Rewind Series - Revisiting Brand Awareness: What's Changed Since 2023

In this episode of the Rewind Series, Janet and Caitlyn revisit one of the most popular episodes in Digital Marketing for Contractors history: Building Brand Awareness — originally recorded in October 2023 — and break it down through a 2025 lens.

While the fundamentals of brand awareness haven’t changed, how it shows up, how homeowners evaluate it, and how Google rewards it absolutely have.

In this conversation, we unpack what still holds true, what’s changed dramatically, and what contractors should be doing right now to build trust, visibility, and long-term market dominance heading into 2026.

You’ll learn:

• Why brand awareness is about trust and reputation — not leads
• What brand awareness looks like at different contractor growth levels
• How Google now rewards brands, not just websites
• Why social media has become a validation step in the buying journey
• How short, simple video drives outsized local visibility
• How homeowner behavior has shifted to a trust-first funnel
• What metrics actually indicate growing brand awareness today

If you want higher-quality leads, shorter sales cycles, and a stronger presence in your market, this episode lays out exactly how brand awareness supports all three.

Visit https://fatcatstrategies.com/brand/ for your free branding checklist!

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: 0:10

Welcome to Digital Marketing for Contractors, a podcast for home improvement contractors to help you crush your elite 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.

Caitlyn Noble: 0:31

Welcome back to Digital Marketing for Contractors Podcast, the rewind series. We're spending the next few weeks resurfacing our most popular episodes of all time and revisiting them with a fresh 2025 insight.

Janet Mobley: 0:43

Okay, so today we are rewinding all the way back to October 2023. The air was crisp, the leaves were falling, and we published an episode on building brand awareness, which you guys loved because it's one of the most downloaded episodes of the year. And honestly, it's still one of the topics we talk about the most with our clients.

Caitlyn Noble: 1:05

A lot has changed since we last recorded that episode. The marketing landscape, homeowner behavior, Google has definitely changed. Basically everything.

Janet Mobley: 1:14

Yeah. The world has changed since October 2023. Yes. But some of that episode still hold up, some parts of that episode still hold up perfectly. Um, and today we're gonna break down what is still true that was true then and is true now, and what is different? What did we say then that's now changed? And what are the action steps that you can take right now heading into 2026?

Caitlyn Noble: 1:39

All right, Janet, let's rewind. In 2023, we defined brand awareness pretty simply. How aware is the general public in your service area aware of your company? I yeah. Do people know who you are, basically? Yeah. Do they think positively about you? Could they pick you out of a lineup?

Janet Mobley: 2:01

So exactly. And back then we talked about the big national examples, like Lowe's and Home Depot. Um, you know, everybody knows Lowe's, everybody knows Home Depot, and we were making a comparison, like what would it take for you to get to a point where people in your community were like, oh yeah, I know that company. And so we talked about things like community involvement, sponsoring, you know, youth athletic teams, hosting events, showing up in your neighborhood, um, building a reputation, and making sure you're known before somebody needs your services.

Caitlyn Noble: 2:37

Um and we also said something that we still repeat all the time: brand awareness is not lead generation. It's trust building, it's reputation, it's visibility, it's that, oh yeah, I've heard of them moment.

Janet Mobley: 2:54

And in that OG episode two plus years ago, we talked about different maturity levels of companies where these are our labels, not, you know, we came up with them. They're we tried to come up with really fun names, but we failed. So we just call them level one, level two, and level three contractors. And in that first episode, we broke down, um, I actually think we did it in a series. Yeah. What does brand awareness look like for a level one contractor versus a level two contractor and and and a level three contractor? Because you need a stable operation before you can start pouring time and money into your awareness plays. So we just acknowledge that. If you are, you know, one or two people and you are installing the jobs and billing the jobs and selling the jobs, and you're likely not sponsoring local little league teams. And that's where those differences between the levels come in. So that's kind of a quick rehash of what we talked about back in 2023. And again, that was an episode that you guys tell us that you loved. So thanks. What's gonna what are we gonna talk about now that you know two plus years has have gone by, what's different, what's changed, what's stayed the same.

Caitlyn Noble: 4:02

So what's still true? We'll start with some good news. A lot of what we said in 2023 is still true, like the fundamentals haven't changed.

Janet Mobley: 4:10

Yeah, so one fundamental is reputation. So reputation is still the foundation of brand awareness. If your reviews are bad, if your customer experience is inconsistent, um, if you are uh, you know, if you're just bad at delivering service to people, neighbors and homeowners will talk. And no amount of sponsorships or billboards, PCC ads, PPC ads, no amount of kind of after-the-fact fix is going to um repair an underlying bad foundation, which is a bad reputation. So your brand awareness has built on a foundation of what kind of reputation do you have in your community?

Caitlyn Noble: 5:00

Absolutely. Still true. Brand awareness supports lead generation, but it is not measured like lead generation. You shouldn't expect a direct ROI report from that little league sponsorship. Yeah, we actually get a lot of questions about that.

Janet Mobley: 5:16

Yeah, you guys contractors, you're always like, We love you because you love the numbers, but man, if you spend a dime, you want three back. Yes. And I get it. I do too. But there are some times that you're gonna spend money on brand awareness, and it's gonna be very difficult to track dollar for dollar back to something like that little league sponsorship. But it's in that brand awareness category. Absolutely. So the thing that is still true, it was true then and true today, community engagement matters. Showing up locally still works, and local trust is earned through human interaction. Absolutely.

Caitlyn Noble: 5:54

And last, oh, we got a couple more. Uh, also still true, direct traffic is one of the best ways to measure whether your brand awareness efforts are working. So if you listen to the last episode, we broke back down GA4. You can learn where uh traffic to your website comes from. Direct traffic is the best way to measure your brand awareness. When people type your name directly into Google, that is brand awareness doing its job. When they directly type in your website, that is brand awareness doing its job.

Janet Mobley: 6:25

Absolutely. And, you know, I've had those conversations with contractors. When we when we get somebody, especially a new client and we're onboarding, and let's say they've got like a really unique name. Often it's like the name of the, you know, the last name of the founder, and it could be a really unique name. If we see a significant amount of traffic where people are going and taking the time to spell that weird name and that long URL, that is your brand awareness. Nobody is gonna go type that in unless they didn't already know your business. So good job on connecting that back to GA4, Caitlin. Thank you. So the last thing that is that was true in 2023 in that original episode that is still true today. If you are a level one contractor, spending money on brand awareness is not your priority. No, brand awareness is not a life raft, it is not going to save you. Lead generation is where you need to be focusing money. So any spending on these like hard-to-measure, um community outreach, billboards, and stuff like that. If you don't have your lead gen dialed in and you're spending money as a level one contractor on brand awareness, you're spending it in the wrong place. It's not going to connect.

Caitlyn Noble: 7:48

Um, okay, so y'all, what's different now? Um, because the truth is the 2025 landscape is very different than the one we were talking about back in 2023.

Janet Mobley: 8:00

Yeah. So the first difference is 2025 versus 2023. Google now rewards brands more than ever. Yes, yes, yes. So huge. Yeah. So this one is huge. Today, Google AI overviews are they're honing in on things that you're quote known for as indicators about your brand. So the more users are are using those AI overviews, if you don't have your brand defined in a way online that is sending signals to the Google AI bots, and you know, where you're not deliberately saying what you're known for, then you're not going to show up on search as much. Um, like it's that just wasn't even a thing we were talking about two years ago. Gosh, no. So I know that we just spent time talking about like brand is in your community, but now we've kind of pivoted to like, what how is Google defining brand online? Yeah, that's rewarding.

Caitlyn Noble: 9:06

Yeah. So I mean, Janet just said it, but this means if your business is mentioned on local blogs, community sites, news, outlets, directories, you are going to get a serious advantage, which goes back to those sponsorships. The moment you sponsor, you know, the Midnight Magic Christmas parade, you're gonna be linked on all over the internet.

Janet Mobley: 9:28

You know what's funny to me about this? And yeah, AI is wild and crazy, and we're all trying to wrap our heads around it. And we're sitting here talking about how like being mentioned on local blogs and community sites is gonna boost your visibility on AI. But to me, that's not it's kind of like what's old is new again, because these are what we used to call backlinks. Yeah, oh and it's how totally it's how we you know helped our clients with their search engine visibility. Totally. So we're not calling them backlinks anymore. Google's calling it branding. Sure. And instead of being quote number one on Google, what you want to be what you want to strive for is to get mentioned in their AI generated response. 100%. This is the era of entity-based search. So Google is ranking brands, not just websites.

Caitlyn Noble: 10:19

So action step for y'all listening, you should be considering quarterly micro PR campaigns. Sponsor something, support something, host something, and submit it to a patch. If you don't know what a patch is, look up patch. It's a it's a great free resource. Your local news, your chamber of commerce, neighborhood associations, every mention equals a brand signal. Why don't you go ahead and tell people what patches? Oh my god, Janet. I will gladly tell you what patches. Um and I will link to it on the website when you guys are coming to our website to listen. On the show notes. I'm just gonna give you the official. It's basically um it's it's not like an RSS. It's but it's similar. It's allows you to just post local news, events, discussions. Um it's just it's it's just a network. It's it's a network if you don't know what it is.

Janet Mobley: 11:23

So local communities are able to post like uh I don't know, uh high school football scores or a cake bake sale. Absolutely, yeah, exactly. Um that is a good online PR play and it connects with your geography.

Caitlyn Noble: 11:38

It absolutely does. So patch exactly like you think we're spelling it. Um reference number two. Wow, social media has become a trust step, not a marketing step. In 2023, we said post consistently, but now homeowners actually check your social before they contact you.

Janet Mobley: 12:00

Yeah, that's right. It's part of their decision journey, and they want to see are you real? Do you have employees that look trustworthy? Are you active? Are you working in local neighborhoods? And I am just gonna give a shout out that I know I can get salty and talk about like what's old is new again. This is legit as the resident old codger in the room. Two years ago, I would have rolled my eyes if you said, Oh my god, people check your socials before they, you know, contact you. I would have rolled your eye my eyes and said, I don't do that. And I am saying I do that now. You do, I do that now. Yeah. Where, you know, if I'm thinking about buying something, I and I guess I'm I'm kind of like processing this thought out loud while we're um recording this. Like you know I don't post a lot on social. You know I'm not on social that much. So like, why did my buying behavior change? And I think honestly, it's because there's so many scams these days. Yeah. That if it's a company that I haven't, if I don't know them that well, I really want to make sure like anybody can throw up a website and look like a business. Yeah, and it can be a pretty good looking website and it can be a hundred percent a scam. Yes. But it's a little bit more difficult to have like an authentic social presence that has deep content that goes back with a lot of local engagement. I think that's a lot harder to fake. You can't, you know. I mean, you probably could if you were smarter than we were, but but like I guess I just want to tell listeners social media is no longer it is part of your marketing mix, but it is part of that trust step. Yeah, even for cranky old people like me.

Caitlyn Noble: 13:55

You've gotta do it. You have got to do it. If you're not going to sponsor a local event or anything like that, just make sure you're posting on social. Yeah. Um, like Janet said, this is the new validation step. Uh yeah, to Janet's point, if your last post was from 2022, that's gonna hurt your trust.

Janet Mobley: 14:16

I'll give you an example from this past weekend. Yeah. It was we're recording the week after Thanksgiving. My husband and I were out of town. Um, we were staying in another part of North Carolina that we frequent, but you know, we don't necessarily know all of the restaurants. So we'd already done the Thanksgiving meal and we wanted to go get uh get a get food in downtown Banner Elk, which if you don't know where Banner Elk is, it's in the beautiful mountains of North Carolina. And so I was like, I wonder if anything's I wonder if their hours are different, you know, because it's it's a small community, it's not the most online community. You can't just look at their Google Business profile and look at the open hours and know for sure that the Friday after Thanksgiving these small family-run businesses are gonna be open. Sure. So I found this this restaurant that looked really cool, and I, for the life of me, could not, I couldn't figure out like, are they actually open? Exactly. And I went to their social media profile and it had not been updated since last summer. No, they're closed then. Well, we ended up making a reservation and going somewhere else. Drove right by this restaurant that was broad daylight open, uh serving drinks. Okay. Well but but they missed they missed getting my money. They could have had my money. Totally. And they could have had me as a repeat customer. Now I'm probably gonna forget about them. Yeah. But their socials were way out of date.

Caitlyn Noble: 15:49

Totally.

Janet Mobley: 15:49

And so I thought they're not even in business anymore. No, let's not waste our time. So that's just my little story.

Caitlyn Noble: 15:56

It's a relevant story, though. It is, it's so relevant. Um, action step, y'all. I mean, this is aggressive, but it will help. Use a simple four post weekly brand kit. So uh community or local involvement, job progress video. We're gonna talk about more about video in a second, customer review, and uh like just post a customer review and then share something about your employee, uh, an employee or your team, spotlight them.

Janet Mobley: 16:23

So you're saying what every week, yes, hit these four points on your socials: community, job progress, customer review, employee spotlights. And you're posting four times a week.

Caitlyn Noble: 16:34

If you can, and if you you need help, you're we've got uh teen social media department here. So um number three, that's different from two years ago.

Janet Mobley: 16:45

Wait, I wanted to go back to your she loves social, your action step. So this this kind of recipe of posting these four things, I see in your notes here that that you said that you came up with this recipe because it hits every trust trigger.

Caitlyn Noble: 17:02

You got it. Yeah.

Janet Mobley: 17:03

Oh, thank you.

Caitlyn Noble: 17:04

I just wanted to don't miss that note. Yeah, it does hit every because you're showing that you support the community, whether you've actually gone out and like physically sponsored something or not. Why don't you share something that's happening fun, like the local worm festival? Yeah, or like the local high school team won their basketball game, you know? Um so obviously reviews, we talked about sharing who your company is and then video. Let's talk about video because it's not an option anymore. This is the third difference between 2023 and now absolutely is.

Janet Mobley: 17:34

Yeah, if 2023 was the year that video was helpful, uh 2025 is the year that video is mandatory in seven. Yeah.

Caitlyn Noble: 17:44

All of the future listeners, please take video, TikTok, Meta, YouTube Shorts, even Google Business Profile now pushes video content. True story. I left a Google Business review with a video. No, you didn't. I absolutely did, and it gets a ton of traction. So it's very important. Was it a good was it a good review or a bad review? It was a great review. It was a great review. Not a scorched earth. No, not a scorched earth, but don't get me started. That's actually a fantastic idea. Oh, I bet you'd get a lot of clicks on that.

Janet Mobley: 18:18

Yeah, so if you're sitting there thinking, good God, another thing on my plate, I don't want to be doing video, you don't need cinematic production. No, some of our clients can get 10 to 20,000 local views with a seven-second job site clip. This is something taken with a smartphone. Yes. You know, a lot of these um the um the little editor, God, I'm showing my age.

Caitlyn Noble: 18:45

Where it's like I don't know if I can help you.

Janet Mobley: 18:47

The thing goes back and forth. What do you call it? Y'all, I don't know. You take a video, like you've got a toddler. You take a video of your toddler, and then it's like a loop where the video clip goes back and forth.

Caitlyn Noble: 18:59

Yeah, um, boomerang.

Janet Mobley: 19:00

Boomerang. Wake Jesus.

Caitlyn Noble: 19:02

Wow.

Janet Mobley: 19:03

Boomerang. It's built into your phone. Old people like me don't know what the hell the name of it is. Same. But something like that posted online about your company from your job site with your smartphone. Yeah. You can get 20,000 local views.

Caitlyn Noble: 19:18

I mean, I will shout out um I know he's a listener, he's a client as well. He just did a video recently standing in front of just different variations of shingles that his company sells. Sexy. It was so sexy. And y'all, it's great content. It's it's the owner in front of real product. It's wonderful. So, action step. Record. Y'all can do this. You can do 10 seconds. 10 to 20 second on site video per day. If you, the owner listening, is not on on site, reward the people who are on site by recording those videos. That's it. One clip, 10 times more visibility. Than any static post. That's a fact.

Janet Mobley: 20:03

Okay. So difference number four between what we were saying in 2023 and what we're saying now is homeowner behavior, that's buyer's behavior, has shifted to a trust first funnel. Caitlin, what in the world do those words mean? I think I know what they mean, but you're going to explain it.

Caitlyn Noble: 20:22

Thank you, Janet. Trust first funnel. Um, this one might be the biggest shift because in 2023, people compared two to three contractors in this year, 2025, and I'm sure it's going to be happening in 2026. They build trust before they even reach out. There's that funnel.

Janet Mobley: 20:44

So the homeowners need to feel like they know the company before they're comfortable contacting us. Is that what you're saying? Yeah. Okay. So where are they looking? Yeah. So that means that homeowners, this is before they fill out a form, before they call you, they're going to look at your online reviews. Yes. They're going to look at your photos. They're going to look at your social media. They're going to look at your staff. They're going to look at your culture and your neighborhood presence. And you know what else they'd look at? Those 10-second videos. Yeah, they are. And then they'll call a company that they trust. Yes. Not necessarily the one with the cheapest quote. That's absolutely true. And those are your ideal customers. Those are your ideal customers because they're not going to like haggle you for the best possible price. So, Caitlin, what is the action step here?

Caitlyn Noble: 21:32

If we're living in a trust-first world, you have to have to have to add a brand assurance section to your homepage. This is going to include local awards, sponsorships, community involvement, employee photos, please take them, partnerships, local recognition badges, instant trust booster right on your homepage. It doesn't have to take up too much space. Put it up a little bit higher. It's an absolute necessity. No. Okay. And I mean I got carried away.

Janet Mobley: 22:05

I got slapped down. She's crazy. Okay, so difference number five between what we said in 2023 about brand awareness and what we're saying today in December of 2023. Wait. We know. I had a brain fart. What did I just say? Difference number five. She went off script.

Caitlyn Noble: 22:21

That's what happened.

Janet Mobley: 22:22

Between what we said in 2023 and what we're saying now in December 2025. I know it tripped me up. It's difference number five in the years 2025. Too many numbers.

Caitlyn Noble: 22:34

So y'all, we it was hard to measure brand awareness. In 2023. Yeah. I mean, it's not perfect now, but it's definitely better. Between GBP, which is Google Business Profile Insights, branded search numbers, local impression data, social analytics. We can actually see how awareness grows. And we couldn't see that in 2020. No. We absolutely couldn't. So that's better. That's awesome. Yeah, it's a lot better. Um, I Jan, I stole your thunder, but I'll go ahead and tell you guys what a good action step is. Um, this is something you should be reporting on if you're listening. Um, create a brand awareness scorecard that tracks direct traffic, branded search volume, GBP calls and direction request, local social reach, and then local backlinks and mentions. This becomes your brand health check. That sounds like an awesome downloadable PDF. So if you are listening and you're thinking, okay, what do I actually need to do? Here's your quick start list.

Janet Mobley: 23:41

So if you did the five things that we just outlined, even if you do them imperfectly, your brand awareness will grow dramatically. And you'll feel it in your direct traffic, your website conversions, and the quality of leads coming in. Wonderful.

Caitlyn Noble: 23:57

Um, okay, guys, if you want help assessing where your brand stands now and what your next steps should be, we have a free brand awareness checklist.

Janet Mobley: 24:08

Say it isn't so. It's so so. I know listeners are not gonna believe this, but I honestly didn't know that we had made a downloadable checklist when we started recording this, and I was thinking, this would actually be an awesome checklist. And she did, she did obviously didn't read the script ahead. No, I never read the script ahead. Why would I? I wanted to be authentic.

Caitlyn Noble: 24:28

You're you're okay.

Janet Mobley: 24:29

So you can download this amazing PDF that I thought I had invented five minutes ago, but I didn't. Somebody else invented it and then went and made it, and then made it so that you could download it. Woohoo! So go to Fatcatstrategies.com brand and it shows you the exact framework that we use with our level two and level three clients to help them build true market dominance.

Caitlyn Noble: 24:52

Go download it. It's free. Fatcatstrategies.com backslash brand will also be linked to the show notes, and it'll give you a super clear roadmap.

Janet Mobley: 25:02

So thank you for joining us again for another episode. And this episode is part of our rewind series where we're reviewing and recapping some of our most popular content from the past few years. We hope you enjoyed revisiting this topic with a 2025 lens on what's new, different, and what's changed.

Caitlyn Noble: 25:21

And next week we're going to rewind yet another listener favorite. You won't want to miss it. Hit subscribe and we'll see you next time. Bye.

SPEAKER_00: 25:36

Digital marketing for contractors is created by Fat Cat Strategies. For more information, visit Fatcat Strategies.com.