LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST BELOW ON FRACTIONAL MARKETING FOR HOME INSPECTORS
PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:
Intro: Fractional marketing, just what is it and how can you implement it in your home inspection business. Also, dead squirrels? All that more coming up in our podcast today. This is Inspector Toolbelt talk.
Beon: Pretty big week for ITB here, because we finally got the same version, the latest version onto every single platform web, android, and IOS.
Ian R.: Yes, that was a long time coming for IOS. Apple’s a kind of a pain in the butt, aren’t they?
Beon: They are, yes. It’s a very protected environment, which has its advantages. But for us as developers, makes it harder. But yes, we finally delivered. So a complete solution pretty proud of that.
Ian R.: Yes, otherwise though, everything going okay on your end down there in Florida?
Beon: Yes man, it’s warm, as opposed to maybe how you’re feeling out there.
Ian R.: So for those who don’t know, I’m in upstate New York, it is cold up here. It is November, almost December, and it’s going to get a lot colder.
So for all our Florida listeners, no offense, but my in-laws live in Florida, and one thing I hate is they call me and tell me that it’s too hot down here. As I’m staring at a frozen squirrel in my yard that apparently just gave up.
He just said, you know what, this cold stinks. I’m done, and he just went outside and gave up. So you can laugh at us, don’t worry.
Beon: Well yes, I guess it’s kind of like for all the Florida and southern listeners, listening to the northerners complaining about how cold it is and how many squirrels died outside their houses.
Ian R.: Florida has the most home inspectors of any state in the country. Texas is always kind of hovering around just about second, maybe a little bit closer I’d have to look at the latest numbers. But there are a lot of home inspectors in Florida.
Beon: Yes, this is true. So don’t be hating on Florida too much there. Anyways, today in our podcast, we’re looking to talk about fractional marketing.
Now when you hear the term fractional marketing, there’s a bunch of different ideas that kind of are labeled in a similar way. So again, maybe question to you, when we are talking about fractional marketing, in the context of our discussion here, what are we talking about really?
Ian R.: Right. So if you look up fractional marketing, the vast majority of what you’re going to find is about large corporations outsourcing small pieces of their marketing. We’re not talking about that part.
What we’re talking about is the idea and the foundation of fractional marketing, which is taking the pie one tiny piece at a time. So the difference of fractional marketing is, typical marketing is I want this whole gallon of milk.
Fractional marketing is I’ll take one drop of that milk from 50 different angles, to fill up my glass instead. It’s a pretty effective marketing strategy, one that I’ve built all of my companies on.
Beon: That’s really interesting, because I mean you’ll hear the expression like diversifying your revenue stream, which basically means you’re doing different stuff in your business to get income from different sources. But here, I mean you’re doing the same thing, but in home inspecting, how does that look?
Ian R.: Well, we’re not going to talk about specifically hey, how do we market to agents? But there is an aspect to that, but it might be an angle that you might not have considered before as a home inspector.
Then it’s also going to be trying to get additional revenue streams from different aspects of the market that most home inspectors don’t look to. Because we tend to think about ROI. If I put a hundred dollars into this, do I get two hundred dollars back?
When you go off of just that thinking, you kind of end up just going after the gallon of milk, instead of little pieces of it. So fractional marketing is the complete opposite. You’re going to get that gallon of milk one drop at a time.
Beon: You got it. You mentioned now in the businesses you had built up, you employed this quite effectively so. Well, I guess how do you do it?
Ian R.: Well, there’s a lot of different aspects we’re going to talk about as I mentioned agents, some other different angles. But let’s talk about agents for just a moment.
Most of my competition, when I first started, there were 40-50-year-old guys, been inspecting for 20 years, it was a long time ago it was almost 20 years ago and it was a different market.
So they had a foothold in there, so all the agents that were selling 100-200 houses a year already had their favorite home inspector, so I was forced into fractional marketing. But I discovered the advantage of it, because guys who had an agent that would supply them 100 inspections a year, oftentimes, found themselves doing favors for that agent.
Trying to keep them happy, if the agent started referring someone else, that’s a hundred inspections a year just completely gone. So I decided to go after agents that did ten or less inspections a year.
We would actually measure it. Actually, our numbers right now tell us, our average agent sends us about 10 inspections a year, and that’s right where we want it to be. So one of the things I did was I targeted agents that weren’t selling a whole lot. Not something that most home inspectors were thinking of.
I would walk into an office, I would contact an agent or otherwise market to them, and they say I only do two to three deals a year, perfect. You’re the person I want.
Beon: Yes, that’s really interesting. I mean, I’m thinking from a perspective if I’m a new home inspector, maybe I have dreams of landing the golden agent with the 100 deals a year and I’m all set, by marketing done, right? But yes, that’s a good point you make there.
Ian R.: Well, it worked out well for us, because there’s always going to be agent churns so to speak. An agent recommends you, then they retire or they recommend somebody else or whatever it happens to be.
So if I lost an agent, I’d only lose 10 inspections a year. So 10 agents, you still equal that 100 a year agent referral. But one of the things that I actually did to kick it off was to teach new agents.
So I’d have rooms of like 30-40 agents and I’d teach them, and I’d help them, I’d answer the questions. I spend a lot of time with them, and I remember a home inspector saying you’re wasting your time, that’s not where the money’s at.
I told him you’re wasting your time, because you’re trying to take fruit from, I didn’t use this illustration exactly, you’re trying to take fruit from a tree that’s already grown. I’m planting seeds, these agents some of them will actually eventually turn into something. I have an agent right now that sells about 20-30 homes a year by himself, only refers us.
I was there the day he was minted as a real estate agent. He only refers us and has for like 13 years. But we have hundreds of agents that are like that, that we were there when they became an agent, and it’s worked out really well for us.
Beon: Now let’s say I am the new home inspector who had the big plan to land the golden agent, and now, you’re telling me, whoa, you really need another plan. So how do I go about diversifying this income stream? How do I go about implementing fractional marketing? Where do I go? What else do I do?
Ian R.: All of us as home inspectors, we would love to say I never want to ever market to agents and only direct to consumer. Direct to consumer can be very difficult, because they have guides in the process, and those are typically going to be the agent.
So I decided to go with fractional marketing in other areas, and I’ll try to list them one by one. But one that’s often forgotten about are mortgage brokers. I used to market to mortgage brokers all the time, and I still have many of them that refer us from that time period.
Most home inspectors weren’t marketing to them, because most of the time, a person comes to a mortgage broker, and they have an agent already, that’s how they found them, deal is done, you’re not going to get any inspections out of it. On average, a mortgage broker would send us one or two inspections every other year.
So I guess you could probably average out one a year. Most people wouldn’t see that as being valuable, except there are hundreds of mortgage brokers in my area alone. So didn’t go to all several hundred of them, but I had a good 20, 30, 40, 50 that we would market to, that’s 50 inspections a year, if you had 50 mortgage brokers.
Again, if I lost a mortgage broker, off they go and it’s really just a drop in the bucket, it didn’t take a lot of time either, because mortgage brokers they’re just doing their job, they’re not marketed to like agents are consistently.
They would throw me an inspection or two once in a while of a client they had that was selling their house, refinancing, or buying a house and didn’t have an agent, because they’re buying it from a friend, and it worked out really well.
Beon: Got it, yes. We just recently went through the process of buying a house, and it’s a good point.
As a client, once you’ve dealt with your agent and now you’re dealing in the phase you’re dealing with your mortgage broker, there’s a lot of face time there. If they have a home inspector in their pocket, obviously is a good opportunity. Okay, good one, what else?
Ian R.: So another thing that we would do are insurance companies. Which seems a little bit odd, because you don’t really have a lot of dealings with your insurance company. So we would get less inspections from an insurance company than we would from a mortgage broker, so it’d be like an inspection every other year.
But it also took less time. While I was driving to an inspection, pop into an insurance agency, talk with them a little bit. Hey, you ever have a client that needs some help, let me know. We’ll be sure to take care of them. It worked out really well because it kind of ballooned a little bit.
I have several insurance agencies that showcase us on their website, and they also sell homeowners insurance. So we get seen there as well.
So somebody’s buying a home, they get three business cards from their agents, mine is one of them. Their mortgage broker recommends me, and now their homeowners insurance company recommends me, guess who they’re going to hire?
Beon: Got it.
Ian R.: So it may not be a direct referral, but it adds on to the whole pile, filling up your entire glass.
Beon: Yes, good idea. What else we got?
Ian R.: So two other avenues that I would often use, one of them being engineering firms, and often forgotten about part of the home inspection industry. Because you’re probably imagining an engineering firm having an in-house inspector, or get one of their civil engineers, they’d send them out.
To be honest, most engineers aren’t going to go out and do an inspection for some home that one of their clients has. So you picture a big client that they have, they have this big commercial project.
Hey, can you guys send someone out to inspect this old house that I’m buying and renovating? They’re not going to spend their time doing that. So they oftentimes need home inspectors but don’t realize it, that has worked out fantastic for us.
We would just visit engineering firms and talk with them. I would know engineers through different avenues, and we got tons of inspections from it. When I say tons, tons compared to other avenues of fractional marketing. So one engineering firm would send us on average about five inspections a year.
They worked with an architectural preservation society, and I specialize in older homes. They would always send me in ahead of time, they loved my reports. I would answer questions, and they loved it.
We get calls to this day and it’s been probably 11 or 12 years now. So going to engineering firms can be a great source of revenue, but there’s a caveat. You have to be prepared for a very picky client.
There’s a different mentality when an engineering firm refers you. When you’re getting a home inspection, okay, he’s going to point out the leaky sink and he’s going to shake the towel bar in the bathroom, make sure that’s on there good, loose steps.
When an engineering firm refers you, you have to be on top of your game. It doesn’t have to be an engineering report, but has to be very thorough, concise, and know that engineers and their clients who have a high expectation are going to read those reports.
So I would be put into some pretty serious situations, and I just had to be on top of my game. I loved it, it was just kind of my gig. It’s not everybody else’s gig. Sometimes it’s like I want to be there for two to four hours and get out.
Sometimes for some of these inspections, that was my day. I’d have to take a lunch break for a home inspection to get it done to the standard that they were looking for.
Beon: Yes. The point is it helps you to break into a market that seemed closed, and that’s really the point here, right? With all these things?
Ian R.: Yes, and the point too is the real estate market fluctuates. So if inspections are down in the real estate market, you need to get revenue from other areas. The engineering industry is not going to be reliant on the real estate market, it’s going to happen one way or the other.
So when market downturns happened, we were thrilled to have multiple engineering firms still referring us. So it’s also kind of like banking for the future. So those inspections may be a little bit more annoying now, but they’re going to pay off the next market downturn.
Beon: Yes, absolutely. I think living proof of that is probably anybody who’s listening to this podcast right now, you know what we’ve just been through, I mean just in life but in the industry as well.
There’s a lot of guys who have dropped out, or have been hurting. So diversifying like this definitely does make sense.
Ian R.: Yes. Market fluctuations are always going to happen, so you can’t hope they don’t happen, you just have to plan for them.
Beon: Yes. Now looking here, are there any other sources we’ve covered a few mortgage brokers, insurance companies, engineering firms any other things left there?
Ian R.: Yes, a couple. We’ll talk about one more human fractional marketing sector, and then we’ll talk about just a couple of online ones that you can do. The last human sector of it, that I like to really market to are HOAs.
Now when you say HOA, homeowners association, sounds like a dirty word. We as home inspectors don’t like them, people don’t like them, they are a huge pain in the butt. But they are fantastic for referrals, and that but was not an intentional.
Beon: Yes, I saw what you did there.
Ian R.: Yes. It’s not a play on words on purpose. But they worked out really well for ancillary inspections. So we do a lot of septic system inspections. HOAs will oftentimes have a centralized septic system in my area or something like that, and they would have us come in and inspect those septic systems.
They wanted an objective third party. Sometimes they’d have a problem with a building and they’d need us to check on it, but most of the time was ancillary services, so for instance radon is a big one. There would be entire HOAs that are like okay, we need to do a sample testing of 15 of our 75 units for radon
But the problem is they don’t usually have ”a guy to do it.” So if you step into HOAs, let them know you’re there, give them a list of services, check-in every once in a while. That can really build up a relationship so that when they do need something, you’re right there to take care of it.
Beon: Yes, that’s all great. So really the idea here, not one of these areas you’re going to be making your whole income. We’re looking to get little like you said the drops from the whole gallon of milk, that’s really what we’re building up here so far.
We don’t want the whoever it is associated with the real estate industry to go and hit up Google to find who they’re going to use, we want them to have your business card and know who they’re going to call. I guess that’s what you’re trying to accomplish.
Ian R.: Yes. The reality of it is a thousand people could listen to this podcast, but only a few are actually going to institute a fractional marketing strategy. So you’re going to have way less competition.
I can guarantee you, everybody who’s marketing to the same real estate agent, same brokerage, they’re going to have 30, 40, 50 home inspectors marketing to them all the time.
You talk to a HOA, you talk to an engineering firm, they’re really not going to have hardly anybody, if anybody that’s ever talked to them about it. So you’re opening up a new field for yourself.
Beon: Yes, that’s interesting. So really if you’re sitting in a market wherever you are, these are likely the ones we discussed so far, pretty much untapped, could likely be very untapped in your area.
Ian R.: Exactly. Remember there’s people that work within those industries, so those engineering firms that I marketed to and they refer their clients to, guess who they come to when they need an inspection.
Again, you’re working for engineers, or you’re working for somebody that runs an HOA, so it’s going to be a little bit more in-depth maybe than the typical home inspection. But they’re all going to keep it in-house, oh this guy does great if we refer to our clients we should use them ourselves and you get work that way as well.
Beon: Got it. All right, I mentioned Googling or looking up something on Google, but you said there’s some technical online resources where we can tap to.
Ian R.: Yes, let’s talk about SEO for a second. So everybody likes to say I want to be on page one. My first question to them is page one of what? Because if you’re in Memphis Tennessee, do you want to be on page one of what keywords? Hypothetically, Memphis Tennessee home inspections.
But now outside of every major city are going to be smaller towns and maybe areas that people don’t want to market to, because there may be like 5000 people. The town I live in is a small town, I think there are like 700 people in my town. I’m pretty sure the cows outnumber the people.
So nobody really wants to market to my town. But there are also 20, 30 towns around me, that same size. So everybody is marketing to the big city with SEO. I want to show up on the big city that has the most bang for my buck.
So let’s say you have, a big city for the U.S. would be 100,000 people, let’s say. But now outside those you have 10 towns that have 10,000 people in them. I would much rather have be on page one of those 10 towns that nobody’s marketing to, than the big city in the middle.
Because nobody’s fighting for those small towns, so it’s an easier win. But people also search locally. So if you live in Chadwick town of 10,000 people or that’s where you’re moving to, that’s where your house is, you’re going to type in Chadwick town home inspections.
You’re not going to search the greater area of the city that you are going to live next to. Because people search locally, having area pages is very important. Build a page on your website for each one of the small towns around you.
Have it be about 300 words, have a good mix of the keywords, have it be all original content, don’t cut and paste the same content into each page. Build out a repertoire of pages for smaller areas. That will also help you rank in the big city that you want to be in. Because now you’re building traffic to those other pages, and Google says oh hey, this guy’s popular, let’s put him on page one of the big cities.
I show up on page one of multiple areas in my service area, because I’m not really aiming for the big cities. I’m going after all the little small towns around me.
Beon: Yes, very interesting approach. The place we live in as well it’s not quite 700 people, but it’s not a very large metropolitan area.
So to illustrate that, whenever I look for services, I always Google our town first, because I want to help the guy down the street. I want to have the local business first, so that makes absolute sense, good idea there.
Ian R.: Yes. Another aspect of fractional marketing, which people don’t think of it as fractional marketing are ads, Google and Facebook ads, and also things like Tik-Tok. Instagram would kind of go along with Facebook anyway, since it’s owned by Facebook.
But a lot of times people run a Facebook ad, and again going back to that whole I didn’t see any ROI on it. How were you measuring ROI on that? Are you saying you didn’t get anything out of people seeing your business?
You can run multiple ads on Facebook, and my favorite thing to do is to pick, let’s go back to those 10 areas. You can target a specific area with a specific ad. So if you live in Chadwick town, you can say here’s my ad for Chadwick town, I’m going to boost this post and it’s an ad specific to Chadwick town.
What I’ll do is I’ll run an ad for 10, 20 towns and run them for a dollar a day. Then I’ll watch them for three, four, five days and the one that’s starting to pick up on clicks, and maybe I even got a phone call from it, I’ll turn a couple of others off and I’ll increase the fee on that one.
Then I’ll do the same thing over and over again. It’s the same thing with Google ads, a lot of times people say I spent five hundred dollars this month on Google ads. I didn’t get anything out of it, because I only got one inspection and so I just broke even. The illustration I use with guys is you met two agents on that, right? Yes, great.
If two agents came up to you and said can you demonstrate the home inspection for us to see if we want to refer you, would you do it? Most new guys yes in a heartbeat, we’ll do that all day long, that’s what that Google ad just did for you. You picked up two agents that you normally wouldn’t have had.
Make your ads specific, get granular with it. Don’t just one run one big broad ad. If you live in Tampa Florida, run an ad for Tampa, then Clearwater, then Saint Pete, and all the other areas around it, see which one’s really taking off and then focus your energies there.
Beon: For a guy who is busting on Florida, you sure know your Florida towns there.
Ian R.: My in-laws do live in Florida, so I have to give them props.
Beon: There we go. For me, I know very little about Facebook, running Facebook ads and Google ads. But I mean that’s your area of expertise. So maybe the guys are listening and well that all sounds really good, and I want to do that but I need some help, here comes the plug, where do they get help, Ian?
Ian R.: Oh, they can come right to us. So area pages, and ads and Facebook posts and all of that, we have a fantastic team. We have people on page one for multiple towns cities and areas all across the U.S. and Canada we’re more than happy to help you out with that.
Beon: Yes, awesome. I think many guys may start off, and it’s just a one item in starting or running your business and you do the one size fits all and you put it up there because you only got so much time. But man guys, invest the time and invest the money, it is worth it, it does bring results. Here’s a guy who knows how these things work and he’s been on both sides, pushing the marketing out there and running the inspection businesses as well.
Ian R.: Well, one thing I’ll have to say about fractional marketing is it was discovered on accident. So when I started my inspection business, my first one I was 23 or 24 maybe. I looked like I was 12 years old.
It’s a genetic trait of my family, I would show up and I actually had a person say is your dad coming. So I had to do fractional marketing, I couldn’t put my face all over everything and say hey, look at me, I have 20 years of inspection experience.
I am a 40-year-old guy with a little bit of gray in my hair, that looks like he can get into an addict, but he knows what he’s talking about. I look like a 12-year-old schoolboy.
So I had to do fractional marketing, but corporations now, you said something interesting the other day, Beon, corporations now are going to a fractional marketing platform, because they see the benefit of it.
Beon: Yes. It is quite interesting to see what’s happening in the corporate world, because obviously, corporate world, a lot is focused on the larger companies on business-to-business interactions. So if you land even two or three big clients, you’re all set maybe for your sector.
But man, the interesting thing is with a big deal comes a lot of strings attached. Both to chase up the deal, to seal it, to keep it going. I mean, a lot of the corporate outfits that you interacting with, they have literally a basement full of widget crunchers, making sure that all the numbers and everything is being delivered and done, so there’s a lot to it.
But what I’m seeing at least in the sectors I’m working in, is they are leveraging to also now look at how can we create products, solutions that we’re making every day, and who else is buying them.
Can we package this up and sell it to the smaller guys. It still would be a business-to-business interaction, but you’re not dealing with somebody of similar or larger size to you, they may even be smaller than you and I must say looking at the numbers, they’re going the right direction.
They’re diversifying their business, and at the same time seeing an increase in revenue. Having a product, I must say the work cycle of having a product that is yours, that you’re pushing to someone else as opposed to just trying to manage or service a client to whatever their specs are, it’s a nice mode to work in as well in the tech industry anyways.
Ian R.: You hit the nail on the head when you said we already have the product, who else needs it? It’s the same thing with the home inspector. We already have the product, we’re the home inspector.
We can’t be outsourced, you can’t build us into a robot and send somebody out there, you have to have a real human being with experience that knows how to inspect. We are the product, who else needs it?
It’s not just a real estate agent that’s going to sell you to their client, there are a lot of different avenues that you can get direct to client or find that client in different ways. It doesn’t always have to be a real estate transaction.
And that’s the beautiful thing, when it’s not a real estate transaction too, when you’re selling your product to other people, you don’t have to have the time crunch of well this needs to get done in five days, you don’t have to stressed-out buyer.
You don’t have a lot of different things. You can say okay, well I can get to this in three weeks, are you going to be there, and then you show up you do the inspection, it’s a lot less of a struggle.
It’s also really great right now, because people are skipping inspections. We see that all over the market, it’s the kind of the big topic that home inspectors are talking about. People are skipping inspections, because it’s still a hot market.
It will eventually die down, but how do you get work in that hot market? You need to have fractional marketing. It will help you to survive and thrive when the market changes like this.
Beon: Yes, it certainly does make sense. So maybe you’re a new home inspector, or you’re considering home inspecting and you’re listening to this information. Obviously, you’re making notes and looking to implement some of these ideas as you tackle the market.
But maybe you’re a home inspector who’s been around for a while already. How many agents are you servicing? What if one of those agents went elsewhere with their business?
Maybe think about it, maybe it could be time for you to start looking at some other ways to diversify and implement the fractional marketing strategies that Ian stepped us through today.
Again, if you need help with doing that, just hit us up on our website, Inspectortoolbelt.com. Or send us an email at [email protected] and we’ll get Ian and the team right on it.
Ian R.: Enjoyed the conversation, Beon.
Beon: Yes, always good chatting with you, Ian. Thanks a lot. I know the guys will appreciate you sharing that insight with them.
Ian R.: Great, and see you the next episode.
Beon: All right, yes. Take care.
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