Instant Quote Door Hanger Marketing Math

Hello Augusta Nation. Hope you're doing super well. I wanted to make a quick video kind of talking about door hangers. I know I've done. We've talked about door hangers a lot and so this might seem like review, but we really didn't do a lot of door hangers. At least I myself at my locations until really just a few months ago when we started really going and using the instant quote door hangers. I'm going to explain today the math behind it and the reason I am is going to be, as you all know, when you come to training, I kind of talk about the top five marketing channels that I currently am thinking about. And for a long, long time it's been Google Local services. And for almost three, almost four years, ever since they came out, I just told everyone, pour every single dollar you possibly can on them. And to this day I still think they're the best. The problem is simply the fact that you usually don't get enough leads, so you'd be lucky to get a few a week in most of our markets. Some people maybe only one a week. Some of our great markets will get five or six a week and that's awesome. But it's hard to say, okay, if I want to grow and scale up, I can't depend on a couple leads a week, even if they're getting really good customer acquisition cost. So you need something else that you can pour the fuel of capital on in the form of marketing to be able to scale up much more fast. And so in the past, it's really been a blend with Google Ads recently and then Facebook ads kind of being behind that. In terms of online.

I have now changed to where door hangers is my number one marketing strategy, 110%. The only reason I can't say it is a second to Google Local services because Google Local services is so constrained by how many leads I can get. Door hangers right now is where we are focused on 100% of our time and energy. When it comes to my locations for marketing, the only reason we would spend on Google or Facebook is if the location needs just a temporary push of leads during a slow time. For example, like in August in Washington, we have a slow period because the grass gets really, really dormant. People aren't really getting into projects and we have that weird space of time before September, October, leaf season, fall cleanups, etc. So at that period of time, I'd probably do a little bit more like Facebook, Google Ads, et cetera. However.

Outside of that period of time and in my location, I'm really trying to scale up and grow. We are going all in on door hangers. After months of really running the math and seeing how this is working. And this was really led by really analyzing Google Ads over the past several months and looking at how many of my leads came from people simply just searching for Augusta lawn Care. The bottom line is with the domain authority that Augusta has, if someone searches the words Augusta Lawn Care in your market, you are popping up number one. I can almost guarantee it. If you've been in business for more than a few weeks and you have like one or two Google reviews, you will pop up number one on the the ranking. And if you have an address on Google Maps, you're going to also be there as well, organically. So what I've been seeing is more than half of our traffic is simply people searching for Augusta lawn Care. They're gonna find me anyways. And so yes, I get the click, yes, I can consider that a conversion on Google Google Ads. However, I think I could probably get 80 to 90% of that traffic anyways. Not of the total traffic of the people searching Augusta lawn Care. So let's just break it down a little better. Maybe 35 to 40% of that paid traffic I think I'd be getting already just by people. So many of them searching for Augusta lawn Care anyways. So.

When I've looked at this and I've been analyzing, hey, what is the customer acquisition cost during periods of really high demand, during spring rush, etc. Google is the place you want to be because people are searching for lawn care, landscaping, these services types. But outside of those periods of time, we are seeing customer acquisition costs still getting fairly high. 150, $200 for a customer acquisition cost is very high if I can beat that out. So the question basically becomes, can I beat that out with door hangers? And we've consistently seen that to be the case. I'm going to explain why I think that is right here. So let me make this a little bit bigger for you. All.

Right, so let's just assume that your conversion rate, you also close your response rate if you're doing every door direct mail and is 0.5%. So basically 1 in 200 people are going to call you from a door hanger or a postcard or a flyer. Half a percent of people are going to see your ad, click on it, ask for a lead, et cetera, ask for an estimate, et cetera. So we can kind of assume like, you know, point, you know, 50 cents per click, 50 cents per every door, direct mail, et cetera. If you assume that one of 200 clicks or one out of 200, every door direct mail converts, you'd have 100 customer acquisition cost. Okay, I'm rounding here, I'm making up numbers in terms of these numbers right here. But I just wanted to show this the case. All I care about is customer acquisition cost. And so the reason I feel like the instant quote door hangers work so well is it skips all of this action because typically, it's been noted that typically it takes six to eight touches to get a customer to finally make a purchasing decision. All right, the problem is I'm having to pay all of this time for all of these marketing campaigns, these flyers to be sent out, postcards, putting out yard signs, putting ads up on Facebook, Google, whatever it is, I'm having to get all these touches. And especially for locations that do not have brand awareness. Because the cool thing about brand awareness, for example, these touches as your business grows and scales up, is this can be done organically by just your trucks rolling around. They see your trucks day in and day out. All of a sudden they hit eight touches very, very quickly. So this is why when you grow and scale, you don't need to do any marketing because people are seeing your trucks, they're seeing your work, they're seeing you online, they're seeing their friends and family talk about you and hearing that you, you do not need to have these touches and you don't need to pay for these touches. And this typically happens in year three and beyond. And that's why your customer acquisition costs typically will go down after that period of time because you're ranking well in Google. There's people seeing you all around town and what's happening is they're getting these touches, these touches that are required for them to actually make a buying decision are happening organically now. But if you're starting out, you're starting brand new, you're going to have to pay for every single single one of these touches. If you're in a new market like I just got back from south park, starting a new location, no one knows Augusta Lawn Care down there. So do I a spend a lot of money educating them via Facebook, Google, YouTube, next door ads, every door, direct mail, all these other things. Or do I go straight for the jug jugular of direct sales? Because what I find a lot of times is we are playing the branding game with, with all of these different types of advertising, et cetera, with the hopes that eventually it pays off, and it does. But I would rather get sales along that period of advertising to keep the funnel alive and keep funding that flywheel of marketing in comparison to just keep putting money in for year one, year two, year three, and hoping that down the road it converts. And it will. Trust me, it will in the long run. But a lot of times people are either not patient enough or B, they run out of capital, keep funding that growth because they simply are. It's costing so much to just keep plowing money into getting these touches. The thing that's really, really cool, in my opinion, about every door direct mail campaign, sorry, about door hangers that have the instant quote is if you look at the funnel right here down at the bottom, typically have cost per click, then we have cost per lead, then we have customer acquisition cost. Now that cost per lead depends on our click percentage. Click through percentage or CTR click through rate. Your cost per lead is going to depend on your conversion rate website, how many people get from the website and then actually convert into a lead. Then the number of people that go from a lead and actually have a close ratio and become a customer. So there's kind of these three filters, and we've talked about these before inside of the.

Funnel, that potentially could weed people out. What I love about instant quote door hangers, where you're putting the price on the door hanger, is you skip all of this. You go from impressions, someone's seeing your door hanger all the way to a paying customer the next time that they talk to you. And so this is extremely efficient because you essentially blow through all of these touches all the way to the point where they are a paying customer. All right? And this is what you are otherwise paying for when you're doing all this online marketing and other indirect forms of marketing. But I like this form of, like, this is the most direct marketing I think you can do. And we've always done door hangers, but we've never before this year, we've never really thought about, okay, I want to have a price for property cleanup, a price for mulch job, price for mowing on every single impression. So what I am doing is I'm essentially turning impressions into leads. And then technically, I could say my close ratio is like 1%. Right? But what's so cool, what makes it so efficient is I'm skipping all these touches and going from impression to customer. Because when I put. Put a door hanger on someone's door that has the price for property cleanup, for mulch, for mowing, you know, if you're doing the one in the fall, it's going to be for aeration, overseeding, top dressing, et cetera. When I do that, I don't have to do anything after that. And so I, yes, I might not have the most accurate quote. And everyone gets react up on this thing about like, well, what about the price on the quote? There's many times when you have, you know, a 299, 399 price on a door hanger for a property cleanup and you're 100, 200 off like the 2, 3, 4 hours or you should have charged for dumping debris, a debris, extra debris on top of that. When you're first getting started, especially if you have less than three employees and you're spending money on marketing, this is potentially the best customer acquisition cost if you think about in terms of $20 an hour. Technically all I am looking for is can I get one customer to accept an estimate, Submit a picture of a door hanger back to my email every five hours. Anything less than that is going to beat out my $100 customer acquisition cost that I have from all the other marketing and from my experience. And every market is different, timing of the year is different, the services are different. What your pricing is, how aggressive you are in pricing is going to determine what is this rate of return. But I've been seeing like when I was in, in south park, every two to three hours, the ID door hangers click conservatively. I'm getting a paying customer, not a lead. A paying customer. Because when they send a picture back of that instant quote door hanger, they are accepting the job. There is no close ratio, there's no conversion and there's no click through. They are going from an impression all the way to a paying customer. Because when they take a picture of that job that that instant code, they're accepting the quote. Sorry, I'm doing all this drawing without showing you guys what I'm writing on five hours. Anything better than that is technically five times 20 better than a hundred dollars customer acquisition cost up here in the top, right? So I've seen this in my south park location and I'm really putting my money where my mouth is. We've run the math now for several months. I didn't believe it at first. I was like, this is kind of a fluke thing. Maybe Chuck's just good at it, Connor's just good at it. Then I go down there and like, dude, it works. And then furthermore, I pay some guy 20 bucks an hour. Just go put them out. And guess what? It worked for him too. And so right now, that is where we're putting our money. We are stopping all of our Google Ads and our Facebook ads at my new locations. And be very clear, my new locations, the growth locations don't usually spend any money on marketing and if they do, they would spend on Google and Facebook during their couple periods of slow season during the year. But for growth locations, we are probably going to be doing this next month and that is turning off all Google Ads and taking that money and hiring someone to go be full time doing door hangers between my locations. And this is what we'll do. Whichever of my locations is not performing the most in terms of booked out or needs, it doesn't have as many recurring customers. Guess what door hanger guy, he's in their neighborhoods for that week, for the next couple weeks, get them four or five, six, seven, eight mowing customers and move on to the next next place. I think it's a great tragedy. I think you can do this two to three times a year on each house. So like oh man, I'm gonna hit all my, the doors in my house, in my, in my territory really fast because I only have 15, 20,000 people in my area. You can hit someone for spring rush, for mowing and spring cleanup, etc, you can hit them in the middle of the summer for like a mulch install or again if they didn't do their spring cleanup, it's overgrown. And then in the winter, in this fall you can do core aeration, get a core aerator, get some seed, go rent the aerator for a day and knock out 30 or 40 core aerations. I guarantee you'll make it several thousand dollars. This is things that you can be doing when you're first getting started and when you're in growth mode when you have just a few employees. Once you become beyond that and you have a lot of trucks rolling, it's probably not worth your time because your trucks just going around and being strategically placed, cleaned, looking good, you've invested well into them. The trucks, the equipment, the uniform, et cetera, those are probably performing on all these touches that are typically going to be the thing that gets someone to a buying decision. Buying decision. Okay, so I hope that was helpful. I just want to be clear about what we are doing and that is we are focusing on door hangers more than Google, more than any other platform. When it comes to growth locations that have less than three to four employees and you have more than three to four employees. Your time as the general manager. Your time as the owner is going to be too far valuable to be going out and putting door hangers. And either A, you need to hire it out or B, just focus on Google and Facebook ads when you are slower and realize that your customer acquisition costs might not be as good, but it is probably in your best interest to not be spending gobs of time putting out door hangers compared to managing your crew of 10, 15 people. So that's what we are doing. We will report back in a couple of months how that is going. But after months of looking at these numbers and just consistently seeing that there's I can't beat 40 to $60 customer acquisition cost like we are getting with these door hangers. And even when I'm down there in south park in the middle of the season after the spring rush, still getting 60 to $75 customer acquisition cost. This is something we can't ignore. I've seen it now, we've been tracking it for four months and we're putting our money where our mouth is. And I believe this is the best marketing strategy if you are in growth mode. If you are larger and you're like, hey, I want to get bigger, you might want to stop spending money, 2, $3,000 a month on Google, Facebook, all these other things that you might be doing. And just try, just try hiring someone for 20 hours a week doing door hangers. Give them a base pay, maybe 15, 16 bucks an hour plus 20, $40 per converted lead. And it's very easy to track because you get a converted lead every time they get a picture submitted into the email. So that's my 2 cents on door hangers or going all in on it. And we'll report back in a few months how it's been going. But I don't really have any question as to whether it's going to work because we've been doing this now for four or five months and we've been tracking it and I just don't think I can beat the consistency of this strategy because it doesn't have to do with demand as much in terms of people searching for me or looking for lawn care. I can actively go out there and convert these impressions directly into customers. So hope that's helpful.