EP: 214 Katy Waters w/ Dyess Air and Plumbing - Shaping HVAC Marketing Sucess
Apr 29, 2024
Evan Hoffman
In our latest episode, Katy Waters, the marketing director at Dyess Air and Plumbing, joins Evan for an engaging conversation on HVAC marketing strategies, data analysis, and market trends. If you’re struggling with how to bring your marketing to the next level, this episode is for you.
Here are 3 key takeaways:
Data-Driven Decisions: Katy emphasizes the importance of leveraging data from platforms like ServiceTitan combined with market share analysis to tailor strategies for different markets, even within close geographical proximity.
Marketing Channels: Discover the power of social media and direct mail for HVAC services. It's time to reassess your marketing efforts to better educate and connect with your customers.
KPIs and ROI: Learn how conversion rates and ROI can redefine how you invest in your marketing activities, ensuring every dollar spent contributes to your company's growth.
Don't miss Katy’s insights on how marketing for trades significantly differs from retail marketing – knowledge that's vital for any HVAC business looking to level up its marketing game!
In our latest episode, Katy Waters, the marketing director at Dyess Air and Plumbing, joins Evan for an engaging conversation on HVAC marketing strategies, data analysis, and market trends. If you’re struggling with how to bring your marketing to the next level, this episode is for you.
Here are 3 key takeaways:
Data-Driven Decisions: Katy emphasizes the importance of leveraging data from platforms like ServiceTitan combined with market share analysis to tailor strategies for different markets, even within close geographical proximity.
Marketing Channels: Discover the power of social media and direct mail for HVAC services. It's time to reassess your marketing efforts to better educate and connect with your customers.
KPIs and ROI: Learn how conversion rates and ROI can redefine how you invest in your marketing activities, ensuring every dollar spent contributes to your company's growth.
Don't miss Katy’s insights on how marketing for trades significantly differs from retail marketing – knowledge that's vital for any HVAC business looking to level up its marketing game!
Welcome to HVAC Success Secrets Revealed, a show where we interview industry leaders and disruptors, revealing the success secrets to create and unleash the ultimate HVAC business. Now your hosts, Thaddeus and Evan.
Evan Hoffman:
Hey, welcome back to another HVAC Success Secrets Revealed with Thaddeus and Evan. I am alone here in New Orleans, Louisiana, hanging out at the Service Titan Marketing Summit and happened to grab Katie Waters. Katie is the Marketing Director at Dyess Air Plumbing. They've got three locations in Georgia, South Carolina, and.
Katy Waters:
Yep, that's it. Georgia, South Carolina. We have two in South Carolina and one in Georgia.
Evan Hoffman:
There we go. Okay, perfect and you are working out of the Claxton location. Yeah. Super excited to be here. Curious, one, what got you into the trades? How did you get attracted to it? And then two, what brought you to the Marketing Summit?
Katy Waters:
So thanks for having me. I'm really enjoying New Orleans. So this is a a plus, a nice little travel perk. So really and truly, if we're being honest with one another, I never was super interested in the trades. Like I didn't realize the importance of them and the real need for them my background is in retail. So I sold high end bridal and high end prom. I managed that industry for probably 10 years. This job is just one of those that kind of, I lucked up on. I knew someone who knew someone. So I started working with Dice in 2018 prior to my position there, there was not a marketing manager. So I think that's pretty common in the trades is the owners and other top management, they wear several different hats. So one of those hats is marketing. So when I started in January of 2018, I had no clue what I was doing whatsoever. I'd never marketed for the trades. I had no clue what all was involved but jump forward to now, I absolutely love it. I really get into it and I am just, again, ecstatic to be here.
Evan Hoffman:
That's so cool. What was it about working with Dyess that really, guess attracted you to it the most. What was it about their office, their location, their culture that has helped you to stick around for now eight years.
Katy Waters:
Yeah so the owner really invest in his people. He really invest in the company. I'm super lucky I have a really nice personal office, but we also have really nice physical office locations. So that's something that not a lot of people can say that they have this really nice, like high tech office that they get to go to and then more importantly, I enjoy the people that I work with. So on my interview on the first day of my interview, I went in and was just super impressed off the bat because of the way that the office appeared and the friendliness of the owner and everyone in there and that's what attracted me the most.
Evan Hoffman:
I love it. In our little pre chat before we hopped on you were telling me a little bit about what it is that you love most about the marketing side of things and what you're diving into now and how that's helping you to make decisions and manage three different locations with different cultures, right? You've got a different marketplace with each area. Georgia is slightly different than South Carolina. You're still in the South, but it is different and you want to be able to cater to that. So how is it that you're utilizing data to be able to make decisions and then work with the local markets?
Katy Waters:
Yeah so one of the things that I really, truly enjoy looking at is our data that comes from ServiceTitan. But also I love using that to put together a strategy with our market share analysis that we get every couple of years and you're right our markets are completely different from office to office, and although our Bluffton office and our Hilton Head office are just a couple minutes apart from one another, those customers really differ. So that's one of our biggest pain points is figuring out how to, create a strategy to market to each one of our customers accordingly. So being able to look at the data that one Service Titan provides for us compared with our market share analysis can give us a better insight on how to do that.
Evan Hoffman:
Got it. That makes sense and you mentioned that you hated data before that. You hated numbers it wasn't your thing. What was it that got you into that? Why did you see that as a need and something that you needed to understand? And how did it transform into something that you love?
Katy Waters:
Yeah, so prior to my position here, numbers made my eyes cross 100% and they still do on a long enough day, don't get me wrong but really and truly what got me more involved in the numbers and appreciating them more was knowing the why behind, the why's to how they matter before, in school, I you took a math class and it was what it was and you got an A or a B or whatever and there was real no why behind it, like how those numbers applied to what it was that you were doing, right because everybody attends a class and says, oh, when am I going to use this in real life? So fast forward to now, I'm using those strategies to put together, several different data sets every day and I enjoy looking at the numbers and seeing, the value in them.
Evan Hoffman:
As an owner, it can be really difficult to understand what it is that's going on with your marketing, with the data because there's so many different hats that they're wearing. They're trying to figure it out, like you said before, before a company can bring on a marketing director. They're generally doing everything. They're trying to understand everything what data is it that you're extracting that you feel is most important to an owner that you're passing along to them to help make those decisions on where to spend, how to spend where we need to invest more, et cetera.
Katy Waters:
Yeah, sure. So the biggest thing for us is, and specifically with our owner and our locations is you can look at profit and you can look at revenue and how that's showing up per office. So per our three offices, and you can see the specific revenue and how many jobs you're doing, but for me as a marketer, it's really important to look at the market share and say, okay yeah, we have a low revenue here, but just because our revenue is low in this office or in this location, should we really market there? So that's the biggest, I'm not going to call it a pain point because I'm talking about our owner here but that's one of the biggest data sets that the owner and I need to sit down and talk about and plan for.
Evan Hoffman:
Right.
Katy Waters:
Is the data that you're looking at now. You may think that it's bad in one area when really and truly it's not.
Evan Hoffman:
They're just frustrated by that top end number and now it's letting them know that, hey, the marketing is working. There's something else that's missing here.
Katy Waters:
Absolutely. Why put money into a funnel that's not going to make you any more profit or revenue?
Evan Hoffman:
Correct. No, it makes sense. I love that what are the KPIs that you need to transfer over to the owner so that they can look at specific numbers? Really need to be better at understanding. Yeah. So again, that market share, the percentage of that you have is one of the KPIs that I look at and how do you calculate that?
Katy Waters:
So honestly, really, and truly thank you Excel and thank you Brent Media, which is one of our strategic partners that we use. So basically we'll go into service and, we'll pull the number of customers that we have and then we'll pull the number of customers within our area that are within our what we think is our ideal customer and compare it to what the market actually is in comparison to our real customer.
Evan Hoffman:
Got it. Okay, perfect. I just want to make sure that other people are able to extrapolate that and figure it out for themselves too. Cool. So percentage of market share, what would be another KPI that they need to understand better?
Katy Waters:
Conversion rates are also really important. ROI, really and truly. You want to make sure that, that's probably the biggest one that I'll look at, because we want to make sure that the money that we're investing, as I mentioned before, is, it's bringing in revenue.
Evan Hoffman:
I love what what Marcia said, the first message that was on today where she was talking about if your ROI, or your return on ad spend, is approaching north of six X, then really doubling down, tripling down on the investment into it to see how much more of market share can you grab and bring that you're going to bring that ROAS down the more that you're investing into it. But how much more market share can you grow as a result of it? And I thought that was a really interesting idea and concept and thought.
Katy Waters:
Yeah, I really appreciated that topic that she brought up only because in the beginning when I first started marketing, I tried to divvy in too much. This one thing that we're doing is working great, but what else can we do rather than focusing on what was really important and what was really bringing up those ROIs?
Evan Hoffman:
That makes sense. If you were to give three channels that are underlooked or overlooked from marketing that you find are working well for you right now? What would those be? And maybe it's a principle versus a specific channel, but what are three things that are overlooked in marketing right now?
Katy Waters:
Yes. Direct mail there's days and months when I hate it. There's days and months when I love it. It just, I think it depends on the specific campaign that you're running and who you're targeting to. But I feel like one of the undervalued and overlooked vehicles of marketing is definitely social. Yeah. I don't think that we use it enough and like we have discussed so much today, it's more of an educational piece for our audience and for our customers and you're not selling to them, but you're educating to and with them. They are you and you are them. You have to put yourself in the shoes and eyes of our customer. So I feel like social media really is the best way to do that.
Evan Hoffman:
I love that. Awesome. To wrap things up, we've got one final question for you. This is our token finishing question.
Katy Waters:
Okay.
Evan Hoffman:
What is one question that you wish people would ask you more, but they don't?
Katy Waters:
All right. I need you to be more specific when you say people are you talking about people within the trades, outside of the trades?
Evan Hoffman:
You can take it any way you want.
Katy Waters:
Okay. All right. What I wish people would always ask if there's a big difference between trades marketing and regular retail marketing and I know that marketers know that, but I don't think owners or, general managers or someone who's not super involved in the marketing field knows the complexities behind the two different types of marketing.
Evan Hoffman:
So is there a difference?
Katy Waters:
Oh, absolutely and I didn't think that there was before I made the switch from, high end retail with bridal and prom to trades. It's. I never really understood how difficult it was to market the trades and it's because we're, the trades are what's the word that I'm looking for? Not undesirable, but anyone can shop for the Remarkable Notebook, right? You want it, you go and buy it. It's not a grudge purchase.
Evan Hoffman:
No.
Katy Waters:
But when you're told it is and it won't flush or when your AC goes out, man you're just in a bad mood already before you even call somebody. So that is that's the biggest difference between marketing for retail versus marketing trades is when you are marketing and that customer you're marketing potentially to someone who's probably already a little upset and not to mention the extra expense that they're going to be spending on a new AC system or a new plumbing system in comparison to a new, couple hundred dollar tablet.
Evan Hoffman:
100%. Yeah, no, I completely agree and it's funny, there was a Facebook post maybe a month or two ago now it was a marketing company that was talking about putting out or studying what big companies are doing on their website, and how can you implement those ideas back on your website and, I pushed back on it and challenged that idea because someone who is shopping for an iPhone and looking at Apple's website is in a completely different state of mind and they're a completely different consumer and how they buy and purchase and what they're even purchasing is a very different process than someone who is needing to get their air conditioner fixed. Sure and so I understood the idea and the concept but again, the fundamentals of how someone is shopping in those two different areas is completely different. Not to mention the demographics and the psychographics and all of that goes into it as well. So I think you're you're pretty bang on with that.
Katy Waters:
Yeah. I appreciate that. It's definitely two different worlds and it's a world that's not focused on, so I'm very happy that there's companies like ServiceTitan and others that we work with who understand the need and, who truly care about their customers and they put out the information that service companies need to have more education on this topic.
Evan Hoffman:
Awesome. Thank you so much, Katie. I appreciate it. If someone did want to reach out to you, where's the best place to do that?
Katy Waters:
Yeah, sure. So anyone can reach out to me via email is usually the best. I'm not the best person about answering my phone unless you, if you leave a voicemail, I'll call you back. But if you don't leave a voicemail, you probably won't hear from me. But you can reach out to me. Via email at k.waters@dyessair.com and that's dyessair.com.
Evan Hoffman:
Perfect. Thank you so much. We'll make sure we put that up when we put the recording on there so that people can see it. Perfect. Thank you so much for joining us. Enjoy the rest of the Marketing Summit and until next time, cheers.
Katy Waters:
Yeah. Thank you so much.
Thaddeus Tondu:
Well, That's a wrap on another episode of HVAC Success Secrets Revealed. Before you go, two quick things. First off, join our Facebook group, facebook.com/groups/hvacrevealed. The other thing, if you took one tiny bit of information out of this show, no matter how big, no matter how small, all we ask is for you to introduce this to one person in your contacts list. That's it. That's all. One person. So they too can unleash the ultimate HVAC business. Until next time. Cheers.