 Because social media marketing is huge now. Welcome to the Smarter Building Materials Marketing Podcast, helping you find better ways to grow leads, sales, and outperform your competition. All right, everybody. Welcome to Smarter Building Materials Marketing, where we believe your online presence should be your best salesperson. I am Zach Williams, and we've got a great show lined up for you today. If you've got Brent Ridley, who is an HVAC technician, as well as works for a plumbing company outside of Georgia. Really unique story about social media as well. We're excited to have him on the show. He's got a killer following. Brent, welcome to the show with us today. Awesome. Thank you for having me on, Zach. I'm excited for the podcast. Brent, for our listeners, you and I are talking right before we go on the show. Tell everybody, how many followers do you have on Instagram? Yeah. So Instagram, we've been having a lot of fun with it. It's been great. It's kind of blown up for us here lately. We got like 184,000 followers on Instagram under our tool pros brand, where we do tool reviews and a lot of skilled trade advocacy is what we do on there. Though people follow along. They get to see what I do every day as a business owner owning a plumbing and heating air conditioning company. Also, we get to show off a bunch of cool new tools and stuff like that. What is your favorite tool we've done a review of recently? Oh, gosh, you can put me on the spot there. There's been a lot of them. I can tell you what I'm looking forward to as a HVAC guy. Milwaukee's come out with a new cordless, what they call a vacuum pump. It's kind of cool. So I'm excited for that one. That's cool. I was at an event, I don't know, six months ago in Chicago and there's a bunch of executives at dinner and they're all different tool companies. It's interesting hearing them talk about the different brands, even though they all work for them. It's like, one's like, oh, we've got the best battery and oh, we've got the best motor and like things like that. And I'm always curious, like the things that they think are really unique. Do the trades professional? Do they feel the same way or are they looking at different things? I'm curious to know when you're doing a tool review, which is why people follow you, what are the things that you're looking at outside of, hey, does it perform the exact task? Like, what are the things that you care about? What does your audience care about? Is it comfortable to use? Is it, you know, like I say ergonomics, things like that. Does it live up to what it says? Because a lot of marketing cannot be truthful sometimes. So we want to make sure that if it says it does this many screws per minute, we want to make sure it does that many or the battery lasts this long. We want to make sure it lasts that long kind of deal if that's what they claim. Those are things we look at a lot with our tool reviews and that we like to pass along to our followers just to be authentic with it and to tell folks how it works well and what I do versus it may be different for what somebody else does, but I try to be authentic and tell folks, hey, this works or doesn't work for what I do. It might be different for you, but so and whatnot. When you do a tool review, like let's say you did one recently like, man, I love this tool. This is a great tool you should check out. How many people DM you and go, man, I love that tool review. I just went out and bought that. I get that a lot. So on DMs, I probably get 75 to 100 direct messages a day about different things. And a lot of them are, hey, I appreciate showing me that tool. I went out and got it or a lot of them are the opposite. Hey, I bought that tool and it really stinks for me. It does not work very good. And so, you know, that's really funny. And the reason I'm asking is because we try to educate manufacturers quite a bit on how are the tradespeople, you know, using social media, what's happening in reference to advocacy influencers, what actually moves the market. And so somebody who's got an account of 187,000 followers, you got a pretty good vantage point for, hey, if I post this thing, people are going to go buy it. And I'm curious to hear from you, like, what are some of the things that you think manufacturers miss out on or don't see in reference to social media and specifically working with, I know you might not like this word, but influencers on Instagram or whatever channel might be. Well, you just said it. They miss out on working with social media. I feel like a lot of companies are still asleep at the wheel for social media marketing. Social media marketing is huge now for a fraction. I'm talking about for a fraction of the price, even if you pay for it. Most social media is free, but if you want to pay an influencer or whatever else, for a fraction of the price, you can reach a much more targeted audience that shows off your tool or product or building material, whatever it may be to a niche audience. And that's who you want to target. It's much more targeted, much more centralized than in a magazine or billboard driving down the road. Those kind of things. Social media marketing can really put you there. And I feel like a lot of these companies are still asleep at the wheel. Not all of them, but a lot of them. Who do you think is doing well? Like what manufacturer do you feel like is marketing to the trade effectively? I'm a HVAC and plumbing guy. So I deal with a lot of that type stuff. There's a company called Vega and they make plumbing fittings. So nothing super exciting. Nothing real fancy. Nothing to get everybody excited about. But they do such a great job with their online presence, which is social media on Instagram and YouTube and things like that. Even TikTok that they have really, really done a great job of getting their name out there and converting people to using their product just from putting their social media stuff out there. Is there something in particular they're doing that you're like, wow, this is really smart? Like, are they being comical or they being funny? Are they being instructional on how to use their products? Like, what are they doing that makes you go, I mean, I can't wait to check out and see what they posted today. It's kind of all of the above. You know, they have specific guys that there's one particular fellow. He's a trainer, but he also posts funny stuff out there too while educating at the same time. They obviously got to be pretty creative with it because it's like I mentioned fittings aren't fun. They're not sexy. So they got to take that and they got to be creative with it and they really do fun stuff. They just did some stuff for May the 4th for the Star Wars and all kind of stuff like that. That's really neat. Yeah. I think that's one thing that people typically miss out on is like, how can we have fun and leverage social media as like a place of engagement and community? Because a lot of times we see manufacturers, they'll just push a new product or check out our product and this project where it is versus how can we make people laugh or how can we make them cry? Like how can we have them make them have an emotion here? And I think that that is one of the best ways that you can only see higher engagement, but also connect with people on a more relational level. What you're talking about. Like I've seen references before in our show, but Hubert Woods, I don't know if you know them, like they'll, they did something years ago where they had people jumping on their product and like their product wouldn't break and then they jump on another one and it broke and it was like kind of funny. They weren't trying to be funny, but it was like a little bit funny. You're like, oh, it's really interesting. Like let me share that with someone. You see a little bit of personality interjected too, which we're starting to see more and more, but I love that the reason why you like this one manufacturer is that element. I'm curious to know as well, if I can put you on the spot, what are some other influencers that you think are someone that manufacturers should pay attention to that? Like regardless of what vertical you're in or what category you're in, these are influencers that are doing it really well. There's a fella he builds. Colbarne is an exact word for it. He calls him something else. Kyle Stumpenhorst, his R and R buildings is his YouTube and his Instagram. Fantastic guy, really down to Earth fella and really goes real in depth with his social media stuff. Then there's another guy, Matt Bangs Wood. He's on Instagram and he's on YouTube and he's a fantastic dude. Really puts good information out there. He's been doing a series where he rides around and visits other contractors on the west coast and really cool stuff. What's been the most surprising thing to you, Brent? As you've grown your presence online, you've started to see either people reaching out or engagement or what's like the thing that you're like, man, I didn't know this was going to happen with us having such a large following. All kind of crazy stuff, man. It's been wild to ride because I just started posting cool tools that I liked a few years ago and it's just kind of blown up from there. We were featured in a Lowe's ad. They took like a six foot poster of me and they put me in the in store of Lowe's all across the nation for a week. That was really cool and interesting and something I never expected to happen. And then to also create these valuable friendships that people have the followers they reach out and we have these conversations with DMs and whatnot. And it's turned into great relationship for friendships that I've met through the internet and it's amazing through social media and that's the power of it and that's what's really cool because without that I would have never known these people. I would have no idea who they are. But now I consider some of these people really good friends. I love it. It's called social media for a reason. I love for you to share just for a second. You have grown this social media following the extensively and sounds like you even get business from it. It helps your personal brain which on a side note manufacturers should be educating pros on how to leverage social media to help them win business not just get tour reviews and things like that too which is I guess another side benefit. But I love to hear like if you're going to give a manufacturer recommendation on hey here's something that you should be thinking about with your social media strategy your online strategy. What would that be kind of twofold here. I would say a number one put some emotion and put some personality behind your product when you show it off and you put it out there. I know what corporations and corporate jargon and things like that there's strict stuff you can do and you can't do and I understand that but you obviously can put some personality behind it and make it personable and people were really bond to that and then also find some people within that niche that you have and let's work together with them work together with those influencers in that niche that you have and see how you can create relationships with them and how they can further show off your product and things like that. Can you give an example if I put you on the spot of somebody that's worked with you to showcase the product and like what did that process look like. Okay, so I'll give you a unique one and it's a really cool one. So probably two and a half years ago I had a great idea. I said you know what I've gotten 10 drills I've gotten 10 saws this stuff is nice but let's do something a little different with this. Let's take these partnerships that I have and let's reach out and go help some people that helps some people via heating in air conditioning and plumbing. So I came up with the idea of miracle mechanical. So the first person I reached out to we've since done several projects with miracle mechanical several companies but the first person I reached out to was rigid tools and I said hey I got this idea. I want to film this with a professional film crew. I want to go in and I want to help somebody who can't afford it do some major plumbing and HVAC repairs in their home and blind faith rigid said sure let's do it. So they helped us out monetarily and we were able to go in we were able to film the whole thing make a wonderful marketing piece but at the same time we were able to help an individual who had septic issues and things like that and repair all of those at his home and no charge to him and he was super thankful but in the meantime we did it specifically where we were able to show off the rigid lot of tools we were able to show off the sewer cameras and show off the different tools that they have like say make it a great marketing piece but then also give back to a customer at the same time. Brett this has been awesome man if a manufacturer or somebody wants to connect with you what's the best way for them to do that? Our Instagram is the easiest way you can send us on a direct message on Instagram at tool pros it's real simple just send us a message and we'll be glad to get back with you. Brett man thank you again so much for coming and showing for our listeners if you enjoyed this episode check us out at venvio.com slash podcast to subscribe and get more until next time I'm Zach Williams. Thanks.