From the Yellow Chair
From the Yellow Chair
Stop the Scatter: Smart Marketing Systems for Home Service Businesses
Most contractors don’t have a marketing problem—they have a systems problem. We sat down with Skip Wilson, CEO of Draft Media Partners and a veteran of iHeart’s digital era, to break down how to replace tactic-hopping with a durable plan that compounds. We start with the core: define a real audience, clarify the action you want (calls, forms, financing inquiries), craft messages people actually care about, and then build a channel mix that won’t collapse when a platform changes the rules.
We get practical fast. If “family-owned” is your headline, you’re blending in. Instead, choose a USP that’s provable and valuable: same-day installs, weekend hours without overtime, or flexible financing. From there, we map a resilient stack that aligns operations with demand: a CRM that can handle volume, automated nurturing to recover no-shows and slow deciders, strong search visibility, and brand-building through video and audio with precise household targeting. One standout tactic: retarget website visitors with oversized direct mail that lands days after they browse—perfect for bigger, non-urgent purchases like tankless water heaters, where timing and recall close the gap.
Measurement is the unlock. We walk through shifting from cost per lead to customer acquisition cost and show how matchbacks connect exposure on CTV, radio, and social to actual new customers. No advanced stack? Use call tracking and a simple monthly CAC baseline to create a meaningful “pass/fail” view. Month one is an educated guess; month two should be optimization, not reinvention. When leads dip, pull pre-planned levers—adjust the audience, rotate offers, move budget up or down the funnel, or trigger targeted mail and outbound—rather than scrambling for “what’s new.”
If you’re ready to stop chasing the most expensive leads in your market and start building a brand people search by name, this conversation is your blueprint. Listen, take notes, and then tell us: what’s your current CAC target, and which lever will you pull next? If the show helped, subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a contractor who needs steadier growth.
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From the Yellow Chair is powered by Lemon Seed, a marketing strategy and branding company for the trades. Lemon Seed specializes in rebrands, creating unique, comprehensive, organized marketing plans, social media, and graphic design. Learn more at www.LemonSeedMarketing.com
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We'll see you next time, Lemon Heads!
What's up, Limit Heads? Welcome to another episode of From the Yellow Chair. I am Crystal, and today I'm really excited. I love talking to other marketing people. When marketing people talk to marketing people, we just hit a vibe. Just a vibe, and we love it. And so those of you that hate marketing but are forced to listen to this podcast so that you can be participating in the marketing for your company. I really think you're gonna enjoy this episode because we're gonna get a little outside the box thinking about overall marketing strategies. So I've got a CEO on the call today with me or on the podcast today that is over an ad execution company. So very a unique approach. We talked about how I'm on one side of the coin and these on the other. And so, guys, let's get ready. I hope you're watching on YouTube or you're listening at your favorite place for podcasts are, but buckle up, guys, let's zip some lemonade. All right, Skip, welcome to the Limited Stand.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you very much.
SPEAKER_01:From the Yellow Chair, absolutely. So, Skip Wilson, you're the CEO of Draft Media Partners, and you are gonna tell us a little bit about yourself and why anyone should listen to what you have to say today.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. Well, I've my whole career has been in like one industry, which is the advertising industry. So it's perfect. Right. Yeah, exactly. I would have to be at least decent at it, um, right? You'd think after 20 years or so. But yeah, um the I started off uh as a copywriter and then went on to uh as a from a freelancer into web design, and then uh from that was a time order when we launched uh our user-generated content platform and then went over to Clear Channel Radio and we launched what was became the iHeartRadio app and was the vice president of digital media for iHeart Media for about 12 years before founding draft and and going off uh going off on on my own.
SPEAKER_01:Awesome, awesome. And you know, I love it when people have been around in the tactic side. So you've seen success, you've seen people not do it right, you've seen people do it completely wrong, like you've seen people make a disaster of themselves. But I love that today we're gonna be talking a lot about um marketing feels all over the place for a lot of people and how contractors are not alone in that. So let's start off with why systems beat scatter every single time, right? So you've worked with everyone from radio giants to these small uh service shops. You know, why do you think so many home service businesses um are really struggling to get their marketing maybe organized or off the ground? You know, I have my own opinion of this, but I'm very curious about what you think.
SPEAKER_00:Well, so there it's a very much a lead-based business, which you know is good. Uh most businesses in some form or fashion are lead-based. Uh we'll say because of that focus, though, only on the bottom of funnel, uh, it causes like hit or miss advertising sometimes. And there's good and bad on both sides. Like sometimes there's been plenty of businesses that made an entire career off of Facebook ads. And then when Facebook changes their algorithm, it completely blows up their model. And then likewise, there's you know, they'll get addicted to like Google ads, and then all of a sudden Google rolls out Google Guarantee, and you know, just those little changes when you become platform dependent, um, it just opens you up to you know needless risk, right? And then and that's if that's if you find a campaign that's working. Uh, if you find a campaign, but you know, a lot of times they're just keep trying different stuff and hoping that something works, and so it's kind of dangerous on both sides.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. And you know, we um I call that the hamster wheel. So we have contractors that they live so much at the bottom of funnel. So uh to to you know, settle this a little bit for people that are listening, like, what is this funnel? You know, every consumer is in this someplace in the funnel of leading down to actually making a decision. So from not a lot of us, I like to focus on top of the funnel um pretty extensively, meaning these are people that aren't even considering your business right now. They don't need your business, but they're just in the consideration they're just in the where you can make a an impression phase, right? Like you're just trying to build awareness with them all the way down to the bottom of that funnel, which is people ready to make a decision right now. They need your service right now. Um, and so that top of the funnel, bottom of the funnel piece. But when you live on that hamster wheel where you're always chasing people that are ready to make a decision right now, there's only so many of those to go around. So so much of your marketing strategy truly has to be built around both marathon and sprint strategies so that you can have a collective approach to building your business. And when you don't, and you hyper focus on the hamster wheel or lead gen only, I believe that it it really is a very it's emotionally taxing as well, um, you know, to the contractor for sure. So um okay. So what do you think the most common signs of business is scattered in their marketing? Like what are some identifiers to you that really pop out?
SPEAKER_00:One of the biggest like red flags is if there's whole like tactic changes uh from like six, seven times, you know, over the course of three years, if you are completely blowing up your marketing strategy, that is a sign that you're kind of hoping that you find something that works. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. And that just creates that constant start and stop of things, uh, which is just wastes a lot of budget because yeah, people that are everyone wants to show up when someone's searching for you know new roof, right? Or if you're a roof, sure, sure, yeah, yeah. And that's definitely important, but that's you know, that's where everybody's chasing. So that's the most expensive type of lead. And you really do want to be, you want them Googling your name, right? Instead of just Googling uh H V A C near me.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, yeah, yeah. Story of my life there.
SPEAKER_00:So yeah, yeah, you want to be on both of those searches, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. So that's why I'm like, this is marketing, is a multifaceted approach, right? We've got to build brand, we've got to get build call to action to gain new customers, and we have to cultivate the existing customers that we have access to. But you said something here, and I might have misinterpreted this, but I have a client right now who they're on their third digital partner in two years. Now, listen, sometimes I want to be like, now listen, I'm gonna treat you like a breakup. It's not me, it is you 100%, right? And here's why contractors, y'all are frustrated, you feel misled, you feel misguided, you feel like you've wasted money. Here's here is the harsh reality about especially, especially digital marketing. Okay. Uh, it sucks, it's always changing, and you have to have it. So it is it is all three terrible things, okay? But once you go, okay, this is a game that I've got to play. It does not behoove you to constantly be bitterly bopping around to all these different vendors, okay? You must get connected with someone that you trust. So this is what I recommend when you're interviewing digital agencies, right? I recommend that we this is what Lemon Seed is going to do. Tell us your secret sauce. Why are you different than anyone else? And what you're listening for are what are their strategies, what are their techniques, what are their philosophies, okay? Digital marketing is something that you have to have a thought around. You have to have a way that you do it. So that's why there are several good digital marketing agencies, especially in the home service space. But the reason that they're all good is they all have a different strategy, a different way they approach and they interpret Google's information back to them, uh, the way they the way they approach AI. So it doesn't behoove you to jump around. Um, because it's like you're starting and stopping, right? Like you're just like start, stop, start, stop. And then you're mad that they're not performing when really those are marathon approaches, especially, especially those of you that are looking for SEO. Now, if you're over here on the PPC side, right, Google local service ad side, uh, you know, other types of paid ad spending like that, those should have a little bit quicker. But honestly, you're just not doing yourself any favors by jumping around.
SPEAKER_00:That's right. Yeah, if I if we're meeting with a with an end advertiser, most of our stuff is white label or behind the scenes of other of other companies. But when we are meeting with an with an end advertiser and they've had two or three companies over the past, say five years, and they want a tactic like SEO, which can take a year or more to pay off. I completely avoid that topic with them because I'm like, they're not going to have the patience for it. You know, I know that it's uh you know, I'm not gonna give them a 12-month strategy when they, you know, when I know that they're jumping around every six months or so.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So, so what do you think is the first system that maybe contractors should prioritize?
SPEAKER_00:So I think the first thing is figuring out like who is your audience, and then like specific to your company, like like you said, what makes you different, and then who cares about that? And then you figure out who your audience is, get that defined, then you figure out what that thing you're trying to get them to do is, whether it's phone calls or form fills or et cetera. And then from that you build out the media plan, which you know, it whether you're having a professional do that or not, what that does is then that insulates you so that if Facebook makes a change or Google makes a change or a platform makes a change, you go, okay, well, where is this audience now? You know, maybe they left this platform and went over to this other platform or did something else. But it gives you sort of hooks to sort of change a campaign so that when you start it, if it's not generating the results that you want, you know which which piece to move on. Like, do we try a different audience? Do we try a different message? Do we try a different result? You know, if if we were heavy on phone calls and they're not converting, then let's go heavy on something else. It sort of gives you sort of three levers to pull to adjust to actually get something that's performing consistently. And then then you can sort of pick it up and plug it into any number of things.
SPEAKER_01:I love that. So let's let's go back to this ideal, the ideal audience, your audience. So if you're marketing to everyone, you're really marketing to no one, right? So true marketing is about pulling emotions. This sounds so corny. Some of y'all are gonna be like womp, womp, womp, crystal. But really, at the end of the day, this is a messaging play. So you've got to figure out how to get some cool messaging, some cool offers, some cool calls to action in your mix that really um are speaking directly to your audience. You cannot afford to speak to every single person out there. So when you look at Walmart, Walmart knows you know they've got all the rollbacks because they know who they are talking to. They have identified their customer versus Target. Everything Target is not looking for bottom dollar shoppers. That's not their plan. There, they are they know it, they own it, they lean into it, right? So you have to know your audience. But the other thing that you said here is a unique selling position. So let me tell you things that are not unique selling positions any longer. Family owned and operated. Now, y'all are gonna laugh at this. It might begin that way as private equity continues to swallow up things. Okay. But right now, family owned and operated, unless you really, really lean into the family piece, like you go this traditional wholesome family route, or to be honest, the other direction, maybe you're wanting to be a lot more, um, a lot more open-minded of what families could be. Let me again, you'd have to lean hard into that. Um, also, like we're when you use any words that you have to tell people so that we're trustworthy. Okay, well, you're probably not, right? We're honest and loyal. I hope so. Right. So you you got to get past those things and you got to dig deeper of are you the client that has uh multiple, are you the contractor that has multiple uh financing options? Are you the client that's uh the contractor that's open Monday through Sunday, seven, you know, 7 a.m., 7 p.m., no overtime charges. Are you the client that does same-day install? Like what is unique about you that not everyone, if you can look at your ad and put anybody's name at the top of it, it's not you. It's not unique, it's not standing out, it's not growing anything. And then you also mentioned levers. Levers are such a core component of what Living Seed offers, which is basically backup plans for us. We want to have like backup plans to where, man, when lead volume is low, what could we do? And I'm gonna tell you that you need to already have your partner stack, meaning, like these are all of the vendor partners that I have at in my um quiller here of uh arrows that I can pull out to shoot. So, you know, you gotta if you want to do texting and voice, ringless voicemail drops and things like that, you need to be with Terp already. So don't wait till you're too late to do that. Get with Terp now, right? So there's there's lots of cool things that you need to do there. So basically when you're building systems, right? Um, instead of just chasing tactic after tactic and what's new and whatever's rolling out in front of you, you need to make sure that your marketing is sustainable and scalable, right? So let's break down a system or so, right? So what's the ideal stack that you recommend uh for contractors who want to get their operations and maybe their marketing in sync? Um, you know, is it like CRMs and what are what are you seeing out there?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's so CRM is obviously important. Like there's certain things that we you almost sort of have to assume. Like if you don't have this in in place, you probably shouldn't market yet. And one of those things is some way to handle like a large volume of customers, you know, coming in. And uh part of that is a CRM. You should also have some sort of lead nurturing in place. In other words, once somebody reaches out or fills out a form or reaches out to you, if they no-show on that appointment, you know, you want to go ahead and have some of those automatic responses um already built out. And then uh you want to have that in place really prior to, or in my opinion, uh prior to doing any sort of paid outreach, because you know, as always, even the majority of leads, you're gonna close a third of them, even at you know, even at good leads and good sell, and if even if you have great sellers, so you need something to help capture the value in those other two-thirds, because you know, they'll close eventually, but it might not be for six months.
SPEAKER_01:Rather slow, slow cycle there.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly. So once you've got that in place, the first place I would start is your basic searches, making sure that you are uh you know that you are showing up in search. I would say that going all in on SEO now is gonna be difficult for most uh most people in the service business because SEO this past year, really just since summer of last year, has taken such a hit, it's gonna be very difficult because of AI searches and AI responses and things. So if you're already doing it, keep up the efforts. If you are new to the game, I probably would make sure that you are decent in the SEO space, but that's I would it's gonna be hard to become great because you are likely competing with uh some major uh private equity firms that are dropping 10 grand or so into their site um in SEO a month. And then beyond that, focusing in on search and keep scaling up the and keep scaling sort of up that funnel, making sure that you show up in search, then making sure that you are building a brand first in social, but then ideally getting some like video and audio tactics and even things like you know, direct mail is making a resurgence um and doing well in the in the search in the home services space uh and performing well. It's not something that you want to do every single month uh unless you do we do have we have a way where you can target direct mail uh to people who have come to your site and haven't taken action. Um but so you could do something like that. But if unless it's something like that, you don't want to have necessarily it's something that you probably want to do quarterly instead of uh instead of every single month uh as far as m mass direct mail drops. Uh but you but it is worth starting to build a brand because we live in a world now where you can target on a household level. So in other words, you can show up on video to that same house so that uh because they did a HVAC search you know two days ago, you can now show up in video to that household. And uh that's exactly because they most likely, unless they had a very immediate need, they most likely didn't take action when they searched two days ago. They're just sort of in that research phase.
SPEAKER_01:Yep, yep. Okay, so love this because I love all these ideas, right? So again, this is a digital play, but I love how it's other options, right? So I love that you were like, you know, people that are visiting your site, you can retarget them with direct mail. Yep. And so it shows intent, right? It shows that they already, number one, they already trusted you, they found you. So now what can they do? Right. Um, you know, like literally for you, you're like, okay, what can I get them to do? Uh and so they they they showed some sort of interest. And so now you can send them these postcards. Tell me, like, how um what does that look like? So do they have to stay on the site very long before you send the postcard? What does that look like?
SPEAKER_00:They have to the only thing they've had to have said yes to is sharing their location. Uh so it does require a cookie disclaimer. Um, the so when they come to the site, as long as they say yes to allowing cookies, which 80% of people do, um, because we're so used to saying yes.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, 80% of people say yes. Love it.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, exactly. Um, and uh and that is sort of geographics, you know, geographically uh specific. Usually rural areas say yes at a higher rate, urban areas say uh yes at a lower rate, but right across the board in the US that's 80%. And then as long as they do that, then we can as long as we do that and live in a single family home, we you can send a you can send them a direct mail piece. I say that because some people live in like apartment. Now that doesn't you don't run into that too much in the home services space because if they live in an apartment, why would they be searching for a roof? But but right, yeah. I still want to put that caveat on there because it does happen.
SPEAKER_01:Well, and you never know too, like, you know, do they live there and own a rental home? I mean, there's all kinds of little drama that can go on, but the the the risk here there's very little risk uh at the end of the day. At the end of the day, so so love love those ideas there that you mentioned. Love serendipitous.
SPEAKER_00:It seems serendipitous to the person because you know, let's say that I was considering like a tankless hot water heater. Well, that's not an immediate need, right? Like that's something I could do a little bit of research before I actually pull the trigger on. And it's when I get that postcard in the mail, which we usually will do the like six by nine, the like the big bigger one, yeah. And uh it's like, oh, I was just thinking about this company.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, oh they read my mind.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, right, exactly. It's like, oh, that's perfect. I was just thinking about them.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and let me tell you like this is all a part of creative marketing strategies. This is a really good example where it's not perfect for everyone, but it's really good for a lot, and it's just about working these things into your strategy. And so, you know, your digital, like so your website hosting, your SEO, your paid ad strategy, your retargeting strategy, your social media strategy, your direct mail strategy. All of those things require coordination to keep them all rolling on time and when you're doing them. And honestly, guys, budget. So many of you want caviar over here giving me a tuna fish budget. And so, you know, there's a difference. You have tuna fish money, then we need it. We need to get the very best tuna fish that we can get, right? So it's not that you don't have enough to be successful, you just have to be very picky and very selective and very intentional. As your budget for marketing grows, then your opportunities and your options grow. And so that's why it's it's really important that people understand a strategy is more than one tactic, it's more than one avenue of growing your business that you just got to get focused on.
SPEAKER_00:Um, and so don't to that end, I would encourage like most uh most folks in the home services business are so focused on cost per lead because that was the end all be all of metrics to focus on. But now we live in a world where you can do matchbacks and those things. So we try to encourage everyone to focus more on customer acquisition cost, you know, which if you have there are fancy ways to track that um through like CRM matching and those things. But even if you have just like the poor man's cocktail napkin version of it of how many customers you had divided, you know, or your media spend divided by your um how many customers you had. Yeah, that's such a core metric because that matters more, uh, you know, that matters a lot more than cost per lead. Because we can get cheap leads all day, but they don't convert, right? And then that doesn't do anybody any good.
SPEAKER_01:So break this down a little bit if you're comfortable. Like what how do you tell someone to calculate their customer acquisition cost?
SPEAKER_00:Well, so we have um that didn't mean that this to be a shameless plug, but we do have a way uh using that same technology to take um you essentially from a CRM what's the uh names, addresses, and phone numbers, emails of the jobs that were run in a month, and compare that to the actual like ad logs of what households were exposed. So that is a very specific way to get so y'all have a match back, basically. Correct. Exactly. So because some things are more trackable than others, like Hulu ads, for example, are they you're not clicking them, right? Because they're on your TV. And so you can't get a direct attribution. But if we know that that household was exposed to the ad and then showed up as a new customer, pretty safe to say that that's you know, at least we're yeah, it was a part of their journey in some form or fashion. Okay, correct. Exactly. Um, and so that's the like on the fancier end of uh of calculating that, where you get a very specific number. But like I said, even if you don't, like if you know what your baseline of business is now and you try a new tactic, compare your, you know, how much did you, you know, did you spend whatever? Let's say 10 grand in in advertising and you had a hundred customers, just to make the math easy. Uh, well, that would be uh well, that'd be too. Let's say you had a thousand customers, then you had a um or a hundred customers, you had a thousand customer acquisition cost, right? And so then it becomes, well, was that profitable or not?
SPEAKER_01:And uh yeah, so you need to be able to tell how many actual jobs you ran that month. Um, I mean, and listen, it's still tricky, it's still kind of cloudy, but it's still a good metric. And I love to see how many new customers you gained every month. Um, and so when you really start segmenting out your marketing and what the intent was behind each marketing tactic, so you know it's really nice to be able to get a broad customer acquisition cost. So, what did you spend in marketing that month versus how many customers reacted with your company that month? Now, listen, some of y'all are gonna get all bent out of shape over it being um, well, these are what about when they're an existing customer? Well, listen, odds are that's well, it's still an acquisition cost, right? You still had to like get them re-engaged, especially those of us that aren't on reoccurring service models. So, you know, like you need a new HVAC system and things like that. So definitely an interesting thing, but great marketing is really not magic.
SPEAKER_00:I love my roofing company that did our roof uh about four or five years ago. I could not tell you the name of that company.
SPEAKER_01:Well, nor are you, uh, and nor are you gonna need them.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, right, exactly very soon.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:So and so I I hope not anyway.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And so in another five or six years, when I might be in the market again, they're completely out of mind, right? So even though I might show up as a previous customer, it would be pure happenstance because I'm just gonna search for a new one.
SPEAKER_01:And listen, some of y'all hang on to that like it's a prize. And I'm like, listen, uh again, we love to track new customer acquisition and new customer acquisition and you know, uh existing customer turn and how we how we make those work. So, but the good news is uh if you look at it this way, marketing is not really magic, right? It's really about momentum and stacking and growing different tactics together, and the right systems make it really possible. So, you know, that leads me into tracking in general. So, you know, I feel like when people tell us, oh, it's not working, something's not working, they're not actually tracking it. So, like they're really going off of their gut feelings. So, you know, you kind of mentioned this, but how do you think contractors could get better visibility uh without feeling like they're overwhelmed with all this data that we just talked about?
SPEAKER_00:Well, I think the biggest thing is knowing what you're gonna track up front. That's one of the biggest things that we always try to hone in on is is this aid cost per lead or is this the customer acquisition cost? We forecast out what makes sense for that market. So, you know, let's say that you're a HBAC company in like Des Moines. Well, then we should be able to figure out um, and uh we have sophisticated ways to do it, but even if you're just doing like the poor man's version of it, uh look up like what the average spend is in your market and what the average uh conversion rates are. Because we should be able to tell you up front, like, okay, you're probably looking at about a whatever it is, you know,$25 lead cost per lead and about a hundred dollar customer acquisition cost. Those are things that should be established up front, and then it just becomes a you know report card of like pass fail. Like, did we hit that? You know, usually in that first month is always the one where we're always very upfront about this because you're taking a guess, right? You're guessing at the creative, you're guessing at the audience. Yeah, first month is always the hardest, and then uh, so you're you're just like, all right, what this was where we should be at, but four weeks in might miss that.
SPEAKER_01:You sit my brain, you saw you probably saw me like look down for a minute, and I was like, my brain went crazy with this word, the guessing.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, but it is an educated guess. That is the dirty secret of marketing, right?
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely, it is so clunky and messy for you back to for you to be guessing, and it really what you just said like stuck out to me. And I was like, I was looking down, I was thinking it's so detrimental, yeah. So detrimental to people. So you don't need and you don't have to, right? There's all these different ways that you can track all the things that you mentioned, um, are powerful ways to know, guys. Why do you not want to be in the know, right? Why do you not want to know um what they're what's happening and how you can measure it? So, you know, I think that um one tool that I would recommend, like for analytics and simplifying leads. So if you don't have a CRM that has it built in, like call rail, is an easy tool to go by tracking phone numbers, tie them all together, and be able to then look and see at least what phone numbers are getting traction to them. But what about you? Do you have another tool?
SPEAKER_00:Uh we use GoHigh Level a lot, um, which I try to say, uh, which kind of blends the between uh callrail and a CRM, uh, especially if a company doesn't have like a great CRM, that kind of allows us to uh because we can also then uh the only reason I like that a little better than CallRail is because we can set up a phone tree so that if it's someone calling, we can have like one or two or three different voice options, which gives us the the ability to sort of weed out bad leads better than uh better you know better than callrail. But that's that's the only reason I like Go High Level better. But yeah, because then we can say, like, are you a new customer, existing customer, blah blah blah. And then we can have them choose from a list, which just gives us a very quick, yeah. Okay, yes. Not only did they have 200 phone calls. You had 200 phone calls and 80 of them were new customer, you know, or whatever.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so that new customer number is so powerful there for guys. I just don't think listeners, I just don't think you understand how much power there is in numbers. And then, you know, honestly, to think about this, Skip, like how awesome is it when you're actually able to get good feedback from your contractors and you're able to say, Hey, Skip, this worked really well for me. I loved it. Thank you for you know showing me this. And like, but then they can turn around and say, Hey, I didn't get any. And you can say, Well, let's pivot here. Being a good partner to your digital agency or to your other vendor partners is imperative to your overall success. I definitely think so. But you can't scale if you don't track. Um, and even small wins that you learn will become repeatable things that you can put into place. And listen, you're gonna hit strides where some things are working really well, and then you're gonna back it all the way up and you're like, what happened? It's like I hit a brick wall, but being able to communicate that um that clearly. Well, skip before we end today's call, I love this little wild career ride that you went on, right? So I want to go back. I think your story's kind of too good. I think contractors love to hear this, but um, you know, what was your first real marketing win that you can remember?
SPEAKER_00:Well, my first the my my very first marketing win um was I was 16 and I was a copywriter and I ended up getting uh someone had submitted my thing to the South Carolina Broadcasters Association ended up winning the SCVA Star Award, which was like a big deal.
SPEAKER_01:Oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_00:But um it was also sort of a that was a big deal for two reasons. One, it was nice to actually win an award and all that stuff, especially at that young of an age. But the other piece of it was that that client canceled um off of that campaign, totally unrelated. And that when I dug into it, I ended up realizing um that that campaign didn't perform. And I so here I was accepting an award for a campaign that didn't produce results, and so that dichotomy just sort of stuck with me forever of like, okay, I'm not gonna chase awards anymore. It's it and instead of uh had me sort of like hyper focused on like. Like, I don't know, that that was like a pivotal pivotal moment in my uh in my career because I was like, hey, that's cool. But also that campaign didn't produce, so you shouldn't be given awards for that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so this is interesting. Yes, yes, absolutely. Well, I love that. I think that's so fun. But you're right, like and I see this all the time. I I'll look and I'm like, they have that contractor on a national stage that that has had a phalanx a company for three years. So it's an interesting approach. Exactly. And then skip how if people are interested in what you do and how you do it, how can they reach out to you?
SPEAKER_00:Uh the best way would be uh email info at um draftmediapartners.com uh or info at draft advertising.com. Both those go to the same place. And uh I would say that's the that's the best way.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. And then what can you help them do? Like what problem can you solve for most of our contractors?
SPEAKER_00:The biggest thing that we so we started off as dynamic response advertising forecast technology or draft technology, which uh was the immediate planning tool that we sold uh as a software as a service to agencies. That was our sort of first go-to-market uh product before we had a number of people just be like, can you just do the ads as well? And so we ended up pivoting into that. But that is still, I would say, one of the most helpful tools is helping uh contractors figure out what should a cost per lead and customer acquisition cost for them be in their market, given their you know the size, scope, and scale. And so that is something that we do at no charge now because we hope that they love it and that they buy the campaign from us. But even if you don't, we can at least tell you what the numbers should look like.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I love it. So, all about customer acquisition cost. Basically, an audit. Perfect, perfect. Exactly. Okay, well, hey, Skip, thank you so much for like breaking down this chaos and just talking with me through all these cool things. Um, as you could tell, my head was down taking all these notes. I even put a note in my phone here about um reaching out to you to even possibly do a webinar soon because I would love to do a webinar just around cost of acquisition. Um, and that's I literally was texting my assistant like this would be such a great webinar because cust cost customer acquisition cost is so uh forgotten that people don't know how to do it. So, anyway, I'd love to talk more about that. So uh thank you so much. And guys, thank you for listening to another episode of From the Yellow Chair. Be watching for skipping my our webinar going to come out in the next couple of months, evidently. Absolutely. But thank y'all so much for listening to another episode. If you've loved what you heard, we would love for you to go give us a review, but uh continue to share us with others. Thank you so much for all the likes and follows that have happened lately. We are well on our way to 50,000 downloads. So keep pushing that for us. And thank y'all so much. Everyone have a great day and skip, thank you again.