Push Past the Usual Marketing

Ever feel like you're doing all the right marketing things but still hitting a ceiling in your home inspection business? You're not alone. 

In this exploration of innovative marketing strategies, we dive deep into how Coco Chanel's revolutionary approach to fashion provides a perfect blueprint for home inspectors looking to stand out. What made Chanel remarkable wasn't that she completely shattered conventions—she simply bent them in ways that felt both novel and familiar. She designed pants for women when they only wore dresses, but maintained femininity in the design, creating something revolutionary that still felt accessible.

This same principle applies perfectly to our inspection businesses. When we follow standard marketing playbooks—regular social media content, professional websites, office presentations—we can build successful companies up to a point. But breaking through plateaus requires thoughtful innovation. The most successful inspectors I've encountered find that sweet spot between the familiar and the novel, like the southern inspector who became his market's go-to professional by offering radon testing when no competitors did.

The conversation explores practical ways to implement this "Chanel approach" in your business through both service offerings and marketing presentation. We examine when to innovate (start with just 10% of your marketing), how to identify opportunities others miss, and—crucially—how to avoid innovations that seem exciting but lack market demand. For every successful Coco Chanel, countless others failed by introducing concepts people weren't ready for.

Ready to break through your business plateau? Subscribe now to continue this journey of professional growth, and share your own innovative inspection marketing successes with our community!

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*The views and opinions expressed in this podcast, and the guests on it, do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Inspector Toolbelt and its associates.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Marketing Like Coco Chanel
• 1:29 Coco's Innovation: Bending Convention
• 4:12 Novel Service Opportunities for Inspectors
• 8:31 Creative Marketing Approaches
• 13:07 Warning: Innovation Has Limits
• 14:47 Closing Thoughts and Call to Action

Transcript

Ian Robertson
Hey, there IT crowd. Ian Robertson here with another episode of Inspector Toolbelt Talk. So today I wanted to talk about a unique subject. We're taking a little bit of a break from the report stuff that we've been talking about lately, for those who are just tuning in, for the past few months, we've been actually most of this season, we've been talking about AD optimizer, inspection report, report writing and things like that. Wanted to take a little bit more of a 10,000 mile high view of something that's important to all of us, which is marketing. So I wanted to talk a little bit about marketing like Coco Chanel. 

So I was just reading about Coco Chanel, really interesting, historical figure. A lot of our modern marketing techniques actually stem directly from her. We're not going to get into the nitty gritty of it, but it's amazing how she changed how marketing happens worldwide. So those who don't know Coco Chanel, it's the perfume, you know, like Chanel N°5. So how Chanel started, Coco, however you want to call her, was she started in a monastery or some sort of convent, and then when she got out, she wanted to get into high society, so she became like a professional girlfriend. It wasn't, I don't know what it was, but she would live with these rich men, was kind of treated like a servant, but she got to be involved with, you know, high society. One day she wanted to break a convention, but not break it, but just bend it a little bit. So she'd started to design clothes that looked more like men's clothes, but for women, keep the femininity of it, while at the same time, you know, making pants so that women didn't have to wear a dress and ride side saddle. You know, they could move around freely and be comfortable, but she made it pretty, you know, women loved it, and it exploded. So there's a couple of aspects of that that we'll talk about, including how she got into perfumery that apply very much to our home inspection business and really any business out there. 
First of all, she created novelty. Now, the reason this podcast came up is I was talking to a friend of mine who's a home inspector, and we were having this conversation, and he asked, Ian, what could I be doing different? And I know he's listening, so hey, how you doing? But he was following the right pattern. And we talk about that a lot in this podcast. We'll talk about, it's the formula. Do this over and over again, and it will work, and it does, but it only gets us so far. Sometimes we hit a plateau, and when we hit a plateau, we have to look back at the 10,000 mile high view and look at, are we being enough of Coco Chanel, or are we being like everybody else? So everybody else, at the time, they did fashion, you know, normal, like all the dresses basically looked the same, but they might change the material or the ribbon or something like that, and it all looked the same. 

We can fall into that pattern very easily with our inspection marketing. We produce a video each day. We have a great website, we go to real estate offices and do presentations, and we do all the stuff that we know works. And it brings us to a point, in fact, this home inspector is doing better than most people in a very difficult market, and will do better than most people in a very difficult market when we have those things set in a way that people like according to what is called convention. But what if we want to go beyond that? To go beyond that, we need to not break convention, but bend it. To do that, we need to come up with something a little bit more novel than the status quo. And there's a couple ways we can do that. 

Number one, we can do it by services. So that's one that we always talk about. And for me, I'll admit it, it was a lot easier for me when I was younger, 20 years ago, starting my first inspection company. To be novel, I started using electronic reports. And people were like, oh, no, no one will ever want that. They want paper. Now, look at us. You know, I was one of the first people to do that. My inspection reports on site, one of the first people to do that. When we wanted to add on Wood Destroying Insect, there were some people doing it, but not a lot. So pretty much all the stuff we do now was novel back at the time, but I had to get out of my comfort zone and do those novel things. Some of it broke convention, but most of it just bent it. I'm still providing a report, but it's, you know, electronic. Now it gets a little bit more difficult because, you know, in an industry, there's only so many different things that you can add, and then it's kind of done, like Chanel might have even thought that before she came out with her line, she might have thought, there's only so many dresses we can make. So, you know what she did? She made pants and made them feminine. So she took something that people were already familiar with and bent it to something else. Now, imagine if she had made like modern swimwear for women like that we have now. People would have been aghast. Everybody would have lynched her. She would have been exiled, called, you know, whatever that word is about being, you know, loose or whatever, because they weren't ready for it. So she took what they already knew and bent it. So how can we do that with our business? How can we get above a plateau of doing the status quo and maybe introduce something that's novel, maybe not necessarily to the industry, but to our area? 

Well, a good example for what we did was septic inspections. We talk about that a lot, awesome service, still my favorite service, but in our area, nobody was doing septic inspections, except for the septic companies. So when we decided, hey, we're going to do it, there was a lot of pushback. People are like, whoa, no, you can't do that. But at the same time, it also kind of made sense, because we're already there doing the home inspection and septic systems part of the home. So it didn't break convention. It wasn't like we were saying, hey, we offer home inspections and we'll change your oil in your car. It wasn't so different. And it became easier to introduce it to people, and it went viral. It's one of our biggest services, and all of our competitors, or a lot of our competitors, I should say, now offer it. Can we find a service like that, one that's known to the industry, or is kind of, sort of part of our inspection but not really. A good example is in our area, I like it when people tell me, well, we don't offer that in our area. Nobody does that in our area. Inspector I know down south, where people, quote, unquote, don't do radon testing, all of a sudden, started offer radon testing. And people are like, nobody's going to pay for that. And now it's one of his best services. People will hire him specifically because he's the only guy that does radon testing. Radon testing has been around for decades, however long, I don't know. But because now he is the only guy in that area that offers it, he introduced something novel, and we all like something novel but that's also familiar. So familiar in the fact that, oh yeah, I'm a real estate agent from upstate New York, and I remember we used to do that all the time. This feels good. Now the word spreads when buyers come in from other areas. Oh yeah, we're familiar with that. Or, you know, people are like, oh yeah, I heard about that on a TV commercial about radon. We're taking something familiar and pushing convention. We're bending it. So that's one way to do it with our services. Another way is we've talked about things like water treatment systems. Now, it's a part of the home so people know it. But can we also be the guy that says, hey, listen, I became certified for this type of equipment, or two to three different types of equipment, so now I can come and inspect those things. And that's a whole different conversation about recurring revenue from that, which is a really great idea, but those are just some things we can come up with a completely novel idea, and maybe you'll change the inspection industry. Maybe you'll just completely blow everybody's mind. But realistically, most of us are going to take an idea from another area of the country or the world and apply it to us. 

For instance, we had Tony Escamilla on a few weeks back, and he talked about some of the new things that are coming out in his area, you know, like those fire inspections for homes and balcony inspections out in California are still a big thing, and all sorts of things. Can we take those principles and maybe bend them to our area? I'm not saying those things specifically, but if there's a service in our area that hasn't been introduced, maybe we're the guy to do it. And especially, people are like, oh, the barrier to entry is too thick. Like, I always hear that about septic inspections, oh, the barrier to entry is too thick. You know, there's training, and then I have to get this certification, that certification. All the better. Low barrier to entry is not what we want. We want to do the things that nobody else is willing to do, because that's great business.

The other way to create novelty is in our marketing itself. So we talked about, you know, we're making a video each day, and we're posting regularly on different social media platforms and all that other stuff. We're doing everything that everybody else is doing, which is great, because that will get us up to everybody else's high level. You want to be a high level company or just a busy single inspection firm, you're going to do those things that you know work that get you there, but eventually, what if we want to go beyond that? So some things that we can do in our marketing is find ways that are familiar but change a little bit. So for instance, could we get a little comedic with our postings, not overly because we still want to have a professional air or a different type of video? So for instance, there's this singer that I like, and he started posting videos about strange stuff, like in his backyard, and nobody else was doing it, but you know what? They were really entertaining. And sometimes in the background, he'd have his music playing at the end of the video, or something like that. And it really drew me to him. He took something familiar, video marketing. Now, convention would say, if you're a musician, you're going to play music. Here's our new song. Here's why I wrote this song and talk about the song and talk about the lyrics and do interviews. But he's just like, no, I'm gonna do something completely random, and it fit his personality, and it really worked. He's going viral, which kind of stinks for me, because I kind of liked him before he was viral, that kind of thing. But can we do the same thing? Can we look at our videos that we're making in our social media posts and say, what can I do that's a little different without busting convention? So maybe keep 90% of my posts where I know they work, where I know that I can keep on level with all my competitors, but then 10% maybe I'll experiment a little bit. Maybe I will do a series on the shoeless home inspector, you know, like, you know, stepping on Legos in people's houses, when people tell you to take off your shoes instead of wearing little booties. Or, you know, I mean, you can take that from any industry, but you can do, everybody was into roofies for a little while. You know, the roof selfie. We have to qualify that, but, um, do something a little different. Experiment. Take two or three videos, and, you know, kind of throw in some of our own personality, like, oh, hey guys, this is fun. I know a home inspector that started making quote, unquote music videos, and I remember this one video still cracks me up. He was doing that whole 80s hair blowing in the wind thing, but he was doing it dancing with his head over the air conditioning so his hair was blowing. I don't know why it was hysterical, but it was very effective marketing for him, because he was still a home inspector, being a little bit funny, talking about air conditioning units. It was fantastic. 

Take convention, and bend it a little bit, experiment. For me, it was extremely effective. And I will say it was way easier in my day. People didn't do social media, so when I started doing social media, it just clicked. I could do any social media, and people are like, wow. Nowadays you have to be a little bit more niche. Think about novel services. Not so novel services, but ones that maybe aren't in our area yet. Think about new ways to make our marketing. Maybe our office presentations can change a little bit. Pull out of the PowerPoint and pull out even some of the suggestions that I've made on this podcast. I remember Nick Gromicko saying one of his most effective office presentations is, and forgive me, everybody's gonna bust on me after this, but I was literally looking at them just a week or two ago, and I still can't remember their names. They look like styrofoam Legos for foundations, but he would buy a bunch of those, and he'd build a Styrofoam foundation in front of everybody in just a couple of minutes and show them how awesome this was. I don't see anybody building Lego houses for people. You know, I see home inspectors doing really great office presentations, and getting asked back, posting it online, and, you know, people loving it. So this goes slightly contrary to what I'm always saying, follow the formula, but the formula will get you to a high point, but eventually we need to be a little bit novel, little bit novel in our approach, little bit novel in maybe even how we do business. We had a couple people on the podcast that do the same business that we do, but we they did novel ways of going about it. Maybe instead of expanding a large company into multiple areas, we start a couple of smaller companies that work hand in hand with each other. Think outside the box.

But I'm going to end this podcast on a warning. One of the reasons that we say don't think too far outside the box is that is the downfall of so many people. For every Coco Chanel, there was somebody that just came out with something that people didn't want or weren't ready for. Just because we think it's a good idea does not mean that it is. I'll give just a couple of examples. Everybody thinks that thermal imaging is a novel idea, that thermal imaging is going to make them rich. It's not. Everybody does it. Blower door testing, talked about that before, in some areas. Yeah. Good side gig. Not novel, not new, not changing. We had Mike Marlow on, there's a good example of a novel idea. And maybe we're one, one of the only home inspectors that'll start doing 203(k) loan consultations in our area, and now we have a corner on the market. And then maybe some real estate agents are like, I never thought about offering that to people. I can show whole new set of homes. I can find a whole new set of buyers, and you'll be my guy. That's a good example. Another bad example is, you know, everybody and their brother has tried maintenance inspections. I would love it if maintenance inspections took off. They're not. They haven't. People have spent millions of dollars on trying to get it to happen. Large companies, InterNACHI, small companies with such modest success that I consider it a failure. It's just nothing anybody wants. So don't take ideas that we like and try to force it into that hole. And that's why I'm always warning people, stick with what works, experiment with what is a bit novel without going too far outside the box. But hopefully this helps, a little 10,000 mile high view on marketing, and hopefully you all go read up on Coco Chanel, she actually changed modern marketing for all of us in ways that we may not realize. Great read, and we'll look forward to seeing all of you next time on Inspector Toolbelt Talk.

Outro: On behalf of myself, Ian, and the entire ITB team, thank you for listening to this episode of Inspector Toolbelt Talk. We also love hearing your feedback, so please drop us a line at info@inspectortoolbelt.com.

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*The views and opinions expressed in this podcast, and the guests on it, do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Inspector Toolbelt and its associates.