From Trades to Tech: Navigating Entrepreneurship and Digital Marketing Strategies

Hey, hi everyone. Welcome to your show E-Coffee with the Experts. This is Ranmay. And today we have David, who is the founder of Contractor Rhino with us. Hey, David, how’s it going?

It’s going pretty good. Thanks for having me on the podcast.

Lovely. David, before we move any forward, let’s get to know the human behind the mic. Why don’t you talk us through your journey so far? How are you growing up as a child? How did you land up in the digital marketing SEO space? And also about Contractor Rhino, what do you guys do? What do you guys specialize in? And we take it off from there.

Yeah, sure. So growing up, really had a love for technology growing up, but also had a love for just trade work and things you could do with your hand. My father was really good at building stuff with his hands, and I just took after that and had an interest and was split between the two, technology side and also wanting to get into the trades. I looked at a few different trades that I wanted to get into, settled upon electrician and started to go down that journey. They just didn’t quite make it all the way down that journey. They started to pivot and get into the marketing side of things. And that just really took off. I was able to take my marketing knowledge that I had learned and information and resources across the internet and really started to craft my own marketing strategies, and then saw that a lot of businesses needed help with these things. And really wanted to be able to offer something valuable to them. I had a chance to work with other companies way back when and just thought that it knew more or less that I could do it better.

Lovely.

Talk us through your idea of starting Contractor ID. How were the initial days? Initial days of an entrepreneur is quite challenging. How was it with you?

Yeah, no. The initial days as an entrepreneur is challenging. I think It’s like a marketing campaign. It’s testing, right? You’re testing different strategies, different things inside of the business. You’re laying that groundwork and foundation as you’re trying to build. You’re really trying to get centralized and organized as an entrepreneur. A lot of times you have ideas, you have things that you want to do and accomplish, and then life happens, right? You get busy, you get sidetracked, and you start an initiative and you don’t really finish it through. What I saw in some of the early on lessons that I learned is I had some really good thoughts and initiatives that I wanted to do, but just weren’t able to see them through. Then I was able to reflect back and look back and see others simulate my ideas and different things that I wanted to accomplish and them be successful at it. This was thinking like, Man, I could have been at this point right now had I continued through and got more organized and got more disciplined with my time. A lot of it’s time management, working with a great group of people, and working on just really building and developing relationships early on.

Absolutely. You have been a growth advisor and digital strategist for years, and you have been in the contractor and SaaS space for quite some time. What trends and strategies do you feel have changed the most? The space that we are in is ever evolving, and that has been a significant shift. A lot of Google algorithm updates in the south. How do you see it has impacted SaaS and contractor rulesharing industry or HVAC industry in particular?

Yeah, sure. I think from both sides of it, like you said, it’s been impacted. For the SaaS side, I would say I I see things, I saw things shifting from product pages. As you get SaaS companies and they want people to land on their product pages, a lot of the times in the search results, you’ll see aggregator sites come up for or let’s just say best CRM or recruiting software. You’re trying to get your product page to rank, but really what’s ranking is those sites or blog posts more than it is the product pages. It’s about really building, getting on these review sites, getting on as many as possible that makes sense for your business, and then really crafting great blog content to support the product page. I’ve seen the things in a shift there. Then from the contractor space, really taking advantage of the Map pack, Google Local Map pack, where before, Map pack was open, it was a little bigger. Now we have it’s three, right? It’s only a space for the top three. You want to be able to focus in on getting in the top three because that’s where you’re going to find the most value for your marketing campaign, your budget, and just for client acquisition too as well.

Absolutely. For the contractor space or an industry in particular, how do you think improving customer experience can drive business growth for contractors? Any top tips there?

Yeah, sure. It definitely can drive business growth if you pay attention to your customer experience. Just simple things as answering the phone, getting back to them in a timely manner. Or even if you’re answering the phone, it’s about being professional and organized. I’ve listened to numerous thousands of calls, and sometimes I hear someone answer and they put someone instantly on hold or they’re talking in the background to someone else while there’s a customer waiting and wanting to talk to them about a need that they have. It just turns the customer off because now I’m waiting for you to respond to me as I’m on the phone, and then you ask me, Who is this? Then it’s It’s almost like an interrogation more than it is like an inviting. It’s like covering them more or less. Those are some of the things that can really derail your business growth. You really want to be giving the best services possible possible, world-class service, really listening to the customer’s needs, giving them the recommendations that they need to as well. When you get inside the home is, Hey, we can do this for you, but we also can do this, or we can provide this maintenance package where if something was to happen, this is super convenient for you to have this warranty in place or this maintenance program where you don’t have to worry about the headache of coming up with the money later on down the line.

But if you have it set up, small chunks is more feasible for you. Winning the home when you’re inside of the customer’s house is really important. Being able to really connect with the customer and giving them a personable experience, not just coming in Hey, how are you doing? We’re here to do that, and it’s not really conversational. You don’t really get to know the customer. Then they’re responding to bad reviews, too. If you see someone leave a bad review, do the best that you can to make it right.

Absolutely. I feel that it is very important not only to respond to the good ones that you have there in terms of reviews, responding to the bad ones also shows up your target audience that no business is perfect. But this particular business, if something goes wrong, they’re there to fix it. That gives them a lot of confidence that even if something comes out which is not perfect, this guy is going to fix it. It is important to address those negative reviews and ensure that once you have rectified whatever issue that was there, they then come back and leave a positive review for you there. That actually helps more than just a five-star or positive review without any comments. That is what we have ideally seen It is very important that you raise that point there.

No, that’s so true.

What is one of the common SEO misconceptions that you commonly come across in the contractor space? How do you feel that particular mindset can be corrected or taken care of?

I think a lot of the times what I see the misconception is, which it used to be different with Google in the landscape of search engine optimization is, Hey, look, I can have my business has been around, and I can dominate in Google Maps across multiple areas. So not only where my physical business is at, but also in the surrounding areas. And that’s changed with Google as they’re giving… One of the preferences they are giving is radius, targeting. Are you close to the vicinity? They call it the vicinity update. So a lot of businesses still are thinking in the old way where it’s like, Hey, I used to have so much more reach. Now I don’t have as much reach. And it’s, Hey, Google has changed things. So where we might be able to help you rank your website in different areas or surrounding communities. But if you really want to stand out in Google Maps, you actually need to go out and get a physical location in the next town over. If they have a high population to be able to expand your reach.

That makes sense. The local business who are actually doing business in that particular territory, but because of someone nearby had more, let’s say, authority or online presence or online marketing sense or muscle there used to overpower them. I think it is a fair and genuine move on Google’s part. What do you say about it?

Yeah, no, I think it’s balanced on Google’s part. It’s trying to give the user the best experience possible instead of just solely thinking about it from a business aspect and standpoint. I totally get why they made the changes.

And the contractor space. In fact, any business for that matter, for them, issue marketing is like immediate sales. They’re always focused on that. How do you communicate to your clients a long term value of SEO and the organic growth strategies to them, making them understand that SEO is a matter of fact, not sprint there.

Yeah, I always say the SEO, like you said, it’s more… Seo is more or less a long game. It’s a long term investment in your business. I think with any space, but contractors, you have your slow seasons and people say, Okay, let’s turn off my SEO, or let’s scale back things. But you really could be harming your campaign and losing your grip on your positioning. You really have to see that long term value and strategy to know that if you keep up this with SEO, you’re going to do yourself more good than bad. I’ve seen companies that, Hey, we know we needed to do SEO, but we’re just now getting to it two or three years later, and it’s always been on the back burner. And now it’s like of the utmost importance, and they expect to get back 2-3 years that they’ve wasted of not doing SEO and just, Hey, in a matter of two months or so, I I need to be on number one, or my phones need to be ringing off the hook, and it’s like, Hey, it doesn’t work that way.

Absolutely. With the rise of AI and automation, how do you see the future of SEO evolving, David, for the contracting industry?

I think with the rise of SEO and automation, these tools will be able to just help streamline marketing campaigns and help assist you with strategy and different things quicker. Goal are the days where you just had to rely on pen and paper or just really doing a lot of things manually. Now you have a lot of tools that can help you automate things, that you can help build out your strategy and your plans much more quicker. Can it do it all on his own? No, it’s like some inconsistencies. But can it help you assist in the framework that you’ve already put together? Yes. And save you time on executing? Yes.

Absolutely. Finally, David, you have quite actually made it running two businesses now, doing good for yourself. Running agencies is not easy, I can tell you that. For our young listeners today who are trying to start their entrepreneurial journey, what is that piece of advice you’d want to give to them?

The piece of advice that I will want to give to them is set goals for yourself and actually measure your plan for how you’re going to actually achieve those goals and what happens when you miss those goals. As you’re going across your entrepreneurial journey, look at others that have been successful and that are doing well, and take tips and things and techniques from everybody and see what you can implement inside of your business, your entrepreneurial journey that makes sense for you to help you accomplish your goals. I think if you can do that, you’ll learn a lot of valuable lessons. When somebody else may be doing your may not want to do everything else that person did, but I’m sure that you can find one or two things or points or takeaways that you can implement to be able to make you more successful or at least alleviate a pain or a mistake that you might make. But if you heard it from someone else, you can avoid that mistake.

I’m sure our audience will find a lot of value and insights that you’ve shared today. Yeah, once again, thank you so much for taking out time to do this with us. Cheers, yeah.

Yeah, no, cheers. Thanks so much.