Mark Petree 0:00

he had texted, my client an hour and a half after he had requested a quote. no one had responded to him, right? And then on Sunday morning, he books because we send a link to where he can finish the booking, and so he books Sunday morning for$370, a one way sprinter transfer. And I'm like, I just can't believe it because I'm like, wait, what are the implications of this? So this guy doesn't get any response

Ken Lucci 0:25

and he goes on in books anyway.

Mark Petree 0:26

I was so curious, especially when I saw his email, I'm like, anyways, he's a senior executive at a, a very large multinational corporation, 11,000 employees, like I said. And he was like,"I usually don't handle this. My EA, she's out. And so, I usually don't do this. I said,"Why did you book when we hadn't even responded?" He was like,

Ken Lucci 1:12

Well, good afternoon, Ground Transportation Podcast audience. My name is Ken Lucci from Driving Transactions. today I am doing the solo. my esteemed colleague, from PAX Training, James Blaine is out training chauffeurs and CDLs all over the country. But I am really excited to have this guest on the podcast. This is a guy I've known for, I don't know, four or five years now, minimum. We started doing some YouTube videos together when I was doing this part-time. I think it was 2018. And, I'm so happy to be able to reciprocate by having Mark Petrie from Limo Marketer on today's podcast. Mark, how you doing?

Mark Petree 1:58

Ken, this is so cool because we talked about this a few years ago and, uh, you're the type of guy who, actually takes, action takes the initiative congrats, man. Congrats.

Ken Lucci 2:11

I will share with you that James Blaine from PACS Training was really the one that prodded me into doing this. So I always blame him. and not too many people know this, but, this is an expensive proposition, as you know, to produce content. We get a Yeah, we get a lot of people that like the show, they like the content. So I'm really excited to have you on today. So tell me a little bit about your background and how did you start Limo Marketer? How did you even decide on this industry?

Mark Petree 2:44

in my 20s, uh, you know, early 20s, I was gonna thought I was gonna be a nurse, didn't know what I wanted to do, and was in a bunch of classes. Then I quickly found out that, I wasn't really interested in that. I got a sales role at a company my brother owned, renting massive video screens to events, Jumbotron screens. And I was there for about nine years, and I did all the marketing. I started out cold calling, trying to figure out who even rents these things. I had no idea who rents these big giant LED screens. And then in around 2006, Google Ads kinda came on my radar most of my, uh, you know, compensation was commission and I'm like,"Wait a second. I don't have to beat my head against the desk, you know, doing cold calls and like playing internet investigator." And so I just got obsessed and, did that for about nine years and then, uh, realized I knew, I knew how to cold call. I knew how to do Google Ads and, my first limo client was a guy at a company out of Sacramento, Baja Limo.

Ken Lucci 3:54

Sure. Yep.

Mark Petree 3:55

name was Glen Main and I'm pretty sure he still owns it. he was my very first client at the end of 2015, early 2016, and I remember the results, he was spending, 8,500 a month on his ads which today in Sacramento, that's actually still like a pretty large budget, but what was happening is he had really great organic presence meaning his SEO was really good. He was number one on everything, right? And he was also doing Google Ads and he didn't know what's coming from Google Ads, what's coming from SEO, right? And so when, when I went and looked in his campaign, I'm like,"Oh my gosh, he's wasting like 75% of his budget." And so we actually lowered it down to 3,500 but increased, I think we doubled the number of leads he was getting. It was hard to say the exact amount because he wasn't tracking before, right? And, that's a theme, which I'll talk about all, all, you know, through this podcast. You gotta know where are people coming from, right? because if you don't know where they're coming from, how can you judge, where to spend

Ken Lucci 5:01

No question. And I even find the reservations departments, when we do audits, they don't ask,"How did you hear about us?" They don't even ask. So the owners of the companies have no idea. Were you referred? Right? So in your case, he was doing 8,500, throwing 8,500 at the wall,

Mark Petree 5:22

M-

Ken Lucci 5:22

then you came in. What's the first thing that you did?

Mark Petree 5:26

so search query report. So that's, um, you know, just a fancy name for, what are people actually searching before they click on your ad? Super valuable data, right? Because you can kinda like be in their head a little bit, right? and so, and, the money he was spending was on just a whole bunch of random, stuff like Sacramento Airport, like people searching Sacramento Airport and Google, And of course it knew back then that like he's not like the airport, right? But, they would penalize you if your ads weren't set up correctly. And, you know, it's like the Google, stupidity tax. and by the way, it's not his, like this was common everywhere. but anyways, when I got results, the results I got for him, I'm like,"Wow." And he was very, very happy. And I said,"Well, if this operator is getting these results and I bet you, this whole industry is like this. and then, of course, what I didn't realize at the time is it's pretty much probably 90% of businesses, are just not really maybe getting the most out of their ad spend. some are thrown away 80%, some might only be throwing away, 40%.

Ken Lucci 6:41

Mark, is that because they DIY it in your mind?

Mark Petree 6:45

yeah, I mean, so the thing is, Google has reps that will call you, right? and it's very compelling because, you know, they're like,"Hey, we'll show you how to set up your own account and everything." And, I kinda, frame it like this. I am your attorney, my client is your credit card, right? and Google is, uh, would you call it the plaintiff? I don't know. Anyways it, yeah, yeah. A- a-

Ken Lucci 7:11

plaintiff, right.

Mark Petree 7:12

And so,

Ken Lucci 7:13

And you, and by the way, the credit card is the agreed party that Google takes every, yeah, takes to

Mark Petree 7:19

that, that's it. That's it. Exactly. And so, you know, really what our job is, is, and, and, and, you know, we try to take this very seriously because what our clients are essentially doing is they're like,"Here's my credit card." Like, please help me get the most I can from, you know And, and that, so that's a lot of trust and, uh, you know, try to take that very seriously because, look, this is people's livelihoods, right? And so that, that's how I got started. Now, I jumped around, between 2016 and 2018 industries, I'm like,"Oh, I'm gonna do roofing. Oh, I'm gonna do all these other things, right?" And then in 2018, I joined a mastermind and, because I knew how to market my clients' businesses, but I never really understood how to market my own

Ken Lucci 8:06

Oh, trust me, I go through that myself, so I get

Mark Petree 8:09

because it's kind of funny because you're a marketing agency, you don't know how to market your own business, but it is a different sort of thing whereas operators, it's a very simple funnel, right? It's pretty much, you know, add to landing page to sale. what's really important is after that, right, are you, getting repeat clients, but, for agency, it's all trust, right? Because, you know, I've heard so many stories, and it's one of those things where there's no bar exam for agency owners, right? There's no it's only what have you done, what are your results, and, why should I trust you with my hard earned, money, essentially, right?

Ken Lucci 8:45

look, we have a lot in common because many people are out there in the world trying to say they can do a business valuation, and many people are out there in the world saying,"I can sell your business." And many people are out there saying,"I can help you improve profits." But the reality is, just like you, we specialize in anything with a fleet, passenger transport, most of what we do is limo. And what we have learned from every assignment from 2018 forward is a culmination of experience that it would take a single operator so much time and effort to duplicate. It's the same with you.

Mark Petree 9:27

Oh, yeah, the data you have

Ken Lucci 9:30

The guy that wants to DIY and sell his own business, good luck. We've seen every mistake made and, you must see constantly the same thing. And with every assignment that you do, it hones your skills even more. How often does Google change the game on you?

Mark Petree 9:48

Oh, man. So, um, you know, five, six, seven years ago, it was, much slower, and, and recently it is at a rate that because it's much, much quicker to, do software development. You can pretty much just tell it what you want and, you know, prompt it, and then this is what good looks like, and then these AI agents build the software,

Ken Lucci 10:17

So you, your primaries are, PPC campaigns and management, as well as SEO.

Mark Petree 10:24

Correct.

Ken Lucci 10:25

So you're really top of funnel. And let's dive into the marketing funnel a little bit. People who really, if you're a business owner, absolutely just go online the way I just did this morning and figure out Look at a marketing funnel. First thing is awareness. Talk to me about how you create awareness for your customers.

Mark Petree 10:48

Yeah. So, the nice thing is, for operators, this funnel is actually very It's a lot simpler, because focus on search, right? So there's lots of talk and, when you hear lots of information,"Oh, you should be doing Facebook and Instagram and all these other things," there's a very, there's a very large difference between PPC and SEO and Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, X, TikTok, right? and that difference is intent and are they actually searching for that thing? If they're actually searching for that thing, it is, so much more valuable, so much so that you can typically expect eight to 10 times the, the, uh, the conversion, from lead to sale, at least initially.

Ken Lucci 11:38

so Explain that to me. Explain that to me. When you say intent, what you mean is the intent of the consumer, or intent, let's just say of the executive assistant. Correct. The intent, the Correct. the

Mark Petree 11:56

E- either

Ken Lucci 11:57

of that, the intent of that person in what you do is to buy versus on social media doing a post, I just might see the post, but I never had an intent to look for that product. Is that what you're saying?

Mark Petree 12:13

Yeah, think of it this way. I just thought of this. you want clients that are hi- you know, I generally hear,"Mark, can you just get me clients that fly in private jets?" And I say,"Of course I can, because no one else wants that. no, I'm just kidding. because this isn't obvious. so think of Meta, Instagram, Facebook, all these platforms that are not search as you're putting a billboard in an area in a business district, right? Think of it like that. You're putting a billboard in a business district and, what you really wanna do on those platforms is have some sort of compelling offer, meaning it's some combination, and it can work for things like wine tours or even maybe party buses. So just think of it like this. you need an airport transfer. Where are you gonna go? you need to

Ken Lucci 13:04

searching, I'm not searching on Facebook. I can tell you that right now.

Mark Petree 13:08

There you go.

Ken Lucci 13:08

but now just to counter what I just said, I may go into my local users group and say,"Hey, I'm looking for a reliable guy to take me to the airport, but that's much different than doing a post." Typically, if I'm gonna do something like that, I'm gonna do a Google search or I'm gonna do a Bing search or a Yahoo search.

Mark Petree 13:27

and what you'll find, it's, it's funny because, you mentioned earlier asking,"Hey, how did you hear about us?" what you'll find is, and this is very funny on us because it's almost obvious when you think about it, but Google is like Kleenex is to tissue, right? And so when someone's searching, they think the internet's Google a lot of people. And so what will happen is a lot of our, clients will say,"Oh, I don't wanna do Bing ads anymore and no, stop Bing." and now, like, it's so much easier because we have the exact data and we're like,"No, because this is how much you made." and that's been a, a, a thing that's been much easier to get as of late, but three or four years ago, unless, you know, you're listening to every call and documenting it, you just don't know. And so, but yeah, search is, for this industry, for most of the services this industry offers is going to be the way to go. Google ads, big ads, now I'm not saying social has no place, you know, organic social, meaning just posting, because it's free to do, right? It's free to do just posting daily, you know, pictures of your chauffeur with clients or just a group of smiling clients, and then posting that on every platform, not just, photos of your vehicles, generally you want to post photos that have people in them, because that's just a lot more interesting,

Ken Lucci 14:52

Engaged in the service, people who are enjoying what you do. Exactly.

Mark Petree 14:57

exactly, exactly. And so, so, it is valuable, I think organic social and even retargeting, meaning someone goes and they do a search, they click on your ad, right? And, and maybe they leave the page, and they don't, know, request a quote, but then you, you put a, a pixel in their, in their brow, you're essentially just tracking or showing ads to people that have recently visited your landing page.

Ken Lucci 15:23

it. All

Mark Petree 15:24

Now that makes sense on every platform, that makes sense, right? Because they've recently shown interest.

Ken Lucci 15:30

so when you do Google Ads, you do PPC ads, you do Bing ads. You do Yahoo. You can tell me what I spent on each one and what leads I got from each one, correct?

Mark Petree 15:42

Correct.

Ken Lucci 15:42

Okay. Once you put up the PPC ads, you mentioned the landing page. The landing page takes you from awareness to co- consideration. The landing page talked about what happens after you put up the ad.

Mark Petree 16:51

so when we launch ads, for, for, for a new client we do things a little differently than a lot of agencies. for one, we don't actually, take over ad accounts. We start new ones, from scratch. Now I say from scratch, it's not from scratch because we know what works in each market because we've had, in every single market in the US, at least a dozen clients in most markets in the US because I think we're almost up to 500 clients since we started.

Ken Lucci 17:19

Wow.

Mark Petree 17:20

so we just know each market really well. We know kind of what works in each market, the seasonality, but anyways, we launched the campaign and what has changed a lot in the past year or so with Google and Bing, and this will be worth the price of this whole video, is, What is Google when you think about it? What kind of company are they, really? they're a data company, right?

Ken Lucci 17:47

100%.

Mark Petree 17:47

They're a data company. And, and when you have enough data, have you ever seen or, or heard the movie Minority Report with Tom Cruise where, where there's predicting the fu- So I know that seems crazy, but that is actually po- when, when you have a large enough data set, you can, you know, with like, let's say 95 to 98% certainty predict future actions people will take. Okay. So most people have, some sort of Google account like a Gmail. I've had one for 15 years. Think about how much Google knows about me. All my receipts go there, like you name it. And so if they have this on hundreds of millions of people, think about how much data that is so they know what the person's buying, when they're buying it. Why am I telling you all this? Well, what Google wants more of is data. They want data on who's buying and how much they're paying. Why? generally when someone buys something, it Let's say someone buys a crib, okay? Well, that person likely is going to need diapers in, in a certain number of, of months and, and

Ken Lucci 19:00

Baby formula and baby blankets, et cetera, et cetera.

Mark Petree 19:04

exactly, exactly. So you have to always look at it And by the way, SEO is like this too. You always wanna treat it like, okay, if, if, if I'm a Google executive, what do I want the most? I want more data because that's gonna enable me to, drive more revenue to my advertisers because I will be better at predicting what people need next. And when you think about it, it can be almost convenient. I know everyone when you log into Facebook, everyone, even I do it, ask app not to track, you know? It just feels like, you know, you don't wanna be Who wants to be tracked, right? But when you think about it, it can be pretty handy sometimes, you know? You see something you're like,"Oh man, I didn't even realize I was gonna need that. and yeah.

Ken Lucci 19:50

so talk to me about when you put up the PPC ads, do you do AB testing on the different forms that you do, meaning put up a couple of different forms to see what's work? Well, let's just say, corporate airport transportation or executive airport transportation or whatever the keywords are. Do you do AB testing with different forms and different offers?

Mark Petree 20:12

we used to do a lot of that stuff. what I've found now is there's a few principles you wanna follow, and if you follow those principles, what actually, matters the most is, number one, having the attribution, and that's a fancy name for letting Google know, if someone bought from you and how much they spent. And so, from the moment we start a campaign, what, what we initially are tracking is every phone call, okay, with what's called dynamic call tracking, all that means is when someone lands on the page, the number switches out now this number is still owned by our clients. They own

Ken Lucci 20:52

Of course. Okay. But it allows you to do the

Mark Petree 20:55

Exactly. It allows you to track the session data. Now that's just the campaign they came from, it gives you the Google Click ID, things like that. and then, what we do initially is phone calls, any form leads, and Google's learning from who is calling and who is, completing the form lead. and so initially, when a client first starts, that's gonna be their worst results because Google doesn't know yet who's bought and who is, a qualified lead. Now, this is something that we started doing

Ken Lucci 21:30

Mm-hmm.

Mark Petree 21:31

about a year ago and how tracking works is, so let's say our client gets a, let's say 50 leads in the first two weeks.

Ken Lucci 21:38

Yep.

Mark Petree 21:39

It's taking all those 50 leads, and of those 50 leads, it might actually have, data like a Google account, it can match a Google account to let's say 70% of those people, So let's say 35 or so people, and it's taking everything it knows about those 35 people and it's saying, this is the profile of what we want more of. Okay? And so it's going to be better than it was when it first started and it, all it had was, okay, target these people, this is generally what we're looking for, but, it won't be as good as it will be, you know, in eight to 10 weeks when we have more sales data, but

Ken Lucci 22:16

it's learning it. It's learning it.

Mark Petree 22:19

exactly. And what we did for the longest time, I mean, until last year it was, all we did was just say,"Here are the phone calls, here are the phone leads, and just learn from that. But I realized, now with technology, we can use, ChatGPT to check each conversation to see if they're saying the wrong, like, something that's gonna disqualify them because if I had to pick one thing that, my clients dislike, and I don't blame them, is tire kickers, price shoppers, people that just, or, or even worse, just someone not even looking for what you offer. That, you know, that shouldn't happen. and I wanted to eliminate that because I found it's not always even a logical decision. A client could have been having decent results, but if they have enough leads that they're like,"Oh, man, it's just, it's wasting my time," because they're also spending money on these leads, right? and who can blame them, right? And so, um, so I knew I needed something between a sale and, the form lead and phone call because, well, number one, my clients, up until recently, now we can automate this whole thing, which is really cool, but up until recently, they had to update their CRMs, right? And look, you're doing a million other things. You have to update your CRM. It's like,"Oh, hey, can you go and, put a number in this field and then drag this card over to this column and it's like, dude, I've got a million things I'm doing. I don't have

Ken Lucci 24:53

Yeah. I'm dispatching, I'm taking reservations, I'm cleaning cars. So what you're basically saying is you are now taking them from the awareness stage, they're clicking on the ad, they're filling out the form, but now you're doing things to impact the probability of conversion. You're doing things now to help them close the sale that you were not doing before.

Mark Petree 25:21

what I'm referring to right now, the sending data back to Google, the idea behind that is when you do search ads, let's say two people search the same exact thing, luxury limo service near me, and same exact thing, but these two people are radically different. One person is an EA at a law firm, the other is someone who's, uh, never booked any sort of, chauffeur transportation before, and Google knows both of them because they both have Google accounts or Gmails and everything, right?

Ken Lucci 25:54

Right.

Mark Petree 25:55

you don't want Google to show your ad to both those people, right? Because if they show your ad to both of those people, there's a chance that, you know, it could get clicked on. and one of those people, you do want your ad shown to. You want your ad shown to that person, that EA, uh, in the number one slot,

Ken Lucci 26:12

Yep.

Mark Petree 26:13

right? whereas the other person, you don't want it shown at all. And that's why it's moving away from keywords to this sort of getting Google the right data and then they're gonna learn, oh, okay, they want just corporate buyers. They want, you know, EAs, and, and it's a lot of that, you know, B2B

Ken Lucci 26:32

okay. So it's not anymore about just getting to click creating any lead with the data that Google now knows, Google is actually trying to help you target your perfect, perfect client persona. So it makes perfect sense that this is gonna take a period of time, right? I hear people, and this has come a long way from the days when it was literally pump in a keyword, right?

Mark Petree 27:04

You gotta just bids on the individual keyword. There are different match types.

Ken Lucci 27:08

100%. So talk to me about, you said you've got clients, you've got a phone number and you're able to listen to the conversation or Google hears the conversation. give me more of that information.

Mark Petree 27:23

Yeah. So, what we provide, and there's a story behind this. So when I first got started in the industry, I, I used to just do Google Ads, and meaning I'm just sending traffic, I'm just paying Google money, and then sending people to my client's website, and just trying to filter for the people my clients don't want they're out of be clicked on, right? and who don't want sent to their site. and I couldn't figure it out, but I'm like,"Man, I'm sending the right people, but they're just not Some clients get really good results, some clients don't." Well, I quickly learned and this was around 2018, I think, I went to a conference in Thailand where there's a huge SEO community in Changmai, and I'm like,"All my clients need landing pages." And so I, I'm like, all right, I'm gonna do, the ads and the landing pages, because that's a very important piece, the page itself, because what was happening is people would land on a page,"Where's the phone number? Can't find it."Oh, where's the quote form?""Oh, can't find it. Oh, you have to do a few clicks and, and then you end up on a page with a very, with a widget that looks like it was Built in, in, you know, the early 2000s

Ken Lucci 28:35

And I abandon it. I abandon it because I'm

Mark Petree 28:38

exactly. E- exactly. Exactly. And so, then, then that was working a lot better, right?'Cause my clients were getting more leads, but I was still having issues because my clients I'd have one client who I thought was killing it. I still remember this. He was in Kansas City. he wasn't a large operator. he had gotten, like, something like 140 leads in the last 30 days. And he said I'd only gotten two bookings. And I'm like,"How is that even possible?" He was like,"They're just bad leads." And I was like,"Maybe

Ken Lucci 29:08

by the way, let, let, I wanna dispel a myth here, okay? There's a great movie called Glen Gary Glen Ross that everybody who sells anything should watch. And Alec Baldwin plays the sales manager. He, and Alec Baldwin manages aluminum siding salesmen. And one of the siding salesman says No, I apologize. He, the salesman is selling real estate in Florida, swamp land in Florida. Okay. And one of the salesmen says,"The leads are weak." And Alec Baldwin says,"You're weak." They don't come on the lot and they don't come in out of the rain unless they want to buy. And that's the bottom line. They're not clicking on your ad just for shits and giggles to click on your ad. They wanna buy something. It's up to you to convert them. I listen all the time just out of curiosity, when I'm on site and I'm hearing a reservationist talk to a cold lead. Oh, you wanna go to Newark Airport? Okay, great. it's$175. Okay. Click. How about Let's back up. Can I use your first name? Ken, how are you today? How are you today, Mr. Lucci or Ken or whatever it is? By the way, what did you do before you called today? Is this your first call to us? Yes, it is. what did you do before this? Oh, I, I used another company, before this. Tell me something. I'm just curious. I don't need to know who they are. Why did you leave them? how often do you go to the airport? And you don't grill. you know, there's an art here of creating the conversation. And that's what drives the conversions. So I'm here to tell you, I mean, because I know a lot of people in the digital marketing space. And you're the, the longest standing in the business. And if anybody wants to look at your website, look at all those testimonials and use

Mark Petree 30:59

Yeah.

Ken Lucci 30:59

but the bottom line is, your job to me is, should be done. Once you've created the lead based on the person actually clicking the form, and answering the form, it's not your job to check their wallet to make sure that they've actually got money. It's not your job to figure out if they've ever used chauffeured services before, right? it's not your job to be able to train the operator on how to sell against Uber. I gotta tell you, if I ever came back in a different life, or could clone myself, I would like to be as, a reservation and as trainer in this industry, because I can sell off Uber any day of the week. Absolutely, we're gonna be more expensive, but you should be comparing us to Uber Black. We're typically about 20, 25% more expensive, but let me tell you why. We have$5 million in commercial insurance and they have 500,000, right? We background check all our people. Have you seen all the sexual assaults, okay? but let me tell you about why people use us over Uber because we're early morning specialists. We wake up our chauffeurs. We guarantee they're gonna be on the road. you're doing so much more to help them though than you ever used to

Mark Petree 32:16

Y- yeah, so C- correct. So, so, um, so after the landing page thing, I was still having issues and so I did something in 2019. I had a VA, or one of my, um, one of my staff, I should say, go and, I think we had around 60 clients at the time. And she used, like, a Google or a spreadsheet and she went on, their landing page and she using a fake phone number, but that was tracked in a fake email. she went in and documented, what time she submitted the form, and then did the client call, text, email, all three? If so, at what times? And, that was a relief because I'm like,"Okay, this finally makes sense. It's just, they're not following up." I probably should have known that, but I just didn't. So I thought I need to help with it. and what I've noticed is since I started, I started with just Google Ads and I'm like,"No, I need a landing page." Then I was like,"I need to do a CRM as well with follow-ups because they're not gonna do that. So, um, customer relationship management. So if you've ever heard of Salesforce like PipeDrive, Zoho- Zoho,

Ken Lucci 33:27

Go,

Mark Petree 33:28

hi- high level. GoHighLevel.com, that's what, all of our clients use and, all we've done is we've just modified it for the industry and so,

Ken Lucci 33:38

No, don't say because what you've done to modify it is some secret sauce there. You've done some real good work there.

Mark Petree 33:46

yeah, actually, and this brings me back because you asked, a question and I know we're jumping around a bit here, but, you asked a question about, when someone calls in, how do you like qualify or whatever? So up until, even a month ago, how it worked is all of our clients would get, you know, a transcript in their, in their CRM that would show up after their inbound or outbound call. And here's the thing, everyone does that. RingCentral, like, everyone's doing that now. but what I wanted to be able to do, and I was only doing this with their, when they got, like, a new lead via form, I was qualifying those people and, and sending their data, It's hashed, meaning it's anonymized, so it's not like we're sending all the client data to Google, We were just doing that for form leads, but now what we're doing is we're using an outside server, and now what we're doing is, because it's so important that the CRM is updated with how much was quoted, was it a quality prospect that we want to upload to, you know, we just call them qualified leads, in Google Ads, because we start out with just forms and phone calls, and then once we have enough quality, or we call them qualified leads, then we can tell Google,"Just focus on this. And then once we have enough bookings, really, you want minimum 30 a month you're sending back to Google with how much the booking was for, you can do different types of, bidding or, or, or, again, I don't want to get too techy, but it just can help increase the amount of money you make on your return on ad spend. So if I'm spending a thousand a month, I know generally, depending on the bigger the vehicle you have, the larger the multiple will be, and generally the more profitable, but for black car, I think you should be doing Initially, you're going to start out probably relatively low, especially if you're starting to say like New York, which I wouldn't even recommend, it might be in the first month, it might be two to three X, but if you're doing the thing you just talked about, right? where you get curious, right,

Ken Lucci 35:57

And you get to the sale when you get to the story. You get to the sale when you get to the story and you use that story to create your own narrative."Well, you know what? My boss was using XYZ service and, uh, they showed up late four or five times. You know, I'm really sorry to hear that. Let me tell you something. We are early morning experts. We have an on- time guarantee. Listen, traffic happens to everybody, especially in New York, but we wake up our chauffeurs. We have a problem reaching a chauffeur. We dispatch another one. We have redundant vehicles. If you start with price, you lose. So I'm intrigued and curious to you. You said," If I invested$1,000, I should expect 2X or 3X."What do you mean by that?

Mark Petree 36:44

because we get asked this, quite frequently, let's say they just do black car and they're in a competitive city and they're like,"Well, what am I gonna make in my first month, in my second month, in my third month?" And it's so hard to say this because, generally, and it's like this in every industry, 20% of your clients are responsible for 80% of the revenue. And so really, really what you're looking for Now, I'm referring to operators that are focused on corporate, which I know most of the industry is and I understand why now, it's all about landing those big clients that will spend, mid five figures, low six figures with you every year, because it doesn't take many of those, to have a seven figure, ground transportation business. But the only way to find those, and when you're doing online marketing, actually I have a really great story about this. I increasingly was doing more and more, right? CRM, and then finally I'm like,"Man, should I just get on the phone myself?" And so

Ken Lucci 37:46

Jesus Mark. It's finally, it's actually come to that where you literally said, what Listen, I, I, I create the ad. I do the form. I create the lead. now should I get on the phone and sell it? I mean, how, how much more can

Mark Petree 38:00

at the end of the day, I might not be responsible, but if the client leaves,

Ken Lucci 38:04

Right. I know.

Mark Petree 38:05

you know, so,

Ken Lucci 38:07

I know,

Mark Petree 38:07

because software is so much easier to develop, we have developed this, uh, landing page software, that right now we're just going to use internally. It, it has kind of like a, a pricing system or whatever, because you, you have to have one. And so, the first client that did the beta with it, pretty large market. And I said, I'm gonna pay for the ad spend and, uh, I will do the sales because I wanted feedback on the landing page and the experience, and to see, hey, does everything make sense?" And so, we started on a Thursday and I had a lot of good calls. Now, Friday I got busy the ads had been running, four days. We were spending like, 75 a day or so, 100 a day, and on Sunday morning, it got its first booking. Now, now this landing page software, they can actually book, on the spot, uh, you know. So, yeah, and so I see this booking come in, right? I'm like,"Sweet, first booking, it works." And then I'm like,"Whoa." And I look at the email address, I'm like,"That's a three letter domain." I'm like, it was like, yeah, a three letter domain. Those are not cheap. And so I get on the phone, with this guy. Now I call him on a Sunday morning, and the reason I'm so surprised is I go into high level, and again, this was my fault. I was responsible for handling these ones. he had texted, my client an hour and a half after he had requested a quote. he asked, uh, regarding a round trip, if there was any sort of, cost break for a round trip, which by the way, because this was a huge 11,000 employee corporate, right? And so no one had responded to him, right? Which, again, my fault. so he requests a quote and then hour and a half later he sends a text, no one responds, nothing. And then on Sunday morning, he books because we send a link to where he can finish the booking, and so he books Sunday morning for$370, a one way sprinter transfer. And I'm like, I just can't believe it because I'm like, wait, what are the implications of this? So this guy doesn't get any response

Ken Lucci 40:16

and he goes on in books anyway.

Mark Petree 40:18

and he goes on So, so I, I was so curious, especially when I saw his email, I'm like, this could So anyways, he's a senior executive at a, a very large multinational corporation, 11,000 employees, like I said. And he was like,"I usually don't handle this. My EA, she's out. And so, I usually don't do this. And first, you know, I was like very apologetic because, uh, it was my fault. I should have been all over this, right? And I was like, you know, I'm gonna credit the, uh, the, the sprinter, which I, you know, obviously didn't have the power to do, but I paid my client for it but I was so fascinated because I said, uh,"Why did you book when we hadn't even responded?" He was like,"Well, I, uh, called two other companies and no one got back no one got back to

Ken Lucci 41:07

So at least we sent the booking link is what you're saying.

Mark Petree 41:10

Yeah, he was like, uh, you know, at least he, it was easy to book with you guys. it was almost funny to me because I'm like, and this is a large market this is, uh, someone looking for a sprinter, right? and so come to find out, he needed a round trip and then, so he's like,"I have six executives flying in from Australia into, Houston and, they're going to be here a week. We're doing dinners, we're doing sporting events and these guys are tall, which is something I never even thought of like, you know, so if you remember, my first job in sales, I'll never forget my brother who's been very successful in insurance sales, uh, you know, my very first cold call, he was sitting behind me. I was like 20 at the time and I was just calling and I was just so nervous, right? And so what I learned at that job was I, I never knew who even rented these things, right? And so in talking to the senior exec, I'm like, Hey, can you connect me by chance?"You know, I know we kind of dropped the ball and all this, but I also had Compton, which he very much appreciated, Can you connect me with whoever handled"Oh yeah, yeah, I'll set you up with our EA who handles all of our Houston logistics. And I'm like, That would be lovely."And so, he connects me via email and then we book a call. So it's myself, my client so I was gonna, in a way, run the meeting, but my client also said, you know, I wanna make sure I'm known to be the owner and what have you. I'm like, 100%. I'm just, I'm doing this because I wanna learn more about what's going to help my client get the clients they want because they all want

Ken Lucci 42:49

Right? No question about it. That's gold. That's gold.

Mark Petree 42:54

And so, so the meeting starts and when I say I should have prepped, my client, I always assume that operators that have seven figure businesses have, been trained in sales

Ken Lucci 43:07

Oh, no way. No way.

Mark Petree 43:09

yeah. And, and so, and, and by the way, yeah, by the way, but, you know, probably sales, the most important thing in sales is it's not about you, it's about them, right? It's about what you can do for them. It's not about telling them about how great you are, it's about

Ken Lucci 43:24

no. It's solving their problem. It's solving their problem. No question. And by the way, the more capable you are at solving their problems and completely, the less important price is. That's the key. I agree with you, and I do think that And I make the same assumption. that my clients can read a P&L, or my clients understand all of the Well, but we've gone back to literally when we did the course, we went back to the basics. I agree with you, and I think that so often, operators are in the logistics mode, They wanna get to,"Well, what do you need the vehicle for and where are you going, et cetera, et cetera." Instead of backing up and saying, you know, tell me something, the executive vice president called us over the weekend, thank you for talking to us. what have you typically done and what's your transportation needs been? And then shut up.

Mark Petree 44:24

Musk has a thing where he says, you know, engineers, you give them a problem, they're gonna try to solve the problem. Salespeople, you give them a problem, they're gonna ask you why it's a problem. and so that's kind of the same framework in a way is operator, um, is,"Oh, what do you need? You need this on this date? Okay." And it's not like,"Huh, that's so weird that you're calling us because that means..." And you're, you're someone who probably uses these services a lot and that it means that either your current vendor isn't available or you know, there, again, the story, right? There's a story there. And so anyways, the call went, relatively well. again, I didn't prep my client well enough and so anyways, she gave us all this good info and then she also said,"Hey, coming up, there's a big, there's a rodeo in March and we're gonna need a few buses, you know, and he was like,"I

Ken Lucci 45:21

just for, certainly a four figure opportunity.

Mark Petree 45:25

yeah, that, that was, a, four figure opportunity because they ended up using the Sprinter on, multiple days. now this rodeo thing, you know, we got off the call and, what I should have done, is, call, pick up the phone, especially because, and again, I will take accountability. I dropped the ball and not seeing this text message of this person, right? but as soon as I noticed, I called. and when I was speaking to that gentleman initially, before we had the appointment I asked my client,"Hey, pick up the phone. It will mean a lot." It means a lot when the owner calls, right? It's like, you almost feel special, right? You're like,"Whoa, okay, owner's calling me."And, because they care the most, right? And so anyways, two weeks goes by, right? And I call my client, and I say,"So how big was that rodeo job expecting to hear like 20 to 30 grand?" And I heard,"Oh, you know, they never got back to me. So he had, sent an email to the EA and sent an email to the initial, senior exec and so here's the thing, this is so common, of course I was incredibly frustrated because I'm like,"You gotta call those. You

Ken Lucci 46:40

So Let's back up let's dissect this from a, from an old sales manager, right? When I was a sales manager, I had much more hair, and I was 31 years old, and I was managing 125 sales rodents. These guys, if you wanna see a sales in the security space and the home security space, those guys were the aluminum siding salesman of the day when I did it in the 90s. Okay. F- first and foremost, just because you had the call and you felt good about the call with that operator, okay, the client, it's not the client's responsibility now to come back and book automatically. The sales process, the sales process is a courting of sorts, and the higher stakes the sale, the more the courting process, okay, it's simple. And I don't know about you, but I kinda get frustrated because I see operators treating thousands and thousands of dollars in total client value potential, right?

Mark Petree 47:41

Yeah.

Ken Lucci 47:41

it was one airport trip. And I think that's the logistics mentality. So if you, as an operator, consider every lead that comes in, not based on that one trip, but based on total client value, total customer value, right? You will treat those leads much differently. so look, What you do and what I do are an opposite ends, meaning that I deal with the finance aspects, I deal with profitability and KPIs, and you deal with the creation of opportunities and leads. If there's any message you wanna give operators out there about limo marketer, what is it? what is your ideal client and what's the message that you wanna give them?

Mark Petree 48:29

Yeah. So it's kind of funny because, my, CMO and I have gone back and forth on, who is the right client for us. And it's tough because we have had success with former Uber drivers who had success and then But what we found over time is, yeah, well, some will, it's a lower hit rate. my ideal client is number one, most important thing. They're spending money on ads. because I've had this experience so many times where I used to think it was all about, well, what are they doing a year? A two million, three million dollar operator, I used to think would be better than a half a million dollar operator, let's say half a million dollar operator spending 3,000 a month on ads and the three million dollar operator, nothing on ads. here's why I think, and it's this, when you first start running ads, the results in the beginning are going to be the worst, right?

Ken Lucci 49:30

Yep. Should like

Mark Petree 49:31

And, exactly. And there's going to be work associated with it. And what's very common is, people, or operators, the ones I found would struggle the most are the ones that maybe they had a seven figure business, but it was 95% affiliate. what's happening there, it's easier for them because they're not seeing the money they're not making, right?

Ken Lucci 49:53

Right,

Mark Petree 49:54

They're just not seeing that

Ken Lucci 49:55

No, they're not Let's say that again, though. They're not seeing the money that they're not making.

Mark Petree 50:03

and so there's two parts of it, really, because there's that, but almost the bigger pieces, like, what's your end game, right? Do you want to be, like, working, you You know, until you're 80 or whatever, do you want to build an asset that's actually worth something, right? And so if you do all affiliate work and you have even a couple affiliates, if you have one big affiliate and that's 80% of your work, I have bad news for you. that's a, I don't know how you sleep at night, right?

Ken Lucci 50:34

No, it, it's a wholesale, it's a wholesale business that will, that you have no control over, right? you do a great job at the service delivery, but if something happens to that network's customer, you have nothing else to fall back on. affiliate work is fantastic work as priming of your own pump, to prime the pump, to build your machine. So you like to deal with an operator who has already allocated money for ads, but you're gonna optimize, to give them a better return on investment.

Mark Petree 51:10

So, it used to be that our average client or smallest client, I should say, was spending about 2750 in total a month, between ads and what we were charging them. Now I would say it's closer to 5,500 to 6,000. and we've actually reduced the number of clients we have because, we found that we were spending time servicing the clients that needed more help than just marketing and you have to ask yourself, where do we draw the line in how much, you know, we provide? And so, so my ideal client is someone who sees the value in running ads, and is spending money on ads because I can guarantee them. I will get them, well, even when you consider whatever you're paying now in fees, because, that, that's something you have to factor in. I think a lot of times, just like with you, same sort of thing, whereas one agency could get you a 1X return on ad spend and the other gets you, let's say, a five or 6X.

Ken Lucci 52:18

Yep.

Mark Petree 52:19

That's a huge difference, right? If you're spending 5,000 If you're spending 10,000 a month on ads, because at that rate, let's say you're managing it yourself, if I can improve your results by just about 20%,

Ken Lucci 52:37

You've justified your investment.

Mark Petree 52:39

exactly. But we never do just 20%. Like, because there's so many things that multiply on top of each other. You know, there's, better targeting, there's lowering the cost per click, there's increasing the conversion rate of the landing page, there's increasing the lead to sale conversion rate. even a small percentage in each of these is gonna be more than 20%. And that's why I love doing this because you can see really crazy, returns, when things are done correctly and then integrating everything and we're getting more and more into this because we really wanna manage the site and the PPC and have everything following through, your CRM, which then we're sending that data to whatever you use, Limo Anywhere, Fast Track, Santa Cruz, whatever it might be. a lot of the softwares make it a little difficult, but, Limo Anywhere, which is the most popular one, they have a Zapier connection, which makes this,

Ken Lucci 53:43

fantastically easy. Oh, yep. Connectivity is

Mark Petree 53:47

which, It's 2026, like typing in things in the fields, it just, Yeah,

Ken Lucci 54:11

on any

Mark Petree 54:11

it.

Ken Lucci 54:12

on any given month, we're reviewing, analyzing, and managing at least 50 sets from 50 different companies. So listen, I get the desire to DIY things, but for what you do and what I do, it's very difficult to DIY it and get optimum results.

Mark Petree 54:33

100%.

Ken Lucci 54:35

client the other day, said to me,"What should I be spending on sales and marketing?" And I, wait a minute. First of all, they're two different things, okay? Selling and marketing are two different things. And what are you doing now? 10,000 a month. Okay. Well, what's your return on investment? Well, what do you mean? How many leads are you getting? I don't know. I mean, what's, what, what impressions, what awareness, how many leads, how many quotes, what's your conversion rate? Didn't know any of it. You know, there's a mathematical

Mark Petree 55:05

super common. That's I would say there's very few that have those numbers.

Ken Lucci 55:11

right, but you're right because they DIY it and all they do is, I just wanna stroke a check and let them take my credit card, okay? There's a mathematic equation to everything in business. And I came to this information way too late in life, okay? And I credit my business partner because we started working together, in the security space and we figured out what the mathematics of the home security space. And then when we started doing this part-time, everything is an equation. And from a marketing perspective, we, we start at the revenue side, right? We start when the revenue is created. There's a completely different set of mathematic equations above that, and no one is managing them. It starts with the awareness, creating the awareness. It is filling out the form, that's the action, and then it's the conversion rate So I would encourage everybody to book some time with you. if you are spending money on ad now, and you wanna optimize your business, 30 minute conversation with Mark will enlighten you, and he will go into much more proprietary detail of what he does. And look, I have been a fan of yours for many, many years, and I've seen a lot of people coming and going in the space. Some of them, you know, have been my good friends, and they all say the same thing. the operator expects me not only to create the lead for them, but I swear to God, they're not taking into account how they're treating the lead. they're treating the lead as a one and done. So Mark, tell people how to reach you. How do we get in touch with you?

Mark Petree 56:50

So, in a month from now we'll have a new site, but, our phone number's 855-255-5466. I can give it, a link to you in the description, if you want in this video. And, yeah, if you're spending money on ads, because whether you work with us or someone else, you should know from your agency how much you are making, it's easy to find out how much you're spending, right? That's, you can just Exact- exactly. But, but how much are you making and where is that traffic coming from? Specifically if you're doing SEO, Google ads, Bing ads, Facebook ads, you should know on each platform, how much you're making from that platform, and then what is your return on ad spend? So if I spend a thousand on Google Ads, how much am I getting back? And remember that it's not just, you know, especially for you operators that do Black Car and, and I have a video, that I'm putting on my channel just about the story I just told, but it's, it's about the, the second sale, not even the second sale, it's about being curious, like you said, Ken. Like, w- why, why, you know, are you calling me now? Like, what,

Ken Lucci 58:09

What did you

Mark Petree 58:09

what is the reason Exactly. Don't you have someone who does this for you?

Ken Lucci 58:14

I wish I could clone myself because I enjoy the concept I...It's not being

Mark Petree 58:28

it

Ken Lucci 58:28

one's doing it. concept...And we did a webinar, for Nila on selling value. and we even had the lady who wrote the book on selling value on this podcast, and I became so obsessed with this book that we did a webinar, and one of my clients was in the webinar at Nila, and he said to me,"You need to create a course on this and come teach my reservationist." And meanwhile, I'm saying,"Wait a minute, we're doing your financial reporting, we're doing your KPIs." I mean, and and we're ha- right. And, and we're, we're helping you with sales data analytics, and now you want me to train your reservationist. maybe it'll be a retirement job, who

Mark Petree 59:12

Maybe just hop on the phone, Ken, yourself. Maybe you just No.

Ken Lucci 59:24

the sales. I'll be the Alec Bal-

Mark Petree 59:26

needs. I, I'm Set a steak knives, right?

Ken Lucci 59:35

John, remind me, we will do a dissection of there's two fantastic movies for sales, and one is Glen Gary Glenn Ross. There's no question about it, okay? And then the second one is about Jordan Belfor, which I will shy away from. But the, the Glen Gary Glenn Ross movie taught me more about sales, but you almost have to watch it with someone who knows sales. But anyway, we digress. Mark Petrie from Limo Marketers, absolutely great. We're gonna flash up your email address and your phone number when the, uh, video was finished. It's been an absolute pleasure, and, um, don't be a stranger, we'll have you on again.

Mark Petree 1:00:18

Yeah, no, and I, I, I'd love to have you on again as well, Ken. Thanks for,

Ken Lucci 1:00:22

anytime you need me on a YouTube, th- this is stuff that Monday through Thursday, I have to look at financials constantly. On Friday, I try to keep it light. So if you wanna record anything on

Mark Petree 1:00:32

One, 100%. I'll hit you up.

Ken Lucci 1:00:35

All right, this has been another exciting episode of the Ground Transportation Podcast. and we'll see you again next week.

Speaker 1:00:43

Thank you for listening to the ground transportation podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please remember to subscribe to the show on apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. For more information about PAX training and to contact James, go to PAX training.com. And for more information about driving transactions and to contact Ken, Go to driving transactions.com. We'll see you next time on the ground transportation podcast.