Knowing what worked is the hard part
Most businesses run ads in a few places and honestly can't say which one works. Ask where last month's jobs came from and you get a shrug and a good guess.
So we set up the tracking first, before anything is spent. Call tracking on the ad numbers. Tagging on the forms. Every lead arrives carrying the name of whatever earned it.
After that, every budget conversation is about facts. This channel costs you this much per real lead. That one costs three times as much. Move the money.
Every channel judged against the same number
You do not have a Google Ads budget and a Facebook budget and an SEO budget. You have one budget, and a phone that either rings or doesn't.
So everything points at one number - what a real lead costs you - and that number decides the split.
- Search ads for the people already looking for you
- Local Services Ads for the trades, where you pay per lead instead of per click
- Facebook and Instagram for the people who haven't started looking yet
- YouTube for being known in your area before they need you
- Local SEO underneath all of it, so that in time some of the calls stop costing you anything
The right mix is different for every business, and it changes through the year. That is the entire reason for measuring it.
The leak is usually after the lead arrives
More often than not, the problem is not how many leads you get. It is what happens to them once they land.
Harvard Business Review audited 2,241 companies to see how quickly they answered a web inquiry. The average was 42 hours.
Somebody filled in your form at seven in the evening because they needed help. By nine the next morning they have already called two of your competitors. Your price never came into it.
This costs more than any campaign we could run for you, and unlike a campaign, fixing it is free.
A broken form looks exactly like a quiet week
Forms break. A plugin updates, a mail setting changes, a spam filter starts eating them. Nothing tells you. The page still says thank you. The leads just stop.
We host and manage more than 80 client sites, and we wrote our own monitoring to watch them. Whether the contact form is still sending is one of the things it checks.
If you are spending money on ads, this is the failure that costs the most and gets spotted the last. Go and test your own form today, from your phone, using a name nobody there will recognize. Then note the time.
Leads should land where you will actually see them
An email is not a notification. It arrives in the same inbox as the invoices and the newsletters, and it waits its turn.
We would rather your phone buzzed the second the form was sent, with the name and the number right there on the screen, so you can call back while they are still on your website.
We wrote a tool for that, because everything we found wanted a Twilio account and a monthly bill to do something simple.
What we count as a win
- A real call or form fill from someone who wants your help. Not a click, not a visit, not an impression.
- We agree what qualified means for your business before anything launches, so nobody is arguing about the definition three months in.
- A lead is not a sale. We are on the hook for the phone ringing, and for it being worth answering. Closing the job is yours.
- The most expensive lead you will ever buy is the one you already paid for and never called back.
Is this you?
This service is a good fit if:
- You spend on marketing but can't say what each channel earns
- You want one team watching the whole funnel
- You need steady leads, not bursts and droughts
- You are not completely sure your contact form still works
We've built this for
Common questions
What counts as a lead?
A real call or form fill from someone who wants your help - not a click, not a visit. We agree what qualified means for your business before we start.
How do you track where leads come from?
Call tracking on the ad numbers and tagging on the forms, both set up before any money is spent. Every lead shows its source.
How fast should I answer a lead?
Faster than you think. The research puts the average business at 42 hours, and the ones that answer within minutes do far better. Getting the alert onto your phone is most of the fix.
How do I know my contact form still works?
Fill it in yourself from your phone, using a name nobody there will recognize, then wait. Do it after any website change. On the sites we host, our own monitoring watches this for you.
Do I have to run every channel?
No. Most businesses start with one or two. The point is that whatever you run is measured against the same number, so you can tell what to feed and what to cut.