The Home Service Expert Podcast
The Art of Building Trust in Marketing with John Jantsch
Fri, 07 Mar 2025
In this episode, Tommy speaks with John Jantsch, a marketing expert and founder of Duct Tape Marketing, about the critical role of marketing in small business success. John is an expert at creating marketing strategies, building trust with customers, and creating tailored marketing systems for small and large businesses. In this episode, John provides actionable strategies for generating leads and retaining customers through effective sales training and referral systems, and gives his advice on how to adapt to the future of AI in marketing. For more information about John and his company, you can visit ducttapemarketing.com Don’t forget to register for Tommy’s event, Freedom 2025! This is the event where Tommy’s billion-dollar network will break down exactly how to accelerate your business and dominate your market in 2025. For more details visit freedomevent.com
Chapter 1: What is the focus of The Art of Building Trust in Marketing?
You know, so many people think marketing stops when you get the sale. To me, you know, the real opportunity is after you get the sale to focus intentionally on all the ways that you can upsell and retain customers and, you know, get them to be kind of your new lead generation sales force.
welcome to the home service expert where each week tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing sales hiring and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business now your host the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello.
Before we get started, I wanted to share two important things with you. First, I want you to implement what you learned today. To do that, you'll have to take a lot of notes, but I also want you to fully concentrate on the interview. So I asked the team to take notes for you. Just text notes, N-O-T-E-S to 888-526-1299. That's 888-526-1299.
And you'll receive a link to download the notes from today's episode. Also, if you haven't got your copy of my newest book, Elevate, please go check it out. I'll share with you how I attracted and developed a winning team that helped me build a $200 million company in 22 states. Just go to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast to get your copy. Now let's go back into the interview.
All right, guys, welcome back to the Home Service Expert. Today, I got John Jantz with me. He's an expert in small business marketing, business consulting, and search engine optimization. He is the founder and president of Duct Tape Marketing. He's done a lot of stuff, Spark Lab Consulting, Tradeful, Podcast Bookers, a lot of great stuff on here.
He's built, he's been a trusted advisor to small and medium-sized businesses for more than 30 years, specialized in marketing strategy, consulting, and advertising. He's also the author of seven books, including Duct Tape Marketing, The Referral Engine, and the host of Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. His blog is recognized by Forbes as one of the top five for small business marketing.
Yeah, here he is. John, how are you, brother?
I'm doing great. You know, you stick around long enough, your bio and all that stuff just gets longer, doesn't it?
Yeah, no, absolutely. You know, there's in business. One of my mentors, Al Levy, taught me there's two things that the owner should never stop doing and paying attention to. And that's know the financials like the back of their hand and marketing and marketing by far, by far more than sales, more than anything for me. Marketing is everything. I love marketing.
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Chapter 2: Why is post-sale marketing crucial for businesses?
Yeah, no, it's interesting because I was talking about greenfield growth versus everybody and their brother right now is talking about greenfield growth. And I'm kind of skeptical for most companies talking about it because I asked them, how big are you in your own market? How much market penetration do you have?
And if they're not above like 20, 30, 40 million, depending on the industry, what's the point of expansion? But let's just start out a little bit, John, by you started this company in 1986, right? Tell us a little bit about your history, why you got into business, what you're excited about in the future.
Chapter 3: How did John Jantsch start Duct Tape Marketing?
So, you know, I went to work it right out of college actually for an ad agency and I really enjoyed it, but I was like, eh, you know, I want to do my own thing. Anybody, any dummy can run a business. So I, you know, jumped out with any real plan. I knew I could hustle work and that's what I did. You know, I got some big clients, little clients, big projects, little projects.
I got a couple, ironically, remodeling contractors, smaller businesses, kind of some of the folks you work with. And I really enjoyed working with them, but they were hard. I've been sort of classically advertising agency, big budget trained. A lot of small businesses certainly don't have the budgets, but don't even really have the attention span for marketing. And so I really said to myself,
I got to figure out how to work with these guys because I really enjoy working with the owner of the business who's writing the check to pay you. For me, it was just a lot more fun. So I created at that point, I said, look, I can't do this the traditional way. So I said, look, I'm going to create a system where I can walk into somebody and say, look, Here's what I'm going to do.
Here's what you're going to do. Here are the results we hope to get. Here's what it costs. You want it or not? And I found out pretty quickly they did want it because still today, I think one of the hardest things for a lot of businesses to do is to buy marketing services.
um you know they're all over the place there's some new new hot thing you know this week and so they they really get um confused and so so the fact that somebody was going to come in and say look we're going to we're going to install a marketing system it's going to start with strategy before tactics and and you're going to know what it's going to cost i think was kind of music to their ears and so i i built my practice pretty quickly that way and then uh um started attracting uh
other agencies who saw what I was doing and said, hey, we want to do that as well. It actually coincided with my first book, Duct Tape Marketing, where I basically describe my system. And so today we have about 400 agencies that we've licensed the Duct Tape Marketing system to. That use our methodology and then I do still have the agency.
And so we work with, you know, dozens of small to midsize clients, kind of almost as their fractional CMO is what we've started to characterize it as.
I love that. You know, a lot of people can't afford a CMO or even a VP of marketing and they come to me all the time. They're like, what would you do if you were going to start over again? I'm like, man, that's a loaded question. I got your book. I don't know. I think four years ago and it's full of like gold. Let's start here. You've been recognized as
the world's most practical small business expert. So what do you believe sets your approach apart from others? I mean, what's the secret sauce in the formation of the plan for these small companies?
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Chapter 4: What sets Duct Tape Marketing's approach apart?
And so just coming at it from that approach, rather than what most marketers do is they walk in and say, what do you need? Sure, we do that. Here's what it costs. And, you know, I'm sure that your listeners are a lot smarter than a lot of business owners, but most business owners don't know what they need.
So the idea that you're going to let them tell you what as a marketer, as a marketing agency, what they need is kind of silly. And so the fact that we come in and very much direct, we bring leadership to the organization.
uh we bring a plan and a strategy for you know what the next year of growth is going to look like um is is still today a to me it's the only way to do it but still today a great differentiator
So when you sit down with a client, you know, let's say it's a plumber or HVAC or electrical or garage doors, we're all pretty similar. Well, there's demand versus non-demand, you know, like windows and gutters and stuff like that usually is non-demand. But let's say you've got a demand type industry. Do they fill out a questionnaire? Like, you know, SEO is important. Do they have a good website?
Does it load at the right speed? Do they claim it on my business page, TV, radio, billboards, mailers? It's just, it goes on and on.
Yeah. So yeah, we, we, you know, first thing we want to do is establish a baseline. Where are they today? What have they been doing? What's worked? What's not worked? What do they need to keep doing? What do they need to stop doing? That's like phase one. And then we have very much, we have actually, we call it the customer success track. We have stages for that.
And each of those stages have milestones. You mentioned Google business page. They haven't claimed that that's in the foundational stage. You know, we're going to make sure that, you know, milestones accomplished. Because we know that if we get, say, that foundation, all those milestones, all those things, boxes checked in the foundation stage, then we can actually move them to the next stage.
So a lot of times people will come to us and they say, run ads for us so we can generate more leads. Well, your website's terrible. If we spend money and send people to your website, all you're going to do is waste money. So first, we've got to fix the website. First, we have to figure out how to convert leads. Then we can actually start spending money.
We run people through those stages because we know that if we get their foundation fixed, we know what the promise is now of being able to generate leads. And then we can move to the next stage, being able to convert more of those leads. Then we can move to the next stage, actually turning more of those clients into repeat clients and referral clients.
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Chapter 5: How can small businesses create effective marketing strategies?
Yeah. I mean, it's tough when somebody is just getting started, you know, because you need to hustle and get some business. But particularly as an organization grows, starts to grow. And, you know, because as you said, those things cost a lot of money. There's no question you can dominate your market by just the fact that people see you everywhere. That goes a long way.
I mean, especially in the home services businesses, you know, we're not filing away, you know, that person that could fix our roof until we need our roof fixed. And, you know, at that point, it's like, who have I heard? Whose trucks have I seen? You know, whose billboards have I seen? What direct mail have I received? That all just keeps us top of mind.
And it's hard sometimes because, you know, you don't have a lot of people driving or calling your business saying, yeah, I saw your billboard and I want you to come on out, right? So it's hard sometimes to measure the impact of that spend.
But I think there's no question increasingly having a sort of an omnipresence in the market is how you really build a lot of trust, but it's also how you stay top of mind.
Love it. You mentioned that being a self-reliant entrepreneur isn't about isolating yourself, but about trusting your own judgment. So the question is, how can entrepreneurs balance self-reliance with seeking advice or inspiration from others without losing their own sense of direction?
Yeah. So so just for context, I wrote a book called The Self-Reliance Entrepreneur, which is essentially it's not a marketing book. It is a kind of an entrepreneurial book.
almost self-help book uh you know it has a has daily uh readings uh you know about kind of what it's like to you know it's it's easy to have a lot of self-doubt to you know get down on yourself to you know listen to or watch what i what you see everybody else doing and you know try to follow them so uh the the idea behind that book and really all the messages and that is that
You know, you got to be true to yourself. You got to do what you believe is the right thing and, you know, not not try to. I mean, obviously, there's going to be a lot of people in business that are going to help you that are going to be a part of your success. But you've got to really you've got to have the vision and kind of mission for your business.
And then you got to stay true to it and and not, you know, not sit there and worry every day. Is this going to work?
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Chapter 6: Why is building trust essential in marketing?
Yeah, 100%. And I'll tell you. I used to be very price sensitive as a consumer.
Yeah.
And now I'm definitely looking for someone that can get out there the same day. And what are the reasons why they compete? And I started to realize it more from a consumer. And I'll tell you, without owning a house with stuff going wrong all the time, it's a bigger house. Now I'm starting to learn how to make ourselves like, man, I saw the plumber just in the last six weeks, seven times.
And I'm like, dude, some of this stuff, I'm like, come on. Like everything, I feel so nickel and dime that I'm like, I wish you just charged me for everything. Give me all the options up front, check everything. Tell me everything you think is gonna go wrong. Because now I feel like, you know, it's 1200 bucks here, five grand there, two grand there. It's like, what the heck? I don't know.
I like to buy the best now. I will say that. And I'm like, give me an option for everything instead of just telling me what's wrong today.
Yeah.
Tell me everything I can possibly get.
Well, and I know you teach this as well, but certainly the folks in your industry that you serve, I mean, the ones that are really excelling, that are really profitable, they spend as much time teaching their techs and their sales folks how to upsell in the sales environment than they do on their marketing.
Because quite frankly, there's a whole lot more profit in that upsell quite often than there is in the come out and fix my leaky faucet.
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Chapter 7: How can entrepreneurs balance self-reliance and external advice?
Yeah.
And and ask for that review.
And we had I had a garage door a couple openers put in recently and and the guy um as he was wrapping up he did a great job really personal guy and he uh as he was wrapping up he said you know my company does this kind of goofy contest and if i get reviews you know they're gonna buy my wife and i dinner at this fancy place and you know so if you you know wouldn't mind giving us a review i mean
he made it so personal. I was like, what kind of schmucks not going to give this guy a review? Um, you know, again, like I said, he did good work. He was a nice guy. Um, but, but just that little twist of, I can help this guy get dinner rather than I could care less about the, you know, the big company. Um, but I can help this guy get dinner.
I, you know, I just think that kind of making it real personal, um, you know, was really effective approach. So I gave him a review for sure.
Taking more notes. You know, there's a couple of ways to do it. I had Jeremy Miner in here and he's like, you know, he kind of laughs and he goes, you know, I want to be back and going to the office and I'm going to be talking to my boss. And if I don't have a review, I might be fired. If I don't have a review with my name in it from your call, would you mind helping me so I don't get fired?
And it's kind of like a playful little joke, but it works. What are all the mistakes? When you talk to somebody and you're like, oh, my gosh.
you are bleeding where is the biggest stakes that you see probably the one i see the most is because a lot of small mid-sized businesses they're really strapped for people for time for resources and yet they're trying to spread themselves you know i got to be on tick tock and i got to be on this and i got to be on that so they're just kind of spraying stuff everywhere and there's really no focus on you know a couple areas that are going to make a big difference so i always i i quite often try to get people to say look
You need to be on Instagram and you need to be on LinkedIn and you need to be, you know, going out there and really working for reviews, for example, and just put a whole bunch of effort into those three things. I'm just throwing out as an example, you know, as opposed to, you know, trying to do everything and not really doing a very good job with any of it.
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Chapter 8: What are some practical steps for small business growth?
It feels like everywhere I look, there's like white hat labeled SEO companies that the white head out to India or the Philippines or Ukraine or somewhere. How do you spot those guys?
Well, there isn't anything necessarily inherently wrong with that. I mean, you definitely want to know what they're doing. And that's one of the challenges, I think, especially at SEO. A lot of people look at it and go, oh, it's really technical. I don't get it. And so... then they don't know what people are doing on their behalf to get them results.
So you definitely want to know exactly what somebody is doing. The fact that they have a team in the Philippines is not necessarily a bad thing. In some cases, they can actually get you more output for your money, working with folks in other countries. But you definitely want to make sure that the work is quality and that they can tell you exactly how they're getting you those results.
You know, I talked to some of the largest companies in North America, and we talk about return on ad spend in ROAS. Some of them, it's so high, but SEO pulls their numbers down dramatically. And SEO is one of those things where it's earned media. It takes time, effort, and energy. It's like my domain authority right now is a 64 on Ahrefs. That's A-H-R-E-F-S. It's website ranker.
You type that in, it's free. You can see what your website is. And You know what? My major goal is that I hit the number one spot for the search words that matter. And it's hard to believe that I can get pulled down to below 10% with how much money we spend. And some of it's going after general search terms.
And some of it, what we found was, is our trucks and our billboards and our yard signs and our TV and our radio. And those things start to multiply. People start searching us by name, which isn't much of a search. But when they are searching a generic search term, I mean, for example, the private equity company I work with works with this company called Little Sleepies.
And they're just kids sleeping in pajamas. And they generate an ungodly amount of money. But they're so good at ranking number one. And some people say SEO is dying. What is your take on that?
So it's going to be around for a long time, especially for local service businesses, like the folks that are showing up in the Google Maps. But there's no question it is dying for general kind of information types of searches because the search engines are giving the answer.
So, you know, it used to be you could write an article about, you know, the five best types of air conditioners to install in your home. And people who were trying to find out, like, what kind of brand should we be looking for? What kind of unit should we be looking for would find your content? Well, now Google is just saying, here's the answer, as opposed to sending you to that blog post.
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