Tracking metrics is crucial for effective contractor marketing. Unfortunately, many small and mid-sized businesses engage in contractor marketing without understanding all the metrics involved, or why they matter to their bottom line. Understanding and recording metrics is crucial for optimizing marketing spend and knowing where your efforts are delivering ROI.
Let’s look at some of the critical metrics that are keys to evaluate home contractor marketing performance:
Total Website Visits
A website visit is a period of distinct engagement with your website by a single individual. A website visit usually includes viewing several different pages. When you pull up a site like Amazon.com, the entire time you spend on the site without closing out the browser tab is counted as one visit, regardless of the number of pages you view.
Website visits where only one page is viewed are called “bounces” and could indicate one of three things:
- An issue with page layout, content, or audience relevence
- Lack of call-to-action on the page
- A landing page with no follow-up page
Website Visits by Source, Channel, Medium
These terms are sometimes used interchangeably by marketers or platforms, so I'll walk through some of the variations.
Google Analytics uses source to define specific sites you receive website visitors from. Each social site or advertising platform that carries your marketing message is a source. Website visits by source helps you to recognize which sites are providing you with the most “eyes" on your message. Examples include Facebook.com, Google.com, Bing.com, a specific email, or specific websites on which your links live. Other platforms for measuring refer to these specific places as channels.
Google Analytics uses medium to define a grouped type, or method, of ways that people get to your site. For example, Google and Bing pay-per-click ads are part of the ppc medium. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and other social sites are grouped under the social medium. Links from specific sites that publish content that links back to your site - such as a magazine article online linking to your web URL - are referral mediums. Additional mediums include search engine results, typing the website address in, and more. Other measurement platforms refer to these methods as sources (I know, it's not as black and white as I'd like, either).
Comparing the spend per channel to the leads generated by each one help figure out your ROI per marketing medium or source.
Leads Generated
Leads generated is a measure of the number of people who contacted your business via an online form. A “lead” can mean someone spoke to your sales team about a new home addition or even subscribed to your email list to learn about contracting services.
Total Reach
This is a social media metric that reflects the total number of unique individuals who have seen a specific post or advertisement. Total reach does not indicate that the viewers took action on the post, nor does it count post views by the same individuals multiple times.
Total Customers Driven by Marketing
Total Customers Driven by Marketing is a metric that includes every individual who went through your complete sales funnel and became a customer as a result of marketing efforts. For contractors, it’s crucial to learn which aspect of your marketing initially attracted a customer and the path they took online, the touchpoints they experienced, and the tailored conversation that eventually convinced them to make a decision.
Marketing-Generated Customers by Source
Marketing-Generated Customers by Source breaks down your total roster of customers to determine which marketing-driven strategies are most effective. This helps you recognize which channels and sites are driving the highest visibility and conversion rate for your site. This is also important for return on investment of your marketing dollars.
Visit-to-Lead Conversion Rate
Visit-to-Lead is the number of people who “converted” to become leads on your website as a percentage of your total website visitors. For home contractors, high visit-to-lead conversions are often driven by seasonal offers, good regional targeting, and informative free content that's incredibly targeted and relevant to your buyer personas.
Close Ratio
Close ratio, also known as lead-to-customer rate, is a measure of the number of people who, after engaging with your business on some level, ultimately make a purchase. Since most people who encounter your site aren’t ready to buy right away, many contractors use email-based “drip marketing" to prime their leads.
Goals
A goal is any improvement in your metrics that you’ve established as an objective for your business and taken steps to achieve. Goals can encompass any of the metrics above – and each one suggests a course of action you can take to improve it. For example, raising your visit-to-lead conversion rate will often mean focusing on free content and drip marketing.
Making sure your goals are specific, measurable, and attainable, and trackable is crucial. Goals should be evaluated and adjusted on a regular basis. Attaining your goals is the key driver of success for your online marketing efforts and will determine whether your contractor marketing money is well-spent.
