What if I told you you’re paying too much per lead?

You’d probably ask me how much should you be paying…

Then I’d ask you, how much are you paying now? (don’t you hate when people answer a question with a question?)

Let’s start there. How much are you paying NOW.

Often times this is not known and rightfully so, it’s difficult to calculate.

First off, what’s a “lead”?

Depends on how you look at it, because it could be when someone says “I’ve done all the research I care to do and ready to hire you if the price isn’t astronomical.”

Or it could be [scene: grocery store checkout line] “Your shirt says ‘Bath and Kitchen Magician’, do you remodel kitchens?”

Awfully different ends of the spectrum, but could both be considered a lead. (One is a little more pre-qualified than the other.)

Do you consider them both “leads”?

For the sake of averages, let’s say yes and get a roundabout number.

The next challenge is tracking them all. In the example above, the first one is easy. The grocery store customer is not so much.

(If you’re not using an effective CRM to track your leads, give MarketSharp a try)

You’ve got to assign a value to each.

But once you’ve got that lead tracking system in place, you’ve got to assign a value to each.

A good starting point is to take last year’s spend in marketing and then an estimate of total leads from that year.

Shit… I’ve got to have an accurate amount of how much you spent on marketing too?!

If you’re calculating the amount you’re paying for SEO, then that ad you did in the NARI magazine, and the new yard signs, and that’s it, I ask you to dig further.

That shirt that you were wearing at the grocery store is a marketing expense. Any food that you supplied to an event. The gifts you purchase for clients after a remodel. All marketing expenses.

So, how much are you spending per lead?

You’re next challenge: how much are you paying per lead for each marketing channel?

Once you know that, put it in this short form below with your profession and it’ll reply with your industry’s average for various marketing channels.

Or you can send it to me directly for a more personalized response.