From the Yellow Chair
From the Yellow Chair
Tracking Marketing- How do I Know if my Marketing is Working?
Ready to transform your contracting business? Crystal, co-founder and lead strategist at Lemon Seed Marketing, breaks down the three essential mindshifts that separate thriving contractors from those constantly struggling with marketing frustrations.
First, you must recognize that you already have a brand whether you're actively managing it or not. Your logo, customer experiences, reviews, and market presence collectively form your brand identity. The question isn't whether you have a brand—it's whether you're controlling it. Crystal debunks the myth that effective branding requires mascots (though she admits to loving them), explaining that consistency across all touchpoints is what truly matters. Whether it's your distinctive color scheme, memorable tagline, or unique visual elements, successful branding demands intentionality rather than leaving your reputation to chance.
The second critical mindshift addresses a common contractor pitfall: expecting immediate, measurable returns from every marketing dollar spent. As Crystal colorfully puts it, "scared money don't make money." The most successful contractors approach marketing as an ecosystem where multiple strategies work together, rather than isolated tactics with one-to-one ROI. This requires patience and sustained investment—ideally 7-10% of revenue, not the insufficient 2% many allocate. Crystal warns against cutting marketing budgets when immediate results aren't visible, explaining how this creates the very lead droughts contractors fear.
Finally, Crystal delivers the uncomfortable truth many contractors need to hear: you must actually run your business like the boss you are. Stop allowing team members to dictate what marketing initiatives they'll support or which upsells they'll offer. By setting clear expectations, creating proper incentives, and knowing your key performance metrics, you establish the foundation for sustainable growth. Without these elements, you're simply "driving a spaceship blind"—orbiting aimlessly without the ability to land.
Are you ready to shift your thinking and transform your approach to marketing? Listen now and start building the legacy business you've always dreamed of creating.
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From the Yellow Chair is powered by Lemon Seed, a marketing strategy and branding company for the trades. Lemon Seed specializes in rebrands, creating unique, comprehensive, organized marketing plans, social media, and graphic design. Learn more at www.LemonSeedMarketing.com
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What's up, lemonheads? Welcome to another episode of From the Yellow Chair. I am Crystal co-founder and lead strategist here at Lemon Seed Marketing, and this is our podcast where today I'm going to talk about three mind shifts that I think contractors really have to make to understand how marketing is going to work, how it affects their business and how overall marketing is nothing to be afraid of. So, whatever you're doing, grab a spot where you can listen in, listen intently, and let's sip some lemonade, All right. So I've really been thinking, as I've been, you know, pitching Lemon Seed services to other contractors over the last couple of months. One thing that has really stuck out to me is normally, within like the first five minutes of our conversation, I can tell if this contractor is really going to be able to do what I'm asking them to do, and I hate that because I'm like man. I wish that Limit Seat could serve every single person and technically we could every single person that had the right mindset right, that had the right idea about how marketing works, what our strategy is, because so many times I watch contractors have the wrong idea about how marketing should work, their expectations are unclear and, honestly, it just spirals for them and they end up hating everything, like their digital provider, direct mail doesn't work, their team sucks, community sucks their brands and everything feels terrible. And I've discovered I've kind of narrowed it down to three things that I think every contractor needs to know as they approach marketing. Because no matter what you have to be in the marketing game, there's no ifs, ands or buts about it. And if you're like, well, I don't spend any money on marketing, you're still marketing. You're still driving around trucks, you're still telling people, they're still referring people All of that is marketing. Advertising you may not be doing, but marketing you're definitely doing, whether you like it or not. This is why I preach like you want to control what's being said.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about the three mind shifts that I think contractors need to make. Number one realizing that you are a brand, whether you like it or not, whether you intended to or not. The logo, how you make people feel, the reviews what you're doing is a brand. So you have a couple of options, right, like you could definitely lean into whatever you have now and start owning the market in that. And some of you might be like what the heck does that even mean? Crystal? Like what do you mean go build a brand. What does that mean? Well, that means that you are intentionally putting your logo and your colors and your taglines everywhere that's possible. You are intentionally engaging in social media content that builds you as authority.
Speaker 1:You make sure that your look and feel is the same across all platforms. So what's on your direct mail card is the same, that's on your website is the same, that's on your social is the same, that's on billboards or community marketing, like what do you call it? Banners across fences. Those are how you build a brand Shaking hands, kissing babies, petting dogs, making sure my logo looks the same for you every single time you look at it. Because remember my favorite thing to remind you all, while I love all of you and you are all very important to this world, we're not nearly as important as we think we are when it comes to choosing us for business. People don't really care what we do for work unless we benefit them. Well, odds are, if you're in home services, you only benefit them at a certain time in their life, certainly not every single day. And so you are a brand. You have a brand. So you can either choose to let the market dictate who you are. Or you can start controlling it through social media content, through the way you write your emails, through the way that you're presenting your logo and making sure that your technicians look nice, making sure the trucks don't pass funeral processions, making sure that people don't smell like cigarette smoke, making sure that you're putting out content that is good and wholesome and true, making sure that you are being visible in an intentional way. That's how you build a brand.
Speaker 1:So this idea that, well, I don't really have a good brand, you have a brand. You may not have a good one, but you have a good brand. And here's another misconception you do not have to have a mascot to have a good brand. Listen, you're talking to somebody that loves I love a good mascot. Okay, I'm not gonna lie to y'all. I love a good costume, mainly because I know how much easier it makes all of your other marketing when we have a hook. So if you're a roofing company that has a very modern name and a roof as your mascot, it's hard to be like oh, saddle up, you know, or settle down or buzz into or any of the fun little plays that we can have off of your brand. It's a lot harder for that. So mascots make my job easier? Okay, they make our marketing jobs easier, but it's not to say that that's the only way to do it.
Speaker 1:What you want is something that's a unique identifier to you. So it could be a color, it could be an icon, it could be the way your wording is the tagline, a vanity phone number. I mean, I see all kinds of things every single day, and that's why Lemon Seed's goal is to tell you we can build brands of any kind, but they need to be authentic. And then we need to just really tell the story about who you are. So stop thinking that you don't have a brand. Odds are you don't have a. You're not controlling your brand or your identity, but you definitely have one. So that was my number one shift Switch your brain into recognizing I am a brand. I can control the brand I need to be branding, okay. Second mind shift that I think people need to make scared money. Don't make money, okay. So we have to wrap our brains around the fact that you're either going to be one of two types of contractor especially when you talk with Lemon Seed right, you either are. Let's go party like a rock star. I have no fear. I'm ready to move this mountain. Let's go.
Speaker 1:Those contractors are the ones that are with us the longest. They're open to the ideas, they're open to the fun side of marketing and the risky side, and they don't expect an individual ROI off of every single tactic that we're spending. What they do love, though, is and we can show them quite often, if not all the time, how collectively their marketing budget and strategy has grown their business. So you have to stop looking at things as one-for-one correspondence. There are some advertising tactics that definitely have one-to-one correlation between I spent the money and I made the money, but really, where you find ultimate success is when you have lots of marketing tactics and things deployed and working together that ultimately drive overall, new customer acquisition and customer retention. So that is the secret sauce. So once you shift your brain that I've got to spend some money to make some money and it's not always immediately measurable and, like you wrap your head around those expectations, that is where I start seeing companies move the needle If they're like well, okay, here's $1,300. I need to see a 10 times ROI in the next month? Okay, well, let me go ahead and break your heart this.
Speaker 1:I cannot name one specific tactic. If someone calls me and says, crystal, I got to launch a tactic right now. What's going to drive leads? I have questions. I have questions like okay, are we? What is the weather that we're like? Do we have weather on our side or not? How long have you had your domain name? Are you active on social media already? Are you emailing your existing customer list already? Do you have a maintenance program? You know why I have to ask all those things? Because, honestly, you should be doing these things consistently every single month and not waiting till the ship is sinking. Before you're like you know, what I probably should do is get some of this water off the boat. Some of you wait until you're like God, I have no leads at all. And then, honestly, when I look back, I'm like oh, so why did you cut your spending in half three months ago? Yeah, it wasn't working. Okay, so you are now feeling the residual fallout of things that you canceled months ago, because that is how marketing works.
Speaker 1:The majority of your marketing is exponentially growing. Marketing, right Like it, grows in its value month over month over month. Consistency and frequency are what builds marketing. So you're right. I don't really have a solid answer for it. I need leads. Right now. I guess you can go jump over there with Thumbtack and Angie and HomeAdvisor and get in the MMA ring and start beating each other up with every other contractor chasing those leads. But what I want to tell contractors is we need some patience, we need budget and we need people that are risky and willing to go and pivot when we need to pivot.
Speaker 1:If you are not that style, then you are naturally going to face a bigger battle because you're looking for something that doesn't exist. So you're out there hunting for Bigfoot and accidentally, he walks by your screen every once in a while. So you'll get some glimmers of hope of things that work. But listen, very, very few marketing tactics are designed to work immediately Text blast, ringless voicemails and out outbound calling. If you're looking for those, those three things are your best bet, right? So you should be utilizing marketing pro or chirp or something that's aligned with your crm to grow your freaking business. But I'm just going to tell you, if you get off of that hamster wheel and start focusing on long-term branding and building your marketing strategy, that is where you're going to see success.
Speaker 1:So again, my number two mind shift was scared money, don't make money. And I just again, you got to be willing to invest in marketing. This 2% stuff is not it. I recommend you need to be spending between 7% to 9%, if not 10%, of your marketing goal in advertising dollars every single month, pushing and pulling what's working and what's not working. Buy, lean into that. If you're wanting to really grow and you're going into a new market, give me 12 to 14 percent for 12 months and let's see what happens.
Speaker 1:But most of you just need to put a little hustle in. You're not willing to hustle, you're not willing to make your team hustle. And that leads me right into number three. Mind shift that you have to make is shocker. You are the boss, contractors, you are the boss of the company. Run the company, set expectations, Do not continue to allow the prisoners to run the prison Terrible example there but you don't want to continue to allow your team to hold you hostage and to tell you what they are and are not going to do. The last time I checked, you were the boss. You were the ones that were making sure everyone got paid, and so the fact that some of you allow technicians and installers to tell you that they are not going to do things blows my mind. I would rather be in a truck before I allow people to tell you.
Speaker 1:So when we say, hey, we really think you need to do a loss leader program like let's get in homes with a low barrier of entry, meaning it's not threatening to the homeowner tune up, can your team flip it over to a maintenance club? Well, they don't really like to sell maintenance club, I don't care. How do we incentivize them and motivate them and equip them to sell memberships, to upsell equipment, to upsell water filtration, to upsell, to tankless, to upsell? How do we motivate them to do it and stop allowing them to tell you what they are and are not going to do? You need to set expectations clearly and up front. It controls your culture. It controls your brand. It controls all of the important pieces of growing a business, and so you must. It controls all of the important pieces of growing a business, and so you must, as that third mind, shift guys. You have to run your business. You have to know your pricing, know your numbers. I talk to contractors every day and I'm like okay, so what is your average ticket? We really don't have access. How do you make any decisions. How are you holding anyone accountable when you don't know that? I know my numbers at Lim Lemon Seed because I know the importance of knowing them. Knowledge is power, and when you're driving a spaceship and you're driving it blind, you're going to end up lost in outer space and never able to land because you're just circling, you're just orbiting. So I just encourage you like, land this ship, drive the boat, be the boss and build your marketing. So, hey guys, these are three mind shifts that I think you could do to be a better marketer. Own your business, own your marketing so that you can grow and you can build the dream and the legacy that you've been dying to build. So thanks for listening to another short little episode of From the Yellow Chair. This was 12 minutes of me just encouraging you to be the best that you can be, but always continue slipping some lemonade with us. We.