The Google Business Profile Playbook for Trades Lead Flow | Aaron Husak

I’ll be going live with Aaron Husak to unpack what actually drives consistent leads for trades and construction businesses right now. We’re getting practical on Google Business Profile optimisation (and why it can matter more than your website), what “consistency” really means to Google, when Google Ads makes sense (and when it becomes a money pit), and how AI is changing the way customers compare quotes and choose contractors. If you’re serious about lead flow without chaos, you’ll get plenty to steal from this one.

You’ll take away

• Why Google may trust your Business Profile more than your website
• The tiny inconsistencies (hours, address, phone) that quietly kill local rankings
• When Google Ads is worth it, and when LSA is the better move
• What a landing page needs to turn clicks into calls and bookings
• How AI will soon be analysing your proposals before a customer decides

Guest: Aaron Husak
Aaron Husak is the founder of Sequoia GEO, where he helps contractors improve local visibility and lead flow through Google Business Profile optimisation, smarter content, and generative engine optimisation strategies. After scaling his own multi-division home services business and earning four consecutive Inc. 5000 rankings, he now works with trades businesses on building marketing systems that stand up in the AI era.

• https://www.sequoiageo.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/ahusak/

Host: Wes Towers
Wes is the founder of Uplift 360 and host of Built. Trusted. Chosen. He helps trades and construction companies be built, trusted, and chosen online through high-performing websites and Search Everywhere Optimisation.

https://uplift360.com.au/

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Transcript

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Welcome to Build Trusted Chosen, the podcast for leaders and marketers in trades and construction. Hosted by WizTalents from Uplift 360. Okay, hi there, Aaron, welcome to the show, Built Trusted, Chosen. If you could just tell the audience a little bit about your background and who you are, we'll unpack it as we progress. But uh just to set the foundation, um, let us know who you what you're up to these days. Sure, absolutely. And you know, thank you very much for having me on. Appreciate you uh having me on the show to you know talk about kind of everything that's going on with uh marketing and uh maybe touch on AI these days. But yeah, my background um actually way back 2006, I started in solar back then. Um I was in the solar industry for a number of years, and then the you know financial crisis of uh 2007 and eight hit, uh got laid off. That was a bizarre experience in my 20s. Um kind of bounced around for a while, and mostly in the energy efficiency space. Um, started some other businesses and then ended up starting uh my previous business, Balanced Comfort, in 2012. And back then we were doing home energy audits, energy assessments, we're really trying to figure out why a house was not working properly. And um, we're here in Fresno, California, so we don't have very severe winters, but we have pretty brutal summers, and so if we don't have 25 days over 100 degrees, it's it's a bizarre uh summer for us, and so we get pretty war. Um and so I actually had that business for a while, started to grow it. Um, and then in 2017, I had an opportunity to uh get an insulation contractor's license. So we added insulation work to the business at that time, um, and then we started doing some work for a weatherization program through the local utility. And then 2020 hit. So 2019 things have really started to take off. I'm thinking that 2020 is gonna be a banner year. We're gonna just get out there to crush it. Uh and then you start to hear things happening in China, of you know, the flu going around and it being a real problem. Well, you know, we had gone through SARS before, and you don't think too much of it, and then all of a sudden, you know, um March of that year, everything shuts down, uh, 2020. And so we actually at the time we were doing quite a bit of work through the weatherization program. We had 25 employees, and everything came to a standstill because that program said we don't want you in people's homes. So I mean, understandably, right? Um, they didn't want to take on the liability, and and certainly we didn't want employees or customers getting sick. Um, so we uh pivoted at that point in time, and we actually we were not doing HVAC before prior to uh March of 2020, and we actually decided, okay, well, this is an essential service, and these people can still operate. I didn't want to lay everyone off at that time. I wanted to continue the business and and figure out a way to keep moving forward, and so we we pivoted into HVAC, um, and that was a you know a pretty neat experience. Um between March and April, we essentially launched the air conditioning division of Balanced Comfort, and it started growing very quickly. Um it was a pretty wild ride. So we grew HVAC uh weatherization eventually came back in 2020. We added plumbing in 2021, and then uh a year after that we added restoration to the business, and so we grew very quickly. We were actually on Inc. 5000 uh four years in a row. Um, our peak position was number 511, and um, so I can you know anyone that's growing a business very fast, I can empathize with them and some of the challenges that come up that you didn't expect or didn't even know those were challenges and all the things that you run into do along the way. So yeah, that that's that's in a nutshell, that's uh my background there. Yeah. Well, a brilliant background um with all the obviously the the trade-related work to to set yourself up and obviously growing um really really fast and and solidly with uh getting recognized for that. It sort of set you up for understanding how how to grow a business and and marketing and so on. So what we what do you think some of the key learnings were back then for for growth um that accelerated your growth? Yeah, that's a great question. So I've always been very interested in and focused on marketing. Um it's always been something that's really fun to me, something that I really enjoy uh playing with, dealing with, learning about. And so our business always had a very tight focus on marketing, um, really looking at what opportunities we could take on. At the same time for my business, I knew that I could not be the guy in the truck. I I wasn't going to be the guy going out to diagnose systems, installing systems, repairing systems. And so, right from the very beginning, my first hire was a technician that was also interested in doing install so that I could focus on the actual office and or the admin side. And that's the most common challenge I see when people get started. They want to start a business, but they're really just starting a job and being a technician role for themselves in their business, and then they get trapped because growing out of that is really once you fall into that trap, grow growing out of it is very challenging. Yeah, yeah. So we start with a skill set, um, and we we use that skill set. Uh that's why we got into typically a founder-led business will will have some form of uh trade or skill and take that to market, and so they know how to do the work, so they do the work. And so um, yeah, as you say, you can get trapped in there and it limits your capacity for for growth. Um yeah, so just having you you always just had the vision to to um expand to be something bigger, or what what was it was it your intention from the outset to grow something substantial? Uh no, I did not anticipate growing as quickly as we did. Um it was more growing out of necessity and to um reach the market that we saw in front of us, and and we would, you know, we would plan for okay, here's how much we want to grow, and then we would exceed those targets, and then it would just keep going, you know. So it was um, like I said, I think it had a lot to do with the fact that from day one there was an understanding that we were gonna bring people in to be out in the field as opposed to trying to be out in the field myself. I think that's a big difference than I see from a lot of other companies getting started. I'm gonna try moving my camera because the uh sun's just come up and uh we hit the lens here. I'm uh looking like I'm uh, you know, it's not great, but it's it's better. Sorry about that uh audience. It's um it's the uh just the sun has moved, you know, to the window point. Um yeah, so it's um and and moving into the the marketing that you do these days, and obviously that world, so you you had some transition times out of necessity sometimes, but opportunities as well um in the trades uh field, um, and to be able to pivot, everyone is talking about pivoting back back then um in COVID times, but you've had pivots along the journey as well, and so and now taking those learnings into a marketing standpoint, and and obviously marketing is is um transforming as well with AI. How's that all going for you these days? Uh I'm probably having too much fun with it, quite frankly. It's it's very exciting. I mean, there are so many things that I have not been able to do before because I'm not a coder. I'm I'm not a developer, right? I I don't uh not gonna sit down and learn Python um or anything like that. But the capabilities that anyone has now by spending time with the AI tools that are really inexpensive and widely available, um it gives you almost an unlimited opportunity to build, develop, create, unlike that we've ever had before. Um it's a very exciting time. And you know, we talked about pivoting. I mean, we're seeing so many things change so quickly right now. And you know, you've got to adapt to a new platform or software pretty quickly. Uh, it seems like every two weeks there's something new that I'm thinking, okay, well, I gotta learn this now. How am I gonna handle that? But um, yeah, it's a it's a challenge. I mean, sometimes it's um there's just so many opportunities. It's hard to pick which ones you're going to pursue. You know, there's so many shiny objects out there right now, and they're legitimately uh beneficial, uh, most of them. Um, but uh knowing what to apply and when to apply it and having that expertise, um, people need guidance in in all that kind of stuff. What do you see are the biggest um mistakes these days given the landscape? And I mean, we've got an abundance of information out there because it can be produced uh at the click of a button, um, and we don't even know if it's legitimately written by a person, if it's just produced by AI, if if anyone's even proofreaded or checked it in um the the information we can see, and even videos, there's so much uh that could be produced um with AI. Uh and it feels as though trust is eroded. How do we cut through that noise? And and what are the the key things that the key levers we can we can pull to create a great outcome? Yeah, no, that's that is a critical quote question right now, and and one that everyone needs to be paying attention to and how trust is eroding, because you know whether someone has experienced it or not, they're already feeling the effects of that. I I uh I responded to a guy earlier today that the email he had sent out was clearly automated, and it it um it was uh automated uh sender. It wasn't even his email address as the sender. And so he sent out an email to a group of people. Um we were at a networking event yesterday, and uh there's nothing inherently wrong with that, but you could just tell that it wasn't him writing it, and it just doesn't give you the same impression. And so I think it's important that we don't just let automation and or AI take over completely. Um the human interaction is still a critical element to our business and to building relationships. Um, there are definitely things that AI can assist with, but if you're gonna be putting content out there, you need to review what it is before you hit send at least one time. You know, um because once the cat's out of the bag, the excuse of oh, AI wrote that, no, that doesn't that doesn't work. You you put that out as if you published that, you know? And so it's really important for people to take ownership of whatever AI content they're generating like if it was their own. And I think there's some loss of responsibility there because you're thinking, well, Gemini wrote it for me, so therefore it must be, you know, whatever, you know, that can be a dangerous road to take. But uh, I think the other trap that's concerning is for you to go on Chat GPT or Gemini or whichever AI you prefer and converse with it, ask it questions. Well, what should I do about this? If you don't have a basis or knowledge in that subject, and you're just relying on chat or Gemini to be the expert, um, it may give you garbage and you won't know the difference. You won't be able to tell if what it's recommending to you is actually the best option. Um I think it presents so authoritively, doesn't it? And and it could be just making stuff up. So we still need to be experts in our fields for sure, and to check over things before the before they go out, as you say. It's um exciting and terrifying times, really. So I mean you work with a lot of local um uh tradespeople. We call them tradies here in Australia. So your plumber, your electrician, your roofer, um, you know, whatever it is, painter. Um what are some of the the best strategies for them as a as a sometimes a really tiny business, a small business? Um, what are some of the best ways to get uh leads flowing through the door? Good question. Um so my opinion and the research that I've done on this, um everyone needs to make sure that they've claimed and have optimized their Google business profile. I mean, that's that's number one. That is as much, if not potentially more important than your website. Uh the reason that I say that is because it's a Google product and Google trusts that product tremendously. They trust that more than they trust your website for sure. No, no question about it. And so if if you've got content, if you're regularly updating your Google Business Professor, if you're regularly getting genuine reviews from customers, um, all of those things are gonna lead to you being more trusted online. Um that's across the web, not just on Google Business Profile, not just on the Map Pack, but everywhere online. And so what we're seeing is a critical importance for companies, small and large, to l align almost exactly what's on their Google Business Profile with what's on their website? Yeah. So we cross the board so Google know exactly who you are and what you're doing and what you're up to. Um and there's often just people miss things that are key in their Google profile, the business profile. What are some of the because you're probably reviewing a whole bunch, what are some of the three things that people miss that really should they should think about um adjusting or adding to their to their business profiles? Yeah, so if it's if you're able to put it in Google Business Profile, you should have it on your website. So what am I talking about? The same phone number. Um the address has to match exactly. Writing out the word south as part of your street versus s, period is not the same to Google. Those are two different things. Yes, we know that it's the same thing, but Google is looking for exact match. Um hours. I I looked at an electrician, um, they're on the east coast of uh the United States, and they had three different sets of business hours between their Google business profile and two different locations on the website. And it's like at that point, you're trying to confuse Google. Like why are you doing this on purpose? Well, they just can't trust you, they can't trust anything that or any of your information, and therefore they don't want to send people to you because it's all out of out of kilter, um, which makes perfect sense. Yeah. Yeah. The um, and so you mentioned uh posting to there um fairly frequently. What are some of the ways people can update their profile? You know, people don't see Google Business Profile like a social media, but they should. So if you've got updates that you're regularly posting to social media, once a week, twice a week, whatever that is. Yeah, it doesn't need to be every day, but you want to show Google that you're active and you're doing things in the business. And the best way to do that is to post weekly on Google uh business profile. It could be a screenshot of a review, something that simple. It could be uh posting about um a water heater you installed or an air conditioning system we repaired. It you know, what it is is uh it needs to be relevant to your business, but you don't have to spend a ton of time trying to create, you know, perfect content. Uh you just need to put stuff out. Yeah. Well, you're probably producing the content maybe for social media. So um, and as you say, people don't think about it as social media, but it can it can function in a similar way, um, publishing that info. Yeah, are there tools that you use to syndicate the same uh piece of information across platforms? Or do you do it manually? Yeah, no. Um once you start dealing with multiple companies, multiple platforms, it it becomes pretty essential to start utilizing some of those tools. Um the one that I've worked with uh the most is actually GoHigh Level. And Go High Level has so much that it can do, but the social media planner that you can use on GoHigh Level is actually very powerful. And you would pay other services for just that social planner, where Go High Level actually gives you a lot more if you want to use it that way. So yeah, it's a full CRM and a whole bunch of other things. Um and so that you're uh you on sale uh resell that to people, or how does it work? Sure, so yeah. Yeah, I haven't gone as far as starting to set up like SaaS products or reselling, go high level at this point. It's more I'm using it for my clients to um to publish content out to multiple platforms at once instead of having to go through all of them. Um stats and feedback as well. So yeah, yeah, that's brilliant. Uh so you it's a done for you service for these, you know, these tradespeople are probably snowed under just getting the work done and and running around. It's it's one thing off their plate and it's getting done properly if you if you hire someone who knows what they're doing and starts to learn about the nuance of your own business and so on. Um Do you think sometimes people find it hard to hire some of them because they they feel as though someone like yourself might not understand their business um and they find it hard to delegate the those sorts of tasks? Or um is it you know, what's that sort of transition time and handover time when people are and maybe a small business and they haven't really um become familiar with handing on the the marketing aspects? Sure. No, there is um there's definitely a lot of trust in that relationship that has to be because you know you are at that point representing the business for them, and that that's a huge responsibility, you know. Uh as an owner, you know, we we had hired several different agencies, and unfortunately, you know, we would get frustrated after a period of time with either the performance or the results, and I think a lot of it had to do with communication, quite frankly. Um similar to working with a you know a residential air conditioning customer, um we would not get the feedback frequently enough, and so it just kind of left us wondering. And unfortunately, our nature is to go negative when we don't know what's happening, and um yeah, there there is definitely a lot of trust involved there. Um I think for companies that are looking to grow, it's just a decision for them on what can I handle, what what's my capacity for doing more, and and is there a value of working with someone who's got the experience to do it and then hiring a professional to do it? Yeah, got it, got it. And so there's the the posting to the Google business profile and making sure it's aligned with everywhere everything else that you've got published through your website and anywhere else, your social platforms, everything's consistent. Is the When's the right time to start uh leveraging pay-per-click, you know, Google ads and the like? Is that is that a great tip for most um trades businesses, or are there some that it just doesn't work for? Yeah, I would say that um in any trade or business where customers are searching for those services online, uh, Google Pay-Perclick is going to be a viable option. Um I I work with one company where they're actually launching a new product, and this is not a product that's available on the market. So you can't put it on, you can't advertise for it on Google because nobody knows the look for it. Yeah, no, I'm searching for the well, I don't know that for sure. That makes sense. Yeah, but um no, pay-per-click can be very effective. It's also very dangerous because you can spend a lot of money on pay-per-click and not necessarily get any kind of results. Um, so conversion tracking, setting that up properly, um, making sure that everything on your website um, you know, aligns with what you're advertising online. Because if Google sees that you're advertising for water heater repair and you happen to be sending them to a page that all it does is talk about electrical work, um, Google's gonna actually charge you more money, or they're not gonna send as many people to your site. Yeah. So it's you you gotta make sure your signals are right. Well, it's in everyone's best interest to make that landing page um as targeted as possible to the ad. So they've read the the ad uh and the next message should be super aligned to precisely what that ad was so it makes sense for people to take action. Do you um usually use like a landing page for that scenario, or um do you just make sure the home page is aligned? What's the best strategy, in your view, of of of making sure those um clicks convert into um a uh an inquiry? Yeah. Yeah, that's a great question. So landing page is always gonna be best. Optimized landing page is always gonna be best. There are some instances where using the homepage might be uh as good of a better option. If the website is relatively new, um you're gonna want to give uh Google a higher performing page or a page that's gonna have a higher quality score as a pay as opposed to um something that is you know either never seen before or has no backlinks and therefore you know the authority on that page may be lower. So um most of the time you're gonna want a landing page though. Yeah. And so what are some of the key things you think that really should be in a landing page to ensure you get the highest conversion possible? It's really about messaging and clarity, making sure that if the customer clicked on that ad for HVAC services, that it's very clear to that customer that HVAC services are are what you what you offer. Um, testimonials are also a key aspect to any landing page because you don't want to assume that customers have read your reviews. Yeah. So making sure that those testimonials are there and they're prominent. Um, I also really like uh sticky buttons and or phone numbers across the top. So as they scroll down, you make it nearly impossible for them to miss an opportunity to call uh or book an appointment, uh, send you a message. So those those are to me the the top elements of any landing page. Yeah, 100%. The uh call to action is is obviously all the clarity and the messaging, but that call to action. So people do it, do what you want them to do, phone or fill in the form or whatever it is. And I suppose the intent for the ad itself, so just thinking it through, so like an emergency style of work, so emergency plumber, for example, you've got a flood in your house because some pipe has burst. Well, the content and the message is going to be somewhat different because it's someone needs you right away, as opposed to something that's a more of a thoughtful approach where people might want uh a certain you know style or or you know um something that's a little bit not so urgent um but more thoughtful, maybe a higher higher ticket uh item, um, getting that balance um in those scenarios. So the um conversion rates, what are you typically seeing um from a Google ad campaign for a local a local company in the in the trades? What's the um what's kind of the expectation people should sort of benchmark against? Yeah, that is a tough question just because there are a lot of factors um that surround you know what you should expect for a conversion rate. Um you know, I was looking at one of our customers uh um earlier this week and and they were up in the 20% range, and I'm like, whoa, this is uh this is good. I would like to see more of this, you know. Um is there anything we can do to improve on this uh conversion rate? But typically the rates are are not uh are not that high from you know uh your impression to your click to an actual conversion. So yeah, uh I I think it would be I don't know that I can give you a benchmark on that number. I would I would rely more on case by case what what they've seen in the past and and what we can get it improved to. Yeah, yeah. It feels like to me, sometimes the Google ads uh um it's it's so easy to to make a loss if you don't get it right. Um and but once you start to think about, I mean, if you can break even almost and you and you think about the lifetime value of the customer as well, um if that's in fact, you know, there's ongoing service that you can provide. Um, you you get your foot in the door, there's there's all sorts of different ways to measure the success um or failure of the campaign. Um and getting those things um measured is is really important. Um you manage a a lot of these uh campaigns for for clients or do you manage it right through or do you set them up and and they manage it themselves? How how do you go about it? No, we we handle the management for them. Yeah. Yeah. Um I mean that part of our our structure is is to make sure that that's all taken care of. Uh I mean we have customers that are asking, like, well, can you set it up and then we'll you know we'll just manage it after it's set up. It's like, well, that's yeah, the management is really where the work starts, you know, setting it up. Just about anybody could set up an ad campaign, but if you're not understanding what changes need to be made or or responding to um what the traffic is doing appropriately, then then you're just gonna be wasting money at that point. Yeah. Yeah, it makes sense. And the the I guess the management fee, if the the campaign's too small, um the the the um costs um Yeah, it doesn't make sense. Doesn't make sense, yeah. So what what do you feel is that kind of that um tipping point where a budget is big enough to to warrant hiring someone to do the management of that? Sure, sure. Yeah, I mean if you're looking to spend over $2,500 a month on Google Ads, that's when it starts to make a lot more sense. Um if you're under that number, then you might be looking at um LSA instead of Google Ads, you know, which is a completely different avenue that most contractors can manage themselves if they choose to do so. Um so yeah, the the LSA is is definitely an important piece that is also you know connected to your Google Business Profile and your reviews on Google Business Profile display in in LSA, and so that you know kind of all pulls it back to how important your Google Business Professor. Yeah, yeah, 100%. And uh once you get to a a budget of decent size, I mean the additional um the benefit of the outcome pays for the management management fee itself, you know, so you you know that all that's the goal. So it makes makes practical sense once you've got a reasonable budget for these things. Um but I suppose to to recap, one of the key things you should do as a priority and everyone should do is to get their Google um business profile done right, and then they can uh scale it up, up and down if they need to for with the ads, um, get make sure everything's aligned. What what if there's it's been a great conversation, by the way, and there's what if there's a question I've missed, what would that question be and and how would you answer it? Well, we can open up a whole nother can of worms and and talk about AI and kind of work. That'll keep us here another half hour or an hour, any longer if we wanted to for sure. But yeah, just briefly, what what would you say to stick to that? I mean, I I think just being open to learning more about AI and and playing with it. Uh I know a number of people that I've talked to that are just kind of sitting on the fence and just kind of paying attention to what's happening but not utilizing it themselves. And I think it's important for everyone to start diving in and see what the power of it is and and what it could potentially do for your business. Not only that, but just understanding um, well, for instance, you know, what do you think will happen to your business if uh your customer, you go out and give them a quote for a HVAC repair um or HVAC replacement, either one. They take your proposal, they've gotten two other proposals, and then they dump them into chat and say, which of these proposals should I choose? How is this proposal gonna fare? I mean now all of a sudden you have uh intelligent software reading through all the legal language that no one ever reads. Yeah. You know, so that six-page proposal just got digested and summarized in ten seconds. And what's gonna happen when customers start leveraging AI to make those types of decisions? How how is your business gonna fare? And so those are some of the other questions that are interesting to see what's gonna happen. Yeah, absolutely, for sure. It's it's making it really easier to to compare Apples for Apples, so to speak, and and see w where there's differences in in proposals. I think it's always been the challenge with well, probably most in industries, but um in the marketing space, because what the what the way in which one company goes about things might be completely different to the next, and it's been incredibly difficult to compare quote to quote. But as you say, uh with the tools and tech these days, um, yeah, it's it's um it's changing a lot. It's a great conversation today, Aaron. How how can people find out more about what you're up to or how can they connect if they wish to do so? Sure, sure, yeah. Thanks for asking, and I I also appreciate the conversation. So my website is Sequoia Geo, and uh GEO is a generative engine optimization, uh kind of where we're headed. But um that's my website. I'm also very active on Facebook. Um I have done uh two workshops now that users can find on Facebook. Um one on generating more five-star reviews, which is critical for your business, and then the other one on actually optimizing your Google business profile. So they can check those out through uh either through my website or through my Facebook. Awesome. Well, I'll make sure to put those links in the show notes so people can find them nice and easy. And uh thanks again, Aaron. It's been great having us. Thank you. Thanks for listening to Built, Trusted, Chosen. Brought to you by Uplift360. Visit Uplift360.com.au