The cheapest lead in the account is the one to check first

A studio’s best-performing ad was selling the wrong thing

One client, a studio, had an ad with the lowest cost per lead in the account by a distance. Everyone had agreed to put more money behind it.

Then somebody started ringing the people it brought in. A good number of them thought they had booked a gym. They were not bad leads badly handled. They were the wrong people, arriving cheaply, in volume.

Nothing in the account could have shown that. An ad platform records a click and a submitted form. Whether the person understood what they were asking for is settled later, on the phone, by somebody in your business.

Work the price down to a customer before the money moves

A newspaper once offered a client 197,000 readers for 6,000 crowns. Carried through readership, then clicks, then bookings, the offer came to one customer. That took twenty minutes and saved a month of budget.

Do the same with a cost per lead. What share of those leads gets contacted, what share turns into a conversation, what share buys, and what is left after delivery. Any source can be cheap at the form and expensive at the bank.

Ten calls, and the questions to ask

Take five leads from the cheapest source and five from the most expensive. Ask each of them four things: what did you think you were asking for, what did you expect it to cost, did anybody get back to you, and what stopped you.

Ten conversations take an afternoon. In my experience they explain more than another month of reporting, because they are the only place the answer exists.

The row your report is missing

Source, spend, leads, contacted, qualified, bought, revenue. Most accounts can fill the first three columns and stop.

If a column is blank, name the person who will fill it and the date. Then buy more traffic.