wet. But I feel like there's a lot I can learn from you as well too. You've got 20 years in this. Yeah, yeah, I've got 20 years. I've sold for two companies. He's very proud of that. I don't hop around to a bunch of different companies, right Like I sold for these two guys and I said, well, what's your average month in sales?

SHED GEEK: 24:12

And I had sold sheds for a little bit. And he said you know, it's about 20,000. It's like, okay, okay, so what's your best month in sales? And he says, well, you know, probably hit around $40,000 or so. And I said, okay, well, what if you blow it out of the water? What are shed guys doing? That is just amazing. He said, well, I've been selling sheds for 20 years. If you get $50,000 to $60,000 a month, you know you're pretty well, you're doing it, you know you're killing it.

SHED GEEK: 24:42

And I said, well, what if you could sell a quarter million dollars in sales a month? And he's immediately out right, it's not possible. I mean, I've been doing this for 20 years. I mean it's great that you want to come in and do that and that sounds good, but you can't do a quarter million in sales. It's not realistic. So whenever you're here to train me. I'm an old dog, right? You can't teach me new tricks. So, whatever you're here to train me, I'm an old dog, right? You can't teach me new tricks. So. But the thing is, I've sold a quarter million dollars in a month, so now you have to convince me. The burden's yours, isn't it? You have to convince me why it's not possible. Why is it not possible? I don't understand. So I'd start with that first thought what is possible? There might might be people here today that came in and they think that $50,000 number was the best that I could possibly do.

SHED GEEK: 25:31

And you're limiting yourself whenever you don't educate yourself and seek out always. What did Chris say? The difference in a pro and an amateur? An amateur does it until they get it right. A pro does it until they don't get it wrong. So you should always be educating yourself, trying to do more or trying to do better.

SHED GEEK: 25:50

Right now is that slow season, right post-COVID, and you see a little chatter on Facebook or you see a little chatter among your dealer network or as you talk to other guys. How many conversations happen in the hallway? What are you guys seeing in your neck of the woods? Guys, you're looking at the reason for the purpose of the podcast there is because I got to hearing this so many different times with so many different people. Why not bring people on and talk about that in a way that's non-competitive? And let's do better. Let's do better for ourselves, let's do better for our company and let's do better for the customer. So that's what we want to discuss in marketing.

SHED GEEK: 26:26

Marketing is the foundation for sales. Can anyone give me a marketing definition?

SHED GEEK: 27:38

What is your definition of marketing? Don't be afraid to holler it out. If you don't know, that's okay, but I'm curious at what your thought is if you have one today on marketing, nobody, lead generation, Okay. So I'm going to give you the definition and I'll let you guys stew over it. The definition of marketing is the activity of a business promoting and selling products or services. We've already discussed products and services, right, so we understand that we have to do both. We have to sell a product. We have to service that customer as well. I bet RTO companies in here know that JMAG's in here, rto National's in here. Their customer becomes your customer. Think about the. Your customer becomes theirs. Think about the dynamic that they have to deal with. You sold this shed on an RTO contract and now you have to hand that customer off to them to trust them. But then they also have to pick up the pieces of what might not have been explained, possibly of what might not have been explained, possibly. So I guess let's see.

SHED GEEK: 28:52

It says selling products and services, including market research and advertising, and the question I got today and I want anybody to shout it out is it says the promotion of how do you promote? How do you promote your sheds currently? What is your avenue to promote your sheds? Anybody? Facebook Always a big one, right. How else do you promote Google? Good, anything else Brochures. It also says that you sell. But how do you sell? How do you sell? Because there's a difference, and that's the second thing to take away today is that there's a difference in marketing and sales. And as your company begins to grow and you begin to organize, it's fine to take that hat of sales guy off procurement order taker, builder, occasional fill in on a delivery. As your company begins to grow and mature, it's good to develop actual plans and actual strategies that you have to move forward in your marketing and your sales adventure.

SHED GEEK: 30:17

I put down here the difference between product-based and service-based, and you guys kind of hit on that already, so I don't want to go back over this. What market research do you do? How do you advertise? Advertising definition the activity or profession of producing advertisement for commercial products or services. How do you produce advertisement? How does it differ from marketing? The sales definition the exchange of a commodity for money, the action of selling something. So let's build up a marketing shed. That's what we want to do here today I'll put my phone away here and we want to educate everybody on marketing, and that's the guys that we have here today.

SHED GEEK: 31:04

So Jeff kind of talked about SEO, SEO. I want to first say Jeff's way. More than an SEO strategist, he has a brilliant tech mind, tech brain that I rely on a lot because I don't have that. So what I've learned to do is to collaborate with people around me who have the tools that I need to kind of help me see the success that I want to see in my life. I've forged out a path for myself that I want to accomplish, and I know that I can't do all of those things on my own. So that's the collaborative effort we have here today.

SHED GEEK: 31:39

Dylan is a.

SHED GEEK: 31:42

I would say that Dylan is a Willie Mays of the shed industry.

SHED GEEK: 31:46

I don't know if there's any baseball fans in here, but Willie Mays was a complete 5-to-1 player, much like Barry Bonds or the new Ronald Acuna. You may see him for the Atlanta Braves. He can throw, he can hit, you know he can steal bases. He's just one of those guys that finds his way into every area of everything and just seems to do well with it, and I think a lot of that's got to do with his testimony and if you have questions about that you can ask him. But let's start with building marketing shed and Deanna's got a microphone so she'll go around and get questions If you guys just raise your hand and we'll get to a more extensive, maybe, q&a. But I want to start with with the educational factor of marketing. Dylan, I'm going to let you start here. I've taken enough stage time here, but I want you to kind of give the idea to the shed industry from your perspective of what building digital assets looks like in a digital storefront versus a brick and mortar storefront.

DYLAN STREET: 32:54

Yeah. So as I try to build this marketing shed and tie these two things together, just give me some grace that I don't build sheds okay, all right, so we always start with. If you were to build a shed, okay, all right, so you know, we always start with. You know, if you were to build a shed, what's the first thing you start with? What is that? Yeah, so most people say, like runners right, is that right? Am I right? Okay, start with runners. So what is that? Now, we got two roads to go down.

DYLAN STREET: 33:23

So oftentimes we get companies that already are established in some way, shape or form. They have a logo, they have a Facebook page, they might have a website, but we also have some people that are they've been building sheds. They don't really have a brand, but they have a lot and they're selling. So we're going to start from two different angles here, but let's start from scratch. Your runners is, you know, your branding and your logo. So if you're about to start a business, you've got to figure out. Okay, who are we right? What do we want to represent? You know? What do we want people to feel when they see our logo? Right, so you know, think of just people that have done it well, like Coca-Cola or Geico or Apple, I mean everybody. You can see the logo in your mind because they've done well at branding it and putting it in front of you. You know. Likewise, you have to think. You know there's even things as deep as what do different colors mean? What does yellow mean on a logo? What does red mean? How does that transpond? Because in any type of marketing endeavor, what you're doing is you're trying to control the narrative of thoughts in your potential customer. Does that make sense? You're trying to literally control the sentences that they're saying in their inner dialogue.

DYLAN STREET: 34:35

Whenever you're doing any type of branding, advertising, marketing, and the first thing you'll start with is logos and we call it brand guidelines, and a lot of times that encapsulates your mission statement, your values, your goals, the who we are. You know what's the backbone of this business and inside of this industry. So you know, as you start from there and then you start, what would be the next step after runners? What would be the next step? Building a real shed, joyce, okay, awesome, joyce. So what would come after logos and brand guidelines?

DYLAN STREET: 35:07

Well, I would say that first we've got to work on your copyright content. What's the language you use when you speak to people, when you're making a Facebook post on your Google my Business, you've got an about us or a description section Generally on a website. You have some sort of small blurb about you, maybe on the top, maybe a tagline, something along those lines. So you have to get your copyright. Content is what we call it. Together. What's the next step? Third step Marvin, you're spitting them out. What you got next? Huh, floors, okay, very well, so, floors, this is where I would first start building your digital assets. Very well, so, floors, this is where I would, I would first start building your digital assets.

DYLAN STREET: 35:49

Generally, I would probably say start with your. You know your Facebook, your Instagram, your Tik TOK, your Google my business. And why I say that is because you could actually get your business started, maybe while your website's still being built or being redesigned, but but just remember, we're talking as we're starting from scratch here. So, as you're as you, so as you're doing these things, you can start your Facebook page, your Instagram page, google my Business, your TikTok, your LinkedIn, your Twitter. What all avenues you want to use?

DYLAN STREET: 36:14

And I would say, as I have been rooted into the shed industry, most folks are just using Facebook for the most part and I was on the phone with Travis Beachy not long ago. He is in Waco, texas. He's got a really cool company. It's called Farm and Yard and they focus very hard on branding. They do really well at it. Just their photos, their look, their vibe, their apparel. It all does well together. And he's really big on TikTok. The other day he had somebody they ran across about two days before they came, ran across his TikTok binge, watched it until 3 in the morning and then two days later drove five hours into Waco. I mean they were down, you know, south in Texas Drove five hours just to buy a shed from him. I just thought that was wild.

DYLAN STREET: 37:02

So I always try to get people to kind of break past just Facebook, just Facebook marketplace. I mean you have all kinds of different outlets. Linkedin that's very underutilized. You can run paid campaigns on it and generally LinkedIn are business professionals so you can find people with you know their own businesses or own franchises, and outside of every Dairy Queen McDonald's there's generally a shed, right, am I right? They always have one in the corner because they have to put their cups and all their overstock.

DYLAN STREET: 37:32

So just something to keep in mind is whenever you're building out, or if you're having a marketing agency or someone in-house build out your digital assets, build them all, okay, and what does that take? So, um, if you're working with a marketing agency and they're do brand, if they do brand guidelines and that's you know the look, the feel, a favicon, and that's generally like a smaller version of your logo that you put in your facebook profile and then you could also get a banner. So everybody knows, on the top of facebook, you have your profile, then you have your banner, right, your long one. Youtube, you have your profile, then you have your banner, right, your long one. Youtube, you have a banner. Linkedin, you have a banner, and they're all different sizes and shapes and it's good to customize those for every social media outlet that you decide to use. What's the next one? Well, let me finish with the website. So you've got your copyright, you've got all your social media assets, assets. You can actually start promoting the business and generating revenue.

DYLAN STREET: 38:31

But you do need to build your website. Generally, that's a much, you know, that's a lot longer, but you need a website. But every time we've had about three calls this week. People want new websites. So they want to redesign and we enjoy doing those. We do a lot of just website jobs. We don't do their marketing, we don't do kind of the full suite of what they need.

DYLAN STREET: 38:51

But if you're building a website and you don't have a plan to get traffic to your website, your website's pointless, would everybody agree. So your website, you can have a beautiful website, but if you don't plan on running paid campaigns and you don't plan on doing any type of SEO, which there's many different types then nobody's going to get to your website. And websites, especially in the shed industry, are not cheap. Because you've got 15 shed types. You've got four animal shelters, you've got six chicken coop types, you're selling pergolas, you're selling gazebos, you're selling all these things and all of those different models deserve their own page. Then you've got your financial resources page, your FAQs, just all this stuff. So a shed website can quickly be 20, 30 pages and each of those pages built from scratch. It's a lot of work and it can be very expensive. What is the next step in the shed building process?

DYLAN STREET: 41:12

What are we at? We're at the floors. Is that right? Walls, okay, walls. So let's kind of tie everything together. You've built all. You have your logo. You've got your branding and your brand guidelines. You've got your social media assets, you've got your website. Now we're going to start tying all of those things together so you can track.

DYLAN STREET: 41:35

So we have moved away from traditional advertising. Traditional we would consider magazine, newspaper. You know, local television, your local news station, right, that would be what we would call magazine newspaper, local television, your local news station. That would be what we would call traditional Print mailers, even though I think there's still a place for those. We're moving away from traditional. The reason is the only thing that you can guarantee on traditional advertising is called a CPM. That means cost per mile and for translation, that's cost per 1,000 viewers or listeners or readers. So radio TV, and then literature, newspaper, magazine, so on and so forth. So it's a little bit different. For instance, maybe, for instance, maybe, what's a midco, right? They service a lot of shed manufacturers. Now, when they run an ad in a magazine like the Garage Shed, carport Builder magazine, that's a niche. So I think let's set that aside from traditional because it kind of has its niche market, but just in general, in general, we would consider this bucket traditional advertising.

DYLAN STREET: 42:44

Why digital advertising is such a big deal is because, if you're doing it right, you can track every lead and every conversion. So let's just say, you know you're going to spend $2,000 on digital ads on Facebook. Right, we can track your conversions. We know that $1,500 brought in 72 leads. And what we call a conversion, or a lead, that is in some way, shape or form, getting the potential client in contact with you, whether they click directions to your business, they call you, they fill out a lead form, they build a, you know, they use your 3D shed builder and you get their information. That's what we would call a leader conversion. So, to build these walls, I think it boils down to about four things. You've got Google Analytics, which is hooked up to your website. You've got a Metapixel, which is a Facebook pixel, which also hooks up to your website. You've got a Google Tag Manager, which is how you track conversions, and then you have a GA4 tag, so that's also how you track conversions. So we would call those things the walls, and what that is going to do is, whenever you do start running campaigns, you can start figuring out. Okay, all right, we're going to start out at $1,500 a month. With $1,500 a month, you know, we know that we're going to get 50 leads and those leads we try like.

DYLAN STREET: 44:13

Our main conversions for our shed clients is we want you all to get their name, phone number, email, zip code. Zip code is important because you need to know if you service their area. There's a lot of times on like Facebook ads, when you're running paid campaigns, it's set up just generically. When you run a campaign, that people living in or interested in this location, so you may have someone that's been thought about moving at one point in their life or they've visited there recently and they live in five states away. Well, you don't want to target that person, so you need to get their zip code to qualify that lead.

DYLAN STREET: 44:53

Now, what Shannon did at the very beginning he separated sales from marketing. We do talk to our clients about the sales process. Shannon's really good about that, just because he's been through it. So we do like to know. But we can get you those things.

DYLAN STREET: 45:09

I had a client out of Idaho the other day.

DYLAN STREET: 45:15

We've got them.

DYLAN STREET: 45:16

They just started.

DYLAN STREET: 45:17

It was their first month. We got them 218 leads on Facebook alone and each of those leads was name, phone number, email, zip code. Well, they were overwhelmed, first off, because they've never dealt with that many leads and you know they haven't went through them all, but they're like we haven't sold any. And, in a nutshell, I tell them well, I can't quite help you there. You know, shannon might have some input, but there's a reason you're not selling because when we target people, these people are interested or have been looking for a shed, some sort of storage solution, or they've been looking for, you know, how to add a garage onto their house, right, we target on Facebook with interest, behaviors and demographics. So what are they interested in, what are their online behaviors and what's their demographics? So where are they at? So that's how I would say what we build those walls, it's going to be those tools that help you track conversions. What would be the next step? Next simple step, on a real shed build, what do we got? Yeah, we'll just, we'll just call it the roof, because I'm running out of stuff. You know what I mean. We got to wrap this up, so we'll call it the roof. And um, in the shed industry, we'll just say google ads and facebook ads. So we we've got most of the shed built. Now we need to start driving traffic to the shed and, from that point, crafting your Google ads.

DYLAN STREET: 46:48

We start with market research. So, generally, you know who your competitors are. We like to get top five competitors and we can analyze everything that we're doing. We can look at every ad they're running on Google, every ad they're running on Facebook and Instagram. We can look at every ad they're running on TikTok, youtube pre-roll videos. We can see everything that they do and so we can also determine where they generate their revenue at, based off the type of ads they're running. So we do market research on the competitors and then we start developing a strategy, figuring out hey, do you offer tiny homes? Are you a certified tiny home builder in your area? Are you focused on just standard utility sheds? What do you want your brand to push out the most? So we figure out what that is and then we start running these campaigns.

DYLAN STREET: 47:41

Beyond that, I'd say the last thing. Let's just say we're picking out the paint, right, picking out the paint and the trim color. That's going to be. How do we craft the ads? What is? What are those? You know those different taglines that your brands, like Blacks, blacks, buildings you know they. They have a few different cool taglines just hand-built sheds, american-made sheds, sheds built to last a lifetime that's some of their taglines. Just hand-built sheds, american-made sheds, sheds built to last a lifetime that's some of their taglines and that's just that's how it works, isn't that right, nathan? And that's what they're known for. So we incorporate that in every ad that we run, for the most part, right? And I would also add in, you know, kind of developing your full marketing shed video content, photos, graphics.

DYLAN STREET: 48:23

I see I get hit with shed ads all the time because you have some people that run their own ads, but they accidentally run it towards the shed industry rather than people looking for sheds. So I see them all the time and I'll look at their Facebook page, I'll look at their logo, their branding and the way that they word things, and then I'll look at their graphic and the graphics purple, but their brand is, you know, yellow and black, and I I'm just like you know, you've got to keep it all cohesive, you've got to keep your color codes, you've got to keep your language, you've got to keep it all together. Uh, so you look like a solid brand. I mean, look at any of of these bigger brands, coca-cola, I mean. Things are red and white. You just have to look at everything and try to keep it all cohesive. So that's what I would say is the marketing shed.

DYLAN STREET: 49:09

In general, we do help a lot of people with, like, if they're getting leads and they're having to go to Google to find leads and go on Facebook and we'll help them try to figure out what CRM, which is a client relations management software, that'll help you funnel all your leads into one spot and then you can create like a pipeline on. You know where's this person at. You know we've called them to have an answer. This is a warm lead, this is a hot lead. This has been sold, waiting on payment, whatever that is, and we like to help there. But I'd say that's the marketing said. Does anyone have any questions? Did I miss anything? Anyone have any questions?

SHED GEEK: 49:50

what you got let here, deanna's gonna bring you the mic real quick, yeah we just we want to get uh, so this is all recording on the mics, guys. So we want to try and create that content so I've got a couple questions here.

Speaker 4: 50:00

So we do a lot with facebook marketing and stuff. So a lot of stuff you're saying around specific targeting methods. Are you seeing that still holding true today versus broadband and broad marketing? So a lot of the stuff that we're seeing. If you get too specific, you're not generating the leads that you need to be generating from a lot of these marketing. And then you know we have used professional companies in the past that have generated zero results because they market to a template and a lot of people try to market this thing that says, hey, you've got to do X amount of characters, You've got to have just one photo, You've got to do these things. And we've followed that in the past with no results at all. And we went the other way characters, you've got to have just one photo, and you've got to do these things. And we follow that in the past with no results at all. And we went the other way.

Speaker 4: 50:47

So we've done a lot of broad campaign marketing which has gotten a lot of good results. So we spent about thirty thousand dollars of marketing last year with facebook advertising campaigns and generated almost 700,000 in additional sales over the previous year. So everybody talks about professional photos, doing all these, what we found out is that Facebook Al we're going to favor more user-generated content that's not looking as professional as this stuff looks to be able to generate these kind of results. So you know, I hear people on each side of this thing, so I just want to know where you fall out, where you hear, you know, broadband campaigns versus user generated content, versus all this professional stuff that we've done in the past that's never generated a dollar in sales.

DYLAN STREET: 52:28

Yeah, absolutely.

DYLAN STREET: 52:29

Those are all good questions. So that ties back to our walls. You have, like, your GA4 tag and you have the data from your digital assets for the lifetime of your company. I'll come back to that. But to answer your point, if you have all these right tracking efforts, google Analytics and your Pixel and all these things are working, what those things are doing in the background is they're gathering data, more data than we all understand. I don't know if you all know, but Google and Facebook they know what you drive and where you work and what you're interested in. They know what you look at on and off of the platforms. I mean they know. I mean, if I want to sell Mercedes steering wheels to people that drive Mercedes, you can certainly get that specific.

DYLAN STREET: 53:26

But if we just start on with a client, we will run a broad campaign and what we'll do with that is we'll start gathering data. That way we can retarget to customers that we know are warm leads. So we always run a broad campaign that may be just a little bit more open and not completely shed specific. We may, depending on the shed company and the demographic which people always ask. Well, do you have a client with a $5,000 a month ad budget. How do they do? Like? Well, I would love to tell you, but they're also in a population of 14 million that they service and you're in a population of 900,000. Big difference. But, pulling that back in, we always run broad campaigns because you have to get in front of people that you know maybe haven't been searching out these things, but it's been in their mind, right, it's not, the data is not there to pull. So we do run broad campaigns, but we also run retargeting campaigns and what that does it's going to bring your cost per click to the website down, your conversion, your cost per conversion down, because you've been warming them up and touching them multiple times and I think it's important to have that funnel. What content are they seeing? First, in a broad campaign, what are you hitting them with? Second, maybe talking about the financial options or, you know, rent to own, just whatever it may be. So I do agree. I think that what we do is we do both.

DYLAN STREET: 54:47

Now, on the content side, it depends on the brand. I think it depends on the brand. So I'll move back to Travis Beachy at Farming Yard. This guy, what he does like every day, he does multiple TikToks a day and you know he'll just be like had a gentleman call from so-and-so and we've customized the shed, we just got it on the lot about to go out for delivery and he'll walk you around. The guy he does really good with organic. He doesn't do a lot of paid campaigns because TikTok is paying off very well for him. Now he is in a very large service radio. I mean, there's a lot of people there and of course, tiktok is huge. So I think it depends on the brand, right, and then you know who is.

DYLAN STREET: 55:24

You can work with anything. I think that you can take a video that you're doing on your phone and doing a walk around and you can spice it up where at least it shows a little bit of class, a little bit of uh, but it but it also feels raw and real. Um, and and I think there's it's good to push your brand, but it's also good to push your personal brand, um, I think, I think most people should be doing both if they're a business owner, um, in my opinion. Does that answer your question for the most part? Yeah, absolutely. Here, dan is going to bring you that mic, okay, and if anyone else has any other questions, please, and dan will come, you know, right after we get done.

SHED GEEK: 56:03

Yeah, I definitely want to walk, walk back through that marketing, shed some too, and then we'll do a little on page, off page and, yeah, seo gotta talk about that we have plenty of time, so that's right so in terms of sponsored ads that you run through facebook.

Speaker 4: 56:16

So, uh, what we've seen is a lot of competitors are able to use financing terms and terminology without getting ads rejected. Yeah, so how is that possible? Yeah, every time I run an ad that runs RTO, runs some kind of no credit check, any kind of numbers we get a lot of ad rejections. What is the workaround to getting these ads that I see every one of our competitors run with no ad rejections at all and we get rejected, you know, nine out of ten times with those.

DYLAN STREET: 56:51

I'm going to be honest, I don't have the answer. We have some clients where we're like RTO a tiny home with no money down right and then you have one that you can't even mention rent to own or finances at all, and what we do is we start a new ads manager for that account. So if one has been rejected once, for whatever reason, the Facebook robots have caught that we will kill that ads manager and we'll start the client a new ads manager and fire off again, because I haven't figured out how to get around that. Once they've caught you, once they'll continue to get you on that ads manager account.

Speaker 4: 57:24

And what we do. We've got several set up, so we've got one that we try the new ads on now to see if it gets flagged before we run it on our main page. Yeah, but when you start a new ads manager, do you have to start a new business page?

DYLAN STREET: 57:38

negative. No, you can start an ads manager account, um, and you can go back and you can connect that pixel. So that's where, when I was talking about the walls and the google tag manager, you can pull that old pixel in with all of your data and stick that in your new or or inside your Google Tag Manager, which is connected to your Ads Manager. It's just kind of a spider web back there, you know. Yeah, thank you Absolutely.

DYLAN STREET: 58:00

Does anybody else have any questions? Anyone? Awesome, I'm going to let Shannon go and I got to make sure we talk about data.

SHED GEEK: 58:08

Well, there's plenty of time here before and as long as we're adding value to you guys, we want to spend time up here. This is a live Zoom call for us. So this is something that we kind of do three, four, five times a week it seems like anymore. So, yeah, building that. Well, let me start with this how many of you heard some of these terms for the first time here today? Google Pixel, ga4 tag. I love GA4 tag. I like to say it because I sound a whole lot smarter than what I am. Okay, and all of a sudden I'm over here and I'm quizzing Dylan. I'm like, okay, break this thing down to me, because this is what I understand.

SHED GEEK: 58:46

I understand my second or third podcast with Gideon Zook, who says it's 1973 and three, him and his two brothers are starting a shed company and his dad come to him in Lancaster County and says two of you boys are going to have to quit because you're going to flood the market. So like, just imagine now, after seeing what we did, like even during COVID and even post COVID, we're beginning, you know, to see that people are seeing increase in sales, even if it's a decrease in units sold right. So like, the price is really, you know, maybe stabilizing, I guess you'd say in the industry. But it's a lot different than let's build some sheds, let's set them out there and let's rely on traditional marketing. Why do you set a shed by the road? You'll get eyeballs on it. I mean, that's the whole purpose for it. If you were going to build a brick and mortar storefront versus a digital storefront, the first thing you're going to do is put in an office and put some product out there, so that might be equivalent to building your website. But what if you put your website, or what if you put your shed lot out in the middle of nowhere where nobody can see it?

SHED GEEK: 59:53

Everybody says, well, that's bad, right, because we want high traffic count, people are checking on four-lane highways and we want eyeballs on it. And no one has to educate you and explain to you why you want a shed lot on a four-lane highway. Because we all grew up with this, it was a natural thing for us to understand. The more eyeballs that see it, the more human behavior might be changed, because somebody might actually see something they like, decide to go ahead and stop in. Now you have the opportunity to sell and you might sell many different ways. You might sell, like some guys I've ran across who's like, ah, they'll come see me if they want to shed. And then you might see some guys that go out and meet you with a bottle of water, oatmeal, cream pie, whatever it is, and you're really trying to focus on the customer and put sort of a very intentional focus on your sales process, but the key being if it's not seen. So if your website's not seen, and that's what we have to talk about.

SHED GEEK: 1:00:49

Obviously, google took sort of the platform whenever it comes to search engine. So let's start there with the 90s dot-com boom and you had all these other search engines. You still have some show up. I don't know what's the most popular. Bing would be second. Bing is probably second.

JEFF HUXMAN: 1:01:05

Yeah.

SHED GEEK: 1:01:05

DuckDuckGo is starting and people really like DuckDuckGo and I bet in this conservative crowd that's probably they're owned by Google. Yeah, most all of that is Google still has such a large, they have such a large presence in information gathering and that's sort of the purpose for it. Whenever you Google oh I don't know, shoes near me, you want to go look up where there's some shoes to buy and you got 500,000 results in 0.332671 seconds. Now, the reason for that is because what Google's saying is like we're the most reliable place to get this information that you want. It's become part of our everyday vernacular Just go Google it. I don't know. I don't know the answer. I don't even have to know because I can Google it. So just go Google it.

SHED GEEK: 1:01:51

And it's become so common that that search engine has become the most reliable source of data and, if you don't know, data has surpassed oil, even in the number one most driven commodity that people are in search for. So, like all of these things that Google and Facebook and all of that's why your little camera comes on when you start talking about beach balls and you get an ad for a beach ball. You know, for those of you who are on Facebook, you kind of understand that, because people are trying to understand human behavior at a level like never expected, because they're trying to understand what drives human behavior. Yes, you saw the shed when you went by the four-lane highway, but what made you purchase, what made you stop? What was the thing? Was it the seventh touch point? Was it the eighth time you drove by here and it just kind of clicked in your mind all of a sudden.

SHED GEEK: 1:02:39

So we're trying to figure out as much as we possibly can, as much data as possible, so that we can understand human behavior, so that we can drive that human behavior to make us money. Right. Go capitalism, yay America, that's just what we do. So and we can't say much. We sell people storage for their excess stuff. So we already know they like their stuff.