Working With SBMS Media
We help small businesses work through whatever marketing challenges they’re having. Sometimes that’s
lead generation. Sometimes it’s figuring out how to get better reviews. A lot of the time, companies reach out
because they want to rebrand or they know their marketing needs to change, but they’re not sure what to do
next.
Any service-providing company with annual sales between about $500k and $5 million is right in our wheelhouse. We have helped companies scale up to $10m in ARR.
Please note: We are experts in the residential construction and home service industry. While we can provide marketing services for professional and personal service providers, we would be operating as a generalist in that space - so be sure to ask about our current Beta offers if you are interested in working with SBMS Media.
First, we identify the actual problem or goal - we need to determine what the business owner is trying to accomplish. Then we review what already exists, figure out what is working and what isn’t, and put together an executable plan to get you toward the goal.
Our services can range from about $500 a month on the low end to around $8,000 a month on the higher
end, depending on what the company needs and how much we’re handling.
When you hire SBMS Media, you’re not just hiring one person to handle your marketing. You’re gaining access to an established network of trusted vendors and specialists we can bring in when your business needs them.
That means you don’t have to hire a marketing manager and then wait while they search for the right web developer, SEO specialist, advertising partner, designer, or other resources. We already have those relationships in place.
You’re also getting more than marketing experience. Our approach is shaped by real business ownership and an understanding of how marketing connects to sales, operations, cash flow, staffing, and growth.
Before recommending a strategy, we can help you understand the pros and cons, expected costs, timelines, what needs to happen internally, and when it is reasonable to expect a return.
For many growing companies, this gives them the support of a marketing department without the payroll, hiring burden, and long-term risk of building one internally.
And as your needs change, your marketing support can change with you. That flexibility is much easier to manage than adding employees before you’re certain you need them long term.
At the beginning, over the period of the first 3 months - we will need about 10 hours of your time.
After that, your time commitment drops considerably. We typically meet for about an hour each month, two hours each quarter, and then complete a two-hour annual review.
Most clients are more involved during the first six to eight weeks while we learn the business and build trust.
After that, they usually become comfortable letting SBMS Media make more day-to-day marketing decisions and move work forward based on our professional experience.
The goal is not to give you another department to manage. It’s to take marketing off your plate, keep you informed at the level you need, and give you more time back to run the business.
First - call and have a chat with us. You will be able to tell immediately by our answers if we know what we are talking about. Too many marketing companies hide behind AI, videos, and written content. The only way you are going to know and trust that we know what we are talking about is to hop on a call and actually talk.
Another option is to check out SBMS Media reviews online. Search "Nicole Crocker" online. You’ll find articles written about my husband (Jack Crocker) and me and the main company we built (Classic Home Improvements). We also had a kitchen and bathroom show room and a Custom Home Building company but we didn't focus too much effort on advertising those companies so there's not much about them online.
You’ll find
the television show I produced that aired on FOX 5 San Diego (California Contractor).
You’ll find years of content I’ve created, and
you’ll find my reviews.
What you won’t find are a bunch of case studies where I’m sharing my clients’ private
numbers and information.
My contracts include NDAs, and I take that seriously.
The other thing you’ll notice
when you talk to our team is that we don’t need to go look everything using AI before we can have a conversation.
We have been doing this a long time.
If we know the answer, we will tell you. If we don’t know, we will tell you that too.
90% of all work assigned on your brand will be completed by Nicole. Strategy, SEO, funnels, email campaigns, and Paid ads are always completed by Nicole and never outsourced. Social Media, graphic design, and website design tasks are sometimes augmented by team members when the project necessitates a specialist.
If you have a vendor you prefer we work with (ie. web developer), we can make that happen, as well.
That really depends on what we’re trying to accomplish.
If we’re working on SEO, we’ll establish KPIs to
measure whether we’re making progress.
If we’re running Google Ads, we’re going to look at lead
generation and what those leads are costing us.
If we’re doing event marketing, we may be measuring
leads, brand awareness, or both.
Before we spend the money, we need to know what we’re trying to
accomplish and how we’re going to determine whether it’s working.
Every client doesn’t need the same
result, but we will know what we’re working toward and what we’re measuring.
We request that you meet with us once per month. Some clients prefer to meet bi-weekly and others require weekly meetups. It depends on what project or campaign we are currently working on.
For brand management clients, we also meet quarterly and annually for deeper brand planning and reviews.
SEO, Google & AI Search
SEO, or search engine optimization, is the process of improving your website and online presence so your business has a better chance of appearing when potential customers search for the services you provide.
For contractors and home service companies, that may include service pages, location pages, website content, technical improvements, local search visibility, reviews, and making sure search engines clearly understand what your company does and where you work.
The goal is not simply to rank for more keywords. The goal is to be found by the right people when they are looking for the services you want to sell.
SEO is a long-term strategy, not an overnight lead source.
How quickly you see movement depends on your starting point, competition, market, website condition, content, authority, and the searches you are trying to compete for.
We typically look for progress and trends over time rather than expecting dramatic changes within a few weeks. SEO compounds as the website becomes stronger, more useful, and easier for search engines to understand.
Abso-freaking-lutely.
SEO has not disappeared.
Search behavior has evolved.
Years ago, someone might have searched:
“Kitchen remodeling”
Then search became more specific:
“Kitchen remodeling in San Diego”
Now, with AI and conversational search, people are asking much more detailed questions:
“Which kitchen remodeling companies in San Diego have a showroom, handle structural remodeling, and have strong five-star reviews?”
That shift does not make SEO less important.
It makes the information behind your brand more important.
Search engines and AI platforms need to understand:
✅ What you offer
✅ Where you offer it
✅ Who you serve
✅ What types of projects you handle
✅ What makes your company different
✅ What evidence supports your claims
Google and AI cannot confidently surface, cite, or recommend a company they do not understand.
That is why SEO (and the broader work some people now call GEO or AI search optimization) is still necessary.
The strategy has expanded beyond adding keywords to a page.
Today, it includes:
✅ Useful content
✅ Technical SEO
✅ Local search signals
✅ Reviews
✅ Brand authority
✅ Structured information
✅ Consistent business details across the web
SEO is not dead.
It is becoming the information foundation that helps search engines and AI platforms understand when your company is the right answer.
SEO is designed to improve your organic visibility over time. Google Ads allows you to pay for visibility in specific searches.
They can serve different purposes.
Google Ads may help reach high-intent buyers more quickly, while SEO is generally a longer-term investment in your company's organic search presence.
For some businesses, the strongest strategy is not choosing one or the other. It is using each for the job it is best suited to do.
Sometimes.
A contractor that needs leads now may use paid advertising while building its longer-term organic presence through SEO.
Using both can also provide valuable information about which services, searches, locations, and messages are producing opportunities.
But every company does not automatically need both. We look at your goals, budget, competition, current visibility, and sales capacity before recommending how the two should work together.
It can help create the foundation.
AI-powered search systems need to understand who your company is, what services you provide, where you work, and whether your website contains useful information that answers the questions people are asking.
That makes strong website structure, helpful content, consistent business information, authority, and traditional search optimization increasingly important.
There is no button that guarantees a company will appear in an AI-generated answer. The goal is to make your business easier for search engines and AI systems to understand, verify, and reference.
AI Overviews are search results that may summarize information directly within Google instead of showing only a traditional list of website links.
That changes how people research contractors.
A potential customer may ask Google a detailed question about pricing, materials, timelines, repairs, permits, or how a particular service works and receive an AI-generated summary before visiting a website.
For contractors, this makes helpful, specific website content even more important. Your website should answer the questions your customers are actually asking.
We start with many of the same fundamentals that make a website useful for traditional search.
That includes clearly explaining your services, locations, experience, processes, common customer questions, and the problems you solve.
We also look for opportunities to create detailed content around the questions customers ask before they call, while they are comparing companies, and before they make a buying decision.
The goal is not to write content for robots. It is to make your expertise easy for both people and search systems to understand.
Not necessarily.
More content is not automatically better content.
A contractor website first needs strong core pages that clearly explain its services, locations, differentiators, and customer experience.
From there, additional articles and resources can help answer important questions, support your primary service pages, and expand the number of relevant searches where your company may appear.
We would rather create content with a specific purpose than publish articles just to say the website has a blog.
There can be many reasons.
The website may have technical problems, weak or incomplete service pages, little authority, poor local signals, strong competition, indexing problems, or content that does not clearly match what customers are searching for.
Sometimes the site is appearing, but for the wrong searches or in positions where very few people see it.
The first step is figuring out why visibility is weak before deciding what needs to be changed.
No reputable marketing company can guarantee a specific organic ranking.
Search results change based on competition, location, search intent, algorithm changes, and many other factors outside any marketing company's control.
What we can do is build and manage an intentional SEO strategy designed to improve your visibility for the services and customers that matter to your business. Your own brand guidelines specifically prohibit promising #1 rankings, which is the right approach for a public FAQ.
Paid Advertising & Lead Generation
Yes, when the campaign is built around the right services, locations, budget, and search intent.
Google Ads can put your business in front of people who are actively searching for the services you offer. But simply turning ads on does not guarantee good leads.
We look at which services you want to sell, how competitive your market is, what a qualified lead looks like, what your sales team can handle, and whether your website or landing page is ready to convert the traffic you are paying for.
The goal is not more clicks. The goal is more opportunities that have a reasonable chance of becoming profitable work.
There is no single budget that works for every contractor - but we will help you work through this once we understand your business model, goals, and local competition.
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Your budget depends on the services you are advertising, the competition in your market, average project value, cost per click, sales capacity, and how aggressively you want to grow.
A plumbing company advertising a high-demand emergency service may need a very different budget from a remodeling company selling six-figure projects.
Before recommending spend, we want to understand what a new customer is worth to your business and how many qualified opportunities you realistically need.
Google Ads typically charges when someone clicks your advertisement. Local Services Ads are designed around local service providers and generally focus more heavily on calls and direct inquiries.
They also appear in different places within Google and have different qualification, setup, targeting, and management requirements.
One is not automatically better than the other.
Depending on your industry, location, service mix, competition, and budget, one may make more sense or the strongest strategy may include both.
More leads are not always better leads.
Poor lead quality can come from targeting the wrong searches, advertising services you do not want, unclear website messaging, weak qualification, reaching the wrong geographic areas, or trying to speak to too many types of customers at once.
We look at where the leads are coming from, what they are asking for, what they ultimately buy, and which types of customers are actually profitable.
Marketing should help attract the right opportunities and filter out some of the wrong ones before they reach your team.
Several things can drive lead costs up, including increased competition, changes in consumer demand, weak conversion rates, poor targeting, website problems, or bidding on expensive searches that do not produce enough revenue.
That does not automatically mean Google Ads should be shut off.
We first look at the campaign, lead quality, sales results, cost per opportunity, and value of the jobs being sold.
A $300 lead can be very expensive for one service and very profitable for another.
Not usually.
Trying to advertise everything at once can spread your budget too thin and make it harder to learn which services are actually producing results.
We typically prioritize based on demand, profitability, seasonality, competition, capacity, sales goals, and the types of projects you want more of.
Marketing should support where you want the company to go, not simply promote everything you happen to offer.
Marketing Strategy & Costs
There isn’t one percentage or dollar amount that works for every contractor. Your marketing budget should be based on your revenue goals, current lead flow, service mix, market, competition, capacity, and how aggressively you want to grow.
We also look at what your company can realistically handle. Generating more leads does not help if your sales or operations team cannot respond to them properly.
Our goal is to help you build a marketing budget you can sustain long enough to measure what is working, make educated adjustments, and produce a reasonable return.
The cost depends on what your business needs and how much of the marketing you want us to manage.
Some companies need help with one specific area. Others need someone overseeing multiple marketing channels, vendors, reporting, strategy, and execution.
We first look at where your business is today, where you want to go, and what is already working before recommending where your marketing dollars should be spent.
We start with the business, not the marketing tactic.
Before recommending SEO, Google Ads, a new website, social media, email marketing, or another strategy, we look at your goals, ideal customers, current lead sources, sales process, competition, existing marketing assets, and available budget.
Sometimes the answer is more marketing. Sometimes the smarter move is improving what you already have.
The goal is to identify the problem first and then choose the marketing that is most likely to solve it.
No. In fact, doing too much at once can make it harder to determine what is actually working.
We prioritize marketing based on what your business needs most right now and what needs to happen first to support the next step.
For one company, that might mean fixing the website before increasing advertising. For another, it could mean starting with Google Ads while a longer-term SEO strategy develops.
Your marketing should build intentionally instead of becoming a collection of disconnected tactics.
That depends on the type of marketing.
Some campaigns are designed to reach people who are ready to buy now. Others are designed to build organic visibility, reputation, brand recognition, or future demand over time.
We generally look for trends rather than judging a campaign based on one good or bad month. Marketing needs enough time and data to determine what is working, what needs to be adjusted, and whether the strategy is producing the result it was designed to produce.
Most importantly, we judge a campaign by the job it was hired to do.
That depends on the goal of the campaign.
For lead-generation campaigns, we may look at inquiries, qualified leads, appointments, sales, cost per lead, and return on investment.
For SEO, we may also monitor organic visibility, search traffic, rankings, conversions, and how people are finding the business.
We don’t want to hand you a report full of numbers that mean nothing to you. The purpose of reporting is to help us understand what is happening, why it is happening, and what we should do next.
We don’t automatically shut something down because it had one bad month.
First, we look at the data from multiple angles. We review the campaign, lead quality, sales follow-up, market conditions, messaging, competition, timing, and anything else that could be affecting performance.
One poor month gives us something to watch. Two may give us something to investigate. When a pattern develops, we have enough information to make a more educated decision about optimizing, changing, or replacing the strategy.
Not necessarily.
Every marketing activity needs a defined purpose. Some marketing is designed to generate leads today. Other marketing builds the visibility, authority, reputation, and familiarity that influences customers who may buy months from now.
The important question isn't simply, “Did this generate a lead?”
It's “Is this marketing doing the job we hired it to do?”
Websites, Content & Branding
A contractor website should quickly answer the questions a potential customer is already asking:
What do you do?
Where do you work?
Who do you work with?
Why should they trust you?
What happens next?
Your website should include strong service information, locations served, proof of experience, customer reviews or other trust signals, clear calls to action, and useful information that helps buyers understand what working with your company will be like.
A good website is more than an online brochure. It should help the right customer decide whether to contact you.
A website may need attention if it no longer represents the quality of your company, is difficult to use on a phone, does not clearly explain your services, attracts the wrong leads, loads poorly, or is not generating inquiries.
A redesign may also make sense after purchasing or inheriting a company, changing services, entering a new market, or moving into a new stage of growth.
But we do not recommend rebuilding a website simply because it is a few years old.
We first determine whether the existing website can be improved or whether rebuilding it would produce a better long-term result.
Yes - most times, we can!
If the website has a solid foundation, we may be able to improve the structure, messaging, service pages, calls to action, SEO, content, or conversion path without starting over.
Sometimes the smartest decision is improvement.
Other times, continuing to patch an outdated website costs more time and money than rebuilding it correctly.
We evaluate what you already have before recommending either direction.
Traffic alone does not mean the right people are visiting your website.
You may be attracting people searching for information instead of services, reaching customers outside your market, ranking for the wrong terms, or sending visitors to pages that do not answer their questions well enough.
There may also be a conversion problem.
If visitors cannot quickly understand what you do, why they should trust you, and what they should do next, even good traffic can leave without contacting you.
Not every contractor needs to publish constantly, but useful educational content can support a strong search strategy.
Your website should first have strong core service and location content.
From there, articles can answer the questions customers ask during research, explain complicated services, support sales conversations, and help search engines understand your expertise.
We do not believe in publishing content just to fill a calendar.
Every piece should have a reason to exist.
Yes.
Rebranding is especially common when a company has been purchased, inherited, gone through an ownership change, added new services, entered a new market, or simply outgrown its original identity.
The goal is not to erase everything that came before.
We look at what still creates trust, what no longer represents the company today, and what the brand needs to communicate as it moves forward.
Carefully and intentionally.
If the company has strong name recognition, reviews, community relationships, memberships, or a long history, those assets may still have significant value.
The goal is to preserve what continues to support trust while updating what no longer reflects the company, customers, services, or future direction.
A rebrand should help customers understand the business better, not make them wonder what happened to it.
Sales, Follow-Up & Lead Quality
Marketing may be generating opportunities while something later in the sales process is breaking down.
That could include slow response times, weak qualification, inconsistent follow-up, poor estimate presentation, unclear next steps, pricing expectations, or a disconnect between what the marketing promised and what the salesperson is saying.
Sales and marketing cannot operate separately.
The message should make sense from the first search or advertisement all the way through the phone call, appointment, proposal, follow-up, and final sale.
As quickly as your business reasonably can.
A prospect may be contacting multiple companies, and interest can cool quickly when someone has to wait too long for a response.
But response time is only one part of the process.
Your team also needs to know what to say, how to qualify the opportunity, what the next step is, and how to follow up if the prospect does not immediately move forward.
There is no magic number that applies to every business or type of project - with that being said, once we understand your business growth goals - we will help you strategize this - if you share with us that it is a concern.
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Higher-ticket services may require a longer decision process than an emergency home service.
The important thing is having a defined follow-up process rather than assuming the homeowner will call if they are interested.
People get busy. They get nervous. They compare options. They forget.
If the opportunity matters, follow-up should be part of the sales process.
Yes. Absolutely - without a doubt.
Good marketing should help customers understand what you do, who you serve, what your process looks like, and whether your company is likely to be a good fit before they contact you.
That may involve better service pages, stronger qualification language, clearer pricing expectations, more specific advertising, improved location targeting, or content that explains your process.
Good marketing does not only attract.
It also filters.
It can help reduce them.
No marketing strategy will eliminate every bad-fit inquiry, but your messaging can establish expectations before the first phone call or appointment.
When prospects understand the type of work you perform, your process, service level, geographic area, and what working with your company involves, some people will naturally opt out.
That is not lost business if they were never a good fit in the first place.
They should immediately understand what happens next.
Ideally, the prospect receives confirmation, knows who will contact them, understands the next step, and has enough information to prepare for the conversation.
The more uncertainty you remove, the easier it is for the customer to keep moving forward.
This is one of the places marketing, sales, and customer experience should work together.
Growth & Expansion
Do not assume the marketing that worked in one market will automatically work in another.
Before expanding, we look at the new area's competition, demographics, services in demand, local language, customer expectations, search behavior, and how established your company already appears in that community.
Expansion is more than adding another city to your website or turning advertisements on in another ZIP code.
The company has to earn relevance and trust in the new market.
First, make sure the rest of the company is ready to deliver it.
A new service may affect your website, advertising, sales conversations, estimating, operations, staffing, training, scheduling, and customer communication.
Once the company is ready, marketing needs to explain who the service is for, what problem it solves, how it fits with your existing brand, and why customers should choose you for it.
A service is not truly launched just because someone added it to the website.
Increase the budget when the business has a reason to increase it, not simply because someone says you should spend more.
That may be when a campaign is already producing profitable opportunities, when you have additional capacity, when you are entering a growth period, or when you are intentionally trying to gain market share.
We also want to make sure sales and operations can support additional demand.
The goal is controlled growth, not generating more work than the company can successfully handle.
We look at several factors, including profitability, demand, competition, average sale value, capacity, seasonality, close rate, and the strategic direction of the company.
The service generating the most revenue today is not automatically the one that deserves the most marketing.
Sometimes a company needs more of its most profitable service. Sometimes it needs to fill unused capacity. Sometimes it is intentionally moving away from one type of project toward another.
Marketing should follow the business goal.
Yes, and this is a common transition for established contractors.
Referrals are valuable, but they are difficult to control. You cannot always predict when someone will recommend you or how many opportunities those referrals will produce.
An intentional marketing system adds additional ways for customers to discover, research, and contact your company.
The goal is not necessarily to replace referrals.
It is to stop depending on referrals as your only reliable source of new business.
tart by understanding what you actually bought from a marketing perspective.
That includes the reputation, customer base, website, reviews, phone numbers, domain, local listings, branding, service history, referral relationships, and any marketing assets that are still producing value.
Then decide what should stay, what needs to be modernized, and what needs to change to reflect the company under your leadership.
For generational companies, preserving the history may be important. For other acquisitions, the previous owner may not need to remain central to the story.
The goal is to respect the value already built while creating a company that can move forward under its current ownership.
Ready to Take Marketing Off Your Plate?
Let’s talk about where your business is today, what you’re trying to accomplish, and whether SBMS Media is the right fit to help you get there.