Tactics Rewired – What Still Works, What Doesn’t

In this episode of Digital Marketing for Contractors, Janet and Arden tackle a big question for 2025: How can home improvement contractors protect their lead flow in an AI-driven marketing world?

From SEO to paid ads to CRM follow-up, the tools you’ve always used still matter—but the way you use them has changed.

You’ll learn:

• How to create content that Google’s new AI Overviews will actually quote (and why it matters for your traffic)
• How to let AI help with ad targeting—without letting it waste your budget
• How AI-powered CRMs can follow up faster, smarter, and more personally to close more jobs

Whether you’re running a roofing company, remodeling business, or window and door operation, this episode shows how to start small, stay strategic, and make AI work for you—not replace you.

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.

Transcript

Speaker 00: 0:00

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 Mobley: 0:31

Welcome back. I am Janet, the founder of Fat Cat Strategies, and today I am super pumped to have one of our amazing and talented account managers with me today, Arden. It's Arden's first time on the show. Say hello, Arden. Hey, I'm so excited to be on today. I love that you came right out of the gate with a hey. Arden is super Southern. I am super Southern and we love it. Okay, so today, what are we talking about? We are in the second part of a three-part mini-series where we're taking a little bit of a deep dive into AI. Last week, we talked about how AI is changing the online game for lead generation and how that impacts customer behavior and what that means for you, the home improvement contractors out there listening. So today, we're looking into digital tactics. What's still working today? What might not be working so well anymore? And what should you try? So the tools haven't disappeared. They're kind of the same or similar tools that we've been using. But the way we need to use them now that AI is influencing so much of the Internet, the way we use them has changed. So let's dig in. Kicking things off. One thing that I wanted to get into right out of the gate that we've been talking about a lot lately is AI and content strategy. Arden, tell me what's going on with that.

Arden Parrish: 1:58

Yeah, whether it's ChatGPT, Gemini, Jasper, one of the many tools for AI right now, they're completely changing how we plan and create SEO content. And honestly, it's made the process a lot faster for us so we can get more content out. And it's really good content, but what you have to be careful with is that it sounds like your brand. And it's not going to be able to do that without that human touch still.

Janet Mobley: 2:22

So what you mean is if you're going to use AI to create content to publish, you can't just hit the button and walk away. You need to actually make sure it sounds like your company.

Arden Parrish: 2:35

Exactly. For it to be successful, you have to have that human touch. Make sure you're reading it and reshaping it to fit your brand.

Janet Mobley: 2:43

Okay, so I guess a question that our listeners can ask if they are using maybe AI in-house and doing some of their own SEO or doing some of their own online marketing is, you know, is this AI content that's been generated, does it reflect your tone? Does it actually solve a local homeowner's problem? Is it accurate? So it's not a shortcut to stop thinking. You still have to think. You still have to make judgment calls as the manager of your company. You know, you're either the owner or the operator if you're listening to this. And even if you have a marketing agency working on your content, if you know that they're using A.I., maybe have conversations with your agency about what is the tone and the approach that you want to take. So if you're going to use AI to speed things up, the strategy is to use it to get an edge on how quickly you can get things up and published, but you can't skip that human layer. And so if you are optimizing for rankings, you need to also be thinking about how Google is delivering answers in 2025. So, you know, in another episode we talked about how with AI, when we used to talk about SEO, which is search engine optimization, everybody talked about keywords and keyword phrases. And then we would have clients say, I searched on this phrase and I don't come up as number one. I think that kind of thinking is now... over

Arden Parrish: 4:23

oh yeah that's changed big time it's not so much about keywords and ranking and phrases now it's now about the actual content can you be quotable by ai are you answering the question that the customer is asking and the ai engine um i mean it's really shaping how rankings are And your traffic could take a serious hit if you're not adjusting your strategy to also answer those questions. I mean, there's even studies right now that are showing that sites are losing their spot in traditional organic rankings to these AI summaries. And they're seeing 20% to 30% drops in traffic because they're still keeping their strategy based only on keywords. You have to answer the question and be quotable by AI now.

Janet Mobley: 5:05

Yeah, that's crazy. And it's such a huge shift, right? Honestly, that we've seen happen just this calendar year. I mean, six months ago, we were still, you know, internally and with our prospects and customers talking about which keywords they rank for. And it feels to me as the old person on the podcast, it kind of feels like this happened overnight. It feels like I woke up one day and now nobody cares about keyword rankings anymore. It's whether or not your answer can show up in these keywords. AI generated summaries. So, you know, if the goal is to be quotable by AI, how do we make that happen, Arden?

Arden Parrish: 5:50

I mean, it's not just about being quotable. It's about Are you a trustworthy source? You know, that matters more than ever. Google's also prioritizing content that looks credible to AI. So that means that E-E-A-T, that experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trust. So in other words, if your content just sounds vague or generic because you're just trying to pack in a keyword, you're out. You have to answer that question. It has to be good content.

Unknown: 6:17

Wow.

Janet Mobley: 6:18

Wow. So I guess what we're saying is you're still publishing content. That has not changed. If you're trying to generate leads online, you're pumping content into the internet. The difference is you're not just pumping it in to target a keyword. You've got to be thinking about clarity of your content, authority of your content, format. All that stuff matters more than ever.

Arden Parrish: 6:48

All right, so we just covered AI and content, but now let's get into the paid side. Google Ads and what's happening with the smart advertising. I mean, there's so much happening here. Google is now using machine learning, it's called smart bidding, to adjust bids in real time. And it's really looking at signals like your device, your location, your time of day, and even user behavior. But just like with the SEO side of things, it isn't just a set it and forget it system. You can't just put what you want in there and hands off you have to get in there and make sure that your goals are clearly defined and that your conversion tracking is still strong so it still takes a strong strategy so that google's ai can optimize the right thing

Janet Mobley: 7:32

okay arden i think you just said a bunch of words that if there's a dude riding in his truck he might not know what in the world you're talking about so you said that If you're going to be running ads on Google, you've got to make sure your data is clean and you've got your goals set up. I'm going to translate that for the mortals out there. Tell me what a goal is. Actually, I'm going to ask Arden to translate it. So when you're saying like, hey, you can't just let the AI run amok. You've got to make sure you've got the right goal set. What is a goal?

Arden Parrish: 8:05

Those goals are what you're trying. I mean, what are you trying to achieve with your ads? How successful are you trying to be? Do you have a cost per lead, a certain conversion rate that you're trying to achieve here? Those are the goals that you're really going to want to set for, or maybe even it's how much you want to spend today. You know, if you're trying to keep it under a certain budget, what are those key goals that you're trying to hit? Got it. And make sure that Google understands those. Right.

Janet Mobley: 8:28

So Google Ads is still around even though AI has changed the search experience. Google's still making money on its ads. And I guess what you're telling us is even though AI has found its way into Google, a human still needs to make sure... that the goals that are set up are aligned with what the business needs. So you mentioned like a cost per lead. If your goal is to get the cost of your exclusively generated leads, not the ones you get from third-party aggregators, but the ones you generate through your own campaigns, if your goal is to get those below a certain dollar amount, say $125, is that what you mean? Like really dial in your goals and then let AI complement what you've set up.

Arden Parrish: 9:15

Spot on. The AI is only going to work if your data and your goals are clear. Got it. So it's not magic. Exactly. You can't wave a little wand and everything works.

Janet Mobley: 9:28

So what are some of the ways that you see AI showing up in paid

Arden Parrish: 9:34

ads? I mean, it's definitely making the process easier. I'm seeing it a lot in AI-generated headlines, the messaging descriptions, and even some images you can create. really cool images with AI now, and we're starting to see that in ads as well. Not just on Google, but also on Meta, those Facebook ads, they're starting to play with some AI tools too that can auto-generate that messaging to get out to your customers. But same thing that we're seeing with SEO, you have to go in and give them your brand, give them your human voice otherwise they're not going to be able to deliver the message in a way that reflects who you are and who your brand is.

Janet Mobley: 10:15

Okay so it sounds like what you're saying is that AI can do some of the grunt work for you but you still need a big picture strategy and some oversight and brand direction coming from a human. Correct. Is that what you're saying?

Arden Parrish: 10:33

Yeah, it can really boost ad performance, but if you're not feeding it the quality data, watching the results and stepping in, then it's going to go off the rails.

Janet Mobley: 10:42

Yeah, so AI doesn't know what your business goal is. It's not going to know what your revenue goal is for this year. It's not going to know that, let's say you have three lines of services. You've got, I don't know, you're doing decks, windows, and roofing. And, you know, AI is not going to magically know that you don't, want to run decades in the dead of winter. Right. Like, so that would be an example of strategy. So you still have to have, you know, You have to bring to the table, what are your revenue goals? What does your split look like? Do you want half your leads from roofing and half from siding? Or do you want 80% of your leads from roofing and 20% from siding? And then once you've got your strategy and your goals and your geography and you know what your brand voice is and you know how you want to go into the marketplace, then the AI can take a lot of the repetitive minutia tasks off of your plate or off of, I don't know if you've got interns doing this or you've hired some assistants, but it can really speed things up and make them a little bit sharper. So, okay, so we covered ads. What are we talking about next, Arden?

Arden Parrish: 11:56

We are going to talk about how AI-powered CRMs are another great tool to help you with lead management and follow-up. Oh,

Janet Mobley: 12:04

cool. Well, what are you seeing, how are you seeing AI show up in some of these CRMs?

Unknown: 12:11

Well,

Arden Parrish: 12:12

They're making a serious difference where it's not just about storing contact information anymore. They're also really helping sales teams actually close through different things like auto-generated emails and text messages to contacts based on what the lead's actually interested in. Yeah, it can get that information from your CRM and come up with custom messages based on where they're at in your funnel.

Janet Mobley: 12:36

Or maybe even like what pages they've looked at in your website or what forms they've filled out or whatever their behavior is that's been tracked in the CRM.

Arden Parrish: 12:46

Exactly. It's all based on what you have in your CRM and it can really help better set those based on the messaging and the information it has. It's really cool some of the tools that are out there with the different CRMs.

Janet Mobley: 12:58

And so what you're saying or what I think you're saying is that now that AI has found its way into the CRMs, it's helping... to automate more customized follow-up and outreach messages, be that a text message or an email message. That's really cool. So there's a ton of CRMs that serve this space, way too many to go into detail here, but one of the things that we wanna encourage everybody to do is since AI has hit us so fast this year, Take a fresh look at the CRM that you're already using. Sit down and look for new features that have been embedded in the interface. There may be AI tools that are in the CRM that you're using that you don't even know about because you've become almost... like blind to it you're so used to looking at it you're so used to going to the same old reports the same old like click here click here click here get my sales report get my closing ratio per sales rep or whatever it is you know leads by source you may be passing right by some brand new shiny ai feature that got rolled out in the last three months that could really help you so um So, you know, on that topic, I guess what we're really hitting home here is that most leads in your CRM go cold because people aren't following up with them at the right time and they're not sending the right message. And AI can really help solve that by setting smart triggers so that nothing falls through the cracks. What else have you seen? in terms of AI finding its way into CRMs.

Arden Parrish: 14:47

Yeah, it's not just, you know, that follow-up piece like you were saying, but there's also some really good predictive insights that AI is able to generate. Cool. It can spot some really cool patterns in your pipeline, look like what type leads are actually converting, and it can kind of tell your sales team where to focus their time and give you guys time back. That could be really valuable. Yeah, the time

Janet Mobley: 15:08

back is the piece that we've been talking about internally, right? you know, approaching what all AI can do can be really overwhelming. And at first it kind of feels like a time suck. But once you kind of get your brain wrapped around it and you play with a few tools, if you first approach it as if this is just a really smart assistant, you can offload some repetitive tasks and you can do things like Arden just said, like some of this predictive insights, run it against a data set to see, what patterns you can find. So the real value here isn't just the automation, it's the intelligent automation. These systems can help you follow up faster, more accurately, and with way less guesswork.

Arden Parrish: 15:58

Yeah, if you're still manually chasing every lead or sending the same message to everyone, you might be burning time and leaving money on the table. All right. So we've covered a lot today. We've done AI content, paid ads, automation, but let's end with something practical. Where should you actually start if you're not already using AI? I love

Janet Mobley: 16:19

that question. It feels like this is in the news all the time. And when I approach something like this, where it's like new and it's buzzworthy and people are talking about it and there's always, I'm a little bit overwhelmed about where in the hell should I start? So if you're feeling the same way, our advice is don't overhaul everything overnight. So one thing you could do if you're running paid ads on, say, Google or Meta, you could run what's called an A-B split test. That's where you run A variation of an ad, we'll call it variation A, against a variation of an ad, we'll call it variation B. And then those two variations battle against each other to see which one converts the most leads. So you could take some of your existing top performing ads on whatever platform you're advertising on and let AI rewrite some part of it. Rewrite the headline, rewrite the call to action, run an A-B test, and then compare the performance. So that's like one small, tangible, practical way you can start testing AI. What other ideas do you have, Arden?

Arden Parrish: 17:32

Another way you could start testing is the SEO side. So use an AI-powered SEO tool for just one blog post. Start out small with just one post and let it help with the structure of the content, keyword suggestions, and maybe even go ahead and write the first draft for you. Just make sure that you edit it to sound like your brand and start there. One blog post.

Janet Mobley: 17:55

Yep. And then, you know, we mentioned this a few minutes ago. Take 20 minutes this week. Log into your CRM and see if you can spot... I call it sparkles. It looks kind of like a little diamond. It's like a little star in the sky. That seems to be what the world has decided is the icon for AIs, a little sparkle, a

Arden Parrish: 18:17

little

Janet Mobley: 18:18

sparkle dust. If you log into your tried and true CRM that you've been using for the past three years, five years, 10 years, look for some new buttons because chances are they've started to incorporate some sort of AI automation in there. And if you don't see it, Maybe go to the website, like the marketing website of the CRM that you're using. Look at their blog posts. Look at their news releases. Are they promoting a new feature that maybe you missed because you're busy running your business? So if you take 20 minutes and do that this week, make a list of all the software that you already pay for, including your CRM, to help you run your business. And just... set a goal, maybe not even to use some of the tools, but to be aware of what are the new AI features in the software that you already pay for. So Arden, let's

Arden Parrish: 19:17

wrap it up. What all have we talked about today? So we've again talked about AI and paid ads. We recommend testing one with an A-B test. We've also talked about trying AI on one blog. See how it works for SEO. SEO

Janet Mobley: 19:34

and software. Yep. Okay. So I love it. I love a simple wrap up. So I guess the point of the day is AI is here. It ain't going anywhere. It's not magic. It's really not. You still have to have a strategy. You still are the human for now until they rise up become a robot army and kill us. At least today, July 29th, I think the humans are still in charge. So don't forget that. So start small, stay sharp, and let AI help you move faster without losing sight of your overall strategy. And make sure to tune into our next episode next week where we will talk about exactly this topic, how to stay human while using AI.

Arden Parrish: 20:20

Oh, that'll be a fun one. And of course, if you found this helpful, subscribe, leave a review or share it with someone on your team who may still be figuring out where AI fits in their workflow. And

Janet Mobley: 20:31

as always, thank you for joining us another episode. If you found this helpful, check out our past episodes for more ways to grow your home improvement business the smart way. And we like to say if you give us 20 minutes, our job is to give you some actionable strategies and tips to help you really crack the code in the home improvement industry to grow your business and make more money. If you liked it, please tell a friend, hit subscribe, leave us a review. We'd love to hear feedback. Thanks a

Speaker 00: 21:00

lot.