PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

Ian R: That was a pretty awesome past couple of weeks of podcasts wasn’t it Beon.

Beon DeNood: Oh, man. Yeah, I think I’m going to skip out on more podcasts so I can see who your next guest is. 

Ian R: I gotta say, I mean, it’s Nick and Ben Gromicko. Were the past two weeks. That’s both slices of bread. So the sandwich is complete. 

Beon DeNood: Absolutely. You’ve topped the charts already. So but that was great, though. I really enjoyed both of those podcasts. Especially the last one there with Nick some interesting topics. I mean, Nick is just such an interesting guy too, with his take on things. The whole discussion, I think brought up some very relevant and important points that the industry is dealing with right now and it was very useful. 

Ian R: I realized, that what I appreciated out of that podcast is a little self-serving. He really complimented our app quite a bit. He was impressed. 

Beon DeNood: Yeah, look, I’m not gonna lie that that wasn’t cool too. 

Ian R: Hey, Nick wants to buy part of our app. So we’re doing something right. 

Beon DeNood: Yeah, no, it was a nice endorsement. I mean, Nick’s been around in the industry for as long as it’s existed just about. Obviously, he’s a huge force behind the whole industry at the moment. So to get an endorsement like that means a lot. So yeah, that was very cool to hear. 

Ian R: Yeah. I loved Ben’s explanation of the fraction. If anybody listening to that hasn’t listened to either of these podcasts, please go back and listen to him. His explanation of the fraction, overwhelming value, people don’t worry about the price. So we need to make that fraction just completely topple over with overwhelming value. So yeah, it was great stuff. I really enjoyed those last couple of podcasts, every podcast. I mean, there are more people that we want to have on, there are so many people in the industry we want to have on. There are people emailing us, and messaging us asking to be on the show. We have a couple of big names coming up here in the next few weeks or months that asked to be on the show. So looking forward to that. 

Beon DeNood: Yeah, that’s fantastic. Maybe to you, our listeners as well, if there’s anybody out there, you know, of that you’d love to get on the show and get some more info from them or, you know, have had them on. Just send us an email at [email protected] and we’ll do what we can to get them on the show. 

Ian R: Yeah, and even if you have an idea for the show, let us know because actually, today’s podcast is something that one of our listeners pitched message me through Facebook and said, Hey, this would be a good idea. Why don’t you do this? So which actually brings us to our topic? I have some home inspection marketing ideas. 

Beon DeNood: Yeah, you know, when it comes to marketing, it seems like it’s this, this never-ending process. Even when you think you’ve got it kind of down, you’re always open to new ideas and maybe something you thought worked, or worked at one point doesn’t really work as well as, as it did. So you always need to tweak and change. It’s a massive sub-topic. So you said coming in that you’ve got a few ideas, and thoughts you wanted to share today related to marketing. So where do we start? 

Ian R: Well, I tell you what, before we get into it, I’m gonna hop on my soapbox here for a minute and just remind everybody of an old expression, that when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Actually, David, I guess we would call him our Director of Operations. I don’t know. I don’t know what you call David. 

Beon DeNood: Yeah, that would be his official title. He has many unofficial titles but yeah. 

Ian R: They can’t be repeated here. He likes to use that expression but it’s a true thing. Sometimes we get stuck in a marketing rut. I remember a guy called me not long ago, and he said, How do I market better? I gave him a few ideas that I don’t want to do? How do I market better? He kept asking, what he wanted to hear was, how can I do what I’m already doing and make it work? I’m like, Listen, man, you need to put the hammer down and grab a different tool. That’s uncomfortable, learning a new tool, trying something new, getting ourselves out of our realm of comfort, that’s difficult. If we don’t, then we end up like Nick Gromicko mentioned driving around dropping off bowls of candies at offices and wondering why we haven’t had a phone call for an inspection lately. So some of these are out of the box. So I have five to be exact that I’m going to share with everybody today. So I have a little bit of an advantage because I know home inspectors all across the US and Canada. All of them have like a little thing that they do. So I get to see all sorts of different marketing ideas, some effective and some not. So some of these I’ve done. Some of these are, I guess you would say conceptual, but other ones I’ve seen home inspectors do very successfully. So this isn’t going to be a big flowery soapbox piece of speech, I guess. I just want to say that. Try one of them. You don’t have to try all of them. You don’t have to say let me change my entire marketing parameter around but can you just grab one that makes you uncomfortable and do it. 

Beon DeNood: That’s a good idea too because sometimes changing the whole strategy all in one go, could end up actually being worse than what you’ve got going on. You only get to know, you know, there’s like a lead time with marketing, you’re only going to know in a few months’ time as to whether it’s actually working or if you really broke it badly. So that’s good advice. One piece at a time. 

Ian R: Yeah. Remember, everybody always likes to talk about ROI. We had this conversation the other day Beon, right? There’s a difference between marketing, advertising, and lead generation. There are three completely different columns. Lead Generation is lead generation, you generated a lead, I paid the home advisor $500, and they gave me three leads. You just measured your ROI, great. In advertising, I sent out 500 coupons, and I got 20 of them back that use them. You can measure your ROI. Marketing is completely different. You can’t always measure ROI on marketing. I heard a guy recently who unlettered his car. So he took all the vehicles wrapping off he goes, I never got a phone call from that ever. I’m like, how do you measure that? You know, how do you measure how many? Hey, I’m calling for a home inspection. I called you off of your car specifically. You know, it’s brand recognition. As you’re pulling up into the real estate office, as you’re pulling up to an inspection, as people are walking by and your logo on your shirt and your hat, you’re creating an environment. That’s what marketing is. I describe it as creating an environment. The reason why we use FedEx instead of the, you know, white van courier services. FedEx gives us that warm, fuzzy feeling. There’s a reason why every brand out there markets and I’m gonna go I’m gonna go back and use the McDonald’s illustration again because Nick likes to use those, so I’ll steal his thunder. 

Beon DeNood: Yeah. Is there any antacid involved this time? Or we’re having a healthy meal? 

Ian R: There’s always, Is there a healthy meal at McDonald’s? 

Beon DeNood: Uh, yeah, as I said that, I was like, ugg 

Ian R: There’s always antacid. McDonald’s will send out coupons. So they advertise. They will also measure, you know, leads generated through their app and things like that, hey, we sent a push notification, and we got a leadoff of that to buy a cheeseburger. But they do more marketing than anything else. We all recognize McDonald’s yet we do not see them say, “Well, I took the logo off of our sign, or we don’t put the logo on our hamburger boxes anymore, because nobody ever bought a cheeseburger from seeing a logo on a bag.”‘ They dumped the vast majority of their money into creating that environment. So some of this is marketing. Some of its lead generation. Some of it is advertising but we’ll talk about that in a later podcast because that really, as you can tell, kind of gets me going here a little bit. I can talk about that all day. All right. So I have five ideas here. 

Beon DeNood: All right, number one. 

Ian R: If you don’t like them, ignore them. The first one is a big one. 

Beon DeNood: I wish we had a drumroll sound effect. Maybe we can put one in. 

Ian R: David. Drumroll please. (drumroll sound) The first one is to start a podcast. So I say that because I never really thought about it before as a home inspector. I’ve never had a podcast as a home inspector in my local market but there was a client of mine that was just killing it. Even as the market was starting to tank, he was just like, booming. He had a podcast. So it was pretty interesting to watch. So what he would do was genius. He’d have a 10 or 15-minute podcast, really rough sound, he didn’t have a sound booth like you and I do here or any of that fancy stuff. He’d use his computer’s audio, he calls up an agent or they sit in the same room. And they’d have a quick discussion. Hey, do you think interest rates are gonna go up? It wasn’t on any kind of podcast platform, he’d do it on YouTube, or live to stream it on Facebook and then record it and put it on YouTube. So 1015 minutes later, he’d have it done. Then less than five minutes, he’d have it posted already live stream it on Facebook. So it didn’t seem like much, but it was 10 to 15 minutes out of his day. Then another five minutes to post it 20 minutes total. He’d do that once a week. What happened was he created a marketing machine with it. So now that agent shared that interview with everybody on her Facebook. So all our clients who liked her Facebook page and all that other stuff, all the other agents or broker. Now, her broker would come and say, Hey, I’d like to be on your show. People started asking to be on his show. He’d share week after week after week. He became an authority all these agents would start to use them to recognize him. It was being shared in the private groups with agents because agents had their own groups like Home inspectors, we have our own groups. It just blew up. The problem was he was like, this is working great. Then he stopped. You know, Beon, it’s a lot of work to think of new questions, new ideas to talk about. 

Beon DeNood: It’s true. I mean, there are a lot of podcasts. Even I’ve noticed since we’ve started ours, there’s been a lot of newer ones and older, you know, home inspector podcasts that have now got a surge of new episodes. But yeah, it is really hard to keep it up. That’s why you see such big gaps sometimes in air dates on podcasts. 

Ian R: Yeah, that was his only downfall, because it built right up, and everybody was loving it. Then people were advertising for him, because you know, he’s sitting there, and he would call it I forget what his company name is. It was his company name podcast and it had his logo in his background, he just did a Zoom meeting. It was perfect, amazing advertising a little banner at the bottom with his website address. The results of it lasted quite some time. You know, if you can keep it up, if you could do that, maybe even make it a weekly show. If you don’t think he could keep it up, attending the 20 minutes a week is not that much. We can find an agent anywhere and grab a new agent who’s never done a transaction. Hey, today, we’re talking to you about you know, starting off your inspection career, what have you found challenging? Now, her broker, his broker will see that video and now you have an introduction into that office? Oh, well, thank you for helping my agent get their feet wet. Appreciate. 

Beon DeNood: So I just to understand the concept a little better. So this is pitched to the podcast audience are you’re looking at real estate agents or you’re looking at clients or homebuyers? Who would be pitched up? 

Ian R: So that was interesting. He did a little bit of both. And the reason he did a little bit of both is sometimes the agent would be interviewed about, hey, why is Keller Williams the best in the area? What do you think? Now every Keller Williams office that is owned by that same person or group is going to say, Hey, look at this great interview. You just got introduced to every agent and Keller Williams in the area. Be very careful with that polarize, you know, Coldwell Banker comes and says, Hey, I thought we were the best, you know. Then he would do other ones that say, Hey, I’d like to help out some first-time homebuyers, what’s the first thing they should do when looking for a new mortgage rate. So now they do that, and that agent will post it to their Facebook page. That’s in front of their clients because that’s where they want to see, hey, can you help me with my mortgage rates, I just did a podcast on that with a home inspector, there it is, you just got introduced to the client, he would do a little bit of both, it was genius. It really, really was. 

Beon DeNood: That’s a great idea, especially just sticking on YouTube. Because you know, I mean, you can go the whole conventional podcast route, but it’s very hard to get that in front of people, but with YouTube, YouTube. Now what I’ve noticed, and I mean, any Google user would have noticed this, but when you do a local search for something, or knows where you’re located, it features YouTube videos on that topic, in the rich results that are localized, you know, so like, I even noticed the other day, I was searching for something on InterNACHI. So I look up, you know, InterNACHI, whatever. There’s all bank Rumiko with these videos, but all the videos that were being featured were Florida-related topics because it knows where I was located. So if you do that, it gives you a major local boost because if you know you, especially in a maybe a smaller area, whatever, they’re not going to have a lot of YouTube videos you know about your town, your service area. So you know, if there is anything, you’re gonna be right on top with a Rich Snippet, they’re gonna see your face and your podcast there. It’ll be great advertising. 

Ian R: It makes it easy because you just put the YouTube app on your phone, and you have an opportunity real quick. Interview an agent while you’re on-site on an inspection, hey, this is what we found. What would you tell a buyer when we find this kind of thing, make a real quick put it on YouTube, and always introduce your show, say, Hey, this is the such and such inspection Podcast. Today we’re going to talk to so and so always introduce it and keep it consistent. It’s not just a matter of, hey, I put up videos, that’s effective too, by the way, I mean, if you’re just gonna shoot some quick videos, make it a little bit more formal. Make it so that hey, this is my podcast. So that people say Hey, can I be on your show? People love to be on a show. They love to talk about themselves. And actually, it was interesting after I learned about this from that other home inspector and how effective it was, you know who else does it is real producers magazine. So a lot of us have them in the area. I watched them because I’m like, How are you keeping this business alive and thriving, not even just alive, but they’re doing really, really well with printed material. Who can keep printed material alive like that? That’s what they do and actually talk to one of their reps about at one time. He goes Oh yeah, it’s a big thing. have, you have a little podcast, shoot a couple of short videos, and I seem to deal with agents in my area, they want to be on the show. Now they’re on the show, I was honored to be on the show for five to 10 minutes talking about something. Then he puts it on YouTube and then reposts it on Facebook and a couple of other places. It’s genius because it doesn’t take that long. 20 minutes, if you can take 20 minutes a week, you know, Monday evenings, that’s your time. It’s really an effective marketing piece. 

Beon DeNood: Yeah, that’s awesome. It’s not like you have to get like a whole bunch of equipment to get started or whatever. All you really have to just do it, you know, selfie stick tripod, or just ask somebody to hold your phone for a few minutes, you know, whatever the case is. 

Ian R: Yeah. Or just do it from your laptop or desktop computer and just start a Zoom meeting. That makes it really convenient for the agents too. Hey, can you do a zoom meeting? Sure. You know what, I’m sitting here in the office anyways, or, you know what? I’m at an open house. Sundays are a great time to do it. It’s in the afternoon. Hey, can you do this while you’re at the open house? Tell me about open houses while we’re on the podcast? 

Beon DeNood: Awesome. Yeah. No, I mean, without getting too technical about the setup or anything. It meant that it sounds like a great idea. I know the benefits. It’s even done for our brand, having a podcast so you know, for a more localized brand. Wow, that would be awesome. Good idea. Okay. So number one you got me. I liked that one. What’s number two? 

Ian R: So the number two is actually related. This is not any kind of new or crazy idea but a lot of home inspectors I find have not thought about it yet but Tik Tok. Everybody’s on Tik Tok. Everybody under 30 years old uses Tik Tok. How many of us have actually posted to Tik Tok though. A couple of inspectors have and they’ve done pretty well with it. The reason I actually started considering it a viable marketing platform for home inspectors, is when I got sucked in watching people tape sheetrock, have you ever seen it beyond? 

Beon DeNood: I did not see the Tik Tok videos. No, sorry. But I mean, in real life, I’ve seen some amazing. 

Ian R: Take more houses than I can count. I remember sitting there I’m like, this is mesmerizing because they’re doing these, you know, what are they called when they speed it up a little bit. I’m watching the tape the room and sanding and then taping going on the next coat and they’re doing level five finishes. Then 10 minutes go by and I’m like, Oh, wow. Um, like people will watch anything? Yeah, so there’s a home inspector, one of my clients that are actually trending on Tik Tok. So that means people are picking up his video that doesn’t know who he is. Watching him do stuff. 

Beon DeNood: Okay, so that, so that’s nuts. Okay, so what is he doing in the videos? What is the video of like, all the weird stuff he finds on inspections? 

Ian R: Remember, we have a television show now and an old television show of home inspectors finding stuff. That’s exactly what it is. You find something cool. Put it on Tik Tok. And I’m not talking cool. Like, oh, man, have you ever seen cm use laid this way? Okay. Save that for a blog post or something? I’m talking. 

Beon DeNood: Take a look at the hydrostatic pressure reading over here. 

Ian R: We like to use the term hydrostatic pressure. It always makes me feel sorry. 

Beon DeNood: I just thought I just had a moment where I felt like a home inspector there. Yeah. 

Ian R: Looking back. I’ve always recommended this for Facebook and stuff. If you find something cool or funny. Put it right on there. Be respectful of people’s homes, you know, we’re not talking about family photos and stuff. If you’re in a crawlspace and you find a dog just tearing apart a ball and he looks at you weirdly. Put that on Tik Tok, you know, have a GoPro camera on and put that on Tik Tok later, later, whatever it happens to be. Tik Tok is where the newer buyers are going. Young people at 25 are buying houses too, you get in front of them that way. You know what? It, there’s an entire group of people that when they scroll down to the bottom of your website to look at all of the social media you do, they’re gonna ignore Facebook and you know, LinkedIn and everything else, and they’re gonna click on the Tik Tok button instead. So keep it light, keep it funny, and again, this wasn’t a revelation like, Whoa, Ian found a new social media platform. 

Beon DeNood: Finally, five years after his existence? 

Ian R: No, but not enough of us have considered it and I know inspectors out there that are doing really well. Just posting once in a while when they find something cool. You know, even things that are mundane to us. Like, how many bullets have you found in a roof? Okay, we’ve all seen it. But your people on  Tik Tok probably haven’t seen it. post that video man. Say well, just dodged this one, you know? 

Beon DeNood: Yeah, that’s a great idea. Again, you know, just the reminder we’re talking about marketing here, you know. He’s like, Oh, well, you know, I’m gonna do all this effort and put it all the stuff up there what for? it’s marketing. It’s the same reason why, you know, okay, McDonald’s, I had to say, McDonald’s sponsors so much stuff, it’s to get their logo and their brand in front of you so that the next time you think, oh, man, I really need a home inspection out, where’s that guy that’s on  Tik Tok posting those videos. You know, that’s the kind of response that you’re looking for with these efforts. 

Ian R: Yeah, it’s brand recognition, it’s marketing, you’re not going to be able to measure, hey, I got five leads from the  Tik Tok I did about the bullet in the roof but it’s, it’s all part of your brand recognition. So that one wasn’t mind-blowing. The next one is a little bit more granular. So we have a first podcast, which by the way, if you’re going to try any of them, try that one. That will blow your market up, every other home inspector in the market will be really unhappy that you’re doing that because it is extremely effective.  Tik Tok, all I’m saying is consider it. It’s a great platform for marketing anyways. 

Beon DeNood: I gotta say it’s number three. 

Ian R: This one I call happy hour. So I’ve actually used this. I know a home inspection company that has grown from just himself and part-time to five inspectors in less than two years. This was almost his only marketing thing for a time. Wow, that’s impressive. Yeah. It’s beer. 

Beon DeNood: Oh, really? 

Ian R: Not the beer, I don’t want to spill the beer. So he would get his way into a real estate office. How he would do it is, you know, he’d go to the manager, and he’d say, Hey, I’d like to do an office presentation. Okay, yeah, great. Everybody does, get in line. What I’d like to do is also, for just your office, this Friday, do a happy hour for your agents. Now you have the broker’s ear because they’re always looking for ways to keep their agents around. Brokers are always worried about losing their agents. So the more things they can do like that, the happier the broker gets because he can keep his agents happy. So when you say, hey, it’s going to be all you, I’ll sponsor, I’ll say, Oh, well, that’s quite generous of you. So he’d go do the meeting. He gives his little spiel, and, you know, don’t talk about how great you are and stuff like that. Then you say, hey, this Friday, 5 pm or 6 pm, or whenever it was over at this particular place, take these vouchers, and you’ll get a free drink on me, I’ll be there. So he said, you know, he’d do an office of like, 20 people, he said, eight or nine of them would show up. So happy hour, you know, he’d buy these things in bulk from the same bar. He’d get them for like, you know, $5 apiece. So he bought drinks for eight agents for $40. So he spent only $40 to sit at a table for over an hour with these agents, eight of them, and just talk about stuff, not talk about work, but talk about stuff. Now. They liked him. He’s like, Ian, every single one of them will start referring me. So the average agent refers us 10 inspections a year. Those eight people for $40 represent 80 inspections for him a year. He said every week he would do that. Tuesday was Office meeting day, and Friday was happy hour. He’s like, I grew a multi-inspector firm and two years on beer. It worked. 

Beon DeNood: That’s an impressive result. Any numbers like that? That’s very impressive. 

Ian R: So yeah, he could actually relatively measure it because you know, he’s sitting there at the table. He’s a talkative guy and he’s working with the agents. He’s like, oh, yeah, I remember you from happy hour. So you could kind of sorta measure it. You know, that same broker said, hey, my agents love that. Can you come back again? Now he has brokers that just asked him to come back on a rotation. When we’ve done things like that, the brokers are always like, oh, man, yeah, just can you come back? Can you sponsor another drink? We have a septic inspection company. So we sponsored a drink. Man, this is probably appropriate for the podcast, but the guy I was working with, he’s like, I got an idea. I’m like, Just keep it clean. Okay. So he called it the morning routine. It was just it was a cup of kalua and coffee, like, man. So we didn’t do that one again. Then I sponsored another drink and I called it a major defect. You know, so you keep it light. You know, you go and you say, Hey, I’d like to buy 10 beers for these people. I’m going to be in here for the next you know, eight weeks. Can I buy these in bulk? Oh, yeah, of course. Definitely for happy hour. You know, and then hey, can you make my own signature drink, and we’ll call it the Robertson home inspection drink or whatever you want to do. You know, you buy enough from that bar for happy hour, they’re gonna give it to you. So now you do have to be careful. You don’t stick the one beer and keep it professional and un rowdy. You want to keep that professional atmosphere, but get people to like you. I was really surprised because, at one time, I’m like, man, what are you doing? He goes, I’m drinking beer. I didn’t get it. And then finally is as like, beer built my business, man. This is how he explained how he did it. I stole it from him. He told me, he totally told me I could use it but it’s very effective. It’s relationship marketing but it’s also not, you know, an office presentation is what, a half-hour at the happiest hour an hour for an hour and a half a week, getting 80 inspections for the rest of the year. Oh, yeah. That’s effective. 

Beon DeNood: Yeah. It shows the value of just connecting with people, doesn’t it? I mean, like you said, relationship marketing. It isn’t but ultimately, it’s not you know, that their workplace standing sitting in a conference room, trying to tell them something that they’ve heard 100 times before, you know, it’s an innovative approach to building relationships with people. So well done. 

Ian R: Well done to him. I always said that it’s more important than people like you. So say that you go to an inspection and the client is upset about something, that agent is going to defend you because you’re not only just the home inspector, some cold company, you’re the guy that he’s sitting had sat and had a drink with, talked about his sister and his cousin, and you know, where they grew up together, you know, what school you went to. Now, you’re going to stop for a second before you throw that inspector under the bus. It helps a lot, even just in your day-to-day. 

Beon DeNood: Number four. 

Ian R: The next one is a simple one. I had never liked this one. But it does work. And I stole this from an inspector in my market. He would run contests online. So whatever social media platforms you’re on, he would run all sorts of contests. One of them is where’s your inspector today. So he takes a picture of himself in front of, you know, a cafe or something or takes a picture of a signature dish. Where’s your inspector today? $10 gift card, if you can guess the place that I’m at. So if he was at a little restaurant, he bought a $10 gift card and said, Okay, you got it right. This is where I’m at come here and grab your $10 gift card. What it did was create engagement. So much of our posting is unengaged. You know, people don’t always react when you put up, you know, certain things. Now you’re asking the person to engage with the result at the end and they did. I was actually pretty surprised. I watched how many people responded and guessed where he was. People would actually start to look at his social media more often. Because it was actually kind of fun. Like, I’m like, Oh, I know that place. Like I kind of got into it. photo caption contests are another one too. If you see something funny, again, be respectful of everybody’s personal space, and all that. If you see something funny, say, hey, I want to turn this into a meme. Somebody caption this for me. Doing little contests like that, keep people engaged. Not only just agents but potential buyers and things like that. Potential clients who by the way, if you didn’t realize this, every potential client under the age of 40 is checking me out online. They’re looking at what you post how you post and, you know, if people are engaged, I actually skipped over a contractor recently, because he didn’t have any kind of social media presence. I’m like, Man, that’s weird. It’s like he’s a ghost. 

Beon DeNood: Don’t think you can trust the guy. 

Ian R: Yeah. Like, Does he exist? I don’t know. It gives people something tangible to look at when they go to your social media. 

Beon DeNood: Yeah, you mentioned the fun factor. That’s definitely it because I mean, even if there’s nothing else to be gained from you just want to kind of, or maybe it’s the game, you know, part of you that that wants to try and get it before anybody else does or whatever. So yeah, it’s a great way to engage. I would never have thought of that on a small business sort of level but that’s a very good idea. 

Ian R: Yeah. It’s easy to do the photo caption thing. That’s easy. Take a picture of something hey, somebody caption this. The restaurant one, you got to stop for lunch anyway. Hopefully, you’re not eating McDonald’s on the road but you know, stop in a little local place and say, hey, guess where I am? Even if you know the owner of a place you can make it reciprocal. So hey, I’m gonna post this on Facebook and Tik Tok and Twitter and all that. Do you mind kicking in the $10 gift card? And then that way, you know, it’ll advertise you somebody will come in and buy a sandwich? Oh, yeah, sure. I’ll do that. If you know the restaurant. Well, if not just do him a favor. Say hey, you know, I just advertised and afterward they had just advertised your business. This many people responded. Somebody’s coming in to get this gift card that I just bought from you. They’ll love you for it. 

Beon DeNood: Yeah. I mean, especially if they also have a social media presence, they’ll probably, you know, repost or whatever on their account and even more marketing for you. 

Ian R: Exactly. That’s exactly it. So we have the fifth one. This one is going old school. I brought this out on the podcast before, but I’m watching how effective it is. 

Beon DeNood: Door hangers! 

Ian R: Door hangers you got it. Yep, it is it goes against every grain of my being to say let me go print something and hang it on a doorknob. Here’s, here’s where we want to use it. 11th-month builder warranty inspections. So nobody looks up that service. People will look up phase one and phase two and phase three inspections and all that other stuff. They will not look up 11th-month inspections because they don’t know they exist. Half of them don’t even realize they have a 12-month builder warranty. So we need to educate them, we need to show them that that’s important. So last year building actually kind of kept up in the US anyway, I wasn’t sure with the Canada statistics. So there were quite a few houses that were built last year, even with the supply chain issues. So we can go find those neighborhoods, and pay our nephew to have our wife or husband do it or whoever just walk those streets and put the hangers-on. Here’s where it gets really good. It’s not a matter of Oh, well. Oh, that one neighborhood, I only got one 11th-month warranty inspection, you need to stretch it. So how do you stretch it and I did this many years ago, but it’s coming back and I have a lot of my clients starting to do it. One of them just emailed me or texted message me rather the other day saying this is working. So what happens is you get that 11th-month warranty inspection. Now you find something in the attic. First of all, you should have a sign out in the yard. This is the 11th-month builder warranty inspection, ask us how to get yours. So that way all the neighbors are like, Oh, what are they getting? You know, and again, marketing, you should have your vehicle logo up and things like that. Anyways, going back, you found something in the attic, that issue is likely in all of those houses. So now you can offer single-item inspections if your state allows it. It was just reading the truck email, and they have some regulations on how you have to go about the single item thing and stuff like that. You can say, hey, if you don’t want to pay for the home inspection, I encourage you to get that, but I can do it for you know $75 while I’m in the neighborhood, we’ll go and verify that as theirs. People love that and it took me less than 10 minutes. I do a little you know, ad hoc inspection page real quick. If you’re using the inspector toolbelt. You just go click and off it goes. Little one-pager. Here’s the one issue. Now you can go back to your builder and have it fixed and all the builders coming back and fixing these issues and all the other neighbors are like, Why aren’t you fixing mine? Well, call Ian, he’ll come and he’ll verify that it’s there. Then the builder will fix it. It’s steam, it just rolls through the neighborhood. It’s really awesome. We used to do that when we would find radon in a house. We put door hangers up, we found radon in your neighborhood, would you like a test that was really effective. It’s the same thing with 11th-month inspections now you hung up door hangers to introduce them to the 11th-month inspection. Now you can hang up a door hanger saying we have a special to the run of just verifying a single defect in your house. You don’t want to give information about somebody else’s house, be careful how you do it. You want to work that one lead from the neighborhood until that whole neighborhood has had you inspect their house either in full or in part. 

Beon DeNood: Yeah, that’s a fantastic idea. You know, just the other day. We had somebody walk up to our door. You know, they didn’t it wasn’t a FedEx truck or you know, Amazon or whatever. They walked up and we were waiting for the doorbell to ring didn’t happen. We heard something on the door handle and we’re like I immediate reaction is like what’s going on, you know, open the door and it was a door hanger from AT&T because they moving into the neighborhood. So yeah, I mean, very effective. If I get that same notice in the mailbox, it would have gotten in the trash, which is where that one went eventually, but not after I’d read it. So yeah, very good idea. 

Ian R: They’re pretty cheap to make. You can go to canva.com That’s C-A-N-V-A.com and we’ll put a link in the transcript here. You can get some simple door hangers made up. Don’t put all of the information on there everything they need to know on there. Don’t do that. Say 11th-month builder warranty inspection. Here’s why have us come and do the inspection. keep it really simple, too much info on it and it goes in the garbage can. You only need one person out of that neighborhood. Canva, I recommend that because it’s easy to design and it’s pretty cheap. Like you can get 100 of them for like they’re like three, four, or five bucks apiece at most. So it’s a fantastic old-school idea. It worked for me in the past, and I’ve been resurrecting it, and clients of mine that are using it are doing fantastic with it right now. 

Beon DeNood: Ya know, it’s a great idea, especially here in the state of Florida, the, you know, number of new construction, it’s just any street you drive on just about you’re gonna find houses that are either being under construction or have recently been completed. So if you are an inspector in an area like that this would be a great initiative to take advantage of. 

Ian R: Yeah, and it’s effectively easy. You know, we don’t have to be the ones to hang them up on the door handles, get somebody else to do it, make sure they’re well dressed, have your logo on their shirt and everything like that. Yeah, it’s low overhead, low time, high return. 

Beon DeNood: Awesome. Well, thank you, Ian. I mean, those are five tips but those are huge. I know. For my business, I would, if I was a home inspector, I definitely jump on that because even if you take one like Ian was saying, maybe looking at all five, you’re like, I don’t know. But just take one idea. Put the podcast first, Tik Tok second, which one sounds more fun to you that you can easily get up and running. Go ahead, get it started. Those first two, you probably going to see some returns pretty quickly. I also like the door hanger idea. If you are in a neighborhood with a lot of new construction going on. 

Ian R: I actually think the podcast and the door hangers have the highest return but the most effort and getting out of your box to do. Tik Tok will be the easiest to jump into. Contests and happy hour are the most involved, but I think the most effective right now is podcast and door hangers. 

Beon DeNood: Awesome. For the Tik Tok one you know if you do have a teenager in the house, have the video edited you know, I mean, they know what it’s supposed to look like and do if you don’t have a clue. They’ll help you out. 

Ian R: Yeah, one note on the Tik Tok thing. Those weird dances that they do are trending. It is really funny to watch a home inspector do those on roofs and in crawl spaces and all that stuff. You have to get a little silly. We’re a professional, but you got to get a little silly because that’s what people like. 

Beon DeNood: We’re not advising you to be doing dances on roofs of the house you’re inspecting that is merely just an idea. It’s at your own risk. 

Ian R: Legal disclaimers. I don’t even know what half those dances are called anymore. That makes me feel old. 

Beon DeNood: I have no idea so I’ll just claim the old badge. 

Ian R: Yeah, there you go. In our generation, it was the truffle shuffle. That’s where I stopped paying attention. 

Beon DeNood: Boy, no, but very, very good advice. Thanks, Ian. I know the guys will enjoy it. Any episode on marketing is well received. Guys hope you can implement some of these ideas in your business and be able to see the returns of it. Remember it will take a while probably before you see some returns on it but at the same time Hey, you’ll be having some fun while generating some marketing buzz for your business. 

Ian R: We’ll see everybody next week with another great episode.

 

Outro: On behalf of myself, Ian, and the entire ITB team, thank you for listening to this episode of inspector toolbelt talk. We also love hearing your feedback, so please drop us a line at [email protected].

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