Your Remodeling Business’ Marketing Strategy—One Step at a Time

Aaron Horner
So if you’re anything like most remodelers, you’ve already spent money on marketing. And if you’re anything like most remodelers, you aren’t positive if the money you spent on marketing is a good roi, if you’re going to get that money back, or if you’re just throwing it down the drain. Well, a lot of the reason for that, at least for most people, is you don’t have a solid foundation for your marketing. What we’re going to be doing in this episode is we’re going to be going over the six steps that we walk through with all of our clients before we ever start doing any marketing. The idea being once you have this, you can be sure that your marketing is going in front of the right eyes. You’re no longer chasing after bad leads. You’re getting your company in front of your ideal client.

Aaron Horner
And on top of that, you’re gonna know exactly what you need to do next with your marketing.

Logan Shinholser
Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Contractor Growth Network podcast. I’m Logan Shinholser, and today I’m joined by Aaron Horner.

Aaron Horner
Oh, hello. Welcome to Good to Be Back.

Logan Shinholser
Good. So what we’re talking about today is I, myself, Ashley, and everybody on the team, we get a lot of questions around when it comes to remodeling companies. What needs to happen from a marketing perspective or on the flip side, you know, we get asked a lot of, like, what do you think about golf cart or, like, golf card sponsors or billboards or things that, like, sure, you.

Aaron Horner
Heard some concept, and it’s like, is this worth my money?

Logan Shinholser
Is it worth it? So we have a lot of the same conversations over and over. And basically what today is going to be all about, and this is specifically for remodeling and, like, interior remodeling. Because the things that we’re going to talk about as far as, like, how to market a remodeling company online is different than home service, than roofing, than landscaping, just because, like, there’s certain things that work really well for a home service company. So, for example, like, Google Ads are like a very good way that, like, if somebody is, like, their furnace is out and it’s freezing in the middle of winter, do you just need to be top of Google right then and there and be able to get out there and get it fixed? But, like, in remodeling, there’s not too many, like, hey, it’s the dead of winter.

Logan Shinholser
I have $200,000 to spend on a kitchen. So, like, the medium in which we want to market is different.

Aaron Horner
Yeah. Well, like from what you’re saying, there’s two different differences. Main differences, it’s like there’s a needs versus a wants and then also a level of trust you have to build up. Is that what you’re saying?

Logan Shinholser
That’s basically what it comes down to is the needs versus wants. Needs being like a homeowner needs it right now versus they want it. And when you think about like the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which is like this pyramid that you can like Google, but basically it talks about the very bottom is you humans need like food, water, air, shelter, and like if they don’t have that at the very top, companionship. Yeah. Like the top is like self actualization to like be able to like say, I’m living a fulfilled life. Like if you don’t have food and water, like there’s. It doesn’t matter how fulfilled your life is. It’s not so.

Aaron Horner
Yeah, yeah.

Logan Shinholser
And then the trust pieces, especially when it comes down to like, you know, interior versus exterior, like the level of trust that needs to be built up to have a bunch of strangers in your home where your wife and your kids are, is different than a bunch of strangers that are going to be outside your home the whole time.

Aaron Horner
Yeah, yeah. So there’d be a lot more trust need for an interior remodel. Like a kitchen in the heart of your home as opposed to something landscaping even.

Logan Shinholser
Correct. So that’s where these different mediums and these different methodologies come in. So that’s what we’re going to talk about today. Because I see a lot of people that do things backwards or they skip steps or they don’t really have a plan in place at all. And we have the same conversation. So I figured this would be a perfect time to jump into it and talk about what needs to happen in the exact order.

Aaron Horner
Okay. So kind of laying out the foundation and like the plan for their marketing specifically for those high trust remodelers.

Logan Shinholser
High end remodeling people, high want, high trust industry, which is the interior remodeling side of things.

Aaron Horner
Cool. Okay.

Logan Shinholser
And home building is the same way. It’s a little bit different because you’re not living in the home. But. But remodeling, it’s. It’s a very difficult industry just because you have to maneuver around families a lot of times that are still living there. And you’re there for months on end and by the end of the project, you know, the homeowner wants you out, you Want to get out. So it’s just like, you know, what do they say? Like fish and family stink after three days? It like, oh, it deals with that. Yeah, that’s what they say.

Aaron Horner
Maybe your family.

Logan Shinholser
Well, yeah. Not our fish though. All right, so kind of the first thing we always want to lead off into and I’ll just give you like the overall overview. It goes ideal client. So understanding who we’re going after. Unique selling proposition and unique value. So that’s going to be what you’re doing to help them. Then comes the media, then everything’s built into the website. And then we’re going to go through SEO and geo, which is like the like all the new AI stuff. And the last thing that we’re going to finish off with is like video advertising, meta advertising, mostly like the branding stuff that would be like billboards and things like that. We’ll talk through each of the different facets, but just kind of say this is where we’re going. It goes ica, USP media, website, SEO, geo, and higher level branding.

Aaron Horner
Okay. And just to clarify, so you’re, what you’re laying out is you’re saying each of these are kind of stepping.

Logan Shinholser
Stones, step by step.

Aaron Horner
Okay. So if you skip things on this, you might be making things that don’t make sense or wasting money later on.

Logan Shinholser
Correct.

Aaron Horner
Okay. Okay. So then the foundation of that is the ideal client.

Logan Shinholser
The ideal client. So basically what this comes down to is I know when I first started doing all the marketing, the ideal client, the idea was like, you have to know who your person is, where they shop, what’s, you know, all that stuff. And I remember thinking, okay, like our client, you know, for my dad’s pond company, like they shop at Costco. And I was like, I don’t know what to do with that information though.

Aaron Horner
Like advertise outside Costco.

Logan Shinholser
Right? Do I go to Costco and get a booth there?

Aaron Horner
Yeah, yeah.

Logan Shinholser
But basically it’s understanding who we’re actually going after because a lot of times the businesses that we run, if it’s a well run business, you’re kind of geared around certain types of people. So okay, there’s a lot of like attracts, like. So if you are a, you know, late 50s remodeling company and you’re the one doing a lot of the selling, a lot of times the people that you’re going to align with are gonna be late 50s as well because it’s much easier to understand what they’re going through in life. What’s Important to them, like, hey, their kids are just getting out of the house and going to college. So it’s much easier to then understand and empathize with them of what’s going on because then you can kind of build systems around that within your business.

Logan Shinholser
But understanding who you’re going after and who you’re not going after is very important in all of this stuff.

Aaron Horner
Okay, so for Premier Ponds, the ideal client was Costco people, is that what you’re saying?

Logan Shinholser
So my dad’s old company, Premier Ponds, it wasn’t Costco people, but that was one of the things that we talked about was who are they? And basically what we learned on the Costco premise, know, coming back full circle after I learned like how to then leverage ica, was basically these people shop at Costco. And the reason that was important was a lot of our marketing. At first we thought, okay, a pond is going to cost 50 to $100,000 to install, plus it’s going to cost 3 to $8,000 a year in maintenance. Okay, that’s not chump change for people. So we thought, okay, the real clients are going to be in the Potomac and Bethesda, basically the very expensive parts around Washington D.C. okay, that tracks.

Aaron Horner
That makes sense.

Logan Shinholser
So that’s what we thought. Well, lo and behold, when we actually then looked at in our, in like QuickBooks and stuff like that, most of the work was coming in from a town that was basically the millionaires next door. So these are people that saved up enough money that they could afford 50 to $100,000 to put into their yard. But they’re not driving around in a Lamborghini. They’re not super flashy. And basically the way to like look at that is the ponds that were being built were very natural looking ponds. Well, a lot of those Bethesda and Potomac houses were very modern style homes. So as a result they kind of had like a misalignment in the style in which the Palm was being built with the actual like layout and design of the home.

Aaron Horner
Just because those people had the income didn’t mean that they were the type of person who wanted the style that your company was good at.

Logan Shinholser
Exactly.

Aaron Horner
Okay.

Logan Shinholser
And that’s the big thing that the ideal client avatar, like helps us understand is really who are we going after? Because like, could we have just switched up and said, hey, we’re going to do a bunch of, you know, modern style fountains where like, maybe like their specialty was hey, we’re really good at creating a really cool fountain in your driveway when you first Pull in, which is like what you would associate with like a 10,000 square foot, you know.

Aaron Horner
Yeah, yeah, we did one of those for Lua. We did a testimonial for them. They had super modern house and then she wanted a water feature to display her recent art piece that she purchased.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah.

Aaron Horner
So it was a whole water feature just to show that thing off.

Logan Shinholser
But like, that’s not something. I mean, I guess they would do that where they would say, great, we can build a pond around that. But like, for that client, she didn’t want a pond.

Aaron Horner
It was like concrete slab water feature, seamless looking yacht.

Logan Shinholser
Like an homage to this thing, basically. So it’s a mismatch in like what the skill set and what the product of Premier Ponds was with there. The client that had the money. So then it became, okay, who is the client? And then when we broke down, they are people that go to Costco. How does that then align? Well, you know, Costco is kind of like you. It’s, you know, it’s a big bargain store, if you will. But like, it’s very easy to navigate and they always have like, cool stuff like going on over there. So like, that would not be necessarily like a one to one of like, oh, because you can buy in bulk. You could buy ponds in bulk. Like, it doesn’t really work that way. But it helped us to understand like, okay, who is shopping at Costco?

Logan Shinholser
Well, it’s the Columbia Ellicott City people, because they’re a little bit more aligned with that. So it’s more of just being able to paint a picture in your head of who your client is and who they’re not. Because that’s what’s gonna help you deem what is important to them.

Aaron Horner
Yeah, I mean, that makes so much sense because I mean, even being in this world and thinking about marketing, as you said that was still surprising to me because I was thinking like, well, obviously they did high end stuff, high margin, so they’re just gonna be in the nicest areas of town. But that makes sense. So if you originally put all your stuff into those nicest areas of town and didn’t keep going or skip that step, you’re essentially wasting those marketing dollars.

Logan Shinholser
And we did that. We spent a lot of money going, hey, this is where the wealthy people are. Like 100 grand to them is, you know, nothing compared to 100 grand to the millionaires next door. But we realized that they just valued very different things.

Aaron Horner
Sure.

Logan Shinholser
So when it comes down to the ideal client, like the way that we do this with people over the phone is we first go, who is your ideal client? And instead of saying, give me, like a generality or like broad information, we want to know, give me your favorite person that you ever worked with before.

Aaron Horner
Okay.

Logan Shinholser
And then that makes it much easier because if we just think in, like, hey, who do you like to work with? Typically, what you’re going to provide is, like, aspirational things. And usually it’s not really mired, in fact. So if we can then say, actually, Aaron can give me somebody very specific, and then I’m able to ask you questions of what your relationship with them looked like and what they really valued. That’s our way to understand. Okay, so what you just said, Aaron, is that, you know, when you were actually in this person’s home, you communicated a lot using a project management software. Let’s say you use jobtrad, for example, or Builder, whatever it is JobTread will say. And you’re like, yeah, the client.

Logan Shinholser
Actually, they brought up a couple times how much they loved the fact that were able to communicate in real time and have everything in this one centralized app where they could communicate. They could see photos of the project. They knew the schedule because they had, like a Gantt chart in it.

Aaron Horner
Sure.

Logan Shinholser
Well, if that stuff is, you know, something that’s important to the client, then that needs to become part of your marketing in some way.

Aaron Horner
Yeah, you need to be saying the things that they’re looking for. So. So how often? Because when I’ve talked to clients for creating video projects for them, a lot of things I would hear from people is. I mean, I do like this person, and they are probably my favorite client, but I don’t know if they’re representative of the market. I don’t know if I would find anybody else like them.

Logan Shinholser
So if it’s a needle in a haystack, that is like, that’s kind of an issue in and of itself. So, like, you don’t want to build around a needle in a haystack. Cause if you truly know that’s the only person that is out there that is like that, then that would be a problem. So the bigger problem, though, is a lot of people don’t stop and think through this stuff with their clients enough. So, like, back to that job Tread example that we just brought up, like, on the communication side, like, if the client is saying communication is really big to me, and I really want to make sure that we communicate during this process, what most people are going to say is, of course we’re going to communicate. We communicate all the time. Like, look, you and I are talking right now.

Aaron Horner
That’s communication now beyond the website.

Logan Shinholser
Right. And it’s the same thing as like when you get. When somebody applies to work for you and they have all the buzzwords on like their skills of. Works well in teams, works well alone. You know, attention to detail, like it means nothing.

Aaron Horner
Yeah.

Logan Shinholser
So a lot of this is understanding first off, what is important to your clients. Because we have some clients of ours that, hey, we work a lot in vacation homes. So what that means is the homeowner is not going to be living there. However, they need to trust whoever it is that they’re basically going to give a key to that person and say, do your thing. So that then becomes, okay, maybe that ongoing communication via job tread or builder trend is even more important because they’re not going to be there.

Aaron Horner
Yeah. I’m working on a video right now for Fry remodeling. One of our clients and his client, she had to move out. It was her only bathroom. So she couldn’t live while they were redoing the bathroom. And so she had to go hours away and was super worried about that. But then him sending over the photos through company cam is from her testimonial. She said that was the thing that like really relieved her throughout the.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah, so. So if those are things that like, are common in your client base that you go after, those are things that you need to make sure that you align with and you actually are like helping to fill that problem with like your solution. But there’s so many, you know, what is important to somebody that is 80 years old trying to do aging in place in their house is very different than somebody who is 30 years old that just moved into like their starter home versus somebody who’s 40 years old that’s, you know, 10 years into their starter home. And now they’re saying, we love the neighborhood, but we do not want to move. However, we’ve got, you know, two kids that are under the age of six that it’s going to be a war zone over here if we’re remodeling the whole time.

Logan Shinholser
So to be able to be really good for the aging in place versus the starter home versus the 40s. And they’ve, you know, built up some money and they’re able to spend on this. It’s. It’s too hard to be great for all three different types of people because what’s important to them is all going to be very different because the 30 year olds want it cheap, but look good. They never really spent money on remodeling before because they’re kind of house poor, the 80 year olds. They got all the time in the world, but they could be kind of a pain in the butt because what’s important to them is that they nitpick you over your shoulder and like, sure, you may be great at that. Of like, hey, we love people that nitpick, but like, maybe you don’t.

Logan Shinholser
So that’s where understanding who you’re going after really makes a big difference.

Aaron Horner
Okay. And a lot of people, they like those different categories, but the idea of narrowing down to one is scary because then that limits the market, limits the reach. What are the pros of? Like, do we. Would you recommend having a couple ideal clients?

Logan Shinholser
I mean, the more that you have, the harder it is. I mean, like, the answer is like, if you need to. Yes, like, definitely. Like, you can have multiple. Like, we have different psychographics and like, Personas for our ideal clients, but they’re typically, you know, some people have basically done their own marketing a lot in the past, and that is different versus somebody that’s like, hey, I’ve been through two marketing agencies already. Let’s have a conversation. So they’re kind of coming in with different, like, problems. It’s almost like if you’re really good at selling cars, but you have somebody that comes on the lot in an Uber because their car broke down, that’s a very different sale and a very different approach than somebody that is driving there in their own car and they’re just looking because then you need to shift your approach.

Logan Shinholser
Okay, so, you know, to be good at both approaches is difficult. So what be it?

Aaron Horner
Become a generalist.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah. And the more specific that you can get into. Like, like, I had a call with Prospect yesterday and she was like, look, we are really good at working with growing families, which works out because a lot of what they do is focused around if it’s a growing family that’s going to be somebody that’s younger, which is good. They do a lot of additions because now it’s talking about expansion. Or it’s, hey, because you’re growing families, we may not even need to do an addition. What we could do is actually, she was talking about, it’s like knocking down a lot of the walls and just reconfiguring what’s already in the space and making that happen instead of.

Logan Shinholser
So because she knows who she wants to go after, it then becomes much easier to say, hey, you know, it’s not like, oh, you have a growing family. We’re really good at installing grab bars because that would be a total mismatch. It’s more of if you need space, that’s what we want. Like, I even talked to somebody out at Kyle Hunt’s remodelers like the Rise conference, and she was talking about basically when they were remodel or build a home. She was talking about like, how much insulation that she puts into the walls and how she was like, you just have to kind of experience it. Like when you walk in, like every floor that you’re on, the air feels the same. Like there’s no drop in temperature. And it’s this whole building science stuff.

Logan Shinholser
And I was like, how did you come up with that? And she was like, the clients that we work with absolutely love it. And then once you start talking more about the ideal client, she said, actually, I. I just lost a project to somebody because I brought up the whole building science and how much we invest into it. And they were like a younger family. And honestly, they just cared about the space. They didn’t care about. Yeah, the drops in temperature. And I was like, as she was describing it to me and you know, we have one and three quarters kids. You’ve got two kids. Like, if you had the option of more space versus same air temperature on each level.

Aaron Horner
Yeah.

Logan Shinholser
What are you picking?

Aaron Horner
Yeah. Maximizing your space. So you’re saying. Okay, okay. So it’s like if there’s only one message you can get across to these people, whether it’s like the tagline on the website or social media post a video, whatever, it’s like deciding what that thing is based on your markets.

Logan Shinholser
Yes. It’s just understanding, like having an in depth understanding of what your client is wanting both from like the actual outcome of their project. So what’s the kitchen gonna look like? What. What’s the bathroom gonna look like? What’s the whole home gonna look like? But on top of that, understanding what concerns they have when it comes to starting a remodeling project, is that gonna be that they’re already stretched thin because they’re like in the thick of their careers and they need some company that is very good about communicating virtually or quickly or whatever that is. The more that you can understand your ideal client and know what they are really wanting and what their problems are, the easier it is to then align everything else up with that.

Aaron Horner
Okay, so like, in the examples you’ve given, like, you know, if you’re dealing with like those vacation clients like, let’s think even niche down to like high end home remodels. They’re still like, we do a lot of vacation homes versus we do a lot of growing families vacation homes, you’re going to be more likely or you should be more likely to promote things like trusted, since, you know, for the last 20 years or something like that, giving how long you’ve been in business and stats around reliability, trust, communication, things like that. Whereas if you’re doing that communication for the growing family, you’re going to be doing a lot more communication about like making the most out of your home, getting, expanding your space, maybe additions, things like that.

Logan Shinholser
So that all then comes into part two, which is the unique selling proposition. Or in other words, like, what are you doing that is special and valuable to your clients? Okay, so let’s go back to that original example of the, like the vacation homes, right?

Aaron Horner
Yep.

Logan Shinholser
So on vacation homes, so if you now know that your ideal client is somebody that has a vacation home in your area, which means that. And even with this, like, let’s say the vacation home one, if they’re Airbnb it out, are they going to most likely want to pay top dollar. Right. Versus if this is a vacation home that they and their family pops in and out of. It’s a very different clientele.

Aaron Horner
Yeah, You. Different levels of work. I’ve been in enough Airbnb to know.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah, yeah. So you see that or it’s like, you know, I was talking to my dad about this. He went to an Airbnb and it’s like old school Airbnb where you would walk in and they were amazing. And now you walk in and you know if it’s run by a property management company or not, because it’s like, looks great in photos, but you show up and they have one roll of toilet paper for the entire family for the week.

Aaron Horner
Yeah, yeah. All the details are mixed. It was specifically made to look good in a photo.

Logan Shinholser
Yes.

Aaron Horner
Yeah.

Logan Shinholser
So, you know, now we’re talking about nuances within nuances. So it’s not just, hey, we’re really good at remodeling, it’s. We’re really good at interior remodeling for vacation homes for people that actually still live in that home. Because that’s going to be a very different setup than renting it out.

Aaron Horner
Yeah, exactly.

Logan Shinholser
Okay, so then with that, we. Once you understand those elements of it and what’s important to them, then you’re able to like build around this, which is. Okay, back to that Idea of, let’s just say it’s vacation homes and it is, they live there, you know, like, yeah, yeah. So it’s got to be done right. So if that’s the scenario, then what we want to make sure is first off, what you do that’s special and valuable to them is if they’re going to be from afar, they’re probably very into communication and on time communication. Cause they’re not living in it. So as a result of that, you need to make sure that your communication is great. So then your role is to not just say our communication is great.

Logan Shinholser
It’s actually just like figuring out in a very concrete way what are the specific things that you do that make your communication really great for that exact type of person.

Aaron Horner
Okay, I’m following you now. So the next step is saying, okay, this is the thing that’s important to them. And now not only do we just say we have good communication, but what’s the factual thing? What’s the actual unique thing that we do that doesn’t just say we have communication, but proves it?

Logan Shinholser
It’s basically taking it from a subjective thing of we have good communication. Like how you would define good communication is different than how I would define good communication versus if I told you every single day that we’re on the job, which is Monday through Friday, you’re going to get a daily log of what work was done with a photo of the work, then I can just ask you not, did I communicate well? It’s hey, did I provide you with a daily log of, you know, what we did that day? And then it becomes a very simple yes or no from you. Did we do it or did we not do it? So that’s where this next piece comes in of actually being able to stop and identify and articulate what are those specific things that we are doing on the solution side.

Logan Shinholser
So to the problems, whether it’s a problem of the space itself or the problem associated with hiring a remodeling company, that’s what we need to be able to understand and pull out of the remodeling companies that we talk to.

Aaron Horner
Okay.

Logan Shinholser
Just because a lot of times they’re too close to it to realize, like, will we communicate well? And I’m like, do you have a project management software? And they’re like, well, yeah, we use Builder Trend. And I go, okay, well like how often do you use it? Like, well, I mean, we do it on every project. I’m like, do clients like that? Or is that more of just like a nice to have. And they’re like, honestly, clients absolutely love it.

Aaron Horner
Yeah. Feature that.

Logan Shinholser
Right. So it’s like that kind of stuff where they’re like, oh, well, now that you mention it, people absolutely love the fact that we do this or this is where we start to really reverse engineer on that ideal client. What did you do for them from a deliverable standpoint, and why’d you do those? Well, we knocked down walls. We did this, and this. And it’s like, okay, well, why? And it’s like, well, they need more space. So instead of doing an addition which would have cost way more than the budget, were within budget and we just knocked down walls. But then since we already in there doing the construction to give them more space, we wanted it to look good because they wanted to look good. So what we also did was we did this really nice.

Logan Shinholser
You know, we started off with like 2D mood board just to get a vibe for what they wanted. Then we showed them different floor plan layouts. Then we actually took all that, put it into a 3D rendering. So they’re actually able to, like, visually, like, almost like experience the space.

Aaron Horner
Yeah.

Logan Shinholser
And because of that, they’re able to see how the space was going to function, but also how it was going to look.

Aaron Horner
Okay.

Logan Shinholser
And then that made them a lot more comfortable. So that all becomes part of the solution, which when you’re able to talk about a specific client, that then a lot of that’s like, okay, well, now that you’re bringing this up, do you do this process a lot? And they’re like, well, yeah, it always starts off with mood boards and floor plan selections, then 3D renderings, and it’s like, okay, when you show a prospect a 3D rendering, is it cool? Or again, is it just like a checking into the box? And like, no, they’re like, blown away.

Aaron Horner
Yeah.

Logan Shinholser
And I’m like, okay, great. Because all this stuff is all things that need to happen from a marketing perspective. And we’ll go through, like, the media and that stuff later. But being able to stop and just identify what are the unique things that. That you’re doing that your clients like, during the actual process, that’s where all this stuff is then eventually going to come in.

Aaron Horner
Okay. So for the people listening to this, they have the good examples that we’ve just given them. But how. What questions do they need to ask themselves to get those answers, like, with those unique things? Because a lot of times you could be so close to it that you don’t know what those are?

Logan Shinholser
Yeah, the best thing to do here. And we do this, like, on all of our sales calls where we, like, have, like, a set workbook that we work through with on this stuff. But, like, when it comes to your ideal client, the most important thing is going to be just some basic, like, demographics questions, which is going to be like, where do they live? How old are they? Yeah, things like that. It’s more of just like the concrete things. Then it goes to scope of work, which is basically, what did you do for them? And then you need to identify for each of the things that you did for them why you did that. So, for example, if you did custom cabinetry in their kitchen, well, why’d you do that?

Logan Shinholser
Well, they had a bunch of appliances that was taking up all their counter space. So it’s like, okay, cool. So now we know that the issue was they had a bunch of appliances all over their counters, so they had no more countertop space. So as a result, we actually built in custom.

Aaron Horner
Yeah, they went to more functionality. Correction. Okay.

Logan Shinholser
And the last piece is being able to walk through step by step. What was the actual journey that they went through and what was the process of working with them? The way that we typically break it down is into like, four. Four main parts, which is the initial discovery with them was there. And basically what we call it is like finding the bright spots. So it’s. If you think back to your ideal client, as you did this with them, were there any specific things that they called out to you that they really liked? And that’s what we call a bright spot. But basically it’s on the discovery. Was there anything unique and special? So did they like that you called them back immediately? Did they like that? We. When you showed up, like, you were in, you know, like any of that stuff?

Logan Shinholser
Like, was there anything specific on that actual discovery of working with them that stood out to them? Then comes into the design and pre construction. So back to that idea of, like, did they fall out of their chair when you show them that 3D rendering? Because it was just so lifelike that they started tearing up.

Aaron Horner
Okay.

Logan Shinholser
Then the construction, which is the actual project, like, the process of building it out was when that happened, was there anything specific that they really called out that they liked? Did you do a temporary kitchen? And they brought up a couple times about how nice that was. And then the last thing is on the completion. So once you’re done, is there anything specific that they brought up to you that they liked? Whether that’s, hey, I love that you actually did your own walkthrough and created your own punch list instead of just putting that all on me or. I loved that. Six months, 12 months, and 18 months after the project was done, you came back out and did, like, a proactive warranty walkthrough.

Logan Shinholser
So it’s basically things that are coming directly from the homeowner that being able to stop and look at your favorite client that you want to duplicate, and looking at those things that will help you really identify. Okay, what are the specific things that we’re putting in place to help make this type of person feel much better?

Aaron Horner
Okay. So once again, making it concrete, having real people examples and going back to those. So that way you’re not just making up what you think it is.

Logan Shinholser
Yes.

Aaron Horner
But actually getting examples.

Logan Shinholser
Yes. Because that’s the same thing. Back to, like, the hiring an employee. If you’re like, aaron, walk me through a time that you had multiple projects on your plate. How’d you handle it? And usually if you just ask a very vague question, they’re gonna go, well, usually what I do is I just, like, really stop and I think and I strategize and I time block and yada, yada. And at the end of it always turns out.

Aaron Horner
Yeah.

Logan Shinholser
And the interviewer, if they’re newer, like the. That’s a great answer.

Aaron Horner
They go, awesome. That’s exactly what.

Logan Shinholser
That’s what we’re looking for. Wow. Versus if I go, okay, Aaron, that sounds great. Give me a specific time that you actually did that. I’m then going to ask very detailed questions around it. Because first off, I want to see if you’re lying. Second off, I want to actually understand how you thought through it, because there’s no way that if this was that tough of a scenario, that it was, you know, flawless.

Aaron Horner
Yeah. And easy.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah. So I want to know what that all looked like. So it’s the same thing here of being able to pick one person and not just like a get. And every so often I hop on the phone with somebody that’s like, I already know who my ideal client is. It’s a bunch of people. And those. Those calls never work out because it’s usually people that, like, they already have in their head exactly what it is, versus, like, being open to the idea of, like, hey, you actually may have a favorite client. And they’re like, no, everybody’s different. And it’s like, okay, well, if everybody’s different, then you’re going to have a bunch of marketing approaches or just Be very generic and vague to be able to appeal to everybody.

Logan Shinholser
And if that’s the case, it’s gonna be very hard for us to market for you.

Aaron Horner
And then you can stand out on price.

Logan Shinholser
Correct. And that’s the only way to do it.

Aaron Horner
Yeah.

Logan Shinholser
If it’s like if you’re willing to do a kitchen and a fence outside, you know, and it’s like, I don’t really care what the marketing is. Whatever’s gonna make the most amount of money. Those are also typically don’t work out.

Aaron Horner
Yeah. Okay, okay, that makes sense. And then that also seems like a good opportunity if you can’t come up with anything. Like we suggest to people is going through their past reviews, like even the Google reviews and seeing what people have said. There’s.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah. Cause typically with reviews they’re gonna be a little bit more vague of like they communicated really well and they were always on time. So they’re not gonna be like, hey, they used, they did daily logs in builder trend or job tread.

Aaron Horner
Okay.

Logan Shinholser
So they’re not gonna be like as detailed as that. But that’ll give you some good starting point. Yeah. Good jump off points. And it’s also like these are good things to talk about with the team because like what the salesperson is gonna have is different than the designer, which is different than the actual project manager as far as like, all right, let’s pick up the Aaron Horner family. Let’s talk about their project. What did you know, highlights from. Yeah, so you go through it, everybody’s going to have their own stuff. If you’re like, oh, okay, like that makes sense. So yeah, that’s the idea of like ideal client avatar of understanding who you’re going after and then the value propositions.

Logan Shinholser
A lot of times what we have found is that a lot of the actual final product itself, unless you have like an inn with like a local cabinet shop that does like you know, just incredible cabinets or you’re the only person that has access to a certain type of tile or like, you know, things like that most of the time the actual ability to have the end final product across different higher end remodeling companies is all the same. So the differentiators is really coming down to design process up front or the ability to like maybe you don’t do in house design, but you know, the right architects or the right designers to be able to like, all right, Aaron, talk to me about your project. And you’re like, I want ultra modern. I’m going like all concrete, very brutalist.

Logan Shinholser
I wouldn’t then pair you up with somebody that’s like super like perfect. We’re going to do wallpaper everywhere.

Aaron Horner
Yeah, you’re going to love it, right?

Logan Shinholser
Yeah. So that could be the other side of it. So it’s the process in which you do the whole design and pre construction process upfront and then the actual, during the actual construction part, those things that you put in place of are you know, doing like dust protection, Are you know, how many jobs does your project manager run on in a single time? Are they doing 15 jobs at a time, which you know, then they’re really only able to spend X amount of time per client or are they sure, you know, doing 2, 2 to 4, which is a lot different. So they, those are some of the elements of like what actually makes it unique and special and different. More so than like the final product.

Logan Shinholser
Unless you have some in or some ability of like, you know, in the pond world it was different because there was only really, you know, even like a very busy area for pond people. You’re really only going to have like three to maybe eight people per metro compared to a remodeling company where you’re going to have three to eight per. Per town.

Aaron Horner
Yeah.

Logan Shinholser
So there is a level of like a lot of the skill sets are very similar. Unless you are like, hey, we just, we only work with like level four carpenters or whatever that stuff is like, it’s a whole different thing. But the actual process in which you take people in, that then becomes a very important piece of all this.

Aaron Horner
Okay. And you don’t have to be the only okay. Because especially when you start talking about unique selling proposition. It also might sound like you have to be the only person that does this ever. But it’s the combination of both. Like you do this specific thing, whether that’s your communication or however your specific design process and you have a specific market and you have a specific clientele, but you combine all three of those and now suddenly you have something that’s very unique.

Logan Shinholser
Yes, exactly. So it’s not necessarily that like you’re the only one that does design or you’re the only one that uses chief architect or like that kind of stuff. A lot of this is your ability to show this stuff off that is more impactful.

Aaron Horner
Okay.

Logan Shinholser
It’s almost like think about like the coaching, like fitness coaching. Like if you’re trying to lose £30 and you went to Google, how many coaching programs do you think you could find personally to help you lose 30 pounds?

Aaron Horner
Yeah, I would think tons.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah, tons. So what makes them all different? They’re all kind of the same. Like, it’s all about, like, calories in, calories out. You know, maybe the different coaches are going to be different. Where one is going to be like, I’m a female that works with females, or one is, hey, I’m older, so I’m going to work with you. Where I understand that you are also older. So, like, there’s little, like, niches within that. But ultimately, the way that you get people from point A to point B is very similar in that sense. The big differentiators is, like, the actual experience that they’re going to go through. But even still, it’s going to be semi similar. So now it comes down to how much proof can you actually say upfront?

Logan Shinholser
Like, hey, I know they say they communicate, but what we do is we have weekly walkthroughs. We use job tread. And your project manager, you will have their cell phone number, and you’ll have my cell phone number as the owner of the company. So if you ever need anything, let me know. They will be on site at least three times per week.

Aaron Horner
Okay.

Logan Shinholser
So it goes from like, a very, like, you know, how much can we just do, like, the very generality pieces to, like, how concrete can we make it? That’s the stuff that really shows proof.

Aaron Horner
Okay, cool. Okay, what’s the next. What’s after that?

Logan Shinholser
Media. So now that we know who we’re going after and what we do special and different in the world of remodeling, the visuals are everything. Like, we build out these feature project pages, which is basically like project walkthroughs on websites. Those are, like, the number two most trafficked pages on websites. Behind the homepage.

Aaron Horner
Yeah.

Logan Shinholser
So people want to come in and the first thing they wanted to see. I remember I was talking to an old client of ours, like, seven, eight years ago, and he. He was the first one, like, turned me on to that approach, was like, yeah, when somebody comes to my website, the first thing they wanted to see is, like, my work. And I was like, oh, they don’t. They want to, like, learn more about you and all that stuff? But, like, that is the reality of it. And as my wife and I are about to go through another remodel, it’s very much like I’m showing her the websites of, like, various, you know, builders and remodelers in the area. And the first thing that she wants to see is, let me see their work.

Aaron Horner
Well, I want to know if they can do the thing we’re asking them to do.

Logan Shinholser
Correct. If you want that same brutalist style of all concrete and I show you somebody that’s all, you know, Spanish style or like all wallpaper, there’s going to be a direct misalignment there.

Aaron Horner
Yeah.

Logan Shinholser
So the media has to be very dialed in. We talk a lot about what good media versus what bad media really is. So Aaron, you’re a media guy. I fly out. You do a lot of videography. We’ll go videography first, then we’ll talk about photography and then we’ll end with like just some like the other visuals.

Aaron Horner
Okay.

Logan Shinholser
What is the difference between good videography for a higher end remodeling company versus bad videography for a higher end remodeling company?

Aaron Horner
Look like there’s so much there from my understanding of where this overall thing is heading. The most important thing here is proving the thing. Like, so when we started off with the client, we started off with what they need. We know how we’re going to fulfill it. And the media is about like now proving that to them basically. Is that what you’re doing?

Logan Shinholser
Yeah, whatever you want.

Aaron Horner
Okay. So, I mean, to me the biggest thing is thinking about how can I show this in a way that’s not just me saying it to camera and how can we do this in a way that proves it without just talking about ourselves? And there’s a bunch of different ways to do that. I mean, just to limit it to photos. Like if your thing is the custom cabinetry or something like that, like the quality of work. Like a small way you might not think about is when you’re taking photos of the project, you want more up close photos of the details of the work. You want to see kind of the finer pieces of it. If you’re one that’s really about the overall style of it and you have designers and stuff.

Aaron Horner
Another photo that you might not think about is like a lot of times we have photographers take pictures of the plants in the room. Like you didn’t make the plant, you didn’t put the plant there. But it’s not about the plant, it’s about seeing all of the photos there and getting a feeling for the space. So it’s, I think that’s one of those are a couple examples of, at least in photography, proving your value in ways that you might not immediately think. If that makes sense.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah. So like we tell, especially if you’re like on the higher end side, we talk to people about like, look, you actually want something that’s more like an interior design photographer versus a real estate photographer.

Aaron Horner
Yeah. Because the real estate photographer’s job is they want to maximize the space so they go wide angle lens, get back in the corner. There’s not much artistic talent to it. It’s just, hey, let’s make this room look bright and open.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah. So like when we talk to people about this, the idea is that like the best leads that come in are usually going to be the referrals. And usually that’s because they’re going to be in the space. So they’re going to be in the kitchen that this other company did for Aaron. So I’m in Aaron’s kitchen going, wow, this looks great. And the reason or the fact that I’m in the kitchen means that I can walk up and see the cabinets, I can touch the countertops. I can actually like experience how the space is because I’m immersed in it.

Logan Shinholser
The same way that if you’re back to that car salesman example, like the feel of the wheel seals the deal is what they say of like if they can get you into the car and test drive it, like the likelihood that you’re going to go home in that car goes way up compared to if you’re just looking at it from afar.

Aaron Horner
Yeah.

Logan Shinholser
So that’s where photography comes in. And videography does a great job of this as well, of showing the craftsmanship that goes into these projects if it’s done correctly. But if it’s just, you know, your own photos or real estate photography where it’s simply just from afar, it’s going to miss a lot of those little details. And those little details are the difference between a really high end project versus like an elevated handyman or like.

Aaron Horner
Yeah.

Logan Shinholser
Person that can do it all themselves coming in.

Aaron Horner
Yeah. So like going back to our example of the. The vacation home person, like if they’re wanting somebody that obviously if this is their vacation home, it’s something that’s a little bit more luxurious, they have the money to pay for it. That kind of stuff. Instead of just talking about your quality of work, you can show it through your photos and the videos as well. Like not just how you take them, but also having the space prepped beforehand, having everything cleaned up and cleared out and then having actually set dressed as well. That means like putting up decorations in there, plants, cutting boards in kitchen, like staging it. Staging it. Yeah, exactly. That stuff makes a big difference. It’s another thing you wouldn’t immediately think about.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah. We have a client out in the Seattle area right now that they are working with a photographer that it’s six and a half hours for a shoot, and it’s like the whole home. So it’s a big shoot, but a lot of that is as long. Yeah. I mean, it’s getting and staging it correctly because the focal points that they’re capturing in it, I mean, it’s the difference between just capturing a blank space versus a space that looks like there’s a family in it is kind of back to what you said. That’s the story associated with it. So if you’re now trying to attract those growing families, then the staging elements that you’re going to have in there are not like an apron that says, like, you know, grandma’s kitchen. Like, you’re going to actually have things.

Aaron Horner
That you want to make it as easy as possible for your ideal client to picture themselves in that space.

Logan Shinholser
Yes. Yeah, that is exactly. Like. If I could summarize what good media does in one sentence, it is that.

Aaron Horner
It’S the thing I just said it was really good. Dude, I’m so glad you brought me on.

Logan Shinholser
So that’s what the media is meant to do is really. It’s the first. Is the excitement piece. So if I showed you a kitchen and it looks like a good kitchen, but I took with my iPhone photos, the likelihood that you’re gonna go, wow, that’s incredible. Is much lower, versus if I hired, like, a really good photographer who understands all the things that we’re talking about and, like, the visual storytelling components of all this stuff as well, that because, like, the goal is for you to look at those pictures and go, wow, I want this in my home. And when we get that thought across, it’s way more likely that they’re then going to want to entertain hiring you. Because, you know, what most people will do is just say, if you need to get your kitchen done, we’re really good.

Logan Shinholser
But the first piece is people are about to spend a lot of money with you and invite you into their home for a very long time. You need to make sure that what you are doing is, like, exciting to them, and media is, like, the first way to get them excited.

Aaron Horner
Yeah. Okay. So it’s like. I mean, like, a common thing that a lot of people say is, like, I want my work to speak for itself, like, people that aren’t interested in marketing. But when I was talking to clients about video, the main thing I would say is, yeah, you can let your work speak for itself. We just need to give it a wider audience to speak to.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah.

Aaron Horner
And so the goal of your media is just to put your work on the best stage possible. Like give it the best. Like my goal was to always make their things look as beautiful in photos as it actually does in real life.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah, it’s kind of like when you think about your work experience and then when you build a resume, you want your resume to not be false or inaccurate, but you want your resume to highlight all the great things. You don’t want it to be like, and by the way, I was late 15% of the time. Like, you just want that where it’s like the resume is meant to like make you look 10% better. That’s kind of how you want to view your photos. Where it’s like the lighting is going to be spot on, it’s going to look a certain way. So like it’s. You just want your projects to pop 10% more in the photos as much as possible.

Aaron Horner
Yeah, because it’s like you give it, you know what the project’s supposed to look like. You have so much context for how they’re going to use it and stuff. That is context that your ideal client wouldn’t have.

Logan Shinholser
Correct.

Aaron Horner
Just coming into it blind. So it’s like by adding in the set dressing, by adding in like the making sure the lighting is exactly right, like they’re seeing it in the best possible condition. So that benefit of the doubt, you give your own work and your clients give because they know the space potential clients won’t.

Logan Shinholser
Exactly.

Aaron Horner
Yeah.

Logan Shinholser
And then the last piece like outside of video and photos is just like the other quote unquote media, which is going to come down to like the designs and things like that. So you know, if you are creating like in your case like a design, like if it’s the design that you’re basically going to give to your subs, where it’s just like the actual like schematics, that’s like here’s where all the fans are going to go and here’s where like where the lights are going to go. Like there’s a lot that it’s basically trying to sell a car with just like a CAD drawing of a car versus like actually showing the beauty of the car and things like that.

Logan Shinholser
So like when it comes to design work, I know not everybody does like hyper realistic designs, but like the closer that you can get it to where they’re going, wow, I want that exact thing in my home. The more likely it is that they’re going to then say, all right, I want that exact thing in My home, dude.

Aaron Horner
And honestly, you don’t have much of an excuse anymore. I was looking at the Facebook group for the users of Chief Architect and seeing what they were able to do with taking their. Not bad looking, but pretty standard, definitely not photorealistic renderings of a space. And then they put it into ChatGPT and says, here’s my rendering for a project coming up. Turn this into a photorealistic image. You know, high quality, that kind of stuff. I mean, it’s night and day.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah.

Aaron Horner
Like, and you have to obviously preface, like, here’s the actual.

Logan Shinholser
Here’s the finishes and all.

Aaron Horner
Yeah, yeah, here’s to scale what it’s going to be. But. And here’s the rendering from ChatGPT or something like that. But like, it’s so easy at this point to make that happen.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah. And we, I mean, we did this like with our bathroom, like the designer, like, they even like superimposed like a baby into it because it was like a. It was a bathroom that we’re adding to become a nursery. And they added that stuff in and they added in like the actual furniture that we had. And like, what it did was it made it so realistic of a space that like my wife was showing everybody that walked in our door the renderings for this project. Because it wasn’t just like, here’s where the wallpaper is going to go, here’s where the actual new shelves are going to go. It was like, here’s actually the other elements, like the furniture that like. Yeah.

Aaron Horner
And just show you what it’s going to look like in the end.

Logan Shinholser
Exactly. Like, like that way. So that way it was very easy for us to see that. Plus whenever, like the subs would come in and do the work, we then would like. And because they hung up like outside the room, like, this is what it’s going to look like. We knew that there was no, like, oh, they were just handed basically like the schematics or like the blueprints that like don’t actually show the end picture. It’s, you know, they were able to walk by and see like, okay, this.

Aaron Horner
Is what it would be.

Logan Shinholser
This is what it’s gonna look like. Yeah, that’s great.

Aaron Horner
I didn’t even think about that.

Logan Shinholser
So that was super helpful for us. But making sure that we have right videos that do storytelling, the right photos that really make your stuff pop. And then on top of that, the other visual components that go into this, the more user friendly, the more that people can quickly look at it and go wow, that’s impressive. Like, even back to that Gantt Chart example, Like, you know, I had a neighbor that had their basement redone, and he showed everybody that walked by his Gantt Chart. And lo and behold, a year later, across the street, directly from him, his neighbor was getting an addition put on their house. It was done by the exact same construction company that did my neighbor’s house. Because. And I’m sure it was the Gantt Chart. And he just. And he was that because he was an engineer.

Logan Shinholser
So he loved the Gantt Chart, but he showed everybody that. So if that’s the case, if you’re a Gantt Chart type of company and you like to go after people that love Gantt Charts. Perfect. You need to show that stuff off.

Aaron Horner
Okay, that makes sense.

Logan Shinholser
So now we know who we’re going after. What we do that makes us special and unique, and we have the media associated with it. Then, and really only then is when we want to then build out the website.

Aaron Horner
Before we move on from media. I have one more thing. Yes, Testimonial. I would be remiss to not say on these. Just quick thing is like, video testimonial. The video testimonial. Make sure your client is repeating back that story of who your ideal client’s gonna be. Like, people should look at that video and picture themself as that person. They should look at it and say, like, yes, what you were. I mean, Fry is a great example. He had people come in and say, like, we saw your cookie bake remodel video. And basically what they’re dealing with, that’s exactly what we want. And so he basically just did the same project twice. Because they watched the video and were like, yes, that everything they said, the problems they’re dealing with, the things they value, that’s us.

Logan Shinholser
So that then piggybacks it into the website. And the website. There’s a handful of, like, really core pages that you have to have on there. But a lot of the stuff that we just went through that’s important to the client and what you. That’s special needs to have a place on the website.

Aaron Horner
Yeah.

Logan Shinholser
So I remember, like, it was like, a couple of weeks ago, I was talking to one of our clients. We just finished up the website for, And part of it is what we build out was these feature project pages, which are basically project walkthrough pages that show what the before looked like, what the problem that the homeowner was dealing with the process. So walking through design and then construction and all that kind of stuff and then actually showing off the final result with like nice high end professional photos. He was like, yeah, we had a client that came in and signed on for a design retainer. Cause they saw that and said, I basically want that exact thing and in my home.

Aaron Horner
Yeah, yeah.

Logan Shinholser
And it wasn’t just like on the featured project page. It wasn’t just like a bunch of photos with no rhyme or reason or no story behind it. Because there’s usually, you know, if you think about the process and the experience that you’ve worked really hard on of, you know, giving to clients, that kind of falls by the wayside with just photos and only photos. You need photos that are great because it’s going to like allow people to see. Okay. Like, if they’re able to get projects to this level and it looks this good, the likelihood that they have their stuff together is much higher. But there’s a lot of nuance and a lot of context that gets missed.

Logan Shinholser
So these feature project pages need to give the backstory and the process in which we got there to be able to say, this is the type of client, this is what they were dealing with, this is how we approached it and this was the final outcome. It’s the same storytelling principle of like problem solution impact that we want, but it’s now done on a project walkthrough page.

Aaron Horner
Okay. Because typically what I’ll see when I’ve like looked at these things before is contractors will have like one of three options for showing off their work. They’ll have like a gallery page, which is just like every kitchen they’ve ever done. You scroll through them and it’s just like one photo of each kitchen. Or it’ll be like they’ll have a project page, but it’s really just a set of photos. And then the featured project pages is that same thing, single project set of photos, but with the context of the testimonial, the context of what their mission was, what the process was like, design, renderings, everything. That’s what you’re saying?

Logan Shinholser
Yeah. I would say the best way to describe it is think about, you’re about to hire a marketing company and you’re a modeler. And the first case, which is the gallery is the same thing as if I put up or we put up just a bunch of random screenshots from clients.

Aaron Horner
Yeah.

Logan Shinholser
We’re like, this is what, you know, clients say to us, but we’re really picking and choosing various screenshots and that’s about it.

Aaron Horner
Yeah.

Logan Shinholser
Then the next level up, which is the, you know, just a bunch of photos of a kitchen. The next level up is going to be all of our reviews. Right. Which is just simply like letting people do the talking of what it’s looked like to work with us. And the final piece, which is the project walkthroughs, is kind of like us creating case studies to say, this was the problem, this is what we did, this was the result. And here are some of the components that go into it. So it’s basically what you’re able to do is the level of depth that each of these need to go through. The more case studies that you have compared to screenshots, compared to just reviews, the better.

Aaron Horner
Well, it better answers that question that you were talking about with Audrey earlier is can they.

Logan Shinholser
Can they even do it?

Aaron Horner
Like, that’s all I care about. That’s the starting point, at least.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah. Like the company that Chris, if you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while, the company that he works for, a higher end remodeling company here in Charlotte, I mean, were looking a few years ago for a company that could actually come in and redo our basement. And the issue with our basement in Charlotte is, first off, not many homes in Charlotte’s. In Charlotte has basements. So it’s not a super common thing. In our basement, one side it’s 6ft 8 inches. On the other side, it slopes down to 7ft, 8 inches. But basically, if were to just finish it off, it would be a very short basement, which for Audrey and I would be.

Aaron Horner
Okay, you’re saying the ceiling height is six foot? Yeah, shoot.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah. Six, eight. So I mean, I’m five eight, so I’ve got plenty of clearance. Yeah. But if somebody moves in and they look at that, they’re like, what’s up with this? Like, I feel like I’m in like the Harry Potter closet.

Aaron Horner
Yeah. Now this is just where I go to pretend to be tall.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. I set all my zoom cameras up right there and then just put like the ruler on the. Like a. It’s like a. Like a lineup.

Aaron Horner
Yeah, yeah. Just through your height behind you. So people are like.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah. So. But when were looking at basement companies, like, the first question. Cause I couldn’t find anything around Charlotte of, like, people that actually seemed even remotely able to do what we wanted. So that was the first big issue. But the reason I brought up Chris is I think, like, and this is all a few years ago, like a year ago, they actually put up a project on their website that, like, I live in Dilworth in Charlotte, and I needed my basement to pretty much be the floor drilled through and finished off, which I was like, I don’t even know if that’s possible. Well, they put up like an actual like project walkthrough that showed in Dilworth. I was like, oh, that’s my neighborhood. And it actually showed them drilling like through the floor to then be able to rebuild it.

Logan Shinholser
And I was like, oh, that was the exact process project. So, like, I can physically see that they have done this thing before. So the likelihood that if were to revisit this basement project that we’d go back to them is very high because I see they’ve already done it and I’ll have to guess if they know how to do it.

Aaron Horner
Yeah, that’s good. That might be even more revealing to people because it’s like you, you have the curse of knowledge being a contractor. Like, you know, all the things that are possible. A homeowner might literally be asking themselves. I don’t know if the thing I want done is possible or if anybody’s ever done it before.

Logan Shinholser
And a lot of that is it comes down to like when it’s like whole home remodeling again. Like, the one of the ladies I talked to yesterday was like, a lot of these growing families just say think addition because they don’t know about just knocking down walls and reconfiguring the space that’s already in their home.

Aaron Horner
They don’t have the idea for it.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah. So it’s a lot of educating around that. So. And on her website, it was like her photos were amazing. It was all final photos. So there was no context of. Actually went from this very cramped kitchen to this expansive kitchen because were able to knock down walls. We did a whole design. Here’s like, so when it comes to if you’re just doing more of like pull and replace, which is just basically, you know, the more cosmetic stuff, but not really reconfiguring stuff and doing more of like the larger problem solving components, like, that’s where the process comes into play even more and more as far as like, what needs to happen. But we still need to make sure that we’re showing the end result that gets people excited enough.

Logan Shinholser
Because, you know, if you come to me and say, hey, actually I can do all this stuff without doing an addition, it’s gonna save some money, but you’re gonna be living in a remodel with your young family. We’re Gonna be loud. We’re gonna be here for three months. Like all that stuff, like it still has to get me excited enough to go, you know what, we can endure that for three months. Like no big deal, let’s do it. Because the end result has to be that exciting to me.

Aaron Horner
Sure.

Logan Shinholser
So that’s what like the featured project page should do is show like specific, almost case studies of the projects that you have done. And the best way to approach like, well, how many do I need and what should I do? Typically what we do like on the SEO side with clients is we say what is like the main service in the main area that you’d like to be found in? And then we say, okay, now great. Based off of that, what projects do we have that align with that in that area? Because it’s becoming like a game of proof where if I can back to that basement example, if that was a basement in some other part of town, I may be gone. Well, like that’s fine.

Logan Shinholser
Like I see that they can physically do that, but the fact that I know that in my specific basement in Dilworth, it’s like half basement, half crawl space. Because I think the digging is so rough where we are that if I saw that this was on the lake an hour north, I would go, well that’s probably different. Digging up there, like that’s much easier. But here you’re going to have to like really dig through rock. So now that I see that you’re actually doing it in my location, I’m now way more certain that you’re able to at least address my problem a lot better.

Aaron Horner
Yeah.

Logan Shinholser
Than somebody who’s only done basements an hour away on the lake.

Aaron Horner
Yeah. Because even if somebody else comes to you and says, oh yeah, I could probably do that, or like, even if they say like I can, you’re probably still thinking in the back your head. Yeah.

Logan Shinholser
But like can you like what are the issues? Like yeah, is this gonna drag out? And stuff like that. So project pages are meant to help out with those sorts of things.

Aaron Horner
Okay.

Logan Shinholser
Then you’re gonna have like the great. What happens from there. It’s like the design page. So you wanna actually have a page that’s dedicated to if you’re really big on design and pre construction, showing that off and not just in a way that’s like, here’s like. And we used to do this all the time of like here’s the 10 steps in just bullet point form of like what we go through. First off, I mean like we used to do pretty in depth like process videos for clients. Like how popular were process videos?

Aaron Horner
The clients loved them.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah, but who didn’t love them?

Aaron Horner
The homeowners. It was too long, too cumbersome, not the best way for them to consume that information.

Logan Shinholser
Exactly. So we want to be able to lay out the process of working with somebody. We actually, what we just started doing is breaking it out into two different parts. So the first part is going to be one page is dedicated to design and pre construction. Because ultimately what you do during the actual experience side of things of the build doesn’t really matter unless we actually get them to there. So it’s based around the design part. And then the other part is what we’re deeming to be like behind the scenes or inside your remodel. But like the design part is, you know, first think about your homeowners. Like the first thing that we solve is not like this is our process, but more of like why do you even need design? Not everybody wants to pay for a design.

Logan Shinholser
They think it’s going to slow down the project. But in reality there’s a lot of benefits to design where you know, they had a study that came out that said design build actually is going to be cheaper and faster and have way less change orders and headaches during the process. So if somebody comes in and goes, nah, I don’t think we need to design. And you go, okay, well if we do a design, statistically speaking it’s gonna be cheaper, faster and have less change orders. What’s the likelihood that you go, yeah, it’s cool, but like I’d rather pay more have it, you know. So yeah, you want to sell the idea of design and then you know what design helps out with.

Logan Shinholser
Then be able to explain your process and why you do each of the steps, make it easy so it’s not like a 30 step process. And then talk through some of the uniquenesses that your design has. So if that’s you actually have a showroom so you don’t have to do a design and then go to every single showroom, highlight that. Or if you work with architects or interior designers or maybe design’s not directly in house but because you’re working with an outside person, they have a ton of creativity.

Logan Shinholser
So now it’s like, you know, the client’s going to get a more in depth design because that’s somebody that’s like specializes only in design or architecture versus remodeling design, which is maybe they’re more focused on like design as it falls within remodeling, you can actually get a more creative solution at the end of it from a design perspective.

Aaron Horner
So finding the benefit.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah, yeah. Whatever your uniquenesses are and your benefits are, again, it has to align with your clientele. So if your clientele is all about efficiency and you’re like, perfect, we actually work with an outsourced interior designer who’s going to come up with the, you know, most wallpaper solutions ever. You don’t care about that. You care about something that’s fast and, like, it’s got to be good enough, but it’s got to be efficient. Like, that’s the idea.

Aaron Horner
Okay, nice.

Logan Shinholser
So we want to be able to highlight that same thing with what are you doing behind the scenes? That’s like you’re inside your remodel. That’s, you know, then like on all your service pages, you want to first off have a page for every single service that you provide. Because, okay, simply, you know, if somebody’s Googling, this will get more into SEO. But if somebody’s Googling, like kitchen remodeling near me, if you just have a page that says, hey, we do remodeling kitchens, bathrooms, additions, basements, you’re going to miss out on not only getting found by Google, but the emotional pieces that we talked about on the ideal client and what you do that’s unique and special as it pertains to a kitchen is very different than a bathroom, which is very different than a basement kitchen. You’ve only got one.

Logan Shinholser
So it’s going to be a lot of emotion if you have a growing family and they’re stuck in a house without a kitchen. So you really want to lean into, like, hey, when we do your kitchen, these are the experiential things that we’re going to do to make it efficient. But with a bathroom, most people have more than one bathroom in their home. So it just kind of sucks. But you may have to go downstairs to shower for the next six weeks. Not, you know, upstairs, but with kitchen. You may have to eat at a restaurant for three months instead.

Aaron Horner
Yeah.

Logan Shinholser
And then a basement may have no impact on that because it’s a walkout basement and they can just come, you know, the remodeling company goes in and out of the walk outside.

Aaron Horner
Yep.

Logan Shinholser
So all it is you’re just hearing them and that’s about it.

Aaron Horner
Yeah.

Logan Shinholser
So each service is a very different emotion and outcome associated with it. So aside from just a Google perspective, you want to be able to talk through your specific Examples and problems and solutions and things like that for each of the services. So prospects can really feel the love and the intentionality around how you approach that specific project.

Aaron Horner
I see. So that’s why it’s specific to have different service pages rather than having all of that just combined into one.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah. Because you can’t let out all the emotion as it pertains to a kitchen and a bathroom and a whole home and an addition in an app. Like all that stuff.

Aaron Horner
There’s different motivators for getting it done.

Logan Shinholser
For everything.

Aaron Horner
Yeah. There’s different worries.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah.

Aaron Horner
Okay.

Logan Shinholser
And that’s like the specificity is what people want and it’s what Google wants.

Aaron Horner
Yeah.

Logan Shinholser
So those are like the main ones are going to be like your, like, you know, project pages, your service pages, your design, and then you’re like behind the scenes pages. And then anything else. I mean, you know, contact page, about us, page, homepage, are all standards. If you have a showroom, make sure you do that justice as well. Where you’re basically capturing a showroom as if it’s like a project of yours. Because if it looks beautiful, show that stuff off. So that’s some of the stuff. But the website is really meant to act like the resume for the business because at the end of the day, the people, especially in this industry, they’re going to the website and spending a lot of time to see the projects and learn more about you. Because this is high excitement, high trust.

Logan Shinholser
So it’s gonna be much longer where somebody’s gonna be immersed in your world before they’re gonna reach out. So, like, we want people to stay on the website for as long as possible. Not necessarily, hey, come to the website and boom, call us. Right now what we really want is we want to be able to guide you through the website and have you go to as many pages to learn as much about the remodeling company as possible. So then you can make a decision. Yes. Based on, hey, do I want to work with this company? I know that they’re higher price, but they go through this design process. Is that worth it to me or not?

Aaron Horner
Yeah.

Logan Shinholser
So basically what we’re trying to do here is not necessarily convince people that they have to use you, but make sure that we are getting all the best pieces of your business out onto this website in a cohesive way. So when somebody then is going through your website and they reach out, you know that they’re a much higher quality lead compared to if they just reached out immediately without having any sort of Insight into process or pricing or the projects that you do or any of that stuff.

Aaron Horner
Yeah, that makes sense. Cool.

Logan Shinholser
That’s website. So that’s. You can’t do website without knowing who you’re going after, what you do that’s special. And then the media, because all that stuff is used on the website itself.

Aaron Horner
Yeah, so I was gonna ask you that. So media before website is important because without. I mean, the website just houses the media. But if you have a website and no media, it’s just a bunch of text. Is that kind of your.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah. Or you use bad photos. I mean, like. Yeah, think about it. If, like, I was trying to sell you a new car and I took it with a very old phone and it was very grainy. Like, first off, not only do you lose excitement for the car, but you’re also like, okay, this is weird.

Aaron Horner
Yeah.

Logan Shinholser
Like, what is going on here? It’s that sort of stuff.

Aaron Horner
Okay.

Logan Shinholser
So that’s where the media comes in of, like, it needs to look good. You can use bad photos, you can use stock photos, but ultimately a good website with bad photos is going to lose in this industry to a bad website with good photos.

Aaron Horner
Yeah.

Logan Shinholser
And that is coming from a website, a company that is, like, really well known for websites.

Aaron Horner
Yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah.

Logan Shinholser
So cool. So that’s gonna be your website. Now, all roads lead back to the website. And this is where we get into now, how do we get eyeballs on the website? And the first thing that we really like to focus on is SEO. And then we’ll talk about the AI stuff. But on SEO, basically you’re gonna have. On the Google side. And now it’s starting to shift a little bit. And we have podcasts on that. But on the Google side, you’re gonna have really, like, three different. When you do a Google search, three different things. One is gonna be your Google Ads, which is at the top of the page. Usually Google shifts this stuff all around. I think at this point, everybody knows what Google Ads are. The second piece is gonna be your maps, so it’s gonna be like the local businesses.

Logan Shinholser
And then third piece is gonna be like your, like, organic section, which is going to be the people that show up, like, naturally in Google for whatever they’re searching for.

Aaron Horner
Yeah, whatever Google thinks is the actual best result.

Logan Shinholser
Yes.

Aaron Horner
For the answer.

Logan Shinholser
Addressing the Google Ads thing for remodelers, we do not do Google Ads for remodeling companies because we have not found them to be as effective as what they should be.

Aaron Horner
Yeah, it’s not that we haven’t tried?

Logan Shinholser
No, we’ve tried a lot and we’ve done it a bunch of different ways. That doesn’t mean that other people haven’t figured it out. But if you think about how somebody buys higher end remodeling, not lower end, but like bath fitters and things like that, where it’s like a quick project, in and out.

Aaron Horner
Like I see a bunch of ads still for like one day bathroom remodel.

Logan Shinholser
That makes sense because like if you are gonna do a one day bathroom remodel scale of 1 to 10, how much trust you have to have built up compared to a whole home remodel, not tons.

Aaron Horner
Again, that’s like the Airbnb people might be a lot more interested in that. Like I flip it around quickly, it’ll look in a photo. Cool.

Logan Shinholser
So that’s where understanding your ideal client comes in of. Does Google Ads even make sense for me? Because basically what you’re doing with Google Ads is you’re just paying money to get to the top of Google and then show what you want to show off. Yeah, but they have a lot of data that shows basically, I think at this point like about 5% of the clicks to on a Google like search engine page ads are going to go to ads, which means that the other 95% is going to go to the maps or the organic section of things. Yeah, so you’re really only competing for 5% of those clicks if you’re just doing Google Ads, which the plus side is you don’t have to wait for the SEO to work to get to the top.

Logan Shinholser
But the downside is as soon as you stop paying, that goes away. And on top of that, Google Ads, the way that the platform is really set up is it’s all around conversions, meaning they want leads. Google’s goal is to get you as many leads as possible, and it actually will optimize around the leads that are coming in. So if you’re in an industry where it’s not super high volume of leads, it’s hard for Google to then optimize around that and they don’t like that. So they really want to be able to work industries where you’re going to get a bunch of leads coming through the door so they can then figure out, okay, we really want to make sure that we’re now showing the right ads and all that stuff.

Aaron Horner
So I mean, are you saying like Google would optimize the campaign for just lead volume? So even if you’re going through and being like, I mean, these, I am Getting calls with prospects, but they’re not like our ideal client.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah. I mean, there’s a lot that goes into it and changes a lot because we don’t do as much with Google Ads. Like, I would not be the best person to say this is exactly how it works.

Aaron Horner
Okay.

Logan Shinholser
But I do know that, like, when we have done it like several times over the past eight, nine years of U.S. doing this for remodeling companies, Google wants. And basically you can set what you want Google to optimize around. So if it’s just like we want to get as much traffic to the website, that’s fine. If you want to actually optimize around conversions, you get to dictate what a conversion is. So you could say a conversion is simply somebody just going to the site. You could also say it’s somebody that went to the site and put in their credit card number. So it’s basically like, that’s how it all works, is like they want. They want to make sure that they’re optimizing as best as possible, but it’s up to you to determine. I think the number was like, it was like 30.

Logan Shinholser
This may be off. But I was like, I thought it used to be like 30 in a week was like the goal of like, how many things I wanted to optimize around. Again, this could be way off. But that was like, okay, so that being said, that’s 30 leads a week. First off, are there even 30 people a week that are filling this stuff out across the entire metro area that you’re in? Like, maybe not. Like, so there’s a lot of things that go into that. And, and then on top of that, because of the way that the tracking goes is they want a quick conversion. They don’t want you to click on a Google Ad, look through the website, look through all the projects, all that stuff, and then come back four months later and click on it again.

Logan Shinholser
Because maybe the way they track you is gone. Yeah. So it’s like just the natural path in which people are going to hire and research. A remodeling company doesn’t necessarily align with Google Ads as much.

Aaron Horner
Yeah.

Logan Shinholser
So that’s why we can at work a hundred percent, because basically you’re still getting to the top of Google. But we just kind of look at this and say, look, if we’re going to put money into something, we want to put it into your own brand and building it up on, you know, through SEO long term. Yes.

Aaron Horner
Okay.

Logan Shinholser
And I had, you know, prospect came in another one yesterday that Said, I used. You know, we’ve done a lot with Google Ads, and it used to work really well, and it’s just not working as well anymore. And I was like, okay, what happened? And he was like, well, you know, just like a backstory in the companies. We used to do, like, smaller projects, but now we’re like, full design build. I was like, okay, well, there you go. And that. Yeah. So I had to, like, in a. In a good sales way of saying, okay, let’s talk through that. Like, what’s your buying process look like? How long does it take? You know? And then we, like, then talked about exactly how Google Ads works, and it was like, okay, maybe this doesn’t. This isn’t the best piece.

Logan Shinholser
So that’s where like, the SEO stuff comes in of making sure that, you know, even if, like, you’re number one on Google, like, the likelihood that they’re going to click on you goes way up. I think it’s like 34% or something like that as far as if you’re number one on organic for that stuff. So people are going to click on you, but unless you wow them immediately, the likelihood that they’re also going to click on a couple other people is also pretty high because again, you’re about to invite somebody into your home for months, spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on this stuff. Like, you better do your due diligence in a good way as a homeowner. So you want to make sure that your first impression is very strong.

Logan Shinholser
But SEO is your way, like that more people are going to click on it. You’re building up your own brand equity. So that’s basically what we have seen to be true when it comes to hiring. I’m sorry, marketing for the website. SEO is going to be like a huge part in all this stuff.

Aaron Horner
Yeah, I remember. Maybe it’s changed since then, but I remember we used to say, like, the website’s the house, and the SEO is like the road that leads to the house.

Logan Shinholser
Yes.

Aaron Horner
Okay.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah. And the road needs. It needs to be appropriate because you have some people that are like, I have good SEO. And, you know, for some reason, people are not converting into leads. So what we look at is first, let’s look at the website. Like our. Is the website set up for lead conversion? Is it doing the things that we talked about on the website side? Yes or no? Then the next piece is, okay, so you say people are finding you. We looked. And the people are finding you for how to repaint a water stain in the ceiling, which is Fine. But is that gonna sell a new kitchen eventually?

Aaron Horner
That’s not the kind of person.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah, you know, and maybe that’s like, step one of, you know, in a while. But basically, when it comes to SEO, you do want to cover the gambit. So if you are a remodeling company, you want to be able to optimize for things like kitchen remodeling near me and, like, stuff like that. But you also want to make sure that you’re building for kitchen remodeling costs. So those are going to be, like, your transactional keywords are going to be things that are, like, people are searching that, like, they’re ready to make a transaction. And that’s going to be your remodeling near me kitchen remodeling company, things like that. Then you’re going to have what, like, it’s like the buying intent informational searches.

Logan Shinholser
And what that could look like is just all about kitchen costs and timelines and things that, like, they’re not ready to buy yet based off of what they’re searching for. But you can tell they’re getting close because you typically don’t look up costs or timelines or, like, logistical pieces until you’re getting pretty close. And when I say pretty close in this space, that could be six to 12 months because it’s, you know, like, this is a big investment for people, so that could take some time.

Aaron Horner
Yeah.

Logan Shinholser
Then you’ve got your next rung up, and that’s your more passive looking, where it’s like, kitchen design trends or, you know, what. What color would go really well with navy cabinets as a backsplash? Then you have stuff on your website that talks through all those elements where people are just simply, like, they’ve kind of raised their hand and identified. I kind of have a problem starting to search, but I’m nowhere near ready to start to actually search for what I want. I’m just trying to gather some ideas right now. And. And your goal with SEO should be to get found for all three different types of searches, from the specific service up to the buying intent informational searches up to the informational searches, because at the end of the day, somebody’s gonna educate them. It might as well be you.

Aaron Horner
Okay. And then all of these things you’re talking about are just blogs or different pages that you’re adding onto their website.

Logan Shinholser
Correct. So it’s gonna be a combination of your feature project pages.

Aaron Horner
Yeah.

Logan Shinholser
Your service location pages. So basically that’s like if you want to get. If you’re in Charlotte and You do, you know, kitchens and bathrooms, but you also want to get found in Lake Norman, which is an hour north of here. Well, somebody in Lake Norman may be looking up kitchen remodeling in Lake Norman. You want your page to show up? How do you do that? You have to actually create a page that says, we do kitchen remodeling in Lake Norman. And here’s basically how that works.

Aaron Horner
Gotcha. So we’re even going one layer in farther in specificity, not just service, but service for location.

Logan Shinholser
Correct. Because let’s take it back to that basement example. Basement remodeling in Charlotte, terrible digging. Basement remodeling in Lake Norman could be great digging. So it has different price points, different associations with it. Lake Norman is going to be much bigger homes because it’s lake homes. So in that basement, you’re going to put in a movie theater. It’s going to be a walk out to the lake and all that stuff. So what you’re doing for that and is actually going to be different than what you’re doing. At least in Dilworth and Charlotte, where, you know, I live in a 1900 square foot home, we don’t really have much space for a full walkout basement. A movie theater in a basement.

Aaron Horner
Yeah, you’re not looking for a movie theater, you’re looking for additional living or additional living space down there.

Logan Shinholser
Exactly. So that’s where like the contextualizing this stuff into it works. And then the last piece of that, and this is there’s a bunch of stuff that goes into SEO, like press releases that will help and backlinks and citations and all this stuff. But basically the last piece on your website is then the blog content, which is talking through those different elements, just.

Aaron Horner
Answering questions people have.

Logan Shinholser
Answering questions, answering. And a lot of this is like questions that people are asking you in person, but also what they’re typing into Google. Yeah, because if they’re asking you this in person, the likelihood that they’re typing it into Google is like 10 times higher. So being able to talk through basement trends for Lake Norman. And that would be talking about the walkout basement, the pool table, the game room, the gym. Like, hey, up here in Lake Norman, we don’t have as many gyms. So what are a lot of people doing putting gyms into their basement versus here in Charlotte? It’s like there’s a gym on every corner. So again, you’re kind of contextualizing it to each thing. And even if it’s like, well, the way that, you know, Maybe Lake Norman would be.

Logan Shinholser
Let’s say it’s the same style of, like, building, and, like, it’s not actually that different. You still need to make it feel way more relevant and talk through what you’re doing and in those certain locations to really, again, make it feel specific. So somebody’s in Lake Norman is looking up, like, basement trends, you know, or just basement trends. If they’re in Lake Norman and there’s one that pops up for Charlotte and one that pops up for Lake Norman. Yeah, they’re gonna click on the Lake Norman.

Aaron Horner
They click on the Lake Norman. Okay, okay, that makes sense.

Logan Shinholser
So that’s where the SEO stuff comes in. It also helps you get. You know, if you do all that stuff correctly, you’re building up enough authority on your website that Google’s like, okay, you know a lot about basements, and you talk about all this stuff, and you also have a page dedicated to this. This person in Lake Norman. Just sear for a basement remodeler near me. We want to show you because we trust you.

Aaron Horner
So then you’re not just lifting up. You’re not just raising the blogs themselves in search, but it raises the site’s ranking as a whole.

Logan Shinholser
Correct.

Aaron Horner
Okay.

Logan Shinholser
So the way that I like to describe it is it’s like a whole vote system. So basically, if you have a blog that does really well and it performs for the right thing you want to perform for, Google looks at it very favorably. And if that blog then says, hey, we actually have a service associated with it and you can link from that blog to the relevant page, it’ll prop that page up as well. Because it’s like a strength.

Aaron Horner
People like this.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah, yeah, it’s that. It’s A. It’s the. If A equals B, B equals C, then A equals C. It’s that idea.

Aaron Horner
Communicative property.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah, I think it’s the. Is that what it is?

Aaron Horner
I don’t know.

Logan Shinholser
I think so. I think. I think it’s about something about transferring, like, transformative property. I don’t know. We did this in math.

Aaron Horner
Yeah.

Logan Shinholser
But either way, and that’s sometimes what we need to do with clients, where we have, like, a client out in, like, the Berkeley area, and he’s like, I really want to be in Marin county, which is a couple towns over. And we’re like, look, what we actually need to do first is right now in Berkeley, you are, like, number five, let’s say, on average, across the board, over Marin County. You’re like, page three. Because, you know, we have not done SEO yet. Instead of just saying, great, let’s just build out Marin county, we’re saying, hey, let’s actually get you to the top of Berkeley first, because we want to make sure that we’re capturing as many people coming to it. But on top of that, if you’re number one there, Google looks at you as very strong.

Logan Shinholser
Then when you’re able to, like, link out to, like, the Marin county one.

Aaron Horner
It might raise the other one.

Logan Shinholser
It’ll raise the other one a little bit more.

Aaron Horner
Sure.

Logan Shinholser
So there is a strategy that’s associated with this of instead of just saying, hey, I want to be number one in Charlotte, it might be faster for you to actually get number one in Lake Norman and then piggyback that into Charlotte. So now Charlotte starting a little bit higher up naturally.

Aaron Horner
Okay, cool. Okay.

Logan Shinholser
That’s. That’s all stuff that factors into it. It’s, you know, we want to know what services and what areas people want to be in. Because if you’re saying, I just want to do basements in Charlotte, and I’m like, great, but all your Google reviews said that you do kitchens in Lake Norman an hour away, Google Smart, they’re going to look at that and go, well, if you want to get found for kitchens like Norman, no problem. But like, basements in Charlotte, like, yeah, you know, we trust you as a brand, but we don’t know if we trust you in Charlotte to do basements. So it’s too many jumps. It’s too many jumps. There’s all that stuff that comes into it, and then you have the next layer of all this stuff, which is the AI stuff, and that’s like the Generative Engine Optimization.

Logan Shinholser
That’s what Geo and everybody has different names for. But basically when you go to like a Chat CBT or Gemini, like, how are you getting found? And what we. And we’ve done a bunch of, like, testing on this stuff already, and the good SEO principles still play out very well. We’re like, basically, if you’re not, you know, like, I think one of the last times we. We tested it through Chat GPT was like, if you weren’t like top five on Google, not Bing, but on Google for the search term, they weren’t going to consider showing you on ChatGPT. On Chat GBT.

Aaron Horner
Really?

Logan Shinholser
Yep, yep. So they’re all in flux right now. They’re all kind of figuring it all out. And there are different nuances. It’s not just, if you just do SEO, you will get found on those other platforms. Because, for example, like, Historically, you never needed Reddit as like a main thing to get found on, you know, for Google. But now ChatGPT specifically likes Reddit a lot.

Aaron Horner
So yeah, you can just see it when you look stuff up. Now Reddit gets cited on Google on.

Logan Shinholser
ChatGPT, like, and each one has their own individual thing. So, like, I think chatgpt, like loves Wikipedia, right? And Wikipedia is more informational searches. Factual, factual things versus like, you wouldn’t go to Wikipedia to find a remodeling company in Charlotte, but Google has been doing local search for, since the beginning of the Internet. So like, they probably have their stuff dialed way more in, so they’re not relying on Reddit or Wikipedia.

Aaron Horner
So yeah, I wouldn’t panic. Like, ChatGPT is going to take over local search. Like, I saw Sam Altman, the CEO the other day was like, look, Google has a massive lead on us with local search. Like, there’s a lot more things that you need to know that ChatGPT doesn’t have real time access to that. Like, we aren’t even trying to compete with them on that.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah, so that’s, and that’s kind of like when, like five years ago when like all the different like, metaverses came out and there was this race of like, whose metaverse was going to be like the main one. Yeah, that’s kind of how this is right now where. Because people are using ChatGPT, which is kind of heavily focused on Bing, but now maybe they’re not as focused on Bing. Like, then you have Gemini, which is Google’s one, and that’s now like ingrained into Google. So. So you just need to basically be diverse enough where, you know, Google trusts you, ChatGPT trusts you. It’s a lot of different things that need to happen. Like you showing up on all these different sites and doing all these things. But basically the core SEO principles still are going to carry you like 80, 90% of the way there.

Logan Shinholser
But like, you know, these feature project pages, like, just like with Google, ChatGPT does not. If you go to Chat GPT and say, I want you to find me a local remodeling company in Charlotte and they find you a crap one, the likelihood that you’re going to go back to Chat GBT to find the next one is lower. Yeah, that’s not what they want.

Aaron Horner
No.

Logan Shinholser
So there’s that difference. And then like, you know, I, I firmly believe in five years, maybe on the minimum, but like, you know, maybe a little bit after that it’s gonna get down to the Point where, like, my. I mean, at this point, like, my. My own chatgpt knows more about the. More about me than my wife does. So, like, if. If I’m now going to it and saying, hey, find me a remodeler, it.

Aaron Horner
Has the context for you, values what you’re.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah, way more than even my neighborhood of like, hey, who’d you use? So now it becomes a big game of, like, how well can we tell the stories of our clients and make sure that these search engines and these AI tools are able to find it? So back to that, you know, growing family example. Like, if I went in there right now and I lived in their service area and said, I’m looking for a remodeler, they in a perfect world would be able to look at their site and say, hey, I know because I’m attached to your Pinterest. I know what design styles that you like. I know that you have a second kid on the way. I know that, you know, you don’t want to blow the budget out of the water, but you want this thing to be done correctly.

Logan Shinholser
Who I found was this person that does design ahead of time, matching it for you. Yes. And what we’re seeing, and they have a lot of research that’s coming out on this, is that the trust that is built up with what ChatGPT and Gemini and these things are coming back with is way higher than just a simple Google search because it’s now taking a lot of context into it, and people are just associating the trust that they’ve built up with these platforms, like with ChatGPT, and transferring that into the business. So, like, we are going, like, all in on this stuff. But it really still comes down to if I’m asking ChatGPT who should I use, and it knows I have small kids. But Aaron’s remodeling’s website talks nothing about kids or safety or things like that.

Aaron Horner
But.

Logan Shinholser
But somebody else does. Like, I guarantee you, if that. If the company that Chris worked for, if they were all set up with it and I said my issue, and at this point, I use a lot of voice into my chatgpt, but I’m like, we have this basement. It’s six foot eight down to seven foot eight. I don’t even know if we can dig through it. Is that even possible? It would be able to pop up and say, actually, there’s somebody that’s done this exact thing. Here’s this case study of them doing it. By the way, they have great reviews and they do design and they are, you know, big into. Not big into children. That sounds bad, but they’re big into, like, childproofing stuff.

Aaron Horner
There you go.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah, yeah, there it is. Yeah. So that would. Then I’d be like, okay, this is great. Like, all the heavy lifting has been done for me. So I think you give it five years, and I think people are going to start to see referrals themselves decreasing. Yeah. Get replaced by these AI tools, because people are going to trust those that much more.

Aaron Horner
If you had started off and you asked me that at the beginning of the podcast, I probably would have disagreed. Maybe I wouldn’t have told you, but I would have secretly disagreed, like, yeah.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah, yeah, tell me more.

Aaron Horner
But no, I’m fully with you now. That makes a ton of sense.

Logan Shinholser
And I think it’s just. It’s, you know, people are gonna have to get more used to it. And, like, if you’ve seen the movie Her, I love tech. I couldn’t get through that. It was too weird for me.

Aaron Horner
Yeah, that was a tough one. I watched it on a plane. No good.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah. So it’s just too odd for me. But, like, I think it’s going to get to that point where, like, if I put my ChatGPT right now and I just say, roast me, it is, like, the best roast. It’ll, like, it’ll. It’ll hit me so deep, and I’m like, damn, like, this was so well done. And I’ll be like, okay, now do it as Dr. Seuss and, like, puts it in, like, a limerick, but it’s still, like, hitting, like, so it just. It just knows so much about this stuff that, like, it’s just going to continue that direction.

Logan Shinholser
So that’s like, the idea here is that, like, this is what we are wanting to build around, but a lot of this comes down to understanding who you’re going after, what you do that’s special, but then making sure that is getting out there so people are able to see it. Because we see a lot of. A lot of websites that come to us where their existing SEO company or they themselves are like, I built out all the stuff you told me to build out, and I’m not getting a bunch of traffic or leads. And I’m like, yes, 80% of the pages, Google doesn’t even know that they exist, so they’re not even showing them. And it may be.

Logan Shinholser
Or Google knows that they exist, but they think it’s a crap page because it just looks like you just copy and pasted it across the board. That’s not valuable to them. So they’re just going to say, hey, we know it exists, but we’re not actually going to show it. So again, you just spent all this time and energy doing this thing for no reason. So there’s a whole level of, like, technical side of this stuff that comes into play.

Aaron Horner
Okay. Okay.

Logan Shinholser
So that’s SEO and geo. So now at this point, we’re really capturing the people that are getting closer to buying using the Internet. Then the last piece here is going to be your. If you think about, like, marketing, is that funnel. This is your top of the funnel stuff. This is going to be your pieces that are like the billboards, the video marketing.

Aaron Horner
Now we’re getting back to that example of the billboard.

Logan Shinholser
Exactly. So we’re getting back to that stuff and like the golf cards, sponsorships, and stuff like that. This is. It’s not that those things are not correct, but you just want to make sure that, like, if you were really a product that was set up to sell in Costco, your best bet is just to go to Costco and do it, not go to the golf course and say, hey, next time you go to Costco, look for our stuff. You want to hit them like, when the iron’s hot. And this is when we do videos for clients and we talk about, well, how do I use them? It’s like, you can actually run these as ads around the areas, but it’s not meant to drive sales through the door right now. It’s really meant to be top of mind branding as a whole.

Aaron Horner
When somebody gets to the point where they’re looking for it, they’re like, well, who do I know in the area? And they’ve seen your ads.

Logan Shinholser
Yes.

Aaron Horner
Yeah.

Logan Shinholser
Yep. And like, for these, like, we don’t send them love. Like, hey, here’s a. Here’s a project we just did. Call us. It’s like, here’s a project we just did in your area. And you can like run this as like an ad directly around that location. If you want to see more of the project, click this page or click this link and it’s gonna send them over to that featured project page. It’s gonna walk through the before, the process and the after to really sell that full experience. But that’s basically like what we want that branding pieces to be. Because it’s really focused on not so much like people that are searching for this. It’s going to be people that are like, hopefully in the right demographic.

Logan Shinholser
Because if you’re in a neighborhood that you want to do More work in the best thing to do. Just like how you’re like able to do direct mailers to the area or like canvas or even if you have your truck parked out front for three months straight, like the people that live there are going to see it. To do that online is not through Google because that’s then based around them actually googling and searching for it. It’s going to be more around like can we just say we know they live in this area, let’s go ahead and show them and show this thing off. That’s the idea.

Aaron Horner
Okay. Yeah. That makes then you actually have the context built up that now this can be a solid investment.

Logan Shinholser
And that’s where social media comes in. So like one of the people talked to yesterday, he was like, the leads that come in through social are great. They’re just not as many as we need, but they’re great. And it’s because they’re showing off the projects, they’re talking through all the things that makes them valuable to their ideal client. The issue is just doing normal social media is that you’re typically only going to get a few hundred views or a couple likes and stuff like that. Ads are an easy way to get more views much quicker and faster when targeted as well.

Aaron Horner
Especially I mean like you’re so bound by location you could get a million views, but if it’s spread all over the country, what’s the point? Yeah, correct.

Logan Shinholser
So that’s the idea of this stuff is that yes, there’s like some social proof of like you have a bunch of followers and things like that. But ultimately being able to just, you know, run lower cost ads that just highlight a project in a certain area. Again, maybe people are that see it are never gonna ever buy from you or maybe people that are getting kind of close. But now you’re getting your name out there the same way that like a billboard would be out there. But now instead of a billboard just saying here’s my company, call me or go to my website or you know, if it’s dangerous enough. I don’t know if they like allow you to put a QR code, I can’t imagine they do on a billboard.

Logan Shinholser
But now you’re able to show off a project in a way that it’s like cool. And then you’re saying like click here to go explore more. And it gets them back to that page.

Aaron Horner
Yeah, okay. Bringing them back into the resources you’ve already built up.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah, that’s how everything works. So it’s ideal client, unique selling and value propositions, then the media. Then you want to build the website the same way that you want to build out your resume and keep that recent. And if you have a new project, make sure you add it on there. Then it’s the SEO and the GEO side. Then finally you’re going to go into like the more branding components and that’s how we do it. Again. There’s other components of like, can we have a whole department here for like billboards or like golf course card sponsorships? Sure. But like it’s getting to the point where it’s becoming harder and harder to be like really good at the thing because of like, you know, just how much competition’s out there.

Logan Shinholser
So being able to like really niche down into a few things really well is the same thing of like you’re a higher end design build remodeling company, you doing a home and then also someone’s drywall and then also someone’s outdoor living space, then also someone’s fence. It’s going to be very difficult versus doing a few things really well. And that’s basically how it all works.

Aaron Horner
Nice.

Logan Shinholser
Okay, how’d I do on explaining that?

Aaron Horner
I thought you did pretty good. I’m still holding on to that one thing I said. I don’t remember what it was at this point. But you said it though. If you could say it, you’d say it like me.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah. So if you’re in the higher end remodeling world, that’s how it all works. Now if you’re more production remodeling, it’s going to be a little bit different. If you’re outside, it’s going to be a little bit different and stuff like that. So this works very specifically for like higher end interior remodeling companies. Make sure that you identify all this stuff, show it off online. Because basically any marketing that you do should align with these pieces and should be very intentional in and of itself.

Aaron Horner
Nice.

Logan Shinholser
That’s all I got.

Aaron Horner
I thought it was pretty good. I’ll give it 10 out of 10. Okay, thank you guys.

Logan Shinholser
We’ll see you next time.