6 Measurements That Will Bring Sanity to Your Marketing

How would you like to know exactly which sales and marketing activities are bringing [the best] new customers to your business?

Measure and track these 6 things to gain insight into the effectiveness of your marketing, advertising and sales process.

 1. How did you hear about us?
2. Through which channels are people visiting your website?
3. On which of your website pages are visitors spending the most time?
4. Which website pages have the most conversions to phone calls?
5. What are the open and click rates of your emails?
6. How many appointments convert to jobs?

“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half.” John Wanamaker

Sorry to smack you right over the head with that same, old hammer, but how do you measure the effectiveness of your advertising and marketing?

How do you know which half of your budget is working, and which half is not?

You can have a dependable system to track the results of your advertising and marketing investments and to stay top-of-mind with the right leads.

Things are better than you think

Your people are already entering the customer contact and deal information that is the foundation of your internal measurement system; in Wintac, or ADDS, or QuickBooks or some kind of business management software or CRM, or at least in an Excel spreadsheet.

So how do you connect the dots between all that solid, real data to the marketing and advertising dollars that attracted them?

How do you identify the investments and practices that closed them?

It is possible, but it requires:

• A System (ANY system will do!)
• Somebody to analyze the data and manage the System (You, your spouse, your child, a smart employee or a trusted advisor)
• Disciplined processes and training to make it happen, and keep it happening

Here’s a few different ways you can take a step in the right direction today.

The Single Most Important Data Point an HVAC Contractor Needs to Know

Make an exhaustive list of all the possible answers to the question, “How did you hear about us?”

This includes all the ads you run, lawn signs, billboards, social media posts and your trucks out in the neighborhoods where you are working every day. It’s not uncommon for a contractor to have 20 to 50 or more potential lead sources.

Every time the phone rings, correlate the caller to one of the lead sources on this list. Add new lead sources to the list as necessary, and speak regularly about this list with the front line people who man the phones in your shop.

Be precise in your determination of the lead source. Don’t simply accept “Internet” as the answer to the question, “How did you hear about us?” Take the question one level deeper by asking, “Where did you find the phone number you are calling me on now?”

This “How did you hear about us?” information needs to be entered into your existing CRM (or other database), or into a simple spreadsheet along with the prospect’s contact information.

Eventually you will come back to add the amount of your quote, the disposition of the quote and whether the deal’s status is won, lost or in limbo.

“Measure twice, cut once.” - Old English proverb

At this point, you have a dependable tracking system that enables you to tie advertising and marketing dollars to sold jobs.

Now you will know which of your marketing and ad campaigns are making the cash register ring, and you will be able to redirect ineffective budget dollars toward the activities that are working best.

This alone will improve your results and lower your cost per lead.

Simply by knowing the answer to one simple question.

By establishing one data point.

You have a new level of clarity, and you’re just getting started.

Measure HVAC Website Traffic to Sell More Jobs

People come to your website through a variety of paths, and Google keeps track of all of it.

Fortunately, Google makes this behavioral data available to us for free through a tool called Google Analytics.

Google Analytics will show you:

• Where your website visitors come from
• How long they hang out and on which pages
• Which website pages convert visitors to appointments

Three very powerful measurements.

With these three simple measurements, you can map out short and long term plans to squeeze more revenue out of your advertising and marketing investment through your automated system.

Remember, all these activities are designed to accomplish one thing: sell more jobs by creating higher volumes of higher quality sales appointments with educated buyers of means.

Here are some effective ways to use these three measurements to dramatically increase the volume and quality of your sales appointments. (In no particular order.)

• Using the 80/20 rule, optimize the pages on your website that represent 80% of your overall traffic
• Using the 80/20 rule optimize the pages on your website website that represent 80% of the time visitors spend on your website
• Using the 80/20 rule optimize the pages on your website that represent 80% of your conversions
  Then...
• Create paid traffic campaigns pointing at your highest converting website pages
• Map out drip email campaigns based on the website content people are reading and converting on
• Create more website content that takes your highest performing videos and articles to the next level

• It is possible to create email strategies that produce predictable results
• It is possible to send out emails that will result in booked jobs and booked appointments
• It is possible to send just the right email to a prospect about just the right topic at just the right time
• It is possible to dramatically improve the quality of your in-home conversations by sending educational emails to prospects prior to the appointment

Marketing email is not about blasting, it’s about creating conversations and increasing positive outcomes

Before you can send super-effective emails, you need to understand who you are emailing, whether your email list is 300 or 300 thousand,

Make a list of your most profitable revenue streams.

Now write down which directions you want your business to grow in.

• Specialize in a specific market niche, such as ductless or BPI?
• Grow your fleet of trucks?
• Grow your staff of technicians?
• Sell more service plans?
• Better crew utilization?
• Geographic service area?
• Fill in your growth goal here:                                                           

Once you can clearly see your big goals in black and white, you can map out the reasons a homeowner or potential employee might pick your company.

When you document a step-by-step education plan for each of these goals:

• Consider your Buyer’s Journeys and distill them down to the three or four or ten things the buyers need to understand before they will call you
• Set up a system to automatically send “smart emails” based on the reasons a person is connected to your company
• Set up an automated system of emails with links back to information based on the website content the buyer has already viewed
• Create an automated email to educate buyers about the key elements of the sales call before the appointment to increase one-call closes.
• Test different subject lines, images and messages, then select winning versions to optimize and increase your results on an ongoing basis.

When you know someone is interested in ductless, it’s important to make sure you get all six of these bits of education in front of your prospect, and email is still the best way to do it.

Digital Body Language - Yes, it’s a thing.

What if you could measure the interest and score the intent of the thousands of homeowners who visit your website every year?

How would you like it if your system tapped you on the shoulder when a prospect was opening the email you sent, watching the video you recommended, or looking at your “About Us” page?

Imagine this kind of information at the fingertips of your salespeople through their mobile devices.

A well-timed phone call or personal email can tip the scales in your favor if you know which prospects to nurture and when.

Pretty darn powerful, and totally doable.

Using Marketing Automation software like HubSpot, SharpSpring, Marketo or one of many others, it is possible to track not only the emails your contacts open and click, but the website pages they view.

Connect this data to activities in places like Facebook to reveal highly engaged prospects.

These are people clearly on the search for home comfort and enthusiastic evangelists for your business.

If you are a $3,000,000 company, you need to be doing this stuff in earnest.

If you want to be a $3,000,000 company you need to be doing some of this stuff in earnest.

Marketing Automation Software for HVAC Contractors - Bringing it all together

Sometimes it's tough to know what you can expect when you don't even know what's possible.

While the point of this article is to help you set up a simple measuring system, the actions you take with the data you gather can be highly automated to improve your customer's experience and, maybe more importantly, eliminate the human error that so often causes good leads to fall through the cracks.

If you don't have experience with software like this, it's best to hire a trusted adviser to help you align your implementation with your revenue objectives, and guide you through the process of integrating the tools into your offline processes.

Don't be afraid to bite this off, but be aware that you are in a marathon, not a sprint. Marketing automation tools are like every tool in your truck; in the hands of a professional, they get the job done, but without proper guidance and training, they are worthless.

You are building a Sales & Marketing House of Bricks.

To build a house of bricks you must be committed to the long view.

When you take this path, you are building a digital marketing infrastructure that will insulate you from the changing tides of the Google Algorithm.

You are building a robust, long-lasting system that is important to your company’s future and success.

This is not a seasonal "program", but a philosophy based on answering every question a potential customer might have.

When you invest in Content Marketing built around solid Inbound Marketing practices, you will have

• An automated machine that will produce a steady stream of educated, high-quality sales leads
• An automated machine that will improve the quality of your appointments, resulting in more one call closes
• A measuring stick that will give you 100% insight into the activities that are making you money

Someday every company will need to do this to compete.

When will you start?