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Advertising Your Small Business With Warren Palley, Palley Advertising

• American Gutter Monkeys, LLC • Season 1 • Episode 10

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Advertising can feel like a guessing game, but the right strategy makes all the difference. In this episode, we sit down with Warren Palley of Palley Advertising, the mastermind behind Cape Cod Gutter Monkeys’ radio success and a key player in helping American Gutter Monkeys franchisees expand their reach.

Warren Palley, of Palley Advertising shares how businesses can find their niche in traditional advertising, why radio still delivers results, and how working with the right advertising partners can make all the difference. From choosing the best stations to negotiating ad placements and maximizing your budget, this episode is packed with insights on making advertising work smarter—not harder.

Listen in and learn how to turn your marketing from an expense into an investment that keeps the phone ringing!

Chris:

For small business owners, advertising can feel like a gamble, an expense that may or may not pay off, but listen to how Dennis Siggins of the Cape Cod Gutter Monkeys thinks of it.

Dennis:

One of my lifelong philosophies on advertising, and especially for the upstart business, for the rookie, is advertising is expensive only if it doesn't make the phone ring.

Chris:

Hello and welcome to Monkey Business Radio, episode 10, advertising your Small Business. Today we're diving into the world of traditional advertising with a true expert who has been instrumental in building the Cape Cod gutter monkey brand. He's now helping American gutter monkey franchises do the same. Warren Pally, founder of Pally Advertising, has decades of experience in traditional media, specializing in radio, tv and print advertising, crafting the radio campaigns that have made Bobby Downspout a household name on Cape Cod. His expertise in radio advertising has helped American Gutter Monkey franchises connect with their communities, drive business and grow their brands. From securing the best ad placements to making the most of value-added opportunities, warren shares how businesses can maximize every dollar and stand out in a crowded market. We have a great show, so grab a cup of coffee, sit back, relax and welcome to Monkey Business Radio. Hello Warren, welcome to the show.

Warren:

Good afternoon everybody. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.

Chris:

Yeah, we're really excited to have you here. I always ask this question to get started. How did you get mixed up with the gutter monkeys?

Warren:

Well, we were all in jail. No, that's a different story for a different day. Well, I've had an advertising agency since 1982. I started in Worcester. I've had an advertising agency since 1982. I started in Worcester. I grew the company over the years.

Warren:

At one point we had about 18 people working with us all over New England. We handled advertising all over New England. And then, about 2008, we bought a house on the Cape and decided to start finding some business down here and I was lucky enough to meet our senior account executive, laurie Oteri. I was working for Cape Cod Broadcasting down here and she was calling on us and I used to say to her I always thought she was good from the moment we met and I said if you ever want to take a trip over to the dark side and you want to come to work for us, let me know. And about a year and a half, two years later she finally said to me do you still want me? And I said yeah, absolutely. And Laurie's been one of the best additions we've had at Pally Advertising in many years and she's really grown the cake business and she went over and brought a sheet cake on the first anniversary of the Gutter Monkeys to.

Dennis:

Dennis' house. She actually gave me a house at the time.

Warren:

The office was still at home, yeah, I mean, it's the personal touch that still works and a lot of people don't do it anymore, but it still does work and it got Dennis' attention.

Dennis:

It sure did yeah.

Warren:

And next, thing, I know we are working with the Gutter Monkeys and their franchisees on all their radio. Yeah, wow.

Chris:

Yeah, so it started with a sheet cake. Pretty impressive, it started with a sheet cake exactly. It's been 10 years now, 10 years of advertising 11.

Dennis:

Actually, we're halfway through our 11th year, wow.

Dennis:

But the truth of the matter is, at the time I think we were on we, the Cape Cod Gutter Monkeys we're one location.

Dennis:

At the time we were on four radio stations, all the four iHearts, and when that is the case there's a half a dozen other radio stations on the Cape, they start calling you up because they want to get you to advertise on their radio station and I was hearing from this one and that one and we really were happy with what we had.

Dennis:

If Lori, who was working for CCB Media at the time and they own and operate four stations if she had sent me an email, picked up the phone and called, I probably would have clicked through or delete, delete, delete, you know. But we came back to the shop which at the time was the garage next to my house and my wife was the office manager at the time which we were running out of one of the extra bedrooms in the house, and she said a pretty young girl came by and dropped off a big sheet cake for us and I think we probably had five of us Andy, me and three people in the field and Barbara in the office and it was a congratulations or one-year anniversary cake and that got my attention and I called her back.

Chris:

What a great old-school move, yeah, and a day of age of cell phones and emails and texting people back and forth. It's that little personal touch, that kind of turned the tide, even something as simple as a handwritten note.

Warren:

Thank you for your time. It was great to meet you. When was the last time you received a handwritten note? Thank you. Note in the mail. Yeah, it's going to get your attention because you just don't see them anymore.

Dennis:

Yeah, and, by the way, as we move forward with this podcast today, remember that a sheet cake which has been around since, you know, for hundreds of years. That was the contact the sheet cake, and we're kind of going to bounce around and talk about some marketing strategies, I think, today. I don't know, chris, but we don't really script it too much here. But, yeah, just just keep that in mind, just the oldest fashion type of a thing.

Chris:

Yeah, we keep seeing this over and over again. We keep talking about innovation, how innovative this company is and how innovative the people we work with are, but a lot of times it's these old school things that are now where the real innovation is. The actual riding a car and saying thank you can blame you. A lot of business that's innovative.

Warren:

Well, what I learned too. You know what I learned, chris, from Laurie. And coming down to the Cape in general, the Cape is a different world unto itself when it comes to marketing down here than it does.

Chris:

And I'm not. What am I? An hour?

Warren:

and a half away from Worcester, where our office is totally different. I never, when I came down here and saw that the gutter monkeys were running 60-second commercials, I hadn't done a 60-second commercial off Cape in 15, 20 years because we had gotten away with it.

Warren:

And we were doing 30s, we were doing 10s and 15s Wow, but no 60s. And I said what's going on here? I don't understand. People were still advertising in the newspaper at the time, and so forth. Because it's different and not to correct you, but there's probably closer to 14 radio stations on the Cape In the Worcester area. There's five, wow, yeah, that's incredible. So it's got its own marketing. You have to learn the ear. You got to what do they say? You got to read the room? Well, this is the room. The Cape Cod room is different One in.

Chris:

Rome One in Rome. Yeah, we've talked about that in past podcasts too. The demographics on the Cape Trends, higher trends, a little bit wealthier, and people are still listening to AM FM radio. Also, you go to the beach, take your radio. There's other factors, so you must have seen a lot of changes then. I mean 42 years of business. Oh my gosh, it's got to be incredible the landscape has changed so much over these years.

Warren:

You know you talk about we call a sheet cake innovation. It's not. It's really not. It's just going back to. What used to work is now innovative because you don't see it anymore, but there's so many things that we used to do. What I try to tell people is our job hasn't changed. We have to get the company that we deal with our clients' names out there to people.

Chris:

The tools have changed.

Warren:

That's what's different. There's still auditory, there's still visual and so forth. The tools have changed. It's not newspaper anymore, it's not even direct mail anymore, it's not 60-second ads off Cape anyways. But it's different and you have to keep up with those quote-unquote innovations. Just the tools have changed, but we still need the essence of getting a message to a customer.

Chris:

Yeah, and some of your customers probably are coming off of their old ways of advertising as well. I mean, you were talking about a story, I think it was about Yellow Pages. It was so fascinating.

Warren:

When I started, Yellow Pages was one of the biggest line item expenses for a company's marketing.

Chris:

It's unimaginable nowadays.

Warren:

It could have been, depending upon how many locations you had, you could easily be spending $5,000 a month back then. Nowadays, it could have been, depending upon how many locations you had, you could easily be spending 5 000 a month back then, back then.

Warren:

Yeah, well, uh on on the yellow pages. The biggest uh thing that I I had to do over the first few years in business was talk people out of it. They didn't. They were, they weren't buying it because it worked so much as if they were fearful. The reps of the yellow pages would make them fearful that they were going to lose a position.

Warren:

If you don't buy that full page ad, your competitor is going to get that full page ad and he's going to be seen before you. It's impossible. It's impossible to open up that old yellow page book or phone book to an exact page where your ad is. You still had to flip back and forth and I showed them this, which they sit there with their mouths open, and then they'd sign the Yellow Pages contract again finally. But that money was better spent in those days in radio, television and so forth billboard. We do a lot of outdoor as well. So and then the signal that it was over, that the days were over, is when the is when the telephone company would deliver those books to an office building and they'd be just shrink-wrapped.

Chris:

A hundred.

Warren:

Maybe there's a hundred books.

Chris:

I remember that you see them in the stairwells.

Warren:

You see them in the stairwells and they never moved. Nobody ever took them out. They ended up going to be recycled eventually, and that's what finally said to me. That's enough. And then we got all our clients out of there eventually.

Dennis:

I had a former employee who became a client. He started his own business. This is back in 05, 06, 07. And he was in the roofing business. He's a Vermonter and he was going to open up a roofing company, which he did. And he told me he was going to rely heavily on yellow pages. And I said don't do that. And I had a completely different marketing program for my roofing company in New Hampshire. I still subcontracted a lot of small jobs to him because he was a small roofing company, we much bigger one and and we we remained close, we remained buddies over the years.

Dennis:

And at one point he said ah, denny, he says you were wrong. He said my phone is ringing off the hook. I said, yeah, that's the problem. And a couple months later he goes damn, that phone won't stop ringing and they're low ballers, no one's interested in paying, yeah, in paying the going rate for a roof. These are bottom feeders, these are tire kickers. He said I got to get that number out of it, but it's stuck there. He's stuck for another year and not only didn't work for him, it was almost a nuisance. That's right. Yeah, it's time.

Warren:

And I mentioned to the point I mentioned before, chris, about our job, hasn't changed. Well, there is a new Yellow Pages. It didn't go away. There's a new Yellow Pages, it's called your website.

Chris:

Yeah.

Warren:

How many people use your website? Go to your website just to get a phone number?

Dennis:

Or a search engine. Yeah, a search engine, or a search engine. The Yellow Pages was a search engine before the internet. Right, exactly, right, Exactly, made out of paper.

Warren:

Yeah, exactly, exactly so. If you look at your website results, if you go into the back end and look at your Google Analytics, you're going to see that the majority of your hits to your website are probably 30 seconds or less. Yeah, and that's mainly because people get the phone number and they get it and they're out of here.

Chris:

That's what they want. So you're finding you're having the same conversation with people today you were having with the Yellow Pitch crowd, the digital sort of I want to be on Instagram or Facebook instead of doing a more traditional ad particularly with the radio.

Warren:

You're 100% right. We have developed and changed over the last 15 years more than I did in the first 30 years of my business the last 10 years and so it changes, and it changes every single day. The algorithms change with Google and so forth. It's hard to keep up with, but it is a digital world. I understand that. But, as I said to you, gentlemen, before, when we were prepping, 92% of all Americans still listen to terrestrial radio. Yeah, it's incredible.

Warren:

Yeah, you can say whatever you want. You can say you know. And the biggest, when we tell them we're going to a new client, the biggest problem we have with a new client is telling them don't buy media that you yourself digest or ingest and so forth, because you like it, and don't not buy something because you don't like it. I don't care what you like, you don't like, I gotta know what your customer identify your target market.

Warren:

The target market absolutely, you know if it's country radio and you hate country radio and you stay away from it. But yet country radio is what your your.

Chris:

Your market is listen to you, buy country radio yeah, it's very simple and since this, you know, this market down here in the Cape is probably aging. I think it's like 55 is pretty much the age I think average age or something like that. It's almost. There's one number here I was looking at it's 85% of those people in the age of 65 and older listen to AM FM radio. Yeah, so that's a huge number 85%. I wish this stunned me. But again, that's why probably the Bobby Downspout that whole advertising campaign is so successful down here on the Cape.

Warren:

Oh, it's phenomenal, and it goes against my thinking of 60-second ads. Bobby Downspout is 60 seconds. Bobby Downspout could be two-minute ads if we wanted to, because they're enjoyable, they're fun to listen to and memorable.

Dennis:

We wanted to tell a story. Each time it's hard to. We're not advertising our name and our phone number. We're trying to tell a story and it takes 60 seconds to tell the story, I believe. Let me tell you that we talked about products radio, it's TV, it's digital but service is huge. The reason so, warren, I think you and I met in about 2019. It was pre-COVID. I had a problem. I was struggling with the iHeartRadio the four iHeart stations down here and they used to be locally owned. It was Quantum Radio up until about 10 years ago and those four stations were bought out by iheart media and my rep at the time was johnny cool. He's the voice, he's the one that says no monkeys were harmed in the making of this commercial.

Chris:

I was wondering how he came into the.

Dennis:

That's his voice, okay he used to work for quantum cool, then johnny cool we call him that because of the cool 102 radio station we were on. And Johnny lost a little bit of power when iHeart bought the company because it went from being locally owned to now owned by a national chain of 958 or some large number of radio stations and I wasn't getting the slotting times. I wasn't getting my morning drive, my evening drive. They were running my ads, sometimes at 8, 10 at night, sometimes at 2 or 3 in the morning. And at this point Lori and Warren said let me fix that for you. And so they didn't change the product. The product is still radio. What it was was service. And Warren fixed it. He not only fixed it with the iHeart stations. At that point I said let me just turn all of my radio advertising over to you and your team. I still make the ads, I still go to the radio stations, I still talk to all the DJs and the recording people, then the studio managers. I still know all those people.

Dennis:

What Warren does is a number of things. Number one, first of all, he gives me some insight. Oh, you're opening a new God of Monkey franchise up on the South Shore or up on Southeast, they'll recommend some radio stations for me. Now I still research it. I want to make sure that it's a target market.

Dennis:

But after that, what Pally Advertising does for me is they help with the placement, make sure I get my morning drive and my evening drive and any other slotting times. They also help me get some bonus slots which I never knew was available. Yeah, that's key. So I would say I mean I review probably once a month my radio ads at the end of the month, my radio ads at the end of the month, and I think that um Laurie and Warren are probably responsible for getting me about 20% additional ads from what I'm paying for. And and we always sign one year contracts. So in my company we want to let the radio stations know that we're on board for another year we're not coming in for a month or two to see if it works know that we're on board for another year, we're not coming in for a month or two to see if it works. And when I have that amount of power that we're bringing, and then I have Pally Advertising working alongside of us. It's just we get so much more bang for the buck.

Warren:

He gets to be the good cop, he gets to go to the station, get the car.

Chris:

Be the Bobby Downspout Be.

Warren:

Bobby Downspout. They love him, they hug him, and then we go beat up the stations for rate. We get a good rate and then we get the bonuses. But on top of that too, as you said today is, it's not enough to buy a commercial anymore. You have to have added value, and that added value might be a news sponsorship or a traffic sponsorship or a weather sponsorship in this particular case.

Warren:

Uh, then you know the uh. This weather is being brought to you by the uh cape cod gutter, monkeys, and we don't pay for that but again, it's just mentions and mentions, because I think the last study I saw said that a potential new customer has to be exposed, has to be hit 3.2 times either.

Chris:

I agree with that. I've touched on those numbers a couple of times in the podcast.

Warren:

Yeah, you've either got to hear it, see it on digital, see it, drive by it on a billboard. See it on trucks.

Chris:

We talk about our panel trucks. How many hits do you get?

Warren:

a day on a panel truck, thousands and thousands of hits.

Dennis:

Yeah, the other day we were making some radio commercials up on the South Shore. So we were making some radio commercials up on the South Shore so I was visiting WATD in Marshfield and then we headed down and we met up with the folks at WPLM in Plymouth and when I get back home it was actually yesterday and earlier today there's some background music that they didn't have. So I called up the folks over at Codcom down here in Hyannis and they all communicate, they know each other, and so my friends at Codcom sent the necessary background music up to WATD in Marshfield so that you know that would be the type of commercial that we wanted to replicate. And there's a lot of cooperation within the industry.

Dennis:

And what Warren does and his team is they make sure that everybody knows what everybody's. They keep everybody on the same page, at least in my world, and it's really a smooth transition. And there's some truth to what what he says is I go make the ads and we have coffee afterwards and we hang out and we talk and it's very fun. And he and his team I don't know what they do, but they get me free ads, they get me free placement, they get me good placements. They really do take care of the end of business. That to me would be very difficult.

Chris:

Yeah, that's one of the questions I was going to have is like if I was a small business guy coming to you today, you know, why would I spend? I've got all these ways of. I can hire a fiver or something of $10 an hour to write digital ads for me and do all this stuff. Why would I come to a traditional company like you? You guys have already answered that question here. This is almost paying for your sleep to the advertising company.

Warren:

Well, Dennis is smart enough to know his time is worth money and his time is not worth sitting negotiating rates and checking invoices to see what time. Sure, yeah, it's better off to to to give it to somebody like us who are going to. We, we have a manager in the business office who looks over all the invoices and makes sure that what was ordered ran and it ran at the right time, and if it isn't, then there's going to be either a credit or additional spots coming the next month. A new client that we talked to. It's no different discussion today than it was 43 years ago when we started. Chris, that discussion is okay. What are your needs? What do you feel your needs are? The biggest mistake that these clients make is they spread their budgets way too thin.

Chris:

Yeah, they go to that.

Warren:

X amount, whatever that budget is, whether it's $5,000 a month or $50,000 a month, they want everything. They want digital, they want billboards, they want this. And then what happens if they're not using us? They do it on their own. They do it for two or three months and all of a sudden it's not getting the results and they freak and they cut. Oh, radio doesn't work because I tried it for three months.

Dennis:

I've heard that so many times. I tried that last month. I tried that last month. It didn't work.

Warren:

Then you find out they were on the wrong station. Identify who your client, who your customer is. You have to identify. They think well, it's everybody. No, it isn't. Even Cape Cod gutter monkeys. It's not. Everybody is not your potential customer. No, absolutely not. You've got to have a home, you've got to have gutters on that home, yeah right. So now you're getting narrower and narrower and so forth and we're able to go in and find out who those people are and where they live. It's really not much different. We deal with multi-generational family companies. That was our niche over the years Worcester, now down to the Cape, companies like Eagle Leasing out of South Grove.

Chris:

I know those guys Drive by them all the time.

Warren:

Yeah, we're dealing with the second generation, southwick Zoo. We're dealing with the third generation, nesh. Yeah, wow and so neshoba, neshoba valley ski area.

Chris:

Neshoba valley ski area. Yeah, are you those commercials? Those are good jingles too they stick in your brain. Second, the second uh, second generation we're dealing with there um all the furniture companies in worcester like, uh, rodman's, you mentioned rodman's, yeah yeah, we dealt.

Warren:

That was one of my first clients many, many years ago. They had great commercials.

Chris:

They had classic commercials.

Warren:

They were not using radio when I joined WTAG Radio at the time, coming out of Syracuse, and I came up with a concept at the time to put Barry Rotman. The concept was we will go anywhere to furnish or carpet your home. Yeah, so we hadry on the moon, we had barry at valley forge, we had. We had him in the desert, we had him everywhere, we had him on the titanic. What a great concept, wow. And you know, it's radio, it's theater of the mind right, just like you guys yeah, bobby, downspout, it's not.

Warren:

It's no different than it was 43 years that's so cool. What a great idea and, and they loved it. They ate it up and they became one of the largest radio users at the time.

Chris:

This is probably pre-Jordan's Furniture too right.

Warren:

Yes, it was.

Chris:

Yeah, so Jordan's Furniture kind of picked up on this. It seems like all the furniture companies had great commercials. They were all kind of competing each other, but along the same lines of that commercial.

Warren:

What we try to find, chris, is you have to identify. We call it the USP, your unique selling proposition. What is it that you offer, service-wise or product-wise, that your competition doesn't have, or they have it, but they don't market it? And the biggest example of that that I learned years ago was Folgers Coffee, you remember?

Chris:

Mrs Olson Sure.

Warren:

You remember Mrs Olson, right, yeah? And the neighbor would say Mrs Olson, why is Folgers Coffee so good? And she would say because it's mountain grown. Yeah, wow, what a concept. All coffee is mountain grown.

Dennis:

Sure.

Warren:

But nobody else jumped on that.

Dennis:

Until Juan Valdez did Until Juan Valdez.

Warren:

And Folgers even had that little mountain logo. Sure, yeah, sure, on the key Mountain grown.

Chris:

That was like the. Was it Lucky Strikes, the cigarettes Roasted. Toasted tobacco Toasted tobacco Toasted tobacco Wow, they got toasted tobacco. That must make it a really great cigarette, yeah they're all toasted great cigarettes. They're all toasted. They all had to go through the oven, that's exactly right, it's crazy.

Warren:

So once you can get somebody to identify that, that's step two. After you've found out who your customer is, and so forth, and then being trusted trust people like ourselves enough to say, okay, you guys put something together. Come back to me, and anytime we make a presentation to a client, we always had two ideas minimum. And they say, well, why two? If you're coming to me with your best idea, why are there two? Well, because 99% of the time you're going to hear after you make your first presentation is what else you got, and I go, oh, okay, well, we happen to have this one. We have this presentation as well, and so it's a lot of fun, though that's the good thing about this is, I've always, always, enjoyed it.

Chris:

Yeah, you mentioned trust there just a minute ago.

Chris:

I'm wondering if this Bobby Downspout, one of the reasons why it's so popular in the Cape is because, again, with more of an elderly crowd or more elderly radio audience. Maybe that's a big part of it, because Bobby Downspout reminds me of a lot of those furniture commercials and he is sort of this trustful guy, the guy you can believe in. He's going to show up on time and do your gutters. He's like your next door neighbor, kind of like the quirky next door neighbor sort of guy. So probably plays a lot into that ad.

Warren:

If you hear enough of the Bobby Downspout ads, you actually it's the information that he's giving you not just you, but your guest on the commercial, whoever that might be. That information makes you trust what they're saying. And so, but then it's coming from quote unquote, a reliable source. Nobody has any idea what Bobby Don Spout looks like. He could be tall, he could be short. Nobody has. They don't care, they trust what they're hearing.

Chris:

Yeah, yeah, they know him. You know him because they've heard him in the past. They know him. He's like your next-door neighbor. He's that guy in the radio ads you used to hear way back when.

Warren:

It's consistency.

Chris:

That's the other thing that's really interesting.

Warren:

Staying with it. As I said to you before, we have a client that runs something for a month or two and says, oh, I ran that radio and it didn't work. You didn't stay with it. You have to let it take hold those seeds got to grow, and so forth, and give it a chance. You have to do it.

Chris:

Yeah, that's interesting. You said that because if you go through all the Bobby Don's about once, which I actually have been going through quite a bit of them yeah, they're pretty consistent from today and the original ones. They haven't really changed that much.

Warren:

They're informational One of my rules.

Dennis:

So I always introduce myself as Bobby Downspout here with the South Shore Gutter Monkeys, and then we go forward and I'll usually I try to mention in this case South Shore Gutter Monkeys five times and the phone number once or twice. It's easy to do, it doesn't sound repetitive if you carefully script your ad.

Chris:

That's crazy. I've never noticed that before.

Dennis:

Five and two I have to go back and look at that, because here's what happens. You'll often hear Bobby Downspout say so. Call the South Shore Gutter Monkeys at 508-477-9100 or visit us at SouthShoreGutterMonkeyscom. That's two mentions, right there. Right, exactly, and all you have to do is you hit it at the beginning, you hit it twice at the end and once or twice in the middle, and we do it consistently, and you're delivering your main message.

Dennis:

We are all things gutters, gutter cleaning, gutter installs, repairs and maintenances and you're also directing them. You're branding the name. It takes a long time, though, and we're still growing year after year. Our gross sales is growing all the time, and we're still growing year after year. Our gross sales is growing all the time, which indicates that there's always new people who are looking for our services, and we spend the same dollar amount every month. I don't increase it in the winter. I don't increase it or decrease it in the summer or the fall. I never play games with that. It's the same. It's called branding. We're not advertising. We're not advertising, we're not marketing. We're branding so that we're living in your brain rent-free all the time is the goal when we go through good economic times, advertising is looked at by our clients as an investment.

Warren:

When we hit rough times and, believe me, you're not sure, as we're sitting here, I think in the 43 years I've been through three or four really good recessions it's the first thing to get cut is advertising why? Well, it's a line item, it's an expense. It's no longer an investment. It's become an expense that we can do without and we can cut it because I said well, are you still in business? Are you still selling X, y, z? Well, yeah, we're just not selling as much. So why would you cut it out? Why would you?

Dennis:

There's still people out there.

Warren:

The world didn't come to a stop. You have to keep the wheels churning on the train. Maybe the train's going a little bit slower and maybe it doesn't go as far as it used to, but you don't take the train off the track. You just don't do that, and that's one of the biggest. So every eight to 10 years I have to go through this with clients.

Chris:

COVID was a big one. Dennis, you've got an interesting story about COVID, how you just came across the radio ads that were so much cheaper during COVID and you just took advantage of that.

Dennis:

Well, what happened was. It was somewhere around March 15th or March 23rd of 20. I was over at CODCOM. I was meeting with Lori Lori, she's one of my favorite radio people and we had just cut a few commercials. And Trevor, one of my coworkers, t-bone we call him T-Bone and I were coming downstairs because he's one of the straight guys that I have in the commercials. And we're coming downstairs and Tim, who is the general manager of CODCOM, which is four radio stations. It has since been purchased. It's still called CODCOM, but the LLC, I think, is Coxwain Media.

Dennis:

So we were coming downstairs, the governor had just issued a shutdown of the state and Tim, the general manager, said hey, dan, you want to sit in on a meeting we're having? And I said sure. And it was all the important people within that organization and they were talking about what just happened and they lost all of their auto dealerships and all of the restaurants, because April is when the restaurants on Cape Cod really kick it into gear. And I think Tim said he had just lost 72% of his potential advertising. And I remember I said something really stupid at that meeting. I said no, no, no, no, no. These are going to be some hard times we've got coming up. This is when you double down on your advertising. And then Tim said something like yeah, I think everybody should know that.

Dennis:

So I was back here in the office we weren't in this building yet, we were still in the old building and my accountant, my banker, a lot of people were saying there's some PPP loans out there, all kinds of COVID money being given out, and I don't like to take a government money.

Dennis:

That because I know there's a string attached to it on the other end and maybe two, three years from now there's going to be recall. So I said to my wife Babs I said you give it 30 minutes. If it takes more than 30 minutes to figure out all the compliance and fill out the form, we're not doing it. Meanwhile, I think we were on about 10 radio stations at the time and I called each of the station managers and I said something like I want to pick up a bunch of your vacant spots. You need some revenue. I could probably use some more advertising. So they cut me some really good deals on and Warren and I were doing business at the time. They threw me a lot of advertising slots at a fraction of the price because they needed to fill that void.

Dennis:

So we signed a one-year contract, I think, with an extension. So I basically got a much larger footprint for two years at a time when we didn't know what was coming. But it was easy to fit it in the budget. We got it and, honestly, we boomed during COVID and the next year were huge years for us. We did not have a down year during COVID and that, to me, just was, I think, a good decision. And we never did take the PP money, the PPP money and I remember talking to so many of my associates and friends in the business world post-covid where they're trying to wrap that whole thing up and and do they have to repay it?

Warren:

and if they do, you know and they were going through that and we didn't have to spend time or effort on that I don't think people realize that the automotive you talked about, the automotive marketing that got cut, yeah still hasn't rebounded totally yet and I don't know if it ever will with the automotive. But people don't realize with radio and TV companies that automotive is anywhere from 25% to 30% of their revenue.

Dennis:

Wow.

Warren:

Yeah, wow, and it's year-round. It's year-round and a lot of it hasn't come back. I think maybe 10% has come back.

Dennis:

I know the folks over at Marty's Trucks up in Kingston, plymouth, kingston I think, exit 9 up there and then we also buy all of our service trucks over at Falmouth Toyota. It's actually in Bourne now, but I know those guys real well. And, yeah, the auto industry, especially the trucks industry, it's not the same anymore. It takes longer to get them and I talked to these folks and I see what they're going through. Covid really changed their industry. It didn't change mine. We're in the home service industry.

Dennis:

It was a little bump in the road, a hurdle and a wrench, and we got through it and everything seems to be back. You know, on a normal level, except aluminum. Pre-covid was always 88 to 92 cents a pound. Now I'm I'm paying 380 a pound, think about 90 cents. And it was level at 90 cents for a long time, yeah, like four or five, six years in a row, and now it's at 380, 3, 375, 380 a pound. So when there's talk about tariffs and possible increase in aluminum, it could happen. But we had to go up a little bit in our prices, not a lot, but we did and we moved forward.

Chris:

So it seems like a good idea to have someone like an advertising group, like you, in your back pocket. In times like that. It's almost like having a CFP. We were talking about CFPs last week. Right, when the market takes a crash, you need someone like a CFP your financial advisor you can go to and he'll say we've been through this before, don't worry about it, this is how we handle it. There's a lot of opportunity here, sort of the same thing with advertising companies. If I got you, I can business 42 years to say, hey, wait a minute, I've seen this before, here's your opportunities you can take advantage of those Absolutely, because, look, there's less clutter, if you think about it A radio station, digital billboards, tv.

Warren:

There's less of your gutter cleaning companies advertising. There's less car dealers advertising. The ones that do advertise stick out. Yeah sure you're not competing against. You know, five minutes later another commercial from another uh competitor or or so forth. So you really do stick out during that time period and it's again. It takes, it's a podcast. I can say it takes balls to be able to stick with it and spend that and sign that check every month for the advertising. During tough times it really does. But Dennis stuck by it and stayed with it and it paid dividends.

Chris:

It's the same thing sticking in the market, not ripping all your money out of the market when the market crashes. Right, exactly Because you're with someone that knows seen it before they've been through it, they can tell you all the war stories and kind of get through it.

Dennis:

Yeah, you'll often hear me talk about your inner circle. You know, and everybody who's in business, for example, needs an accountant. You need a banker, you know you need a financial planner. You need an attorney, you need a marketing consultant. These are people that should be in your loop before you need them, right Right, so that when you need them, they know your platform, they have your history. And remember too, chris Warren, any one of us you are the average of the five people that you are closest to in any world, in your business world or in your personal world. I try to surround myself with people that are smarter than me and people that have skill sets that I don't have, and when you do that, it makes me we all rise to tide together. That's why you want to have people like Warren and his whole team, and we're going through some interesting stuff right now. It's so great to have these people here because they know my history. Yeah, sure you know. We don't have to explain the backstory. It's just a quick phone call and boom, we're moving forward.

Chris:

Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. How do you guys see sort of your relationship going forward? I know things are changing still. I mean, the baby boomers are aging out and things like that. Do you see, this is going to be sort of probably a gradual change, but do you anticipate any sort of changes coming up near term?

Warren:

Well, we've been working on. You know this as well. We've got to get Bobby Downspout further out there and in a different area. You can't buy any more radio than you're buying on Cape Cod. For the franchisees it's another story. But I know we've been working on some animation and so forth to get Bobby Downspout out there in front of people, whether it's through cable buying Red Sox, bruins, celtics games on Nessun and that type of thing, or digitally sending out, even on the website, having Bobby Downspout come out and say hello to you once you click into the website on the homepage so giving a quick 15-second.

Warren:

Hi, I'm Bobby Downspout. You've heard of me. Now you get to. You know, aren't I a good-looking guy, that type of thing. So I see there's more there that we've got planned and so forth. As far as the tools you that's obviously digital is is, uh, invaluable. We, we've got to be there. There's going to be younger homeowners starting to use your services and they're going to be the as they get older and buy, buy homes and so forth. They've already been through the digital training. They understand it more than the 60 yearyear-old of five years ago versus the 60-year-old five years from now are going to be two different people.

Chris:

Sure yeah a little bit different. That's going to be tricky too, because I know in the digital market just since I've been working on it and that's not my background. I came from a high-tech background. This is kind of my second career or third. It's probably my fifth digital marketing ever evolving digital marketing, podcasting and stuff.

Chris:

But yeah, even inside that mark, just in the time I've been doing, it's changed so much. How much more it's gone. It's gone from Facebook to Instagram. You know we're into Tik TOK now and YouTube's taking off. Now YouTube is becoming the dominant marketing platform, right? Uh, podcasts, uh, videos, everything it's become YouTube. So it's going to be changing quite a bit. It's going to be tricky, it's not going to be as straightforward, I think, as TV versus radio or something like that. Inside digital marketing there's going to be who knows what it will be.

Warren:

And it's not the answer for everybody. It's not the silver bullet that everybody thinks it is, because one of the biggest problems we have is trying to back people off when they call and go. I got to get into digital, I got to be on YouTube, I got to be on timeout. Now, all right, you have a one location company your customers come from, maybe 20 miles around. Let's not get crazy here.

Dennis:

That's so true.

Warren:

Home Depot, they got to be, they got to be on YouTube, because everybody's there, their customer, and so forth. But if you're a small clothing store, for example, or whatever, a fine men's clothing store, and you want to, I get. Oh, I've got to be on social media, I have to be on Instagram. No, you don't.

Chris:

You don't have to Such a distraction too. It's a lot of work, trust me, it's just a lot of work.

Warren:

Exactly, but it's a herd mentality. Everybody's following the sheep and so forth, everybody's there. And you know what we always say to our clients that digital hole is a black hole. Oh, I know. You can just keep tossing money into that and somebody will come back and say to you well, look at all the hits you hit. You had this many hits, yeah, but my business didn't increase.

Dennis:

Yeah, it didn't make the phone ring.

Chris:

It didn't make the phone ring it didn't make the phone ring it didn't make the meter move. Yeah, it's a hard market to figure out whether you're actually hitting your target markets there. And it's getting even harder now with cookies and everything going away.

Warren:

I mean that's a whole other story, but yeah, it's even getting more difficult and Google just loves to get on the phone and call people and try to sell them into all types of things Brutal.

Chris:

Yeah, Now they've got bots that'll answer your ads just to make you feel good. It's just insane.

Warren:

Exactly.

Chris:

So we did touch on it a little bit. Cape Cod Gutter Monkeys is a franchise of AGM. Bobby Downspout has been representing Cape Cod Gutter Monkeys for many years. But we kind of want to get Bobby Downspout out into our franchises and things like that. So that's kind of a transition we're going to have to sort of work with you on, I guess, to be able to figure out.

Warren:

I see Bobby Downspout is the next Bob from.

Dennis:

Bob's Furniture. These guys Warren's team was here probably three weeks ago. We had a meeting and we've begun acting on that meeting. We've taken two of our current radio stations that were on cat country and uh wplm each. They're the two largest uh geographically. Also the towers and the power that they put out 50 000 watts per and um. So we just started building our new platform. The other day, monday, I was up there to those stations making some new radio ads that are regional ads, okay, and so this is one of the new strategies and this was from a meeting that. Were you at that meeting, chris? A month or so, three, four weeks ago.

Chris:

No, no, I think I missed that one.

Dennis:

Warren was here, laurie was here, andy, bruce, myself, a couple of us were here and, yeah, we were bouncing things around, and so we've started moving in that direction this week, because next week is March 3rd. This is when we launch our new strategy for the year, and you always have to be thinking that way if you're a growing company, right, and that's why it's good to have opinions from people who I don't work with every day.

Warren:

Yeah, it's important that we find a way to keep Bobby Downspout and the Gutter Monkey family likable, and local People like to do business with local companies. So as we branch out off Cape to the other franchisees geographically I mean we're going up looking to the north, up to New Hampshire, maine, we're looking south at different coastal regions and so forth that has to translate. Bobby Downspout's commercial and message has to translate into we're a local company, call us, we'll be there. You're going to talk to a human being when you call and we're going to book, we'll send somebody out and give you a free estimate. So the marketing has to. We have to be able to take it from the Cape where it grew and transfer it to these other regions. And we have to make sure that we're buying the right radio stations. The right radio station in New Hampshire might be different than the right radio station on Cape Cod, and so we have to do a lot of research and talk to the stations.

Chris:

It's very important. I always find it interesting. You guys are always talking about radio strength and demographics and things like that, and where's the radio tower located, and things like that.

Warren:

Well, that's interesting, it's important, All of that's interesting. It's important, all of that is important and Dennis has spent a lot of time looking at that as well. We look at formats. Today, as I said to you, 92% of Americans are listening to terrestrial radio. Everybody says, well, satellite radio, satellite radio, it's wonderful, 500 stations, whatever. But what happens is you get satellite radio free for the first year. When you buy a new car the majority of the people do not renew.

Chris:

I'm going through that right now. Yeah, I'm going through that right now.

Warren:

The majority of the people do not renew their subscription to satellite radio the second year. So it's a wonderful thing. But if you go into the car, most people most people again will have minimum somewhere around three to four stations, as opposed to years ago when we used to have all these presets and we'd have a dozen or so stations. Today they everybody has a, a one music station, they've got a sports talk station, yeah, and so forth, if they might mean you know males and so, and they might have a news talk, but that's pretty much. That's it, because people still want local information. They want to hear somebody talking about the local restaurant, they want to hear, uh, local weather, traffic and so forth. They're just not listening to as many stations. So our job becomes a little more difficult.

Chris:

We have to narrow that down and find those stations and those markets that are going to serve yeah, we've been talking recently with you about franchise down south and uh, so their radio footprint isn't quite the same as Cape. Maybe things aren't working out as well for them. So you're down there kind of tinkering and figuring out how this particular franchise is going to take advantage of Bobby Downspout Radio.

Warren:

put a franchise in a triangle of three different corners, of three states and that you can't afford. Can't afford to buy all three states. It's not easy, so we have to really count on information and feedback from the franchisee. As to you got to tell me you know what, five, ten miles, I can't go 20, 30 miles out. Yeah, can't afford to do that and you gotta to buy. You got to buy the right stations.

Dennis:

It's very important creating the culture to create a brand. It's a culture. You know burger king is out marketing on tv anyway mcdonald's. I don't think mcdonald's needs to brand in that way as heavily as burger king because last time I checked mcdonald's still was number one in the fast food industry as far as annual sales. But you see Burger King trying to create this new culture now with their radio and their TV advertising. They're singing these funky tunes that don't sound that attractive but it sticks in your brain. Tuned that don't sound that attractive but it sticks in your brain.

Dennis:

One of my lifelong philosophies on advertising, and especially for the upstart business, for the rookie, is advertising is expensive only if it doesn't make the phone ring. I don't care anymore how much we spend. I know I'm not going to overspend. But if there's a new radio station as we move and expand our region, if there's a radio station that hits my demographic and Warren says we need to put $2,800 a month, we're doing it Because I know it's going to outproduce, not advertising. $2,801 of business means I'm on the positive side. So once we figure out what works and we've replicated it two, three, four, five times, we can go to a new location and say, okay, we know what our target demographic is Age. We know what our target demographic is Age, region, location, income level, so on and so forth. All right, and this is what they listen to, and boom, that's where we go. Advertising is expensive only if it doesn't make the phone ring. If that's something that I can have the upstart business owner just wrap his mind around, that, it's huge. It's huge.

Warren:

I remember many years ago, before Neshoba Valley Ski Area, we handled Wachusett Mountain and the Crowley family. And I remember David Crowley God bless his soul just passed away this past year. And I remember David saying and they were spending God that time they had to be spending 400,000 a year between TV and oh, easy, easy, yeah. So. But remember they were getting a lot of bonus on top of that. Sure, oh yeah, yeah, they're so well-branded, so well-branded. But anyways, I remember him sitting in the meeting and saying to us I really could theoretically stop my advertising. We're so well-known, I could stop for a whole ski season, try to save a few bucks and save some money, and so forth and so forth. He says, but I'm afraid, I'm afraid to do it, I'm afraid what the alternative could be, and that's why I don't do it.

Dennis:

You work it into your platform. Yeah, my monthly marketing budget. Once we set it, it's a one-year-long agreement and then we reestablish it a year later, maybe add some slotting time. But it's part of the budget every month, just like payroll or replenishing my stock. So I don't not order product from my warehouse because we have plenty of it. Let's not order it this month. It's part of the budget. You keep your inventory updated. You keep your payroll up to date and you keep your marketing budget on budget. Those are normal monthly expenses. In the end, we know what to expect. Your payroll up to date and you keep your marketing budget on budget Correct. Those are normal monthly expenses and in the end, we know what to expect. I agree, warren, I could cancel all my radio advertising and we'd still probably have a really great year this year, but then I got that recovery. You don't want to do that.

Chris:

Oh, you'd have my mom saying I haven't heard the gutter monkeys ad.

Dennis:

Oh no, no you can't do that, it's the big one, elizabeth, I'm coming.

Dennis:

It's the big one. No, I think your friends from Wachusett are right. Yeah, if you're branding, if you're digital marketing and there's other things I mean digital pop-up ads they're not sort of the branding type of thing that I use radio for you know, direct marketing or direct mail. Direct mail you send it out, you get a response, and there's not a whole lot of brand awareness being built there. Right, it's, it's it's direct response. I'm sending you this and it's this is for, you know, labor Day weekend, and it's it's never going to happen again. So come down and buy your car this week. Proper branding, yeah, it could allow you to stop advertising and at the pace you're going, you might run for another year or two, but you don't want to do that.

Chris:

You also talk about how it kind of keeps the foot on the neck of your competitors as well right. Absolutely so. Every time they continually hear your radio ads over and over and over again, it just you know it is kind of you got your foot on their neck while I take it off.

Warren:

Exactly. I think one of the greatest examples of consistency of branding was even in the car business was Herb Chambers.

Dennis:

Yeah, he just sold for $1.2 billion.

Warren:

He just sold his 40 dealerships last week for $1.2 billion. He just sold his 40 dealerships last week for $1.2 billion. But they don't advertise. Over the years, if you look at his billboards, they never advertised price on item. It was always some message and so forth we don't sell cars, we help people buy them. Those kind of messages and so forth.

Chris:

Ernie Bach was great at this too as well. Even his son was really good. His son is very innovative as well. In fact, he has his own sort of Bobby Downspout. I don't know if you've ever seen the animated Ernie Bach Jr. Oh, yeah, yeah, and he's a musician, he's a cultural type of icon?

Dennis:

Yeah, absolutely. And now his kids and, I believe, his grandkids. But his kids are you know. They're working them into the storylines. Yeah, I saw one very recently. Yeah, yeah.

Chris:

Okay, well, we're kind of wrapping it up here.

Dennis:

Yeah, it's been a long hour. It's a good way to go.

Chris:

It's very interesting We've gone for quite a while.

Warren:

Yeah, absolutely, we'll have you back again. Oh, I would love to Bobby Downspout journey. So we'll keep you informed about that and try to stay up on the next chapter. The next chapter.

Chris:

Warren thanks for joining us, my pleasure. Thanks for being with us today on Monkey Business Radio.

Dennis:

As always, we'll go out with no monkeys were harmed in the making of this podcast. There you go.

Chris:

All right, thank you very much. See you next time. Thank you for tuning in to Monkey Business Radio. If you enjoyed today's episode, please make sure to subscribe, like and follow us wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps us reach more aspiring entrepreneurs like you. If you got a question or topic you'd like us to cover, leave a comment or reach out to us on social media. We'd love to hear your thoughts and keep the conversation going. Don't forget to leave us a five-star review if you found the episode valuable and make sure to share it with anyone who might benefit from our tips and stories. We'll see you next time. This podcast is produced by American Gutter Monkeys LLC. Build real wealth through business ownership. For details, visit us at AmericanGutterMonkeyscom.