Dawn Perry joined CertaPro Painters®, North America’s Most Referred Painting Company®, in August 2022 as the Chief Brand Officer. In this role, she leads the company’s brand strategy and marketing.
With more than 15 years of franchise marketing expertise and 30+ years of marketing experience, she has a proven track record of driving lead generation and delivering extraordinary brand experiences with a customer-centric approach. Prior to joining CertaPro Painters, Ms. Perry held two roles over 12 years at Anywhere Real Estate as Senior Vice President Cross Brand Marketing, and as Chief Marketing Officer at ERA Real Estate.
Previously, she held marketing management positions with Avis Budget Car Rental Group, Scholastic Book Club, and Time Inc. She also led her own Little Gym franchise for four years.
Ms. Perry has received several accolades for her innovative branding and marketing strategies with bottom-line impact, including being a recipient of the Consumer Marketing Achievement Award from Time Inc., the Alex Perriello Innovation Award, and the Realogy Round of Applause recognition.
She is currently a member of the American Marketing Association (AMA) and was previously a Forbes contributor. She also holds a master chef certificate from The French Culinary Institute.
Connect with Dawn on LinkedIn.
This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.
TRANSCRIPT
Intro: Coming to you live from the Business RadioX studio. It’s Franchise Marketing Radio. Ready to revolutionize your franchise with AI? Franchise now empowers franchises with advanced AI solutions, automatic processes, and enhanced marketing strategies. From personalized customer interactions to predictive analytics, we help you harness AI to drive growth and efficiency. Transform your franchise with the power of AI. Visit Franchise Now to learn more and take your business into the future. Now here’s your host.
Rob Gandley: Welcome, everybody. Welcome back to Franchise Marketing Radio, the podcast that dives deep into the story systems and strategies behind today’s leading franchise brands. I’m your host, Rob Ganley, and I am thrilled to welcome back to the show, a person that’s been helping lead transformation in the home services space. Her name is Dawn Perry, chief brand officer of Certapro Painters. Welcome back to the show, Dawn. It’s great to have you back.
Dawn Perry: Thank you. It’s great to be here.
Rob Gandley: Well, I love to tee up your your background as both a successful entrepreneur as well as a successful executive. And I think there’s a there’s a distinction and you maybe do a little of both at some point. But being that entrepreneur to being a founder as well, I just love that. So I would love to have the audience just again, I know you’ve been on the show, but if you could maybe introduce and tell us how you got to be to where you are today, a little bit of that journey.
Dawn Perry: Sure, I’d love to. Thanks again for having me. I really enjoyed our first conversation. I’m glad we get to chat again. Just a little bit about me, just for the audience as a refresher. So I started out in basic direct response advertising way back in the day. I worked for people magazine and what was once called Time life. And then it became a whole other things. Time. Time Inc. became Time Warner. Uh, so, uh, I started in true direct marketing. And when I say that and you’ll I know you’re going to laugh when I say it. This is where I actually mailed you something. And you had there was a postcard with prepaid postage on it that you would send back to me. It was true. Direct response. So, you know, nowadays we don’t have that luxury. We do direct mail, but we don’t expect anybody to mail us anything back. So, uh, it’s just that’s where my core, my roots were. Um, I just went from, uh, publishing went from there to Scholastic books. I ran 32 different book clubs for Scholastic Books. And for those, I think it’s a US only. But for those in the US, it’s it’s those book fairs and things that you get at your school growing up, um, you know, great brands like Clifford the Big Red dog and the Baby-Sitters club, right? So real fun, uh, branding exercise. And then I went to Avis Budget Car Rental. So I’ve gone through started with Avis we acquired as part of the Cendant Corporation back in the day. They acquired budgets. So I’ve done, uh, you know, basically a marriage of two brands.
Dawn Perry: And how do you keep them separate and all the different intricacies of managing two brands and two different, um, brand value propositions. Yet it’s the same thing. It’s car rental. Right? So that’s a whole other thing. Um, and then I decided I wanted to go out and, uh, be my own entrepreneur. And, you know, I did found something. I was a franchisee of the little gym. And, uh, I will say it’s a humbling experience to be a business owner, as you know. Right. It is. You think you’re really smart, and then you get in the trenches of local marketing and the day to day and you’re like, wow, there’s a lot I did not know. Um, and I did that for quite a few years. And then I wanted to go back to corporate America. So I’ve been able to leverage that, uh, you know, opportunity as an owner, as a franchisee to then help other franchise owners and other entrepreneurs. When I worked at ERA Real Estate, which is part of the Anywhere real estate brands, and now at Certapro painters. So I’ve just been, you know, I’ve had a bit of an eclectic career, but always in marketing and kind of bounced around. I also did a stint as a I went to cooking school. So I’m a also a chef. I certified chef, if you want to call it. So I’ve been kind of all over the place. And you would I? That’s a whole other podcast about the parallels between working in a hot kitchen and working in franchising. So we do that a different time. But I’m happy to be here today.
Rob Gandley: I love that, I love that that we could have a whole show of the parallels. I love like sports. I always think of sports. I compare sports to like business and things. But I never thought of that. I never I immediately thought of you becoming like you being a chef. I thought of how marketing campaigns are a little bit like that. Like these ingredients, like a little bit of this, maybe a little less of that. Let’s test this. You know, I could see where there’s some parallels with, with creating, uh, recipes and doing marketing campaigns. So anyway. Great.
Dawn Perry: Well, it’s funny, we’ve been talking about that. It’s ironic because I just has been using this the souffle metaphor at work, right where an integrated plan is like building a souffle, even if you have all the ingredients. You forget to do one thing correctly. Maybe you don’t whip the egg whites enough. You wind up with a pancake and not a souffle. So you know the importance of an integrated strategy. So yeah, I use those metaphors all the time.
Rob Gandley: And it’s just a little only a few details when we talk about digital marketing.
Dawn Perry: Exactly.
Rob Gandley: That’s crazy. Well, let’s talk about that. Let’s jump in and talk about digital marketing. Um, so for 2025, let’s get real about where we are now because things are evolving all the time. And now that is sort of the thing is, is just constant evolution. And you’re dealing with an iconic, I’d say, iconic brand. I know your name. I think most a lot of people know your name. Um, and you know how how do you keep your pulse and eye on things that can help your franchisees balancing it between, you know, running the kind of business that you’re running, which is a local painting service business and in the community. And it’s very it’s very people centered. Right. So you have that thought, but then there’s still this digital world that is constantly evolving. And us as people and consumers, we’re using it differently. So that always makes it a little different for you to think about what is worth putting energy behind what is moving the needle. So what are some of the ideas for expanding like? One of the things that I think most franchisees care about is continuing to grow and reach new audiences. So how do you reach an expanded audience with digital marketing in a in a model like a home services brand?
Dawn Perry: Yeah, it’s a really good question. You know, we could look at it a couple different ways. I was just having a conversation this morning. It was really quite funny because, look, it’s a it’s a Google world and we live in it. Right. And so remember I just used the souffle metaphor and you’ve got all the ingredients and you do everything right. But Google’s changing the temperature of the oven every ten minutes. Right. Like that is the problem we’re having. Right. So you could go crazy trying to really focus all your energy and time on digital, right? It is important you have to do it, but you cannot get, um, um, I guess waylaid by all of the all of the things that are constantly changing that are completely out of your control, all you can do is learn from them and move on. Right? So one of the things we’ve been telling our franchisees from a digital standpoint is it’s important to be in all channels, right? So even if you just think about, um, you know, we, uh, we promote an integrated full funnel marketing strategy, of course, which has some digital, some traditional, some what we call assertive marketing, which is extremely important in franchising, particularly in home services. And I’ll tell about that in a second. But ultimately, we want you to be doing local service ads if you’re in the US only. We have some Canadian franchisees. Local service ads are not part of their ecosystem yet. In Canada, you would need obviously paid search branded and unbranded. You need lsas. But now Google has the AI bot, right? That’s providing content. So it’s essentially important that you are constantly optimizing your websites for SEO. You’re adding content, you’re adding relevant content to your local market as well as to your business. Because then when the AI chat bots are looking for information, you are coming to the top in terms of your expertise and your value, you’re more likely to get picked up. And now that’s considered organic, right? So what we originally called organic. Now we’ve got AI in there. And I’m like really? That’s organic. But I guess it is right.
Rob Gandley: Yeah I think it’s brilliant what we just talked about. Like you just you just hit something that it just in my head, it’s still kind of new, like I’m, I’m learning with you. But I’ve noticed that for a lot of the work I do, I know, and again, the only thing that I can put an AI or the only thing I can connect it with. In other words, how do we show up in this new space of the AI output at the at the top of the search results, right. Which I dearly love, especially being a software person. I love the quick, the quick fixes the quick, the quick recipes.
Dawn Perry: Right?
Rob Gandley: Yeah yeah yeah. So but it’s like how do you how do you get get there. How do you know your brand is going to be the one. And I know it’s a lot to do with content. It’s about constant content marketing and relevance and personalization and quality. And I’ve been talking to franchises forever about telling stories like we’re doing right now. That’s exactly talking about the brand. We’re talking about marketing. We’re talking and it’s like, but you got to do constantly do it. I don’t think there’s a way to yet do it just a little bit or a certain amount. I think it’s just this idea of how do you do it perpetually and do it well, maybe everybody that’s a different amount. The bigger the brand, the bigger the website, the more you probably got to think about, right? So what a challenge there. But so tell me a little bit about social media then. So we’ve got this idea of Google which you’re right. Just to be clear, Google is is by far the biggest web presence, even way past Facebook. Right. And they own they own YouTube on top of that so that it is a Google world. I love that and gosh knows what their market cap is. It’s almost like you didn’t think a company could be that big, right?
Dawn Perry: Right.
Rob Gandley: Um, but anyway, so so tell me about social media then. So then you have this idea of Facebook and, you know, Instagram and some of these other platforms now gaining momentum. Even TikTok now is in the conversation for for traditional mainstream marketing versus just the kids using TikTok. Right. Yeah. Um, so tell me how how now do you and how does that relate to Google, the social presence, the content? Tell me a little more about how you’re balancing those ideas.
Dawn Perry: Yeah, I mean, you just hit on a lot of different things that are all related, right? So yeah, content is king. I didn’t I certainly didn’t coin that. I’m sure you’ve heard it. I forgot actually who did coin that phrase. But your ability to tell stories in a very relevant and meaningful, meaningful and authentic way about yourself and your business are essential to making a connection in your local customer. Local community. Right. I think one of the from franchising, it’s unique, right? We I am the steward of a a tremendous brand. Right. It has we we do all of the polished brand advertising, if you will. Right. But the it is essential for franchisees in a local market to come across and appear as local entrepreneurs. I hear this from franchisees all the time. Well, sometimes our marketing, we seem too big and people don’t want to work with us because we’re not local. Of course you’re local. You’re not only working there, but you’re hiring and employing people from that local community. And you are, and we encourage them in. Many are like, this is I we talked about this the first time. Franchising is a tremendous community of people that are giving back to their own local community. Right? They’re all entrenched in that. So just showing up in those type of ways really helps tell your story. Right. So then you asked about social media. It should be, you know, look, Facebook has the opportunity. You can do lead gen campaigns from there. Everybody’s interested about where’s the next lead coming from. That’s extremely important, but it allows you, whether it’s through Facebook or Instagram and now TikTok, depending on the the audience, you have the opportunity to tell a very authentic story about who you are, your expertise and why anybody would want to work with you. And it’s sometimes it’s not about the product, the output of the product, the paint on the wall for us, if you will. It’s how you show up and the, um, the commitment that you make to your customer and to their expectations. Yeah.
Rob Gandley: Yeah, yeah. So with the you mentioned community, right. And I know with local businesses, uh, obviously it’s key, right, to to not just think that you’re going to hide behind, uh, some digital presence and then get leads and work with people. Never interact with your community in a broader way, right? In fact. Well, you could, but it wouldn’t be a good idea. And let’s talk about why not, you know, so how do you integrate this idea of community outreach or events or interacting with other business owners, other organizations? How do you create opportunities for that through marketing programs? And then how does that then link back to what we just talked about, where you can connect the two. Like so you’re doing these local events. You’re doing some kind of outreach. You’re helping a cause, whatever it might be. And then you can take that and again create storytelling around it. And then it becomes more, um, dealing with a business that’s like a has a heart and is a person. And most of us, by relationships I know, like trust. And of course, you can’t just be triple the cost or, you know, be the worst reputation. One star reputation. Yes. But people do buy from people. They they feel like they know and they can relate to on a personal level. So tell me more about that. The idea of creating this community, and it’s so great to do it. I mean, like, it’s not that it doesn’t feel good, but it’s also a great marketing strategy. So tell me more about how that works for you guys.
Dawn Perry: No. Happy to. I I’ll tell a little story I had in my former life when I was in real estate. There was a real estate agent out of Charleston, South Carolina, and he did a phenomenal job. First, he was the when I met him, he was a rookie agent. He was his first year, and he built his whole business. On working with local, uh, restaurants and small businesses. And he would go and promote them. He’d stand in front of their office on social media and say, hey, I just worked with Bob over here at ABC restaurant, whatever it is. Um, and they’re doing a phenomenal things here. And guess what? I, you know, I’m bringing my whole team here on Thursday to do whatever. Right? So he was promoting them a little bit. It was not about him and what he does. He did of course say he was. He’s in his brand and he’s, you know, he’s a real estate agent. But, um, he was always giving back to them and promoting them on his channels, which of course they would either share or tag and do the same for him. So um, him, together with other local business owners, they were building like a little network of, uh, referral.
Dawn Perry: Right. The social is now the new town square. Right. What you might used to do at PTA meetings or rotary clubs or whatever, which still exist, of course. But you can do that now in these Facebook groups and other places in social media. That same agent now, you know, fast forward ten years, he actually now he’s moved into commercial real estate. I was just on vacation in Charleston, South Carolina. I saw him pop up again in my feed. He’s talking about all the development, real estate development that’s going on and you know how it’s going to impact the local community. Well, that makes him valuable not for his expertise in real estate, but for what he what the impact of all of this change is going to be on the local community. Right? So that’s the opportunity for you to work with others in your market to do that. Um, we also have a franchisee. Now back to Certapro. You know, we are focused on creating raving fans. And before I tell that story, I just want to share at our conference this year, I don’t know, have you ever met or worked with Brittany Hodak.
Rob Gandley: No. He wrote.
Dawn Perry: So what’s her book I wrote her. It’s it’s creating super creating super fans is her book. But she was our keynote. Yeah. At our speaker, um, keynote at our conference this year. And she, you know, basically, this is not going to be news to you or anybody who’s in marketing, right? The way that you create a raving fan is what you do, not what you give them. Right? So it’s not yes. You need obviously good quality work or, you know, product, but it’s the way you make them feel and not exactly what you do. Right. And so we tend in marketing get twisted up. And I need a referral program and I need to get a coupon for this. All of those things are important to your marketing strategy. But if you can create an extraordinary experience with your customer, they will talk about you. They will refer you. Just like I shared with that, that one real estate agent who I don’t, you know, I don’t keep in constant contact with. But I know the commitment he has to his community, and I know how well he is entrenched there. And I tell the story all the time. So that’s how you build real customer loyalty.
Rob Gandley: Yeah, yeah.
Dawn Perry: That is and you could do that on social. That was your question, right? Like how how does social interact that it’s a perfect platform for it.
Rob Gandley: Right? Right. And I love the idea. Like you, you said a lot in that. I mean, one thing that that and I and I see this strategy used over and over, but in any kind of service business or any kind of business at all, really, where you’re a local local owner, uh, the idea of interacting with other business is extremely valuable. We know that, um, there’s ideas around masterminds and, and consulting groups where you get ideas from different industries, different CEOs, different owners. We get that. But the idea of joint venture content marketing to help your community in a greater way, where both entities contribute. Right. And it’s and again, you’re just talking about how you’re going to help or what the impact is. And so you’re doing kind of what you’re saying. You’re making people feel a certain way. The assumption is, oh, you’re really good at real estate. Oh, you’re really good at it. It’s more about you’re a cool person and you’re helping our town, our our area. And I think that’s an immediate transfer of no, like, trust. Right. Which is the important thing. We’re going to assume that you’re good at what you do because you’re not good at what you do.
Dawn Perry: In.
Rob Gandley: Business.
Dawn Perry: Yes. Exactly. Yeah.
Rob Gandley: Yeah, yeah. But it is the feeling, right. Yeah. I you know, and if you think about that just for a minute, I know for me everything in my life has been influenced by what you said. Like if I really liked a company or an experience, it was because of how they made me feel. Yes, there was. The output was there, but if they made me feel good and made a couple mistakes and addressed them, still no problem. Still love them, right? I might like them a little better because they’re just everyday people trying to do their job, just like me. So. So anyway, very cool stuff. Um, so let’s talk about operations a little because you mentioned it early, earlier, um, where this you know, one thing about marketing today is it is so complex compared to, say, maybe 20 years ago, right, where you had less moving parts, let’s say, um, there’s a lot of details. You had said it with the souffle. It’ll it will be a pancake or not, you know, whatever. If one little thing. Right. Or Google’s always changing the temperature of the oven, there’s a lot of detail, which means operations when it comes to marketing has to be super tight. Everything has to flow well. And there’s a relationship between what you’re marketing and selling and how you’re delivering the experience, the feeling, like you said, right? Like we’re trying to make this work, but we’re not doing it over here. How does tell us more how you get that working in a big company? How what is that? First of all, why is that important? The relationship between ops and marketing, and how do you optimize that and what is that then what is the benefit.
Dawn Perry: Yeah. Um, so let me lead into this. You know, we talked a lot about marketing to start. Right. And the importance of this integrated plan. Right. And you can only throw so much money at things, right? There’s only so much money to be thrown at the problem, right? To try to generate leads. So many times. What you now then need to throw out is your time and your energy. So what we’re telling franchisees is, yes, you have to have a smart paid media plan, both digital and online and offline. We will support you with what we’re doing at the at the system wide level, but it is essential for you to build your brand locally. And the way you do that is being present in your marketplace. So, um, at certapro over the last two years, we’ve had two, two focuses. One was mastering the basics, and that’s just getting back to the core of what we do and doing it well. And then the other part of it is, um, just, um, increasing the opportunity to win business locally. Um, we call it self-generated leads, but it’s, there’s versions of that. Right. And that comes from all the things we talked about being present in your community, getting out, putting out yard signs, um, having your vehicles wrapped, all of those things that local franchisees do. So we aligned with operations pretty quickly about okay, these two things will drive value for our businesses. One, if you get back to basics and you are. So let me take a step back. Do you remember Covid? It seems like a long time ago now.
Rob Gandley: I love that question. Right. Do you.
Speaker4: Remember Covid? Yeah, it’s almost that. It’s almost that. Yeah.
Dawn Perry: Yeah. It was called Covid 19 at one point.
Speaker4: It was 18. 19.
Dawn Perry: Yes, exactly. Um, and when that happened in home services specifically, um, it happened in real estate as well. We had this influx of business that was pulled forward because in real estate at one point was considered essential workers. Same thing with painting and other things. So there was an opportunity. A lot of people couldn’t go anywhere. So they renovated their homes, they painted, they sold it, uh, bought new homes. And when that happens in any service industry, it it’s easy, right? It’s easy to take the order, do the job, move on to the next one. And you are still doing a great job, just like you and I talked about, right? If you weren’t good at it, you wouldn’t still be in business. However, now when it’s harder and there’s more competition and we’re all like, there’s only so much discretionary income in any particular, you know, household. So we’re all fighting for this in the home services market. It is essential. It’s essential that you are going back to the core of selling and what you were good at right before it was easy. And the and the fish were jumping in the boat. Now you actually have to go and create a plan and basically master the basics on how you win customers. Right. So that’s the focus. And so when we said that we sat with operations, said, okay, if this is our focus, well then how does marketing impact that. Like what can we be doing.
Dawn Perry: And the self-generated leads is part of that. Right. Building your brand in your local community. That’s and being assertive with your marketing locally that helps you win the customers. And then of course, if you’re executing the basics after that. And I find that when companies go wrong in this, when they’re not aligned with operations and you don’t have a singular goal or a singular focus, it’s look, it happens. It’s nobody’s fault. It’s not because of best of not intending to do well, but we’re all running a million miles an hour at different goals, and you’re never going to get to the end to the end point. Right? Because we have different, uh, perspectives. So it’s not easy to stay aligned. You have to spend time working together. We just actually got the operations and marketing team together, um, in February, right before the big spring season started and made sure we were aligned on our core goals. And we did some training together so that we can, you know, there’s a level of empathy that comes when you work together on a training exercise, because I don’t know what you do every day and you don’t know what I do every day. But we, we, we agree that we’re all moving towards the same goal. But wouldn’t it be great if we actually, you know, were working on it together? So those type of exercises really help strengthen the bond between marketing and operations.
Rob Gandley: I love that you made you made me laugh in a sense, because it’s like, it’s great to know you, but listen, my agenda is more important. Okay?
Dawn Perry: Right. You know.
Rob Gandley: Needs to fix themselves, right? It’s never us. It’s them. No kidding. Kidding. But that is. You can’t really get to that reality of understanding each other without that interaction. That was a great, great suggestion. But what? Yeah. Tell me. Like when you guys do that, you’ve been doing this a while. And what are some of the gaps you have identified. Like what what can other brands or people listening? What can they be looking for? What is the common pitfalls between ops and marketing strategies? Like what are the gaps and what are some of the things you’ve solved by by knowing by aligning better?
Dawn Perry: Yeah. So I think the biggest pitfall is, you know, when you’re measuring the goal, right. So if let’s just say let’s use a round number of 1000 leads, we’re all shooting for 1000 customers. Customer leads. Right. Well, you would think it’s all marketing’s problem to generate those leads. But if remember I just talked about all of this local marketing. We’re doing well. The operations team are speaking to our franchisees every day. So if they’re not reinforcing the message of. It’s equally important to buy, you know, spend your marketing dollars appropriately, but be present in your marketplace to earn the leads, then you’re not going to get to the thousand. So it depends on whether you’re measuring, okay, we’re just going to wait for the thousand, or if we’re all actively measuring the activities that will get you to the thousand. Marketing has activities. Operations has activities that can reinforce the message with the franchisees. Right. These are independently owned and operated people and that they have the opportunity to go their own way. So you can only help influence that. And when marketing and operations are aligned on that and on the goal and the activities that will get to the goal, then you have better success.
Rob Gandley: Yeah. So I like to ask this in every interview because I is obviously in our face all the time now, and I think a lot of us are probably tired. And the marketing in the marketing world, we’re just pelted with, yeah, with this. And but it is a reality as a technologist and someone who has a passion for it. I know it’s a real thing. It’s going to transform society for sure. Just a question of timing and how we all evolve with it. But I’m wondering, like from your view, like what are some of the thoughts you have on where that might play into the future for services kind of brand like you guys, and there’s are some things you’re doing now or what are you what are you thinking about in terms of AI and its capabilities and where it impacts marketing?
Dawn Perry: Wow. It’s a that’s a good question. It’s a big question.
Rob Gandley: Right?
Dawn Perry: Yeah. Well I’ll start with very high level. Right. Like AI is just the next new thing. It’s a very powerful thing. But there was a time when we didn’t have CRM automation. There was a time where we didn’t have email. I mean, now it really dated myself, right? There was a time where I mailed you something and you mailed it back, right? There is always going to be some technology or enhancement that makes it. It’s a different way of reaching your customer where you have to be thinking about. And I don’t have the answer. Certainly not is the next. So every franchise has their own target of who they’re trying to. Who is their ideal customer? Well, those customers age out and you get new customers who have different habits, different behaviors, and AI is going to be the norm by the time the Gen Z and Gen Alpha get to a place where they’re going to be looking for paint services, it’ll be a whole different landscape on how they consume media and where where they’re influenced to pick a brand, right. So I just think we just have to like, let’s not get excited yet, right? Like the world’s not coming to an end in terms of marketing. I will have a place, right?
Rob Gandley: Yeah.
Dawn Perry: But it’s a little scary right now because you’ve got you’ve got a balance with open AI. Is is could be dangerous to a particular brand, particularly if you have a competitive advantage. Right. You can’t if you just throw things into open AI. Well now it’s out there. Right. So there is no more secret sauce, if you will. Right. Um, it’s not like, uh, what is it like, uh, Heinz ketchup is not going to put their recipe out or put it in. Hey, how do I change the color of whatever for Saint Patrick’s Day, but use the same recipe if they throw that into ChatGPT. Now everybody knows what the secret sauce is for Heinz ketchup. So, um, we just have to be careful. You know, obviously the closed platforms are better. And then you also, as the person sitting in my seat as the chief brand officer, you are getting bombarded daily with, uh, new tools, new technology that utilizes AI. You have to be mindful from the, uh, from the corporate seat to make sure they’re following best practices and the policies before plugging in a vendor to work with. Um, and then you also have to balance that with every franchisee saying, just use AI to do it. Can you build me 25 ads and just use AI to do it? There’s a place for some of that. But no, like there is an expertise that you either leverage your own internal resources or your agency partners to help use Smart Data Insights to create the right messaging to create the right campaign. So we’re not there yet where you can push a button and it spits out a perfect campaign. Um, yeah. Will we get there? Maybe. But I’ll leave that for the agencies to figure out how we leverage that to their best success. Right?
Rob Gandley: Yeah. Right. Right, right. Yeah. No, that is that is true. And so with operations and marketing and I think obviously tech has a big influence of all of it. Um, but just in general we were talking about because the way, the way I see it is, is digital digital technology is. So as I said earlier, there’s so many moving parts. And if ops and marketing aren’t completely aligned, I just see constant friction. And I see it over and over. Yeah. Tell me some success stories. Let’s talk about like yeah, okay. That was an issue. And now we got on the same page. We aligned and boom look at that result. Like help us see that. What was some maybe some examples where marketing and ops got together through some of those exercises and you really saw the impact at the local level.
Dawn Perry: So okay, I’ll tell a story, but I think we’re missing somebody in this in this conversation. And that’s technology. So in some companies technology leverages ladders up to operations and other companies it’s a different pillar, right. And in this day and age, without technology, uh, you are pretty much sunk on a lot of your initiatives, right? So one of the things that we had done, oh, God, it was two years ago now, we noticed from a marketing standpoint that we had leads, abandoned the website. That’s not uncommon. People know how it is. We captured information up front. We had their name. We had, uh, probably either an email or a phone number, but they never. Our lead form for painting asks you a few questions about the property and and, you know, is it residential? Is it commercial? Um, if it’s residential, how many rooms? Whatever. If it’s a commercial, what type of property. And then you hit submit. So the submit button would to schedule an estimate. Or to schedule somebody to come do an estimate. That’s the lead right. That would be considered the lead. But we had all this information up front. And when they abandoned the form we had it, but we weren’t doing anything with it. And it doesn’t help. Yes, I could do nurture campaigns from where I sit for all of these people, but it’s better to get it in the hands of the franchisee because it was a person who had interest and probably just got the dog barked or something happened and they abandoned the cart.
Dawn Perry: Right. So we created this program, we noticed it, we shared it with operations like, well, hey, how about we just send those down to the sales agents, right? So we’ll have it as an unscheduled lead. So somebody had interest. They didn’t book an appointment. Let’s have them follow up. And we had much more success with a human in the local market following up, whether through text or email or whatever. Um, then we did from a broad based campaign. Right. It’s much more personable. It’s it can be closer to real time because someone’s reaching out the moment it abandons. So that was working with ops. Like, would the franchisees be open to this? Yes they would. How do we use technology? Then we got technology involved. How do I just deliver this to their dashboard so they can action it? And we’ve that was two years ago. And now it’s it’s part of the whole process. Right. It’s considered a lead. And many times we’re easy they’re easy to convert because like I said they just got distracted. They just wanted a quick answer. And they were tired with the form and they abandoned. And when they speak to a person, they get on the schedule and off we go. So that was one opportunity where we leveraged an insight, and we married it with operations expertise about how the franchisees actually work. Right? Because they’re they’re in the front line with them. And then we use technology to solve it.
Rob Gandley: I love that. I love that because it’s as simple. So like super simple. But this thing happens a billion times a month or whatever it is like. Yeah, over and over and over and thousands of times.
Dawn Perry: Yes.
Rob Gandley: Right. And so you just it’s a little it’s not to say that if it just happened once a year, it would be that impactful. Yeah. But your, your numbers then or you feel that you know in the revenue side it’s just like because you’ve implemented that and it’s just like now instead of converting x percent you move the needle up to a higher number and boom, it’s a massive impact because of that little tweak. That’s incredible. Yeah that’s great. So so just thinking about, you know, the future and and you have an interesting, uh, view of things because of one the brand you work with and, and your exposure to other brands, other your colleagues and the industry of franchising, which is some of the most I mean, you’re going to see some of the most advanced strategies in marketing in different brands. But what when you when we’re in 2025 right now, as you said, things have changed and things will continue to. What do you see right now? Is there anything you see as being common mistakes people are making or things that they they become bigger mistakes if they don’t pay attention. I know we kind of alluded to some things, but I’m kind of trying to zero in and say, what are the wrong things to do in 2025 versus the. And maybe that helps people realize, oh, wait, we’re not looking at this the right way, but how do you see that?
Dawn Perry: Yeah. So wow. Um, so for 2025 and beyond, I think the, the if I, if I could say anything or leave and this is again, this is not my mantra, but let’s just control what we can control. I think the biggest hurdle we have right now is all the uncertainty, right? I there’s things I can’t control. I can’t control wars in other countries or even the sentiment in the United States. I can’t control, um, you know, the stock market. I there’s things that I cannot control. Um, and as a small business owner, if you get so focused on my business is being impacted by these things, um, I it is occupying all my brain space. When you can’t control that, what you can control is that you’re out in your community talking to your customers. You could do customer appreciation events. You in in my business, right. We have, um, independently owned and operated franchisees. They have employees. Right. So it’s what you’re doing for your employees to make them feel good about what they do, to get them additional training to make sure that they’re working for every opportunity. But we also employ all of these other small business owners, which are painters, um, except in California, where they have to be employees.
Dawn Perry: But in most cases, these are subcontractors and you are fulfilling their life, um, and helping them build their, you know, net worth as a, as a family. So there’s so much you can do and can control in your own business. And if we get focused on all the things we can’t, it’s going to drive you crazy. So yes, you have to have a great integrated marketing plan. You have to spend the right amount on marketing. You can’t. That’s one of those things where everybody decides, oh, it’s a little tough right now. I’m going to pull back my marketing. Well, we all know that you when you do that, that has a longer term impact on your overall success, right. To the extent that you can keep your foot on the pedal from a marketing standpoint, um, both paid and earned right in your local market, that’s essential to your success. Don’t focus on the world when that’s going on around you that you can’t do anything about. And but it’s hard, right? I say this it’s easy for me to say it’s very hard for us to, to get out of get that out of our headspace.
Rob Gandley: Oh yeah. Exactly. It might the answer might be don’t look at the screens as much. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dawn Perry: Um, when I had my friend just real quick though, when I had my franchise. Right. That was when the housing market crashed, I. So I had a whole community of people that were losing their homes. Um, so Kids fitness was not the thing that they were focused on, right? So I couldn’t control any of that. All I could do was try to manage my business and maybe evolve my business to help the community. Um, so like I said, you can only can control what you can control.
Rob Gandley: Yeah, Exactly. Stay focused. Stay focused. Um, so with franchise development, how how does your role in this particular brand? Because I know all brands are sort of structured differently and certainly smaller brands, you know, they don’t have the teams that the larger brands have. Your role is as chief brand officer. How how does that impact how the brand markets the opportunity and how do you everything we just talked about is so vital. If I’m considering becoming a franchise owner, you know, obviously how you’re handling operations, technology and marketing is going to be really important to me to, to to signal to me that this is a great opportunity. So how do you take all that knowledge that you just kind of shared, and how do you connect that with franchise development and make sure that is represented in a consistent way. So when the franchisee comes in they they understand what they got to do. So it’s also understanding what their role is and all that. But how do you align that too? Because I know a lot of times you can kind of market something that’s not really what it is, right? Not maybe on purpose, but a lot of things you talked about needs to be embedded in how the opportunity is presented. So how’s that alignment work?
Dawn Perry: Well, it’s an interesting question. We spent a whole time talking about like how marketing and operations should be aligned. It’s essential for everybody to be aligned with franchise recruiting, right? Um, I’ve been at organizations in the past where kind of what they promised wasn’t necessarily what was being executed. Nobody’s fault. Right? But it was just sold in a way that it was, um, a little bit more forward thinking than what was actually happening on the street. Right? And you don’t want that to happen, because then that leads to a whole host of other problems. So, uh, I make sure that our brand messaging, our core values, everything that we say and do about ourselves is well represented and that we bring along the franchise recruiting team if there’s any change to be had. Uh, we’re not alone. I’m sure every franchise, whether they call it a VIP or a Discovery Day or whatever they call it, when you bring in franchise potential prospects, um, into the office to try to win them over to to buy a franchise, uh, we make sure that that is a really tight, uh, um, presentation. It flows. Well, it tells our story. Well, right. We talked we started out by saying the story is everything. And if I can’t tell a really great story about this brand and how it has evolved from a bunch of college guys who were entrepreneurs and started painting house exterior houses in Canada all the way to what it is today as a, you know, $1 million brand. It is, um, it’s essential that I can tell that story well, not only in what it means to me as the franchisor, but what it means to you as a potential small business owner. Um, and we’re aligned on that messaging, and we work hard to do that.
Rob Gandley: Yeah, yeah, you you do got to work hard, right? I mean, it’s constant communication. You can’t underplay the word communication. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I told you that.
Dawn Perry: Essential. I’m sorry to interrupt, but it’s, you know, it depends. All franchises are different. When I was in real estate, we didn’t use brokers to help sell franchises. It was. It’s a different, uh, animal over there. Um, but we do in, in for what we do in this type of business. So it’s also important that the people that are representing you, trying to find candidates also understand the brand story. So we take them through our our discovery day, make sure that they know what we’re presenting. And so that we’re all aligned on what the value is to a potential franchisee. So that’s helpful too.
Rob Gandley: Yeah. Now just just out of curiosity, your role, is it is it both sides or is there a counterpart that kind of considers the marketing for franchise development? Or is is you kind of handling that too, or how does that work in your brand?
Dawn Perry: So for my brand, uh, it is franchise recruiting is separate. There is a person who does marketing for them, and then there’s the head of franchise recruitment. Um, obviously I support them from my seat, but that’s just based on how our PhD defines how you use the general advertising fund. So it really just varies in that regard.
Rob Gandley: Yeah, but it’s so important. That’s the point is that you have to communicate well with that side so they understand what you’ve created. Right. Yeah. To bring them into the right thing and align that messaging. Yeah. Well that’s cool. And that’s very rare in a business, right. To have both sides like that, which is one of the frustrations I always have with with vendors that don’t understand franchisors. It’s like you’re not seeing it the right way. You’re just missing it. It’s hard to do unless you’re involved in franchising. So.
Dawn Perry: Well, it’s funny because you can bring in a vendor and they start to work with one franchisee and it’s great. Everybody’s happy. It’s wine and roses. And then they’re like, oh, I want to add franchisees. And you add 4 or 5 and then they totally overcapacity. They can’t scale correctly. Like you know, you’re also trying to marry your vendors who are also trying to grow. And they would like to, you know, work with more franchisees. And when that happens, the, the, the level of service they can provide is diminished because they just don’t have enough teams. So yeah, it’s a balance always.
Rob Gandley: It’s always a balance, yeah. So as we wrap things up, I know I want to make sure that we, uh, had plenty of time, but I also wanted to leave you a little time to just share. I mean, coming from your seat, I think a lot of times it becomes routine, the great things that you do and the accomplishments that you’re able to to, uh, to get through. And what if you could leave? Maybe your colleagues. Is there anything about the industry that you just wish was done a little differently? You know, at different brands or anything like that? Or what advice would you give other leaders like you in big brands? Because you’re you’re more in the big brand kind of side and there’s a lot of influence, like we have some big brands that affect the economy and, and so but is there anything as a leader that you wish other leaders embraced, or is there any advice that you might leave, even emerging brands that are going to become like you someday?
Dawn Perry: Yeah. Uh, wow. Um, do I wish we did things differently? Um, it’s hard to say, I’ll be honest with you, because every franchise network manages their brand fund. As, for lack of a better term, uh, how they use it, how it’s defined, how they can use it, um, how what what is the responsibility of a franchisee versus what we handle at the corporate level? Um, I would for it’s easier for me to tell about emerging if you’re emerging, um, brands and you’re small and you’re trying to grow your franchise network. Be very clear on, um, how, um, let’s just say the standard operating procedures of how people should be using their marketing dollars. Um, what happens is when you start little and you start growing and growing and growing, as an example, if you’re a small franchise, you might not have any co-op marketing, but as you build as a brand and you have, you know, dozens of franchisees and say the Atlanta DMA, well, then you can actually leverage your, you know, your dollars to buy media that you wouldn’t buy as an individual franchisee. Right. So if I am one franchisee in Atlanta, I’m not buying radio in Atlanta. I’m not on TV in Atlanta. I can’t afford that.
Dawn Perry: But if there’s 25 of us we possibly could pull pull our money. So that’s great. You start to create co-ops, but if you what I would encourage everybody to do is be consistent in how the co-ops are set up, how they’re run, make sure you have all these rules in the road, because as you some brands just accelerate growth significantly and then they start throwing these things together. And or you have franchisees that collaborate on their own, and then you try to put that in a different market. So I just would say be clear on your standard operating procedures, um, as you move forward with that standpoint. From my seat, though, look, I don’t think there’s something I can say for from a big brand that I wish we all did differently. I do think I would like to have more franchising marketing collaboration opportunities, right? When you go to some of the big events, they’re either about advertising in general. You might be looking at programmatic marketing, very specific niche type marketing conferences and conversations. But franchising is different. And even franchising con conferences are more about how to sell more franchises or how to work operationally. I would love for more franchising marketing leaders to get together.
Rob Gandley: Oh my goodness, that was that was an amazing thought. Yeah, because we just talked about how integration marketing or joint ventures. I mean, of course it’s at the community level and you’re talking other brands, but there’s a lot of franchisees in communities, and so why not brands need to collaborate more for, hey, how can we work together and make an impact across the whole again, the network effect. Right. But that’s not happening. You’re right. It’s not. I’m not seeing that collaboration happening, not at least at the national level where it might Right? Yeah. That’s pretty.
Dawn Perry: I mean, I was lucky enough to be at anywhere. Real estate brands had six real estate brands, so all the heads of marketing would collaborate right on. But that’s like, look, that’s a little ego. It’s a big it’s a big ecosystem, but it’s just real estate. Now I’m part of Firstservice brands right. So first Service Brands has floor coverings. International has California closets. Right. So we can collaborate. But again right. For franchising franchise marketing, we’re not really spending a lot of time, you know, digging into what’s successful and how we can all leverage and learn from each other.
Rob Gandley: Yeah. No, no. Exactly. There’s a but that’s so that’s interesting because the, the idea of a platform company is is definitely has picked up momentum in the last whatever ten years. Let’s say there’s I don’t know more than 100 that I know of and probably more than that. But but because of what you said. But it’s like but that’s that is there’s more to that. There’s the operation, there’s everything. You’re synergistic. But just the marketing side just saying, how can we collaborate? How can we do events, how can we do good works together? Right? I just think there’s more could be done there and that would be cool. Great thought. Yeah, great I love that. Yeah.
Dawn Perry: Maybe a little spin off. Maybe in your in your downtime you could you could build that.
Rob Gandley: Yeah.
Dawn Perry: Yeah that’d be great.
Rob Gandley: There’s a there’s a quick tip, you know, reduce your workload if you think you’re already doing too much. There you go. That’s it. Look at your list and whack half of it.
Dawn Perry: That’s it.
Rob Gandley: Yeah. Alright. Well, before before we do end the conversation, I wanted to first thank you for for sharing your innovation, as always, sharing your innovations and your strategies, your smart person. Thank you so much for being on the show. Uh, but let’s make sure everybody knows how to get Ahold of your brand. Even though I know the name Certapro painters, I think that’s pretty common. But how do they get Ahold of you? Maybe both ways. Consumer or if they’re interested, maybe in being part of the brand as an owner, what’s the best way to approach that?
Dawn Perry: Yeah, no, I’m happy to share. So, uh certapro comm. That’s Serta with a C, right? We have to say that because there’s others that start with an S, it’s right here. Well, you can see me. I’m on a podcast. Anyway, you can see me. And, um, if you want to reach me, you can certainly reach out on LinkedIn. Say that you heard, uh, heard of me, um, in this conversation. And I’ll connect with you. Um, you can also send a, a request if you’re interested in franchising, uh, through the website itself. Um, but also, you can just send me an email directly. I’m pretty open. It’s just my first initial D Perry last name@certapro.com. So I’m happy to, uh, hear from any of you.
Rob Gandley: That’s beautiful. Take advantage of that, folks, and thank you for listening. And listen. If you you find value in our show, please share it with others. We appreciate you guys for tuning in. And again, thank you, Don Perry, for being here.
Dawn Perry: Oh you’re welcome. It’s a great show. Everybody should listen I love it. Thank you for having me again. Appreciate it.
Rob Gandley: Very cool. Thank you.
