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Paid Advertising
Fierce Competition, Long Buying Cycles, and Great Advertising
My colleague, Johnny “FM” Molson, recently wrote that “most people don’t know most businesses.”
For example, how many brands of hearing aids can you name?
You and I are happily oblivious to almost all the so-called “brands” in any category that we don’t routinely shop.
And that goes double for what I’d call Ugly Ducking Businesses.
Yet there are exceptions. Take insurance.
You’ve likely only shopped insurance a few times in your life, yet you can easily name a half-dozen insurance brands. Why?
Advertising.
Every major insurance firm runs a heavy-duty, well-crafted, TV branding campaign. To include:
- The GEICO Gecko (and Caveman)
- Allstate’s Mayhem
- Progressive’s Flo
- Jake From State Farm
- Liberty Mutual’s Limu Emu
- The “We Are Farmer’s” campaign with J.K. Simmons
So what can we learn from that?
To Compete with Great Advertising You Need Your Own Great Advertising
The major insurance houses brand with passion ‘cause they can’t afford not to.
If they sat on the sidelines while their competition dominated the Mental Availability and Top of Mind Awareness game, they’d go out of business.
So, if you don’t have any competition running great branding ads, you could wait until they do and then be forced to respond…
Or you could launch your campaign before the competition.
I recommend the latter, ‘cause branding into a messaging “blue ocean” is far easier than having to fight it out in a red ocean of persuasive advertising.
That said, if you are forced to enter that red ocean, it’s better to do so sooner rather than later — and with the highest impact ads you can muster.
Long Buying Cycles Greatly Benefit From Great Branding
Most people associate heavy-duty branding with what the industry calls “Fast Moving Consumer Goods” (FMCG)
Think soft drinks, chips, soaps, fast food, beer, detergents — stuff people buy every week or several times a week.
Coca-Cola certainly does spend a lot on advertising.
Yet branding is even MORE important for products and services with longer buying cycles, bought far less frequently.
Lose a burger sale to a competitor, and you’ll have another chance at selling to that customer later that week.
Lose a roof or AC sale to a competitor, and you won’t have another chance with that customer for fifteen years.
Lose a barn sale, and it’ll be fifty years.
So for long buying cycles, it pays to pre-convince customers before they ever need what you sell, as the cost for reaching them too late is so high.
Conversely, successfully boxing the competition out of consideration hurts them dearly — and profits you even more.
For these reasons, insurance companies know that they have to be on your shortlist, or they’ll lose you as a customer, perhaps for decades. That makes a strong branding campaign a must-have.
If you also have a business with a long buying cycle, it’ll pay to follow suit.
Interesting Characters Make For The Strongest Messaging
Pretty much all of the insurance branding campaigns star and spotlight strong, identifiable characters.
Think of the GEICO Gecko (or caveman), Flo, Mayhem, Jake From State Farm, and the Limu Emu.
Heck, even Farmers has the recognizable spokesperson of J.K. Simmons
There are multiple reasons for this, but the top two are:
- Interesting characters are dynamite entertainment and ensure better audience engagement.
- People bond with people faster and more easily than with faceless corporations.
Since 95% to 99% of your ads’ audience won’t be in the market for what you sell, your ads will need to offer entertainment to capture and keep their attention.
Fortunately, characters and character-driven storytelling is the best and most surefire way to provide that entertainment.
And this is especially the case for an episodic or serialized content, such as a TV campaign.
Look at any movie franchise or novel series and you’ll see: people may come for the plot, but they stay for the characters.
You go to a James Bond film to watch James Bond, after all; the plot is secondary. Works the same for branding ads with strong characters.
And not only do the characters engage the audience, they help foster trust in the company.
This works fine with fictional characters, as the insurance campaigns demonstrate, but it works even better for business owners as spokesman, such as Frank Perdue and Gert Boyle.
So if you’ve got a strong Origin Story, you really ought to be telling it — through your mass media advertising.
What’s Your Buying Cycle? And What’s Your Plan for Winning It?
Whether you’re selling burgers or bookkeeping, you’ll want a plan for winning over prospective customers whenever they DO need what you sell.
And it boils down to this:
- If they’re not aware of you…
- If they don’t think of you when they need what you sell…
- If they don’t think well of you…
- If you’re not easy & pleasant to do business with, and…
- If you don’t make & close the sale when the customer calls or shows up, then…
… you’ll lose the sale.
If you wish to win the sale, you’ll need to make sure each step is in good working order.
And nothing on Earth is so effective at improving the first three steps as a character and story-driven, long-term branding campaign.
If you’d like to launch or reboot your business’s story-driven branding campaign, I’d be happy to help.
Paid Advertising
Why you should shield your ads from pesky bots
Greetings, business innovators! Gone are the days of being elbow-deep in tools and tangled wires; you’re making strategic decisions, and directing your business towards opportunities and growth.
But as the owner of a booming business, there’s a new kind of pest you need to watch out for: Bots!
WHAT ON EARTH ARE BOTS?
Short for “robots,” bots aren’t the sci-fi, humanoid machines that might first spring to mind. Instead, think of them as special-purpose computer programs designed to perform specific tasks on the internet.
While some serve a useful purpose, like helping to index the web or respond to simple questions, others have less honorable intentions. Either way, bots are probably impacting your ad spend in ways you aren’t aware of.
These invisible critters, seemingly benign, can be as detrimental as a small leak that slowly but steadily drains your ad reservoir. Dive in with me and let’s explore why Bot Blocking should be your new best friend.
1. YOUR CASH IS PRECIOUS. DON’T FEED THE BOTS!
Nearly 40% of all internet traffic is some kind of bot, making them one of the costliest critters at this digital banquet. Every time one clicks your ad, intentionally or not, they take a bite out of your budget. Your campaigns become less effective for humans, because they’re keeping bots well-fed.
2. THE MULTIPLIER EFFECT: BLOCK ONE, GAIN A BUNCH
Every bot you block has a domino effect. Let’s say your campaign generates 100 clicks, but 20 of them were bots. With bot blocking in place, those 20 clicks can instead be living, breathing, humans clicking on your ad. Every dollar you spend goes 25% further.
In addition to getting more bang for your buck, your campaign has 25% more legitimate clicks to learn from. Services like Google Ads use machine-learning to figure out who is likely to purchase your product, and show those shoppers your ad. When droids no longer click on your ads, Google stops thinking you’re trying to sell to them.
With bot-blocking, your campaigns become leaner and smarter, targeting genuine souls and turning their clicks into gold.
3. NOT ALL BOTS WEAR BLACK HATS (BUT THEY’RE STILL A NUISANCE)
Think of bots as ants at a picnic. They might be on a benign quest, but you wouldn’t want them munching on your sandwiches.
Some of the bots that are generally useful include search engine spiders that index your site and images so that they can show up in search, and site analysis tools like SEM Rush, Ahrefs, and MOZ Open Site Explorer.
Like the picnic ants, “useful” bots can unintentionally snack on your ads. Seemingly innocent, but still costly.
4. BEWARE OF AUDIENCE EXPANSION AND DISPLAY AUDIENCES!
Advertising platforms lure you into expanding your audience and putting ads onto other “ad networks.” These networks are often made of low-quality blog websites that only exist to host ads.
Beware! Expanding your audience is like venturing into a dodgy neighborhood. Bots especially love these “expanded” territories. Be cautious where you tread.
5. BIG TECH’S HALF-HEARTED EFFORT
Tech giants like Google, Microsoft, FaceBook, and LinkedIn benefit from bots clicking on your ads. To a tech giant, a click is a click, and you get billed regardless!
While they make some effort to block bots, let’s be candid—when there’s money involved, motivations can be murky.
6. LET’S PLAY SPOT THE BOT
Are you experiencing a surge in web traffic without a corresponding boost in sales? There might be a bot party on your site! While it may look like you’ve got thousands of people flocking to your website, these visitors contribute no actual value.
You are looking for real humans to buy your products and services. Inflated vanity metrics like website visits don’t tell the entire tale.
7. BUT HOW DO I BLOCK THE BOTS?
Ah, the billion dollar question! The simple trick is to employ specialized bot-blocking software. There are a number of options in this arena. While the technicalities are daunting, any of the top options are going to do a pretty good job of keeping the bots off your ads.
Bot-protection software use myriad techniques, such as IP address blocklists, or excluding specific audiences, ensuring that any bot that clicks your ad once can’t click again.
8. DECREASE BOT DAMAGE
If you want to minimize the impact of the bots that do make it onto your site, there are couple of measures that you can take that will keep those bots from making a mess of your life.
- Use Google reCAPTCHA on your forms. There are a number of techniques that help keep bots from filling out the forms on your website. To block bots that make it past your firewall, we have found reCAPTCHA to be the most effective tactic.
- Make sure you don’t count clicks as conversions. The main types of clicks that people often count as conversions are clicks on email addresses, clicks on phone numbers, and clicks on submit buttons of forms. These actions are worth tracking, because there’s a good chance that they indicate a real attempt to contact you. BUT, it’s always better to track the successful completion of a form submission or phone calls that last a minute or more when you are measuring valid conversions.
9. WHAT ABOUT THE HUMAN PESTS?
Beyond bots, there are humans with mischief afoot—like competitors clicking on your ads just for kicks – also known as click fraud.
Fear not! Bot-blocking software often doubles as a sentinel against malicious human activity, adding such tricksters to blocklists based on their frequent clicking or other shady maneuvers.
WE BELIEVE IN EFFICIENT ADVERTISING
Wizard of Ads Online uses advanced bot-blocking defenses for our client ad accounts, ensuring every penny you spend targets genuine, interested humans.
So, titans of industry, let’s arm those ads. They deserve genuine engagement, not bot interference.
To learn more about how we can help you, book a call with Ryan Chute of Wizard of Ads™ today.
Process
The Overlooked Strategic Value of Processes, Procedures, & Standards
Oh PPS, how most people hate you for no good reason! Processes, Procedures, and Standards.
These are the money-makers of the big 6, er big 4, er, big 2 Business Consulting Firms. The Showtime show House of Lies takes the idea that business consultants are just snake oil salesmen full of hot air to the next level. I love that show because they do manage to use some of the right buzzwords I’ve heard (and used) in the last 25 years. But like any other show, it’s more “dramedy” than reality when it comes to fixing companies.
In my experience, most senior executives in large companies ($100+ million) think their departments use PPS. When interviewing department heads in the same companies, that percentage drops significantly to about 25%. When interviewing staff in the same departments, virtually no one would call whatever written documentation they had as being usable processes, procedures, or standards! Everyone explained that these documents were old, obsolete, or otherwise not applicable and that the company had changed enough things to make them useless.
Naturally, there are exceptions. Companies that have become certified in standards, such as ISO 9001 or even ISO 27001 must have PPS to become certified, and so they absolutely have PPS – for the areas covered by requirements. For that matter, they have PPS on how to keep their PPS up to date. Of course, companies that practice Kaizen, have Six Sigma programs or have contracts that require PPS, try to have it to whatever degree they need to.
But let’s look at the typical small to mid-sized business. Selling $25 million top line and maybe getting $2 million in bottom line profit. How many of them have up-to-date, meaning actually usable, PPS? Not many at all and if you’re like the average company in the US, you probably don’t either.
So what’s so great about Standards or Processes anyway? Well, to put it into money terms, they allow you to have a more standardized product or service delivery for a lower cost. So you can do stuff cheaper and of consistent quality. With business, unlike art, variety is the enemy of success. No matter how much people like your product, if you can’t repeat what you did, you will never taste the reward of that success.
Repeatability allows you to make and test incremental changes. Quantifying the results of those incremental improvements is impossible without consistency.
Standards define what things are, what they need to be produced, and what to measure the final product against. Procedures describe how things are made or assembled, or designed in a repeatable way. These are step-by-step guides like Ikea furniture might include. Processes are the big-picture view of the business operations. They discuss standards and procedures and show processes necessary to drive the business.
If so many businesses operate without them, then why would small businesses need them? Well, competition favors those who can offer the best thing at the most reasonable price. Notice I didn’t say cheapest since you have to compare apples to apples, not oranges!
There are many advantages to standardization and continual improvement. I had the pleasure of having the W. Edwards Deming Institute as a client many years ago. Deming is the American responsible for most of the Japanese auto industry overtaking US automakers in such a short time. Today Toyota is the world’s largest automobile company. I happily defer to the Institute for training on the benefits of the Deming method or to a plethora of Six Sigma training programs for quality and process improvement.
Most of the Fortune 500 companies utilize some form of PPS, and for one I am happy to name a company where I consulted. P&G – Procter, and Gamble – is leaps and bounds ahead of any other company I have worked with in their adherence to PPS and continuous improvement.
While I came into P&G with multiple certifications in various technology and business practices, I was very happily surprised at the level of process control and improvement at every level of the company with which I interacted. As you can imagine it is much harder to ensure processes are followed and monitored in a large company than a small one – there are just so many more moving pieces – but P&G managed to lead the way for other large businesses. It is interesting to note that in 2017 P&G cut $140 million in advertising online. There may be many factors that played into that decision, but a significant factor was the lack of tangible return on investment.
Unlike companies that act like lemmings, following one another blindly, P&G evaluates all their contracts and expenses to be sure they are performing at the level of expectations. This process is very uncommon in small businesses and almost unheard of in large corporate America. P&G determined that traditional media like television, print, and radio had a better quantifiable return on their branding spend. After all, it’s impossible to have an ad-blocker block out commercials from the radio station you are listening to in the car – and that includes SiriusXM!
To learn more about how we can help you, book a call with Ryan Chute of Wizard of Ads™ today.
Marketing Strategy
When you exist to serve, all you need to do next is invite people.
The big brother lived with his little brother, his mom, and his grandma.
They lived in an apartment, with an entrance that looked like the one on Sesame Street. Today I understand that meant this fractured family lived in an inner city, somewhere. When I first fell in love with this book, I just thought it was cool.
I have no idea what that children’s book was called, or who the author was, but I will gladly pay a bunch of money to the used bookstore I find one day that has a dusty copy sitting on a shelf. I always imagine it will be low down, forgotten, near the back.
There are a lot of booksellers out there I still have to visit. It was a brilliant story. If I remember it, so do other people who were once upon a time in grade 2.
Connecting people who have with people who want.
People who need help with those that know how. This is the dance of every single small business.
Service or product, any small business exists to serve. If they do it right, they thrive. Their business thrives, their community grows, people have jobs and little Johnny gets a new pair of shoes.
Some don’t thrive, they survive. Squeaking by year after year. The owner owns a job, and not much more.
I believe the tragedy is when it’s a great idea of a business, the owner is beyond passionate… But Not enough people know. Even worse, they know but can’t imagine themselves needing it and walking in that door to Get It. So even, one day, when they finally actually need that perfect local business holding on by fingernails of faith, they don’t think of it. It doesn’t pop into their heads. They ask their friends, coworkers, and spouses, “Who should I call for…..Where should I go to buy….” And no one knows about the shop around the corner.
All of us are potential customers, looking for something.
When we wander into a shop, call a company for help, or scroll past cat videos that make us laugh out loud, there is something we are looking for. A need or a want…. there is always something.
“Can I help you?” asks the shopkeep.
“No thank you, just looking.”
That happens every time someone drives by your location, even if that location is on their screen and not on the road in front of them. We drive by in a lot of different ways.
The pictures in that book were beautiful, glossy prints of canvas paintings with bold colorful strokes – there was a texture to the faces and the furniture – the granma’s smile – that carried the simple plot beyond the words. I could feel that big brother’s heart all the way through the story, completely connected to mine.
The pictures told me he was black and that made no difference – he was completely my twin brother.
This little guy (my age, but still, I thought of him as little) had realized he did not have his own room. Granma explained that he and his little brother shared the couch and the one bedroom belonged to her and mom. But – all was not lost, he could have his own corner.
Well, that was grand. He picked a corner and fixed it up beautifully with Granma’s help. A little plant, a crate, some drawings, and even a small turtle. His little brother kept annoyingly invading his sacred space… even though the wise Granma had bestowed corners on both boys.
The Grand Corner of the older brother simply could not be made perfect and wasn’t fun… And it should have been! Finally, the big brother realized – with Granma’s wisdom of course – that there could be no joy without the satisfaction of helping little brother create his own perfect corner.
I just loved that big brother. And the little brother. And that sage Granma. It was the building and the sharing and the creating that was the ultimate joy of having.
That is why I love advertising so much.
By connecting what your business is to a message and a campaign that people remember, you take a project and a job and turn it into something beautiful. Something brilliant. Something bigger than just a corner in your side of the room.
Because somewhere out there, someone has this… something, they keep looking for. Or a needed service that would make their life better.
They have money to buy it. But they don’t know who to call so it’s going to be a lot tougher to connect and do the dance.
Advertising is the invitation. There is no Best Before date and no expiry on the invite.
Let’s tell them to come when they are ready and need what you have for sale. We start by telling them the story of what you have, and why.
And it might not be what you think you are selling. The brothers got their very own corners, but Granma gave them much more than that.
I promise the process will make your corner feel exactly right and help you create the perfect corner for your customers. You will be just what they were looking for.
I know people who know how to help you do that.
The picture above, “Jonathon and His Mommy”, isn’t the book, but it’s the closest I’ve found… so far.
If you're struggling to craft killer direct response ads for your business, Ryan Chute from Wizard of Ads® can help. Book a call.
Lead Generation
The Push-Pull Method of High-Performance Lead Generation
Have you ever come across one of those doors that people perpetually get wrong?
Where people push when they should pull and vice versa?
Doors that resort to signage to help clue people in? Like this:
Those are called Norman Doors, after the industrial design legend Donald Norman.
His contention is that people intuitively and subconsciously respond to the design language of the doors themselves.
So when the design language mismatches the function, people automatically attempt the wrong action.
In the header image, the broad, flat black platforms look like affordances for pushing.
So that’s what people do — only to get jammed up against the non-moving door.
Similarly, the doors in the side image have pulling handles attached, when the function requires users to push.
In both cases, the building managers band-aided the problem with signage.
But I’ll guarantee you people continue to routinely screw it up. Even people who pass through the doors on a daily basis.
A far better fix would be to install proper pull handles on the doors in the header image and to install those black pushing pads from the header image on the doors in the side image.
Got it? Great.
So…. what’s this gotta do with high-performing lead generation?
Everything.
What Is Your Branding Intuitively and Subconsciously Communicating to Prospects?
Your brand voice and attitude as well as your brand codes all communicate on an intuitive and subconscious level to prospective customers.
Let’s call this your “brand design language.”
So when that brand design language mismatches your business model, you run into trouble.
When you get leads through discount offers, but your business is set-up to provide a premium product or service, you’ve got a mismatch.
And that mismatch, wherein you attract transactional customers to a relational business, inevitably drives low conversions, bad reviews, and low margin.
If your business was set up as a low-priced provider, there’d be no problem. Your brand design language would match the customer experience, your operations, and your business model / economic engine.
If you attract bargain-seekers and price shoppers, but you’re set-up to profitably do business with that type of customer, you’re all set.
Walmart does a roaring trade doing exactly that.
Conversely, if your ads used a brand design language that attracted relational customers who place a premium on convenience, quality, expert help, and professionalism — and if your business was set-up to provide that level of customer experience, then you’d be all set.
Apple became one of the most profitable and valuable companies in the world doing that.
Either way works, so long as you are matched up on brand design language, customer experience, and business model.
It’s exactly like push doors work and pull doors work whenever the design language of the door matches the function.
For lead generation, the key is to craft ads with the right brand design language to attract the right kind of prospects into your business.
This will skyrocket your conversion rate and help you to make the most of your lead-gen efforts.
If you're struggling to craft killer direct response ads for your business, Ryan Chute from Wizard of Ads® can help. Book a call.
Marketing Strategy
Not all who wander are lost. Unless your brand’s marketing wanders.
“Don’t forget about me.”
I haven’t. But enough people did. John was friendly, and passionate, and had a great location for his service-based business which filled a need.
And John invited people. In a bunch of ways. There is, you might have heard, only so much money for advertising. But John didn’t want to miss anyone. At least, not all of the time. And so he jumped from a bit of this to a bit of that. Some signage, some flyers, the occasional radio spot. Community sponsorship too, of course. He understood that he could not talk to everyone all the time. But he was convinced he could bounce around enough to remind all people everywhere about his business.
He loved the excitement of something bright, shiny, and new that just might work better than the last shiny new possibility.
Change and movement feel like we are going forward. It is the wind in our hair.
The daydreams of the ultimate “moving” sale or better yet “grand opening” event are endless! But a business owner ready to sink their teeth into success does not keep moving locations, even for that rush of change and “what if….” Not even successful food trucks move all the time. They fight over and guard a stable location.
Business owners looking for a crowbar lever to the next floor know changing an address does not serve sustainable growth. You sign the lease – or the mortgage papers, set up shop, and flip that sign on the door to Open. And you stay.
I left home at 18 to get a job and figure it out. University was not an option but I had a cheque for $500, $140 bucks, and change and it was a Saturday in late August. A perfect day to pack everything I owned into my Red Chevy Nova 3 on the tree 4 door and head to the not really big but kinda big city 2 hours away. My sister rode shotgun.
We found my first apartment, a one-bedroom basement suite, and the caretaker let me move in that day even though I wouldn’t have the damage deposit until the banks opened on Monday. I paid him cash for the last week and a half of the month and only just realized that he no doubt pocketed the cash and let me move in, telling the apartment owner that he had a renter for the beginning of September.
Hmmmmm.
Of course, on Monday, no bank would cash my cheque until I called the small town bank where it was drawn from. First, I had gone with the very hyper-friendly caretaker who offered to vouch for me at his bank, but it turns out he was really overdrawn on his account.
I did have a full tank of gas because I had taken the last bit of cash I had and filled up – I explained to my sister that we needed to make sure not to run out of gas and we didn’t. But we were a bit hungry until the cheque cleared on Monday. Rent was $217 a month so I was job hunting right away and put my writing career in neutral.
I lived in a bunch of places over a few short years, moving for a bunch of reasons, buying a lot of beer and pizza for friends with trucks, and patching a lot of nail holes with bits of toothpaste (always use white- not peppermint).
I loved the basement suite I rented from an old woman with a hump on her back which I heated by keeping the oven door open and sitting on a chair close by with a book in my lap reading and imagining that one day I would have a fireplace. And a pool. And a puppy. And be a writer.
I didn’t write or read or study or live nearly as much as I could have. I was moving around too much.
Marketing decisions are the same.
Stop moving around, here, there, everywhere. There is only so much money, remember? And even if you can keep cutting checks for every earnest marketing guru with an idea for you, just stop.
As I told John, pick someone to work with. Even if it isn’t me. Roy Williams is right – trying to talk to everyone, everywhere means you will be forgotten by almost everyone when they finally need who you and your business are.
Work on your business. Make a decision to handle your marketing in a specific way, and move on. Trust someone to do your marketing. Trust yourself to grow your business. Pick someone who has a vested interest in your success. Believe in someone who believes enough in your business to be paid according to how you grow. Who? If you are on this site, reading this blog, you already know.
Don’t jump all over. A Wizard of Ads partner will create a plan and a team based on what you have created and what you envision.
A business that no one will forget.
Don’t keep losing your damage deposit.
If you’re interested in learning more about the best means for marketing your specific business, you can book a discovery call here.
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Frequently asked questions
Questions? We’ve got answers.
Who does the Wizard of Ads® for Contractors work with?
Wizard of Ads® for Contractors work with healthy and growing Residential Home Service Contractors hungry to grow by multiples, like you.
You are ready, willing, and able to grow your business. You are open to change and are seeking a distinctive angle of approach to gain the time and attention of a too-busy public.
You know that lasting relationships take time, patience, and good energy to nurture and cultivate. We carefully enter into every arrangement with the intention of working with you for as long as you own your business. You prefer lasting partnerships.
You are already a solid operator. You have successfully grown your business and appreciate the impact the right brand story will have to get to the next level in your operation. You know a strong relational message takes time to gain momentum, but it’s worth the one-time short-term discomfort for the long-term gains.
Marketing cannot fix a failing business.
We accelerate what’s already happening in a business. If your business is on the rocks, marketing will only speed up the inevitable.
You’re focused on lasting change that leads to exponential, profitable growth, not just sales at any cost. Intuitively, you know that communication that enhances every element of your customer's experience and your employee's culture is the key to your success.
How does the Wizard of Ads® for Contractors charge?
Traditional marketing agencies are designed to capture the greatest amount of revenue from a client, regardless of results. Every last item is billed and expensed to the client. Typical agency fees can represent a whopping 55% of the entire advertising budget. That means a $5 million dollar advertising budget, you would spend $2.75 million on agency fees.
Think of Wizard of Ads® for Contractors as the Anti-Agency.
Our income is not tied to your advertising budget. Our income is exclusively tied to your growth. Our goal is to maximize your advertising impact with the lowest reasonable spend. This allows you to spend only what is necessary or to put extra horsepower into aggressively growing in your market.
The genius of this model is that it perfectly aligns our motivations as true partners for exponential profitable growth without the pain of being unaffordable. Ultimately, we are confident in taking the risk of being underpaid in the first few years because we know the results always speak for themselves.
Next, we do not accept commissions, referral fees, kickbacks, or other compensation from any service providers we recommend or engage for production work. Most agencies do. This includes the 15% agency commission for media buying. This approach is considerably different from the compensation plan employed by most advertising agencies, as it eliminates any potential conflicts of interest and allows us to focus our entire attention on helping you grow your business profitably as a true partner. For example, a $500,000 annual media buy would involve a $75,000 commission that we would have removed directly from your media providers' invoices.
This is the perfect pricing model for Residential Home Services.
By tying ourselves to gross revenue, we only have one motivation. Your motivation. We have no motivation to convince you to spend more money on marketing than what is necessary, and since we are a variable expense to sales, we NEVER become too expensive to have us on your team.
In almost every case, we end up lowering the amount of money you spend. We will stay within your planned marketing budget, including your media spend, production, and our Annual Fee. Add on the fact that you get any and all commissions back for media buys and various services provided by outside providers, and you will actually save money having us on your team.
Don’t forget, we have the largest buying power in North America for media buying, meaning for every dollar you spend buying media, we only spend 27 cents on average. This stretches your reach, impact, and frequency in a way no other agency (or yourself) can achieve on your own, saving you hundreds of thousands of dollars, eventually millions, every single year.
Clients who heed our advice and embrace our Marketing Strategy quickly add $1 million in incremental revenue to their business, making your investment a smart bet and a bit of a no-brainer.
There is no longer any guesswork, hope, or fear that our marketing strategies are going to work. If our client’s are able to abandon any limiting beliefs about marketing, deliver operational excellence, and play the long game, our marketing strategy will accelerate their profitable growth.
Wizard of Ads® for Contractors pricing model is based solely on the topline revenue of your company. It consists of an Upfront Fee and an Annual Fee. These fees are inclusive of scheduled travel, services, and all other expenditures as outlined in the Consulting Agreement.
The Upfront Fee covers the intensive Uncovery Process, the first year’s Media Buy, the Creative Process, and the Market Research while the Annual Fee goes toward implementation, ongoing creative and consulting, and next year's media buy. You get a team of 3.5 people, with direct access to a top tier Creative Lead and Media Buyer, and on-demand access to me as your Master Strategist. You will also have a full-time Account Manager keeping everything on track.
While the upfront does have an initial pinch, it is easy to amortize the investment over the many years we will be working together to grow your business. Wizard of Ads® retain clients for 10 years, on average. The sale of the business is the number one reason for termination. We actively terminate the bottom 1% of clients who are unwilling or unable to follow our strategies.
Wizard of Ads® for Contractors believes that all rewards should be directly correlated to the success of our clients. This means that the Wizard of Ads® for Contractors only receives a raise when the company achieves growth. For example, if your gross sales for the year have increased by 25%, the Annual Fee you pay us in the following year will also be increased by 25%. Likewise, if your gross sales decrease, our Annual Fee will decrease by the same percentage during the following year.
This is an exceptionally easy and fair way to track and reward success. This model was developed by Wizard of Ads® over 35 years ago and has served us well because it serves our clients well.
As a rule of thumb, we take the risk of working for considerably less than our actual value in the first few years as we help accelerate growth. This means you need to be willing to pay us exceptionally well when you start doing even better.
When should I engage The Wizard of Ads® for Contractors?
There are four key revenue stages for engagement with the Wizard of Ads® for Contractors.
- Under $3.6 million in revenue
- Between $3.6 and $10 million in revenue
- Between $10 and $20 million in revenue
- Over $20 million in revenue
Under $3.6 million in revenue is an investment in your brand. This will serve you well in establishing your brand story early on and help you with your name, logo, and truck wrap design. It's easier to create pictures from a story than it is to make a story based on pre-drawn pictures. You'll be glad you did. Everyone on a fast path to growth is.
Most clients start with Wizard of Ads® for Contractors between $3.6 and $10 million in revenue. They have often seen a natural ceiling with their leads for demand service and are looking for ways to push past the ceiling. This can only be done with a properly executed brand strategy, specifically in mass media with a sticky story.
Between $10 and $20 million in revenue, Wizard of Ads® for Contractors has some natural economies of scale. This is a sweet spot where Wizard of Ads® for Contractors can offer some added value in getting the ball rolling.
Over $20 million in revenue is actually the lowest cost point of entry as a percentage of revenue, but not the cheapest time to start with the Wizard of Ads® for Contractors. Leveraging all economies of scale aside, we have been left out of the upside along the way, so engaging when over $20 million in revenue means we have to mend a lot of fences damaged along the way. This is also where clients see significant savings in their media buys and production costs.
There are also three market sizes to consider.
- Primary Markets are the top 50 cities in America.
- Secondary Markets are the smaller cities in America.
- Tertiary Markets are the more rural trade areas in America.
When considering an engagement with The Wizard of Ads® for Contractors, consider what size market you are in. For example, a $3.6 million company in a Primary Market will struggle to get the necessary reach needed to make a splash. You either have to be more patient than a larger company or spend more money to accelerate your reach.
Alternatively, a $5 million company in a Secondary Market will look like a pretty darn big fish in a medium-sized pond.
A $20 Million company in a Primary Market will feel like a $50 million company using our strategies to potential customers.
The key to remember is that the earlier you start with the Wizard of Ads® for Contractors, the lower the investment to get started. As they say, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is today.
Are production costs included in your fees?
The Wizard of Ads® for Contractors Creative Lead will create the ad copy, cast the voice actors, source the production house, direct the performance, pick the music bed, manage all the edits, and provide you with the completed ad for final approval before sending to air on your behalf. This is included in our fees.
You pay for the production house, actors, royalty-free music, and jingles directly to avoid any potential for markups, commissions, or management fees.
We have many friends in the industry that give our clients good deals due to the large volume of work we provide them. We will introduce you to them.
How long before a brand-forward strategy starts working?
In approximately three months of activation, we’ll just be getting live on air. In six months (3 months on air), you’ll be getting anecdotal feedback from people that you are being heard, but there will be no direct line to revenue.
After 6 months on the air, you’ll think you made the biggest mistake of your life signing up for this branding nonsense. After 9 months on the air (12 months in) you’ll see the light at the end of the tunnel.
At 12 full months on the air, you’ll know why you did this branding thing. Two years from now, we'll be clinking champagne flutes as you wonder why you didn’t do this sooner.
How long before we’re live?
The general guideline is 70-120 days, depending on the level of production needed and if there is a name change to your business.
This includes an onsite visit, a deep dive into research, and getting things created, negotiated, approved, produced, and live on the air.
- Uncovery - 15-30 days based on travel. 1-2 days onsite.
- Research - 30-60 days based on the scope of work.
- Creative and Media Buy Process - 45 to 60 days
- Offline Production - 15 days for radio. 30 - 60 days for television.
- Online Production (if switching) - 60 days
This means planning for roughly 90 to 120 days in the proper development and production of a completely unique Marketing Strategy before anything hits the airwaves.
Are you exclusive?
Creatively, yes. During the term of this Agreement, all Creative Partners assigned to your Account shall not engage, directly or indirectly, as an employee, officer, manager, partner, consultant, agent, owner, or in any other capacity, in any competition of the client, including any company engaged in marketing consulting.
For clarity, the Creative Partner is defined as the individual Wizard of Ads® Partners who is responsible for creating your creative strategy and ongoing creative copy. Competition is defined as companies that engage in the same industry and business units (e.g., HVAC, Plumbing, etc.) as you. The market area is defined as the area where the marketing message naturally reaches through DMA or 60 miles from the city center of the client's service area(s).
Naturally, we exclude any potential future competition in markets where you are not currently active at the date of signing.
We do not limit Media Buyers in any market. Media Buyers get better deals for larger volumes, making it beneficial for the client to have the Media Buyer available to do as many buys as possible to secure the best deals on the client’s behalf.
Do you do digital marketing?
In rare circumstances, Wizard of Ads® for Contractors will provide specific digital marketing solutions. Wizard of Ads® has very specific Partners that provide digital services that serve Residential Home Services effectively. Under no circumstances will digital marketing services be offered without Wizard of Ads® for Contractors' core solution.
It is most likely that Wizard of Ads® for Contractors will work with your existing digital partners and suppliers. If you do not have a reliable digital provider, we would be happy to introduce you to a number of great providers that play nice with Wizards.
Do you do jingles?
Wizard of Ads® for Contractors can assist you in getting a jingle for your business. Like any other tactical element of a marketing strategy, we do not produce a jingle for the sake of a jingle.
If you do not have a story or a strategic reason to have a jingle...or an ad campaign to tie it to, do not waste your hard-earned money on a jingle. You are wasting your time and money.
When you do build a single unified marketing strategy that incorporates a jingle for a specific (often scientific) reason, we have a Jingle Wizard who has studied the art and science of jingle design.
He will score you an original, royalty-free jingle, including professional singers, musicians, and producers. He will not knock off a generic jingle from a publicly available music bed that sounds like everyone else's jingle.
Your jingle will serve a very specific reason and produce a very specific result. Have you guessed how much we love jingles yet?
Who owns the copyrights?
Wizard of Ads® for Contractors owns your copyright for two very specific reasons. We also provide a fair use clause in all contracts to ensure you are in no way limited to the access of your creative works, whether you are working with us or not.
The first reason we own your copyright is to ensure that we do not have to go up against our own creative works in other markets we serve. This means you are not allowed to lend, give, borrow, tweak, rent, lease, or sell your creative works to any other company at any time.
The second reason we own your copyright is that we can establish a one-time value for your creative works in the event that someone steals the content. Upon selling you the copyrights, you can go after the perpetrator for theft and make a considerable bounty in a slam dunk case.
Here is how Wizard of Ads® word the fair use of your copyright for as long as your business is in operation:
All writing and/or marketing materials we create for you are not works-for-hire. Wizard of Ads® for Contractors hereby irrevocably grants you, and your successors in interest, the non-exclusive, royalty-free, non-transferable, and worldwide right to use the Works in connection with the marketing of your business pursuant to the Marketing Strategy for so long as your business is operational.
How do I measure brand results?
There are a number of interesting ways to measure results. Some people like to get unique identifying telephone numbers, or create branded URLs that redirect to landing pages or the website. However, much of this is a waste of time and energy as it never tells the true story of the brand journey and how it affected the decision-making process.
Other indicators of brand effectiveness include tracking new customers, reactivated customers, or running a brand equity survey to get a sense of your share of mind. Digitally you will see direct search increase, which cannot be affected by anything digital, as well as branded keyword inquiries increase. You’ll, of course, need to get your digital people to add these to your campaigns if you hope to see an increase in conversions.
Wizard of Ads® for Contractors tracks the simplest of indicators. Top line revenue. When your branding takes effect, and the company responds in kind from the phone call or form fill-on, top-line revenue will increase. Efficacy is plotted on a T12, and total lead volume from all sources is tracked.
12 things you should know before signing up.
- Quality relationships take time. Branding is a long-term strategy. That’s why most contractors do it wrong, or not at all. There is always a lag between the start of the new campaign and the time it takes your customers to connect the dots. You MUST BE READY, WILLING, AND ABLE to endure this lag period. In our experience, the lag is typically 6 to 9 months, depending on how competitive the marketplace is, your company’s reputation, your budget in relation to reach, and the eight uncontrollable environmental factors. During this time, we will be helping you implement a transition plan to ease the pain. The good news is that this lag only happens once.
- Decisions by Committee. We completely reject the notion of decisions by committee. We work with a single, courageous decision-maker. We welcome decision influencers, but we only look to the Owner for the final decision. All decision-makers and influencers must be involved in the Uncovery and Marketing Strategy Presentation if they want to offer input in the future. It is critical that we have a 100% fully approved plan that can be defended and championed by all leaders in the organization.
- Proven Strategy. That means we are not the low-cost provider. With nearly 200 home service clients and a book of strategic devices, tools, and tactics, this isn’t a guessing game for us. We know what to do to make your externally triggered grudge purchase appealing to your potential buyers. If you can deliver the goods, we can continue building relationships. If you are uncomfortable with the idea that you are paying us less now so that you can pay us considerably more once revenues allow, please do not commit. We intend to be your true partners, in sickness and in health...so long as you own your business.
- Automatic Payments. Everything is on automatic payments. If you struggle with managing cash flow, figure that out in your business first. We accept all major credit cards and ACH payments.
- We Cause Problems. If you don’t have a capacity issue now, I promise you will in about 9 months. Let’s deal with recruitment out of the gate as part of your comprehensive marketing strategy.
- We Own the Copyrights. All writing and/or marketing materials we create for you are not works-for-hire. We irrevocably grant you, and your successors in interest, the non-exclusive, royalty-free, non-transferable, and worldwide right to use the Works in connection with the marketing of your business pursuant to the Marketing Strategy for so long as your business is operational.
- Brand Building. We will be steering you to limit the use of discounts, rebates, coupons, and sales to attract clients. We know this feels counterintuitive to many, and we will clarify our reasoning. Rest assured, we have considerable experience in creating similar offers that are not damaging to your profitability, your brand’s integrity, and your preferable long-term client relations.
- Creative Authority. We must have creative authority over the words. You can accept copy as written or reject it outright, but you cannot modify the words yourself. If you do not like something as written, we are happy to discuss it and make the necessary change to maintain the integrity and intention of the words chosen. Alternatively, we will scrap the concept and create new copy that you are happy to get behind 100%.
- Proprietary Algorithm. The media buy must be structured in a very specific way, including running a full 52-week schedule. It is based on brain chemistry, not P&Ls. Once we have committed to the buy, it’s important to avoid adjustments unless they are calculated additions.
- Knucklehead Factor. You should expect knuckleheads. For example, when you start running ads that are certain to get attention, you need the courage to continue running those ads, even when you receive complaints. We celebrate complaints. It means we’ve made people feel.
- Digital Weasels. In about three months from the time your advertising campaign hits the airways, your digital marketers will show you a marked increase in direct and organic traffic. Some Digital Marketers will mistakenly claim this success as their own. Done properly, you can continue to spend less and less on digital lead generation by increasing your branded keyword online presence.
- Annual Marketing Meetings. Travel permitting, we prefer to hold Annual Marketing Meetings (AMMs) outside your city. Years of experience have taught us that we get better results when decision-makers are outside their sphere of influence, away from the day-to-day distractions of the office.
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