North Valley Marketing

North Valley Marketing Ex-construction, now building a marketing agency for modern construction and trades companies.
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It’s funny how fast the internet jumps to conclusions. In a recent metal building contractor’s awareness ad, suddenly th...
10/10/2025

It’s funny how fast the internet jumps to conclusions. In a recent metal building contractor’s awareness ad, suddenly the “experts” showed up in the comments picking apart his workmanship guarantee.

Turns out they didn’t actually understand what it meant.

At first, it was frustrating. You put time into showing people what sets a builder apart, and then someone comes along trying to compare it to a product warranty from a completely different kind of company. One even pointed to a portable storage building manufacturer’s metal warranty, thinking that was the same thing.

It’s not.

A workmanship guarantee covers the quality of the labor, fit, and finish. A product warranty covers the materials. Two very different things.

That feedback showed us something valuable: people can’t value what they don’t understand. Sometimes you have to slow down and educate before you can sell.

Educate first, and the selling part takes care of itself.

I used to think planning was a once-and-done thing. It’s not. I learned that again last week when I caught a double-book...
10/08/2025

I used to think planning was a once-and-done thing. It’s not. I learned that again last week when I caught a double-booking before it turned into a mess.

It wasn’t a major problem, but it reminded me how easily small things slip when you’re juggling a dozen moving parts. I had one ad creation session scheduled twice, another task I’d nearly missed, and a few client pieces that needed feedback.

Nothing huge, but enough to throw the flow of my week off.

That’s where good planning (and double checking) saves you. Not because it’s perfect, but because it gives you time to catch problems before they turn into catastrophes.

The truth is, planning never stops. You plan the quarter, then the week, then the day. Each layer makes the next one easier. My Q4 outline made my daily planning sessions faster and calmer. I can open my calendar, see what matters, and not try to hold it all in my head.

Planning is about clarity, not complete control. It’s what keeps you from running by the seat of your pants and wondering why everything feels chaotic.

Last Thursday afternoon, I completely wrecked a client homepage project. I was trying to control AI too much. The first ...
10/06/2025

Last Thursday afternoon, I completely wrecked a client homepage project. I was trying to control AI too much. The first draft was garbage. All my fault.

I’d given it every detail I could think of, and more, thinking more input would make it better. Instead, it couldn’t sort out what I wanted.

Later that night, still frustrated, I realized the problem wasn’t AI.

It was me.

I’ve done the same thing with people. Tried to over-explain every step instead of just giving them what they actually need to do good work.

So, the next day, I restructured my inputs. Gave clear goals, simple directions, and just enough context to guide it to my desired result.

Then I got out of the way and let it do what it does best.

The next version came back clean and natural, and actually spoke to the customer.

AI or people, it’s the same rule. Give them clear, simple instructions, then get out of the way.

Contractors bleed money on Meta ads because their budget isn’t aligned with what they actually need. We took link clicks...
10/01/2025

Contractors bleed money on Meta ads because their budget isn’t aligned with what they actually need. We took link clicks from 248 to 406. Same Meta ads budget. No extra spend.

At the start, this campaign was running about a 50-50 split between awareness and traffic. Good for visibility, but it wasn’t getting the results we needed anymore. So we pulled some of those dollars back and shifted more weight into a traffic campaign — both cold and warm audiences.

Link clicks went from 248 to 406. (Yeah, it’s a small budget…)

Sometimes, the answer isn’t spending more. It’s making the dollars you already have work where they matter most. Put more of your budget behind the step you are trying to accomplish. We still needed awareness, but not at the expense of results.

Last week, I sat down and roughed out Q4 for some of my clients. (Still working on the others…)Heading into the quarter,...
09/29/2025

Last week, I sat down and roughed out Q4 for some of my clients. (Still working on the others…)

Heading into the quarter, I’ve been mapping out flights and budgets of ads and laying out concepts for the graphics and text. It’s not a finished blueprint, but more like a rough sketch of how we’ll move through the quarter.

The benefit is I know what’s coming and I’m not stuck trying to invent strategy on the fly. A client knows what’s planned, and they get the confidence that their goals are being built into the process.

Planning doesn’t have to be complicated. But when it’s done right, it keeps everything on track and delivers better results.

Last week, I finally mapped out Q4. Nothing fancy, just getting the basics down.What I’m really doing is layering the fl...
09/29/2025

Last week, I finally mapped out Q4. Nothing fancy, just getting the basics down.

What I’m really doing is layering the flights of ads and frameworking the campaigns so I’m not trying to figure it all out as I go. That makes the whole quarter more manageable.

I also had Q5 in the back of my mind, that week between Christmas and New Year. Not many contractors think about it, but it’s a gold mine. Ads are cheaper, cost per action falls, and it’s the perfect time to stack your audience for the new year.

The pain is, most contractors don’t plan ahead, so they miss Q5. Planning doesn’t have to be complicated, but doing it gives you confidence and puts you in position to take advantage of that low-cost stretch.

Pounding the sale on a cold audience is how you light money on fire.I’ve seen it on accounts that felt weak. The leads w...
09/26/2025

Pounding the sale on a cold audience is how you light money on fire.

I’ve seen it on accounts that felt weak. The leads were thin. Costs high. Not because the offer was bad, but because we were trying to close on a cold audience.

When you skip awareness, your lead gen budget has to do two jobs at once: find the right people and sell them.

That gets pricey.

I treat awareness as audience-finding/building. Short, useful videos. Simple posts that show real work. Website visits measured with the pixel. This is how Meta gives you the signal of who is interested in your offer. That signal becomes a warm pool of people who already know who you are and what you do.

If your leads feel expensive, don’t swing harder at the sale. Earn the audience first. Then ask. That’s how you stop selling to people who aren’t ready to buy.

$0.19 vs $0.26 cost-per-click. How I used a 14-day split to see if a warm audience really beats cold. (The results tell ...
09/24/2025

$0.19 vs $0.26 cost-per-click. How I used a 14-day split to see if a warm audience really beats cold. (The results tell the story.)

I ran a simple side-by-side for a shed dealer. One audience was cold (no previous interaction). The other was warmed from short video views, page and ad engagement, followers, and site visitors on the pixel. Cold excluded the warm completely.

The warm side clicked more and cost less. Link CTR was 3.22% vs 2.06% on cold. Cost per link click was $0.19 vs $0.26. Cost per landing page view was $0.27 vs $0.33. CPM ran a little higher on warm, but it was cheaper where it counts.

It’s one test, but it matches what I see when we build an audience first and then make the ask. Warm audiences aren't magic. They’re just people who already know who you are and what you offer.

If you want quality leads at lower cost, fill the warm pool steadily, teach something useful, then ask for the sale. That’s how you get more bang for your buck.

Only 3% of your market is ready to buy today. That’s why “the funnel is dead” is bad advice.If you only run ads for quic...
09/22/2025

Only 3% of your market is ready to buy today. That’s why “the funnel is dead” is bad advice.

If you only run ads for quick wins, you pay more and get less. Most of your market isn’t ready to buy today. Without a warm audience and some education, you’re just pounding on cold steel.

Treat it as a decision funnel across channels. Show up, teach something useful, then ask.

Trust is what makes the warm pool work. Build it first, and your higher-ticket offers stop feeling like a gamble and start working like a system.

On a call last week, a first-year business owner was telling me about his frustrations.He talked about how things weren’...
09/19/2025

On a call last week, a first-year business owner was telling me about his frustrations.

He talked about how things weren’t as efficient as they could be because everyone on his team was new. Processes weren’t polished, so work took longer than it should. Frustrating.

Listening to him, I was reminded this is normal in the first year. It’s about learning the business as a whole. Making mistakes, stacking small wins, slowly figuring out how the pieces fit together.

I’ve been there, and I think most small business owners can relate. The pressure to “have it all figured out” is heavy, but the reality is it takes time.

Year one is messy, and that’s okay. The important part is you keep learning as you go.

Last week, I tested my new Core Offer Clarity session with a contractor friend. By the end he admitted the real value wa...
09/18/2025

Last week, I tested my new Core Offer Clarity session with a contractor friend. By the end he admitted the real value was in the questions he’d never thought to ask.

That didn’t surprise me. Most small contractors don’t even know what to ask about their marketing. They like to build, not sit around thinking about messaging, offers, or positioning.

That’s exactly where things go awry. If you don’t know who you’re talking to, or what you should be saying, no ad, no website, no brochure is going to save you.

In the session, we dug into the basics most people skip over: Who’s your real audience? How does your offer line up with the way they buy?

Simple, powerful questions.

Smaller contractors need clarity. They need someone to ask the right questions so their marketing lines up with their ideal client.

When your offer lines up with your audience, you get better clients, better jobs, and better profits.

If you’re only running ads for quick wins, you’re setting yourself up to go broke.The other week I pushed a blog post ou...
09/17/2025

If you’re only running ads for quick wins, you’re setting yourself up to go broke.

The other week I pushed a blog post out with a small ad budget, my newsletter, and across social media. We got a good amount of traffic, and one of them was my own mom. Even she was impressed by what she saw.

But here’s the thing: the sales didn’t roll in overnight. I didn’t expect them to. That traffic is building awareness and warming people up. Some will come back ready to buy later.

Too many contractors expect ads to deliver quick wins every time. Yes, sometimes they do. But if all you do is pound on the hard sale, you’ll burn through your audience and annoy the very people you’re trying to reach.

The work that lasts is filling the bucket with people who are interested, not just chasing the handful who are ready to buy today.

Quick wins are nice, but steady wins keep you in business.

Address

RR1 Box 1079-A
Hardin, MT
59034

Website

https://calendly.com/chad-beachy-northvalleymarketing/30min

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