What Actually Happened After He Spent $250k on TV Ads

Brandon Welch: 0:06
Welcome to the Maven Marketing Podcast. Today is Maven Monday. I’m your host, Brandon Welch, and I’m here with a very special guest, Tyler Smith from the great state of Georgia, Atlanta, Georgia. How are you, my friend? I’m good, man. So we are uh we are in Tyler’s living room of the beautiful home he and Ashley built. Uh we’re going to talk about the beautiful business they built today. If this is your first time here, uh the big idea of the podcast is that we talk about how to eliminate waste in advertising, grow your business, and achieve the big dream. And uh with Tyler, I can honestly say we’ve been working on that together uh for 13 years. That’s right. So we’ve been uh we we were uh yeah, we became friends at the start of both of our companies. He was here for the early days of Frank and Maven, and I was um there for the days, I think right before he even started uh the Windows Source of Atlanta. And we want to take stuff out of principle mode today. We talk a lot about marketing principles, we talk about um everything we’ve taught in the Maven Marketer book. Um, and I want to give you a real life glimpse of how it’s working on the streets. And with Tyler, uh in uh the Window Source of Atlanta, I can specifically say for a lot of years we focused on the today customer. We focused on lead generation, uh, all the things that a lot of contractors and service companies chase. Um, and then we all all the way up to um, you know, four or five million dollars a year in his business, we that’s basically how we grew it in the Atlanta market. And uh today we are having more like million dollar months, and I’m gonna let him tell you about that. Instead of, you know, three or four million dollar years, we’re having million-dollar months, uh, or at least we’re we’re dangerously close to that. And it’s happened at kind of this magic point that we talk about in the book, which is the 12 to 18 month band after you start tomorrow marketing. And so I just want to want you to hear it straight from Tyler. Uh, we have like five questions we’re gonna ask today and just to see how this uh tomorrow marketing, which uh just a quick refresher on that, is for all intents and purposes, that’s earning um brand position that’s earning the tomorrow customer through mass media. In the case of Tyler, we started a TV campaign about 18 months ago. And uh I just want to ask Tyler, how is that going 18 months in?

Tyler Smith: 2:23
It’s going great, man. Um, you know, like the text I sent you this morning, we’re just closing out months. I mean, I’m just like I said um earlier, uh since we’ve set here, I’ve seen two or three contracts come through. It’s just people are just pulling the trigger so much quicker than they were before.

Brandon Welch: 2:37
Um, we talk about the seven clues along the way. Um, and basically when you’re starting a traditional media campaign, a uh a really common thing is that you know business owners get really excited and they go, Oh, I’m gonna be on TV or radio, or maybe I started some sort of billboard campaign or whatever. And they they start spending the money and like two or three months in, they’re like, Wow, what is going on? There’s I’m spending all this money, are you sure it’s working? Are you sure my ads are playing? And we always um we always find that there’s this chickening out period, and a lot of people conclude, wow, it’s not working. And what’s really happening is that there’s just barely enough of you in the market. Uh the the in most categories, the customer moves so slowly uh that they are just barely starting to build an awareness or or a uh a likeness to you. And so what happens in most categories that take 15, 20, 30 years for a buyer to come around at large, like on average, most people buy windows every 30 years, right? Um, it’s about after that year to 18 month period that enough of them they’ve been listening all along, but they just now got around to buying and they cut they come out of the woodwork. And so uh the reason we build these seven clues along the way is it’s not this overnight flood of thing, like flood of uh customers, flood of like uh things that just suddenly happen. Um it’s a it’s a relationship. And so um the the things on that list, and I’ll just read them right out of the book here. One is increased direct traffic to the website. Uh today, compared to uh 18 months ago, you were about 30% up on your direct traffic, meaning people come straight to your site. And then I want to ask you about this next one. Do you feel like your leads are getting cheaper? Decrease lead costs. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, we have uh we have we we see a reduction in lead cost on both Facebook. It’s about half the price it was um a year and a half ago, and right now it’s about um 10% less on Google, but Google’s cost per click has gone up like 40%. Um so keep that keep that number in mind. So the the the likeness in the brand you’re building in the market is causing other things to work better, right? And get cheaper. Uh higher conversion rates on your website. Have you have you noticed that?

Tyler Smith: 4:53
Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, when we had our call last week with Kyle, he he mentioned that.

Brandon Welch: 4:58
Yeah. Um, so I looked just uh 10 minutes before this call. Uh 41% increase in the conversion rate on your website.

Tyler Smith: 5:07
Yeah, so that’s where the leads are coming from because nobody’s just calling in and saying, hey, I saw you on TV, I want to schedule an appointment. I feel like it’s obviously driven through the traffic of the website. Um, because there’s just no other way to to explain this type of increase because we’ve done the same thing every year for 12 years until until now, right?

Brandon Welch: 5:24
Yeah. So the next yeah, so people are are the even though there’s there is an increase of traffic to your website, the bigger deal is that every person that comes is basically 40% more likely to take the next step. And we’re seeing that. Um, the next clue on the list is more repeat and referral business. Do you feel like some of your old customers are calling you back and or sending their friends and family? Do you feel that’s absolutely yes? Big time. So often it’s not just that oh, brand new customers are calling us, it reminds your old people how good a job you did, and they sort of go out of their way because they’re hearing those commercials, you know, in your case, uh Yeah, yeah. I feel like they’re rooting for us in a way. Yeah. Uh your your online reputation, your the number of reviews you’ve gotten have has actually gone up in this time period too, uh, compared at a at a faster rate than what we saw um 18 months ago. Um would you so here’s the big one. Here’s the one I want to know about. Um, would you say that your salespeople are having a easier time closing deals as opposed to 18 months ago? Big time. Big time.

Tyler Smith: 6:29
Tell me about that. All the way around, the sales guys, um, you know, first six, eight months to a year. I didn’t hear a whole lot out of those sales guys. I bounce in sales meetings and ask questions. Um, and and now they go out of their way to tell me that it’s just a different feel out there in the house, uh, especially in Atlanta, especially in you know, those higher end parts of Atlanta to where it’s a big market. It’s competing. Yeah, we’re competing with some really big companies, and now we’re actually a contender. Um, and the sales guys on the flip side, the sales guys take their job more seriously. They see all the investments that we’re making into the business, and it’s paying off and it’s working, it’s putting money in their pocket, real money.

Brandon Welch: 7:08
What’s your close ratio now versus maybe a year or two ago?

Tyler Smith: 7:12
Uh it’s not a huge, huge increase. Um, but I would say it’s three to four percent up from last year.

Brandon Welch: 7:19
Well, that’s huge. I mean, that’s a that’s another job or two per week.

Tyler Smith: 7:23
But when you think of three or four percent, it doesn’t sound like much, but when you’re operating and you’re you know scheduling eighteen hundred appointments a year, then yeah, that’s significant.

Brandon Welch: 7:32
So another thing we say in the clues along the way is that the job averages get bigger. People are more willing to spend uh on the higher uh the higher end projects. How how much has your average order gone up?

Tyler Smith: 7:42
Uh 30%.

Brandon Welch: 7:44
Holy smokes.

Tyler Smith: 7:44
So And it usually doesn’t move but more than one or two, maybe three percent.

Brandon Welch: 7:49
Yeah, annually. Like you just you don’t raise your prices that much annually, right? But people are just buying the bigger products because they’re trusting you, right? Exactly. Yeah, would you say you’re attracting a higher end customer?

Tyler Smith: 8:02
Absolutely, yes.

Brandon Welch: 8:03
Would you would you would you say that uh some of the in your in your market, I know it’s like uh Anderson and Pella and some of the you know some of the real fancy big national brands get a lot of the business. Would you say you’re getting some of that?

Tyler Smith: 8:16
I’d say we’re getting some of that. Yeah, I think we’re still stealing from the big guys, and um, I think they they’re starting to know who we are, which is huge for me.

Brandon Welch: 8:26
So this is this is what happens. Uh Tyler’s had a tremendous amount of courage uh to do this, and it took, if we’re being honest, it took a long time to kind of get to that confidence level to invest in it. Would you agree with that statement?

Tyler Smith: 8:39
Yeah, even when I had the money, I wouldn’t do it. So yeah, you know, we just did it.

Brandon Welch: 8:44
Tyler is one of the best guys at running numbers for his business. He knows his numbers, I I would say, to the uh to the day at least. And I’ve seen him calculate them to the hour. And uh so he’s he’s a master over the spreadsheet, he’s a master at KPIs, and uh that is all well and good. But uh the idea of tomorrow marketing didn’t really fit well on a spreadsheet, did it?

Tyler Smith: 9:08
No. No. Tomorrow market tomorrow marketing hurt my margins, my my net margins, right? Um at first, right? Oh at first, at first. Um, but yeah, there’s no going back. It’s just you know, once once you figure this thing out, then it’s it really makes the business part fun, you know? Because even when I see us getting slow, we’re not gonna be that slow.

Brandon Welch: 9:29
Yeah. So to to be clear, with the decrease we’ve seen in lead cost and the other ends of marketing, and yes, it is a significant. Uh I mean, we’re spending multiple five figures a month uh to make him famous and known well and liked and trusted in uh in Atlanta. Um, but we’re getting that back with higher um average order values, higher close rates, lower lead costs, decreased investment in a lot of those very cantankerous hand-to-mouth uh type lead forms. You haven’t done coupons or mailers or anything like that in a long time, right? And your lowest months are raised up to such a such a high bar um that the cash flow is is taking care of itself, right?

Tyler Smith: 10:15
Absolutely, yes.

Brandon Welch: 10:17
So um it took uh I want to ask you, how long did it take before you were like, okay, because you you put a lot of faith in us and in me and this process and these things we’ve been claiming for years uh that we’re working for other companies. Uh, but how long did it take before you were like, you know what? I’m seeing it. I know, yep, there it is on the spreadsheet. It came back to me.

Tyler Smith: 10:39
Um I would say probably um beginning of this year. So I’d say 12 months. Uh 12 months we started to feel it, and we started to, you know, the best KPI that I would pull for whether TVs work in would obviously be traffic traffic to website, right? Or when you have those monthly calls, but I don’t really get that information until I talk to Kyle once a month. But it would be the team talking about it. Um and I would just see an increase in in appointment setting and the conversions just across the board. Everything got a little bit better. It’d be just dialing up your master volume and everything, your treble, your base, it’s cranking everything up just a little bit. Nothing massive on one or the other. It would just be across the board.

Brandon Welch: 11:15
Um the sort of the the highest and and most uh desirable metric of all this is a faster growth rate annually. And you’ve you’ve never not grown. Um you’ve been a powerhouse of a company, and you guys have just done so much in every corner of your company, and you’re gonna grow when you work as hard as you have. Um, but we’re seeing a faster growth rate this year, yes?

Tyler Smith: 11:40
Oh, yeah.

Brandon Welch: 11:40
I’ve never seen anything like this.

Tyler Smith: 11:42
I mean, when as soon as you when you hit five, you know this. Any it’s easy to grow from a million to two, you know, not easy, but it’s a lot easier. But to go from five to six, six to eight, eight to nine, yeah, gotta have the appointments.

Brandon Welch: 11:55
Yeah, and we’re seeing that. We’re seeing a uh a a double double digit growth, uh, almost thirty percent um for the year, and that is it just continues to snowball. And and and I would add, we were talking about this before this, um, not not the not the most rosy of economies right now, right?

Tyler Smith: 12:13
No, it’s not phenomenal. Stock markets, you know, doing pretty good, but other than that, there’s a lot of scare out there with you know, tariffs, things are through the roof, stakes are $25 a pound. I mean, there’s a lot of it and we sell to the average person, right? Yeah, um, normal average uh income.

Brandon Welch: 12:29
So yeah, so people holding on to their money a little tighter, but we don’t we don’t see that affect the market leaders uh like you are starting to be uh near as much. And so I just wanted to share that. It’s a it’s a good piece of news. Um you can things are harder. They’re they’re gonna continue to get harder, I actually believe. Uh, but if you become the company people like first, they think of first, they feel good about, they want to do business with, um, that knocks down a lot of dominoes, and you don’t get stuck in this transactional, like, you know, fractions of a doubt type company that uh end up being the ones that aren’t closing the customers of the way that uh Tyler is. And so uh I want to thank you for having the commitment to doing that and uh being willing to share that with everybody. Uh last thing I would ask you, if there’s somebody contemplating their marketing for 2026, is there anything you would tell them?

Tyler Smith: 13:23
There is, yeah. I would say it’s a whole lot more stressful the what for the uncertainties of where the the next month’s leads are gonna come from than you know building that reserve. And if that’s your goal to grow an actual you know company, four, five, six, ten million, you gotta do it um with TV or you gotta do it with you gotta be exposed at such a high rate. So I would just say if you think you’re stressed out now, you know, it’s it’s more stressed out. You’re getting more stressed out just looking for the next lead, you know. We’ve been in there, we’ve been there for 10 years. So I would say jump on the trend.

Brandon Welch: 13:57
Yeah, our our uh our team commented, man, our our calls of Tyler are just a lot easier than they used to be. Because Tyler’s the one that’ll hold your feet to the fire. He’ll he he shook out every penny of his marketing budget. And so now the the abundance is just there, and it’s because you’ve built a personality. Uh, it’s because people are committing to you long before they realize they’re gonna do business uh in your category, and that just is just gonna continue to sprout out of the ground. I’m excited for you. Uh it’s been so fun. Thank you, and thank Ashley for uh being willing to share that with us. Um we will be back here every Monday answering real life marketing questions because marketers who can’t teach you why are just a fancy lie. Have a great week.