Ep 72 – Are You Buying Results, Rankings, Software, or Just Better-Sounding SEO?

We tackle one of the most confusing challenges contractors face when evaluating marketing agencies and services: understanding what they’re actually buying.

Are you investing in results, rankings, software, a marketing strategy, or simply a better sales pitch?

Based on a real-world contractor scenario, Amanda and Devon break down the marketing jargon, guarantees, and promises that often make it difficult to compare agencies apples-to-apples.

But also be cautious of the “easy button” mentality in marketing. Today’s buyers move across multiple platforms, from AI-powered search results and Google Maps to reviews, websites, social media, and referrals before making a decision.

Ultimately, this episode emphasizes that successful contractor marketing rarely comes from a single tactic or channel. Instead, it comes from a clear strategy, honest communication, strong tracking, consistent execution, and a marketing partner that understands how all the pieces work together.

🔑 Key Takeaways:
•Rankings, leads, appointments, revenue, and profit are not the same thing
• Ask whether an agency is providing strategy, implementation, software, reporting, or a combo of these?
• Be cautious of one-channel marketing solutions that promise to solve every business problem.
• Understand the difference between Google Maps, the Local 3-Pack, and organic search results.
• Read guarantees carefully and understand what responsibilities fall on you as the contractor.

Let’s get into it!

Amanda Joyce:
Welcome to another episode. Okay, so today’s topic is one that we feel is going to hit close to home to a lot of you. All contractors are being attacked by sales pitches from marketing agencies, for lack of a better term. Oh my
Devon Hayes:
Gosh.
Amanda Joyce:
Yeah, you’re getting beat up all the time. Are you with the right agency? Maybe you don’t like your agency and you’re shopping for one, but when it comes down to really comparing them, it’s not apples to apples and it’s really important to ask yourself if you’re buying results, rankings, software, or just better sounding SEO. So we’re going to help you break down that marketing jargon and figure out if you’re actually buying into something that’s going to give you guaranteed profitable growth guaranteed, or if maybe it’s not quite as it seems.
Devon Hayes:
If you’re a contractor that keeps getting hit over the head with different marketing tools, softwares, different marketing solutions and with AI, it’s so easy for agencies or marketing companies to reach out to you and poach your email address and you’re probably getting slapped with sales pitches left and right. Today’s episode, we’re just breaking out what is it that they’re selling you? Is it a glorified SEO package? Is it a software? Is it a system? Is it a framework? So stay tuned while we help you ask the questions that’s going to decipher exactly what it is that you’re buying when you sign on with a marketing company. Welcome to Trade Secrets, where we demystify digital marketing to help contractors get the most bang for their marketing bucks.
Amanda Joyce:
This is for you if you’re a contractor looking for actionable marketing insights.
Devon Hayes:
Learn from home services industry experts to elevate your business through simplified marketing strategies.
Amanda Joyce:
Let’s dive into today’s trade secret.
Devon Hayes:
So this topic came up as the intro said our clients and maybe you too keep getting hit over the head with so many emails and repositioning of some of the same old marketing services, but it sounds glorified. Shoot, there are some agencies that are really great at marketing and they’re putting lipstick on the same old pig, but it’s so smart how sophisticated some of the jargon has become. It’s like trademarking a tactic or a marketing activity that goes with a traditional marketing service. So we figured in this episode we would break it down and talk to you and kind of help you understand the questions to ask and how to really understand what it is that you’re buying, what the actual solution is because it’s confusing and we’re seasoned pros and you look at some of this stuff and you’re like, "Oh, that sounds amazing." And then you look under the hood, we’re like, "Oh my gosh, Google Maps dominance and all you’re doing is LSA and a GBP." That’s it.
Amanda Joyce:
Yeah, exactly. They throw some acronyms in there and you’re like, "I don’t even know what any of these Gs mean. I just want some of that. It sounds like it’s going to make you more money."
Devon Hayes:
You say it’s going to get the leads. Awesome. That sounds great. Get me all the leads. That’s what I need right now. Oh, I don’t have to be involved. You’re just going to get the leads. That’s the kind of
Amanda Joyce:
Marketing I
Devon Hayes:
Want. Yeah.
Amanda Joyce:
Exactly. The easy button. And you’re going to see a theme that goes through all of this. There is no easy button is the long and short of it. So if someone’s selling you a bill of goods that tells you that you’re going to push the easy button, write them a check every month and they’re going to just help you dominate the local three pack or dominate maps, some more questions need to be asked.
Devon Hayes:
Yeah. And like a very specific example, I think whenever we can provide examples, it helps add some color to what we’re talking about instead of talking in general terms because that’s easy to do. But this came up because a client of ours was approached and they were sold, "Hey, we’re going to get your Google business profile to show up in the top three results on Google Maps within this certain amount of time." And it was crazy because we’re like, "Well, that’s funny. You’re already in the top three. So what more are you looking for for these full service terms, the roof replacement, roof repair, the meaty, meaningful keyword terms. That’s another kind of loophole. So you always want to ask, okay, top three for what keywords?" And so then we kind of started to break down that contract and that’s where we looked and we thought, oh my gosh, yeah, this is a great opportunity to kind of educate and talk through what to look for in those contracts because that ranking in the top three in the local three pack sounds great to most home services contractors, but for what keywords and in what areas are you expanding my visibility outside just where my brick and mortar is?
Devon Hayes:
Because that’s a whole different ball of wax and what that guarantee looks like. I’ll save you the shock and awe, but it said, "We’re going to expand your service area. Reach was the sales pitch, but then the contract is like, we’re going to rank you where your physical location is, which is what any … If you’re paying an SEO company, that’s what they’re doing anyway. All right.
Amanda Joyce:
Okay. We were talking about this earlier, but one point that we wanted to make sure that we make as we’re talking to you guys is you’re an easy target. We’re all stressed out in this economy. You’re trying to scale your business at a time when a lot of people are scared to spend. So you are highly vulnerable because a lot of these people can come to you and make a couple of quick promises and you’re like, Here, take my money. I want that. And that’s where the problem lies. We definitely really discourage people, especially in an SEO world from continuously hopping agencies. So even if you’re with an agency right now and you’re questioning maybe whether everything’s working, slow down, take a look and you very well might find out that all this fancy jargon and this new proposal is just exactly what you’re already getting.
Amanda Joyce:
It doesn’t mean that maybe their strategy wouldn’t be slightly different, but this is just a really good time to take a deep breath and look deeper. So that’s what we’re going to help you guys walk through today and just give you a little bit of a comfort level with what it is you should even be asking, but just keep in mind that something shiny and new isn’t always better. One of the things that we actually enjoyed about prepping for this was going through this particular contract with a fine tooth comb. And when we see stuff, like we’ve talked about before, we have imposter syndrome. Anytime we hear some new promise or cool thing, we’re like, oh my gosh, is that something we need to add to our mix? How can we get better as an agency? And it was really interesting to dive in and realize that if you truly apples to apples, it was less service at a higher price.
Devon Hayes:
Yeah, which is crazy. And the reason you guys are maybe even listening to this is because every contractor or a lot of contractors, I should say, not everyone, they’re looking for the easy button when it comes to marketing and they’re looking for one solution. They are looking for something that they can stroke a check and call it good and trust that system. And there are some really, really well sold marketing ideas and systems where it does feel like the easy button, but ooh, Christmas gift coming in handy. If you see the easy button, chances are …
Devon Hayes:
That it’s not exactly that. In today’s marketing environment and landscape, one marketing channel is not the answer. You can’t go all Google ads and think you’re going to win there. That gets really expensive. You can’t say, "We just need SEO," or an agency that sells you on just SEO is, it’s probably not the best fit either. With AI, with the change of buyer behavior, you have to be omnipresent, which means you have to have visibility on most marketing channels. You want to be visible locally, you want to be visible on the organic results. Yes, the maps results, but total map domination doesn’t mean more leads always. Be on social media, be in your community, go to those networking groups, all the things, right? So be careful and be aware that if you are being sold one channel marketing solutions, it should be part of a broader marketing mix or realize that there is no one channel solution.
Amanda Joyce:
Yeah. We watched Google Live this week and they went through all of the latest bells and whistles. And the thing that was a continuous theme through everything was that omnipresence and how people start out maybe in the … They start out in AI and then once they maybe have narrowed down a service provider, then they’re going to go look up their reviews in the local search results. Most people anymore, I mean, there’s some folks that might just be like, "I need a roofing contractor," and they’re going to go look in the local three pack, they’ll do one search call and they’re done. Most people are going to do their diligence and truly look at you all over the web. If you’re putting all of your eggs in one basket and spinning all of your marketing resources on one area, you better hope that you happen to be in a market where folks aren’t doing their due diligence and are not looking deeper because otherwise you’re going to get really frustrated when you are probably getting a lot of clicks, but people probably aren’t truly taking action because you don’t have the social proof around the web to make them decide that you’re going to be the service provider they’re going to allow onto their home.
Devon Hayes:
Absolutely. So now, I mean, the big takeaway here is now more than ever one marketing channel is not enough. So if you’ve only got a certain marketing budget, you don’t want to invest all of that in one marketing channel. You want to be partnered with someone who’s going to touch multiple marketing channels and have a strategy around how much of their time they’re investing in each of those channels. We always talk about this. If you need leads right now and you start with SEO and you think that’s the answer, you’re going to be … It’s going to hurt because that is painful and it takes time. But if you are in a good position, your pipeline’s full and you have the time it takes to build SEO and AI visibility, great, let’s build a plan around that, but there should still be a plan. And even with that, we still oftentimes, depending on each company, we look at the brand trust because it isn’t just service plus location, I want to rank for that, or I want to run ads on just this specific keyword.
Devon Hayes:
There’s so much more to an ad strategy where you’re showing those ads, how it impacts your SEO. And if you have on agency for paid media and you have one for organic and you have someone else doing email marketing and maybe in- house you have someone doing social media for you, but there’s not a cohesive strategy, then you’re going to look fragmented in AI and you’re going to look fragmented on search. And what happens is you get deprioritized in those search results. So working with an agency who is kind of on your side and GCs your marketing for you, if I were a business owner that was in the contracting space, that’s the way it would go. But this ended up as all things do on this podcast, being a rant about why one marketing channel isn’t the answer. Even us as an agency, the way we’ve changed our business, we do have set packages.
Devon Hayes:
We do have a set SEO package, a local SEO package, but moreover, our clients are like, "I need a little bit of this, a little bit of that. " And it is more effective when we can take a look at the client and their business and say, "Oh gosh, there’s no brand demand. Nobody’s even Googling your name. We need to strategically do X, Y, and Z." Because if your brand isn’t trusted, then all your service plus location ads or SEO is not going to have the compounding effect you’d want it to. So that is my rant. We can move on to the next segment of this podcast. I’m sure you are. Tickled pink.
Amanda Joyce:
Okay. So we want to talk to you guys about decoding contract language. I know your eyes probably cross over when you look at a contract, but when it comes to marketing services, the way us as homeowners feel sometimes when we get overwhelmed and we’re trying to compare contracts for a contractor. So we really wanted to spend a little bit of time today talking through what you should be looking at in a contract and not getting lost in the jargon.
Devon Hayes:
Yeah. So truly like question number one, you want to know what are they selling you? Are they selling rankings, leads, appointments, revenue or profit? I mean, that sounds nice.
Amanda Joyce:
But
Devon Hayes:
A ranking is not a lead. A lead is not an appointment. An appointment is not a sole job and a sole job is not profit. So the question you would ask the potential agency is, what exact business outcomes are you promising and how will we measure it?
Amanda Joyce:
Great. Couldn’t have said it better. Another one that we want you guys to really think about is are you doing strategy, implementation, software, or reporting? And that might sound like, well, I kind of hope they’re doing a little bit all of it, but it is really important to ask this question because a dashboard is not a strategy. A report is not implementation and software does not mean that someone’s doing work. So you really need to ask them what work is actually being done on a monthly basis and they should be able to answer that for you. You don’t need to know how the sausage is made, but you need to know the major checkpoints of things that are taking place because you do not want to end up turning around and finding out that you’re paying multiple thousands of dollars a month for a set it and forget it marketing plan that does not have strategy that’s not pivoting based upon the market and what kind of return you’re getting.
Amanda Joyce:
And unfortunately, in some cases, that is what you’re going to get if they can’t give you a really good answer to that question.
Devon Hayes:
Yeah. And the second part of that question too is really critical. When you ask, what work are you doing each month, but also what am I expected to do? That’s huge because moreover, as things stand, there’s only so many things we can control as an agency. We cannot control how many reviews you’re asking for the way you ask for them, how many you’re getting. If you’re answering the phone. If you’re answering the tone of your receptionist or admin who’s taking that call, we can’t control those things, just like we can’t control your proximity to where a searcher is. So understanding what responsibilities fall on you as the contractor in this relationship with the agency is huge. And then we have more on that later, but we’ll get to question three. And question three is, is this a full marketing strategy or on channel? An agency can specialize in Google Maps, local SEO, local service ads, Google ads, social media, website design and development, email marketing, reputation management, branding, video marketing, so many marketing channels.
Devon Hayes:
So understanding what exactly you’re getting if it’s a channel or if it’s actually a comprehensive strategy that contemplates all other aspects of your marketing plan, understanding that is huge. Specialization is great, fantastic. And Amanda and I, in our agency, we know what we know, but we’re very specific. We know our limitations and we have great contractor partnerships with other folks where we don’t totally specialize and we’re smart enough to know that and smart enough to, and we’ve learned a lot along the way, but we know that. But our plans always incorporate those people. We pull them in because we know clients need them. So in any case, it’s a great question to ask. Is this a full marketing strategy or one channel?
Amanda Joyce:
Perfect. Exactly. Are you solving my whole marketing problem or are you just improving a single channel? Because again, sometimes the fine print in these contracts, you can get six months into it and then you start to get frustrated and say, "Well, I’m not seeing this holistic improvement in my marketing." And then they can point back to that contract and say, "Well, all I told you I was going to do was make you rank within five miles of your brick and mortar. I never promised any of that other stuff." And then you’re like, "Oh my gosh, how much money have I invested in this? And I’m ignoring 99% of the marketing pie." And that’s a pretty terrible feeling.
Devon Hayes:
It is. It is. I think one of the most recent traps is, or something that I think we see everywhere is Google Maps dominance, like to just be everywhere on Google Maps, be number one. And there’s massive promises, which I’m like, if you can execute on that, I think what we see more and more now is contractors, they might need, and depending on how competitive a market is. Most local SEO agencies, they can get you … I mean, they should be able to get you to rank for your brick and mortar. There’s things you need to do as the client. If you’re not getting reviews, you are having your agency push a boulder up a hill, especially after what we learned this week at the Google Marketing Live meeting, literally pushing a boulder up a hill if you are not getting reviews. But my point is with Google Maps as a channel specifically, it is highly influenced from Google.
Devon Hayes:
You can AI this yourself and look it up, but it’s highly influenced by proximity, relevance, and prominence. And some of those things are harder to overcome. We have clients who want to reach outside of where their physical location is. They’re like, "I want to rank 12 miles away and compete with other roofers that have a physical office in that area 12 miles away, but I don’t have any reviews that mention that service area. I can’t believe you’re asking me to get those reviews in that service area. I don’t have any ties to the community. I’m not sponsoring anything at a school or a little league. I’m not joining a chamber of commerce. I don’t believe in the BBB. You’re stripping away any possible way to have local relevance and your proximity is already far away, so you’re already fighting something. Now you also don’t have local relevance.
Devon Hayes:
So it’s really harder to gain prominence than a roofer who’s highly involved. All their reviews are in that area. But I’m not saying it’s impossible, but I’m saying that if you think you can stroke a check and call it a day and not have a partnership in that, homie, that is not what it is.
Amanda Joyce:
And one of the other things as we were prepping for this, will you talk a little bit about the difference in the three pack and maps? Because I think that’s also critical as well for people to understand.
Devon Hayes:
So I kind of geek out on this. So really within Google, I don’t know the technical way to say this, but I view Google Maps, the local three pack and organic results as three different search engines and you can test this yourself and I did this as well. So we all know you Google something, then you see the local three pack inside of the search engine results page right there on Google and below those three results and maybe some sponsored maps results are the organic results. So the three pack that has one algorithm that it’s running off of below is the organic results that has another algorithm. But then at the top of the search engine results page, you click maps where you can click videos, news, images, you click maps. And when you look at that, you’ll see that the local three pack rankings from the main search page versus the maps page are not the same companies.
Devon Hayes:
So who I had in my local three pack was my husband’s company was number one and it was even incognito folks. I was very excited about that. But then when I clicked on the maps tab, his company was number seven. So if you are buying maps dominance, don’t confuse that with local three pack dominance. They are not the same thing to the layperson, it sounds like it and that sounds great, but one is much harder to game than the other because of the proximity, relevance, and prominence and the weight that those things carry for the local three pack versus the maps pack. So my husband’s company is 22 miles away from me, but so in the maps pack it was showing me roofers that are closer to my home. But on the local three pack, they were right there for Best Roofing Contractor, Denver, which I love, but that’s something to check out yourself.
Devon Hayes:
So we’ve seen contracts there. It’s like Google Maps dominance. Well, maps ranking is heavily, or I shouldn’t say heavily. We know that it’s more influenced by Google local service ads than the way you can influence your local three pack ranking. Local three pack looks heavily at your GBP and maps. There’s a heavier correlation with Google local service as and your organic maps ranking that you can kind of, I don’t want to say game it, but it operates differently and weights different criteria for ranking than the local three pack on the search engine results page in Google. Are your eyes crossed yet?
Amanda Joyce:
And the other thing that I think about too with this, and it’s nuanced and some people will click it at that map and not even know the difference. So your average consumer is like, I don’t know where the heck I am. I see local services and these are people I want to consider. But I think about like if I’m pretty familiar with search results, I would never pick a service provider in maps myself because I don’t care if they’re two miles away from me. I’m cool with them being 20 miles away. If they have 300 more reviews and have a great reputation locally, then sure if I’m looking for pizza, I’m like, okay, that’s right around the corner. I’m going to go grab that. But it’s just interesting to think about even the mindset of somebody who’s looking for it to really invest with you or let you in their home.
Amanda Joyce:
Even if you’re HVAC or plumbing that maybe you’re coming in at a lower ticket price depending on the service you’re providing, still I’m not as worried about whether you’re right out here a mile from my house as I am about if you’re a kick ass company that I can trust.
Devon Hayes:
That’s true. And it makes me want to do an experiment right now. If I pick up my phone and I just go to Google and I say like, I don’t know, electrician near me and then, all right, I see some people, but I think people scroll down. I don’t think anyone types in electrician near me and then clicks up top to maps and then for me, I would have to open in Google Maps and maybe that’s something else to look at. When you have a marketing partner, they would say, "Oh my gosh, 70% of your users are on desktop over mobile." And desktop, maybe they do click through on maps because they want to scroll through and see who’s close to them. But on mobile, I mean, how many of you click over to maps or do you just stay on the page and scroll down?
Devon Hayes:
So all kinds of considerations, but just keep that in mind because that’s the one that I know it’s unlike me to have a strong opinion about anything, but when I see maps, dominance, to me, I feel like that’s preying on people that don’t know the distinction between the local three pack and maps. And I get annoyed by it to say the least.
Amanda Joyce:
Yes. Frustrated for our contractor friends. They can easily be sold a bill of goods and then the service isn’t in their best interest.
Devon Hayes:
Yeah, truly. So going back to the original question of this segment that just had us sharing all kinds of goodies, is this a full marketing strategy or one channel? And then the question you can ask them, the takeaway here is, "Are you solving my whole marketing problem or are you improving one specific channel?" And it’s not bad if they’re improving one specific channel, but you as the business owner, you should know that and you should know that you also then have to do work on all these other channels because that is what you have to do to stay competitive in today’s landscape.
Amanda Joyce:
Yes. So if that’s going to take up your entire marketing budget, you should probably just take a step back and think about it for a minute before you go down that path.
Devon Hayes:
Yeah. Which leads us to this next segment, which is like the guarantee and the guarantee microscope because if it is going to be just that one marketing channel, is there a guarantee assigned to it and what does that guarantee look like, would you say?
Amanda Joyce:
Exactly. Because one thing that we’ve said on this podcast numerous times is, as an agency, we don’t ever guarantee anything. We’re going to guarantee the work’s going to get done. We’re going to give you a list of all kinds of activities that are going to happen, but we’re never going to say … And dominance is also loose enough. They’re not saying number one. They’re saying it’s up for interpretation, but if they’re going to give you a black and white, you’re going to be number one in your local three pack. A follow-up question would be like, what’s the keyword? Because then they can again say, well, you are number one for this one. We can get real creative to show you that we solved that problem. But if they’re making promises, you probably need to ask some very clarifying questions.
Devon Hayes:
That’s true. Because again, this goes back to like, we can’t control your proximity and that’s huge. Anyway, but you’re right, that’s the loophole is those tricky little keywords. Something else that we’ve seen promised is the quantity of form submissions or phone calls. And when you see that number, it probably sounds good, but then you have to think about that’s not true leads, right?That’s just someone walking in the door. So you have to temper your expectations with what those promises are. But even that, I mean, if a company does that and delivers on it, I mean, I feel like it’ll be the first time I’ve heard of that.
Amanda Joyce:
You’ve hired Madame Clio.
Devon Hayes:
Yeah. And you want that and you can try to average it, but there’s seasonality to take into account and if they are going to average 33 a month, well, if they’re failing and they’re going to pour their own ad dollars to try to make up that difference, okay, great. I guess they’re getting those leads through the door. But if they’re doing that to hit a quantity and they farm it out to like an Angie’s list or something and then you get 33 or 55, whatever the number is, forum fills or phone calls, but it’s all spam, that’s not helpful to you. So we could do that all day. We could drive tons of spam calls to your site or in web form fills and say, "What? We did drive that many form fills. We did drive that many phone calls." So there’s just guarantees I’ve yet to, and there’s so many reputable agencies out there, so many really, really good ones and I have yet to run into one that guarantees anything because we all know that we’re at the mercy of Google Gods and we’re also at the mercy of the client and how quickly they answer the phone, the duration of the call.
Devon Hayes:
How many reviews they’re going to get. Yeah. What does that look like? If someone messages you on your Google Business profile, how fast do you respond? Are you doing scammy, spammy things behind your agency’s back and buying reviews and then getting 80 of them taken down and then just destroying and nuking your own trust stack? So anyway, there’s all these caveats too many for any seasoned marketer to promise a certain number of leads. So to us, we’ve been doing this a long time. If someone makes that promise to you, I would really look at it underneath the microscope. If they say you’re going to have map pack dominance and then the contract says where your physical location is, but what was sold to you is like, we’re going to rank you for 10 miles out from your physical location, that sounds good. And that’s really, really hard to do.
Devon Hayes:
And if you find someone that can do that within just, I’ve seen three months promised, I’ve seen four months promised, six months. If they can do that for you, fantastic. But know that you’re going to play a huge role in that. There’s probably a caveat about your involvement in the relationship for that service provider. That’s not a set it and forget it. You’re not going to stroke a check. You are going to be heavily involved and that’s great if you are willing to do the work and it is possible, but you can’t do it without being involved in that one. So look at the guarantee under a microscope.
Amanda Joyce:
Exactly. And ask for clarifications. If it says you’re going to have dominance, ask for the diameter around your location where you can expect that grid to go ask what keywords they’re going to be focused on because again, they can just be really creative with it otherwise. So ask if they’re making serious swinging promises, then you need to ask them to clarify them that much more.
Devon Hayes:
Yeah. And I think another question that we don’t even have listed here, but like what happens once my contract’s over? What happens if I walk away? Do I lose my rankings or are you building a future-proof system that’s sustainable long-term? Ads we all know, you turn it off, then the faucet stops, right? But with these other systems or softwares or, I don’t know, services, what’s the outcome when you leave? And that’s a really important question and I do definitely toot our own horn in the way that we do SEO because we are future proofing our clients and when they walk away, they own all their assets, but what we have built for them will only continue to compound after they’ve left. There’s always work to be done to sustain it, keep it up to the latest and greatest best practices, but they don’t lose anything in terms of the service they’ve already received on the organic side of things.
Devon Hayes:
Obviously paid media, they keep their campaigns, they will always have that historical data, but it’s paid. You turn off a campaign, obviously the phone stops ringing from paid ads. I think we don’t talk about the one enough because really the way we do things and we have so many agency friends and we’ve actually realized how much more we do in terms of like SEO, we really set businesses up for success. I’m pretty proud of the way we do things.
Amanda Joyce:
Absolutely. And just how open we are if they ever do want to leave with access to absolutely everything. We don’t want anyone to stick around that doesn’t want to be here and we always just want to make sure that even if they were only our client for a little while that we set them up to continue their journey and keep succeeding, even if they give their dance card to another agency.
Devon Hayes:
I hate that because then our work just starts to compound and makes the other agency look good, but it was us. I hate that. Okay. Red and yellow flags. So I think we’ve talked through some of them already, but some red and yellow flags, just a couple of them when you’re looking at a contract or considering an agency or whatever the platform might be is what your responsibilities are as the client and does it impact their guarantees in order for the guarantee to remain valid? So this is really brilliant that we’ve recently seen. It’s like if you do not get an average of two reviews a week, this guarantee is null and void. That’s amazing. That is so smart of that agency to put that on the customer because we keep saying this, but at the Google Live event this week, they just hit that nail on the head over and over and over again about how it’s third party, it’s called UGC, user generated content and how much of an impact and how much weight that carries on your visibility because businesses are trying to find a shortcut.
Devon Hayes:
They’re trying to find an easy button to marketing. They’re trying to use AI to write their website and AI to write their content, but you can’t force AI to write reviews for your business. Google’s AI is looking for AI to interpret if you’ve used AI and you’re not actually who you say you are. So reviews are huge. So good on that agency for figuring that out because you really are going to have a struggle to remain relevant and visible without consistently getting reviews.
Amanda Joyce:
But to your point though, ultimately then they can just point to that even if let’s say you only averaged one review a week for a few months and then you’re like, "What happened to your promise?" They have that loophole and then everything previous is null and void. So looking at that language is so critical and it’s important anyway, just before you get into a partnership with another agency, make sure you can commit to the time that they tell you. Make sure you have enough jobs closing to get the reviews they’re telling you you have to get for their system to work.
Devon Hayes:
That’s huge. And then the other big thing is look at what the promise actually is and is it narrower than what you were sold during the sales process? If it says you’re going to have total online dominance, you’re going to rank number one. Where do you rank number one? For how long? For what keywords? Where? And that’s again, you can’t totally control what Google decides to do with a profile, but if it’s being guaranteed, it’s like, well, what exactly is it guaranteed? How are they guaranteeing it? I don’t know, but look at what that is. Specifically, when we were crawling through this contract, we noticed that the sales pitch was maps dominance. We’re going to manage your GBP and you’re going to dominate on maps. But as contractors know, the local three pack is the most transactional part of the SERPs. That dominance is incredible.
Devon Hayes:
That’s what kind of that pie in the sky, all those bottom of funnel users. And then the fine print said, "We are going to rank you near your physical location." Well, what does that mean? And this particular K client was ranking number one for everything where their brick and mortar is. And the promise in the contract was ranking number one where the brick and mortar physical location is. But the sales pitch and the way our client understood it was we’re going to rank you in all the other places that you want to be in. That’s the sal, that’s what was sold to them. The fine print actually said, "We’re going to rank you where your GBP location is. " So look out for that because your expectations versus reality could be kind of brutal on that. And at that price point that we saw, that would be a tough 12 month contract to pay someone heavily for something that you already had walking in the door of that contract.
Amanda Joyce:
Yes, with no additional website updates or contents. For us as agency owners, when you see stuff like that, it’s a little sickening because it does give all of us kind of a bad reputation. And then that’s a lot of times the contractors that come to us and are slow to trust and have just been burned so badly and it’s just unfortunate.
Devon Hayes:
Yeah. And now that you’re absolutely terrified of signing any contract or buying any marketing services, highlight, there is a better way to do it and there’s so many good agencies. We know so many out there nationwide, so many in the home services niche that are really, really great. And they actually, they come up with a marketing plan, including ourselves. They diagnose where you’re weak, what you need as a business. They turn marketing tactics into business outcomes and objectives that you can understand as the owner. So look for a partner in marketing. Don’t just stroke a check for one channel. But the best way to buy a marketing, you’re going to have a marketing plan, a diagnosis of what’s working, what’s wasting. There’s going to be a multi-channel mix in there, ensuring that you’ve got brand clarity the way search engines and large language models understand your brand and entity, probably a combo of organic plus paid.
Devon Hayes:
They’re going to help you with lead tracking. Tracking and acquisition is huge and there’s so many ways, but find a partner that touches on all those things and is not laser focused on one channel only because that’s not the answer anymore. Okay. Final takeaway. Final
Amanda Joyce:
Takeaway is just be methodical, look for somebody that you really feel good about from the very beginning and that they’re going to look at your entire marketing mix. If you’re already doing things, a lot of the people we end up working with have somebody in- house who is managing social media, for example. Make sure that you’re going to find a partner that’s going to work with your team, make sure that the content that’s already being produced on your side is being taken advantage of for your SEO efforts or your paid media efforts, that there’s some cohesion there. And that goes back to the larger cohesive marketing strategy. They don’t have to do all of your marketing activities for you, but they better be making sure that they’re taking all of those into account as they’re delivering strategy for you so that you’re not wasting money and you’re not wasting resources.
Devon Hayes:
So true. We can’t control Google, the economy, your competitors, or whether your team answers the phone, but we can diagnose where your visibility is weak, prioritize the work that’s most likely to generate more lead opportunities, qualified lead opportunities for you and measure the inputs and outputs and just build and help you build marketing assets that you own. So when you believe that one channel marketing tactic is the answer because it sounds easier, we get that you’re probably exhausted and you want that certainty because it’s so stressful, but certainty and marketing rarely comes from bigger promises. It comes from a clear strategy, better tracking, an honest diagnosis, and then execution that compounds over time doesn’t just stop working when you stop investing the way it works with ads.
Amanda Joyce:
Exactly. And that continues to pivot because even if it’s the right plan today in six to 12 months, it might not be anymore. So the right partner is where it’s at.
Devon Hayes:
Yeah. And then I guess final takeaway, if the contract is hard to understand, the results will probably be really hard to evaluate as well. All
Amanda Joyce:
Right. So we hope you guys found this useful. If you have a contract that you’re trying to diagnose right now, we’d love to take a peek at it. So yeah, please reach out to us. Let us know if there’s some more jargon you’d like us to break down at another episode. We really hope that this helps bring a little bit of clarity to an area of marketing that can be very confusing.
Devon Hayes:
Yes. Thank you for watching, well listening, being part of the fan.
Amanda Joyce:
That was today’s trade secret. Thanks for listening.
Devon Hayes:
Did you find this helpful? We’re just getting started.
Amanda Joyce:
Subscribe and don’t miss our next reveal.
Devon Hayes:
Until next time.