Episode 548 Home Service Businesses With Reed Hansen
Show Summary
his episode of The SDM Show, hosted by Rob Cairns, features a conversation with Reed Hansen, focusing on home service-based businesses. They discuss the unique marketing needs of these businesses, highlighting the importance of automation for managing leads, booking appointments, and following up with customers. The conversation also covers the strategic use of online presence (websites, Google My Business, and Facebook business pages), the value of reviews and testimonials (especially video reviews), and the potential of AI-powered tools like chatbots and SEO engines to enhance marketing efforts. The discussion emphasizes that while businesses excel at their technical skills, leveraging marketing expertise and technology is crucial for sustained success.
Show Notes
Rob Cairns: Hey everybody, Ron Cairns here. Today I’ve got Reed Hansen with me and we’re going to talk all about service based businesses. Hey Reed, how you doing man?
Reed Hansen: Doing great. Thanks for having me on the podcast. I’m excited to be here.
Rob Cairns: Yeah, I’m glad you’re here. And uh this is a little bit of a different one. And um so we’re going to talk about service-based businesses. So first of all, did you get into dealing with service-based businesses? That’s a question I always like to start with; it’s always interesting to hear people’s stories. So, what’s yours?
Reed Hansen: Well, you know, I think, you know, as a part of designing your ideal customer, you know, a lot of it is who you want to work with, but uh the other part is who wants to work with you. And so, I’d say part of it was by design and part of it was by uh by their feedback and and them coming to us. So, um, you know, I’ve talked there are some industries that are very mature in the digital space and and others that are less mature. Um, we we have a big group of photography studios. Those are fun. You know, put them in one group. And then, um…
Rob Cairns: Your wife’s a photographer. Your wife’s a photographer, isn’t she, too?
Reed Hansen: That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. So, we’ve uh got, you know, I’ve got a lot of uh a lot of lot of miles in on those roads on uh in the photography industry. Um, but we have also found that a lot of these home services businesses uh have great needs. Um, there’s a there’s a variety. Um, some are quite sophisticated, do a high volume of of output in terms of like cold emailing and cold calling. Um, others simply are the technicians leading the business like a like a plumber and he’s got his hands down a drain and his phone rings and he needs an automation to respond and and process the call so he doesn’t lose the lead. Um so that so what what I have found though is that the the home services industries they have a lot of technical skills but not necessarily the marketing experience or chops to uh maintain a continual uh pipeline of bookings.
Rob Cairns: No, I I would agree with you. I have a good friend of mine who is a cross street old high school friend and he runs a painting business and he’s been a painter professional painter for years ever since I know him. And what he’ll tell you is it’s hard for him to balance his business and then the admin side of the business. So we’re not we’re talking the lead gen side, the answering phone call side, the sending out quotes side, that side of it he finds it it’s hard. And fortunately he’s at a stage in his life where all his kids are over 20, so they’re self-sufficient, thank God. But, you know, that impacts and I hear it time and time again. Oh, I called a contractor and it took me 4 days for them to get back to me because they’re busy. And I hate to say it, what people in home service based businesses haven’t realized is something I stress and I’m sure you stress is don’t have time to do it. Get somebody to do it for you.
Reed Hansen: 100%. And uh uh you know it it really is a a question of immediacy in response. So you know there’s we there’s a whole whole uh portfolio of concerns that they have from a marketing standpoint but uh they they need to act quickly. I’ve had the experience myself as a customer of various home service. You know I moved into a hundred-year-old house and it seems like we’re we’re on the phone with some contractor or another every day and um but I often have to call multiple contractors to get somebody to pick up the phone or to give me a satisfactory time frame that they can uh provide an estimate or or a delivery. And um so so automation is is critical for for these professionals because you know they can’t they can’t both sell and and service the the client. Um they they will need to either have staff which is expensive costly uh that you know that are dialing out or they need to have good mechanisms, good technology that can funnel leads and uh provide the information with the immediacy that they that they need.
Rob Cairns: No question. And I I think what you just said was a piece of gold world word and um I think it applies to even more than home service businesses. And you said automation is critical and I so wholeheartedly agree with that. So basically what that means is if somebody goes to a website and they fill in a contact form, where do 90% of all contact forms end up? Two places. One in spam, right? Like because their their website’s not set up properly. So you know that’s problem number one. Problem number two is it takes days to get back. It drives me insane as a customer when the website says we’ll get back to you in 48 hours and you call and they said oh it’s going to be 5 days. No, no, no, no. That’s not the way to run business. So why not do smart things like automate that process? For example, send back a first of all nice email saying thanks for getting in touch with us. We’ll get back to you. And by the way, while you’re waiting, here’s some resources you can check out the company. Not just thank you. That’s one of my biggest peeves is people say thank you and they don’t take advantage. Now that they’ve got your attention, they’re in your inbox. Problem number one. And then set up your automation sequence to set up uh follow-ups depending on what they’re looking for. So if they’re looking for, say this is a contracting company and they’re looking for plumbing. Maybe you want to send them a couple emails every two or three days saying what kind of plumbing services that you offer and tag them appropriate. So one thing you got to do is learn to segment your potential clients. Right.
Reed Hansen: Absolutely. Absolutely. There’s uh as you said, there’s a lot of different ways that people find a business or approach you, but if they have gone to the effort of filling out a form and and submitting, which indicates some interest, but also some effort, that is that is a very valuable lead. There are other leads that are much more passive that are captured because they clicked an ad uh maybe while they were Browse a social media platform. Much lower intent on those. Um, if on your form you can put other questions that further qualify like uh you know are you the homeowner or you know you renter something like that or uh some demographic information that is a great that’s a great point to filter rather than wait for the the call to uh to qualify.
Rob Cairns: No, I I agree and and and get some kind of automation in there. So I mean any really good email automation platforms or you know a couple of them one comes to mind is Keep which used to be Infusionsoft which a lot of people either like or hate because it’s complex. You can do it with Get Response. There’s um a couple if you’re running a WordPress website there’s a couple built-in uh CRMs that will run right inside WordPress. Groundhog comes to mind. Um I know the founder quite well. Um interesting story. The founder of Groundhog, Adrian Toby, his father was the number one Infusionsoft trainer in Canada at one time, believe it or not, and one of my mentors in the business. So, yeah, it’s just an interesting story. But the whole thing is with all this stuff, and I don’t care if you’re using Get Response, using Keep, using Groundhog, what you got to do is sit down like somebody like yourself and develop a system. How are you going to tag stuff? How’s your sequence going to do? Because I’m going to tell you, business owners are generally not good marketers. I will tell you that every day to Sunday and I will tell you most marketers aren’t good logical people. So marketers I come from a originally a programming technical background. So I’m in a bit of a different spot to most people, but most marketers when you throw conditional logic in a in a sales funnel at them, they kind of look and say it takes a lot for them to grasp.
Reed Hansen: Absolutely. And you know, like you said, it it is critical. So, so there’s so many decisions you make in an automation and uh one is timing, one is the actual message that is sent and uh you know, and others are, you know, what are the follow-up steps? Are there uh is there logic built in the automation that uh takes somebody down a different route based on the response? Uh which you know should be the case. Um and you what are what are those factors? The um and and then do you have a mechanism for analyzing uh where there are drop offs in different parts of your your automation? Um you know your inbound pipeline is is something you should be thinking about a lot and and tweaking and and refining. Um you know and here’s a an interesting uh case study from my uh business school years. This is you know 15 years ago. I um we had a case study about um it was a discussion based case study, but it was a large retailer. I believe it was Walmart. They were trying to decide on the frequency of advertising emails that they would send to people in their database. And um interesting interesting and um the so take take us for what it’s worth in 2010-ish because I I’m I’m sure conditions have changed, but at that point uh they intuited they thought well let’s do a couple emails a week and um and and let’s see if that provides the highest response and and they you know they were able to track that uh you know we could maybe add in more and and um they got up to where they were sending an an advertising email with a coupon every day and that was actually producing the best results but then um somebody said well why don’t we just try something else. We’ll just jump way ahead. And they were having the most success sending up to 12 discount emails a day. And like that was actually the most effective, you know, they were that was a case of observing the data rather than, you know, intuiting, you know, like 15, that’s too many. That’s too, you know, like that’s that’s bad.
Rob Cairns: I go I go nuts. And I’ll tell you, I’m Walmart’s big in Canada. I think you know that, right? And I’m a a Walmart photo center user and they do send daily emails around the photo center. And of course, at the time of this record, Mother’s Day is coming up. So, there’s more and more specials out there because Mother’s Day is coming. Um, do you have to use them for Mother’s Day? No. But the point I’m making is, and they they’ve got a special a day right now, and most of them expire in 24 or 48 hours. So, what they’re doing really well is they’re throwing urgency in there, too. which also helps with specials. Having open-ended specials, as any business, even a homebased business, is a bad idea. Put some urgency in it. Hold some purse strings and say, “Hey, if you don’t jump on this now, it’s going to go away.”
Reed Hansen: Yeah. No, and that’s an excellent point. You know, the discounts and promotions as a service provider are uh, you know, are not not as effective as uh for a product based business, at least for the health of your business because you have limited uh you can’t be in two places at once. You know, you when your booking calendar is full, you can’t you can’t book any more business. So, um immediacy, urgency, um and then, you know, some of the other factors that that we could talk about would be the trust that you are able to both convey at the beginning of the process and uh rightfully earn and and you know, show off through testimonials and reviews at the at the end of the process.
Rob Cairns: Um, so I and that doesn’t mean by by the way that doesn’t mean all positive reviews because you and I both know that you can do as a business owner everything right and give the client everything a contract should agree to and some clients just can’t be happy.
Reed Hansen: Yeah.
Rob Cairns: And then we’ve got the whole issue in the review game about the bots, the personal attacks, the competitor the fake reviews, they still go on. I get an email as an agency owner every day saying, “Would you like me to write 10 reviews for you?” No, no, no, no, no, no. And and and people argue, and I know I’ve gone through as a business, even myself, and I’m not I’m a B2B business, I’ve gone through bad reviews, but the key with reviews is answer them because you’re not going to make everybody happy. You’re not going I had I had one review a guy who work not done great. He didn’t follow what was in his contract and he had the nerve to write me a nasty review. Well, fine. So, I answered it. So, take the time as a business owner and deal with the bad reviews. That will build trust more than dealing with a positive review.
Reed Hansen: Yeah, 100%. And I I think you know when you see a business that has a 5.0 on uh you know, Google, it’s probably an indication that they a don’t have very many reviews or that they’ve um they’re not getting an accurate uh like survey of of their actual users. Um you know, when you start seeing, you know, in the you know, excuse me, 4.5 and above and you see like a very engaged business owner, yeah, those are the kinds of businesses you should you should uh work with. Um you know, but reviews are another thing that you can re the requests for reviews and the prompts for reviews, that’s another thing you can automate. Uh you can you know at parts in the sales process um you know depending on our depending on our client we either once service is complete we either ask for it immediately or or do kind of a staggered you know a few days later. Um but but we recommend that for every business that for every sale you ask for a review. Um you can get in some of the um the mechanics of there are platforms where you can get get an assessment before it it goes to print, so to speak. You know, you can get the if the bad reviews, you can address them directly rather than have to wait until they hit uh Google or Facebook. But, um, you know, there’s but I think to your point, Ron, the most important thing is that you’re engaged and that you know, if you hear something negative, like you’re actively addressing it, right?
Rob Cairns: Or better still, send out um after they’ve done the work. A quick email to obtain a net promoter score because I think that’s really important. That’s a quick gauge. It takes the client 30 seconds and say, “Here it is.” Now, one of the tricks I love with reviews and I I think I picked this up off of Michael, what’s his name? Stelzner. He runs um Social Media World and all of that that stuff. Michael was talking about dentists, but it applies to any business, even a service-based business. I’ve worked with a couple is if the client really likes the job, have them shoot you a quick 20 second iPhone video with you standing in front of the work and then take that video and post it and and don’t fancy it up. Literally take it as raw video. And the reason I say don’t fancy it up is cuz if you fancy it up, then somebody says, “Oh, what did you do to the video?” So don’t do that. Just post it on your YouTube channel, embed it, share it, and just be done with it. And that alone as a review mechanism will generate reviews. Imagine going into a living room and you’re thinking about, oh, you want to have your hardwood floors done, right? And you see somebody’s hardwood real quickly and they’re saying how wonderful the contractor was and that they’re going to go by.
Reed Hansen: Yeah. You know, well, and think of the value of those kinds of videos, you know, uh, home service provider, say, you know, they’re doing your hardwood floors, they’ve got a video of them standing with a happy homeowner in a home. All of a sudden, new customers, they picture can really envision this is a safe person to let in my in my home and you know it it it takes it a further step. That’s something that like as a marketing agency I just can’t do. I can’t you know uh uh I’m very rarely face to face with my with my clients other than, you know, on Zoom. And so home services businesses should consider that a major advantage you know that that can boost their marketing.
Rob Cairns: Yeah. And the other thing we were talking about is you mentioned booking and all this and I think booking is the ideal opportunity for automation. So give you an example and this is kind of homebased but it’s not uh my best friend bought a toilet at Home Depot. Yes, they’re in Canada too by the way. So yeah and um Home Depot has a service where they will install send their contracted installers to install your toilet. You pay for it when you purchase the toilet and then they bring it. And we said to them, “How do we book this?” And they said, “Oh, don’t worry about we’ll send you a link today.” So, you click on the link, it gives you some options. You book the time in the slot that they need. What I’m suggesting is, especially these contractors who are busy, busy, busy. Automate your booking process. Then, you don’t spend 5 hours on the client to book a 1-hour appointment. Just find a way to do it. And there’s enough cheap booking packages out there that this shouldn’t even cost you a fortune to be honest.
Reed Hansen: Absolutely. And and that can be combined with a automation um opportunity we talked about earlier. You you know this can be embedded in a link and if you miss a call then the the link to a calendar could be book could be a booking for uh here’s when I’ll call you back or here’s um if if you’re ready here’s here’s when to book my service calendar and uh you know actually book the appointment. So it you know, it’s critical to have uh an online calendaring system that, you know, obviously matches the your real availability and, you know, and and to make that super simple. I think people just have that expectation that that um you know, they they’ve worked they do a lot of purchasing on uh these big retailer sites and they have that same expectation for local vendors.
Rob Cairns: Yeah. Yeah, it’s true. I agree. Um kind of moving on. We’re talking home service businesses. What do you think of Yelp as a platform? Have to go there.
Reed Hansen: Uh well, I am I’m not as uh big on Yelp as as some of the others. I um Yelp Yelp tends to well, for instance, um when you’re working with these review companies and they’re uh and I say that as like Google and Facebook as the two big ones I think of, Yelp is um yeah. Yelp is valuable as as well, but um I I do feel that Google is more pervasive in the uh the search the kind of searching that people do more frequently. Google actually has the ability to promote their own review engine more so than Yelp. Um and then but Yelp likes to insert itself into uh you know into like the booking process with some automated bots on in some occasions and and it I I I personally don’t don’t want to uh recommend putting a lot of effort into Yelp. Um…
Rob Cairns: Okay.
Reed Hansen: Yeah, that’s that’s my two cents, but you know, I’m I’m definitely open to other uh other perspectives.
Rob Cairns: So, if you’re looking at a platform, I know in Canada we have a platform called Homestars, which is, you know, it’s one of those contractors. I don’t know if you have it in the States. Um where would you would you look at platforms like that or would you third party platforms or look somewhere else.
Reed Hansen: So my primary focus um you know we have um hybrid sites that are that are reviews but can be gated you know like an tell me if uh Angie’s list is that very pervasive in Canada.
Rob Cairns: Yeah I know Angie’s list well but it’s not always used but my you know my listeners are all over the world so go with it. Yeah.
Reed Hansen: So um so Angie’s list for example is um is gated you know this small subscription just a $2 a month I believe for to join and you get um high recommendations and then you you ask for services on there. You you put an inquiry out and these companies who have also subscribed to Angie’s they uh receive leads that they’ve paid for and um so so that’s um that’s an opportunity potentially to from a consumer standpoint work with well-reviewed businesses and from a business standpoint to have a a steady source of leads. But um my my two cents is that that does push you into the very competitive um speed and price um metrics. And because you’re you’re going to, you know, if you go that route, you’re going to get uh vendors that try to to race to the bottom on pricing and maybe not maybe cut some corners on service. Um and then conversely, uh you know that you’re going to have to do that as a vendor if you’re getting if you’re taking Angie’s leads um you know and again I so I would I would again I would point people to the Facebook and Google uh primarily for in terms of effort and in terms of developing those business presences. So the Google My Business and Facebook business page um I would I would start there and when you’re very mature there and getting um you know got a large number of leads or large number of reviews and a large following on those then you may want to branch out.
Rob Cairns: Yep. Um, you mentioned a race to the bottom. So, one of my favorite books out there is a book called The Inside Advantage. Don’t know if you know it. It’s written by Robert Bloom. Was written in 2009. Big red hard cover. And what Robert talks about, one of his premises in his book is don’t fight to race the bump unless you’re a dollar store chain because that’s a recipe for business disaster. And distinguish your business and what makes you different than your competitors. So don’t go down that rabbit hole.
Reed Hansen: Well, you know, I would agree with that. And so that so that will require you to develop a few things. So both um outcomesbased marketing um and your ability to tell stories. So if you’re if you’re able to tell uh you know whether it’s in print or your your other messaging that you you can take somebody from a problem state to a very happy state through the the vehicle of your services, you know. So, you know, they were they were crawling with termites and and uh but we were able to come quickly and though they were very concerned and uh losing sleep at night and worried about the huge expense, we were able to allay those fears and resolve it in under X days. And they those kinds of stories you you know as a service-based provider that helps establish authority and trust. Um, yeah, again, a product business doesn’t quite get that opportunity. Um, and you know, so, so ref being able to refine those skills, have your customers create those testimonials, uh, those videos and and you know, they inevitably will tell the story if they if they like you, that comes naturally. They lived it. Um, but if you’re able to connect those dots in a way that you know, they were at the very bottom and then they they rose to the top because of what we were able to help them with. That that makes a huge difference.
Rob Cairns: Yeah. And while you’re telling stories, tell a couple things. One of the things I started off this podcast was asking you how you got into the business. That’s important.
Reed Hansen: Yeah.
Rob Cairns: Tell your founder story. I have a good friend of mine who’s a regular on the show, Todd Jones, and he writes founder stories. Tell your founder story. People want to hear your story, why you got in. And one of the stories I always tell and I don’t know if I shared this with you, but I will. And regular listeners, this podcast, I was never going to be a marketer. I took a marketing course back in college in the 80s, and my marketing professor came in this class, put her feet up on the desk, big boots and all, and looked at us and said, “I’m only here because I want my summers off.” I said, “Great. Tell me when the exams are. I’ll be here for tests only, and you don’t have to see me the rest of the term.” And right then and there, I swore I get through the class and never be in marketing. And what have I done? I’ve run a digital agency for agency. But stories like that. And the reason I put it out there, it’s just compelling. They tell your story. They tell what makes you. They tell what makes you tick. Because what you’re doing is you’re building connection and trust. And businesses and individuals work with people they like and trust because there’s so many offerings out there.
Reed Hansen: Absolutely. And and that helps pricing not become the issue because Yeah. You know, if if you provide a great experience, they’ll be frightened to uh to go with somebody else and not have that great experience. And you know, so you just by the the great job you do and the maybe the surprise or wow factor that you can offer uh that will ensure repeat business referrals um and and great reviews.
Rob Cairns: Yep. Now the other thing service businesses don’t do well after reviews is followup to get repeat business. We all know that. And this is where developing the right automation sequences because they’re going to say, “Oh, I don’t have time.” That’s a missed opportunity. Missed, missed, missed because what happens is you um the cost of acquiring a new customer takes more effort and time and money than an existing customer. So, I think they should spend the time following up and they would all argue and say not the time to do it. So, automate it.
Reed Hansen: Yeah, automate it. Exactly. And and that is 100% uh uh a process that we would recommend for everyone. Um you you know, you have a database of your former customers and those former customers are both potential future customers and potential uh outlets, gateways to their friends that that will have the similar needs at some point in the future. Um, you know, you can offer uh, you know, discounts on future services or discounts to your to their friends, whatever uh, you need, but but those are are very valuable leads because they already start out trusting you. They already start out um, uh, wanting to like you now. Um, you know, and and I think along with that too, when we’re talking about repeat business, the um, and your ability to automate it, you actually will have an ability to upsell uh clients using automation. And so you can build in in any of these platforms, you can build in logic that based on what they’ve purchased or um you know the the nature of the purchase that they would be great candidates for either an ongoing subscription to your home services or um well you know you liked our window cleaning. How about our um you know our gutter cleaning, you know, and and um they would it again that’s much easier business to to win than than a a fresh set of eyes. So those are you know it’s just it’s a automation that can be built just like any of these others we’ve we’ve described and you as the operator don’t have to keep a calendar to remember to call or uh remember all these things that this can all be uh repeated and systemized.
Rob Cairns: I’ll give you an example. And it it doesn’t really apply, but it does. I do work for a a spa, a legitimate spa. I need to qualify your disclaimer. You know where that conversation goes.
Reed Hansen: Sure.
Rob Cairns: And and they um they do they do massages and their clientele is about 70% women, which is not uncommon. And what we do is if I notice your wife is coming in every four weeks for massage after two weeks, I’m sending her a coupon saying if you come in next week, we’ll give you 30% off because what we’re trying to do is increase frequency and it’s all automated. Your wife hasn’t booked. Okay, let’s get her off a coupon. Let’s just do it. And once the system’s in place, it’s a breeze. And when they went to this four years ago, they increased their business, the repeat business, and increased their frequency by 40%. If you can believe that.
Reed Hansen: Wow.
Rob Cairns: All done. All automated. They’re well known. They’re high-end, you know. Ladies pay money for massages. I will tell you that every day.
Reed Hansen: Yeah. I you know, if my wife’s any uh judge of that, then you are 100% correct.
Rob Cairns: Yes, I am. And by the way, I’m a massage user myself. So, there you go. Um, so we’ve talked a lot about around automation processes. Um, what other things should small businesses do when What else do you get involved in with them?
Reed Hansen: Yeah, so we do work with um so we have chat bots. So beyond automation um and this this is a form of automation but it’s AI powered automation. We occasionally get uh inquiries in uh in off hours like when we’re not at our our desk you know evenings, weekends it may be and and those are good leads too. Now um our typical message is, you know, an invite to book a time. But when it’s off hours, we’ll say we turn on our our chatbot. Now, uh, you know, opinions vary, but I don’t think that everybody has fully experienced how good the bots are getting and, um, the the bad experiences they may have had in the past, uh, with, uh, the old learning language models where it was just so mechanical and so obvious, it like today, it’s quite a bit different. And and in coming months, it’s going to be even better. You know, you’re going to have like uh Jerry Seinfeld or Jay Leno like engaging, you know, levels of engagement. You know, just people just are uh so excited to chat with you because you’ve got a a hilarious bot or, you know, very dynamic possibility. Now, um I I’ I’d say our current chat bots are pretty indistinguishable from, you know, our human responders on on this and they can go ahead and they can book appointments, they can send payment links to uh actually close the sale and answer a whole suite of questions. Everything that we’ve you know we’ve loaded a whole wiki of information about our business that the the chatbot can answer. Um so so that’s one thing and and then we also do so I mentioned SEO which there are SEO engines and platforms that have AI embedded that they analyze keywords they create.
Rob Cairns: No question.
Reed Hansen: Yeah. So, it’s um very important. Um we generate content uh for social media campaigns and uh landing page design and um I’ll also say that AI is a big part of that work. You know, it it accelerates things. It it incorporates um very sophisticated instructions and um you know, it does require all of these require some human training. some human intervention and monitoring, but they are able to do really extend our reach and and um accelerate everything that we’re able to do. Um just trying to think…
Rob Cairns: Let’s go ahead. Let’s talk um landing page design for a minute because I want to go there and that’s an interesting topic for me. Um one of the things small businesses do on landing pages and we’ve all seen real good ones and we’ve all seen real bad ones, right? They give the potential buyer or customer too many choices. Don’t do that, people.
Reed Hansen: Yeah.
Rob Cairns: I’m actually a big fan of removing the navigation off my landing pages at the top. I don’t want people I want them to stay on that page and click on what I want them to do, not to go away. Number one, I I will even go so far, depending on the cost of the product, of removing branding on that page, depending on what the product cost is. If the cost is a $5,000 product. No, you can’t get away with that. But but the point I’m making is make them simple because your objective on a landing page is to get somebody to take one action and and don’t give them 10 actions, right?
Reed Hansen: Yeah. No, that is great great advice. And uh you know your landing page is already you’ve already somebody has indicated some interest. They have they they saw what what was being offered on this page. clicked on it and they’re here. So now, why would you throw in another distraction, another branch to to go down? Um, so anytime you can do that, that is really really helpful for closing. Um, you know, I think a lot of uh businesses should think through the flows through the site. So on that point, landing page or not, you know, think about logical steps that somebody would take through your site. Yes. So like you know if if it’s a big investment you know do you have you know uh terms and conditions that are easy to find and and do those terms and conditions navigate back to somewhere where they can buy you know that um… Yes, these are um these are definitely other considerations because you know you can use Google Analytics to help find those or you can um you can include testing um you know as part of the site see where see where people are going and where they drop off your site where they close the tab and and fix.
Rob Cairns: And the other thing is the other thing is while we’re talking about that your wife’s a photographer.
Reed Hansen: Yes.
Rob Cairns: So, I’m going to I’m going to start this conversation off by saying photographers and artists are exempt of what I’m going to say. And that is don’t make your websites too pretty. Photographers and artists need to because that’s their business. But I’m sorry if you’re a brick-and-mortar store and you’re selling plumbing services. What do I want as a customer? I want on that site. I want to figure out how to contact. I want to figure out your pricing. I want to figure out how to book with you. You You need some images, but you don’t need I hate to tell you it high-res images. You don’t need You don’t need You don’t need Think about functionality that leads to conversions, which leads to leads, which leads to sales more than the site being pretty. The reason I say if you’re a photographer, an artist is you have to make the site different. And that’s the reality of it, right?
Reed Hansen: Well, and you know, reminds me of a a piece of advice I give to our photography clients is um for a a number of reasons it may be tempting, you know, they’re very aesthetically minded and and I’ve seen websites look they look gorgeous. They load and there’s a video that streams in the background with some text overlay and you know and I say you’re a photographer you photograph still images you know for instance you know why why would you uh distract from what you’re offering by, you know, showing a video. You know, now they’re envisioning themselves as maybe in a movie. You know, you want you want to, you know, there’s many other technical reasons not to do that, but um uh you know, don’t don’t provide distractions on your site just because it’s beautiful.
Rob Cairns: Just because it’s beautiful and because everybody else did. And the other thing I’m going to tell people, even photographers, is please don’t put a slider at the top of your page. It’s a waste of time. It’s a waste of space and it has no SEO value whatsoever. So, don’t do it. I know. Well, my friend, that’s nice. Let your friend do it. Don’t you do it. That’s That’s my first And speaking of websites, cuz I’m kind of on this crusade lately. If you’re a small business, don’t try and run your service-based business off Instagram or Facebook without a website. If you remember last November, there was an Instagram outage that went on for 24 hours.
Reed Hansen: I do.
Rob Cairns: I had a guy who became a client who lost $40,000 in one day because he couldn’t do sales and he had a service-based business.
Reed Hansen: Yeah.
Rob Cairns: What I’m telling you is if you’re going to do social, if you’re going to do ads, if you’re going to do anything, all roads should lead back to your website. What are your thoughts on that?
Reed Hansen: I agree 100%. I I it’s your storefront in in many cases that uh you know used to be the standard that you had a physical storefront but a bare minimum now is a digital storefront. If um you know there there’s a lot of reasons not to focus on a social media platform. The the user user uh rate on those platforms has gone down tremendously uh over over the past decade. And so a lot of people don’t have Facebook and Instagram accounts. or um but if if you invest too much in one platform then you’re you’re segmenting your potential audience in you know thirds you know like it really it should support your website not uh it cannot replace it.
Rob Cairns: I agree with it and it’s it’s really interesting while you’re while you’re there and I I’m going to I’m going to I know I’m tooting my own horn here. This is you’re a small business owner and you decide to go a non-SaaS platform. So, if you don’t go with Squarespace or Shopify, a lot of small businesses dive into the WordPress space, um, get that. It’s, you know, it’s inexpensive. Even to get a dev can be not expensive. The one thing I’ll tell small businesses is you better have a plan for backups and security if you’re going to do web stuff. Because, believe it or not, 90% of websites that get compromised and I see it all the time are small business websites because then they use those to attack large businesses and those small business websites actually affect your business reputation. So be really careful of that as well.
Reed Hansen: Interesting. Yeah. And that that is not my realm and um you know I think we talked about maybe having a follow-up conversation about this.
Rob Cairns: Of course. Of course. Anytime.
Reed Hansen: Very fascinating stuff. And you can’t be too careful with with uh security and and reputation.
Rob Cairns: So, there’s a lot here. And I think we’re not trying to scare you. We’re just trying to kind of help people and say, “Hey, these are the things you need to do.” And we and we haven’t even talked about the off-site stuff. So, you know, I was I was on the phone uh with my insurance agent the other day talking about business insurance and looking at stuff. I mean, you got to think of all that stuff, too. And that’s a bit of outer realm of what talking about. But don’t for what I’m saying is as a business owner or service based business, don’t run your business like a hobby. Think about in the states, should you set it up as an LLC? Should you in Canada, we don’t have LLC’s, so you end up incorporating, but do it because you need to protect your liability. You need to and and and I know it’s out of the realm, but it’s still worth mentioning, right? So…
Reed Hansen: Yeah. And you know, as a service-based business, you know, you’re you are good at a technical skill. You don’t have to be great at marketing. You can lean on people, agencies, and and other experts that that you find that that can fill in those gaps. Um, you know, don’t don’t ever feel like, you know, it’s it’s a mountain of knowledge that that you have to climb. It’s um that this is accessible through uh vendors, various softwares, um you know, even if you’re taking a you know, long dialogue with ChatGPT to get through it. you know, these are um… Yeah, this is accessible to all businesses.
Rob Cairns: Yeah. And and I know the world is tough right now. We know what’s going on in Canada. We just went through an election. We know what’s going on in the US with tariffs.
Reed Hansen: Yes.
Rob Cairns: And without getting into all the political stuff, honestly, now is the time to build that business. Usually, when economics are tough is the best time to build this type of business, not when everything’s going great. And people don’t realize that.
Reed Hansen: Right. Right. Yeah. Absolutely. And and this is Yeah. This is the time to metaphorically sharpen the sword and and sharpen your tools so you are ready and and efficient for when the economy is in a better state.
Rob Cairns: Yeah. No question. Hey Reed, what what an what an action-packed uh show. If anybody doesn’t get something out of this, I think uh they got a bit of a problem. That’s just that’s just my opinion. Um If somebody wants to get in touch with you, talk to your agency, uh see about getting you involved, how’s the best way?
Reed Hansen: Best way is to go to our website at marketsurge.io and you can email me anytime at reed@marketsurge.io. Either of those are are great ways to uh to get in touch and learn more. But uh you know, again, really nice to be on with you, Ron. You uh have such a great audience and and uh you know, I love the content you put out.
Rob Cairns: Yeah. Thanks so much. We we’re going to talk again. I know. I I just see this one of being many conversations. And you have an amazing day, my friend.
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