Security Company Marketing That Actually Works in 2026 (SEO, AI & Lead Generation)

Most security companies are still marketing like it’s 2015. The best operators are already adapting to AI search, modern SEO, and smarter outbound systems.

In this episode of Entry & Exit, Stephen Olmon and Collin Trimble break down the marketing channels driving real growth for security companies today — from Google reviews and local SEO to AI optimization, outbound prospecting, and commercial lead generation.

They share what’s working inside Alarm Masters, including the SEO strategy that helped land one of the biggest projects in company history, how AI platforms are changing customer behavior, and the channels that completely failed for them.

Inside this episode:
→ Traditional SEO vs AI search optimization
→ How Google reviews impact lead flow
→ Outbound systems for commercial leads
→ Marketing channels that failed
→ Why tracking and attribution matter

🔗 More Entry & Exit — https://www.entryandexit.co/

Connect:
Stephen Olmon — http://x.com/stephenolmon

Collin Trimble — https://x.com/TXAlarmGuy

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Transcript

Google Still Matters

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Just because you know chat GPT is popular, people are still using Google every single day.

SPEAKER_00 0:06

They're even using Beam, too.

Welcome and Episode Setup

SPEAKER_01 0:08

It's given boomer. But hey, guess who's in leadership positions all over this country? Yeah, that's right. Let's not ignore that. People were using keywords and trying to kind of like stuff all these different words into their website and get information. But the change is now people are looking for answers. And so that's a different way to build a website. None of it's gonna work if you're not tracking it. Welcome to Entry and Exit. My name is Steven Ullman, and I also have Colin Trimble with me, who is my co-host and my business partner. Today we're talking about the best marketing channels for security companies.

Marketing Wins and Goals

SPEAKER_02 0:48

Yep. Um, last week we attempted to record this same episode, and Steven and I could not get through it because we were laughing to ourselves about random inside jokes, and then every time we tried to start the episode and look at each other, uh, we would just start laughing. So uh we sat there for 25 minutes attempting to record this episode and it didn't happen. So we're gonna try again today. We're gonna try our darnedest to keep it together. Um, yeah, we are we want to talk marketing today because there's been some recent wins for us. And um we we recently did a board meeting, and so we kind of do a really deep dive quarterly audit on our marketing numbers and sort of what's working. And we've also had some like serious leads uh come through some of these marketing channels. We're like, man, this is a really good time to kind of talk through some of this marketing channel um activity that we're seeing and what's working for us. And Steven, why don't you kind of lay out what you think we should talk about in terms of channels today?

Website Investment Pays Off

Traditional SEO Big Deal

SPEAKER_01 1:50

Yeah, we'll talk about the channels that are working right now, maybe some things that we've tested or want to go back to. Yeah. Um, and I think one thing is kind of a high-level comment is some people kind of conflate or mix up sales and marketing. And so I think it's important to kind of define uh how we think about that. And so we'll we'll be kind of clear along the way of kind of where we think about the sales team or the sales department kind of picking up in that process. Um so the the first thing that has been a huge win, like if we just zoom out and if we could pick one thing, we have heavily invested in our website, so we've worked with a great outside vendor, and they have just crushed it, frankly. So um our kind of like web traffic monthly over the last 13 or 14 months is up, I think 7x. Um, it's it's like uh maybe even higher than that. And we've seen the the the fruit of that, and so you know that's you know, people say SEO, well, with the rise of you know all these um different LLMs, chat GPT or Claude Perplexity, there's a big shift there, but there's still an immense amount of kind of traditional SEO value to derive. So I would not ignore that. It's really kind of a both and and we'll we'll jump into that. Um, also what we've done from a local SEO perspective, which is probably there's a couple different elements of that uh that's been working. Um, we do some things on kind of the cold outbound marketing side, um, some referral things that we do, um, vendor partners, things like that, where we get some some leads. Um, so we'll we'll talk about that. Um, and also some things that haven't really worked, um, and and maybe one or two items that we're thinking about coming up. So um diving in more specifically to SEO, I think that one, like when I say that out loud, it makes me feel like it's 2015. Like, how are we still talking about SEO in the traditional sense? But because we track all of this very uh very closely, we can tell that we just closed one of the largest projects in our company history, hundreds of thousands of dollars from a traditional SEO lead that came in through an organic search, flowed to a relevant page, they came inbound, and over the course of a few weeks we ended up. Uh, how long was that sales cycle?

SPEAKER_02 4:26

It was kind of long. I think it took us, I think the lead came in and we were closed five uh four and a half months later. It was a longer project.

SPEAKER_01 4:36

Oh, it was a little bit longer.

SPEAKER_02 4:38

Yeah, but it was a huge project. I mean, we were out from when they came inbound, we were on the phone with them within 10 minutes, and then we were out there within you know 48 hours. But in terms of it closing, it took four and a half months. It was a longer, I mean, it was a big deal.

SPEAKER_01 4:53

Yeah, and and hopefully we crushed that project, and I think there might be more there. So the value from that lead from like a lifetime value perspective could definitely end up being in the seven figures. So that's like a really good reminder to me. You know, it's not the only deal that we've closed, but from you know, that type of um channel, but it's a good reminder that man, just because you know chat GPT is popular, people are still using Google every single day.

SPEAKER_00 5:21

They're even using Bing. Ooh. Yeah, what's Bing?

Search Shifts to LLMs

SPEAKER_01 5:25

Like, yeah, it's true. So um, especially that like 50-year-old plus segment is still is using Bing Song. That gives that gives boomer. It's given boomer, but hey, guess who's in leadership positions all over this country? Yeah, that's right. You know, so let's not ignore that. So um, but but then there is this rise, significant rise in search shifting to and growing in you know, LLMs, like these new kind of AI platforms that you can chat with, and um, and that really is more like historically you were people were using keywords and trying to kind of like stuff all these different words into their website and give information, but the change is now people are looking for answers, and so that's a a different way to build a website, that's a different way to construct your entire um uh strategy essentially to attract that type of search and be relevant in in those different platforms. And um, I just saw a statistic, what was it? Um I think that the on the on the B2B side, I think it's nearing 40% um of searches have shifted to LLM. So yes, consumers are using it, but you know, B2B, like the the people that are um you know decision makers and they've got AI in their hands, like and they're using these platforms just like we are. You know, you just said to me before we started recording that you're looking something up. And okay, I'll let you all your thunder, you know. But Colin's using these things too, I think. Yeah, um, that you were like, you know, yeah, I Googled, you know, well, I didn't Google it, I used Claw, but you know what I mean. So uh it's it's changing.

Quick Guide to LLM SEO

SPEAKER_02 7:15

Is that a funny paradigm? Isn't that funny that like uh and I I didn't even I didn't even think about it, I was just like, yeah, I Googled it. And I was like, well, first of all, shout out to Google for becoming like the house name, the Kleenex of looking something up on the internet, right? It's like I Googled it, uh, but I didn't Google it. I used Claude and I have it like, you know, like a widget or whatever on my phone. It was just like bam, and it it popped up. And so I just I think that that's a really interesting thing. And by the way, I think that um it's worth spending just like can you give us the two and a half minute summary on how a company, easy lift, can optimize their website for LLM marketing? I know there's like a ton of YouTube videos, nobody's watching those. Like, yeah, what is what is the like two-minute summary? I've heard people say that you can put like a txt file on your website or whatever, and then it's like read me, AI, you know, there's some stuff. So, like, what is what's the two and a half minute summary on that?

Local SEO and Reviews

SPEAKER_01 8:16

I would say that if you are not already owning SEO yourself internally from a traditional sense, I would not necessarily encourage you to try to own AI first LLM-based search yourself, necessarily. Yeah. Um, that that might be kind of slamming your face against a wall. So if you already are owning that internally and you have like a skill set, someone on your team or yourself, like then yes, like you can reconstruct pages to be more answer driven. Nearly every single page on your website needs to have unique FAQs that are relevant. Um, I'm not gonna get into some of the like uh technical file uploading like you're talking about. Yes, there are different more technical strategies there, but it is kind of a reorienting all of the verbiage and content around your site to think about what are the answers that my prospects or customers are looking for. Um, and so that's the the big shift I'd say in terms of approach. Um, and there are softwares out there that you can try to kind of do plug and play. I would say that's a little hit and miss. Um again, that just depends on how technical you're let's be self-on like honest and self-aware. So um, if you are like, man, I don't even know how to spell AI, then I might consider working with someone to make sure that you don't get left behind. Different LLMs prioritize different things. You've seen the rise of uh Reddit being relevant, Yelp actually being uh there's evidence that Yelp is heavily considered, uh, which is kind of funny. Um directories, like raw data that can go be scraped and consumed by these LLMs. Um they're not necessarily looking at review data on Google. They're not actually considering that because that's not that's like Google's proprietary data, and they're not wanting to base their results on what is essentially the legacy competitor, right? So they're going and looking at the rest of available data. So it is uh a big difference. Uh traditionally, just backlinks, like obviously having um other web properties that have a lot of authority pointing to you, always a good thing. So yeah. Um anyway, so we we started investing in that last year uh specifically, and it's been paying off. So you kind of have this three-pronged SEO approach. One is traditional SEO, um, and traditional strategies and uh different like technical ways of setting up your website or you know, backlinks or anything like that. There is like kind of additional things to do and improve and change, modify for LLMs to um reference you and kind of like push you up in those results or suggest you as maybe the right solution for someone who you know is looking for an answer. Um, but then there's also local SEO, which is still very much alive and well, which most typically you're thinking about local directories. Um, you know, I I want you to be on listed on Chamber of Commerce and you know, all these different like local sites that can reference your business. That's great for local search, but Google My Business is still king today, yeah, on local SEO. And so you want to be posting pictures and updates and responding to every review. If you get spam reviews, you want to fight those, and um, you can actually request Google to take those down. Um, and so there's all sorts of kind of management of your Google My Business profile that you want to kind of dive into if you're not. So that's kind of like three-prong SEO. We are focused on all three of those, and it's been paying off.

SPEAKER_02 12:14

Yeah, I think the the hardest thing too for a lot of folks is understanding that really the most powerful driver, at least today, is Google reviews. It's such a massive influence on your SEO. And um it's also just I mean, a lot of people still use it. A lot of people still look at uh Google reviews. It is sort of the gold standard for how well is your service, and it is just set the expectation if you haven't already, like it's impossible to fight bad reviews. Like you, you can't. It is they're always it's like a credit card, they're always gonna side with the the consumer. I mean, there there is some ways, and you can a one-off scenario so it's very clearly spam and you can provide proof that this is not a customer or whatever, but like right Google's not motivated, they don't want to spend time on that. That's not where they want to allocate resources, is arbitrary, you know, trying to figure out your disputes with customers. So they're just gonna always default to the customer. So it's really tough. You should have a Google My Business account. And by the way, if you're acquiring businesses, you're gonna want to, you're gonna want to get that locked as well, because that's a valuable asset.

Outbound Prospecting Engine

SPEAKER_01 13:22

That's true. Yeah, especially if you're more residentially focused. Um, I would say it's even more utilized that consumers are looking at those reviews. It's relevant for both, but um, there's definitely a difference. You know, obviously we are uh we've talked a lot that we're more kind of commercially focused. We still do serve um hundreds of residential customers every month, but um there are uh uh a bit of a different strategy. Um, you know, if I was selling pest control to homeowners, I'd probably be running meta ads all day long, every day, just scaling that really hard. Um, whereas since we're focused more commercially, which I'm gonna go into kind of uh a couple other channels here in a second, um, that might be different. So um, you know, what else is working? So we, and and you can kind of speak to this because you've helped own some of it, but um, we have long kind of uh looked for uh data that maybe people aren't finding or getting themselves typically or utilizing for um new businesses or just businesses that may be relevant for us. So we have had kind of a um whether we've done it through a vendor or we've now doing it ourselves, like uh going outbound, kind of outbound cold email or outbound calling, trying to identify new prospects that we'll send marketing emails to.

What Failed and Final Tracking

SPEAKER_02 14:46

Yeah. Yeah, we so one of the things that we're looking for is creative or uh leads that come from creative sources that are around a compelling event. So one thing is um new businesses that are filing for like a permit, basically, to become a their new businesses through the comp controller's office and they're setting up a new entity. Um, that's publicly available data that can be scraped, and it's challenging at scale to do that if you don't have um a tool to help you do that. And we do. And so we use that to go find the businesses that fit our ideal customer profile. And then what we do is we go enrich those accounts to find the actual contact information, and then we do high volume outbound email, which by the way, we would consider high volume outbound email a marketing channel. And then we go outbound on those to set appointments and drive them through to the sales funnel to create a sales lead. So that's another great option is a high volume outbound that uh I think is a easy lift and is a immediate way to shove leads into your um into your pipeline. You it's just kind of like everything else. It's like if the quality of it is gonna depend on one, the vendor you use, and B, the amount of context and thought that you give to that vendor about like who is your target market, what is the ask, what who is the role, etc. The more information and better context you give to that vendor, or if you try to do it yourself, the more that you have that dialed, the higher success you're gonna have. So yeah, Steven, I want to I want to close out on just quickly because I don't want to skip over this. Is like, what is the stuff that we have tried that has not worked? Like, what is the stuff that like you would say did not work for us? Maybe it worked for other people, but just didn't work for us.

SPEAKER_01 16:28

I would say two things come to mind. Um, one, we've because we are more commercially focused, we we've tested on the residential side some direct mail, didn't really get a lot of results from that. I think if you are a heavily focused or entirely focused residential security company, residential alarm, then that makes a lot of sense. Um, and that really comes down to probably the creative that is actually like the design and the call to action in like an offer that you might be making. And that's just kind of like an ABC test, right? Like you just want to be trying to find like the optimal mailer to send. So maybe you test it on a single zip code and you're trying to learn and then scale that over the course of time as you kind of find like a winning offer, winning creative, that sort of thing. Um on the commercial side, we haven't really done any direct mail testing, but the residential test that we did didn't really pan out, and we just chose to spend money in other places, so we've gone away from that. I like the idea of chunky mail. I don't know if you're familiar with this, but um, the idea of chunky mail is like low volume, high ticket. And so if we identified like, you know, 20 customers in Houston that we could potentially sell seven figures of services to on an annual basis, and then you mail them something like custom to them that is like really large or kind of an odd size to where like their assistant could just like not throw it in the trash. Yeah, like what is this? It's heavy or whatever it may be, lots of different ideas. I think it'd be fun to try chunky mail for us on the commercial side, but not like normal direct mail. Yeah, and then um last year we tried to run a Google Ads paid uh Google Ads test, and we just weren't quite set for it. Like we didn't have enough tracking in place. I don't think we had planned that campaign with enough kind of rigor and testing. And so after a couple months, we said, hey, let's stop, let's slow this down. I think later this year we're gonna go back to that. We're in a better place from a technology and tracking perspective and can do that with a little more depth. Um, and so I do think that commercial security companies can win on paid, but you have to be really disciplined and have like all of the tracking set up from day one to be able to um get enough ROI out of it. So we'll come back to that one for sure. And then if you're more residentially focused, I do think you should be using Google LSAs. Um, and and that's really true of any residential uh kind of home services type business. I think LSAs have to kind of be a part of your mix uh from a marketing channel perspective. Um, and then the the last thing I'll say is um none of it's gonna work if you're not tracking it. Yeah. Like typically, like you're just not gonna win here if you're not watching it, testing it, improving it. And so if you have that talent internally, awesome. You know, hold those team members or yourselves accountable to KPIs that you come up with that make sense um to track through to be profitable, um, because we don't want to just spend money to spend money. And then um, if you don't have that talent or ability internally, then you need to have a partner that can. And we've had to do that because whether we didn't have the skill or the time, we needed to find good partners, and we've done that. And um, so yeah, that'd be kind of like my my final encouragement.

SPEAKER_02 19:54

Yeah, I agree. And if if anybody has any questions about who we're using for partners or whatever, we're happy to give you recommendations. Just hit us up, uh, info at, and we'll make those recommendations for you. Happy to do that. Uh, if you like this content, hit the subscribe button, give us a like. If you've got a question that we can double tap, like we will. If we see a comment and we feel like, hey, this is worth reviewing, we'll bring it back up in the next episode and be like, hey, we saw a comment on this. Like, so let us know. Thanks for listening. We appreciate it. Have a great week.