Posted by Rich Harshaw on June 8, 2016.
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.
Posted by Rich Harshaw on June 6, 2016.
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.
Posted by Rich Harshaw on May 31, 2016.
Post Category: Client Success.
I once watched my brother-in law Jared pull 42 rainbow and brown trout out of the Mountain Fork River in SE Oklahoma in an hour with a fly rod.
That’s one fish every 86 seconds.
A few minutes into doing it, other fisherman—who were having far less luck—started to notice.
Then they started to congregate. Then they started to crowd him out. He finally quit after an hour because he was getting overrun.
Funny thing, none of them were catching nearly as many fish. A lot of them weren’t catching ANY fish at all.
In the exact same spot.
On a related note (sort of), did you know 65% of remodeling contractors don’t use PPC?
Here are the main reasons why:
- They got crappy results when they tried it in the past.
- They think PPC leads are low quality.
- They think it costs too much.
In other words, they think it’s a giant waste of time.
One of our clients, Merrell Home Improvements, thought PPC was giant waste of time, too.
They had tried it in the past with another company and failed miserably. By the time we got together to build their website, they wanted nothing to do with PPC. They wouldn’t even have the conversation with us for MONTHS.
They didn’t even believe us when we told them the results were guaranteed—there is literally no way you can lose. The MAXIMUM you will pay is $200 per lead. If it goes over during the testing phase, we pay the difference out of our pocket.
Finally, reluctantly, he agreed to try.
Result: 38 leads in the first 4 weeks—at a ridiculously low cost per lead of $121.61.
That’s like 42 trout in 60 minutes ridiculous.
Check it out:
A bird’s-eye view of the detailed report we review with you after every PPC cycle.
(Don’t worry: We spell it all out for you!)
How do we get results that are so much better than everyone else?
The exact same way Jared out-fishes all those other wannabes on the banks of the river:
We are experts who know exactly what we are doing—not just jokers sitting on the side of a river somewhere praying for a nibble.
No, this is not my brother-in-law Jared. If it were, he’d be holding 42 trout, not just one.
I’ll update you on Merrell’s progress in the future… their lead counts will go up and the cost per lead will go down as the campaign optimizes.
Meanwhile, here are some things you can do:
Have a great day!
Rich
P.S. Tomorrow, I’ll show you how we took a window company in a hyper-competitive market to #1 on Google. Their website is pulling in an absurd amount of high-quality leads. Look for the details in the next email.
Posted by Rich Harshaw on May 12, 2016.
I hear the lamest excuses for NOT doing pay-per-click (PPC) advertising:
- We got ripped off one time by some PPC dude
- The leads are garbage; they don’t convert
- It only works if you’ve been around for a long time
What utter nonsense. All of it. Let’s get real.
We took a brand new company in Pennsylvania called “One Week Kitchen and Bath” from having no website and no customers… to generating SALES from PPC leads in less than 3 weeks.
Here’s how it happened:
They came to us after watching a webinar to create a website and manage a PPC campaign.
We normally need about three months to build a contractor’s website. But since it’s nearly impossible for a new business to even start marketing without a website, we pulled out all the stops and built the client a five-page mini-site (instead of the usual 30-25 pages) in just one week.
After all, leads RIGHT NOW are much better than leads three months from now, right?
We started with nothing on Monday, April 18th and were able to write all the content, create all the code, and launch the site on Friday, April 22nd. The following Tuesday (April 26th), we launched the PPC campaign with a minimum spend for his product and market of $3,000.
This contractor went from no website to awesome, lead-generating website within 3 weeks.
And so far, the results have been an unqualified success.
In just 10 days, (from launch to May 7th) our “Little Website That Could” has generated six PPC leads at a solid cost-per-lead of $202.84. We expect that cost per lead to drop to less than $175 by Memorial Day.
Now the best news: They’ve already closed 2 of the 6 leads for $26,250 in total revenue.
To be clear: that’s $26,250 in revenue in the bank just 19 days removed from having NOTHING.
So tell all those whiners and doubters who say PPC doesn’t work to go SUCK IT.
When the campaign is properly structured and properly funded… and when you have the right website to convert lookers into buyers, IT ALWAYS WORKS. Always.
We’ll continue to update this story in future emails—keep your eyes peeled.
In the meantime, click here to find out more about what our PPC advertising can do for you. We’re the only company that GUARANTEES quality PPC leads and 100% percent of our clients make money with our PPC services.
