Context
Avenlance sells ready work to service professionals. HVAC and appliance technicians pay a monthly subscription for access to qualified jobs, and the company earns on the access rather than on the work itself. So the campaigns weren’t looking for homeowners. They were looking for the plumbers.
The arithmetic is the offer. A technician taking the guaranteed seven jobs a week gets twenty-eight a month, and the average job is worth about $70. Call it $1,960 of booked work, guaranteed or the money comes back. The incumbent charges $180 to $200 for a single lead that may never become a job, and refunds nothing.
Diagnosis
The research went first, into forums and owner groups, before any message was written. Two findings decided everything after.
The number one question technicians ask each other isn’t technical. It’s "how do I get customers?" They’re strong at the trade and unsure about the business.
And the incumbent is actively disliked. Angi and HomeAdvisor come up as "biggest SCAM, poor quality leads, $180–200 each", with owners telling newcomers "DO NOT SIGN UP." That isn’t a market to educate. It’s a market already angry about a specific thing, which meant the offer had to be the opposite of that thing and say so plainly.
Decisions
- Ran five message variants against each other rather than picking one, so the audience decided instead of the account manager
- Wrote two as direct hits on the incumbent’s failure: "Appliance jobs, not fake leads" and "Booked Jobs, Not Another Leads"
- Wrote one to sell nothing at all: "The job was easy. The client wasn’t"
- Split campaigns by state and let geography carry the cost difference, which ran from $4.70 in Maryland to $12.19 in New Jersey
- Judged creative on cost per lead, not click rate, which turned out to matter more than expected
Results
127 leads on $808.89 of spend, 32,050 impressions, 18,907 reach, and 30.2% of clicks becoming leads. Regional cost per lead ran from $4.70 in Maryland to $12.19 in New Jersey. Against $180 to $200 a lead from the incumbent, that’s a different order of cost.
The platform data adds something the report doesn’t. The campaign built on 18 August returned leads at $3.75. The two built five days later returned them at $7.87 and $9.19, on the same targeting description. That gap is wider than the regional one and nothing explains it, which makes it the first question I’d ask if the campaigns ever turn back on.
The creative test produced the finding worth keeping. "ZIP-Based Appliance Jobs" won at $5.60 and 44% of all leads, because it tells a technician the work is near him. The loser was "Real clients. Real jobs. Every week." at $10.74, almost double.
That one had the highest click through rate in the account, 1.55%, and the lowest click-to-lead conversion at 18.3%. Optimise on clicks and it wins. Optimise on leads and it’s the ad quietly costing you money. Specific beat emphatic every time: the vaguest message promised the most and converted least.
One active month filled the company’s serviceable capacity, and paid acquisition has been off since. The campaigns didn’t stop performing, the business stopped needing customers.