Jake Sheldon was back for another round. He runs his own pest control company and helps a lot of other owners with their marketing, and Facebook is his thing. People ask me about this stuff all the time, so I wanted Jake to walk through what actually works.
Here are the lessons I keep thinking about.
This is part of the Pest Control Millionaire podcast. For more from Jake, check out his earlier episode on reviews, referrals, and pest control growth.
This was the first thing Jake said, and it stuck with me. If you run Facebook ads, do not use boosted posts.
A boosted post feels like an ad, but it is not. As Jake put it, “you’ll actually have better results if you just throw money out into a cul-de-sac and light it on fire, because at least people from the cul-de-sac will come to the fire.”
Facebook runs on an auction, and boosted posts rank low in that auction. Few people see them, and no eyeballs means no leads. Build your ads in the ads manager instead, because that is where the real ads live.
Get customers for free with Facebook groups
This is my favorite part, and it costs nothing.
Jake’s plan is simple. Make a spreadsheet of every group in your area, like community groups, business owner groups, local mom groups, and your city and suburb groups. Save the link to each one.
Facebook lets you post 10 times a day on one profile, which is 50 posts a week and 200 posts a month. If you and your spouse both post, you double it.
That adds up fast. Jake has clients who put on 100 to 300 accounts a year this way. In a smaller town you might get 25 to 50, but either way you spent zero dollars.
Let’s do the math on the low end. Say you charge $150 a service and $600 a year, and put that against 25 accounts. That is $15,000 a year, for free.
Jake is so sure of this that he dares people to prove him wrong. He tells them to do it five days a week for a whole year, then come back and tell him it failed. He says nobody has proven him wrong yet.
Pay your customers before you pay for ads
I asked Jake where he would spend his first $500 or $1,000, and his answer was great. “Pay your customers first.”
He means referrals. He is fine paying $25 to $100 to get a new customer, but most people refer you for less, and we land around $50. He pays it all day long, because a friend, neighbor, or coworker is worth far more than that.
Referrals are the best leads you can get, because they trust you before you even call. Jake said it plain: “we’ve actually closed 100% of our referrals so far.” One guy slipped through, only because they couldn’t reach him. That is it.
We ran our own referral campaign this year, and the soft launch did $7,000 to $10,000 in the first week. These were people who already loved us, so of course they told their friends.
Give something real, not a credit
Here is a small change that makes a big difference. Stop giving account credits for referrals.
“There’s a huge difference between a $50 credit and something tangible,” Jake said. A credit gets forgotten, and it is gone the moment you apply it. But cash, an Amazon gift card, a real gift? People feel that, and they refer more.
Build a system, or it won’t happen
The hard part of referrals is not the idea. It is keeping it going.
You cannot text a thousand customers by hand every few months, because it is too much. So most owners try it once, get busy, and quit, and the campaign dies.
Jake’s fix is to automate the whole thing. Set up a system that sends the texts and emails for you and tracks who referred who. Then you set it and let it run.
Facebook paid leads are cheap, but you have to call them
Once your referral program runs, Jake spends money on Facebook ads, but he is honest about the leads.
Facebook leads are lower quality than Google. About 25 to 40% are great, and another 40 to 50% are bargain shoppers you sift through. The trade-off is price, and the cost per lead is so cheap that the math still works. Jake is happy paying $75 to $150 to land a customer.
One warning, and it trips up a lot of owners. These are form fills, not phone calls. “Facebook will not work for you if you cannot call the leads,” Jake said. “You have to call the leads.” Nobody is calling you, so you call them.
Use Nextdoor to turn customers into influencers
Nextdoor works well in bigger cities, and Jake said anything over about 75,000 people is usually a good fit.
The smart move is using your current customers, since there are no rules against paying them to post about you there. He calls it turning your customers into influencers for your business. A happy customer talking you up on Nextdoor beats any ad.
Pay for the shortcut
One last thing that stuck with me. Both of us spend real money on coaches, and Jake spends six figures a year on coaching for himself and his team.
Why? Because it saves years of pain. As Jake said, “why would I want to go through all this pain to try to figure this out on my own dime when I could just pay someone who’s been there and done it and just teach me a shortcut?”
I have made every coaching dollar back many times over. The information is out there, so you just have to find someone who already has it and get it into your head.
My takeaway
None of this is complicated. Build a spreadsheet of groups and post every day, pay your customers to refer you, and give them something real. Run Facebook ads, but call the leads. Use Nextdoor in bigger towns, and get a system so it all keeps running without you.
You can do most of it for free, and the rest is cheap. The only thing in your way is doing it five days a week and not quitting.
