LIVE From IRE 2023 With LMH Agency!

Danny Braught from LMH Agency shares digital marketing advice!

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of a live interview with Danny Braught from LMH Agency. You can watch the interview or read the transcript below.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Hello. Welcome to day three at the International Roofing Expo. You are here live on the sound stage for Roofers Coffee Shop with a Coffee Conversations live sponsored by SRS. I'm Heidi. And you know what? Sometimes this is the cool thing about these shows, you're walking around or people are walking up to the booth and you make new friends and you find people who you're like, "Wow, we have so much in common." Well, that just happened with Danny and I. Danny, welcome to the sound stage.

Danny Braught: Thank you. I appreciate it.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I love it. So Danny Braught, can you introduce yourself to everyone and tell them about your company?

Danny Braught: Yeah, so my name is Danny Braught, I'm with LMH Agency, our local media house. We're a marketing and advertising agency that specializes in working with home service contractors to help them get more leads and ultimately get more revenue. That's the only reason we're around. And so, yeah, that's what we do is build websites. We do SEO, we do paid ads and help you with your marketing strategy so that way you can get out there in front of people.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Well, I love marketing, love marketing so we connected on that, and then I found out that Danny's from Damascus, Oregon.

Danny Braught: Yep.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: There's not a lot of people from Damascus, almost as many who are from Sisters, Oregon.

Danny Braught: Yeah, there's one stoplight to give you an idea.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: We don't even have a stoplight. We have a roundabout. And so I wanted to talk about this. I wanted to hear your perspective. This is the first time you've been to the roofing show, right?

Danny Braught: This is the first time I've been to this roofing show, yeah.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, and so what do you think walking around and seeing the show?

Danny Braught: There's a ton of cool products that are out there. All the new technology that's coming out for contractors is amazing, making their jobs more efficient, as well as just the people that I've met here. The people here are absolutely awesome. Every booth that I've talked to or the panel that I was on earlier today, just everybody's awesome with great ideas. And yeah, it's been an awesome time so far.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I love it. Tell us about the panel. What'd you do on the panel? What'd you talk about? And was it here?

Danny Braught: Yeah, so the panel was with the Catalyst Group.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Okay.

Danny Braught: And so we were talking about marketing. There was five of us on there. We went through different things, whether it be branding or rebranding your company, different things to look for when you're looking for a marketing agency, what things you should be doing first if you're just starting out, where you should be if you're a larger company, and what you should be doing, how much of your revenue should be used for marketing. And then going back and forth with different people who think that one percentage isn't good, another percentage, and that you shouldn't have a hard and faster rule, and so going back and forth, it was fun.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: It is interesting because everybody has a different way, and we had a panel this morning also, and we were talking about how technology's coming in, how the culture, the give back, brand reputation. There's so much to it. It's not just... The old days you get an ad in the Yellow Pages and you name your company with an A, so you're at the top, but now-

Danny Braught: AAA.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: AAA, you can even do the AAA. Yeah. So, but today there's just so much on the technology front that's really hard for contractors. So what are some of the first steps that you would recommend for contractors who are like, I just got to get a digital presence?

Danny Braught: So first thing is make sure that you get a website, but you want to make sure that you're not using GoDaddy or something like that, where you're not able to have any SEO, any SEO optimization. A lot of those website builders is what you would call them, they don't have a good backend to be able to build in the SEO that you're going to need to build. So start with the end in mind and build something that's good from the beginning. But if you're just very starting out, just get something up there because it's really some way, a way that people use to make sure that you're real, make sure that you're a real company, that you're actually in business. So making sure that you have a good digital presence is very integral. Because even if you meet them, because you met them at a show or you met them at some networking group or something like that, they're going to go to your website to see how legit you really are of a business because-

Heidi J. Ellsworth: They are.

Danny Braught: ... you can't just take people at face value. They want to go do some research and now every single consumer in every industry, you have the internet and you can go do as much research as you want and really figure out who people are.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And people are doing the research. And what's really funny is, Karen and I have been talking about you have to have a website for probably 10 years, if not longer. And because it's a valid, you are 100, it's a validation. And I think today more than ever, if you don't have a website, people, they just aren't going to do business with you.

Danny Braught: Yeah, I actually have a friend who runs an electrical contracting business and he doesn't have a website. I've been on him for a year about it. And he said that he just lost a big job because of his website, because he doesn't have one. And so they didn't think that he was going to be a reliable person for them to come back to. The other thing is, when it comes to having a website, you want to make sure that you have very clear CTAs or calls to action on your website. I see a lot of people who you got to go searching to find their phone number on their website. It should be very big in the top right hand corner or on a mobile, it should be at the bottom. We keep on the websites we build, it stays at the bottom even while you're scrolling-

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Aah, I like that.

Danny Braught: So literally they can just click and call.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah.

Danny Braught: Because that's what they're trying to do anyways. First they're just trying to figure out a little bit more about you, and then from there you want to bring them down in the funnel so that they're actually calling and taking action.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: It's so funny, you're making my day because on Roofers Coffee Shop, metal coffee shop, we are constantly like you have to have a call to action. What do you want to do? And I kind of want to be told what is the next step? And if you aren't sharing that, then that's going to take me how much longer to figure out and by then I'm onto the next thing.

Danny Braught: And it's also not just having a place where they can call, because a lot of people don't want to talk on the phone nowadays. It's how can you set up some sort of scheduling platform where they can just schedule directly online like they do for most of the stuff? Or they're going to go out to a restaurant now, you can go directly on Google, go onto Google Maps, go to OpenTable, click your time, and you don't have to call the restaurant for a reservation. Well, how can you set up windows of when people can be there to come out and for roof and come do a free estimate? All right. We'll be there between 10:00 to 12:00.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah. I like the chatbots too.

Danny Braught: Chatbots are awesome.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I think chatting is, I can be doing 10 other things and I'm still chatting with somebody.

Danny Braught: As long as... I don't like the chatbots that I have to answer 16 questions first before I start actually talking to somebody that actually wants to talk back.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I agree. I agree. I agree.

Danny Braught: It only gives me four options. All right, here's four new options. Here's four new options. All right. I just want somebody to answer this without me having to go through all of it.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, I love it.

Danny Braught: We have a great partner for that that is actually out of Oregon as well.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Oh, see so much good stuff from Oregon. Well, Danny, thank you.

Danny Braught: Yeah. Thank you.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Thank you for taking the time. Thank you for being here. Hopefully you'll be seeing Danny and LMH. You'll be able to find him on the site, get more information, get in touch with them. This is stuff that contractors need every day. So if you just get in touch with us and we'll hook you up. So Danny-

Danny Braught: Awesome.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: ... thank you for being here.

Danny Braught: Thank you very much for having me.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I appreciate it. I'm so glad to meet a friend from Oregon.

Danny Braught: Yeah, definitely.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: So stay tuned. We'll be right back.