It takes us roughly 5 working days to get things set up for you and then we start running your ads. Results – in the form of booked appointments – can appear the first day your ads run. Although we would expect it to take a few days before the specific set-up we’ve created for you finally beds in. From there, we refine your ads as results come in, looking for small improvements in order to increase overall results. That can take 3 – 4 weeks. But you’ll be getting appointments in the meantime – and we’ll be aiming to run the size of campaign necessary to keep your company fully busy throughout. You need to be able to handle the increased appointments and orders before we begin your ad campaign.

The problem is that – way too often – the people sending you leads are simply sending you email addresses and, possibly, a phone number. Those details are often coming from people who might be thinking about your service… who are possibly wondering about the price… who think they may need to address the situation in the coming year or so…But they’re not buying now. Certainly not this season. Quite possibly not this year. Or even next. They’re just thinking about it right now. To sort out the buyers from the ‘just looking’ requires you to make hundreds of calls and dozens of follow ups. This takes weeks at least – and ends with few or no sales at the end of it. And you’ll quickly realise that you’re not the only  home improvement company chasing what little business there is. Every other company seems to be chasing the same leads. We don’t put you through any of this. To qualify as a lead respondents to our ads have to fill in a questionnaire and then our team will follow out with the lead ourselves to book them into your calendar if they are in fact they are qualified to buy.  And then we need their full contact details. People who give us all this detail are real leads – people who are serious about it. You receive the appointment details as they’re booked.This is a qualified lead: happy to hand over all their details and willing to book an appointment with your company. They’re genuinely looking to buy. Anybody else – the ‘just looking’ crowd – don’t want to go down this route. So they don’t fill in their details – and you don’t end up with a lead that simply won’t convert. And the leads we send you are exclusive leads – only your company gets them. In fact, the person’s entire experience of giving their details and booking their appointment is carried out on pages we created… but which display your company name, photos and logo. So when you call them they already know who you are. Not all leads are equal. Some leads will possibly become a sale eventually – but many more almost certainly will not. Typically, a home improvement company will receive leads that contain mostly the second type – ones that will not produce a sale.

There’s a huge number of people who look like potential home improvement customers but who are in fact ‘just looking’. And many of the ‘just looking’ will simply drop the idea and revisit it next year. Or the year after. But there’s a smaller audience who’s actively seeking to buy your service right now – and want to close a deal in the next week or two. Most lead generation agencies will dump both types on you. Your team will then spend days and weeks trawling through hundreds of leads, calling them up trying to work out who is serious and who was just curious at the time. Whereas we qualify leads before you ever see them. A lead has to book an appointment before we send their details to you. So you get more of the motivated buyers and fewer of the ‘just looking’ people. That’s what a genuine lead looks like to us. So we lose the tyre-kickers, the ‘just looking’. Which means we’re left with fewer leads. But these are what we call ‘high quality leads’ – motivated buyers, often with financing in place, who are ready to pull the trigger. The kind of leads you can build a business on.

Leads aren’t free so they represent a cost of doing business. Nothing surprising about that. But not all leads are equal and some eat into your profit margins more than others. If you’re getting leads from one channel at £300 to £400 each and converting one out of five into orders then you’re paying £1500 – £2000 per new sale. You’ll have to factor that into your pricing. If your Profit Point orders are coming in at £100 – £350 each… which they generally will be… then you can better judge where your marketing pounds need to be spent. It’s easier to know what your profit margins are likely to be when you know what your leads costs are.