You didn’t start your pressure washing, roofing, or pest control business to sift through marketing data all day. But without tracking key metrics, you may be throwing away your marketing dollars without seeing any return on investment.
Take the case of a local landscaping business owner, Newton, I helped who was spending $2,000 every month on Facebook ads. He wasn’t sure what was working—or if it was working at all. Newton simply boosted Facebook posts without any strategy. During our first consultation, he realized he was wasting money on unmeasured, unfocused marketing.
If you’re like Newton, you might not know how to track your marketing efforts or may be focused on the wrong data. Don’t worry. This guide outlines the five key metrics every home services business should track to ensure digital marketing success—and how to track them.
1. Website Traffic
Your website traffic, just like foot traffic in physical stores, tells you how many people are visiting your store.
You need to know how many people visit your website daily and where they are coming from. Here are the metrics to track:
Total monthly visitors: How many people visit your website each month? You should aim to increase this number.
Traffic Sources: Where are your website visitors coming from? Is it from your Google Business Profile, Facebook ads, TikTok videos, guest posts, etc.?
New vs. returning visitors: this tells you the percentage of your traffic that are new versus returning users who have visited your website before.
This data allows you to know which marketing channels are working so you can put more resources into them.
How to track website metrics: You can track these website metrics from your Google Search Console or Google Analytics page.
2. Conversion Rate:
This is the number of visitors who take the desired action. For example, as a service provider, conversion for you can be having visitors call you or fill out a contact or booking form.
A high conversion rate indicates that you are targeting the right people. For a local service provider, a conversion rate of 3% or above is great. This means that for every 1000 people that visit your site, 30 of them take action. Not bad.
Here are some tips to improve your conversion rate:
Display your contact details (phone number and email) prominently.
Add a clear call-to-action button ("Book Now," "Get free quote").
Make your forms easy to find and fill out.
If you are getting a lot of traffic but no conversions, focus on the quality of your traffic. Identify the traffic sources that convert and put more resources into it.
How to track conversion rate: You can use Google Analytics to track your conversion rate.
3. Cost Per Lead (CPL):
As a home service company owner, every marketing dollar you spend counts. Cost per lead measures how much it costs to acquire each lead. You can determine the CPL by dividing your total spend by the number of leads you got.
For example, if you spend $1,000 and get 50 leads, that will be about $20 per lead. The ideal cost per lead varies by industry. Here are some CPL estimates based on industry:
Plumbing: $30 - $75
HVAC: $35 - $95
Pressure washing: $20- $45
Landscaping: $25-$55
Roofing: $50-$125
Mortgage broker: $65-$125
Insurance agent: $45-$100
Remember, a high cost per lead isn't necessarily bad if your service prices are high. For example, a CPL of $200 for a $2,000 kitchen remodel job is money well spent.
In addition to CPL, you should track the customer acquisition cost. It is similar to CPL, but goes beyond the ad cost to cover every single cost and resource associated with acquiring a customer. To get the customer acquisition cost, you need to add the marketing costs, sales time, consultation cost, etc., and then divide the total cost by the number of new customers you got from the effort.
4. Customer Retention Rate
While it is important to attract new customers, keeping existing ones is often more profitable. The retention rate tells you how many of your customers are making repeat purchases.
Improving customer retention rate could lower your marketing costs and lead to higher customer lifetime value. To increase retention rate, offer personalized and exceptional services with consistent follow-ups.
5. Social Media Engagement:
Social media is a powerful marketing tool for connecting with your audience. The metric for success on social media is not the number of followers you have but the engagement you get.
Track and improve social media engagement metrics like likes, shares, and comments.
Post engaging content that aligns with your audience.
Interact with your customers, either by responding to their comments or through direct messages.
Most social media platforms provide an analysis dashboard to track your engagement metrics. Higher social media engagement could lead to more traffic to your website and more conversions.
You don't need fancy tools to start tracking these metrics today. Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and a simple spreadsheet will do the trick.
Track and refine your strategy to improve each metric. Be sure to get help if you feel overwhelmed. The team at Succession Marketing helps small businesses to implement and actualize their marketing goals. We can take over the heavy work of tracking and improving your marketing metrics while you focus on growing your business.
Call us today at 305-809-6360 or email us at Ana@SuccessionMarketing.com for a free consultation.
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