Growing A Gutter Business A Live Case Study Month One
Trust the Process? I enjoy the process, maybe that’s why I have so much fun coaching. Recently, I purchased a stake in a Gutter Company and I’m now tasked with scaling this business. As part of the coaching process, we’re going to turn this project into a Live Case Study. My team and I are going to document the ups and downs with 100% transparency as we grow and scale. Follow along as we crowd source this business into a 7-Figure monster.
Week 1:
The deal was struck and the onboarding process took place. Signing agreements, cancelling auxiliary services, gaining account access, meeting the staff, etc. etc.
Before I take on a new client the first thing I do is look at what the competition who is already ranking happens to be doing. This helps me build my strategy going forward. First, I get an idea of how hard it is going to be for me to rank for certain keywords. In more competitive niches such as: law, plumbing, roofing, dentistry, etc. I front load the strategy with paid search, to ensure leads are flowing quickly. Second, I get an idea of what people are searching for and how they are searching. Why start from scratch when someone has already done the leg work for you? Last, it allows me to build the most effective strategy. I identify the weakness in other sites and I target those low hanging fruits first.
Week 2 – Week 4:
I now have complete control to market and build this business. I set my team to work researching competition and developing a high-level strategy that could be implemented in a 14 day “Sprint”.
Here’s what they arrived at: 
Website
- Implement Live Chat
- Implement “AMARA Lead Gen Site Template”
- Buildout Local Landing Pages
- Have Landing Page Content Written
- Implement Google Reviews
- Call To Action!
- Have a YouTube Video Made
On Page SEO
- GeoTag Images
- Header Tags
- Title Tags
- Implement SSL
- Implement Google Analytics
- Configure Google Webmaster’s Tools
- Implement Rank Tracking
- Implement Schema
Google Business
- Upload GeoTagged Images
- Setup Messaging
- Correct Business Hours
- Update Website
- Update Phone Number
AdWords
- Build Out Campaign
- Build Out Landing Page
- Set Budget
- Generate Leads
Offline Marketing
- Lean on Current Relationships
- Implement “Thank You” and Referral Processes
- Have yard signs made
*Disclaimer*
All of these strategies can be implemented for FREE and on your own, however I have a full team behind this project.
Results:
We Launched the new website in less than 72 hours, implemented Google Analytics and submitted to Webmaster’s Tools.
Website:
I had my content writer create content for some ~50 cities in the Metro Atlanta area. Why so many cities? Here’s what I know, the Google algorithm loves content and there’s only so much information I can have written about gutters. So, by having ~50 pages with 1k words of content, I’m much more likely to rank for various long tail keywords. We’ll start broad and adjust as necessary.
AdWords:
While I’m an AdWords Certified Pro, AdWords is not my strength. In fact, I hate working within AdWords… However, as I absorbed all the marketing costs I chose to build out a quick and dirty campaign myself with no AdWords specific landing page (this is not advised).
The Results?
I chose to start with a “Broad Match Campaign” as a result I generated a ton of clicks and even some calls that lead to sales. However, the broad match campaign also brought a bunch of trash clicks such as “nissan sentra alternator replacement cost”. Overall, I spent around $700.
How much revenue did I generate?
As of today 10/10/2017 we’ve closed and performed 4 deals, with a handful still pending.
Deal 1: $3,297
Deal 2: $2,986
Deal 3: $550
Deal 4: $1,780
Total: $8,118
So far my Customer Acquisition Cost is $175, (*Excluding My Team’s Time) let’s see how low we can drive it over the next 12 months.
What’s Next:
AdWords –
I should have paid to have a proper AdWords Campaign built complete with a specific landing page and call tracking. The campaign I built works and is profitable, but is far from efficient. I’ll end up hiring someone next month to manage my campaign. Estimated cost? $200 – $500 per month.
Retargeting –
We’ll implement Facebook Retargeting to help push more leads and lower customer acquisition cost.
SEO –
I’ll start building links to the site and pushing organic rankings, “FREE” traffic is the best traffic.
Reviews –
Now that we have jobs flowing the team will implement our review processes to drive positive reviews.
Live Chat –
The live chat feature has been awesome, but managing it myself has been impossible. So here’s the dilemma do I hire someone to manage the live chat in the USA or do I outsource it?
Since we’re crowd sourcing the strategy what do you guys think we should do next?