Latest / Contractor Business Builder Podcast / How to Market Your Construction Company When You’re Wearing 10 Hats with Mindy Lepp

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How to Market Your Construction Company When You’re Wearing 10 Hats with Mindy Lepp · Contractor Business Builder Podcast

• 0:00
  Welcome to another insightful episode of the Contractor
• 0:02
  Business Builder podcast. Today we have the honor of
• 0:05
  hosting Mindy left. She is the marketing director of
• 0:08
  Lept Design. So most contractors waste
• 0:11
  thousands on marketing that doesn't work because their
• 0:13
  strategy is broken. But what if your marketing
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  partner actually understood the unique chaos of your
• 0:17
  construction business? Welcome here, Mindy, How you?
• 0:20
  Doing today, I'm doing well. Thanks for having me.
• 0:22
  Perfect. So lots, lots going on in
• 0:25
  marketing, lots changing all the time, new technology and ways of
• 0:29
  doing things. I mean, there's, there's
• 0:31
  obviously the fundamentals, but let's start with just maybe
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  where do you see like contractors kind of going wrong
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  with their marketing or or some stakes that that pop up with
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  contractors when they think about?
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  Marketing, sure. I think one of the biggest
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  mistakes that I see is not using enough visual material.
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  You don't see enough video, enough professional photos.
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  It's a lot of times outdated or just very sparse.
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  And obviously, you know, hiring a contractor, remodeler, home
• 1:02
  builder, anything in that vein, you need to see good visual
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  representation of what you're getting.
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  It's, it's one of the hugest purchases you're going to make
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  in your life. So you want to make sure that
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  you have enough to show what you've done.
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  And I see it just usually across the board that that's missing or
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  or not enough. So I would say that's probably
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  one of the biggest mistakes that I see.
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  I definitely come across that fairly often as well.
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  Maybe they have a website, they've got some pictures on
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  there, but it's, it's not really a process or, or something that
• 1:35
  gets repeated too often. It's sort of like, OK, we have
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  some pictures now we're good, right?
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  And they? Kind of, right?
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  Be used and reused over and over again.
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  So what what would you suggest as far as like what should the
• 1:45
  contractor or their team be doing to generate new images or
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  videos? Like what's, what's the system
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  or process there to to be able to get more of that stuff out on
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  the marketing? Side I think the keyword is just
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  what you just said, making it a process like adding it as part
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  of their process. OK, we finish the house, we
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  finish remodeling project. Now we're going to call the
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  photographer and you've got your photographer's number handy or
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  e-mail handy and it's just part of what everybody does.
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  OK, we finish this, you know, we do whatever punch list we need
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  to do. And then the last item is, OK,
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  now we're going to bring the photographer in.
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  I have one client that is a remodeler and they do a great
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  job with this. It's every single time, like
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  clockwork, they finish their project, the photographer comes
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  out, there's no questions, there's no forgetting, it's part
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  of the process. So I think that's just the big
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  key is just getting people in the habit of doing.
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  Yeah, yeah, definitely. And, and those pictures of
• 2:37
  completed projects, they are like really valuable for
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  marketing standpoint. So definitely worthwhile getting
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  someone professional or getting some professional equipment to
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  be able to document every, every project should lead to another
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  project, both with marketing materials as well as referrals.
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  And you know, you're going to spend money on marketing and
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  lead Gen. and you know, advertising whatever.
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  Don't continue to have to do that.
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  If you've got good projects, you can turn that project into
• 3:01
  another one through good materials, good referrals and
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  things like that. As far as like the social media
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  side of things, what's your suggestion there like?
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  Like obviously nice polished videos and pictures are are
• 3:12
  good, but you're not necessarily completing a project every week.
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  So what do you suggest to engage with audiences or or do lead
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  generation social channels? I would say through social media
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  you want to have a good mix of photos and videos and to make it
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  engaging. I always tell people like
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  there's different levels. You know, talking about Facebook
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  in particular, we've got OK, text posts is maybe this much
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  engagement photos goes up a little bit and then reels it
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  goes even further. And so if you can sprinkle in
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  reels with and it doesn't have to be a video of a project.
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  So that might be overwhelming to some companies like, oh, like
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  you said, like we're not finishing something every every
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  day or every week. So and we don't have somebody
• 3:55
  all the time that can go out and take videos for reals.
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  But what you can do is just seem together, you know, a few photos
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  and make a real in Canva and that, you know, it just needs to
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  be 20 seconds. So doesn't have to be super
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  long, but just something to engage people.
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  And you can cut like one large project into multiple wheels so
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  that you can reuse you know, parts of maybe 1 project that
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  maybe to three months ago and you're still doing little
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  snippets of videos on social media.
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  So you can really stretch things out.
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  And even if you did a video three months ago, you can reuse
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  that video too. You know, most people maybe
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  didn't see it or they saw it and they probably don't remember it
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  anyway. So reuse them.
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  Don't be afraid to reuse video as well.
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  Yeah, have like a media library of different photos and videos
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  and you know, you can make always longer stuff and, and do
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  smaller segments or stitch things together.
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  As you mentioned, you just take a bunch of photos and create it,
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  you know, short little, you know, video from that and stuff
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  like that. So lots of, lots of ways to to
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  get content out there and, and be consistent with it.
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  It's really the big thing. So you mentioned like a lot of
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  your clients do come to you after they've maybe hired A
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  freelancer or they're trying to do it themselves and things like
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  that. So what do you for those
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  contractors who have maybe always sort of relied on
• 5:10
  themselves or hired like one off freelancers, what should they be
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  looking for when they engage like a professional or marketing
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  agency to kind of handle the the bigger picture and and more
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  in-depth marketing? I would say when they're ready
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  to make that next step, make sure that that company has, I
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  would say as many services as possible under one roof so that
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  you don't have to like divvy up, OK, I'm going to hire this
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  person for social media and this person for search engine
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  optimization, this person for Google ads.
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  It can get kind of confusing and then nobody's talking to each
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  other and keeping everything consistent brand wise and
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  everything else. So try to look for a company
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  that, you know, maybe they won't have everything, but most
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  services under one roof just so everything is cohesive and
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  you're not, again, not paying this guy to do that and that guy
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  do that. And then things are looking
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  different or having different messaging and things like that.
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  So I would say try to look for that and that'll that'll get
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  you, you know, a good step in the right direction is to try to
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  covers many things as possible. OK.
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  And then for those contractors, maybe they're in that like
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  $1,000,000 range for 2 million. They wanna you know, grow and
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  scale up. They see marketing as you know
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  an Ave. to bring in more leads, better leads and and things like
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  that. What would be your advice to
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  those type of contractors who have kind of built a good stable
• 6:28
  sized business but really want to take it to the next level?
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  What's from a marketing standpoint, what would be their
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  next step or what's what's the process to get kind of that next
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  level in place for? Them, I think for some companies
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  in that position, they might be ready to take that next step and
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  hire it might not be a full marketing firm like ours, but
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  maybe it would just be bringing somebody in part time to do a
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  little bit of social media. It's wherever you reach the
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  point where you feel like I'm, I would call it wasting, wasting
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  too much time doing marketing when that's not your skill set,
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  you know, and you feel kind of like overwhelmed.
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  It's it's that breaking point. So at a certain point you're
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  going to reach that and you're going to say, I'm at this sort
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  of cusp where like I don't have enough time now to do marketing.
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  And so I would say, yeah, try to look for somebody to help you
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  take some of that load off and just take, you know, baby steps.
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  And then you can always add on more and more services.
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  But, but start small, start somewhere and then you can
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  always build from there. And there's different marketing
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  channels. You know, some are long term
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  marketing strategies like social media, You're you're sprinkling
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  and the seas and you're watering them for for a long time and
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  other things like Google ads that might get you some leads a
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  little more fast or more quickly than than a social media or
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  other strategy like that. But just start somewhere and and
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  realize it's gonna take time also.
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  So be prepared for that. Yeah, Yeah.
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  I know you've mentioned that often contractors can kind of
• 7:59
  cut their marketing too early or kind of change directions too
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  quickly if if they're not seeing results.
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  What do you see as as normal timelines for the different
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  types of marketing? What can be expected or what's
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  sort of typical? Yeah, it's tough in the building
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  industry because the buying process is so long.
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  And so I always recommend at least six months, if not a year
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  with any sort of marketing that you're doing, whether you hired
• 8:28
  somebody, a company or an individual, or you're trying,
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  OK, I'm going to do Google Ads or I'm going to do this magazine
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  ad or whatever the case may be. You want to give it like a good
• 8:39
  solid 6 to 12 months to really see if it works because we all
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  know, you know, you don't decide today I'm gonna build a house
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  and then tomorrow you call the home builder and then all of a
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  sudden, boom, it's done. You know, we're starting, you
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  know, people are starting to think about it.
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  They start to look online. OK.
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  I think maybe in a year we're going to have enough money or,
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  you know, maybe a year we can start saving.
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  And so it's like year plus usually process.
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  So if you start, let's say, now advertising in a magazine,
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  someone's at the beginning of that process and you pull out in
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  three months because you say, oh, I didn't get anything, then
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  you didn't continue to be in front of them for the whole time
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  that they're thinking about it. And so you might lose that lead.
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  So that's why it's really important to stick with
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  something for a long period of time.
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  And in this industry, there's other industries where, hey, you
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  know, I'm going to buy a hair brush and I'm going to buy it
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  right now. I feel like getting a hair
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  brush, right? And you can do it more quickly
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  in and out. But the building industry, you
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  really have to play the long game.
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  Definitely I've, I've, I've found that to be quite the case
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  as well. And so for, I guess like
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  marketing, you've got marketing, then you've got sales, right.
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  And then I guess the question I actually wanted to ask was those
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  builders who are, you know, are looking to grow and scale and
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  kind of get that next level. They often see advertising like
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  Google ads, Facebook ads as sort of like quick way to throw gas
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  on the fire and, and get more leads.
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  What should they be thinking of or getting in place before they
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  start, you know, putting a bunch of money into AD?
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  Spend. I would recommend hiring a
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  company to come in and do a marketing review, the marketing
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  plan for the company first before you start any of what you
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  were just saying, You know, whether it's social media,
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  social media ads, Google ads, making changes on your website,
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  just really everything because you don't want to just jump into
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  it. And then you're just kind of
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  like popcorn, You know, I'm going to do that and then I'm
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  gonna do that and I'm going to do that.
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  And you don't have any sort of set plan in place.
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  And so it's really important to lay a good foundation to figure
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  out, OK, what is the company about?
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  Who's their target market? How are we going to reach them?
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  What are the things we're going to do to reach them?
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  OK, now we've got that foundation.
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  Now we can go ahead and move forward and do other things that
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  we want to do. And a lot of times, you know,
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  the companies, they'll come to me and they're super anxious to
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  get started, you know, OK, we haven't done marketing forever
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  or we've been out without, you know, without a marketing person
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  for a while. We want to start tomorrow.
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  But it's really important to get that foundation, that marketing
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  review and a really in depth knowledge to know, OK, what are
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  we going to promote about you? What's your unique selling
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  proposition? Let's make sure that we're
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  putting that out there properly and not just kind of randomly
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  shooting from the hip, you know, whatever shiny thing, you know,
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  pops up, let's do that. Let's do that with that without
• 11:26
  having a a real plan in place. Yeah, makes sense.
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  So what's the, you know, the branding is in place, They've
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  got their kind of ideal client profile, Unix position.
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  They put out advertising starting to work generating
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  leads. Now how does that handoff to
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  like the sales part of the business?
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  What, what have you found effective?
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  Obviously, you know, spending time and energy on generating
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  leads, but capitalizing and, and having, you know, a good sales
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  process is a big part of the reason that you're marketing in
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  the 1st place. So how do you maybe facilitate
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  that handoff or what do you suggest on that kind of more
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  sales side of things? Yeah, It is extremely important
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  to have some sort of process in place on the other side,
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  whatever that process may be. There has to be a process and I
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  find more. So the question is, what do I
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  see not happening then what I do see happening, right, Because I
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  see it happening a lot where or bringing and leads we're
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  bringing in website visits, we're bringing in more, you
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  know, whatever we're bringing in.
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  And then it's really hard to make the connection between
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  what's happening afterwards and how are those leads being
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  treated afterwards. And so there needs to be some
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  kind of like content, you know, customer relation, you know,
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  management system in place, just something to, to, to link those
• 12:45
  two things together, have the marketing people and the sales
• 12:48
  to each other. I found that to be effective
• 12:50
  too. For a time I was meeting, you
• 12:52
  know, with some of my clients sales teams, you know, even if
• 12:55
  it was like once every three months or something to have a
• 12:57
  meeting and say, how can I help you better?
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  You know, and a lot of times they'd say, Hey, you know, I
• 13:02
  keep getting phone calls and people asking for XYZ and we
• 13:06
  don't do that. Can you do something marketing
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  wise? So they know we don't do that,
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  you know, or we want this thing over here and we are not getting
• 13:13
  that. Can you maybe change something
• 13:15
  on your side? And so they have to talk to each
• 13:18
  other and then there has to be some kind of system the place
• 13:21
  after the leaves go to, you know, the company, there's got,
• 13:24
  even if it's just a simple spreadsheet, just something you
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  gotta be something. So yeah.
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  I guess you always think like marketing lead sales that it's a
• 13:33
  straight line, but really you do need that feedback loop of, you
• 13:36
  know, if you're not getting the right type of leads or they're
• 13:38
  asking questions that could be easily answered beforehand.
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  You know, there's qualifying questions, there's ways of
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  messaging and marketing and branding in order to make sure
• 13:46
  that the leads that are going to the sales, obviously experience
• 13:50
  and nurturing, you know, being quick to respond and then
• 13:53
  follow-ups and all that stuff is super important.
• 13:55
  But if the quality is quite aware that, you know, there's
• 13:58
  these kind of like questions that should be answered, then
• 14:00
  that's something that you can go back to the drawing board a bit
• 14:02
  with the the marketing. And it's always a bit of a
• 14:04
  refinement process. I find like the longer that you
• 14:07
  do marketing, you're, you're slowly sort of narrowing down
• 14:10
  and getting really more dialed in with what resonates with, you
• 14:13
  know, the right types of people, what are maybe issues that can
• 14:15
  be avoided? How do we attract, you know,
• 14:18
  someone else or a different type of person or or qualifiers and
• 14:21
  and things like that? Can you maybe walk us through a
• 14:23
  client journey of yourself of a a contractor came to you for
• 14:27
  marketing help, how you got started, what some of their pain
• 14:29
  points are issues were and and how you were able to help them
• 14:32
  kind of achieve results? Sure, just.
• 14:33
  Sort of like a case study. Yeah, Yeah, exactly.
• 14:37
  So one of our clients there were newish master plan community.
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  There were starting up in an area where they didn't feel like
• 14:45
  people quite knew yet that they existed.
• 14:49
  And so when they came to us, well, OK, we need help.
• 14:53
  We've been kind of doing stuff, you know, by ourselves for I
• 14:56
  don't know how long it had been six months maybe where they
• 14:58
  hadn't really had any professional ongoing marketing
• 15:01
  help alongside them. And so they brought us in and we
• 15:04
  first did like I said that that first marketing review that plan
• 15:07
  and figure out, OK, who are you? What do we want to present to
• 15:10
  the world? And they've done, they had hired
• 15:12
  an initial company to give them some information.
• 15:15
  And so we took that into consideration as well.
• 15:17
  But some of that even where like, I don't know if that's
• 15:20
  quite right because we want to present, right.
• 15:22
  So we helped walk them through that.
• 15:24
  And then we established everything across the board.
• 15:27
  We did good doing Google ads, social media, social media ads,
• 15:31
  billboards, You know, we've, we just, we made a huge splash for
• 15:37
  six months to a year to really just bring in that awareness.
• 15:42
  And we've, we've reached a great point now where I was just
• 15:44
  talking with the sales person yesterday on our, our weekly
• 15:48
  call and we were like, Hey, should we do this event, you
• 15:50
  know, again this year? And we're like, you know, I
• 15:53
  don't think we need to do that this year because that's kind of
• 15:56
  more just a generic community event.
• 15:58
  And we're at the point now where the community knows they're
• 16:01
  there, they're well aware that they're there.
• 16:03
  And so now we just need, you know, we gotta get in our little
• 16:06
  our target markets. And so for them, we've seen some
• 16:08
  really nice growth with a lot of the different things that we've
• 16:12
  done. And just like you said a few
• 16:14
  minutes ago, the longer you do marketing, the more you keep
• 16:17
  refining and making things better and more OK, now we see,
• 16:20
  oh, that that works. And so now let's do that more
• 16:24
  and that's maybe not working. So we'll cut that out.
• 16:26
  And so that client it's it's been fun to see the growth over
• 16:30
  the last two ish years now that we've been working with them.
• 16:33
  So that's wonderful. Yeah, glad to hear that.
• 16:35
  And it's it's nice to be able to realize that they came.
• 16:39
  Maybe we don't need to be doing this anymore.
• 16:41
  And you know, essentially like you mentioned, you double down
• 16:43
  on what asking and and either limit or or just, you know,
• 16:47
  eliminate something that that's not for sure and and get more
• 16:50
  and more efficient with that. So for our audience out there,
• 16:53
  if they want to get in contact with you, learn more about, you
• 16:56
  know, the services you provide for your marketing, we'll put a
• 16:59
  link to your website in the description here.
• 17:01
  So go check out the description of the video or audio and check
• 17:06
  out the website. But what's the best way for them
• 17:08
  to connect with you and and and talk further?
• 17:10
  Like you said, they can go to the website and fill out a
• 17:13
  contact form if they'd like to get in touch with me.
• 17:16
  I'm more than happy to sit down with people, you know,
• 17:19
  complimentary for an hour just to chat about marketing and give
• 17:22
  them advice. I have little document that I
• 17:24
  put together that gives some tips that I just give to
• 17:27
  everybody say hey, these are standard tips that I give to
• 17:30
  everyone in the building industry.
• 17:31
  And so I'm happy to just sit down and chat if you know,
• 17:34
  people have any questions. And then you can also find me on
• 17:37
  LinkedIn, you know, shoot me a message and we can connect there
• 17:40
  as well. But those are probably the best
• 17:42
  and fastest way to get ahold of me so.
• 17:45
  Yeah, thanks to the website and your LinkedIn profile, you know,
• 17:48
  reach out to the Mindy here and get some outside advice and help
• 17:52
  and a second set of eyes on your marketing.
• 17:54
  You know, some of those tips and stuff can can, you know, be
• 17:56
  thousands, 10s of thousands of dollars, even more in potential
• 17:59
  projects by just making some some small tweaks.
• 18:01
  And I know I do this for for clients as well.
• 18:04
  But just having someone to like look over your marketing
• 18:07
  materials and just give you some things that you're probably just
• 18:10
  not aware of or haven't thought of.
• 18:11
  And having someone else look at your business from from the
• 18:14
  outside can really pinpoint like, hey, this isn't, you know,
• 18:18
  really driving or you thought of this or you're kind of missing
• 18:20
  this. And often they're they're not
• 18:21
  big things. There's just a lot of little
• 18:23
  stuff. But it all adds up to not being
• 18:25
  as effective with the marketing legion as as it could be.
• 18:28
  So I'll reach out to Mindy here for sure.
• 18:30
  And any final last words of wisdom or or topics that you
• 18:33
  wanted to share? I will.
• 18:34
  I'll say 1 little tip which I've been asked this question before
• 18:36
  and I've used the same tip as that on social media.
• 18:39
  I don't think a lot of people realize that if you're not doing
• 18:44
  social media ads, that you're missing out on a huge percentage
• 18:47
  of views, that your organic posts only reach like 3 to 15%
• 18:53
  of your followers. And so, you know, let's just say
• 18:55
  you have 100 followers, maybe 3 to 15 people saying you're,
• 18:59
  you're beautifully put together, photo real that you put
• 19:02
  together. So I usually encourage people,
• 19:05
  if you're doing social media, which you should be, that you
• 19:08
  should also incorporate some social media ads and boosting
• 19:12
  some posts so you can get some more eyeballs on on those posts.
• 19:15
  Yeah, great. Tip yeah, you're just a small
• 19:17
  percentage and that small percentage is like the people
• 19:19
  that already really know you well, like family and close
• 19:22
  friends and stuff like that. You're not necessarily reaching
• 19:25
  sort of the new newer leads that are coming in to your, to your
• 19:28
  ecosystem, your channel. So great way to yeah, it's very
• 19:31
  cost effective to be able to reach wider audience and and get
• 19:34
  more, more bang for your buck. Cause you're again, you're
• 19:36
  spending time and money to put out the content.
• 19:38
  You may as well get it in front of the right people to make it
• 19:41
  effective. So exactly great tips.
• 19:42
  Thanks so much for coming on here today, Mandy.
• 19:44
  Really appreciate your insights and your help with this
• 19:46
  marketing. Yeah, sure.
• 19:47
  Thank you so much.