Before You Spend More on Ads, Check What Happens to Your Leads

Runtime 3:40

Transcript

You're getting leads, but you need more sales. Should you increase your advertising budget to get more leads—or change what happens after a lead comes in? Here is some data that will help you figure this out.

You already know that when someone submits your online form or leaves you a voicemail, you should call them back as soon as possible. The longer you wait, the more likely those leads will go with a competitor who reached them first. Here is what you may not know.

Research from Velocify found that leads called within one minute were 391 percent more likely to become customers than leads called later. That's almost five times the likelihood of a sale. Salesforce also reported that 35 percent to 50 percent of sales go to the vendor who responds first.

But being first doesn't necessarily mean being fast. You could call five, ten, or fifteen minutes later and still be the first business to respond. Think about what the customer could be doing 10, 15, 20 minutes after submitting your online form or leaving you a voicemail.

They could be filling out forms on your competitors' websites. Ideally, you want to reach them before they have time to do that. So it's not just about being the first to respond — you want to get back to them within the first minute.

Dr. James Oldroyd's—Oldroyd... I hope I'm not butchering his name too much — his Lead Response Management Study also showed how quickly that opportunity shrinks.

Businesses that called a lead within five minutes had 100 times the odds of reaching them on the phone—and 21 times the odds of reaching a qualified prospect—compared with waiting thirty minutes. And that's just to reach them on the phone. The chances of reaching and qualifying that lead drops a lot in those first few minutes and continue falling over the first hour.

So getting back to them quickly matters. But that's only the first part. Some people won't buy right away — even after you've spoken with them or visited their property and given them an estimate.

For those people, you need a structured follow-up sequence that includes a couple of text messages, some follow-up emails, one or two phone calls, and some targeted follow-up ads. You plan that follow-up over the next one to three weeks depending on the service you provide and whether your customers need it urgently or they're the planning types. And make the follow-up relevant — don't show them generic emails and ads.

Answer their most common questions and concerns. Address what matters to them. Help them feel confident about choosing you.

Published case studies have shown results like 30% more deals closed, along with substantial increases in sales from following up on estimates that hadn't yet turned into jobs. So these aren't bad leads. A lot of them just needed more follow-up after you gave them the estimate.

And you can set this up with conventional marketing tools. Now, with AI, you can further customize your automatic follow-up messages to match what you and the customer actually talked about — as long as the AI is well trained in your business and your industry. We can talk about your options during your growth review.