The Huddle - Episode 51 - How to Market your Flooring Business

The guys are joined by Daniel Mascovitch from Flooring Pro's Marketing (https://flooringprosmarketing.com) to discuss how to appropriately and successfully market your flooring business.

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The HUDDLE is where the flooring industry can get together and talk about everything! Lead by Paul Stuart from Go Carerra who is joined by Daniel and Jose Gonzalez from Preferred Flooring.

https://www.preferredflooringmi.com

https://www.stuartandassociates.com

hey flooring family welcome to the Huddle we're here every Tuesday 3 P.M

Central we're talking with a very special guest Daniel from flooring Pros with me as

always is Daniel and Jose Gonzalez from preferred floors out of Grand Rapids

Michigan and so they're Daniel there's no confusion that's skinny Daniel I'm

fat Daniel you're looking great fat Daniel come on thanks man

these are these are the the names we came up with in Vegas so

yeah next time I see you in person I hope that we can't you can't even tell the difference between us there you go

I'm I totally Embrace Pat Daniel I've been fat my whole life so well that means you got to gain a little bit there

or skinny Daniel So today we're going to be talking about you know marketing your your service

whether that's your full-service flooring company uh retail commercial some ideas built around that uh some

stuff I'm working with flooring Pros on um uh in that regard as well as if

you're an installer how can you start to leverage um and I mean you have no idea how

powerful it can be if you can leverage digital uh marketing for your flooring

service whether uh like I said whether you're a full pledge flooring company but as an installer you're truly setting

yourself apart because 99.5 of installers do not Market

themselves very effectively so that's obviously one of the things that go career does but we only do it

from an aspect of promoting your profile once you're a go Carrera installer this

is uh outside that feel free to use any of the Nuggets you learned today about marketing yourself

um whether you're a member of go career or not this is just all value and we're

going to touch on everything from some chat GPT stuff AI stuff effective

marketing uh you know the challenges that uh installers face

um as well as multiple different ways that you might be able to set yourself

apart in the digital world so kicking things off the biggest problem

that I see is from a marketing perspective with installers they simply don't know what

to do most um most will post on their feed they're

you know in their socials like their completed work or something or some of them have gotten pretty creative on

creating uh short form reels or such of

there of the progress of the installation and those are all cool but if you could drive traffic to that stuff

and to your social pages to get more eyes on that you can really set yourself apart even

within the installers that are currently doing some of this if you're not doing

it taking some prideful pictures of your work and

um even the pro the process of you doing a project is is a a pretty cool way to

show people what we do reality TV is a big thing reality in

general we like to see what if other people are are having the same struggles we are uh and that's what really draws

us to reality television and that's a form that's what social media can be for you is your own reality TV channel

so um that being said effectively marketing let's start with uh just your I'm gonna

say like the two to three man crew that's out and about Daniel uh and I'll

I hate to use skinny Daniel fat Daniel in this one yes so

if you don't use it we're all going to be confused so so I'm actually going

flooring Pros uh and then well that that'll be my separator so I gotta call

you guys he's FP Daniel and we are PF Daniel yeah yeah see that's even

confusing yeah that's even more well I got an app yeah I got four Pros marketing you know I got DM there too so

I could uh yeah that is confusing yeah yeah there we go

um so I've you know been working with a number of flooring uh retailers and installers over the last few years here

just getting to know their businesses and what their struggles are with online marketing as well as over the last 10

years working with various business owners in various different Industries and I think it really comes down to you

know marketing works when you have the right message getting to the right people right so determining what that

message is and who those right people are is going to be really really important so once you determine that

message you really have to understand okay so if you're an installer uh who are you going after are you going after

higher end customers and consumers if that's the case what do they care about

they care about quality they care about making sure that you have a good tight process for the installation that you're

using good products you're gonna you're gonna come on time you're gonna you know finish the project when you you know on

schedule you're going to clean up after yourselves and things like that those are the things that that they really

care about if you're targeting that audience some people might care about they want

to support local as opposed to big box stores so maybe that's your message right and some people really just care

they want the cheapest floor because they just can't afford something that they want like good floors for

affordable prices there's kind of a counter argument there too right like if you want the cheapest don't call me kind

of thing yeah yeah and that that does work if that's the if

that's their message right if they're they're trying there's some people who don't want the cheapest and some people do right and some people want the

cheapest one they think that they can get the cheapest at Home Depot or some of these big box stores but in fact you

guys can get better prices sometimes as an independent installer right so

um it really just depends you have to own in on okay what who do I want to get after like what is my message and then

once you understand what your message is like how do I get in front of those people is that their first step Daniel uh at

Flora flooring Pros is that the first step is like ask yourself this question

and write down the answers like what what does your client want and just take

some time in developing that I mean can you talk through a little bit of the process that you use to pull that out of

people yeah so that's called a customer Avatar right so um I think that marketing doesn't work when

you're trying to be everything to everyone right um so if you know that you want to be

known or perceived as a specific type of flooring company and you know

that there's a specific type of customer that would look for that flooring company then be that own it uh right so

you want to understand who you do want to work with and I think at the beginning when you're we're all starting business you know I know I've made that

mistake you're taking on projects that are not right the right Fit For You

So eventually after you kind of work for a few years you understand hey these are

good clients and these are bad clients so once you have an idea of what a good client is

develop that customer Persona develop that Avatar understand you know what's important to them their challenges their

frustrations with the you know contractors or you know flooring installers or buying flooring or

understanding flooring you know and then hater your messaging to them on all your

platforms and I'll talk about different Platforms in a minute here but um

you know that's really important I think that's the first step is really just understand okay like who do I want to

get in front of who do I want to be and how do I be that that company to that person to that

ideal customer so as a as a

subcontract installer or an installer uh there's

a few avatars I can think of from a customer base like you have if you're in

the commercial world you have your commercial flooring companies if you're in the retail world uh maybe

you're in both you got the retailer you also have your uh end user that you go

direct to and those are distinctive different ways that you're going to Market yourself

um the so it's like really important to figure out if you're doing work for a

retailer but you also do work directly with the homeowner you gotta mesh those somehow I would assume through this

process or have two distinct ways of marketing to them is that correct or would you would you recommend like you

mesh them because many I know many installers work for for a store of some sort whether it's a flooring contractor

a Commercial contractor or a retailer and they may work for uh homeowners uh

directly who went to say floor decor and bought their tile and just need somebody to install

the answer depends it depends on what they want to achieve it depends on resources it depends on budget

it depends on what they have already um like ideally

you know if you're an established business you have a website and a page dedicated on on you know a page

dedicator and website for each of those personas so for your residential projects for your commercial projects

things like that for your retail as well so um depending on

who you're trying to go after and if it's multiple people then just you have to have different messaging for each of

those segments and then you have to have marketing campaigns and and different kind of materials for each of those

segments as well because what an ideal uh commercial client would want or an

ideal commercial partner right if you're trying to get in front of more say designers or Architects or you know

property managers they care about different things than a you know homeowner and looking to redo their

floors right so uh you just need you can have all that stuff on a page you just have the messaging has to be different

for each of those Target audiences right gotcha yeah so yeah that's what we see too like uh

like we have everything set up different like that but what ends up happening is we don't push residential at all but

they see all of our commercial work and they give us a call anyway they're like hey we see your work over here do you do

this as well those are the the Gimme jobs when they're basically tired of

dealing with everyone else and just wants someone that they believe

they they see us that we know what we're doing so they just use that to to get us

in there yeah that's a great great part about flooring is that it's a visual

it's a visual crap right like you're talking about the images and the before and afters and the you know the still

photos and stuff like that of the pro progress of a job people like that because the consumer isn't stupid

consumer knows what they want consumers doing research like I've talked to a lot of my following clients I said like what

percentage of customers who are coming into the showroom know what types of floors they want but

again she's like not you know they're like most of them are like 90 95 they know exactly what they want already

it's not your job to necessarily convince them over one floor or the other it's to convince them that hey you

have what they're looking for and you're the best fit for that right so

um I I Believe In selling and marketing from a standpoint of

Integrity uh you know trust honesty and then omnipresence also right like

education omnipresses so if you can be in front of them in so many different ways that's when marketing really works

if you can get in front of them when they're doing a Google search great you can get in front of them when they're on uh you know social media great as long

as it's not too pushy or or something like that if you can get in front of them you know on groups local groups or

communities emails things like that your omnipres right it's not gonna you know

you're not gonna win over everyone but that's fine that's totally you know that's that's part of marketing

kind of part of the game part of the game so how does uh just a quick question

here for preferred flooring up there uh do you guys

when you're when you get a client because I think it's interesting that somebody sees

uh a commercial job that you did and then once you do their their house we've experienced that as well but

what's what's kind of really cool about that is you're not marketing to that side you're kind of still doubling down

or are uh going after more your commercial stuff and because of as a

result of doing such a good job there you guys are getting the residential jobs is that accurate

um you know there's a there's probably a little bit more to that that meets the eye

um a lot of the residential comes through contacts that we make on Commercial projects and it also comes

from the the area uh the school district um we we do

put our name on Little League teams we put our name on on high school teams we

try to help out in that manner too like originally we didn't help out to get

residuals we helped out because we were kids that grew up without those opportunities and we wanted to help and

plus this is the school district that our children are attending and we want to do our part in helping them become a

successful District um so the

the visual the name is familiar right like oh well let's check out preferred foreign

company oh but all they have is commercial work well look at some of their work I'm sure they do Residential

you know and I'm pretty sure that that some of it is a mixture of a familiar name and logo mixed in with a little bit

of research so um that that um who knows you not who you know thing so

just and plus people thought we had a whole Fleet of Vans at one point but our

vans are such stand out they stand out they're they're driving Billboards and like oh man I've seen your van in

Lansing on Monday but then I was in Greenville and I seen it there on Tuesday man you guys are everywhere how

many crews you have we just laugh but I think that that's what helps with the website it leads it directs people to

the website and in turn they call hey I don't see any residential and then we have a conversation

so that how does how much does brand continuity play into this uh

do you think Daniel yeah uh yeah like it's it's part of the

omnipresent stuff right like again like I I I I I live and breathe the digi in the digital marketing worlds that's what

I know uh so I don't do much of the the traditional marketing or you know but I

think that it's part of that that omnipresent stuff and you know it's it's being seen right so if you're being seen

in person if you're being seen online if you're being seen with the trucks uh you know driving by and people recognize you

when it comes time for them to get flooring chances are you're going to be you know

top of mind right because flooring is not something that's like you know unless there's a you know

obviously an insurance claim or water damage or something like that it's not necessarily something that is like an emergency I need it tomorrow right it's

like oh I'm planning on doing some renovations right it really depends the timing so you can't control the timing

where people are going to need your services but it's up to you as a business and up to someone like me as a

marketing company to make sure that when that timing is right that you are top of

mind that you are found right so uh that you know if people are searching for you

that your website pops up and your your branded assets pop up if they you know

that you're continuing to email them if they became a lead even a year later you

can still nurture them with you know updates uh News latest reviews case

studies before and after pictures things like that that can all be set up on you know automation marketing automation so

that you're nurturing that lead who was interested in boards but maybe they just weren't ready to pull the trigger on their rentals yet and you're still top

of mind right so it really just comes down to um making sure that you're doing your best

to to be there when when the the prospect of prospective client is is ready right

and I think that's where like there's there is that difference between the commercial world and the residential

world as far as like all the emails and stuff because like I'm

especially like project managers and stuff like that they they move from GC

to GC and it's hard to keep track of all that right so in order for us to be top

of mind with um commercial we we that's why we're out doing the baseball teams and stuff

because then we we attract those eyes where it's like hey your kid was on my

kids team and I own a construction business so hey why don't you want we sit down and talk and um you know my

sister's kid is on a team right now with one of the guys that used to work for a distributor who's retired now but now

it's like he sees our logo everywhere he's and then he he calls us hey my church needs some work done can you come

measure it it's it's all all about how many how many eyes we can get on us at all

times so that way like you said we can be top of mind yeah yeah and it comes back to the

beginning there I you know knowing who the right eyes are what the right message and then knowing how to get in

front of them right there's multiple ways to get in front of them and you're right commercial is a whole different Beast than the residential but you can

still use the online stuff right there are still people who are searching for commercial flooring installers in your

city right and there you can still do targeted email lists if you have a list that you buy or you know maybe even jobs

that you did 10 years ago might need some refinishing work they might need some patch ups that might need new

floors right you can reach out to them even 25 right things like that right I didn't mean like you it's it's wrong or

anything it's just you have to have everything that you can in order to get

the most presence that you can yeah 100 yeah 100 I mean because I never thought

that sponsoring the teams and like he said we didn't do it just try and get jobs or anything but

after we started seeing like some of the residuals like man maybe this stuff does work you don't think about it like old

school right printing something having it kind of a shirt or you know um what

are we doing that's all that's awesome that's also tugging on some heart strings I mean there's a whole another

aspect of charitable marketing um not that you do it for the mar for

that side but there's you know if you're involved in your community and you you advertise uh yourself uh

often if there's some event or something you're the sponsor of it you're up on a

billboard you're uh you know so those things always tend to come down the pipe and uh you stay top of mind but

digitally it can be a little bit tougher because the our attention spans

digitally are so short and that's part of your struggle at floor marketing Pros

right I mean like you have to have hard hitting

things digitally uh in some manner so depending on the depending on the

traffic source so it's kind of let's let's break let's break it down here right so we always say when I when I'm

talking to prospective clients it always starts with you know your website right a website you need to have either a

website or a landing page or a squeeze page or something like that that is Catered towards that person who's

looking for what they're looking for so make sure that it's it's that it clearly

addresses that topic whether looking for hardwood flooring or commercial flooring or residential flooring or luxury vinyl

or just an installer whatever you want to make sure that that page is relevant to what people are looking for there or

if there's a promo or an offer or you know a sign up whatever and you want to make sure that it's easy for them to

take action whatever that action is request a quote book an estimate uh you

know call you right you want to make sure it's easy there you want to make sure that the messaging is not all about you or yourself right so a lot of people

a lot of the times I go onto a website it's like you know we're you know Miami's number one flooring company and

here's how why we're so great and we've won on this award and this award and this award and it's like people don't really care about that until afterwards

like talk to the talk to them first like explain why they should care about you

uh show them that you understand their frustration or you know their pain points hey you've been looking for

hardwood floors and you just don't know which one you know is right for you have you dealt with flooring contractors that

never showed up and we're late and you know your project was delayed and they went way over budget or something like

that here is why we won't do that here's proof that we won't do that and here's

you know there's some some uh some awards we've won because of that right so we want to make sure that you know

your messaging and your website are congruent to that kind of stuff there and then you want to figure out where

you're going to be driving that that traffic from so um you know uh

I'm a Google guy that's where you know where I got my feet wet in the online marketing world is the SEO the organic

stuff uh and I think still think it's the best possible traffic Source there

is online the reason being is if someone is searching for something online

chances are they're interested they're searching for flooring near me you know uh flooring Kansas

city they're looking for flooring in Kansas City they're not really looking uh you know to understand you know

what's better or something if they're looking for what's the difference between you know lvp and laminate then

they're looking for more information but they're looking for flowing contractor interview they're looking for a flooring company and the vast majority of people who

uh search will click on either the organic Maps results or the results

below that right so that's why I think that's so powerful of us to have strong

SEO presence is because people are searching for it and you know that they are if you're not ranking high in the

maps or organically you're just losing out on those people who are interested

now it's how can you yourself tell where you're ranking because like if I search

for me it's like pops up as the first one because it knows it's me right

yeah so there's a bunch of different tools let me do one for you guys I'll show you I'll show you a couple here and

give me just a moment you guys continue I just kind of plug in my camera here or

yeah there's a whole bunch of tools that I have a tool that I that people really love and it's to show uh

it is to show local Maps rankings but I need to be able to share my screen

yeah so I would do an organic search I would look from uh an incognito window

okay okay and and take a look there but if you're located where your office is

you are going to show up yeah if you're doing things right so the idea is maybe you should do a search from another side

of the city and and see where you show up ideally you can rank across a whole

Metro like we have some rankings that are making the maps across the whole area it takes a while to get to that

point but it's totally possible so most Maps change my settings on Google to

change my location because like I didn't know that until recently that you could do that but uh yeah on my new phone it I

kept doing like search near me and it thought I was in Ohio because that's where what was programmed into the phone

so and then when I want to find out some information and I'm pulling up a bunch of spam I do uh I do change my location

to a different country and then I I pull up a whole different um a whole different envelope of

information from another yeah so yeah you can change your search uh on the Google settings on the phone also like

through a desktop fake yeah there's a way to change your your geo coordinates as well totally but

yeah there's tools out there that will show you where you're ranking locally in the maps and like I said it's let me see

if I can share my screen here Ashland is the host I just asked her if

she could if you could yeah Ashland if uh you would make uh for

marketing Pros the host that would be awesome

so in the meantime you know okay there we go so you know seos and Google search

is really really important uh and also just showing up for your brand so we

talked about your you know branding right uh you know sponsoring different uh events and teams and scholarships and

Charities and things like that uh you want to make sure that if someone searches your brand you're going to show

up as well and oftentimes people don't really have a strong brand online their competitors might show up for them

because your competitors are bidding on your name or you just don't have that strong of a brand there so let's let's

do uh one here and I'll show you a good example here so it's

it's remind me of the name that you're going to get your business is preferred preferred flowing preferred

flooring bird flooring in

yeah or right there Grand Rapids the second one down I'm trying this one oh

no it just disappeared it was it was the second one second one

okay this one yep three mile road okay so we're gonna enter a search term

there's like flooring or flooring contractor

and we're gonna do a local search and we're gonna move this to miles

and change this to about seven

and I'm gonna move the the grid to a little bit more in the center of Grand Rapids there

and actually we'll just change it yeah throwing contractors it's even just flowing Grand Rapids

and we'll do a search and I'll show you so what this does is it gives you an idea of what your

search you know where you're ranking in the maps across a geographical area so obviously green is good one two or three

is really good because that means you're showing up on a Google search otherwise people have to click on more places to

find you and red and orange and you know uh lighter green is is not so great so this

was one I did for a uh you know prospect that uh last week let's open yours there and you can see

here that he's ranking the maps for a turn like this for flooring only near

his actual physical location but anyone outside of that location he's not

showing up so it's really really important to absolutely to to you know to optimize your site uh for that

traffic and your and your business profile as well to get that right because the vast majority of people are

going to click on that and that was something I didn't necessarily mention is you have you know you've got Google ads you got the maps you got organic

results now how many of you guys actually click on Google ads some of us do I do sometimes but somehow they don't so most

of you really relevant it's got to be really relevant exactly so that's why uh

you know investing in the uh in um or a strong organic SEO presence is

really important so you can see here you guys are showing up for flooring for

in Grand Rapids closer to where your physical location is there

in the Northwest right so anyone in the Northeast

or Southeast or Southwest if they're searching for flowing Grand Rapids isn't finding your your listing there so

that's that's something that you know that's really you know something very interesting and uh appealing to a lot of

flooring businesses out there the majority of the contractors we do we work with are in that area right around

us anyway so so that's amazing that's great yeah so it really depends on it depends on the the company right if you

are annoying reader if you're a retailer and there's someone who's going to drive from this area to that area no problem

if it's the right store if they got the right reviews they you know have a good

brand reputation from a commercial from a commercial standpoint though like

you'd want to to what I see most is general contractors

when you when Google's used where I see it used most is when a general contractor is coming into an area they

don't know who preferred flooring is or who the best is in that area and so they they type in flooring contractors Grand

Rapids or something of that nature you'd want to rank high overall

for that that's not really a real tight local search right that's kind of like

just looking for the best flooring contractor in Grand Rapids how does that what you just showed us how that how

they're uh how they look up and Grant in Grand Rapids how much does that affect

like what what if I'm a GC out of New York and I'm going to build a Trader

Joe's in Grand Rapid and I'm looking for a flooring contractor to cover my my flooring side of that

how much does that that local search that you just showed affect them

it depends how much it depends how much research they're doing right so if

you're if you're if you're a commercial uh you know a GC or a property manager

or if you're a residential homeowner it depends on how much research you're doing right so if you're willing to go

down and take a look at all these sites and read about them that's great but if

you're you know like a lot of people they're just gonna see okay this one has five star reviews 88 five-star reviews

I'm gonna you know click on them and give them a shout uh they're showing up here I don't have to I know the owner of

absolute Floor Covering he's a good guy well that's great that's awesome yeah shout out all right so so yeah so it

really depends like on how much they're willing to to do uh you know you can go

to more places and you can find other stores right there and you can go to see what the reviews are

um in my experience people are looking for a store that has a good reputation

that's going to not going to be too too far away from them uh they're looking for someone who can give them a quote an

estimate at a relatively uh you know as early as possible and they're looking for someone who's going to be within

their price range and budget right so it really depends Paul and I think that that would be

pretty important like I would say that you know you're going to want

to well the reason I ask is that is sorry to interrupt go ahead no no I've

just you know you wanna you wanna uh try to get as much like we're talking it comes down to

omnipresence right you want to get as much visibility as possible in life so if someone is looking

whether they're in New York or they're in you know these southeast of Grand Rapids you want to be visible if you

want to be visible right it really depends on the goal of the company uh but yeah I could see it really and it's

important for a retailer because like from if I'm a homeowner I want to go to the closest Best storm like those two

things right the best but also the closest if I have if I look up on there

and I see somebody that's got 55 star reviews versus 88 but they're closer

you know that's still pretty good I'll I'll probably get but from a commercial standpoint we you know

most commercial contractors don't just service a small area so they'll service all of Grand Rapids or all of right you

know that entire area of of Michigan even

um like even before we traveled doing national accounts at Stewart Associates we still did work in all of Kansas well

Western Kansas is for over four hours away from us you know

um so I guess my question was those local searches really matter when

you're a retailer do they matter as much from the commercial side and I think there's some

Nuance there that that would have to be talked through to get to a true answer to that but that was my question

yeah it depends who's doing the search if that person is is just looking for a reputable company that has good reviews

they'll click on a few of the companies there go to the website and reach out to them right

um most people are not going to spend the time going through multiple Pages that's for

sure so you know there's a there's a joke in our industry that the best place to hide a dead body is on page two of

Google right no one's going to page to Google whether

they're a commercial Prospect or residential Prospect I don't see them really taking the extra time to to find

a result on the second or third page right so if you're buried there I think they're still uh a need there but for

commercial Google is definitely less of a factor and I would say that it would

be more targeted ads so we talked about Google advertising that you got targeted ads right so that's on Facebook or

Instagram or LinkedIn uh YouTube and then uh targeted emails as well so if

you have that list if you know like people you have that ideal custom commercial customer that you want to reach out to you create that list you

send your message depending on what your message is like we talked about at the beginning and you you know you set up

email campaigns and marketing campaigns as well I think that's where you can reach the uh commercial uh customers a

lot a lot better I want to do a couple of things I want to talk about the independent installer

just out there installing so he doesn't really have a lot to say about what the store where it's at he's trying to

Market himself as as the best installer uh for whatever trade part of the trade

he's in maybe the best tile installer in the area and often uh when when people are whether

it's uh I mean I've done it in my own town when I've gotten desperate and and

Googled flooring installers Wichita Kansas you know um how can what are some easy ways they

can Market themselves is one question and then a follow-up is like what is the

experience of going through you know to to demystify this you know email

campaigns and all this I mean how do companies like floor marketing Pros help with that and is it as scary as it

sounds so part one is the first question of how can independent installers Market

themselves effectively who may not have websites but use social media more and

then the second part uh as I just yeah yeah social media would be the key there I

think uh um you know we've tried we've tried some

paid ad campaigns uh on Google ads for independent installers and it just

didn't work as well uh the cost per click is going up on Google ads right now so like we were averaging uh I would

say twenty dollars per click for flooring contractor intermediate tile contractor and that adds up if you are

an independent guy if you just have you know maybe yourself or another couple guys that adds up that would eat a big

budget and uh understandably so frustrates people and they say okay well

it doesn't really work Google ads work absolutely you just have to be able to be willing to spend a

bigger budget you have to have a bigger kind of brand name recognition you have to have a nice site to send them to

there's a whole bunch of different things to make Google ads work better for you so I would say that the Google ads probably not the best solution

unless you have you know you're willing to spend you know 50 bucks a day and you

have one specific keyword you're bidding on in one specific area or a couple zip codes that you're bidding on then I

think you can uh you can leverage some phone calls for sure there and it's pretty easy to get get started there but

social media would be where it's at because of what we talked about with the visual aspect so if you have great

imagery and videos and media and then you're going to share that the

issue is that people aren't sharing it in the right places a few years ago there was a study that showed that

your your Facebook page right your shared Facebook page I think Instagram is a bit better for sure but your

Facebook page organically has a reach of like five percent so if you have a

hundred people who follow your page only five people are gonna see what you post or again unless unless you've boosted or

you know pay to play things like that so um if you're just posting your work on

your own page expecting the phone to ring and there's not many people following it

you're you're you're missing out you're missing the point there but if you're doing some targeted ads you're boosting

it to the Right audience if you're posting in groups you know I I know a couple contractors have had a lot of

success posting in their local you know uh Community groups uh you know local

mums groups and things like that hey you know wanted to share this Amazing Project we just did and don't pitch

yourself like just say this is the pro that this is the project this was the problem we encountered this is what we

did and we're so happy with the results and like here's you know uh you know testimony or you know testimonial or

review from from the client before and after images people are going to be

interested in that you know well that's great that's great because you're I like what you said don't pitch yourself like

just let the results speak for themselves almost like if you're given a a talk somewhere and you

don't you're not there to pitch your company but you're there to talk about the problem or whatever it's almost like yeah you're showing exactly that's cool

like I said the consumer isn't dumb right so there's a place for a pitch and there's a place for not for not for

pitching right so the the Facebook groups some of them are spammed to hell with people just saying hey do you need new new windows do you need a new group

you know I can you know just maybe share some projects and

that's it let them decide hey you know this this looks great I'm gonna call these guys right so that's where I would

uh suggest it would be the the Facebook groups and the Instagram uh but again you need a following so make sure that

you're you're tagging relevant uh accounts and you know relative pages and

maybe following different people so the bigger following you get the more you're going to be seeing leverage stories so

show the pros the the progress of a job show the process of you guys installing people want to know the human side

behind the brand they want you to install it yeah they want to see the process the process so that kind of

stuff would be would be really good uh and then uh you know you can the email marketing all those

I'll talk about in a second but uh Tick Tock I don't know much about Tick Tock but I know that there are a lot of

people who are doing really well with tick tock especially in the flooring world because it is visual it's quick

easy videos oh sure and shorts exactly so that would be something that I would

suggest yeah do they run traffic to their site is

that is there is there a way for um or is that through just email but is

there a way like if you have a Facebook page I I know some smaller companies that's their website is their Facebook

yeah yeah so you don't need to run traffic to a page so like uh like the ads that we're doing with go Carrera I

think we have uh Legion uh form so basically it's a form directly on Facebook or Instagram so you know are

you interested great name email number you know you can set the fields and it's a form it never goes to your site at all

right so if you don't have a website that's ready and that's what I would suggest if you don't have a website that's set up for the conversion that's

going to Showcase your work going to have nice imagery reviews trust factors and things like that

just try to collect their information as quick as possible yeah I'll give you a

plug there you guys did really good for us down in we ran a campaign down in

Florida and it was it was successful with my uh in my view and we have a

website and everything but we're just we were trying to gather uh information but that sounds like that mechanism they use

for GoPro would be really helpful for our installers as well like you know that that could be a easy way like if

you're if they're I see a lot of posts on Facebook that are like I'm the best or this kind of attitude

when they're posting about themselves I really enjoy the ones that are more like what you said that it's like here's some

work I did here's a problem I solved check out the finished result um but at the end of the day they can

they can there's ways to leverage your social is what I was trying to get to like there's ways you can leverage that

to to not just post on your feed and hope for the best

yeah yeah I mean again yeah go ahead I would say you could run a link to all your socials anything you

put Facebook as their primary and they have a second or they can link them all together

um at that point I guess it's better to have a separate work Facebook than personal but

now um I did come up with an idea what you're talking what if we just started calling people and asking them about their floors extended warranty

start spamming on the yeah yeah that's good give that a shot Daniel or Jose and

let me know how that turns out is there a program right now going on

right now for that no so you don't know about Canada over here in the U.S it's a joke because

we are everyone got a call been trying to reach you about your car's extended warranty uh yeah yeah exactly yeah yeah

I know there's lots of that's what we're getting calls about Windows right now and window replacement and and like over

here right now it's all about the uh employee retention tax credit get like

24 25 calls a day government grants yeah people making

money off the government grants yeah yeah so um going back just a minute because I

want to give as much value as possible to people who who need it when I taught

when I said you there's more ways to uh leverage your social media than just

throw in a post up and you were yeah you had a thought on that

well yeah hands on your budgets depends on your target audience

uh and depends on your message and in the goal of it is it just if you're trying to get

in front of more homeowners like I said the free way to do it would be just you know share but don't spam

your work on relevant groups you know build a following do some

Instagram things some some shorts uh some stories get people to you know tag

you join in with local charities and community and trying to get some them to share with you because the more that

they share your stuff the more brand recognition you have there and then there's the pay to play which is running

targeted ads there's two ways to do that you have the first one where you can just do a post and you can say boost

this post it works you don't have as much targeting criteria as you would on the

back end which is through business manager so you would set up a Facebook business manager account that's connected to your Instagram you've set

your daily budget you set your audience uh you can be really drilled down uh

it's kind of gotten a little bit trickier in the last few years since um apple and iOS change their like

targeting and privacy settings but you can still do that so if you're a commercial installer

um you know think about who you want to get in front of uh you know

so we we've done some campaigns for commercial uh companies targeting

interior designers Architects property managers and just say hey this is what we do this is the work we do if you ever

have any projects that require you know gym floors or you know hospitals hotels things like that here's our work yeah or

like here's a guide of like how to choose the right floor for your next commercial project right so it's education right there's various

different things it really just depends on the budget and and how willing you are to to connect

with them at that next stage right so if you're just kind of like hey this is my work call me great

if you have enough resources and enough time to put together that that type of

kind of sales funnel material where it's more educational uh you're not pitching anything uh and then eventually more

about you you know the next ad can be about you and your history and then the

next ad can be like a case study like before and afters and reviews and then

finally it can be like book an appointment with me if you're interested so really that's like how we have set up

our social media campaigns but in order to do that we need a decent daily budget

because we have those four levels of ads we have this kind of intro top of funnel ads that are very generic then we have

you know more detailed about about the client what makes them you

know their passion for flooring how they got into it why they love doing what they do and then like a review or a case

study before and after pictures and then like a call to action right we have different levels of ads so it really

just depends uh you know think about who you want to get

in touch with what the message is and then you know just go and build uh build relationships and and get in front of

people there so we've talked a lot about building the relationships on the podcast in the past

what I keep takeaways for me is like talk about like give something away I was not

texting I was actually taking down a a note to um

write up a free pdf about choosing the right flooring that sparked me again calls all the time about that why not

leverage that knowledge that I get from several Architects and have all the

Architects telling me to uh specify what fluorine goes where that's really where

we set ourselves apart is we're not just trying to sell you a floor we're trying to sell you the right floor for the right space

um just had a client just as an example and do a pool room and we bid

um we did protect all which is a product uh for her chlorine and me both really

enjoy and believe in and it was perfect for this pool house at a country club

um they decided to go with somebody else uh and put kinetics in which is a

kind of uh here and there but it's not really the best application for that product and so now the edges are a

little weird and curling and they're calling me say can I start to just call you I have to

give some members uh of our country club work so I can't give you every job but

do you mind me calling you to make sure the right product is being put in I said absolutely so that's part of an idea for

me there uh so giving something away for free it like that seems like especially

if it's valuable and it's well put together and actually provides value to

that person could come right back to you I remember we have our friend called chat gbt so uh

yeah you know um that there are there are prompts out there that build

that material very very well you just have to uh you know program The Prompt a

little bit and prime it to give it the information that you want you know I want to make sure I talk about this type

of room and this type of room this rep room and this type of floor for these for this audience

you know go you know write that guide and you can also say I want to make it like a a pamphlet like a PDF can you

give me some ideas for images as well and it'll give you an idea for images you can send that to a designer a graphic designer and canva there's some

pretty awesome stuff that you can do with that um right what we're using the AI now

pardon me even canva has an AI picture exactly exactly you can connect canva with the chat exact so you can connect

it and send it to canva and Canada will create the uh the guide it's pretty amazing uh all that stuff and I would

just say that if you're doing that uh route you just want to make sure that that if you're putting that out in in

the ecosystem that there's a way for them to either in the past it used to be something

called like gated content right so here here's our guide but you need to get you know put your name and email in order to

download it which is great still works or just make sure that it's there available for anyone but you have

maybe a tracking pixel on it uh you have uh multiple calls to action uh as well

you know do you need help with this get in touch with us right so you don't want to just put it out there without a way

for them to actually get into your uh your your final ecosystem up as well

yeah I I'm sure a lot of people in the audience has used or messed around with

chat GPT a little bit uh if you haven't it's pretty fascinating just to play

around with a little bit but you talked about having the right prompts and things like that

um also if you're gonna write something um remember to put your

this just my my take on like put your flavor into it like don't just rely on

chat GPT to give you a perfect document like yeah

yeah you can input you can input um previous previously written material

as well to to get it to understand how you write and how you talk and like the way you want to uh portray yourself or

your business so you can give it uh you know you can say hey these are these are pages that I've written before this is

my emails that I've written this is my style this is my tone can you write something about this now using that

using that tone right so yeah you can get you can get smart and and when I we use chat TPT for you know writing ads or

writing emails and I'll get back to your your question about the email stuff um and then for website just

understanding structures right so uh going back to the SEO stuff I'll touch

on this really quickly it is uh website will do well if you have the

right Pages for the right things right if you have a good solid site structure so what do I mean by that you know you

talk about flooring okay well flooring what you know flooring installation okay what types of flooring installation I do

hardwood installation we do carpet installation we do Luxury vinyl installation we do a you know you have

pages for all this stuff and things oh what type of phone you sell okay we sell Hardware okay what type of Hardware solid Hardware you know a pre-finished

hardwood you know site finished hardwood engineered hardwood you have types of things you're you're creating that

entity and chat GPT can help really well understanding all that we call them kind

of topical entities or topical relevance in the SEO world so chat TV can help you basically say hey I want to rank you

know my sector flooring what are the different types of topics or entities that I need to have on my site it will give you a list and then you can take

that okay I want to write a page about this one okay great then you edit it and you adjust it and you know your flare

um we try not to copy and paste at all too much especially for the Google stuff

um but we'll take that as as kind of like a inspiration and put it into other writing tools when we're doing our

content that's what that's what I've used it for

is more inspiration maybe a little bit of like guidance on topics or something

but typically the body uh I like to just

for lack of a better word exercise that creativity on my own but it is nice sometimes to have that problem that kind

of gives you some subject lines for an email or or uh you know for a book that

you may be writing or whatever yeah that's where oh yeah that's really helpful

yeah and there's there's a Chrome extension called aiprm I think it's 20 bucks a month or something or 10 bucks a

month and it's just wonderful like it has something like a thousand different prompts depending on what you're trying

to do and you just plug in a couple keywords there and it will just shoot it all out because it's all been pre-programmed uh what's the name of

that a i p r m a i p r m

all right that's been awesome yeah yeah and there's there's tons of you know for social media posts there are

also like I can't remember off the top of my head but there's ones that will create automatically like ads and

carousels and you know uh headlines images and stuff like it's basically just say like hey if you want to do a

social media campaign on choosing the right for for your next commercial project

it would create the various ads for YouTube which is awesome again but again you need to make sure you review it and

then that it's you know true to your fashion and your style and your it represents your brand and all that stuff

but and actually true and and actually true exactly and actually accurate right

right so and then in terms of answering your question about the emails and the email marketing stuff like that we have

programs that we use uh you know we're going to be setting up some some stuff for you Paul there uh we're basically

here's where I think that most people fail with their email or even their lead management

is a lot of people will use say something like a MailChimp or something like that and they'll just send like a newsletter once a month once every six

months put a list but they don't really follow up with it or have like a next

step or a call to action right so when we like to do our email campaigns we like to have uh you know uh multiple

touches related to the same topic because some people might open that first email and they might not open the third or some people might open not open

the first two and they might be open to third right uh um so it depends uh on

the day time of day you're getting in front of them so we'll have multiple touches related to the same topic and if

they're interested we have a call to action we'll move them down along the pipeline and that pipeline will trigger an automation so it will trigger hey

this person's interested you should call them right away because you know they're a hot lead or I will send them a link to

the guide of how to choose you know the right flooring for your next commercial project right so we have various

different automations in place as well so uh so we're not just kind of sending an email and hoping that someone gets

into touch with you you're taking as much action as possible to to convert them into a lead or say hey no I'm not

interested right now or leave me alone you know that's fine if they say leave me alone you know that they're not

interested at all you can you know erase them from from your list right subscribe

yeah yeah is there um what do you think on uh when you say multiple touches per

topic and we're running short on time so I'll make this short but uh multiple touches per topic

the people who maybe grab the do you exasperate the ones who do like open

your emails on a pretty consistent basis uh in almost uh sacrificing them for the

ones who need the additional uh touches on the same topic do you see what I'm

asking like yeah the way we have it set up is we remove people from the workflow

if they opened is not enough but if they replied so we we make sure there's a

question in there like are you interested or would you like to you know schedule an appointment with us

something like that if they replied yes they get moved they get removed they don't get any future emails they get

moved to the next stage if they replied no I'm not interested they get removed and they get you know sent to not

interested uh but if they're opening and they're not replying we'll set still send them until they say yes or no right

so that's the way we have have it set up got him that makes sense

all right well uh I say this every week and I'll say it

again that hour went by fast yeah sure I am I am uh uh want to say thank you to

Daniel from floor marketing Pros he's done some work for us we've been very happy that's why I brought him on uh I

think that uh Daniel can you how can people reach out to you like how can they get in

touch with you if if I'm a a small flooring company or I'm a big flooring company or I'm an installer and I want

you know any entity that I may be how do I reach out to you to maybe give some of your expertise and help yeah uh website

is flooringprosmarketing.com email is Daniel at flooringprosmarketing.com on the website

there's a link to book a call with me as well which I'd be happy to talk uh to you guys and you could find me on uh on

Facebook and Instagram all the all the uh socials there uh the name is Daniel moskovich so it'll be I'm sure it'll be

in the episode here you can have some notes uh some links there you can add me on Facebook and we can talk via

messenger but best would be just kind of visit the sites uh or send me an email awesome

preferred flooring what's your guys's take on all this uh you know what it

what this episode did for me is uh you know I was taking some notes because I just every time I get with someone who's

really tuned into the to their to their uh trade like digital marketing Temple I

just see these holes that I have right I need to you know what I mean like yeah

that's what you you think right because we're we always say look at the our industry and how people

you have the installers that don't know what they're doing and then the installers who do right

you have to think of your of yourself like that I'm not a marketing professional and sometimes you gotta say

you know you're always like this person should hire me because I'm the professional well sometimes you have to think outside of you and be like I'm not

a professional at this that's where you know Daniel comes in and it's like sometimes you got to hire that

professional in order to get to that next level and you'll never get there on your own can you do like us personally

right like what we have done ourselves has gotten us to a certain level and in

order to grow from there the only way to do you know grow from there is to actually hire someone that knows way

more about it than we do yeah because well there's a lot to be said about working in your what you are pro every

moment you spend doing something you're not great at like like for me it's more I'm not the best marketer but I'm really

good at selling floors and I'm really good at you know managing Crews and and hiring people and

training them for my company if I can focus on that and let someone else do some of the marketing stuff then and and

that goes with anything but since we're talking about marketing that's a key Point here is that like sometimes it's

time to turn it over so hopefully uh some people reach out to you Daniel and at the very least I want to say thank

you is packed full of great information man and uh I know it's a bit like

getting the understanding how the digital marketing World works there's a reason why there's professionals and

it's it's because it's it's a little it can seem a little complicated but it's not as scary I'll tell you from

experience as you think when you engage a professional so uh hire me as your

flooring professional or higher preferred flooring up in Michigan as your flooring professional and hire

Daniel is your marketing professional so yeah I appreciate that it's it's it's it's it's simple but it's not easy

sometimes and and we prefer you guys to focus on what your uh what you're great at as well and yeah and then help you

grow your business stay in our lane just say stay there exactly

all right well I appreciate it uh I want to say if you guys are watching this on

YouTube you know consider giving us a like subscribe to our channel uh I know

that preferred marketing posts as well give them a like And subscribe as well as uh Daniel down at floor marketing

Pros we'll see you guys next week again it's two every Tuesday 3 P.M Central uh

we come with several different topics uh I would like to uh tell you look out for

the news there was a press release recently and we've teamed up with the fcef in helping them to

um you know increase their revenues so keep it keep an eye out on the industry uh paperwork or the industry

Publications for what GoPro is doing right now and uh we're trying to help the industry and that's why we put this

thing on every week with these awesome dudes up in Michigan so thank you guys again every week you're here and

um I can't tell you how much I appreciate it and Daniel to YouTube man thanks for coming on and

we will it's my pleasure next week awesome all right thanks guys we'll see you later see ya all right

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The Huddle - Episode 52 - Managing Common Installation Problems

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The Huddle - Episode 50 - Best Practices for Hiring and Training Installers