Turning Data into Dollars for Landscaping Businesses – Paul Demarco of Intrigue

Robert (00:31)
Hi everybody, welcome back to another episode of the IAM Landscape Growth Podcast. Very special episode today. We have an amazing guest, bias I guess, Paul DiMarco, co-founder of Intrigue joining us today. Thank you Paul for doing this.

Paul Demarco (00:48)
thank you for having me, Robert. ⁓

Robert (00:52)
Um,

all right. Well, in like true, uh, you know, landscape growth podcast fashion, you got to give the audience a bit of a rundown of like, where do you come from and what you’re up to today? It’s just, they have an understanding of like, you know, your perspective and where it comes from.

Paul Demarco (01:06)
Yeah, so my name is Paul. I co-founded Intrigue with Rob as a project in 2006 and almost 20 years later, we’re still here on the entrepreneurial journey, having some fun. Yeah, we’re from Ontario. I came to Guelph for university, specialized in marketing. And that’s where I met Rob with this big straw hat on the first day of university.

Yeah, we started this company as a project in school in our third year, putting up TVs in places and letting them fall off walls because we didn’t know how to install them properly. And yeah, I mean, that’s kind of like the background of the business side of things and where it all began. And then I have my floor and my two little ones, River and William, they keep me busy when I’m not hanging out in these four walls.

Robert (01:59)
Alright cool, so then what’s your core focus at Intrigue and what are you dealing with on a day to day?

Paul Demarco (02:04)
Yeah, right now core focus is client results. So I’m trying to lead our ads team on making sure that we’re getting the best results for our clients, getting the most value for the money that they’re spending with us. And I’m working with our SEO team to make sure that we’re building the best stuff from when it comes to backlinks and content to make sure that we’re ranking in Google. And then lately I’ve been working a bunch on the data infrastructure inside.

of intrigue. So centralizing all of our data into a platform called Datarama. So we can see all of the landscaping clients all in one spot and we can benchmark website conversion rates. can benchmark ⁓ cost per lead, cost per qualified lead, return on investment and start to see like, where are clients above the benchmark and crushing? Where are they below? And how can we learn from what’s crushing to bring it to the rest of our clients?

So just trying to do everything we can to make sure we’re bringing the most value every day to all of these, know, over 100 plus landscape clients that we’re working with these days.

Robert (03:12)
Boom. So we talked a little bit about what we’re going to talk about before we started talking about it today. ⁓ And you kind of brought up this cool ⁓ topic around like partnerships and like what makes a good partner or partnership relationship, whatever it might be. And from a business context for the record, mind you, there’s probably a lot of ⁓ crossover in terms of personal relationships. ⁓ Actually, now I’m just thinking about it in my head as I say it out loud, I think there’s probably a ton.

Uh, that are very similar. Um, and so, um, last year in November, as we were running like our, our strategic planning, like cadence, annual cadence. so at intrigue, meet weekly as leadership team quarterly. Per full day and then annually for a full day, sometimes two days. Um, a couple of things kind of came from it in, in November and.

One of them, I mean, this isn’t, you know, matters to the audience, unless this does apply to your fiscal year and the calendar year. We realized that November is probably a time of year for us to plan annually, because then we recap what we’ve done and then change what we’re going to do to make it better. And then we go into what would be, you know, our busy season. We talk with all the time. When you guys are planting, you guys being the audience of landscapers, when you’re planning, we’re working. And when you’re planting,

you know, we’re in like management mode. So we’re not really doing all the onboarding that we normally do during the busy season. ⁓ But the reason I bring it up is because we kind of look back at the year and we’ve kind of, we’ve transformed the company from like a local marketing company, Jack of all, master of none. ⁓ Essentially like, you know, let’s, let’s work with everybody we can within a reasonable driving distance and try to figure out all the Rubik’s cubes that come along with all the different business models.

becoming really focused on helping landscape entrepreneurs in North America. And so we were like, okay, well, what do people really care about? And so we’re in, you could argue year 18, you could argue year 19, depending on when you start a business, is it in market research phase, or is it revenue phase, but whatever, you could say we’re a better part of 20 years. And working with thousands of entrepreneurs, all shapes and sizes,

We kind of came up with this idea that like when someone hires us, they want more customers and they want to know what’s going on. So results in communication, we’re kind of at the ethos or the essence of where we think or what we thought and have experienced clients perceive value with their relationship with us. And so we’re going to talk about this idea of partnerships, but I just want to get your take on, you

Well, first of all, now that we’ve been doing this and we’ve changed the way we’ve approached things, how’s it been going from your side of things? And what does it mean just to give context to the audience?

Paul Demarco (06:10)
like how the results in communication been.

Robert (06:12)
Yeah, well, results in communication, like we’ve changed the way we do our work. We’ve changed what we deliver. We’ve changed the way we communicate with our clients. And so somebody who’s been at the helm of, hey, things aren’t working and you get like flagged this year and last year, what’s the difference? know, like how’s it been going for you? And then what is the difference? Like what’s the change we made just so the audience knows?

Paul Demarco (06:36)
Yeah, there’s a couple of pieces to it. So fundamentally, the way that we build websites has changed. And that’s changed results, client experience, and communication. So historically, we’d built websites over a three to six month period where you’re kind of pathing the ball from one department to another. So it’s like,

Someone does a session at the beginning to gather all this information. And then we design the site. And then we write all the content. And then we build all of this out. And there’s lots of different communication points throughout that journey. And often, took three to six months to build it. ⁓ This past year, ⁓ we moved everything into sprint models coming out of the methodology from Scrum, ⁓ which is just a book called Scrum that’s used a lot in SaaS software development.

where we would build websites in a week and make it so that the team working on that site had nothing else that they were focusing on for that week except for building that one website. And then we had multiple teams that were building sites so we could build up to three websites at a time with these three different teams. ⁓ Well, from a results perspective, from a client experience perspective and a communication perspective, it went up considerably because we got some okay feedback about our website process in the past, but generally it was painstaking for everybody.

Like it was a lot of pain to go through the process for ourselves, for the client. was just the, where’s this project at? And there’s just a lot of constant.

Robert (08:08)
out over a period of time.

Paul Demarco (08:11)
Yeah, it was an OK experience at best for everybody. And then this year, moving it into these sprints, well, one, our team is very happy because they can focus on one project, take it from concept to live in a week to maybe two weeks, depending on the size of the project. But our client experience has gone through the roof. And we can just see it from the feedback that we get and even the reviews that we get so much earlier in the relationship because people are just thrilled with it.

the fact that their website was just starting and now it’s already live in a matter of a week versus what could be up to six months. We’ve had websites go 12 months depending on how involved the client needs to be and if it’s e-commerce and all this stuff, right? So, and that’s like pretty good in industry, you know, to have a website done in three to six months compared to what we hear out there. so that piece has been a big improvement from a communication side, but then also results side because it’s in market faster. We’re getting

traction in Google quicker. ⁓ Typically, we see conversion rates go up when we build websites. One of the big reasons people build websites with us. if their conversion rate sits between 0 and 2%, ⁓ from all the leads that they’re getting, they’re getting 0 to 2 % of them are actually traffic that they’re getting to the website. That’s how many turn into leads. We usually see it bump up to 3 to 5%, which might not sound like a big increase, but it’s like,

often 100 to 200 % increase. So the results start to come in much, much quicker. So that minor change, which is also a bit of a major change in terms of the whole way we work, has impacted results in good way in client experience. And then the other really cool thing is we’ve been able to, from an ad side, take all of this learning across all of these different accounts and be able to bring it to everybody. So if we find something

that works somewhere really, really well. We can be like, cool, this is working really well here. Let’s try it on a couple of accounts. Yes, it’s working well here. Okay, let’s roll it out across the entire suite of clients. Whereas before, if we had clients in all these different industries, that wouldn’t necessarily apply, but in this instance, it very much does. So I’d say that we’re even at a softer market that we’re seeing in 2025 versus 2024, which was even stronger in 2023, we’re still seeing.

lead flow and cost per leads and cost per qualified leads inside of what we had promised to our clients because we’re making the dollars just much more efficient than we ever could in the past because we know what’s working and we can help bring those results to different people. If that makes sense.

Robert (10:54)
Yeah, for sure it does. And there was a couple of things I want to touch on though for, okay, I’ll come back to the philosophical approach in a second. But from somebody who’s watching results for landscapers and for landscapers that are listening to this thing, what is working? Like, what is driving leads?

Paul Demarco (11:11)
Yeah, well, there’s two big pieces that there’s many facets to this whole thing. So starting at the very top of the funnel is getting traffic to the site. So we get traffic to the site in a couple of different ways. One is ads, and one is through organic in Google. So from an ad side of things, the one thing that’s working is

well, trying to capture the high intent keyword searches. It can be challenging in Google to have you show up for the right things and only the right things, because Google is trying to make a bunch of money. And so they’re trying to show your ads for everything under the sun and not without going into too much detail. There’s a phrase. There’s a different match types. And as much as you try to make it so that only show up for landscape design company near me,

Often, even if you’re bidding on that, you’ll show up for a lot of other things, even though we don’t want to. So on our side, the thing that’s working the most is trying to make it so that we’re utilizing budgets as best as possible. And what we usually find is that when we go into audit an account, it’s pretty broad in terms of what people are spending their money on. So people think that they might be spending money on landscape design company near me, but they’re actually spending money on landscape design ideas.

And they might be burning 50 % of their budget on that term. But unless you’re buried inside of Google Ads, which is a labyrinth in and of itself, you don’t know where to look to find that information. ⁓ And Google only gives you a small percentage of the actual search term data. So maybe it’s like 20 % of the actual search term data that you get access to. they’re not as transparent as you would certainly like them to be. And they’re getting less and less transparent. ⁓

But we often see the biggest issue is that budget is being wasted on search terms that aren’t driving high quality traffic. And so that’s what’s working for us is making it so that we’re trying to utilize that budget as good as possible. And then also not necessarily showing up for competitive terms. So again, we don’t bid on any competitors. But the way that Google’s algorithm works is that if you’re searching for landscape design company near me, I’ll just use that to keep that same example.

Yeah. you know, someone searches Paul’s landscaping or Paul’s landscape design and boom, all of a sudden my ad showing up and I’m paying. Sometimes it can be like $30 a click, you know, for that term, which makes me want to vomit. And, know, when you see that, cause it’s like, it’s like robbery from Google. Cause clearly they’re not a good match. Like I didn’t want to pay $30 for Paul’s landscape design. Yeah, but it’s not what my intent was, but you know.

fighting with Google’s, like just fighting with the wall. So it’s not really worth fighting with them about it. So we have to make it so that it’s used as efficient as possible ⁓ because a lot of money could be wasted. So Google Ads, the search campaigns, and then they also have these performance max campaigns, which tend to complement quite well. Like they won’t work really well on their own, but actually having more display ads in market, ⁓ we find that we can see like between like a 15 to 30 % lift in search conversions if we’re running.

those campaigns with it. But sometimes you kind of have to take the bad with the good on that. So you might get some like spammy leads through, but you still get good leads. So that’s like the ad side of things. From the organic side of trying to show up inside of Google search. I mean, still the same old strategy for lack of better term works, which is give people good valuable content. Like even in the advent of AI, like if we’re writing a 3000 word,

guide on everything you need to know about landscape design in Massachusetts, then that’s going to be a good piece of valuable content that’s going to help you rank in Google. And there might be some AI tied to helping us build the framework for this thing, but we’re still not seeing many competitors writing that detailed content. So no doubt that continuing to write good quality content is going to help. And then complemented with

communicating to your audience, taking that content, bringing it into email, bringing it into social. And then backlinks are still something that tends to work well. So being able to take that article and have it linked in different places throughout the internet. It’s a weird strategy because it doesn’t really drive a lot of actual organic traffic. But Google tends to give a higher authority to websites that have more backlinks, which overall lifts.

the website in rank, which innately brings in more people to the top of the funnel. So that’s getting people to the site. And then beyond that, now that they’re on the site, what’s converting them? So.

There’s a lot that goes into a landing page here. We’ve got like a 27 point checklist of all the things that we want as best practice to be on a landing page to get somebody to convert. So there’s lots of different pieces around that. But ultimately it’s like giving people the right information when they get to the right page. It’s making sure that we’re talking about them and not us. So like we weave in our clients, we weave in their why, like what do they care about most?

but we really want to make it about the actual person who’s reading and trying to relate to their problems as much as possible. And we find that if we can do that and also talk about our clients passions and why they do what they do every day, that combination with like little things of having calls to action above folds in the right places can increase conversion rate 100 to 200 to 300%. So driving the traffic, converting the traffic, and then

nurturing that traffic. So once somebody actually does inquire, making sure we’ve got amazing conversion tracking set up so we can tell exactly, you know, Rob Murray inquired, they inquired on the landscape design page. They first came from a Google ad and they came back organically. They searched, they searched landscape design company near me and now they’re in the CRM. They’re in a, you know, proposal stage. The quote value is $60,000.

And we can see all that in the system. being able to kind of see from start of the journey into closing of the journey results really matter because we can actually see every layer of the funnel.

Robert (18:01)
And dollars like that. That’s cool. And I think you did a pretty good job trying to summarize it because there’s so much associated to it. So then just just as a quick tip then for people listening, you talk about the idea of landscape sign company near me. What’s another one or two examples of like a high intent, high value keyword that you’re seeing in all these ad accounts?

Paul Demarco (18:18)
I mean, we see a lot on landscape construction contractor, landscape construction company. It depends on the type of job someone’s trying to get. So if you’re trying to get more of the design build job, yeah, we find that people that are actually searching things like landscape design and build, Toronto landscape design and build, Atlanta, those are good keywords that will

Robert (18:33)
thousand plus.

Paul Demarco (18:46)
that have really high ⁓ intent, especially if it’s landscape design and build company. Anything that has to do with landscaping company near me starts to come down a little bit, because somebody’s intent might be for a design and build, but their intent also might be for their lawn to be mowed. So once you start to move to something that’s a little bit more generic, we start to find we get more leads that are more generic, ⁓ maybe not the lead that somebody wants.

bit on things like landscaping ideas or landscape design ideas that we’re really getting traffic that we don’t want. So landscape construction company, landscape design and build company, landscape design near me, but then including the geography. ⁓ And then some fringe things like ⁓ retaining walls are interesting. So someone’s looking for an armor stone retaining wall, that can sometimes lead to a good ⁓ lead to someone’s in the landscape design build process. ⁓

And then custom outdoor kitchens ⁓ plus geography, another one that leads to good jobs.

Robert (19:52)
Cool. All right, so let’s go a bit more philosophical for a quick second. You talked lot about how this data aggregation initiative that we’ve been on for quite a while is helping us understand what to expect in terms of what we can promise people. So this whole idea of results in the way that we work with our clients is really tied to expectations. If we agree on paper for services and money based on a result that we predict,

The expectation of that result is on us essentially to be like, this is what we think we can do. And it sounds like based on what you’ve been working on and what I’ve been experiencing on a daily basis, that’s getting a lot tighter. And then there was this other thing about websites being done quickly. And sometimes actually when we present this to people, they don’t even necessarily believe us because they’ve built a site for a year before. But then we get it done in like the first four weeks of them working with us. Cause we said, Hey, you’re slotted in on the week of whatever. you’re going to get, you know,

We’re going to do the information session to gather whatever before, and then we’re going to do the thing and then it’ll be live. And then it happens and people are really happy.

Just talk to us a little bit about like the value of a partnership from your point of view with regard to like expectation setting and how important that is to be clear.

Paul Demarco (21:08)
Like for our clients, you mean?

Robert (21:10)
Well, mean, that is the point of the question, but I do believe this does stem into every part of life.

Paul Demarco (21:18)
Yeah. Well, I mean, think with.

I’ll start with the client piece, because for us, the biggest thing that, I think five or six years ago, we talked about what’s the one thing that we can do that will have more impact on our business and our clients’ success than anything else? the idea was, well, if we can predict the result of our work within a 5 % margin, that would be the bee’s knees. If we can do that, that’s really going to make our client experience amazing. It’s going to make our

sales process better because we can actually go and predict the future for the people and what to expect. And so we’ve been on a big journey, you know, trying to make that happen. And one of the things that we do do is we legit predict the future. So when we go to sign on a new client, we do our research and based on like what we see in our suite of clients and what we see as what’s happening in that market that that landscaping company is in, we say, hey, we think that based on everything we see,

There’s a cost per lead prediction for you is going to be x, and our cost per qualified lead prediction is going to be y. And that’s the promise we make. So now we’re on the hook to deliver on that to your point. But I don’t know a way that we could be more clear in terms of expectation setting. ⁓ And so I think that that promise is just really huge, because if we make that expectation, we can live by that expectation. And if we’re beating it, awesome. Most of the time, everybody’s happy.

If we’re not beating it, well then, you know, we’ll do whatever we can in our power to move the needle in that direction. So from a client side, mean, making that clarity and expectation just goes a long way. And it also goes the same way with the website. It’s like, hey, your website is going to be built on this week. We are going to go live on this date, full clarity. Whereas before it’s like, this is a 90 day process. It might go longer. It might not. Your website live date is undetermined.

It’s just a lack of clarity, which just causes friction. Because if there’s no expectations, no clarity, people can start to go into this like that mum effect of just creating these bad ideas in their head about what’s actually happening on the other side. Whereas if we can create that clarity and communication and those expectations, then typically it leads to much healthier relationship. I mean, that’s the client side when it comes to like,

any relationship, it’s kind of the same way. Like, I think about our relationship and having clear expectations of each other. It’s been, like we said, don’t know, 18, 19 years so far. Having clear expectations of each other as a partnership. And it hasn’t always been sunshine and rainbows. We’ve had our challenges, but having that communication with each other has been absolutely vital to creating this friendship and partnership.

But having that communication space is also really important. Like the fact that we’re going for dinner, like, you know, the two of us will spend four to five hours a week together and, you know, break bread, try to do it once a week. You know, when we’re, when Rob’s flying all over the place, it’s a little bit more challenging to do that. But when we’re here.

Robert (24:29)
35, 40 weeks a year, something like that.

Paul Demarco (24:31)
Yeah, like significant amount of time, right? So into thinking about how it stems to all these other relationships, like how many people do that with their spouse every week? Like, I can’t even say that I do that. I spend more time having dinner with you than I do her, which is kind of crazy. But that space for us has been the glue, I think, of our partnership and just having that space to talk every week and constantly being able to share the expectations of each other and having that communication space has been.

been the thing that’s made the thing healthy.

Robert (25:03)
Yeah, for sure. And it was, and it was one just for the audience listening. Like, I don’t know what it was, but at one point in the business, we were both doing everything. Like you were doing cold calls. I was hanging upside down, hanging TVs. Like we were both making videos. We were both talking to clients. We were literally both doing everything. And then at one point, I think we were just, okay, you know what, Rob, you do sales and I’ll do ops. So you make the promises. I’ll keep them. And then we’ll just make sure we’re lockstep in terms of how we go about doing that. It’s kind of like grown. It’s like graduated to a whole new level, but that’s still kind of.

relationship, which is kind cool. So one of the things you’re talking about there with regard to like a healthy relationship is the idea around expectations and it’s, you implied it, but like, you know, the idea of doing what you say you’re going to do when you say you’re going to do it, which creates integrity and trust. And in terms of what we’re doing, you know, and if somebody’s listening to this, they’re like, well, you know, my current marketing partner doesn’t necessarily

approach it that way, whatever. But if you were to talk to somebody who’s maybe, like maybe not satisfied with their current relationship, whether it’s marketing themselves, marketing with a team member, marketing with a company, what would be one or two things that you’d recommend that they like either broach the topic, look into like, what can they do to make it better?

Paul Demarco (26:21)
I wouldn’t, but I think the number one thing I would recommend somebody to look for is a tool to be able to understand what’s working. Because you might think that things aren’t working, maybe they are. And it’s hard to know that, right? So ⁓ yeah, there’s some great conversion tracking tools. We have one that we call Salt that it’s like our sales and lead tracking system. Like Hyros is another one that’s like attribution tracking.

But these tools will make it so that for very little work, you can have them on your site and then you can see what marketing is working or not working. So I feel like that’s one thing I would want to know if I was going in, just be like, well, is your marketing agency or company doing good work? Well, the first thing I would do is go put that tool on my site to be like, is this thing, are the ads working?

Robert (27:18)
Yeah, and for the record, anybody listening to this, you go to intriguemedia.com slash track, you can get a tool like this set up for four months. The way Paul’s explaining to anybody. If you’re curious, intriguemedia.com slash track.

Paul Demarco (27:29)
So yeah, so like that would create the transparency. Cause then you’re going to see, okay, how many leads am I getting from my marketing efforts? Are they coming from my Google ads, my Facebook ads, my social media posts, my Google organic? And then you can see, start to see those customer journeys. And also you can put in your sales values so you can kind of like have the whole thing cycle back. But I think that the number one thing I would do would be to track that information. Cause like people use Google analytics or GA4.

as people call it. you don’t get that level of transparency when it comes to tracking. So number one thing is to get the data right so you can understand what’s working, or if your current stuff is working.

Robert (28:11)
Yeah, I think it makes a lot of sense because like we’ve had clients come to us and be like, you know, I’m I’m not satisfied with this. And then we would take like a data dump from their CRM and then reconcile it with the tool you’re referring to. And then we’d be like, okay, you’ve got like a $1.8 million in revenue from a hundred thousand dollar investment.

Paul Demarco (28:29)
Sounds pretty good to me.

Robert (28:30)
It’s kind of working like what else could you spend a hundred grand and make 1.8 million and you know gross margin sure call it 40 % So cut it in half in a bit. We’re still looking at like 800,000 on a hundred K If I have an investment opportunity like that, I would do it again and again and again. Yeah, and again

Paul Demarco (28:50)
mean, the other thing I think would be insightful for people to look at would be like, ask your agency for a search terms report. know, so go to Google, like ask for a Google ads search term, just report over the last 90 days and be like, okay, hear me out that it doesn’t give you all the information, which is frustrating to no end, but it gives you a flare of like, okay, here’s what I’m getting my clicks on. And you know, it’s like, this is a battle that we’re always fighting here. So I’m not saying that because somebody’s

Because it doesn’t look perfect, it’s not good. Google changes their algorithm all the time. And one day, what’s working amazing, tomorrow it’s not. One day, you’re showing up for the right stuff, the next day you’re not. So it’s a bit of an ongoing battle. But try to understand if you’re showing up for the stuff that you think you want to be showing up for. Are you getting clicks for the terms that we talked about earlier, like landscape design company near me or landscape construction company near me? Or are you getting all your clicks on landscape design ideas?

Robert (29:48)
or Dave Smith, some random person you never met.

Paul Demarco (29:52)
I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it. $36 click. It’s just crazy. So what are you showing up for? And what are you paying? What are you paying Google for if you are running Google Ads? Because you might not be thrilled with what you’re paying for. You might be really happy. But that’s another piece of inspection that’s worthwhile.

Robert (30:13)
Yeah, that’s cool. think something too that you’ve kind of said the entire time without saying it, but it’s been like, essentially the foundation, which you’ve been talking about everything that we’re helping people with and what we’re trying to accomplish as a company. What is like, is there a clear goal?

Paul Demarco (30:29)
Sure, yeah.

Robert (30:30)
And there might have been at the beginning, but it’s not necessarily reinforced and brought up on a regular basis. Or maybe it has been, but you as the person paying for marketing support and services to generate a result don’t necessarily know what the goal is. And we see it all the time. Like we couldn’t be more upfront with like what your cost per lead is going to look like. And then we say in your first year, it’s either a four or five to one ratio, depending on how well you’ve marketed in the previous years.

So if your cost per lead is going to be like 250 bucks, well, it’s going to be a thousand dollars to get a quote in the first year. So we say four to one ratio. We say it upfront. We say it every month. And still some people like miss the fact that that is the whole point of this thing. Cause really you’re running a business. You want to make sure you have enough customers that your, you know, your team’s booked out, that you’re making money. You’re working with, you know, bank, finance, you’re doing all the things, training, whatever. Um, I think the idea of like, essentially the entire conversation we’ve had today is around.

expectation setting for a good relationship and like what is the goal? Like what are we trying to accomplish here?

brand visibility, community visibility, in our experience, getting ready, writing checks for that gets old pretty quick. So I think getting clear on what the goal is would be really helpful. So then I guess just as a final note, we’re gonna do a lot more of these episodes. you like this one, you can tune into more coming. ⁓ But if you were to speak to…

you know, a couple of hundred landscape entrepreneurs, you want to let them know something ⁓ based on what you’ve been experiencing this year and last, what would you say they might want to hear?

Paul Demarco (32:10)
Hmm, big question.

Yeah, I mean, there’s a couple of things, but like the thing that comes to my mind the most is like stay in market. there’s people are looking like I see leads in our system every single day, like, you know, in our full system, like tens of thousands a month. So there’s no doubt that people are, are looking at one of those. So what we’re hearing a lot, we’re still seeing a lot of lead flow. having, you know, people are having a little bit of hard time closing deals depending on the company. Yeah. But the demand is still out there and.

It might be shrinking a little bit, but there’s an opportunity to be ahead of your competition and to capture the demand that exists. So I think like, not like with us or anybody, like, and make sure that you’re continuing to invest in marketing, especially if it’s going to be in a softer market, because there’s still a lot of opportunity out there. And if we, if you stop investing, I feel like you’re definitely not going to capture it and try to build as much transparency in your data.

as you can so you can understand what’s working and what’s not. If you don’t have full transparency on what’s working for you right now, I just really think that that’s a place to start is to understand what’s working and then stay in market.

Robert (33:27)
Yeah, the last thing you want to is turn something off that’s working.

Paul Demarco (33:33)
Yeah, it’s like an ad specifically, it’s a bit of a, I mean, I don’t want to say a death sentence, that’s extreme, but it can really hinder trying to get back to that point. We had that happen with a client last month where they were getting a bunch of spam leads and they’re like, oh, do we should do this? we paused this one campaign and then, oh, the leads, the good leads are starting to go away and we’re like, oh, we probably shouldn’t have paused that campaign. We probably should have kept it running.

because it’s hard to build that momentum back. Like we’re essentially dealing with a machine. When you think about an algorithm that Google runs off of and that we’re trying to like train to give things our way instead of somebody else’s way, because we’re all bidding to try to get this traffic that’s out there. So turning to zero can really impact Google’s liking of you, for lack of better term. So trying to like turning something off that could be working could be

could be really ⁓ impactful when it comes to lead flow and sales.

Robert (34:35)
Cool. And then last one, a resource, an author, a speaker, a video that you have been inspired by over your years that you might want someone to check out.

Paul Demarco (34:45)
Well, my top of mind right now, probably similar to yours, like we’re very deep into everything to do with Alex Hermosy. So he’s got a couple books that a hundred million dollar offers, a hundred million dollar leads. We’re learning about their process, you know, for us as ourselves, from a marketing standpoint, but also what we can do to bring it to our clients and how we can simplify at the same token building like very robust marketing strategies that

that can work for us and for our clients. ⁓ yeah, I just think that there’s, even though the books are called $100 million offers and $100 million leads, and they sound like more marketing focused, there’s just oodle, like, you know, however many books, like hundreds of business books we’ve read over the years, like value for minute listening. ⁓ I’ve listened to all my books instead of read, so I’m on Audible to listen to all my stuff. ⁓ But more value for minute than anything I’ve ever listened to.

So anything from Alex or Mozi, like whether it’s his podcast, the game or the books, you can find them for free on Spotify too, or buy them on Audible for like six bucks. Bet you think that there’s tons of value, no matter what stage of the entrepreneurial journey you’re in, ⁓ if you’re listening to that stuff.

Robert (36:00)
Beauty. Love it. Totally agree. Yeah. I don’t know. I think I’m on like round seven right now of listening to a hundred million dollar leads and round four of offers.

Paul Demarco (36:07)
I just don’t even want to listen to anything else. just like, why would I? I’m just going to keep listening to this until I feel like we’ve got it nailed down.

Robert (36:14)
It’s like three to five takeaways for every 30 minutes every single time.

Paul Demarco (36:18)
Yeah, it’s just chock full of actionable, meaningful take. It’s almost too much. It’s hard to digest it because there’s just so much coming at you. But it’s still obviously very worthwhile. You’re just trying to the nuggets that you want to implement. For us, it’s like because there’s so much, stick into the stuff that’s going to make the most impact first.

Robert (36:39)
So who wants to get a hold of you? What’s the best way?

Paul Demarco (36:41)
⁓ Best way is probably just to email me, paul at intrigue me dot ca. Yeah, if you’re ever interested, like you can go to intrigue media dot com slash track. If you’re interested in the tracking tool, we’ll happily set you up and get you trialed for it just so you can kind of see the transparency. ⁓ But yeah, I’m happy to chat with anybody individually if anyone’s interested.

Robert (37:03)
Rock and roll, thanks Polly for doing this.

Paul Demarco (37:05)
Roberto, it’s been a pleasure. I look forward to doing some more with you.

Robert (37:08)
See you everybody.