Phil Risher warns home service owners not to waste money on ads until their operations work. Focus first on booking rate, close rate, average ticket, and customer acquisition cost. Cheap leads mean nothing without a system that converts them.
Scaling marketing before fixing your systems is one of the fastest ways to waste money. When I used to talk to marketing companies, they would tell me, "Well, just spend more on ads if you want to grow." And I used to ask them, "Well, how do I know that's going to help me grow my business?" And they say, "Well, you're getting $80 leads, so how's that not going to help you grow?" And it's because in home service, we have a bunch of different parts. We have a booking rate, we have a close rate, we have an average ticket, we have a customer acquisition cost. All of those things play into actually growing your business. Leads is one thing. You could give me $10 leads and they're going to be tire kickers and price shoppers from Facebook and they're never going to convert. So before you spend money on marketing, you need to make sure you have your systems tight. You need to know those numbers, your booking rate, your close rate, your average ticket. So that way you're putting good leads into a good system that's gonna generate revenue and profit for your business.
