 Hey, good afternoon everybody, Tom Stewart here with my partner Liz Trotter. Hey, Liz And we've got our special guest Matt Ricketts from Better Life Mades joining us. Hi Matt. Hey, how are you guys? Thanks for having me again This is awesome. We've had a long list of topics that we wanted to cover yesterday with Matt and didn't really get to any of them so I'd agree to come back and join us again today because we have some stuff that We think is really important and useful As you consider smart business moves during the corona virus pandemic We're going to be talking about marketing today and and some of the things that Matt's been working on ideas to help develop your brand and and create more value out of your brand and to to leverage that to gain market share Which is kind of a fancy way of saying getting more customers and generating more revenue and putting more money in the bank Something that Is near and dear to all of our hearts and it's important and now more so than ever Before we jump into that is there anything happening in the In the world in the last 24 hours as it pertains to I don't know small business administration or any of the the COVID related stuff out there that we we haven't talked about I think everyone should probably read the new sba guidance that came out today. I haven't read it yet So I don't really want to dive into that as a topic today, but they did put out new guidance under rule 46 I believe is what it's called um on the uh the protection plan forgiveness and um There's there's a lot to it So I'm going to probably dive into that tonight for some bedtime reading and then we can Probably expand on that and help people understand a little bit more in the future or There's a lot of people, you know That to follow on that right now too that could help with that too But was this the information that was promised several weeks ago? I don't know And it's it's in q and a format too, which is kind of funny So it's not even like the rule is actually out there somewhere and it's probably really Complicated to read and even worse than this the q and a is huge from what I looked I just opened it up and it was like It was a pretty good document And um, and it was all in question and answer format So i'm guessing that they must they must be responding to the fact that there's a lot of questions still So it was it was a strange format for a uh For a rule to come out in but I maybe it's not the final rule. Maybe it's just their Guidance it was but it was helpful. I read like a couple paragraphs of it and I was like, all right I've got a lot to do today. So this is sba website I believe so Look now you got me all excited matt. I can't wait to get in there and read that I'm like, ah, you guys can get a stay on the call and let's go read Yeah, oh We're we're going to be here matt I don't know. I don't know I Because megan likes shared the link. So I found it on facebook through megan like so Can you send me the link in an email? Yeah, I can do that. Okay. I can do that today But yeah, so that was that was sort of something that I saw come out today And I dug into a little bit, but I don't have enough to speak on that with any clarity today Well, that's our t's for tomorrow Yeah Hi y'all You got the regulars in early today All right on time We want to jump into branding and you know jump up What you do that, uh, what what you've been working on matt So, um, I'll probably share my screen in a second But I'm just going to kind of give you an overview of what we decided to do with some of our time. Um Um, and honestly, I think I'm going to make this like a permanent as long as I have the money for it When this is all said and done, um I hired a web designer and a graphic designer into my company and um, you know, both of them at about 10 to 15 hours a week and um I'd like to be able to imagine that I'm going to be profitable enough to keep them throughout the year But I have a lot of projects that I want to get done And with this downtime, it seemed like a good time to do it Um, so, you know, I have them working on some things So we decided to do a rebrand of our company and a rebrand is not just a new logo Although that is part of it. Um, it's not just a new website. It's for us It's a comprehensive like evaluation of the image that we're presenting to our customers. So What I really wanted to focus on in a new design was Are we making the customer the center of the story of our website of our communication? Are we making them the hero of the story and we're still so when I show you the examples the copy's not there yet But that's the idea Um, are are we solving problems for them? And are we like a trusted guide and the word trust again Being such an important word in this um in this environment So I wanted to create, you know, again a brand that was modern and you know exuded trust So working on that also working on some facebook marketing and then trying out some new things like, um Next door some of you guys might already be using next door for yourselves Next door used to have some pretty big restrictions on who could Advertise with it how much spend you would have to do and things like that um They just lowered those probably in the last few months. I hadn't been paying attention Um, if you've been using this for a while, that's great. I knew last year. This was this was not an option This is only for big companies But you can target people in next door and those are pretty active communities And if your business is, you know getting a lot of recommendations in there That's a very good place to be focusing some energy And I know a lot of you guys are in there when people are requesting cleaners and things like that But you can now put a special in there. Uh, so we're doing a 10% coupon I can show that today as well. Um You know not 10% is not a great not a great special It's not going to probably knock the doors down But the fact that we already have 25 or 26 other little hearts on our profile in the in the next door Uh lens system credibility and hopefully, um again that word trust that they'll You know give us a call and at least give us an opportunity to Uh to win that trust so, uh, yeah, uh, I can share the screen and kind of start with some of this And we can dig in where people have questions. So, um I'm gonna have to share I only have one monitor today. So, uh, I'm gonna do My entire screen it's gonna be us in limbo for a second until I jump over to envision here Tom whenever you're ready. I think I'm uh Okay, man, you're you're up. I'm gonna go ahead and go full screen here. So, okay So I'm gonna show you our current website and I'm gonna just kind of jump back um to that to start with so um our current website is Is a little darker branding is branding is always been very colorful with us But we tried this darker overlay over pictures So we could use like full-sized pictures and things like that But but it really never we never really loved the the look and feel of the darker website and it just kind of you know The other thing is you see this scrolling form It just takes up a lot of space and it converts well it gets people to fill out the form. So that's the point But there's other ways to accomplish that and then the other thing is so Um our branding has always been about being consistently delightful um While delightful is a great word. I don't know that it's the word that I want to focus on Uh, moving forward, right? So not that there's again anything wrong with that as a brand idea It's just I want them to focus on trust a little bit more. So Um, we're using a few things. So if you want to start with This is our logo now. I think it's still a serviceable logo But we wanted something a little bit more modern and clean and so I'm gonna open up. Um, I'm gonna open up a Let's see finder downloads and Let me know if you can see these logos when they pop up. Do you guys see this time? Yes Okay So wanted to create a flexible logo that could be used both horizontally and vertically And the reason we wanted to do this is that it just it's just more flexible I don't want to dig too deep into it better old But we wanted a logo that was modern clean and we we wanted to have just a very quick nod to the fact that we were you know, um May we want to get an icon in there. So we snuck this bottle Into the logo and that's the shape of the better life product bottles, which is kind of a unique shape um So the logo is flexible it can be used in a lot of different ways You know horizontal horizontally and vertically but also with colors with with other, you know with other combinations And just um, how it looks on on imagery and things like that you can kind of see So that was kind of the first step. We took some time and really rethought the logo made it look a little bit more clean and modern so And then we've you know by no stretch of the imagination are we done with with this website. This is a mock-up tool called envision Um, if you are going to work with somebody that's going to design your website for you Um, there's a couple of tools that I really like and envision is one of them It is and there's other mock-up tools that are great but this this is where your designer can put the design ideas And put them all in one place where you guys can collaborate and try some different ideas. So What's cool here is um, this is just like one version of a site. This is not even the site It's just we're looking at what the what the kind of we're looking at the conversion strategy here. So Um, you know, you can comment on this to and be in comment mode and add comments to here So you can see that I've put a bunch of comments on this already Um, you know things that I'm not thrilled with But one thing I want to show you here is obviously here's the new execution of the logo Um, your life met your life made better With service you can trust however. What's cool is As they you know, stay on the screen. This is going to change from service to people to products And this will be clickable to any of those things So we really want to be we really want to focus on our service people products But this word trust is going to be is going to be very big and then um, you know Really focusing on cleaning for safe for safety and health and that's a big thing that Um, I haven't stolen from tom, but it's you know, something that he's focused on For a long for a long time. I think there's a way to um to do that in a fresh modern way It's called practices. Yeah, best practices They kind of call it plagiarism, but it doesn't Okay So then then just some like really fun graphical style. So I really like mid-century design So I really wanted to kind of incorporate some of that. So these shapes and designs are all kind of like from that and A few strategies. I don't want to dig too deep into this But what my point is it's a great time to to be thinking through Um, what you want to do with your website what you want to do what you want to do with your um, what you want to do with your All of your branding at this time to really Stand out in a crowded market. So again, we we're trying a few different things we're actually going to probably create a couple different home pages and test them out So this is another version Where we're going to still have a form, but it'll just be here at the top here This gets your instant price and this will tie right into made central Um, and it'll also take them to the booking page once they request the estimate And so, you know focusing on a video with this version and then some other videos below here But again, really I wanted to focus on a lot of white space With the idea of being, you know, bright and clean fresh perspective lots of trust elements with reviews a letter from angela and Again, this is still a work in progress and you can kind of see some ideas that we're we're working through um, so tying that into tying that into Some advertising that we're doing right now um We've been we have we haven't stopped um We haven't stopped marketing through all of this even when we were completely shut down um Because we just we recognize that there were some opportunities there to Reach people that are serving other people and and so through june we're gonna we're offering 20 off cleaning for all first responders um, we're offering We're offering 20 off cleanings for all health care workers and Again, this is just another another example of an ad targeted to health care workers And i'm going to show you kind of like how we build some of our marketing out and how it's designed so We we do everything in kind of 90 day increments So you're going to kind of see the behind the scenes of this a little bit. I'm going to expand this up a little bit um So this is one from december I'm not going to probably share my most current one because I've got some pretty fun ideas that I don't want you guys to steal before I do them but um Basically we we always evaluate what worked what worked last time what are what our top posts were How many how many you know impressions did they get how many people clicked on them? And um and really, you know, how many of them turned into sales And we use an agency so we can actually track and really get some pretty deep deep data on You know on on some of that we can also give them our phone all of our phone calls They actually have access to our phone system and they can see every all that came through and Attribute that to a facebook ad as well. So there's there's a pretty deep dive you can get into We're always looking at what our competitors are doing. Sorry. I don't hopefully maybe some of you guys are on here They're competitors, but um, I don't see a lot of national brands doing a great job with marketing. I think the maids is probably Probably the best and then um There's another franchise out of boston area. I'm sorry. I'm blanking on their name I think they do a pretty good job with some of their marketing, but made pro made pro So I think they're they're good to look to for inspiration You know, I also suggest following me following other companies that you like outside of our space Um, I always tell my designers to not look too much to what our competitors are doing because I don't see a lot of originality in our in our industry So I look for I look to other places oftentimes for for ideas But it's always good to kind of look through what your competitors are doing Um, you know have some keywords that that you really want in your in your messaging So think that through Those are all things that that we always think through pretty regularly as far as what do we want to say In our messaging. What do we want to get out there? So that's what we wanted to do six months ago. Obviously this has changed So who are we targeting right so website visitors? Those are everyone that's visited us in the last Uh, I would think that's a two month. That's probably a two month sample sex. We get about 2 000 visitors a month phone calls So we're we can target everyone that's called us as well through our agency. They can they can match that to people Any emails that we that we upload so really our most current leads we put back through We don't like to put our full list through because some of those are pretty old Engaged users people that have that have recently clicked on on an ad and then our facebook fans Those are some of the audiences that we have as our We call these primary audiences Because these are people that are you know engaged with our brand And then we do secondary audiences These are things you create with facebook targeting The reason you do a secondary audience is you can reach more people. Those were only, you know, probably 20 000 people in the other list So potential reach 360 000 people with our home homeowner look alike. So based on um, you know Um top 1% of spenders Location living in the united states within 25 miles of our location Excluding illinois with an age range pretty broad And then we do a parent look alike or a parent audience of just parents in in our in our region Where we do some kind of targeted ads towards parents um So, you know, we aren't going to be able to reach all these people with our budget So oftentimes you want to probably narrow that down a little bit 360 000 in this month That's a little high. I think we've narrowed it down quite a bit since then and You know, again, we have usually several different campaigns going so there's one two three four campaigns going so We're usually targeting four different four different things at a time and testing different ads so Drop leads are people that have been to our website that went to our booking page, but then did not book So we can specifically target people that almost got to the finish line and And then didn't book for whatever reason so We we retarget them this month on our satisfaction guarantee and then some more information on our service trying both those things um So basically they just they went to our website they hit the booking page But they just did not hit the they did not hit the thank you page. Okay, so Um This is what the copy says this must have been before we finalized it with images um, so this would be kind of an example of an image we'd use and Uh, then the other the other thing we did was we sent them a or we were targeting with a video As our other as our other targets. So I'm just going to kind of roll through this a little quicker um You know because we do this for uh all different kinds of all different kinds of leads so Um, just we and we really structured so we know where are we sending them to what page on our website? Um, so in this particular instance, we sent them to the what's included page of our website We thought that would be better than sending the home page so they could dive a little deeper into You know, what are they getting? We had a promotion on fall cleaning. So, you know That was again kind of the same process you kind of you kind of work through Um, you kind of work through all these questions and build the content out Based on those things. So where are we going to send them to so this one? We just sent to the home page um We did a gift card special Right now and just this is something that that really surprised me. We sold almost I'm not going to just throw a number out there somewhere between 15 and 20 thousand dollars of gift cards over Um, this last few months mostly through email, but also we were we were doing some things over facebook as well. Um so We did This doesn't look like the final copy Um, but this would be the gift card. This would be what we did. We always do this as a holiday gift card special Um, and I don't think facebook is what really drives it. Mostly it's going to be um what it's going to be Driving it is our email list Looks like we didn't put the final web page there, but we sent it to our gift gift card cafe or our gift card cafes who we sell gift cards through and then dynamic content is kind of a cool thing in facebook you can do this um Where you can actually create up to five different ads So this is the copy that it would be so like, um You know five different Like copies that you can create. I really like throwing these emojis into facebook ads I think that those really, you know catch people's eye and What's cool is um You can have five different called actions and five different buttons and just test just test things out And then these are the images and you and it rotates through so if you want to just kind of quickly test my ideas out You can create an ad called dynamic content with facebook And uh, it'll allow you to to try a bunch of different ads out really really quickly So those are kind of some those are kind of some that's kind of our method Or how we build out our content for like a 90 day period And I think now again, I don't know we all are probably, you know Busy than ever there was a time that we were sitting down and I was feeling like I had all this time on my hands um But now all of a sudden that's changed. Uh, last thing I wanted to show was just this next door. Um, I feel like next door is Is got a pretty good platform Let me see if I've if I've had any action on this ad not really yet. So I just put this out yesterday I think it cost me like 200 bucks To run this ad that can reach up to 100 000 people for For 30 days. So you know anyone that gets on in the next 30 days this this ad will rotate through and You know, all we did was I'll show you the deal we did we just created a local deal and Pretty simple. We just uh, let's see if it let me click into it So you just add an image you 10 off a whole house deep plane you add some copy um I also put in I also made sure that I put in there Um a link to the precautions we have for COVID-19 I think in everything you do right now for your marketing you do need to address that it's it's um What do you guys think Tom Liz? I mean are you guys you guys, you know making sure to put that in emails and things like that that you're putting out every time We are here in Olympia. I'm a fan Yeah, it's It's in every email reminder I send out It's in every text that we send out to our customers that there's a cleaning coming up I like this link shortener bitly because I can track Clicks and things like that so I can create different instances of the same link So I could actually put this link in a new link shortener and I can track every place that it's ever been clicked through from So that's kind of a cool thing And if you they have a paid version that's like $300 a year where you could create custom URLs I don't know if I would go that far. I've thought about it but my the initials of my brand don't really lend well to that because of a Of a movement that happened a few years back so it doesn't it doesn't work well for my brand anymore, but For you know depending on your brand the like shortening it to three letters could work really well and that's a really, you know a nice branded piece to have a A shortened url although the ly url I don't know if any of you guys know this what country what country code that is for url anybody know Not me Anybody on the chat? No, and maybe there's somebody Somebody out there. It's it's syria actually. So it's Not the most secure. It's kind of it's you know, I wouldn't build a whole website based on the ly I feel worried for bitly in general that that's kind of built on a on a shaky foundation of of You know Our url that so they so syria's government somehow controls that whole process of buying these urls bitly somehow has the ability to To buy them and give you a shortened url if you a branded one if you wanted it for whatever reason It's about $300 a year. Uh, I don't I don't do it. I don't know that you need to do it The basic features of it are great. Google has a shortener too. I like it because again, if you look at the whole url of My blog and look at the whole url of that website of this page um It becomes pretty long and takes up a lot of characters So if you're using you know text or things like that, it's not easy And obviously being able to go to bitly and check and see what links have been clicked for you know For a unique link that you've created. That's all that's all pretty pretty cool that you can do that. So um That's all I really have for basics of sharing. I know I went through a lot pretty quick But then we can dive in if people have questions It works out matt because we do have a few questions here All right The first thing somebody wants to know is what is your connection to the better life maze product? the better life Yeah, so Tim Tim was a friend one of the founders of better life and so we originally were a go green clean was our name very original and so we started out in 2008 as go green clean and When they kind of came out the products about the same time we were using them and we really liked them um, I wanted to Co-brand with them and it actually really worked really well for them because we We actually gave them a lot of footprint in the st. Louis region before they were big before they were You know before they were at all even sold in grocery stores They had cars rolling around with better life maids branding We were dropping dish soap off at our customer's house With with branding on it. Uh, we were selling product through we were actually one of their biggest biggest sellers before they got on with Help Whole Foods because we were selling direct to our customers at one point Um, and you know that that was the relationship though. So we co-branded with them To to kind of create my goal was at one point to sell franchises And I sold about five and I realized that that's a whole nother business. I didn't love So long story short, uh, they were friends of ours and we were able to work out agreements to work with them on Cool and the next question is about your website. Um, and catarina is saying it's great to have such a beautiful website But a good website is no of no value if you don't have a good seo So she's asking if you have any suggestions about um seo experts or What do you got? I think most seo experts are Are probably not worth the money you pay them. Um, there are some good ones and I hate I hate to You know and the ones that are good enough to pay them are probably very expensive So there's a guy here in town in st. Louis Um, I mean he won't even touch your website for less than 2000 a month and I would trust him to do it But I don't even really want to spend that kind of money on it What I suggest is what's going to make your website rank is Is local reviews and you know the stuff that they're doing is they're building links They're building relationships with other websites, which are votes which you can do yourself. There are There are some tools out there. Um Tom I used to recommend one I and me and derrick both did you remember the link the the seo tool that we used to To to recommend maybe derrick will remind us. He's talking about maz No, yeah Well, that's what you use though. Tom. We've used over many years maz low bowlin So maz is good for maz is good for building out your directory links and that's important too. So I definitely think um I definitely think that's a huge first step that most people never take You've got maz local and you've got like the maz for your your national which will help you with You know So for some amount of money, I think between 20 and 50 dollars a month. There's different things with maz local That's a good point. So I think we can't forget that point. Um maz local will build out all your directories and um And directories are just things like like yelp Or like the yellow pages or but there's literally hundreds and hundreds of them So there's a bunch of first tier ones that you want to be on And it can be very hard to build all those yourself at one point before all these directories were out I I built hundreds and hundreds of these I found lists of like all the places to do this and You know, I was I had it. I was an island pilot time. So I'd be at my hotel room and I would get online I would just do this work And um, yeah, I mean you can shoot up the rankings pretty quickly by just doing some basic stuff, right? Um, you know getting reviews with google local Um can really move you up into local rankings and especially when people are searching close to you What I think people really need to realize now is so much of your google rankings are just based on where somebody searches If somebody searches more than five miles away from my office The rankings are vastly different even though we like have I think we have like 168 google reviews more the more than anybody else in town Um, if if somebody's searching out in Kirkwood, which is exactly five miles away Uh, we're not going to show up first no matter what we do not in the map pack We probably show up maybe a couple times in the organic and that's why you still probably have to do some advertising as well We do the google, uh, what is it called tom google locates, uh, I think it's just google local. It's just their, uh They're paid service. Um, oh google guarantee Google guarantee, I mean I do I do ad words. I have my ad words turned off right now because um I just was conscious of the spend there for a little bit. I wanted to be doing more facebook I like I mean I I spent about I spent about $2,000 a month every month on facebook ads even during the during the shutdown not including my not including my agency spend You know for designers and to create, you know create fresh content and stuff like that and then for people to manage it and You know, so there's more money involved in that but Um, if you can't spend that kind of money, there are smaller operations that will do this for you I You know There is a lot there's a lot to do it right You know, you can do it with uh, some of the basic tools that facebook provides and I don't I don't discourage that I think just even just doing boosted posts is a good start. You can actually do some Okay targeting with that. Uh, there's another level of targeting You can get into if you get into the get into the facebook manager And really manage your ads a little bit more deeply Um, but I think something is better than nothing with that and getting out in front of getting out in front of people Um, relatively cheaply and uh, and and honestly ad spend on on facebook is actually so even though there's What's kind of weird about facebook is it's based on impressions, right? So it's based on how many times they show your ad to different people There are people that I have not seen on facebook for like 10 years that have been popping up on facebook Like I had a bunch of friends just like that were never on facebook finally joined And I think people are you know this time of like, you know of slow down and just like, you know connecting digitally Some people that have just said, you know, I don't need this. I've decided that they're going to get on So anyway, the impressions the available impressions are way up. So the cost per ad is actually down quite a bit. Um I want to say about 20 or so. It's it's it's a little bit cheaper than it normally is and it's always It's always people always ask me like what about radio? What about tv? I'm like I would be happy to do that if I exhausted every penny that I could possibly spend on facebook and on other on other digital platforms Either ad words or youtube if I spent every dollar with with digital spend first and I couldn't reach any more people Then I would go to places like television and radio and honestly I want I want a younger demographic. Anyway, my company my customer does lean a little bit A little younger with You know, they being tech savvy being able to book online Doing some of those things and if if your demographic is a little older, maybe radio is you know, a good thing We do some Mother's Day advertising and we do um, we do something called home for the holidays that's on the radio where we give a give a A family some free cleanings A military family that's that's home for the holidays a free cleaning and then a bunch of other businesses chip in and they give uh Sometimes a car if a dealership, you know chips in sometimes Anyway, it's just it's you know, it's kind of cool to be part of this big thing and uh The radio the radio station still makes us pay for the advertising even though we're giving all this stuff away But uh, it's that you know, that one's just kind of a good will piece. Um, but it's not particularly expensive But but I still think I still think facebook is still the cheapest way to reach people and obviously It includes instagram as well and It also has one other thing that people don't really remember No, don't really realize about facebook is is that facebook has a huge ad network off platform. So um, a lot of the ads you see on like, um better homes and gardens like for example, which might be a good You know tying for someone that's for for our demographic It's looking for a house or maybe an architecture website. There's you know, there's all the ads that are built into those websites Those are either delivered by google or facebook and oftentimes both And they're competing for different slots on their site. The these sites have like an algorithm that's basically selling these spots, you know, um, and Usually they actually are selling the both ad networks. So I have chosen to use facebook's ad network versus google's just because I don't want to be competing against myself To be selling ads either like if i'm selling on we're trying to buy ad space, you know on websites with google And and i'm targeting people that have been to my website not just random people. I only do I only do remarketing uh with those kind of ads where i'm where i'm going to people that That I already have a relationship with but have visited my site And we all get those ads where we look at a pair of shoes and then that pair that pair of shoes keeps showing up I try and have them go to a page that they've Why don't we take remarketing from the from the top just back up a little bit because that's kind of an advanced concept Okay, all right, so Remarketing is the idea that every time you visit a website There's a tiny little piece of code that that gets placed on their computer called a cookie and that's why you know Um some ad blocking software and stuff like that has has been built But the truth is 98 percent of consumers don't use any of that stuff and it's uh, you know, you know It's still readily available If you're going to use that technology you probably need to talk to an expert to put some a disclaimer on your website That you use that technology and that's why you see those disclaimers on most websites as a pop-up But america the united states does not require that it just needs to be in the privacy policy of your website that you're doing this So just to be clear There are some things you would want to do if you're going to do it to be in compliance Um, so when they go to your website now, they have a little tiny pixel or code that's on their computer So google or facebook or whoever knows Relatively who that person is basically and so when they go to facebook now They are able to on the right hand side or in their feed Um see ads that are delivered targeted to them based on their web searching history So um if they and especially the more recent web history is going to be displayed in ads for them So if they're looking at um Whatever their hobbies are right, so if they're into you know scrapbooking They're going to see scrapbook ads from this website that they visited last or you know In our case, hopefully a better life maids ad that's targeted and catches them at the right moment and they're like Oh, yeah, I forgot I was searching for them yesterday I should click on that ad again and go back and you know get that book because a lot of times you know One of my pet pieces sales people that don't have tenacity is like man like I Like sometimes I just need to be reminded to like buy your product. I wanted to buy it I was like right there, but I just got busy and forgot and like You know if you would have just had one or two more follow-ups of some kind I would have bought from you and so this is kind of automating that process right so they keep seeing your ads And and you're you're being a little tenacious. You're being out there and you're you know, some people don't love it. Um It's part of the it's part of the the advertising Part of the advertising landscape now And I think it's I think it's just something you would want to look at if you want to reach people especially if you're getting any kind of traffic to your site you want to reengage those people because um What percentage buy the first time that they visit your site right like? um It's it's pretty low So if you look at the people that are doing like online bookings and like that's their big thing Like one percent of visitors would be a good conversion rate for a lot of those companies Like if they had a hundred visitors if one of them booked that day Sometimes they would say that's that's a good conversion strategy. I've heard people say three four five percent for online booking I've looked at a lot of people's analytics. I've never seen it that high if there's anyone on the call that's doing that I want to see what you're doing because that would make me happy Um, I want to know what you're doing and please share and I will I will share lots of ideas with you If you have five percent conversion rate with your online booking, we need we need to talk Um, but I hear people talk We do have some more questions too to matt um It's a couple of quick questions is do you manage all of this stuff yourself like your your website next door Your facebook marketing. How much of it do you manage? How much do you farm out? How do you do that? so I manage it all in the sense that i'm deeply aware of what we're doing But I couldn't possibly do all of this stuff anymore. Like so like the website. I have I have there's two people that work on the website. There's both a designer And there is a coder, right? So, um, those are two different jobs. So, you know, oftentimes I I think that We we have to remember like there's different roles that you know that we can we can only know so much stuff So like just to do good advertising There's copy, right? I'm actually a really good writer when I actually Keele away all the things that I say and just get to the point sometimes um, so You know, I I I I oftentimes write things down and then I just delete whole Paragraphs and what I'm saying and then it's like that was it was just this one thing But it was good And um, so, you know copywriting, right? That's one skill Graphic design. It's a whole another skill You know the analytics I am good at that. So I do look at all my data and my numbers my conversions That's another skill Another skill would be, you know, photography Another skill would be videography. There's no way you can do this stuff all yourself I do think you need to have a trusted team of people That you're doing this with or or, you know, a small up and coming agency Would be would be a good would be a good resource to to really look into You know me and tom a joke like that. I should start an agency. I've I've thought about it a long time It's just You know right now. I really want to focus on growing my business and doing that I would love to be able to help more people with this stuff. It's just a matter of You got to orchestrate all those pieces together and and really and really do that So it is really hard as an individual to do it all yourself. There are some basics you can do Go ahead All right, so if So you're a big company matt and a lot of the people that are on these facebook lives They're they're smaller companies right now. They're stressed out, you know, the coronavirus pandemic They're hearing from you somebody they trust that they need to like do this new branding thing But they can't do it all themselves Oh What what do you recommend? Where do they start? How do they how do they? Do what's right for them if they have a hundred thousand dollar company or a fifty thousand I mean it depends on what your investment level is in in in that stuff and what's right. So it's not necessarily like what your revenue is, but you know Um Yes, that's a good. That's a good question because you can't you can't do all this stuff yourself But then it does get expensive to form it all out. Um, you know the numbers that I might throw out might be Vastly different than than what you'd be able to do. Um what I would suggest is Um, what I would suggest is There are some low-cost ways to get started that are not going to necessarily be perfect But they're going to be good. You can use tools like canva to kind of do your own design Um to do your own graphic design. You don't need to know So I know how to use photoshop and illustrator and some other tools um I take a lot of pride in the learning that I did and if you wanted to use those tools there's there's uh Some websites that offer some courses. Um, I want to say there's one called martha.com If that maybe somebody looks that up, uh and see if that's still around I think it was called martha like 10 years ago. It was called martha.com. It could have changed names since then Uh kind of a terrible name for a website But it was awesome because it had all this learning on photoshop and illustrator I know I know adobe too as part of the whole covet 19 thing had a lot of their Training that normally they they charge for they were giving it away. Yeah, so so I took the time I did take the time to learn it and you certainly could so you can trade time or you can trade money But canva is a good tool that you could just get started with. Um, I know there's a lot of people that do some really creative stuff with canva It's not going to look Like it's from from some fortune 500 company, but it's going to look good Uh, that's not the point again The branding is not necessarily to make you look like you're the slickest company in the world The branding is about again creating trust and creating and creating an image that is professional So if you can be consistent and it doesn't look like it rolled out rolled out of like, you know Um, well, let me give you an example. I was just about to say it rolled out like on a piece of newspaper um One of my plumber friends had a really great point was he's like matt you make yourself look like your business is really expensive He's like, I want my I want my customers to think that it like our website is a brown paper bag And that it's just like, you know written in ink and like It's just very basic because I don't want them to think we're the most expensive plumber I want them to call us thinking they're going to get a deal. I'm like, well, dude, that's a good that's a good analogy I think that that's a good point too. So there is something to be there is something to be said for if you are small Don't pump up too high because you you can, you know Over present this image that you're this huge company and the expectations are out of line I think I think presenting the image that you're a small Mom and pop company, but you're doing things the right way Man, I think that's super powerful. That's a that's a great brand Some of you guys that have names like, you know mom maids and you know things like that or like Those are those are strong brands about trust like and and focus on it Like who would you rather have clean your home than another mom, right? Like who's gonna like I mean, whatever the whatever your company is Whoever you are That's your brand and that's that's what you focus on It's not like trying to be the slickest or have the best advertising use what you have Find some basic tool. Oh the other but I was going to say we're sharing tools canva There are I haven't used them in a long time, but I have used with some success There's some like logo design contests and then you can even go to Upwork is more for if you're going to have like a website built up work is good You can look for a graphic designer Or fiber Is hit or miss sometimes you can find some great people on fiber though if you Um anybody had any good success in the comments with fiber? I have I have not but I don't have though. I do 99 designs might be the logo design 99 designs is good. Yeah, that's a good that's a good place to look I was going to say I did have one good thing from um Form uh fiber. I had somebody record uh a while back our uh our um Phone system like on from fiber and they only they only were like it was like five dollars per recording And it was pretty good and we spent like 20 bucks And uh, it sounded better than me and I was like that's perfect like you know, so um You you can sometimes get lucky with fiber and find some good people so Fiber is a good resource. Um, oh There is a great resource uh for copy and for creating ads for facebook, um Um, I will try and remember before the end of the ad I before the end of this You keep thinking of that and i'm going to throw out these all in a row for everybody These are the things that matt has already commented on canva Upwork Fiber 99 designs and moz mozi So these are all tools to help you with your marketing and branding And moz moz local would be my particular Free I mean you can pay the paid version, but They'll give you a lot of information about what directories you're in and you don't have to pay anything for that And it gives you a lot of tasks to do which make you um Feel and it actually does work some stuff that you can do we also have a couple of questions here too Um matt do you have a preference or anybody that you're recommending? For managing facebook for your facebook ads or all of that Nobody right now. Sorry lily all right, um, how about Do you have any information about where people can go who they might use to? Um, they want to get um like an instant price quote on their website like a book at now form There's a few tools so in full disclosure. I use tom's product made central that has that has that built in Um, I don't recommend that for every company. I think that that is a great software But I think you need some level of growth in your company to make that investment A worthwhile investment Um, so tom. Sorry. I think you know, I think you'd agree with that I agree. It's Um, so so I think there's a couple options If you're just getting like for smaller companies response a bit is awesome. I think That's a great tool response a bit would be a great tool for putting on some online pricing in your website launch 27 I know a lot of you guys manage your companies with launch 27 once 27 is also software I know a mars company zen made Has um a a online booking tool um, there there's a couple others there's uh Man, there's one that's fairly new Um, I can't think of the name of it, but it would be Gosh, I wish I could just pull that out But there's several out there and I think we can talk more about you know Booking engines and things like that to run your company with but if you just want one If you already have a good back end or you're already using, you know Scheduling software and stuff like that Responsibid is quite good and very easy to use and kirk kemper is uh, kind of a fun Smart guy what kempton kempton Smart guy and he puts out some like really funny blogs. It's very helpful with uh, I read his blog too. I think he's he's quite funny um, I've been out to dinner with him and just like Just dying the whole time talking about parenting and his style of parenting and and it's funny because it's all about business but he's like tying it into His brand is just uh, you talk about brand is just like Just goofball funny guy, but super smart and and again his product is good and simple to use and I know I know that that would be a good place to begin If you don't want to switch softwares for everything else. It's it has some crm functions too as far as drip marketing and We're we're kind of getting in the we end here, but Uh, Bridget's asked if we could post like the links to all of those resources that you just mentioned That's a bunch of links what we can do now You would maybe if you could put together like a document, which is kind of your tool box I could put make that a download of a cleaning business today and they can I'll make that a link and we can download and get all of that on one list I can do that. There's a few things we've talked about today. We can put on there If Liz has some notes, we can just Get a note taker to shoot me over her notes and picture from the From the call and I'll try and write something up I'm gonna I'm gonna ask a question. We talk a lot about tools and just a short answer here Website obviously is important in applying those tools to to kind of build up your website and make it relevant But what do you think about? You know a lot of times like a facebook page or your google business listing Maybe is is overlooked in this whole process. How important are they? in the digital marketing space I'll tell you what my google places I'd have to pull up the stats on it, but my google places page Gets almost as much traffic as my website. I mean, it's probably I would not overlook that I would not overlook, you know, putting some posts on there Um putting your specials on there. You're reminding me. I haven't done one in about a month. Um I actually think our google the the google local the google places page is actually More important than our website. Sometimes our facebook page is important and and obviously Is obviously very important too, but I think you can really actually have some pretty good results with uh With making that as good as possible with some great Being a small business with a limited budget and limited resources You know, I think a lot of times we spend too much time worrying about our website And You don't need a developer You just take your your phone and take some pictures and upload it you can You could build a cheap website on wix with just I mean honestly all your website really needs to be is if a caveman looked at your website Would he be able to immediately know what you do? In like 30 seconds three seconds, right if a caveman looks at your website and he just grunts greening company That's all he needs to be able to do right If you think much more complicated than that Then it does you you need to have a good, you know good messaging But if you but again a cleaning company they can trust and why again It could just be a one page or two page or five page website Like my website has 300 pages and there's a reason for it because each one of those pages Is going after some long tail keywords but to start with Okay, but your main word is trust right now make make note We're like 51 minutes and so we're going to go back and snip that cleaning company caveman and we're going to We're going to we're going to put that to you But matt if you if somebody had to like have this overarching idea right now what you're suggesting is Come on. Let's get everybody focused on Trust yeah customers to trust you right now safety health Yeah, all of that good stuff right When this was all going on I like I had a call me and tom are doing a call and We we talk a lot about business ideas and you know share a lot of ideas And so you guys are kind of getting in behind the scenes of like some of the calls we do Probably once a week we do in strategy calls for our businesses and it's kind of an informal thing sometimes There's other people on the call and whatnot, but it one of the calls. I was like man, tom I was like he did it in such a nerdy way like 10 years ago But you were like you were like predicting the coronavirus with your branding I was like, man, I'm going to rebrand to casp keepers. I think I Well, I want to I want to add to the trust idea in order to do it Effectively you have to be thinking about how do I become trustworthy? Trust doesn't just happen. You have to create a business that is trustworthy and through that you get the trust So what are some of the things? What are the things? So really tom, I mean now is the time that you need to start popping up links because really We didn't plan this like this although it's going to look like we did But bottom line is that's the whole point of the courses that we are creating is because We want everybody that is I know it looks like we planned it, but we didn't All the time that we're never that that that talented to Yeah, it would be awesome if we were as talented as we appear sometimes but um So this whole idea of trust that matt's been talking about this The this entire call and you've heard it if you think about it now, you're like Oh, wow, they have been talking about this the whole time We're trying to professionalize the industry because we want everyone to trust us and feel like it's the good safe Healthy hygienic option to have us in the home Here are some more things to go on your website y'all. So go ahead tom give us uh, give us the information two classes two programs the covet 19 program is a three-hour class Designed for cleaning professionals who are cleaning in a covet 19 world. It is just specifically the information that a cleaning professional would need to be responsible and Do the right things in the covet 19 world talking about, you know, the rate ppe and how to use it when disinfectants are and have a sanitize high-tech surfaces bed linens It's an awesome course and anybody who's out there cleaning right now should take it again as designed for cleaning professionals But the program that we're in the midst of launching is the phc class professional house cleaning class Um, that's seven. It's a program actually. It's a seven class program Uh, the second class just went live today. The first class went live last week There's five more classes are going to be coming out between now in the end of may At the end of the program at the end of you know, the seventh class There's there's an exam you complete it. You get a certificate of of completion Um, and again, this is designed for your house cleaning professionals Folks are cleaning homes every day a much broader course than just a specific covet 19 material Um And it's it's it's non-prescriptive It's for for for any cleaning company regardless of business model or what products or tools you use But it's like the foundation that any cleaning professional Really needs to have and You go to modern cleaning and you can click on either one of the links on the home page It will take you to the covet class or the phc and you can go down here and click and register and um There are awesome courses and that's part of building trust because you want to be able to tell Your clients and your prospective clients that you're providing training your people are professionally trained They know what they're doing And be able to demonstrate that it's easy and that's where things are going There was a time and it wasn't that long ago That people could just make claims and get away with it and customers weren't even asking questions They said it's on the internet must be true I think moving forward people are going to be a little more leery a little more weary a little more concerned about Health and and keeping their home safe and they're going to be looking for evidence that the claims that are being made or real And this is this is an important way of doing that And one more thing about this these programs is the programs are created For you the business owner, but they're directed toward the professional house cleaners meaning that they're um directly developed so that your professional house cleaner keepers can engage with them and gather the information and feel confident and Like they want to do the things that are that are in these programs But we're doing it for you We're doing it because we know that this is what you're going to need to be able to be competitive in this new market This isn't going away anytime soon It's not going to be a world where the smiling faces are going to win out over the The factual Not factual. What's the word? I'm looking for the educated Company the educated company is going to win in this new market I don't I drop the links to both the kovat class and the phc class and the chat While we're here I was also able to find the link to the sba guidance on the rules for PPP We can talk about this tomorrow, but I'll go ahead and drop that in the shared as well. So um Everybody can get a get a jump on reading it. It looks like it's like It's like 48 questions. It goes on for like 16 pages. It's a pdf download All right, that's great. Thanks for finding that for us. Tom. Um, I know we are Um, oh, look at that. We have a whole two minutes here Matt, I did make a note for you of all the resources that you mentioned today And I'll send them over to you so you can create that Thank you. I'm glad everybody was appreciating the info today a little bit different information But it's time to we got to be moving forward too, right? We got to what are what are your steps? What are your next steps? What are the actions that you're taking? To make you successful in this new environment and these are some of the things you have to be focusing on Not just worried about how you're gonna How you're gonna spend your money or did the money drop in the bank yet? Not just that Definitely keep thinking about that, especially if you haven't but we got to move past that as well There's 143 billion left in ppp if you have not applied yet So I would I would say that it's gonna disappear quick But it you know didn't go as quick as the first round because I do think some of the big companies that took advantage the first time through Really ate through it quicker and I do think if you haven't applied yet, we haven't gotten your paperwork together There's still an opportunity to do so. So I would I would get that done though in the next couple Couple days if you can not too much no longer Yeah hours is better days are second and then no longer than a week y'all Running out of time now Okay, we have time for one last question. Maybe Anybody have one last question? Yeah, but we said We said two minutes We we got nothing so we got all the quite. Oh wait, there was one more question Matt, do you have any information about home advisor or google ads preference with some better? How I We used to go guaranteed ads and we like them. Um, I Have home advisor used to be something else in the past. We are not currently using them Um, I'm not saying that they're good or bad. I just didn't have a great experience with it in the past because you're fighting You're fighting for three other companies for for leads and I always found that the home advisor leads or whatever it was called in the past were oftentimes very very price conscious and not Not looking out for my brand or what I was offering. They're looking at price as their primary buying decision I think pretty much the consensus is google guarantees a better value Yeah, I even think yelp would be probably something to try right now and turn on their turn turn on their ads I've not had a lot of success with it. But I mean If you want something just easy to turn on yelp might be something to do but The simplest thing is Yeah, the simplest things are oftentimes are oftentimes good yelp is simple And um, you can build out your page But lots of pictures that you just took on your smartphone again You don't need a fancy photographer to do, you know, some great pictures of your staff and um, you know We didn't talk about this a lot but photography taking pictures is a great piece of marketing and using instagram And then boosting some of those again your your biggest tools are oftentimes you carry something in your pocket with you every day as a phone So Thanks guys Here, uh, we'll be back tomorrow five o'clock Easter. Stay safe. We'll see you tomorrow. Bye. Bye yelp