E48 – The Top 5 Episodes of 2023

Let’s talk top 5.

The top 5 hit singles on the Billboard popular music chart at the end of 2000 were:
Breathe – Faith Hill
Smooth – Santana featuring Rob Thomas
Maria Maria – Santana featuring The Product G&B
I Wanna Know – Joe
Everything You Want – Vertical Horizon

Any favorites or smart remarks? We certainly have ours.

And just like the Billboard, we too have whittled our entire Trade Secrets episode catalogue from 2023 to our top 5 based on popularity and engagement.

With so many great episodes, we were excited to revisit every single one and we’re proud to present why we think they were so popular plus give an overview of the key points of each one.

So if you’re new to us, we encourage you to go back and connect to these relevant episodes still applicable in 2024!

Our Top 5 Episodes for 2023:
Episode #9 – "What is Your Marketing ROI?" – Provided tips and tools for measuring the business impact and return on investment from SEO campaigns.
Episode #3 – "Consistency is Key in Marketing" – Emphasized the importance of consistent branding, contact info, and ongoing communications for building trust and visibility.
Episode #43 – "Lessons Learned and Scaling a Successful Roofing Company with Erica Smith" – Featured an interview with a successful roofing company owner sharing her experiences and advice.
Episode #35 – "2024 Marketing Plan: Why Now is the Time to Get Your Sh*t Together (Part 2)" – Dove into the tactical implementation of an annual marketing plan.
Episode #8 – "Marketing During a Recession" – Discussed strategies for prioritizing marketing spend and tightening belts during an economic downturn.

Amanda Joyce:
All right, in today’s episode, we are going to go over our top five most popular episodes to date. So we’re going to go down memory lane a little bit and kind of talk about why we think these particular episodes resonated with our listeners. And hopefully, if you haven’t listened to these ones, we might pique your interest so you can go back and check them out.

Devon Hayes:
Thanks for listening. I’m your co-host, Devon Hayes.

Amanda Joyce:
And I’m Amanda Joyce.

Devon Hayes:
Welcome to Trade Secrets, where we demystify digital marketing to help contractors get the most bang for their marketing bucks.

Amanda Joyce:
This is for you if you’re a contractor looking for actionable marketing insights.

Devon Hayes:
Learn from home services industry experts to elevate your business through simplified marketing strategies.

Amanda Joyce:
Let’s dive into today’s Trade Secret.

Devon Hayes:
All right, so this is kind of fun to go take a look back at what resonated with people. We looked at a bunch of metrics to come to the conclusion of which episodes were the most popular. We had to look across different platforms. Turns out none of you are actually watching us on YouTube, which is great.

Amanda Joyce:
Thank you.

Devon Hayes:
Yep, yep. Mostly downloads on Apple. So we sorted through not just downloads, but engagement, like which episodes people listened to all the way through.

Amanda Joyce:
Yeah. And it’s kind of funny. Yeah, I would say it’s kind of funny too because this is exactly what we’re constantly lecturing everybody to do, is to look at their metrics and make data-driven decisions and then we dive in and look at the back end of our podcast and we’re like, "Oh, all that time and effort we’re spending worried about what we look like in our YouTube videos, no one’s watching them."

Devon Hayes:
No. So yeah, today I’m sporting for those of you listening, which is most of you, Denver Nuggets. It’s a t-shirt and vintage. We were second in the Western Conference as we record this, so figured I’d pay homage to my 30-year-old t-shirt.

Amanda Joyce:
Absolutely. And I’m just wearing some of my typical Elevation Marketing swag.

Devon Hayes:
Oh, is that who sponsors this episode?

Amanda Joyce:
Yes. Yes.

Devon Hayes:
Ding. All right, cool. So with that, so these are the episodes that not the most downloads, but have the most engagement, the most listenership through the entire episode. So with that, number five is, it was our eighth episode, Marketing During a Recession. So this episode we definitely talked about what to prioritize, where to spend your money, where you could tighten your belt loop, belt strap, belt buckle, belt. I think just the belt is what they say, but I don’t know, Amanda, why do you think this one was one that people really listened to?

Amanda Joyce:
Yeah. To me, I think we’ve all, for about a year now, been kind of holding our breath staring at the economy with all the volatility. And this was especially, this came out early last year when people were first saying the word recession again. So I feel like it struck a nerve even emotionally for folks. But I think all of us as business owners, when we start hearing talk of a downturn, we’re immediately a little bit panic-stricken and we just want to make sure that we’re being really methodical and also having just come out of COVID and then we had just kind of felt like we got in a hold of things and then we started hearing talk of recession. So to me, I feel like that’s probably why people just even saw the title and decided they wanted to click in and learn a little bit more.

Devon Hayes:
Yeah, I think so too. And it is when you’re trying to be forward-thinking, you’re trying to take in as much information as you can and advice from people who might know specific industries better than you do yourself. And I don’t know, just take all the info in and make a smart business decision. Even if the train has left the station and it needs to slow down, it’s good to work with all the info and not just make emotional decisions as things may slow down a bit.

Amanda Joyce:
Exactly. Look at the data.

Devon Hayes:
Look at the data. All right, so that was number five. Let’s cruise into number four. All right, the number four most popular episode was episode 35, which was the 2024 Marketing Plan: Why Now is the Time to Get Your Shit Together Part 2. I wonder what happened to part 1.

Amanda Joyce:
People are in such a hurry, they just wanted to get to the end.

Devon Hayes:
Just clicked through, clicked through.

Amanda Joyce:
Just give me the end notes. But yeah, so I mean, first of all, I feel like just the fact that we had "shit" in the title is more eye-catching, so I think it was a little bit more of a punchy topic title, but why do you think that one resonated specifically?

Devon Hayes:
I think on episode 2, I think we did episode 1, we talked about what you should do and then episode 2, I think we dove into more the hows, how to tactically implement it, which I think the majority of maybe who’s listening might be an owner themselves and they might’ve said, "Hey, go listen to this. Make sure we’re doing all these things to an admin or someone who’s maybe executing those deliverables." Like weekly social media posts or creating the images, writing the content or their sales team who needs to get project images over to the marketing team. So maybe that’s why that one got listened to a bit more because it started with an owner who was like, "Ooh, that’s a good idea and that’s easy to implement and doesn’t cost me any money, go do those things. That’s easy enough."

Amanda Joyce:
Do it. Go do it. Yeah, I think that’s a really good point. And so often when we talk to contractors, they want to hear way less of the why and they want to hear the how. They’re like, "Okay, get to the point." Because you guys are also busy. You’re like, okay, just give me the actionable items and let me get back to my day.

Devon Hayes:
Land the plane. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Amanda Joyce:
Again, listening to our data. We sometimes need to just land the plane.

Devon Hayes:
I don’t know what you mean. All right, fine. Coming in at number three of the most listened to was episode 43. Oh, I love this. Lessons learned in Scaling a Successful Roofing Company with Erika Smith. She’s a treasure, she’s a joy, we love her. And she is so hilarious and just a freaking beast in the space, like building what she has built, almost single-handedly. She’s had one kind of right-hand person been through it with a couple bad hires, but she has built a very successful roofing company in no time. And she had a ton of experience in the industry. She worked at Owens Corning for a long time. She worked for another supplier, was very familiar, was smart with pricing and I don’t know. I think that episode spoke to a lot of people in parts of her personality, but also just the struggles that maybe folks who are listening to these kind of podcasts, they’re trying to grow their business. And so anytime you can hear from another business owner and save yourself the dumb tax, I think people are on board with that.

Amanda Joyce:
Absolutely. And yeah, to your point, she just has such a presence about her and she’s… I think she shared some just really good nuggets in that episode that I’m sure kept people listening and not bailing out to go check out the next one

Devon Hayes:
Yeah. To listen to all of them all the way through. Getting down there, folks. I know you’re excited. All right, the… Oh, wait. Okay, the second most popular episode, most listened to episode was episode 3 ever that we ever did. That was when we were real, real new and green. Consistency is Key in Marketing. That one had a 140% consumption rate. That’s awesome. I think the overall message in that one was consistency is key in marketing for branding of course, but I think the point we were driving home in that one was actually your online consistency of your company name, your address, where you abbreviate it, where you don’t, and we drove home the importance of that, how it impacts crawlers and your trust score and trust flow by having that consistency with your company name, slogans, colors, address, phone number, you name it.

Amanda Joyce:
All the things. Yeah, and I think we also touched on like, if you’re doing email marketing, doing it regularly, just having that clean presence everywhere online that completely matches so no one’s ever confused about your brand or who you are. And then whatever efforts you are committing to, that you’re doing them with consistency. So again, you’re just staying top of mind.

Devon Hayes:
You make up a good point with the email marketing piece of it. If you send one email newsletter and you expect conversions from that, that’s not what it’s for. You send it consistently and when somebody needs you, you just happen to pop in their inbox and they click reply and they might’ve received 25 emails from you in the course of two years before they click reply. But this just happened with my husband’s roofing company last week. They just replied to the newsletter and it was like, "Oh yeah, I have a property that needs a replacement and I need a repair on this other property." And they hadn’t worked with this person in 18 months. So it is just that, "Oh yeah, thanks for popping in my inbox." But it’s that consistency. If they did one email, you wouldn’t have gotten that person if you stopped 18 months ago because they didn’t click on something. So nurturing that lead long after the job and project has closed out is massively important and so inexpensive. That’s a side note. All right.Drum roll, drum roll. Are we on to number one?

Amanda Joyce:
All right. Coming in at number one.

Devon Hayes:
Number one. The most listen to episode of 2023 for the Trade Secrets Contractor Marketing podcast is…

Amanda Joyce:
What is Your Marketing ROI?

Devon Hayes:
That was my…

Amanda Joyce:
Wow. That was my Bruce Buffer impression.

Devon Hayes:
I think that’s great.

Amanda Joyce:
Okay, so why do we think that this one resonated so well? I mean to me, we all at the end of the day want to know what our ROI is. I feel like everybody listening here is trying to figure out exactly how much they should be investing in marketing and how to do it the most effective way possible to get the most out of their marketing dollars. So this topic speaks directly to that.

Devon Hayes:
Yeah. And I think it was important because especially with what Elevation Marketing specializes in, SEO, you want to make sure you’re like… You’re telling me that I’m not going to see true ROI for 9 to 12 months? We definitely touched on how to track progress because we don’t expect you to just blindly trust us for 6, 9, 12 months. So I think that was important too. I think that helped people understand. I think we gave links in the show notes to, or maybe not, we talked about at least giving a link to a sheet to help you calculate ROI. And we even do that with our customers. Getting all the leads that came in through a form fill on your website. Here’s your golden nugget today. Remove any email address on your website and force them to use the lead form or the phone call and have phone tracking.

So then you can see how your website is working for you. But taking those leads, matching them up against jobs that have closed or leads that converted, then you can start to roughly assign a dollar value. Was it a repair? Was it a replacement or was it a full, I don’t know, backyard design build, outdoor living space? Whatever it might be. Was it big? Was it small? What was the quality of the lead? So I think we talked about those things that matter and helped coach people through how you can track your ROI with especially like an SEO spend, but where it’s not as obvious as say with Google Ads where it’s pretty easy to track your ROI on your marketing spend, but that’s advertising spend.

Amanda Joyce:
Yeah, exactly. And even with that though, so often a lot of agencies will just give you a number and say like, "10 people filled out your contact form this month, and that’s the whole story." But if you’re not actually going and saying, "Okay, what are those names?" And realizing, okay, one of them wanted a job, one of them was outside of our service area, whatever it may be. I think we hit on that too, just talking about how back to the lead scoring you were talking about. It’s critical to do that lead scoring in your ad spend because you’re putting hard costs behind driving that traffic and it can help you determine like, oh wow, it looks like I thought this keyword was worth this huge amount of spend because I had all of these contacts come through, but it turns out they all sucked and then it just helps make you more effective.

Devon Hayes:
Yeah, so I think we talked about some of those ways to track it too. Maybe people didn’t know that you can call tracking on your website that you can track. I don’t know, we talked about even when you do a trade show or a conference and having a QR code go to a specific landing page. So seeing how much traffic came through from there. So I think we just talked about different ways to track some of the digital aspects of marketing to try and tire rope around that spend, because you can spend a whole lot of money and have no idea what value you got out of it if you don’t have some sort of tracking in place. So I think we covered maybe some of those tools. Anyway, I think it was just good as a business owner to even know some of those tracking tools that are available to you, how to use them and hold your marketing and advertising partners accountable.

Amanda Joyce:
Yeah, absolutely. There you have it, guys, our top five episodes. So if you have not listened to those, we definitely encourage you to go back and give them a listen. We’d love to hear from you, what are we missing? What golden nuggets did you find helpful in them? We’re definitely always looking to get better at this. We like to think we’ve come a long way since a year ago this time when we started doing this, but we’ve got a long way to go.

Devon Hayes:
Absolutely. Amanda and I, in doing some homework, we realize we both say the word absolutely approximately 157 times an episode.

Amanda Joyce:
I’m going to control myself and not say it again, but… Yeah, I’m going to get t-shirts made.

Devon Hayes:
We should. That’s brilliant. You should be in marketing. Absolutely. I love it. All right, well if you found this helpful, please share. Share it with someone you might know. And as always, you can find us online at elevmarketing.com or we even… Ooh, we have a podcast website now too. What is it? It’s tradessecretpodcast.com. That’s tradessecretpodcast.com.

Amanda Joyce:
All right. Thanks, guys.

Devon Hayes:
Thank you.

Amanda Joyce:
That was today’s Trade Secret. Thanks for listening.

Devon Hayes:
Did you find this helpful? We’re just getting started.

Amanda Joyce:
Subscribe and don’t miss our next reveal.

Devon Hayes:
Until next time.