Marketing for success with Tim Brown

Tom Houghton:

You’re listening to “The Building Code,” your guide for a better way to run your business. I’m Tom Houghton.

Paul Wurth:

I’m Paul Wurth.

Tom Houghton:

And joining us via Zoom today is Tim Brown, co-owner and lead strategist of Hook Agency.

Tim Brown:

Hey, how’s it going guys?

Tom Houghton:

Great. How you doing?

Tim Brown:

Doing pretty well. Happy to be here. Happy that we live in a time where we can have this kind of technology and have constructive, useful conversations over video.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. Let’s hope this one’s constructive and useful.

Tom Houghton:

No pressure buddy.

Paul Wurth:

Set the high bar high.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. No pressure.

Paul Wurth:

All right Tim, we’re excited to have you. We met last, was it at the International Builders’ Show a few months back?

Tim Brown:

Yes, sir.

Paul Wurth:

And you talked to me a little bit about your business and I thought it was interesting. I thought we’d get you on and just have our listeners hear really about marketing, but as Tom alluded to before we got on, it’s really great for our listeners is just to hear a little bit about who you are, how you started your business and of course, what your focus is. Do you want to kind of give us a quick rundown?

Tim Brown:

Yes. So I started in digital marketing and web design and I have kind of grown in that over time. I got into getting leads from Google. So search engine optimization is a big piece of that. And I figured out early on in my business that I could actually drive my business significantly just from free Google traffic, which to be honest as a person getting into this seemed pretty amazing. And I wasn’t yet selling that to clients, but I was pretty excited about it because as you can imagine, somebody two, three years in their business able to get regular consistent leads from Google that’s pretty cool. And then I’m not super extroverted, so I wasn’t necessarily going out to events all the time and drumming up business that way. So I literally grew my business entirely on Google and then I slowly started to offer that as a service for clients about five years ago.

Tim Brown:

The biggest part of our business is two thirds is driving qualified leads and unqualified leads. We drive a lot of leads from organic Google traffic. So we’ve gotten heavily into that. A lot of it is around content marketing. So figuring out ways to get regular, consistent content out on your site. And then also just making sure that your website is set up well and persuasive and stuff like that. And a big chunk of our clients is in our contractors. So we are at the builder… What was that event called?

Tom Houghton:

The International Builders’ Show.

Tim Brown:

International Builders’ Show. So we’re there, I was dressed up as a wizard half the time because I was trying to tell people that SEO is not black magic. Actually it bothers. It was a gimmick and it was probably terrible, but it does bother me that there are a lot of marketing companies out there that try to make SEO seem like it’s black magic, to seem like it’s this black box. It bothers me. And I want contractors and construction companies. I want them to be able to own their marketing. I don’t like that people rent their marketing and pay for leads. That bothers me.

Tim Brown:

So literally, we believe that construction owners and construction companies should really own those systems because then you build equity into them long-term. So that’s a big piece to what we believe and yeah, we have 13 people now, so it’s been three and a half years since I went out on my own completely as my own company, before that I worked for another marketing agency and we have 13 people now all dedicated to helping construction companies and small businesses get more leads from organic Google traffic mostly. And we do paid stuff and web design as well.

Tom Houghton:

That’s impressive. You mentioned the F-word there. Free.

Tim Brown:

Yeah.

Tom Houghton:

Just in case you didn’t catch which F-word I was referring to there. You mentioned free. So, I mean, I think most people, whenever you mention Google ads, I think most people immediately think paid.

Tim Brown:

Yeah.

Tom Houghton:

And you’re talking about organic search. And I think maybe for our listeners, you might need to clarify the difference between paid versus organic and what you’re doing there.

Tim Brown:

Yeah. So we’ve got the little ads up at the top. They usually have some kind of call-out that says ad at the top of the Google search results. So if you Google, let’s say home remodeler, Albuquerque, right. You see those first couple, those are usually ads, there’s organic search results. There’s the map. And then there’s just the regular listing. And the map and the regular listing you can manipulate that and Google doesn’t want you to know, but you can manipulate those search results. And frankly you should take every advantage possible in your small business. And a lot of these guys that we’re talking with and rooting for they’ve taken massive risks of bringing their company out on their own. They’re building a team in these communities. They’re the heroes of these communities. They are small business, growth-minded businesses in these communities.

Tim Brown:

And they have taken big risks. You should take every opportunity on your marketing front that you can and organic search traffic, you can work with a company like ours, but you can also do a lot on your own. There’s a lot of things that you can do on your own. You can blog, you can answer questions that your ideal prospects are asking on the phone. You can do a blog about that topic. And literally people don’t realize, but blogging for stuff where there really is people searching for that, that helps your search rankings go up for the other things. Like I said, for home remodeler, Albuquerque, if you were the company that was blogging about things that homeowners are really looking for and it’s good to also do stuff that’s kind of like anchored in your area. So stuff that would relate to the local people and that kind of stuff really does help you get higher in Google search results. And there’s all kinds of tricks and things to do on that, but you can look into it.

Tim Brown:

So just look up SEO and there’s a lot of really good tips and things that you could do out there. And especially if you’re in a smaller market, you can own that without even working with a company. You can really get to the top of the first page and maybe even the first three results, even without a company like ours. Now we just make it easy for people and we do it quick, but no matter what, it’s a long process. And in my opinion, in marketing, the long processes are usually actually the best ones. The ones that people have no patience for, those are the ones. Actually, if you know they work, if actually, there’s good evidence out there that these methods work, those are the ones to go for. Building your brand, doing event marketing like you guys do.

Tim Brown:

And by doing these things that take longer and that your competitors are too lazy for that’s the good stuff. That’s the stuff where you actually get these massive advantages as time goes on and they won’t do them because they just want to pay for that ad. They want the quick fix. They want to pay HomeAdvisor. They want to pay these different companies that are essentially taking advantage of them from my point of view. I hope, if somebody is listening from HomeAdvisor, excuse me. But no, there’s a lot of companies that want to sell people leads. Just sell them leads, 80 bucks a lead, 40 bucks a lead. It doesn’t really matter because what you’re doing is you’re entering into a race to the bottom, because you’re becoming a commodity because all you’re doing is you’re going up against the remodeler down the street and you guys are trying to underbid each other.

Tim Brown:

But when you build your brand and you build content on your website on a ongoing way, in a way that’s attractive, then people come to you, knock on your door and ask to work with you. And same with social media marketing, that’s something that a lot of these guys can do on their own and can create a personality and make something attractive that makes people ask to work with them, that makes them not have to be the lowest bidder every time, that builds relationship. And we do a lot of video at our company and yes, it offers people an opportunity to get to know us. So social media content and video allow people to get know you, they want to work with you. They don’t care necessarily that you’re the cheapest guy. You can’t be crazy outlandishly more expensive, but you do need to build something. These longer-term systems. And I think they’re better than the short quick fix stuff for sure. And I think that is evident in a lot of areas of life, but particularly marketing.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah, Tim, you said something interesting that, there’s sort of two ways to go about it or maybe a life cycle of going about your SEO. You want to start off by just trying to get as much knowledge as you can and doing those things you can do on your own, if you have the appetite for it. And then you said, then you work with an agency to do something, I guess second level. What is that point? Where have you found it goes from making those initial efforts in SEO that help out, but then needing some help. What’s the help part?

Tim Brown:

That’s such a good question because as an entrepreneur myself, right? I did not pay for stuff until after I hit a certain point. And when did I hit that p-? I might’ve had subcontractors or people work. I was a freelancer and I added people as contractors. And then at a certain point, I had to start paying for stuff because my money was worth less than my time. My time was worth more than my money. You know what I mean? That’s a spot where a lot of these contractors get to as well. I’d say for sure once it’s, a lot of times it’s past that 1 million mark. You should be a hustler and a modern contractor who from 100,000 to 500,000 can do stuff on their own that can really start to own this marketing and do the stuff that you’re capable of doing.

Tim Brown:

In the meantime, that’s a good spot to be doing stuff on your own. That’s a good spot to be trying to not, you can’t just spend money and make a company, in my opinion, you know what I mean? Unless you have funding, right? And most contractors don’t have funding. So we’re talking about essentially, you have to figure this out. How to scrap together. And that’s why we relate to contractors so much because they’re used to this. They’re used to figuring it out with subcontractors and other people in their industry and people. That’s why we relate to it because we didn’t have that funding. We didn’t have the cheat codes. We didn’t have people giving us a bunch of money from our parents or something like that. We worked our butts off. I worked my butt off for 60, 70 hours a week.

Tim Brown:

And a lot of these contractors have been doing that, are doing that. In a certain point, you have to stop. You have to stop because what got you from here A to B does not get you from B to C. And just, at a certain point you blogged every Saturday, let’s say. It really would help you if you blogged every Saturday for two or three hours. And you were that $500,000 contractor. That would still be really good and smart, right? But at a certain point, once you get to that million mark that 2 million-mark, you got to start delegating that stuff, whether it’s an internal marketing assistant or whether it’s an agency or and the same goes for systems like software and stuff like that. I do think that there’s a certain point where you don’t want to be doing that work at 8:00 PM at night. You need to find a bookkeeper.

Tim Brown:

We know a bunch of bookkeepers that are. For contractors, finding a really good bookkeeper, getting a system like, Buildertrend, getting other systems in place where you can shave off that extra 10. Maybe you get from 70 down to 60 or 60 down to 50 hours. So you can enjoy your work and stay with it and start to be in a spot where you get joy from your work, because that’s where you really start to get those, stuff starts to compound because you got a couple of good people on your team. Now you’ve got a team of 10. Stuff starts to compound. You have joy in your work. You’re motivated. You’re willing to get up and do that extra stuff. You’re willing to represent your company at events and you’re willing to do different stuff.

Tim Brown:

So I feel there’s a certain point where people have to get over that hump. And I do think 1 million is this pretty symbolic mark for a lot of contractors. You get to that point, you can start to get some of that snowballing effect, if you get some really smart people around you and the business. I mean the business development stuff is part of that. And yeah, I think getting more leads is a huge pain point for a lot of these contractors. Getting better leads because if they’re just your friends, your acquaintance and you’re trying to give them the best bid possible. And you do three projects out of your 10 projects like that for the summer or the year, right? The profits don’t compound. So you can’t just be doing stuff for everybody you know all the time. And I do see that as a problem for some of these smaller contractors. And what it comes down to is you need to find new ways to get leads.

Tom Houghton:

Absolutely. So leads, it’s very interesting. We are in this time of coronavirus, of course. And so everybody’s talking about their business and working on their business, but part of that is also generating new business. And what, in your opinion, would you say that business owners should be working on right now to continue their marketing because I think a lot of them are sitting out there and thinking, why would I invest time in this or why would I invest money in it even right now, with everything being so uncertain. What would you say to that?

Tim Brown:

So there’s a couple of things where, with any business you don’t want to stop them completely. You know what I mean? You don’t want to stop building your team. You don’t want a team rapport, like play engagement and stuff like that. You want an engaged team right now. You want loyalty. You want a team that wants to go to war for you. So that’s something you don’t want to stop. You know what I mean? Having good client experiences. You want your clients to have a good experience. You want them to feel taken care of and there to be good communication. And for them to know where their project’s at, even if it has to slow down for some reason, the different people on the project or social distancing or in some of these states where they literally just can’t work right now. Where are we at at this project? What’s the revised timeline based on what we know now. Those are the things to communicate.

Tim Brown:

You can’t stop that, right? You really should have the best client experience possible because if let’s say two months from now, I’m trying to be optimistic guys. I’m trying, we’re out of the lockdown. When we’re recording this, it’s all very time sensitive right now. Where it’s April 15th, right? Whenever this goes out, if we still have more time at the end of lockdown, people still need to know where their projects at based on if work can’t get done or if you have to do social distancing between the subcontractors or different things like that. So that’s huge. And I would say marketing systems are still pretty important because there’s things coming out of the end of this. It’s summer, first of all. It’s about to be summer and frankly, it’s a pretty good time for most contractors normally to be closing deals. And unfortunately, no shaking hands.

Tom Houghton:

Yes.

Tim Brown:

No shaking hands for a bit, but yeah. So I assume that we’re going to want to have good projects. And yeah, some people’s summer’s already filled up. It’s already filled up and they’re into fall and you get that, but you really want to figure out what systems to have. We want to have some systems in place for marketing because you want those better kinds of customers even if you’ve got the leads and you’ve got the projects in place. You want good and in my opinion long slow systems are actually really good. So that’s why we love Google organic traffic, but you want those tight. And even if you have a light marketing program, even if you’re not that heavy, you should get that tight.

Tim Brown:

And kind of like from my point of view, it’s all around habits. Hey, what habits do I have in place? Do I post? Do I have three days where I make sure to post on social media? Three days a week. Do I have one Saturday morning where I blog for two hours? Do I have just a few systems in place? And who owns that? So if it’s you or if it’s your assistant or if it’s your agency, what are those systems? Let’s get them tight. And like I said, we think contractors should own their marketing. So if you have an agency look closer, what are they doing for you now? And maybe it is a good time to take a look at really, is this the right stuff for my business? Is this the stuff that’s going to create demand long-term? Is this the stuff that is going to create a structure for business development for our company?

Tim Brown:

And I think that in good times, it’s less obvious when something is not working, right? So I think failure is a really good teacher. It’s way a better teacher than success. Success, if I’m successful during a good economy, no one respects that, but if you’re successful during this time. Think about this two years from now, if you’re a contractor and you’re successful and you’re still doing well, you’ll have even more respect of your friends and family because you got through that time and you figured it out. And sometimes that’s just making sure your existing customers are super well taken care of. And that’s probably the biggest one, right? That’s the best marketing. Making sure your existing customers are super well taken care of, but then layering on those other things for creating demand down the line.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. We had talked right before the show that in general right now, and this isn’t for everybody, but the actual leads coming in hasn’t slowed down all that much. It just maybe a delay in this decision process. And then that’s going to be a hard change for some contractors where they’re used to three or four days or whatever it is and it’s a yes or a no. There’s probably going to give you more of that middle time where we’re going to have to stay in touch and continue that relationship during the sales process. And then whenever this is over and we don’t know when that is, people are going to be ready to start doing things. So for a company that doesn’t have or is not used to sort of that longer period between lead and sale, what are some tips, what’s some advice in terms of just how to keep the conversation going?

Tim Brown:

That’s good. Man, this is such a good question. There’s two key components I would say. One is going to be video chats like this one. And frankly, trying to bring your A game. I have been trying to get better at this. You guys both have great backgrounds. I’ve been working on background. I’ve been working on audio quality. I know that you don’t have to have this. This is a Blue Yeti mic. You don’t have to have all that, but you do want some kind of mic, if you have headphones with a mic built in, those are the normal Apple headphones have that, but there’s just video chats and getting better with that and trying to make it feel like in-person a little bit more, have it facing towards a window.

Tim Brown:

I know this is little stuff, but it really does actually help because I’ve seen contractors. I was just talking to 40 contractors in my local area on these video chats. And because we did a Zoom webinars thing. And so many of them are sitting in this and what feels that. I’m sure it’s a beautiful space, but they’re in their living room and it looks dingy and dark and I’m scared. I’m scared talking to you sir or ma’am. You got to lighten it up. You got to try to bring your real personality during these calls with your prospects. And then so that’s one side. Get better with your video etiquette and start treating them like real sales in-person meetings. Try to actually bring your personality to the game because that’s what a lot of these contractors have created their businesses on. Is their personality, their ability to build rapport and their ability to get trust because they’re trustworthy, hardworking people, right?

Tim Brown:

And then the other side from my point of view and this is something we’ve been doing for a long time, because we have slow sales cycles and yeah, because some contractors have pretty slow sales cycles too is that content piece where if you have content to send over, because the problem is, is when you do that follow up, how’s the contract going? You guys have any more questions? It just feels like nagging, but if you go in with a piece of content that says five ways to make sure you’re getting the best kitchen possible or something and you send that over to them instead of, hey, how’s the contract going? It’s just a reminder. It puts you at the top of the inbox and it’s coming in with value rather than, hey, let’s close this deal.

Tim Brown:

And basically like you said, no one wants to close deals. It’s slower. Everything’s slower because they’re holding onto their purse strings because they just saw their 401K drop by 20%. And they’re kind of scared. So they’re just making sure that they’re still good. That we’re not going to have, people are saying big things about recessions right now, right? And so those things are scary. Now, it’s not going to affect everyone. You know what I mean? It’s not going to affect everyone. So there are certain people that are just going to be out of the sales cycle now. They’re out because they owned a restaurant or something like that or their business was more strongly affected by this. And there are some people that are getting knocked off the map right now, right. So if they are involved in one of those industries, it’s gone. That person’s out of your funnel. Sorry.

Tim Brown:

And it’s sad. And I don’t mean it like, make it seem they’re just a prospect in a sales funnel, but frankly you got to triage at this point. Like I said, you need loyal people, like we’re in a war. You need to triage your prospects, like we’re in a war. You need to act and I kind of said this a couple other times on a couple of different pieces of content, but I think people should be trimming their marketing in certain ways right now. Especially towards the beginning of all this, I feel, if I was to guess, I hope we’re in the mid part or whatever, but the beginning trim, trim, trim, cut all fluff. Cut the fluff. You have to. It’s smart. And then, hey, what’s crucial.

Tim Brown:

What makes for a better client experience? Making sure we retain and have the best possible process and what are the smart moves? What are the arbitrages? What are the, hey, this is going to actually get us more deals quicker. And one of the things I’ve seen and we don’t even do a ton of this. So I’m promoting something that we don’t even do. Facebook ads are like 30% of what they were, because people all pulled out their budgets and now we’re sitting with this vacuum. And cost per click went way down. So ads and stuff like that, there’s more inventory now. And you should try to look for those arbitrages. And that’s just one example. The point is cut fluff and then look for arbitrage.

Tim Brown:

Especially if you sense that in your area, we’re coming out of it because if we’re two weeks out, let’s say in whatever state, if we’re in Montana, right? And it’s two weeks out from when the governor said, we’re going to come out of lockdown. I’m looking for those Facebook ads, I’m going to inventory and push on brand. I’m going to push on my company brand because yes, maybe people aren’t in sales, they’re not ready to get a sale, but if I can do brand-oriented stuff, long-term stuff, I’m getting a bunch of attention because the game is attention from my point of view. Attention is hard to get normally. And right now it’s cheaper. You know what I mean? And so if you’re open to building your brand, it’s a really good time. If you’re open to creating more content on your blog, it’s a really good time. If you’re open to being a comforting, positive voice on social media, it’s a really good time. And yeah.

Paul Wurth:

That’s good stuff, Tom. You have a class, build your brand with video.

Tim Brown:

Tim, oh Tom.

Tom Houghton:

Oh, yeah.

Paul Wurth:

It’s Tom, yeah.

Tom Houghton:

Tim and Tom and Paul we’re all …

Tim Brown:

I’m sorry. I thought you’re calling me, Tom.

Tom Houghton:

It happens to me too Tim.

Paul Wurth:

I never make mistakes.

Tom Houghton:

That’s true.

Tim Brown:

Mistakes were made, but not by me.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah, that’s right.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah. I teach a class at Buildertrend University called “Build Your Brand with Video.” I think video is a huge component of… I mean, even it was already a huge component and now it’s just even more so a component because of the coronavirus, because this is how we’re all communicating and we’re all consuming so much more. We’re in front of our screens even more than we already were. And so video needs to be a crucial component. You mentioned Facebook and I’d like to use that as a segue, as we wrap up here about advice that you might have for our listeners with their business on social media, what platforms should they be using? What should they be posting? But real quick, maybe if you can give, one or two tips on, what they should be doing when it comes to posting on social media.

Tim Brown:

Yeah. I think it is about not being pushy. I think people just really don’t want the sales pitch right now. So it’s reading the room and trying to be useful and helpful. So that’s the tone that wins right now. Useful, helpful, not salesy. And then secondly, I just kind of want to double down on the habits thing. I just want to say, it’s not a bad time to create your habits and sustainable ones. So really finding, let’s say if it’s three times a week or something where you’re going to share a before and after or whatever you’re finding is resonating with your audience. Really getting that system in place for who owns it, what is it, what are our series? I love series on social media.

Tim Brown:

So if you say the before and after Tuesdays or whatever it happens to be and just getting those systems, getting those habits in place, that to me is extremely important. And it’s just a lot of people do stuff sporadically and that’s not really going to help you win. If you just post a hundred times over the next month, it’s not going to create an audience for you on social media. It’s not about clusters of erratic posting, it’s about systems and habits and making sure that those are consistent.

Tom Houghton:

Good tips there. Awesome. Well, I’m sure we could talk to you for much longer about this, but I know that our listeners have a short amount of time because they’re not driving to job sites as frequently. So we’re trying to keep things short and keep things moving. But Tim, we really appreciate you coming on the podcast and sharing your insights. Of course, we would love to promote your social media that’s part of this whole thing. So they can follow you on Instagram. I think at @HookAgency.

Tim Brown:

Yeah. @HookAgency.

Tom Houghton:

Yeah.

Tim Brown:

Hookagency.com. And we love helping contractors. We’re just grateful that you had us on the show. We are doing a bunch of stuff during COVID-19 season here to try to help contractors. So if you check out our site, we have a big kind of COVID-19 resources thing on it with a bunch of work from home tips, sales pitches, remotely marketing tips during COVID and stuff like that. So we’re really trying to curate a bunch of resources. We’ve got a whole hub on there with stuff like that.

Tom Houghton:

That’s awesome. We’ll put a link to that in our show notes. You can find the show notes at buildertrend.com/podcast. So make sure you check those out, but Tim, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and sharing your knowledge.

Tim Brown:

Thank you guys so much. Appreciate you.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. Thanks Tim. This was great. Appreciate it.

Tom Houghton:

Love what you heard. Don’t forget to rate and subscribe to our podcast so you can hear for more guests that will benefit your business. Also, please check out our show notes page for more information on what we discussed on this episode. You can find it at buildertrend.com/podcast. Thanks for listening. And we’ll see you next time on “The Building Code.”