Rachel Johnson | Threefold
This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Threefold Chief Marketing Officer Rachel Johnson talks about running marketing for 6 brands at once - with a team of herself and just one other marketer - all while raising three children under the age of 7.
If there ever was a real life super woman, Rachel just might be her!
As CMO of private equity firm Threefold, Rachel runs an in-house agency responsible for marketing all of Threefold’s portfolio companies. Some are franchise businesses, and some are independent, and there are interesting lessons to be learned from all of them.
She does all of this while also the mom of three kids under the age of 5, two of whom have special needs.
How she does it, I’ll never know!
Check out the full episode to hear Rachel’s story, and learn how she’s getting big results for Threefold’s portfolio companies.
Resources from this episode:
Connect with Rachel on LinkedIn
Email Rachel at rjohnson@growthreefold.com
Visit the Threefold website
Rachel and Kathleen recording this episode
Kathleen (00:03):
Welcome back to the inbound success podcast. I'm Kathleen Booth, your host. And this week, my guest is Rachel Johnson, who is the CMO of Threefold. Welcome to the podcast, Rachel.
Rachel (00:25):
Hey, thanks. So thank you so much. I am really excited to be here.
Kathleen (00:28):
I am so excited for this conversation because I was, I was just telling you, before we started recording that you are a, in addition to being an accomplished CMO, you are a master juggler when it comes to work and life balance or lack of balance. I don't know, but, but I know you as somebody who gets a lot done and has a lot on their plate. And so I want to talk about marketing, but I also want to talk about just how you do it all. And so let's start with having you just introduce yourself who you are, what you do and what Threefold is, and then we can kind of go from there.
Rachel (01:05):
Sure. So I first of all, I joined Threefold in June. I was doing some consulting work with them and then actually joined full time in June. So I'm relatively new to the role. And at Threefold, we talk about how we do OJT on the, on the job training. And I feel like it's been, it's been nothing short of amazing and terrifying kind of all at the same time. I'm drinking from the fire hose starting at day one. So I'm a little bit about Threefold. So Threefold is a self-funded long-term investment, private equity firm. And when I first started to kind of go down the interview process with Threefold, I was like, Ooh, private equity firms. And everybody kind of makes a face because we, some of us have had positive and negative experiences with private equity firms and Threefold is so different and they're in a lot of different ways.
Rachel (02:01):
So we, first of all, we hold companies in the real estate home improvement and retail space. So non-traditional SaaS companies which is very different than my background. I spent, you know, 15 plus years and small, medium and large size SaaS based software companies and was really kind of looking for a change. I I had a really great mentor as I was, I've had the pleasure of having eight acquisitions in my career. And so that has caused me as a revenue leader to change jobs about every two years. And so, as I was kind of looking at this opportunity at Threefold, I had a really good mentor of mine that said, Rachel, if you want to change the trajectory of your life, you need to get off the hamster wheel. I'm like, what the heck does that mean? And so getting off the hamster wheel for me was kind of getting out of B2B SaaS for awhile.
Rachel (02:57):
And it's hard, it's challenging, but it's really, really fun. And I come back to the whole, like face that people make. When I say that I worked for a private equity firm and Threefold is so different because we were self-funded. So our two owners Charlie Meyer and Mark Riggle are self-made men. They met kind of in high school timeframe, worked inside buy-side territory as at Aldie, and then decided to open a CertaPro Indianapolis painting company and buy that part of the franchise and they, they actually had Mark's dad co-sign on the loan. So we come from like very humble beginnings and our business has grown. Now we have six brands in our portfolio. Three of them are independent brands and three of them are franchise brands. And so I'm part of today. I think we're going to talk about inbound and kind of verticalized marketing that we've done. One example that I'll bring to you today is actually one of our independent brands. And the other one is actually a franchise brand. So we'll talk a little bit about how you can use those similar plays, even if you are, I'll say restricted or resourced with with franchise dollars.
Kathleen (04:14):
There is so much that this makes me excited about I, and I don't even almost know where to start. I think the first thing is an observation, which is I love the story about Threefold because what popped into my head right or wrong when you were describing its origins was Warren Buffet, because he's always been a proponent of investing in the things that you understand. Right. And I love the story of them starting out and, and, you know, buying the CertaPro franchise and getting, you know, that being the entree in, and those are the types of brands that you still work with today. And so I think that's really cool. And I also, I can, I really resonate with what you said about getting off of the hamster wheel and trying something new, because I think we also grow a lot when we get out of our comfort zone.
Kathleen (05:01):
And, and I have often taken issue. So I used to own an agency and, and I worked with companies across a lot of different industries and I always bristled when somebody would say, but does your agency have experienced an X industry? Because I was like, well, no, but do you want to do things the same way everybody else in your industry does? Cause if that's what you're looking for, then that matters, right. But if you want to cross-pollinate and have fresh ideas, and if you want like really first principles thinking, you know, which is throw out everything, you know, and figure out what makes sense, like then you don't necessarily have to have experience in that industry. And so that's why I think is really neat about what you've done and, and going to Threefold. Having said all that what I find so interesting is you have T tell, tell the listeners how many people are on your marketing team.
Rachel (05:52):
So I it's me and one other person and we'll finish the year just from a size perspective around 70 million for our portfolio.
Kathleen (06:01):
And how many brands is that, that you're marketing for six, so six brands, 70 million in revenue to marketers. Take a moment. If you're listening, process that information. And now you probably realize why I was really excited to talk to Rachel. And on top of that, Rachel, can you just take a minute and also share like personally in your life, the other things that you're responsible for.
Rachel (06:27):
Sure. So I have three little kids. I had my youngest two weeks before COVID and which is experience. I don't remember most of April and may cause we had a newborn and we had three kids, five and under so my oldest McKayla is seven. She was born two and a half months premature, so we've had some fun, interesting challenges with her and doing virtual kindergarten last year is we can have a whole other podcast on virtual kindergarten, the whole other level of health, but that was but we made it through and we she is thriving in first grade and we are still in person crossing our fingers. My middle daughter is Eliana. She is my like pint-sized powerhouse. She she's three and a half and she is less than 30 pounds.
Rachel (07:19):
And I'm pretty sure her brother's going to overtake her. And then my, my son who was born right before COVID was actually born deaf. And so we've had some like fun challenges with that. So I kind of described myself as a champion plate spinner. That is like my calling and my, my superpower is I can, I can basically juggle plates until the cows come home. My other super power and, and what I lean on is like our village. And so I'm really blessed to have my parents that live three minutes from us and they're kind of like part of our village. And then my husband has always been like a, a really good supporter of my like passions and dreams. He has never told me like, Rachel, you need to slow down and, or you need to wait, or this is not the right time for this.
Rachel (08:06):
I've, he's always been by my side as I've I've like explored all of these like new, different things. And he's like my, my dad said it probably best at our wedding where the listeners can't see my hands, but my, my I'm kind of like up and down and my husband is like the steady force. And so, you know, if we were, if we were doing marital advice today, I would tell you to choose a partner that the supports you and is your is that person that you can always go to? The other kind of fun part is we actually used to work together. So we met at work. So he actually knows like, not only the Rachel from the home side, but also the work, the Rachel from a work side too. So I think all of those components like make us who we are. And I think that level of security that I have at home allows me to explore and be a risk-taker at work, because I know that I have the foundation at home that that is supportive.
Kathleen (09:07):
So, I mean, I just have to repeat a few things to marketers, seven brands doing 70 million in business, three kids under the age of five, two with special needs. I mean, people who are listening, can't see this, but I'm literally like bowing down right now to Rachel. I don't know how you do it and I need to, I need your secrets. I, funny enough, I also worked with my husband for 11 years. So that is another podcast in and of itself.
Rachel (09:36):
A whole group of listers have on that, but I, I appreciate that, but I think it's, that only gives you as much as you can handle and and no more so well, he entrusted us with two very special blessings.
Kathleen (09:49):
You're, you're amazing. I don't know how you do it all. And so I do want to talk about the marketing stuff because you know, you, you joined the company not really long ago during a global pandemic when all this other stuff was happening, but you've already gotten some really great results. And, and so this whole story is pretty, pretty remarkable. So talk about, let's talk about some of the brands that you work with, and then we can dig into some of the specific things that you've been working on that have been producing some good results.
Rachel (10:20):
So when I came into the business there, the, the dream and the idea was that we were going to create this centralized marketing agency and our brand actually buy into the service. Like they do some of our other services as well. And as part of that, they get two things. They have, they get CMO services, which is basically me on their team. And then they get the access to the marketing agency, which is like our production agency. I'm actually hiring a second person and that person will hopefully be in place by the end of the month. So I'll have a power team of three that will serve as all of our brands. And so being able to kind of understand like the, the infrastructure and like which hat I need to put on I'll kind of talk about the, the experiences that I've had in terms of like, which hat I need to put on.
Rachel (11:14):
And then also I think that the coolest part about this job is I get, I get six test beds from our brands and then seven, if you add in Threefold and I'm in the testings. So one of the, kind of the pieces of advice I'd love to give the listeners is test. Like don't be afraid to fail fast. Don't be afraid to try something new and what I've, what I've done is I've taken my B2B SAS background of I'm a demand gen marketer at heart. Inbound is inbound and outbound is kind of my life and I've, that's where I've kind of grown up. And so taking all those learnings that I had in the B2B fast industry and applying those to an industry that isn't really ahead as far as sophistication and marketing well, that's one of our secret sauces that we're kind of creating within all of our brands is the ability to take all of those learnings and apply them to a brand new industry.
Rachel (12:10):
So I really resonated with me when you were speaking about your agency and how, like, do you have experience in this industry? But being able to say like I don't, but I think that this industry and what we did here is parallel to what you're doing. And we do a lot of that at Threefold. And with our brands like as an example, it's no, it's no secret that both labor and product is getting materials is a challenge right now. So I have crew recruitment campaigns are running in four of our brands because four of our brands use subcontractors in order to do their work. And that's also not a secret that, that we keep. And so being able to say, Hey, I'm going to try this Facebook campaign to see if we can drive some additional results. And I'll talk about that in a minute.
Rachel (12:59):
And then, you know, we're going to try email and targeted lists in this, in this group and try and see how that goes. And then we're going to try the job functions and sales and Facebook and see if that works. And so basically I have, I kind of look at it as like seven sandboxes that I get to play in. And then I get to take the learnings from each of those sandboxes and apply them as they're applicable. And I think that's one of the beauties of the, of the, the relationship that I have with our brands and the learnings that I'm able to provide.
Kathleen (13:29):
Yeah. I mean, that's how I felt when I owned an agency, I got to work with, I think we had at any given time, we might've had, you know, 15 or 20 key clients we were working with and I wasn't the account manager on all the accounts, although in the early days I was but I always came in for strategic reviews that sort of like you talked about having a CMO on your team and having that visibility into so many different industries, it was everything from SAS to attorneys to landscapers, you know, you really got to see how different things work in different places. And, and cross-pollinate, I love that idea. So you mentioned the difference between franchise marketing and kind of independent business marketing. You talk a little bit about that.
Rachel (14:11):
Sure. So we own, and I, I didn't name the brands kind of when we were talking our brands in her portfolio are CertaPro painters, Indianapolis CertaPro painters, Dayton Renovia, which is a commercial painting company, independent. White Hat, which is a fluid applied roofing company. Also independent. We have California closets Midwest, which covers Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Dayton, central, Illinois, and Louisville and Lexington. It's one of the largest, most spread out territories in kind of the Cal Closets grouping. And then we have Casual Nomad, which is our newest brand. And so Renovia is our largest brand. And Casual Nomad is our smallest brands. So we're talking about maybe like 2 million in revenue, and then we're talking, you know, 20 plus million in revenue. They are a real estate company that helps provide short-term rentals to like high-end investment properties.
Rachel (15:16):
So they will go into 'em and they use a tech enabled approach to they actually survive. We, we acquired them two or three weeks before all of the shutdowns. And so they've, I've watched them over the last 12 months or so kind of pivot and kind of figuring out like where the gaps and the opportunities are in the marketplace. And so what they do is if you want to stay, if you want to go to, let's say Indianapolis for the weekend, and once you have Colts game, but you really don't want to stay in a hotel or like us, we have three kids. So five total people, we don't fit in a standard hotel room. And so being able to actually stay in an apartment with that, you know 1, 2, 3 bedroom apartment that allows us to spread out as we need to, and the spaces are beautifully designed.
Rachel (16:07):
And so it's kind of a unique part of our portfolio. We have retail in California closets. We have and then the rest of our businesses outside of casual, no matter all like services based businesses whether it's painting or root flood applied roofing. And so it's kind of the fun anomaly when I've had a that's the industry that I know the least about. And so you talk about like learnings and there, so there's subtle nuances with that industry, but there's also some similarities that you can pull, like from traditional retail or some of the, some of the reads and whatnot that some of our, our other brands are going after real estate investment trusts. That is also casual nomad can also work with. And when it comes to, to the like property management groups.
Kathleen (16:53):
Neat. So, okay. You've been here, you went, you joined the company when you said this earlier. Tell me again, June 1st, June 1st. So it's been, oh my gosh, June, July, August, September. It's been like four and a half months in four and a half months. Like, talk to me about some of your successes in that time.
Rachel (17:12):
Yeah. So I'm gonna go back to your previous question about like the differences between franchise marketing and independent marketing. So the, the franchise marketing there, it's kind of a blessing and a curse to have corporate there. So for me, from a learnings perspective, it allows me to understand, like, what are the things that we have, the ability that's kind of fits within our guard rails to do. And then what are the things that either corporate provides or is that we need to provide corporate? So there's lots of, I'll take, for example, CertaPro lots and lots of like programs and stuff that they're doing on the national level to help supplement when it comes to like corporate initiatives, they're trying to do, like for the month of October, they're encouraging all of their franchisee is to paint it pink for breast cancer awareness. And so being able to help those business owners to set up opportunities for their, for their teams, et cetera, to do philanthropic work in the community, as well as providing resourcing and supplementation. So I'm gonna, I'm going to have you guess how much CertaPro pays from a management fee perspective for paid ads every month.
Kathleen (18:26):
Pays to who?
Rachel (18:29):
Pays to the agency, every month. It is supplemented.
Kathleen (18:37):
Okay. Wait, I have to put some parameters around this. So pays to the agency that you work with. So they're buying into your agency and is this for all of their ads or is corporate running ads separately?
Rachel (18:51):
So with, I should probably preface your, your guardrails.
Kathleen (18:56):
I want to get the answer right!
Rachel (18:59):
So this is their digital agency that they buy Google ad words through, and they do also paid social through. So there's a management fee. There's a management fee that, that we, CertaPro pay this agency to manage our paid ads.
Kathleen (19:16):
Okay. I'm going to guess I have a feeling it's going to be really wrong. $5,500 a month.
Rachel (19:24):
Oh. So much lower,
Kathleen (19:27):
Like, like 2,500. Okay. 500. I feel like I'm on the prices. Right? How low should I go?
Rachel (19:36):
$250 a month for a management fee. Right. Because corporate supplements it. So I use that as an example that that there's power in corporate marketing when it comes to the franchise model and
Kathleen (19:53):
Their feed, not the ad spend.
Rachel (19:55):
You got it. You got it. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, crazy. Right.
Kathleen (19:59):
It's a much better deal than I'm getting right now.
Rachel (20:02):
The same, the same with some of our other brands, but it's so there's the blessing and curses to, to, to franchise marketing as well. And then I will also tell you from a resource perspective we have, we have people that are at, I will say our beck and call, but the ability to jump on calls, explain things to me in California Closets is a great example of this. We, I just got off our weekly call with our, our, our marketing partner at California closets. And she is helping us on, you know, working with a specialist on their team to calibrate our Google, my business listings. And what localized content should we produce? And OSHA, we talked to the social expert and all of these things at the end of the day, it's to drive leads for their designers.
Rachel (20:51):
And so I think that sometimes people here, you know, independently owned and they have one feeling just like, maybe they'd make a face when they hear private equity firm, or they, they make a face when they hear a franchise model. But it's, it's kind of a, it's kind of cool for us to have both in our portfolio because there's lots and lots of things that we get. We get to be a part of, we get to be, to, to learn from, and there's people that have, that have done it this way. And there's also trends. So being able to say to our, you know, our CertaPro or a California Closets rep, like, Hey, how's everybody else doing? Like we were, we were a little bit down last month. How's everybody else doing? And where are we pacing against other, other markets that are similar to us in the country?
Rachel (21:40):
And so I think that benchmarking too, when you're, when you're thinking about inbound campaigns, if everybody else's is up and you're down, then you can figure out why. And, and having a small, nimble team, you know, one of my other tips is utilize all your resources. And so I am trying to take full advantage of the, like the inbound experts, the social experts, the GMB experts at those corporate locations and, and what they, what they may or may not know is I'm going to take those learnings and then I'm going to sprinkle it across all of our brands. And so they're really helping me to create, you know, better marketing programs across all six of our brands by jumping on the phone with me for an hour and helping me calibrate GMB.
Kathleen (22:22):
Yeah, that's great. I love that. Just all of that cross pollination makes everybody so much smarter and more effective. So have you had, in the short time you've been with the company, any like campaigns or anything you've worked on that you really feel has started to produce results? And I realize it's a short amount of time, and so maybe not cause some of these, some of these things take longer and there are longer sales cycles.
Rachel (22:45):
Yes we have. And so I think that's one of the, one of the bigger topics today is about verticalized marketing campaigns. And we, so the, the whole idea of me coming on board with my background was about building account-based marketing programs or target account programs for all of our brands, because we, on the commercial side of all of our brands, seeing similarities between if we do these, we do these programs and we're working with a really, really large national customers. So think in the verticals of storage or healthcare or senior living, there's, there's tons and tons of opportunities to work on projects with one brand across, you know, however many locations that they have, especially if you're doing painting or roofing, et cetera. And then those reefs that I talked about earlier, like for example, for white hat provide a really cool opportunity for us to stick with the same ownership group and then do all of their locations.
Rachel (23:43):
And so one of the, like one of the big things that we've found is coming in our brands weren't ready for, for ABM, like full blown ABM, they were not ready. And so I'm another kind of piece of advice to the listeners is take a pulse when you get into an organization. If, if leadership believes that you are ready for a certain type of marketing tactic, you, you know, best like, you know, your background, you know, you were, you were trained to do this and don't be afraid to say, Hey, I don't think we're ready yet. So I'll give you an example. I I started with, with with Threefold and our, my boss, who I report to Charlie Meyer he was like, yes, we're going to create all these ABM programs. It's going to be awesome. And I was like excuse me, our brands aren't sending basic email yet. So let's start there.
Kathleen (24:35):
We have to crawl before we can run.
Rachel (24:37):
Maslow's hierarchy of needs, just like sending bulk email. Like we, we don't ever want to hear that word, but sending bulk emails, like a sophistication tactic. So that was another like interesting thing coming from B2B SaaS where marketing and ABM play is et cetera, like table stakes, all of our brands outside of one haven't ever really invested in marketing ever. And so me coming on board, I liked, if you think about like the marketing sophistication, dial me just hitting, like hitting the pavement, you know, when we went from like one to a hundred in a matter of like 60 days,
Kathleen (25:17):
Sometimes those are the most fun accounts to work with. Like I mentioned, I worked with so many kind of industries along those lines. Like I had commercial landscapers and attorneys, and these were people who really had never done any marketing before I worked with them. And it was just so fun to see the immediate results and impact that you could have with that.
Rachel (25:36):
Yeah. So you, when you ask about results, I like I have them because we've actually turned on marketing programs for the first time. And I like a fun story around like inbound marketing in general, when I was when I was talking to one of our VPs of sales and one of our brands I showed him my inbox from my previous employer and I said, see, all those HubSpot lead notifications, I can do this for you. And he was like, we, like, we use, you know, traditional prospecting tactics, our team isn't used to doing that.
Kathleen (26:08):
Our industry is different. I'm saying this, you can't see it because you're listening to this podcast, but I'm using air quotes, as I say that.
Rachel (26:15):
Yes. Yes. So the services based industry, they have they have welcomed inbound leads with open arms and every time we get leads and we close them specifically, I'm talking about Renovia, as we get leads and we close them, our team is embracing those inbound leads. And one of the biggest findings we've found with specifically like paid inbound leads through our contact us form is those leads actually close faster. So there are people, if you think about the inbound funnel, there are people that have already gone through the awareness and consideration phase. They know that they have to beat their building. And they're really on the, like the quest to find, you know, two or three quotes get two or three quotes. And one of the other things that we've done with Renovia is, and this is, this is all them, and I'll give them all the credit in the world for it. They have a predictable communication model where when they tell you they're going to do something, they actually do it that like always.
Kathleen (27:12):
I said that I should have, I should, if I had a second life, I'd come back as like a girl plumber who shows up on time, I would slay.
Rachel (27:20):
You would slay. And it's those little details that that, especially in the services industry, like, Hey, I'm going to be at your property tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock to take a look at the building with you. And they're like, yep. You're like the cable company. I'm an ex, I'm going to have, you're going to have a four hour window and you may or may not show up. And you're probably going to text me 10 minutes before the end of our window and tell me that you're not coming. And so Renovia has basically made their business grow by doing what they say they're going to do. And so when I know it's crazy, so what we found with these inbound leads is people wanted a fast turnaround and we've had, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars that have closed an inbound leads because we had an agreement with our sales team to go out and actually look at the property and quote the property.
Rachel (28:14):
And so we know that if we can, you know, put that into a seven day timeframe or on turnaround, when that lead comes in, they're calling the customer and then they're scoping it out and they're figuring out what does the customer want? And then they're actually showing up on site when they say they're gonna show up on site and quote the project, and then we close it. And so that's like, I mean, it sounds super simple, but if you can figure out what your secret sauce is around inbound, as you turn on that, start gathering trends, partner with your sales team, because they're the people with the boots on the ground, and they'll tell you what is actually going on. And then you're able to know, okay, why can count on, you know, two or three of these leads a month? And in the, in the commercial painting industry, when you're closing, you know, 35,000 to $700,000 job, a couple like one to two leads a month, it's super meaningful. And then if we have the backend kind of scoped out around what the sales team's expectations are, they're following up with those leads, making sure that their managers are copied on that so that the whole branch knows that when you get an inbound lead, we mean business because this person is ready to buy.
Kathleen (29:26):
Well, let me ask you a question about this. So these are industries, I think that everybody's familiar with, you know, painting and California closets, et cetera. When you talk about inbound, what, what channels are driving the leads for them?
Rachel (29:39):
Yeah, that's it, that's a great question. So we're using traditional channels. So we're using email email drip campaigns, especially like for example, white hats white hats kind of sales cycle. And when they actually would get another opportunity to regenerate that roof is 20 to 30 years. So if we miss that, if we miss the window, now we have to wait another, you know, a long time in order to get another at-bat at that specific building. Same thing with commercial painting and residential painting people don't paint every day. So it's you know, five to seven, maybe 10 year turnaround on that particular building in that particular room. And so one of the things that we've done is nurture campaigns and drip campaigns, which I'll talk about in a little bit, have been one of our secret sauces for our sort of pro indie branch, where we're utilizing verticalized marketing campaigns across different segments, and then different persona types in order to penetrate organizations and kind of get commercial painting top of mind for them.
Rachel (30:45):
So when they're, when they are doing budget planning and they're thinking about when, when should I actually put this project on my docket, they might want to budget for it in January, but if you have an exterior PD project in January and the Midwest, we're probably not going to be able to do that because it's cold and the paint won't, the paint is not going to perform the same way that that it would. So that's one of our tactics email drip campaigns, specifically, we use paid ads. So both of our sorta programs for residential and commercial are utilizing paid ads. Facebook advertising for us around crew recruitment has been great. I'll also use that as an inbound tactic as well, and then organic social. So one of the other things going back to the franchise model that has really helped us is providing localized content.
Rachel (31:37):
So homes and buildings look like, you know, your neighbors and look like they're actually in your city. And they're the type of type of building structures and styles that actually exist in your community. And that's one of the things we've done to help. We'll say combat, maybe people's mindset around franchise is providing that localized content. So social I think I shared this with you before the podcast, but we actually got a social lead for CertaPro Dayton via messenger. When we sent out a trend piece around painted brick. It was just that like a little social posts. I created the graphic in Canva by the way, for all of our inbound marketers. And you have not discovered Canva.
Kathleen (32:24):
Yeah. It's so funny. Somebody said the other day that they were like, I don't know who designs your paid ads, but I really liked them. And I was like, that's me! I'm like, so proud of myself.
Rachel (32:36):
Yeah. It's like little, like I have one of our content writers is actually a designer as well. And I'm like, just don't mess with doing those in Photoshop or InDesign. Like let's just use Canva and we can repeat like, create it as repeatable and scalable and just move on. Cause it's not about the actual, like graphic it's about the graphic paired with the content and the cadence. And so we we do trends pieces once a month. So we have our agency that we work with create a blog posts. They also do SEO and SEM for us. They create a blog post on our website. And then they, and then we'll, we'll follow that up with a trends piece on social, organic social. And then they'll also utilize the graphic that we use on our organic social for paid social.
Rachel (33:27):
And we're all, we're putting everything back to the website with P like we're an expert. We know that painted brick as an example this year has been really a hot trend date. And so a lady messenger messaged us and said, Hey, I want my house exactly like this picture, but I only want it to be dark gray. And I was like, yes, ma'am, we'll get you right over to one of our sales associates. And so, I mean, for those people that don't think that organic social, it can help drive leads, it can, oh, I totally agree with you. It's, it's definitely a well-performing channel for us as well. So email paid ads in our plays are relatively simple. They're not super sophisticated, but they work organic social. And then Google my business pages for any of our local business owners has been kind of a secret sauce for us.
Rachel (34:19):
We also utilize for like leaves in general, there's a service and I'll give our friends a shout at Five Star. They do reviews. And so they help businesses to consolidate reviews across channels. So if somebody leaves a review on Facebook, how do we then also get that same review on our Google, my business channel and on our review sites, but like a review aggregator. And so that, so one of the, one of the kind of decision making points is before I make this decision as a homeowner, I want to make sure that my like the Google reviews are good or, or, you know, I'm seeing positive things. And, and I see like the workmanship is positive, especially in the services industry and the reviews do it for us. So again, services, industry element. But that, I would actually count that as like an inbound lead channel is, Hey, I saw you on Angie's list, home advisor, any of those plus Google my business at any of the other like review sites.
Rachel (35:25):
Yeah. Now you talked about verticalized marketing. I'd love to learn a little bit more about how you're approaching that. Yeah. so as I kind of mentioned, our, we have done we from no marketing and most of our brands to like turning on the faucet and as we started to get baseline plays in as our foundation, one of the things that I was seeing is that this like I'll call it, the traditional funnel was working for people. And so instead of fixing what isn't broken, let's start to funnel traffic over to this other funnel that we call ABM, which is really where, where we want to help our brands to explore. And so our kind of theory around ABM is don't like, don't stop doing this traditional marketing and traditional sales model, but let's just take certain strategic accounts or certain strategic verticals that we want to have additional penetration in, or, or we believe we have a good story to tell and let's start running different plays on, on those.
Rachel (36:29):
And so that's exactly what we did and I'm actually CertaPro Indianapolis. They've been an amazing partner for, for me they're, they're, we call them partners. But their CEO JJ Dar has a marketing background and he and I have gone round and round about like different ideas and whatnot. And he's been a great person to push me to explore and try and help to turn on this channel even faster. So we'll give him a shout out. But the, but the plays that we've run for them have been specifically verticalized plays. So if you think about like ABM sophistication, this would be the step below target accounts. So instead of saying, I'm gonna, I'm gonna throw a wide net across all these different verticals that we play in. We're going to pick a specific vertical, and then we're going to pick either whether it's KPIs or certain elements of the messaging that those, that, that specific vertical cares about.
Rachel (37:28):
And then we are targeting a, to one persona, which happens to be the decision maker. So like, as an example we are running three different verticalized campaigns right now with CertaPro Indianapolis. And one of those has two different plays and I'll share some of the, like stand out some of the stand out like email results specifically for those the, the, the verticals that we're targeting for that are healthcare. So these are not like easy verticals either to like get into healthcare specifically like hospital locations, not like the main hospital, maybe like the surgery center, dialysis centers. Those are the types of, of of like, like healthcare locations that we do work in. And then we call them managed commercial. These are, and then we have two actual personas that we're targeting in that we're targeting the property manager.
Rachel (38:25):
So think about, this is the person like onsite, who's running the day-to-day operations of that specific property. And then you have the owner who may we own the actual building, but doesn't, but doesn't necessarily sit in that particular location. And so we are running kind of parallel messaging for those 2% of types. And then our third one is churches. So CertaPro Indianapolis has had some amazing successes with painting old churches specifically in like the, the central Indiana region and being in the Bible belt, we have these beautiful, ornate, old churches and one of their, when you align kind of something that they care about to your messaging, it produces leads. And I know that's like a super simple concept. So like, as an example, most of the churches in Indiana that kind of fit that bill were painted or were built before 1978. And one of the things, one of the elements that they use was lead based paint.
Kathleen (39:31):
I was going to say it that, yeah, yeah. I live in a house that has a little bit of it.
Rachel (39:36):
There you go. So, you know, that it needs to be treated with with care. And so being able to being able to know that our, that our churches need to be handled with special care. We say that in our messaging, like, Hey, do you have, do you know that you, that your church probably has lead based paint and, oh, by the way, we're certified by the EPA to handle on base page, let us come out and look at your building and take, put on more of a consultant hat then maybe a true lead generation hat. And let us come out and take a look at your property and help you to determine, you know, how we can help you. The other dynamic is the other personas that may influence that decision. So if we're talking at an, a church as an example, we might be talking to the facilities manager, but I'd be talking to the chairman of the board. We might be talking to, you know, a variety of different people, and then we've, we've kind of tailored messaging to fit who we're actually talking to and who we're going to meet on site versus talk to you via phone. We also know how to handle the kind of the board decision on whether or not to get your church painted.
Kathleen (40:51):
It's so interesting. I just am fascinated by how, how much you have to know about so many different, not just businesses and business models, but then all the different audiences. They serve all these different verticals and how they buy and what they're interested in. Like it's a lot for one person to wrap their brain around
Rachel (41:08):
It is, but you also hire really smart people. Our our content creator I'll give her a shout out her name's Eileen. And she did, she worked for copy press is actually the organization that, that creates all of the articles on indeed. And one of my one of my thoughts to her in our interview process was, so if you're talking about, if you're trying to write for astrophysics, and then you're reading for marketing, like, how do you, how do you figure out, like, what's your research process to figure out how do you then create a, you know, 500,000 word article? And so she's a master researcher. And I think having somebody like that on my team there's not a challenge. I can, I can throw stuff at her and know that she's going to go dig in and figure out everything that she needs to know about churches in Indianapolis and what are some of the nuances.
Rachel (42:06):
And from a tools perspective, our team also utilizes zoom info for inbound. And we will help our teams to harvest lists. We'll run those through refresh address to make sure that the email addresses are valid, et cetera. And those are actually the correct people. And then we help our sales associates by helping them to see like, oh, well, this one has a little N next to it, which means that's our mobile number. So when you're doing your calls, maybe try their mobile numbers or their desk number, because we know that if you're a facilities manager at a church, you're probably not gonna be sitting at your desk. And so being able to help, I would say co-coach our sales reps to, to follow up on those leads. And I think that's another element from learnings. Over the years from SAS based businesses is bringing in the lead is only half the battle. And you can bring in so many leads, but you're not going to get credit from a marketing perspective until those leads become pipeline or close. And I think for, for all of our listeners out there, just remembering that fact that you are not, you are not always judged by the number of leads you bring in you're, you're kind of judged on your partnership with sales. And if you can't figure that out, you're not gonna reach any of your results.
Kathleen (43:22):
Accurate truer words were never said, I feel like we could keep talking for hours cause there's so much here, but I we're going to run out of time. And so I have a couple of questions I want to kind of wrap up with the first is, and this is not a question I normally ask people, but with you, I'm asking, my first is if you could give just a one piece of advice to somebody who's in a marketing role, who's struggling to hold it all together, who has a ton on their plate and is trying to figure out how to get it all done. What is your number one piece of advice for like staying organized, being productive and controlling the chaos?
Rachel (44:00):
Hmm. That's a, that's a, that's a good one. I, so I use a couple of different tools. We utilize Trello for project management. I also utilize Trello for personal as well. And so travel for me. It's almost like my calendar. If it's not in Trello, it doesn't exist.
Kathleen (44:20):
I so know that feeling.
Rachel (44:22):
And so, so conditioning a yourself and your team as well as all of your business partners to help provide an, almost an invite into the conversation as well. So it's like, Hey, I'm going to, I'm, we're going to use this project management system to collaborate on, on this project, et cetera. And when I need something from you, I'm going to at mention you in this cart, and then you're going to receive an email from that. And if I don't get responses back from you, it's going to hold us up as a team from progress. And I think just making that alignment on from a business perspective with your partners has been really key for me. I would also say like, like be okay with being human and, you know, you, you kind of heard a little bit about my story and my, like my personal life, my family life, and like being okay with like, letting your work friends and colleagues like, know you as like a real human being.
Rachel (45:18):
And if your kid was sick or, you know, there's something funny that happened, like let them in and let them see all of you. And I know that's not to organization, but it also provides like compassion. And so if people know that you've had a sick kid all week, or your kid, or like your baby's teething and you walk in with bags under your eyes, and maybe you're not a hundred percent sharp allowing them to, to like give you a little bit of grace I think is really important. And that's one of the lessons that I learned with Threefold that I felt like I couldn't do in the B2B fast world, because it was so cutthroat and competitive is I actually feel like I can like be all of myself and I can bring the home and the work together and kind of slam it all together. And so I would, I would challenge you just to like, be okay with like being human and vulnerable and everybody has bad days every, but he has days that they're off.
Kathleen (46:14):
I think that's the importance of working someplace that does have a supportive culture, because if you are in a place like you alluded to it with your B2B SaaS experience, if, if you're in a place that doesn't have a good culture or a supportive culture that that may not work for you, you know what I mean? Like that, that may not be an environment that's that tolerate anything less than constant delivery, you know, which is a really, it's a very stressful thing to be under. And I think, I think that's where we have to look within ourselves and decide where we, what we want to be a part of.
Rachel (46:46):
Last, last thing on that is so Sunday at nap time is like my like time to prep for the week. And so we have our younger two still nap and my older one's independent enough that she'd go do something else. And so I spend that like hour, hour and a half time prepping for the next week. And before I actually did that, I found myself, I would say overwhelmed on Monday morning as to like, that was the time when I started thinking about what was going on that week. And so find some time on the weekend. I know some people like don't want to, like, don't want to think about work on the weekend, but I promise you if you'll put in a little bit of time on the weekend to like prep, whether it's journaling or going through your inbox, clean out also during that hour and just like purge the stuff and put it in folders so that my inbox is never at zero, but but purchase so that you have like a, a good platform jumping off platform on starting on Monday,
Kathleen (47:49):
I do the same thing. And honestly it makes me so much less stressed on Monday morning. It's so worth it to me to give up an hour on the weekends to feel that much better about my Mondays. So it's, you know, everybody has to decide for themselves, but I am with you a thousand percent on that. All right. Two remaining questions. The first is you know, I hear all the time from marketers that they're overwhelmed. We've just talked about how much there is going on with you, but also just keeping on top of what's happening in the world of digital marketing that can, and ended up itself be challenging. So do you have certain sources that you rely on to stay up to date?
Rachel (48:29):
I do. So a a wise friend told me when I was with an early stage startup and I was kind of venting to him that it's really lonely at the top of the organization. And so it tell you, like, find your tribe. And so for me, that was revenue collective, which is now rebranded as pavilion. I found the CMO channel, especially to be a place where I could just like ask the dumb question that you would never want anybody at your actual office to know that you asked. And I have found that community to be like a very open and kind. I had I had an experience with actually these hires that, that I'm bringing onto my team. And I was, I was mentioning in one of our CMO chats. And one of the gentlemen contacted me afterwards and he said, I feel for you, and I have some advice.
Rachel (49:21):
And I said, great, can I buy you a cup of coffee? And I'll talk about that in a second too. And he's like, no need for a cup of coffee, but I just want to, like, I want to help you because I know that other people have helped me in the past. And so I think that idea of just giving back and like being okay with receiving somebody else's guidance. This gentleman happened to tell me that I needed to knock it off when I was hiring my team and I needed to stop hiring like a B2B SaaS company and start hiring like an agency. And I was like, thank you. Thank you. And so I think that candidate feedback too is, is, is really, really important. So CMO channel and the revenue collective slash pavilion. And then I would also say like, fine find books or, or things that you, ways that you can start consuming information.
Rachel (50:09):
So like, as an example, I, I mean, this may surprise you, but I don't have a ton of time to like read. I know that's surprising. And so I do audible and so audible is a way I have about a 30 minute drive to, and from my office. We are fortunate to be in person with the services based businesses that we have. And so I actually am with a brand or in my office you know, most of the week. And so utilizing that time in the car from when I dropped my kids off at a daycare to the office to like, do some self reflection learning. And so being able to like listen to like the newest book on, on audible has been like a really good opportunity for me. Yeah. And then podcasts too,
Kathleen (50:55):
You can do it at 1.5 X speed, which also makes it super efficient. I always liked that when I listened to books. All right. Next question. Actually, last question, which is you know, this podcast is all about inbound marketing. Is there a particular company or individual that you think of and think is really setting the standard for what it means to be a great inbound marketer today?
Rachel (51:18):
So I'm going to do it from an industry perspective. And I, I continue to look back on my, in my mind and resources that I've had on what is going on in the B2B SaaS industry, because from an inbound perspective, like not being in the B2B SaaS industry anymore, and you're still able to utilize plays from what is going on and inbound. So as I was kind of creating our theory and, and idea around how we were going to create our own ABM strategy, I looked at players like Terminus and DemandBase, and people like that who had done it, and that's their entire business model and the B2B SaaS world and utilizing those people as benchmarks. So, and then I just caveat to say like, Hey, these are the results that you may see in a B2B SaaS company.
Rachel (52:04):
We all know that we're not in a B2B SaaS company, but these are the results that they saw. So when you're doing something for the first time, like being okay with utilizing results that maybe are not a hundred percent applicable. And so I, I listened to things like I love flip my funnel. That's one of my favorite podcasts. And, and I'll start listening to this one as well. Since this, you and I met, I've listened to it probably five or six episodes, and they've all been like really invigorating. So I think just finding, finding your tribe and finding, you know, play places where in between things you can, you can learn. The other thing that I've done is Sirius XM has the ability on your computer to pull in different podcasts or just listening to kind of, I won't say the news, but like NPR or things like that, what's going on in the world. And so instead of doing music, like I used to do, when I write I've been utilizing podcasts and I do it on a slower speed. So it's kind of like a drum beat in the background. And so hoping that I'll absorb something that way.
Kathleen (53:14):
Awesome. Osmosis. Just like soak in and make me smarter while I work. I love that. Well, Rachel, this has been amazing. I just, I will reiterate that. I, I so admire you and I think you're incredible. And, and I, I have a feeling that we're going to be hearing and seeing a lot more from you moving forward, because you're a total dynamo. If somebody is listening and they want to connect with, you, ask a question, learn more about what you're working on, what is the best way for them to do that?
Rachel (53:44):
Probably email. So it's rjohnson [@] growththreefold.com. And then I, you know, if you're in pavilion as an example, like, look me up, I'd love to talk to you. And then I'll, I'll go back to my last, like piece of feedback and advice. I have whatever I'm doing something new for the first time. There is so much that you'll learn from buying people a cup of coffee. So a $5 cup of coffee helped me build my business development team from the ground up. And I'd never done that before. It's helping me to build an agency. And so I would just challenge you to like go back to the basics and you can buy somebody virtually a cup of coffee to you, like sending them a $5 Starbucks gift card is perfectly acceptable. And so I'm happy to chat about anything, you know, work, family, kids related inbound marketing, of course. So I'm, I'm open for any, and all coffee talks that anybody wants to connect with me on.
Kathleen (54:45):
I love that. And I am going to put the, your email address as well as well. I can't put the link to pavilion, but I will put all of that in the show notes. So if anybody does want to connect with you head there and that's now on, by the way, if you're listening, the show notes have moved there now on my personal website, which is kathleen-booth.com. So have there, you'll find the transcript, the recording, as well as the links. And you can connect with Rachel, but if you are listening to this episode and you enjoyed it, please head to apple podcasts and leave the podcast a review. And if you know somebody else is doing amazing marketing work, I would love to interview them. So tweet me at work, mommy work, and they could possibly be my next guest. That is it for this week. Thank you so much, Rachel. This was an amazing conversation and you're an amazing person.
Rachel (55:34):
Oh, well, thank you. It's, it's been a pleasure and I've really enjoyed getting to know you. And when we started to talk about this podcast, I enjoyed like digging in and hearing about all of your amazing guests. And if you have not checked out this podcast please, please do. There are some awesome, like little tidbits and pieces of advice. And Kathleen puts all of the resources and stuff that we mentioned in the show notes. So if you're looking for resources on a particular topic, she probably has an issue.
Kathleen (56:03):
Oh yeah. There's definitely over 200 episodes. So, well, thank you for the shout out. I appreciate it. All right. That's it for this week. Thank you everyone.
