Filtering Posts by Month: June, 2016

Let me tell you about this ugly guy in the picture.

He’s an anglerfish. Besides having a face not even Mother Teresa could love, he’s best known for being a conman.

He uses that bright, shiny, glowing stalk on his head as lure for prey.

From afar, the prey thinks the gleaming beacon is food. So the prey swims toward the lure, thinking it’s found itself a nice snack.

Then the prey gets up close. That shiny thing isn’t food at all. It’s a trap.

A deadly one.

The prey’s been tricked. But it’s too late to turn back.

The anglerfish’s barbed fangs sink into the prey.

Anglerfish: 1. Prey: 0.

—

Here’s the point of the story…

PPC providers are the anglerfish. And you’re the prey.

Many PPC companies show you beautiful, glossy reports to entice you to do business with them.

The colorful graphs and pretty pie charts draw you in. On the surface, the reports look substantial, important, and insightful.

Take a look at part of an anonymous report from another PPC company…

PPC lead report from unidentified company.

It’s bright. Spiffy. Vibrant. And it appears to convey significant information.

But a closer look reveals it’s nothing but a chocolate Easter Bunny: Sweet on the outside, hollow on the inside.

Here’s why.

Notice how the report classifies phone calls into four groups: Answered, Voicemail, Hang-up, and Other.

Sounds logical, right? Sure.

Just one problem—those 24 “answered” calls were counted as leads.

And this is where the anglerfish’s giant barbed fangs sink into your flesh.

Just because someone calls your company doesn’t mean it’s a lead.

• A homeowner contacting you from 500 miles away is not a lead.
• A telemarketer pitching copier toner is not a lead.
• A current customer calling to check the status of his job is not a lead.
• Little Timmy hitting a wrong digit while dialing nanna is not a lead.

But a lot of PPC companies don’t differentiate between ready-to-buy prospects and the Little Timmys of the world. They consider ALL calls “leads.”

So when the company provides you with your report at the end of the month, they can say, “Look at all the leads we provided you! Money, please!”

Unfortunately, most contractors don’t know any better. So they take the bait and fork over thousands of dollars a month to get calls from copy-toner salesmen, someone’s grandkids, and the occasional lead.

It’s a total sham. Which is why MYM has done something about it.

Our PPC team has developed a classification system that clearly separates leads from non-leads.

In your weekly PPC report, we provide you with transcripts and recordings of online chats and phone calls.

We classify each as a “lead” or “non-lead,” and place them in a subset of one of those two categories.

Take a look:

Chart of leads vs. non-leads.

Here’s a breakdown of the categories…

• Lead Calls, Repeat Lead Calls & Chat Calls: Calls in which you book an appointment or capture contact info.
• Lost Opportunity: When the lead is interested, but the person answering your phone doesn’t set the appointment or capture contact info.
• Unanswered Calls: Calls that are not answered or go to voicemail. (PPC-lead calls must be answered immediately or called back within five minutes.)
• Zero Value: Wrong numbers, calls outside your service area, not for the services you provide, or from salespeople.
• Remaining Categories: Self-explanatory. These are not leads.

Under the “Result” column on our Call Transcription Report, you’ll see which category each call fits into:

MYM PPC Call Transcription Report. Names and contact info removed for privacy.

That’s how proper lead reporting is done.

No fancy graphics. No superfluous graphs or pie charts.

Just the info you NEED to know—spelled out clearly and transparently—so you can maximize profits.

Want to know if you’re being baited by the bright, shiny lure of highfalutin PPC reporting? Click here for a free Lead Generation Audit.

We’ll tell you if your PPC, SEO, and website are truly driving leads to your business… or if getting “anglerfished.”

Until tomorrow.

-Rich

P.S. Here’s a video of the anglerfish in action. Fast-forward to the 45-second mark to see how it uses its lure to attract prey. Crazy stuff.

Last email, I told you how most PPC companies are drop-dead awful at reporting.

To recap: They give you very little (or no) information about your campaign’s numbers so you can know whether or not it’s, you know, actually working.

Today I want to show you the kind of report you should be getting from any PPC company.

I snagged one of the weekly PPC reports we send to our clients and screenshotted some of the most important pages.

On those pages, I’ve highlighted the unique data we report on that almost no other company does (for example: online chat logs, transcribed phone calls, and leads vs. non-leads).

Why almost no PPC companies provide this level of detail, I have no idea.

Maybe they don’t have the resources. Maybe they’re lazy. Maybe they’re hiding something.

Whatever the reason, you’re handing your money to someone who has zero accountability. Someone who’s taking your money and spending it on… well, who knows?

Stop it.

Accept nothing less than the level of reporting I’m about to show you.

Strap yourself in.

Campaign Summary

This is the page with all of the “nerd numbers” (cost per click, impressions, etc.). We take things a step further and provide details on chat leads, lost opportunities, and the all-important cost per lead.

1.    Cycles – We break your campaign down into bite-sized chunks called “cycles” to help give you deep detail on how it’s progressing.

2.    Calls – Not every call is a lead. We separate calls and leads, so you know how many potentially profitable calls you’re receiving. Unlike a lot of PPC companies, we don’t count things like telemarketing calls and wrong numbers as leads.

3.   Chat Leads – We document the PPC leads that come via chat and transcribe them on a separate page.

4.   Total Leads – Once we determine which calls are real, bona fide leads, we add them up in this column.

5.   Cost Per Lead – This is how much you’re spending per lead—possibly the most important number in the report.

6.   Lost Opportunities – We also track leads that were improperly handled by the client. If we see a pattern developing, we step in and help the client fix the problem.

Cycle Summary

On this page, we break down your leads into different categories.

1.    Cycle – Each cycle, we determine which leads were good (green), which were lost (gray and yellow), and which weren’t really leads to begin with (basically, all the other colors).

2.    Lead, Repeat Lead, And Chat Calls – These rows are the “money makers.” Leads that show up here were either booked for an appointment or provided their contact info.

3.    Lost Opportunities And Unanswered Calls – The amount of leads the client either mishandled on the phone or did not answer. Note: We do not count voicemails as leads. If you don’t answer the first time a PPC lead calls, or don’t call them back within 5 minutes, you’ve almost always lost them for good.

4.    Totals – The amount of leads you acquired in each cycle, along with actual Cost Per Lead and potential Cost Per Lead (a.k.a. “Lost Opportunity”) lost due to call issues.

Call Transcripts

We document, transcribe, and audio record all of your phone calls. This lets you see how well you’re closing leads over the phone and if there are issues you need to iron out.

Chat Log

We retain copies of all web chats. We classify each chat under a different Lead Type Name, so you can easily see which ones are leads and which ones aren’t.

Chat Log (Zoomed)

Here’s a closer look at a transcribed online chat.

Now that’s PPC reporting.

If you aren’t getting that level of detail from your current PPC provider, you’re getting jipped. Plain and simple.

If you’re not sure if your current PPC campaign is pulling its weight, we can tell you. Click here for a free, no-strings website lead-generation audit. We’ll review your PPC and SEO efforts and let you know how they stack up to your competitors’.

Talk to you soon,

-Rich

P.S. In my next email, I’ll explain why we don’t consider every phone call a lead. A lot of PPC companies try to pull a fast one and make you believe that 33 calls = 33 leads. It’s a load of crap. I’ll tell you why tomorrow.

Imagine how you’d feel if your bank didn’t offer online access to your account, but instead, just sent you a simple statement every month.

And what if that simple statement only showed your balance?

No transactions, no line items.  Nothing.

Just a number. “Here’s how much money you have.”

Would you be okay with that?

Or worse, what if they never sent you… ANYTHING? No statements. No online access. Nothing.

Is it fair to say that you’d find a new bank, immediately?

———

Yet, bafflingly, many remodeling companies continue to put up with terrible PPC reporting month after blessed month.

Many remodelers get no reporting whatsoever.

And those who do often discover that there’s not enough information provided to make intelligent decisions.

“Here’s your cost per click.” Okay, is that cost per click good or bad?

“Here’s how many phone calls you got.” Okay, but how many of those phone calls were actually leads?

“Here’s how much money you spent.” Okay, but how many leads were generated?

At the end of the day, they give you no way to know if your campaign is truly working or where your money is going.

Case in point…

One of our bathroom remodeling clients hired us to build their website, but already had another company running their PPC campaign.

They said at the end of the month, they’d get an email stating the cost per lead and the total number of leads.

When I asked them if the “leads” were actually good LEADS, they shrugged and said they didn’t know.

So I showed them what our WEEKLY reporting looks like—what PPC should look like.

I think I heard the guy fall off his chair over the phone.

Here’s the deal:

When you spend money on PPC, you should always INSIST that you know the following every WEEK:

• How much money was spent, to the penny.
• How many phone calls were generated.
• How many of those phone calls were actual leads—not just some dude trying to sell you copier toner. Or a customer calling in with a question. Or somebody who hung up before you could answer.
• How many real, bonafide LEADS you generated (from calls, web forms, and chat)
• How much each of those actual LEADS cost you to generate.
• How many opportunities you lost because you didn’t handle the calls correctly.

See, all the other numbers are just noise.

Cost per click? Who cares? Number of impressions? Irrelevant. Click through ratio? I couldn’t care less.

The above sentence is sacrilege in the PPC community. All the PPC nerds in the world breathlessly compare CPCs, impressions, and other nerd-crap that ultimately doesn’t matter.

The only thing that does matter is LEADS. And to be hyper-specific:

• How many leads do you get, and at what cost per lead?
• Are the leads high quality; do they convert into sales?

Nothing else matters. Literally nothing.

At the end of the day, you aren’t buying clicks. You’re not even buying leads. You’re buying SALES.

So all the nonsense, BS clicky numbers you might be getting from your PPC provider are just that. BS nonsense.

And if you’re not getting any numbers (reporting) at all—well, all I can say is:

You are a sucker. Sorry, there’s no other way to say it.

You are handing over money every month to somebody who is quite literally screwing you over.

They don’t have your best interest at heart. They’re not maximizing your spend. They’re simply loading their pockets with as much of your money as possible.

And you just let them.

Like a spouse you suspect of having an affair who puts a 10-digit lock code on their phone and refuses to let you check their call or text history.

You just sit there and take it. You hope everything will turn out alright—despite massive evidence to the contrary.

If that sounds harsh—it’s supposed to.

Here’s the good news: it doesn’t have to be that way.

In my next email, I’ll show you a REAL PPC report, and point out some critical elements you should be looking for.

Yes, a real PPC report has some of that nerd-crap on it, too. It will show the cost per click, number of impressions, and all that stuff. Of course. It’s part of running a PPC campaign.

But wait until you see the LEADS.

And the cost per lead.

And the calls that were NOT leads.

And the transcriptions of those calls.

And the leads that came from chat.

And the chats transcriptions that show which chats were leads, and which were not.

And the total number of opportunities you MISSED because you didn’t handle leads properly.

It’s all in there.

I’ll show it to you in my next post.

Until then, happy marketing!

Rich Harshaw

PS. Are you even using chat on your website (for PPC and regular web traffic?) If not, you are losing opportunities—big time. More on that in a future email.

“What do you mean my husband needs to be present for a quote? You’re sexist!”

That’s what a prospect said to one of our roofing clients a few weeks ago… right before she trashed them on Yelp and Google for being “misogynists.”

Here’s what happened…

The woman called our client for a quote on a new roof. As is standard with this company (and probably yours, too), they require both parties present if the prospect is married. You know, to ensure everybody in the home is on the same page about the project.

This woman didn’t take it that way. She believed our client didn’t want to provide HER with the quote because she was a woman.

Before our client could even explain their “both parties present” policy, she hung up on them and instantly took to the internet.

She lit into our client on all of the biggest review websites, leaving a one-star rating in her wake.

Yelp: One star.

Google: One star.

Facebook: One star.

All because she thought the client was insulting her.

Welcome to 2016, where people are eager to take offense… and even more eager to hop on the internet to let everyone know about it.

As a contractor, you’re especially vulnerable to the wrath of today’s Online Grievance Mob. (You already know about the roofer who lost $1.5 million because a crazy customer left online reviews accusing the owner of murder.)

Here’s why: People are over 50% more likely to leave a negative online review than a good one. And studies show negative reviews carry A LOT more weight than positive reviews.

You could have 253 five-star reviews and a single one-star review on Yelp. And that lone bad review can still sway 80% of prospects considering your business.

In other words, your online reputation is more vulnerable than a baby seal being circled by a herd of hungry sharks.

Unless you have the proper protection.

We’ve spent the past 7 years developing a service that makes your business completely immune to bad online reviews.

It’s like wrapping your online reputation in a Kevlar vest—bad reviews aimed at you bounce right off, leaving no damage.

And if your business is already hemorrhaging money due to negative online reviews, this program stops the bleeding, sews up the wound, and makes your reputation as good as new again.

It’s called Online Reputation Management (ORM), and we launched it last week.

With ORM, prospects researching your company online will see only your “best side.” It’s perfect if you…

• Have an anemic online reputation and want to establish a dominating presence across all of the major review websites.
• Need to squash some negative online reviews to start over “fresh” with your reputation.
• Want to maintain or improve your already great online reputation.  (Studies show just a one-star increase on websites like Yelp spike profits by 5% to 11%.)

Watch the quick video below to see exactly why ORM is mandatory for maintaining a profitable business in today’s over-sensitive world… and why you’ll never have to fear a negative online review again.

Click to watch video

Have a great day!

-Rich

P.S. Check out my blog post on the 5 immediate ways to utilize online reviews on your website. Get this: Some businesses report as much as a 58% sales increase from their sites by adding a simple review widget!