Don’t get me wrong, being curious is a good thing; however, being curious enough to completely change the direction of your marketing without proper information can KILL your company.
Imagine this, you are working with a marketing agency that has been doing okay, but not great. Leads are flowing, deals are being closed, ROI is decent and overall this marketing agency is doing their job.
Then, let’s say, you start scrolling through Facebook, Instagram, or heaven forbid you end up on the TikTok death scroll, and you see an ad from a different marketing agency saying they can have a new AI backed marketing platform that is the new way of getting leads. You click on the ad and end up sitting on an appointment with the new agency because you are “curious” about this new AI thing.
After one meeting you are sold because they COULD, possibly, maybe, might, should get you more leads. Herein lies the issue 90% of home service contractors deal with every single day.
More leads.
Answer this question before you read on…
Do you want more leads, or more closed deals? Yes, there is a difference.
Some ideologies proclaim that more leads lead to more closed deals, and 10 years ago you would be correct. Now, cost per lead does not mean what it used to. Contractors need to now change their thinking to cost per closed deal. If the marketing is working, you’re closing deals, to just getting leads.
So, how do you know if your marketing is working?
Let me lay out how to track this thing in the most simplistic way possible.
Let’s use Google as our example.
Click through ratio is the first thing to look at. Click through is basically taking how many people see your ad divided by how many people click on your ad. This number should be around 15% depending on you market, ad spend and type of ad you’re running.
The second metric to look at is the number of leads. I know I said it means nothing earlier, but this will make sense soon.
The third number is how many appointments were set from those leads. You have to have tracking set up to get this number. If you don’t, call us and we’ll fix it…shameless plug.
Take the number of leads divided into the number of appointments and you get an attrition rate. This number should be over 50%.
Then go get your close rate, which is the fourth number, you divide appointments into closed deals.
If closed deals are all that matter, these are the only numbers that matter. Click through ratio, number of leads, number of appointments and closed deals. You get attrition rates and closing percentage using these numbers and now you know if the marketing is working.
Don’t let curiosity kill your marketing. Know your numbers. Stay informed. Be curious, yet cautious. And for heavens sake just communicate with your marketing agency.
