Digital Marketing for Contractors
A podcast for home improvement contractors to help you crush your lead goals and take your business to the next level. Join us each episode as we give you powerful insights and practical tips on the best digital marketing strategies to help you grow your home improvement business.
Digital Marketing for Contractors
SPECIAL GUEST: Ryan Cohn from Blazeo
In this episode of Digital Marketing for Contractors, Janet and Caitlyn sit down with Ryan Cohn, Content Marketing Manager at Blazeo, to dive into the massive impact of speed to lead and how automated, real-human follow-up can supercharge your sales pipeline. Formerly known as Apex Chat, Blazeo has evolved into a powerful suite of tools for contractors—offering live chat staffed by trained U.S.-based agents, 24/7 call center support, AI-powered voice and chat features, and seamless CRM integrations.
Ryan breaks down how Blazeo helps contractors respond faster, qualify leads better, and ultimately win more deals—without adding pressure to internal teams. You’ll also hear success stories, like one contractor who saw a 24% increase in gross revenue, and how easy it is to get started.
If you’ve ever struggled with slow lead response or messy follow-up, this is your episode.
Want to find out how we can create a custom digital marketing game plan for your contractor business? Schedule a call with us at fatcatstrategies.com.
Welcome to Digital Marketing for Contractors, a podcast for home improvement contractors to help you crush your lead goals and take your business to the next level. Join us each episode as we give you powerful insights and practical tips on the best digital marketing strategies to help you grow your home improvement business. Let's get started.
Janet:Hello everyone and welcome back to Digital Marketing for Contractors podcast, the show where we break down the best marketing strategies to grow your home improvement or construction business. I am Janet and I am the founder of Fat Cat Strategies.
Caitlyn:And I'm Caitlin, the head of client services here at Fat Cat. Today we are going to dive into the power of speed to lead and how text-based online follow-up automation can completely transform your sales process.
Janet:We are super thrilled to welcome Ryan Cohn, the content marketing manager of Blazio, a platform that helps contractors close more deals by reaching leads faster through smart texting workflows. Ryan, welcome to the show.
Ryan:Thank you so much for both of you having me on today. I've been looking forward to this for the last week.
Caitlyn:Awesome. We're so happy to have you. And I mean, blank statement for those listening, Blazio was Apex Chat.
Janet:So if you've heard of Apex Chat, you've heard of Blazio.
Caitlyn:Yes. So give us a little bit of background. Tell us the background of Apex Chat, now Blazio, if you don't
Ryan:mind. Yeah, I would love to. So yeah, Apex Chat, we were founded in 2008. So we've been around for quite a few years. We've helped over 35,000 customers over the years, typically small to medium-sized businesses. a lot of contractors, a lot of law, personal injury, trade schools. We've worked in a lot of different industries, but really any company that needs high ticket or does high ticket sales, that's typically the industries that we work in.
Caitlyn:That's fantastic. And what problem were you guys seeing in the market that at the time you felt like was missing and that's what Apex Chat, Blazio can now solve?
Ryan:Yeah, so we started as a live chat provider. That was sort of our bread and butter. So, you know, people have probably used live chat before. A lot of times, you know, it's sort of like this automated sort of bot, you know, workflow. And, you know, what we saw is that that can kind of cause issues for companies, especially If it's not set up properly, you know, people can start using the bot and realize that it's not a real person. And, you know, it ends up causing the lead to bounce. So it sort of like counteracts even the reason to have it on there.
Janet:Why you would have it on there in the first place.
Ryan:Exactly. So we. how we changed our approach is we hired real people to manage the chats. We have over 250 plus industry trained agents. They'll work those chats for each of our clients. We'll give them custom scripting, train them on each customer that we bring in. That way, a contractor who's busy running around, working on roofs or whatever, he doesn't have to manage a team running chats all day. We run that for them. And typically we see that's helped our clients, you know, increase their leads by about 30 to 40% on average.
Janet:That's huge. I'm going to take a small step back. I always like to do this. I as the slow person in the room. I think one thing we didn't say at the top of the call is that Blazio is something that you can install on your website and it creates a little pop-up that allows your website visitors to engage with a chat agent. So I think we went straight into like the benefits and I always take a step back. If I were listening, I'd be thinking like, wait, what are we talking about? We're talking about website chat. And Ryan, what you're saying is that Blasio's distinction is that it's not an automated, like if they ask this, then show them this response. It's staffed by actual living, breathing human beings.
Ryan:correct and i should have made that distinction too that
Caitlyn:i jumped right in i was like apex chat okay everybody knows but like if you don't know what apex chat
Janet:is that's what it is
Caitlyn:but you guys changed your name because you do offer new services right that's
Ryan:exactly why yeah
Caitlyn:oh perfect segue so yeah why was the name changed
Ryan:yeah thank you for for queuing that up um so we changed the name about a year and a half maybe two years ago now and exactly you know you nailed it um we didn't want to limit ourselves to being just a chat company anymore because we we built out so many different products over the years and You know, it was through market research, also getting feedback from our customers like, hey, you know, we want the chat to do this. Can you handle calls? And so we built out those services. So now we have a 24-7 US-based call center, which is huge. A lot of call centers are based overseas. So our clients really appreciate that. And we can do outbound, inbound, cadences, all that. we're on the verge of having an AI call center. So that's, you know, coming out in the next week or two.
Janet:Wow. That's very soon. So by the time this podcast airs, Blasio will have an AI based call solution. Did I say that right?
Ryan:Yep. It's, it's pretty slick. So you'll be able to go to the site and you know, you get a demo, you'll be able to get a call from our AI call center. And it's, It's amazing. I mean, you can, we can just give it the URL of a customer's website and it builds out the whole scripting and flow and all of that. Wow.
Caitlyn:I did the demo with another one of your teammates and I was so impressed. We booked a nail appointment. So it was very cool. I love that. Like we were on the phone with an AI
Janet:called you.
Caitlyn:I, we did a demo. We called into a company who had this, tool set up that you guys are offering. And through the scripting on the phone, I was able to book a manicure. Okay.
Janet:This scene, I'm still playing. I did not. It was a demo. I know it's a demo, but like you were using your human voice and speaking to another voice. Yes. And saying like, I want pink nail polish or whatever. I thought
Caitlyn:I was talking to the nail salon in my neighborhood that, that I could go and book a, you know, a manicure at 2 PM on Friday. Like I literally booked that. wow
Ryan:it's pretty uncanny
Caitlyn:is that right i mean that's the news out there yeah it's amazing so yeah i've seen it in real person
Ryan:so i love that i'm glad you got to see it so i'm you can actually believe what i'm saying
Janet:it's
Ryan:not just me saying
Janet:it's just changing so fast
Ryan:ai is
Janet:it's
Ryan:insane yeah yeah
Janet:it
Ryan:really is
Janet:so live chat obviously is the birth of
Caitlyn:this
Janet:of Apex Chat, which is now Blazio, and now you have a staffed call center, and you have the next layer is the AI-based call solution.
Ryan:Yep. So AI call solution. Yeah. We did release an AI-powered chat widget as well recently, and so that's been picking up steam as well. And that's basically our live chat solution just now. It's powered through AI. It can still do the appointment scheduling, call transferring, all that stuff. So we can actually take a lead or someone through chat and get them on the phone call with someone inside. The roofing company or the solar company or whoever, get them on a phone call with a qualified lead right then and there. um we are building out a crm solution so oh that will be coming in the next couple weeks or months i hesitate to say a couple weeks because development is always longer
Janet:yeah
Ryan:um and so those are the the main things we do have a texting hub as well so clients can can um use our chat services and and text all the leads through our system on their laptop or on their phone. So there's quite a few different products.
Caitlyn:That's fantastic. I was really excited about, I mean, these are just elements of, I think, the chat feature, but there's an integration with Google LSA that I think helps with the messaging. Oh,
Janet:so if I'm a homeowner and I'm looking for... A landscaper. Yeah. And I engage through the Blasio powered chat bot. Yes. Like I came in from LSA.
Caitlyn:And correct me if I'm wrong.
Janet:No.
Caitlyn:Yeah.
Janet:That wouldn't, because LSA doesn't send you to the website.
Caitlyn:Nope. You're right there in LSA. You send a message through LSA.
Janet:But it gets pushed into the Blasio
Caitlyn:dashboard. He's
Ryan:not in there. No. So you're talking about on the Google business profile. Yeah. So I press the chat button. Yes. Yeah. We'll integrate with that. with their Facebook Messenger as well for their business profile. We'll integrate there.
Janet:So it gives the administrative staff of our contractors one place to log into. They're not logging into Facebook separately, then logging into their Google LSA account separately, then logging into their web-based chat option separately, and then logging into a separate text solution to do appointment reminders. It's one place to log in.
Ryan:correct and i mean really you don't even need to log in right because we'll handle all the chats you know out
Janet:of
Caitlyn:this podcast we'll send janet to log in you can log in like the billion is through a login i think like you can see the record of all the leads that came
Ryan:yeah yeah you'll see the full transcript
Janet:i i like to pretend that i am embodying the person riding in their truck listening to this and asking what I'm not calling the person in the truck dumb. No. Or old. What could be called dumb questions. In this scene, I get to ask all the dumb questions. Yeah. I mean, but that's a good point. Somebody else may be wondering.
Caitlyn:So, like, if you're driving around and listening to this, you do not physically have to do anything once you...
Janet:Hook everything up.
Caitlyn:Other than, I mean, how does the setup start? So, like, if somebody's listening, you're like, wow, this is amazing. How did we get started?
Ryan:It's pretty simple. We... You know, on our website, you can schedule a consultation and we'll customize the solution based on what their needs are, what they're looking for. And depending on the solution, it can take like a business day or two to get it all set up.
Caitlyn:Okay.
Ryan:And that's pretty much it. We give them like a single, if they have a WordPress website, then there's an easy integration.
Caitlyn:Yep.
Ryan:You can just add it. in WordPress?
Caitlyn:We've done it for many clients,
Janet:yes. All
Caitlyn:of our clients are on WordPress.
Janet:Okay, perfect.
Ryan:So that makes it super simple. Yeah, it's just a plugin.
Caitlyn:A plugin. What other kind of like customizations? I mean, how does this, I know the AI is coming soon, but like for your current like staff who are answering those chats, those calls, whatever, is there a script that like a contractor has to provide?
Ryan:So we'll actually create that script for them. And each contractor will, they'll be paired with a customer success manager. So we'll meet with them, you know, get them all set up, make sure the flows are correct. We're asking the right qualifying questions and, and all that. But we do sort of have like these template templates. scripts that we base it off of based on the industry. If it's a roofer, we've worked with roofers before. We know what kind of questions typically roofers want us to ask. We'll base it off of that. Again, if they want us to change the flow or the the qualifying questions, we can definitely modify that based on their needs.
Caitlyn:The examples I've seen have been like, you know, do you like the service locations? Like, Hey, you know, I think you guys may as go as far as, you know, Hey, what zip code do you, I don't, I want to back up real quick. Like once somebody is engaged within a chat, you know, how far will the, will your service go before you pass it off?
Ryan:yeah um you know there's kind of a fine line you don't want to ask a bunch of questions in the chat
Janet:somebody exactly
Ryan:and you'll end up they'll probably end up bouncing if you ask too many questions so we try to limit it to you know three to five main qualifying questions so like we're you know we can find their location um we can find their their name email phone number uh maybe how old their roof is or something like that so
Caitlyn:qualifying okay that's a good point yeah so qualifying
Janet:to get them into the crm
Ryan:correct yeah so once we get the lead generated then we'll we'll plug it into the crm we'll send emails texts uh and yeah or we even do the live call transfer and get them on the phone with the contractor like within seconds
Janet:That's fantastic. So just to kind of underline that point, I'm a homeowner and I'm looking for... We'll just stick with roofers. I've gone to a website. I've engaged with the chat. Somebody asked me three questions. I met the qualification criteria. And within seconds, I'm now on the... I guess someone would be calling me because it started as chat. And now they've asked for my phone number. And then within seconds, an inbound phone call, I'm receiving and I'm going to pick it up because... Now, like as a user within 90 seconds or less, I'm talking to somebody and getting my problem solved.
Ryan:Exactly. Yeah. And what we find is, you know, sometimes people, they're not comfortable calling in necessarily or they don't want to wait for an email response. So chat is just that other option for people who maybe they're busy at the moment or they're not comfortable calling in and they have some questions or concerns and we're able to answer that concern for them, make them realize that there's people here to help. And once we get them qualified, we can offer to get them on the phone call. So we'll say, hey, we can actually connect you right now. Would you like us to do that? And if they say yes, then we'll call the customer, we'll call the contractor, and then we merge the call for them.
Caitlyn:Oh, fantastic. And if they say no?
Ryan:Then we can fall back to scheduling them for an appointment or just sending over the lead.
Janet:So if you fall back to scheduling an appointment, are you actually... connecting with um a calendar availability of the contractors sales reps
Ryan:yep yep um
Janet:walk us through how that works
Ryan:yeah these are these are great questions i love how in-depth we're going we
Janet:are nerds no it's great i'm a nerd too so i
Caitlyn:mean our listeners like they're going to be thinking the same thing. So, you know, how can we simplify this?
Ryan:Yeah, totally. So we, we can either work with like a Calendly or HubSpot, you know, booking link if they have those.
Caitlyn:Okay.
Ryan:If they don't have that set up, then we can integrate directly into a Google or an Outlook calendar and we'll, we'll pull the availabilities based on that, that calendar that we integrate with.
Caitlyn:That's awesome. And then if somebody was like, no, I'm not ready to set an appointment, then the people who are responding to the chat then just know, okay, I'm going to just pass this lead into maybe a nurture sequence.
Ryan:Correct. Yeah. I guess that would depend on how it's set up in the CRM. We would send over the lead and mark it as a qualified lead basically and have the whole transcript in there and everything.
Janet:And I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that the Blasio customer success reps, this is the kind of stuff that they are working through with the general manager, the sales manager, the call center manager at a home improvement company where they ask, like, what do you want to happen with a homeowner who's engaging on chat? And then they guide through the setup and offer suggestions based on what you've seen work.
Ryan:Correct. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. We, we want them to be happy at the end of the day and, and have it customized to what they need. And yes, that's really their role is making, making sure they understand how it's, it's going to look once the leads handed over to them.
Caitlyn:Okay. That's amazing. Any success stories like you want to share? I mean, this is such an amazing product. I mean, that's
Janet:why you're on, you know, we're recommending it, but like, you know, the secret behind this podcast is our clients. have used Apex Chat for years. We've walked into what was Apex Chat and Blasio. We've seen it work. Yeah. And we're a partner. Yeah. So we know what some of the success stories are, but we want you to tell one.
Ryan:Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I would be curious too. I mean, you guys probably even know more success stories than I do, but having worked with so many clients, but Um, one that stands out to me is the bath fitter. Uh, we did a case study for them.
Caitlyn:Sure.
Ryan:Um, and we saw 24% increase in gross revenue for them once they go live with, with live chat and they saw a 19% increase in business inquiries.
Janet:Oh my gosh. 24% increase in gross revenue. I think you can drop the mic and leave the room. That's it. No brainer. I'm going to turn that down.
Ryan:It's pretty amazing. I also worked with an ADU company. I don't know if you're familiar with ADUs.
Janet:Accessibility Dwelling Unit?
Ryan:Accessory Dwelling Unit. Accessory Dwelling Unit.
Janet:It's like a mother-in-law suite, right?
Ryan:Exactly. Somebody
Janet:holds behind their house.
Ryan:I know it's more popular on the West Coast, so that's why I like to ask everyone I talk to on the East Coast, like, what is an ADU? Accessibility.
Janet:It's an accessory dwelling unit. So actually, my neighbor on my street converted a standalone carport into a really small studio apartment. ADU. That's an ADU. And the only reason I know about this is because we're in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Raleigh has been a little bit... schizophrenic about, from a zoning perspective, whether or not they're pro-ADU or not pro-ADU. So I think it depends on where you live. East Coast.
Ryan:That makes sense.
Janet:But sorry, you were telling us. Yeah. So ADU and then you railed us. Let's
Ryan:get back. I could talk about ADUs all day long. I used to sell ADUs. Yeah. I sold prefab units, but I, so I, I, uh worked with a prefab adu company
Caitlyn:sure
Ryan:and uh you know when they went live with us we were seeing 50 60 leads a month
Janet:was it boxable
Ryan:it was not boxable they were called the name slipping me at the moment but it's not boxable you see boxable everywhere
Caitlyn:i see those ads all the time and so the leads came in through chat were there any um the bath fitter story were there any features that bath fitter wasn't using or were they using all of the features to get that
Janet:24 percent
Caitlyn:revenue lift you know
Ryan:that i'm not familiar on so i don't want to give you folks oh it's okay
Caitlyn:no but i mean the full suite's
Janet:available this was a bath fitter franchisee not bath fitter corporate correct or incorrect
Ryan:i believe so i didn't work on this account okay
Caitlyn:um
Ryan:I looked over the case study, but I believe it was Bath Fitter Corporate because I didn't see it was labeled as an individual location.
Caitlyn:That's awesome. We love success stories like that. Absolutely. I know your team is also pretty flexible, so we might see instances where we don't want to have the chat feature on mobile because it might block something and there's ways to customize that. So that's really positive. I mean, you guys have also like helped us work like, Hey, let's put the button on the mobile side on the left side of the screen, the right side of the screen. So it's a very custom user-friendly tool with a great support staff. If you know another positive beyond just the case studies. So
Ryan:thank you. Yeah.
Caitlyn:I guess, I mean, if anybody was doubting this, like, you know...
Janet:Yeah, to put our doubters, our Debbie Downer hat on, for the contractors that are hesitant to automate follow-up because they feel like they've really got it nailed, it's very personal, they're doing it in-house, what would you say to them?
Ryan:So what I would say is... I've been doing our webinar recently, and one of the stats that I found was that 78% of sales go to the business that responds first. And if you're not automating yet, you're likely your competitors are already starting to or already do. So if you're not that first person that's reaching out to the lead, you're likely going to lose that business to a competitor.
Janet:So that's that speed to lead.
Ryan:So,
Caitlyn:so, so, so, so important.
Ryan:It really is.
Caitlyn:So, Ryan, if pricing, I don't know if you can give that information or if they need to book a demo, like if somebody is ready to get started, what should they do? Yeah,
Ryan:that's. Course of action would be go to blazeo.com and you can schedule your initial consultation. And then we'll customize the solution, you know, based on what they need and what they're looking for and all that.
Caitlyn:And it's, I mean, transparency, like it is an affordable product, so it's worth it. Like if you're listening to this, it's... not something like that's going to break the bank either.
Ryan:So a lot of people think that, yeah, if we're manning their chats, that's going to, it's going to be thousands of dollars a month or something, but it, you know, we have a plan that starts at $39 a month.
Caitlyn:So, wow, that's
Ryan:amazing. Very affordable. Um, obviously it depends on how much web traffic they get and all volume and all that stuff. Um, you know, if they're going to be working with our call center, but, um, yeah,
Janet:$39 a month. And then is there an additional fee per lead?
Ryan:No, we actually changed that model. So now it's based on website traffic instead of cost per lead.
Caitlyn:Okay, wonderful. Well, great. So I will put all the information in the show notes in terms of how to find the website. Anything else you want to share about the product or new webinars coming up? How can they stay informed about changes and so forth?
Ryan:Yeah, best way to keep in touch with what we have going on on the webinar side is following our LinkedIn account. We typically do webinars every two weeks or so, and we'll be doing a webinar soon to sort of announce our AI voice product and all that. So if you don't want to sit through a demo, but you do want to see everything that we're doing and see it live, we'll be able to show it to everyone then.
Caitlyn:Okay, amazing. Well, Ryan, this has been such a great conversation. So if you wanted listeners to take one thing away from this conversation about Blasio and the product, what would that be?
Ryan:One thing to take away from it, based on some research I did, I saw that most contractors take two days to respond to a lead and 40% don't. respond at all. And I know a lot of people pride themselves on speed to lead, but building out a team and processes to automate follow-ups and all that can be difficult. And partnering with a company like us and you guys to automate their advertising and marketing and everything on the backend really helps contractors take the weight off their shoulders and it just makes their lives a lot easier. So that's what we try to do. We try to empower small to medium-sized businesses and we do it through our tools. So we love to help you guys.
Janet:I love that. So you're making their lives easier and you're helping them make more money.
Ryan:Exactly.
Janet:Sounds like a win-win to me.
Ryan:I agree.
Caitlyn:Thank you again for joining us. If you're a contractor and you're listening and you're struggling with slow lead response or just weird follow-up, Blazio is definitely going to be the solution that you probably need to try. So, blazio.com. I'll drop Brian's information as well in the show notes. Follow them on LinkedIn. Lots of great opportunities there. They're putting out a ton of great content.
Janet:And if you liked today's episode, please make sure to follow or subscribe wherever you listen and check out more marketing resources at fatcatstrategies.com. See you next time on Digital Marketing for Contractors.
Speaker 00:Digital Marketing for Contractors is created by Fat Cat Strategies. For more information, visit fatcatstrategies.com.