Digital Advertising Strategies for HVAC Companies | James Pacovsky

David McBee: Welcome to Simpli.fi TV. Our guest today is James Pacovsky, advertising director at LOCALiQ. As a digital advertising expert, James has spent his entire career devoted to working with the traditional media industry to help advertisers expand their reach. He began introducing digital marketing to Yellow Page advertisers, then newspaper, radio, and television advertisers. He currently specializes in the home services category, working exclusively for clients who are scaled nationally. James is IAB certified and Google Analytics certified. James, welcome to Simpli.fi TV. James Pacovsky: Thank you, David. Thank you for having me. David McBee: Oh, no, I'm super grateful that you came on. I really appreciate it. I would love for you to just start the interview by sharing with our viewers what a day in the life of James Pacovsky looks like. James Pacovsky: Yeah. Well, I work with a company called LOCALiQ, which is one of the largest local media companies in America. So we specialize in working with small, medium-sized businesses primarily, but also national advertisers and international advertisers. So my personal role, on a daily basis, is to collaborate with a team of sales strategists and operations folks to make sure that our clients have campaigns that are designed to reflect their ambition, their growth ambitions, and their targeting criteria, then ultimately, how those campaigns perform and being able to articulate that back to the client to help prove ROI and justify their investments. So I spend all day really working with my team to ensure that the campaigns are on point in terms of their performance objectives, and then relay that information and share those successes back to the client to give them that assurance that everything that they're investing in is producing the proper yield for them and exceeding expectations. David McBee: That is great stuff for taking care of the client, but I want to back up just a little bit. How do you find the clients in the first place? How do you prospect? James Pacovsky: Sure. So over the last few years, what I've been doing is attending a lot of service expo trade shows and trade shows in that category. So I specialize in the home service sector, so I deal with companies that are either in the HVAC or the plumbing trades. I also have a company that's national in the solar panel installation industry, and I also have a company that has 81 self-storage facilities. So how I traditionally prospect is I go to shows where companies that are looking to make their advertising more efficient, they're looking for other vendor options to consider, or where companies are looking to find franchise opportunities to take their business to the next scaled level, and they're looking to find folks like me that work in companies like ours that are able to help them scale nationally, and grow and expand their businesses. So traditionally, going to trade shows and then really just do a lot of prospecting, Google mining, really looking for those particular businesses that are in their category fairly prominently in major cities, and then trying to find ways to help them be more efficient in the way they go to market, and making sure that their investments right now are performing and delivering the yields that they're looking for. And if they aren't, we can hopefully provide them a better alternative and a better solution. So a combination of trade shows, Google mining, and just overall networking, with the amount of years of experience that I've had in the industry. David McBee: What tactics do you feel are the most effective for that particular category of businesses? James Pacovsky: So traditionally, in the home services space, marketing is really simplified two ways. They have to create a demand for their product and service in the marketplace, then they have to be available to capture the demand that's been created. So tactically, we use combinations of email marketing, display advertising, targeted display advertising, as well as social media to leverage and build brand awareness. And then we use the traditional lead generation tactics through search marketing, and even other tactics like using lead gen through social. So it's the balancing act of creating demand and capturing demand, and tactically, traditional email, social marketing, display, and then a paid search is generally our go-to recipe. David McBee: And once you've gotten them to sit down with you, how do you move to the recommendation portion of the call? James Pacovsky: Well, a lot of it's really just trying to get into that initial needs assessment, trying to understand what their current state of their business is, and then what their desired state is, and try to establish what that gap might be. So understanding what the client's growth goals and ambitions are is really the key to a needs assessment. Trying to figure out where they are and where they're trying to go, and helping them understand the path to get there can be more efficient if you're targeting the right prospects with tactics that will obviously attract and compel them to take action. So it's really just asking those very specific questions. Where are you? Where are trying to go? What are some of your pain points? And if I could obviously provide you some remedy to help you be more efficient and generate higher ROI, is that generally a conversation that you'd be willing to engage in? And that's how the conversation, that initial dialogue would go. David McBee: And what do you find is the best digital strategy for these kinds of businesses? James Pacovsky: Yeah, in my world, the name of the game is efficiency. So in old school marketing, it's all about reach and frequency. So the way I look at it, when I'm trying to help an HVAC company, for example, target homeowners that have a home of a certain age, where the obsolescence of their original HVAC system is getting ready to be ready for a replacement, the beauty of target marketing is we can identify homeowners that fit a certain criteria of age, age of home, value of home, household income of homeowners, and then ultimately it's about reaching the right people a lot versus if you go back to traditional media, which is all about reaching a lot of people, the efficiency play is don't just reach a lot of people, reach the right people a lot, and it's a lot more effective to have the frequency model really just attached to the right audience that you've curated, reach those right people with enough frequency. You hit them over the head enough times they're going to say, "Ouch," and respond to a message so... David McBee: I like that a lot. James Pacovsky: Yeah, that's how you leverage the old school marketing of reach and frequency to an efficiency play. David McBee: All right. One last question before we wrap things up. Is there a book that has influenced your success or that you'd like to recommend to our viewers? James Pacovsky: Yeah, absolutely, David, Never Lose a Customer Again by Joey Coleman. It's just a great explanation about how businesses that deliver exemplary customer service have extremely high retention rate with their clients. Because ultimately, how you begin a relationship and the clarity that you establish with your client upfront, and then how you continue building that relationship with clear expectations, providing very transparent communication throughout, helps build an insurance policy, helps build a wall around your client relationship that's almost impenetrable by any competitors. So removes all vulnerabilities of losing a client when you take the steps that Joey introduces in his book. And you'll recognize a lot of very, very popular brands that really employed the philosophy, and that's why their market shares continue to grow, and at the very least, they continue to maintain where they are despite any competitive pressures. David McBee: That sounds like a good one, I'll have to add it to my list. James Pacovsky: Yeah, absolutely. David McBee: Well, thank you very much for being a guest on Simpli.fi TV, I sure appreciate you being here. James Pacovsky: Awesome. Thank you, David. David McBee: And thank you guys for watching Simpli.fi TV. I am David McBee, be awesome and we'll see you next time.