A quiet week of leads gets blamed on the market. Sometimes the market is the problem. Sometimes the ad is tired, the form stopped delivering, or the job stayed a walkway because nobody showed the client what else that yard could hold. The spend still left the account.
This is how return on ad spend works on a hardscape lead, from episode 325, ROAS: Make the Most of Your Leads. Marketing spend, the leads that spend produces, and the upsells that change what one lead is worth. Dollar figures below are examples from that conversation.
Count Ad Spend as a Share of the Job
On that episode the target is not a viral cost per lead. It is ad spend as a share of the revenue those projects bring in. The number he wants is about 2 to 2.5 percent of that revenue. He calls that his return on ad spend. When work was easier, the same business ran near 1 percent. Lately it moved to about 2 percent. This year the budget is about 2.5 percent of revenue for marketing.
His example of 2 percent is simple. Spend $1,000 and hope to bring in about $50,000 of projects. That is a hope he stated, not a report of one campaign. If you are new to ads, do not expect that ratio. If you pay someone else to run them, expect the percentage of revenue to sit a bit higher. Both of those limits are his, for his shop, not a promise.
Half a point is large enough to rebudget. He said a 0.5 percent move can be $1,000, $2,000, or $3,000, depending on the revenue behind it. He does not leave that in profit by accident. He updates the budget in his software for the rest of the year so the price of the work recovers the spend. 2.5 percent is a ceiling he is willing to live with this year, not a number to copy because it looks tight. If your ads are young, or an agency fee sits on top of the media, a higher share can still be honest. What is not honest is leaving last year’s 1 percent in the budget after the real number has moved. Watch more than cost per lead: ask what share of the sold work the ads ate. A cheap lead that becomes a small repair, and never anything else, can miss the ratio even when the ad “worked.”
One Problem per Ad
What has been working for him, this year and the year before, is Facebook ads with his face in frame and one problem behind him. The recent one is a patio that needs a lift and relay. The line is whether the viewer’s patio looks like that. The picture tilts while he asks if it is sinking. The hook is the tilt, not a list of services.
He shoots on a GoPro in 4K so a vertical crop still looks decent. He believes that crop lands around 1080p. His face sits in the center, or just off it, so the same clip works wide and tall and the failed patio stays visible. You can ask a chatbot for hook ideas. The ad he is running is still his face and a problem he actually fixes.
When the ratio slips, he does not just add budget. The audience in that area may be used up, or the ad may be dead. He launches a few at once, cuts or starves the weak ones, and moves the money to the one that is working. New creative is the reset.
The ads that pay him are narrow. One for step repair. One for patio repair. He used to run one for polymeric sand in the joints and stopped, because he does not want that work anymore. A line that says you do full outdoor living, patios, and everything else has been the worse return. People answer a specific mess.
That is also why smaller work is in the plan. Front walkways, front steps, side walks that need repair, and backyard patios that need repair. The ad can name the sink or the bad steps. He is already seeing people from those small jobs come back for the backyard, including repeat work he put at about three years out. The first invoice is not the whole return. A specific ad you no longer want to fulfill is not a bargain. He killed the sand ad on purpose. If the crew will not relay a patio or rebuild steps, do not buy those clicks. When three ads run for a month because nobody turned the two losers down, the working one is starved, and the report still says you “tested.”
The Sale Changes the Ratio
Spend and lead count are only half the math. He said the return also moves with what the average project sells for. He is not a high-pressure closer. He does not tell someone they need a fire feature. He sends a welcome package and lets the pictures do it. He started using that package this year.
When a lead comes in, the note says to open it. The portfolio is video. The install is step by step, with a video on the steps. Another section is the work he can add: lighting, fire, water, and whatever else that yard might hold. He has spent years filming that catalog so a stranger can see the difference before they have three quotes that all say “patio.”
One client was already ready to hire him for the patio, saw a fire feature in the package, and asked what it cost. He gave an approximate number. They put it in the design. He did not state that price on the episode, so it does not belong here. Seat walls with lighting do the same job from a photo. Telling someone that landscape lighting would look nice underneath the project, on a small job you are not even designing, asks them to imagine it. Most of them will not.
Photos carry this. Video carries more, because the flame, the light, and the way the wall sits in the yard are hard to fake in a sentence. The package is a sales tool now. He said the time that went into it has paid for itself more than once. He will send his if you message How to Hardscape on Instagram. Steal the structure. He still wants a PDF on the email, not only a page on the site. A link has to load. A PDF is already in the thread, and they are not wandering off into the rest of the website.
He walked a second example, again as math, not as a closed ticket. Spend $500 and get one good patio lead. That might be a $10,000 patio, which he called a very small one. Show the fire, the lit seat wall, a pergola if you build them, and that same $500 can sit under a $25,000 job instead of the $10,000 one. The ad did not get cheaper. The job got larger. Explain the evening use in plain language if you talk at all. A lot of these clients are at work all day. They sit outside at night and they entertain at night. A light under the seat wall is for that, not for a catalog.
If they only buy the patio, the package still planted the next phase. Doing a good job and then going quiet wastes it. Note what you offered and did not sell. Next season the email is specific. The porch overlay. The pergola they passed on. The patio extension they passed on.
The same videos belong in the proposal if they never opened the package. His are step by step and linked: how deep the dig is for patios, retaining walls, and driveways; woven and non-woven geotextile; geogrid; open-graded base against dense-graded and synthetic; screening; laying; jointing compound; edge restraint. In his setup those links drop in when the proposal is a paver project, so he is not retyping them. Clients have told him the package was useful, and that the proposal videos helped. He can feel the first visit go easier when they have already seen his face. An email-only stranger is stiffer. YouTube is where he keeps the long versions, because the subscriber count and the comments sit there as proof. He did not give a subscriber number. Show the work you will actually build this season. A fire feature in the package that you cannot schedule, or cannot price without a specialist you do not have, creates a conversation you will lose on site. If the lead came in for a patio, you told them you also do fire and light, and the sold job is still only the patio, the ad spend did its job, but the follow-through did not. This is not the consult script. It is the proof you hand them before you ever stand in the yard.
The Form Can Spend the Money and Hide the Lead
Last spring his site went quiet and he read it as a slow year. About a month later he found the form had stopped sending leads to his email. The phone still rang, so some work showed up, and the website leads did not. He had the same break this year after a WordPress form plugin change. It was down for a few weeks, again in the spring rush. He switched providers. He tests the form every month now.
That is part of the return. An ad can be fine while the inbox is empty. You will cut spend, or blame the season, and the leads are sitting in a form that never mailed you. Do not judge a campaign in the busiest weeks of the year without submitting your own form. The test takes a few minutes. The missed month does not.
Work the Leads You Already Paid For
If the schedule is thin, he does not start with a new ad. He goes back to people who already hired him, then to people who already inquired.
For a finished job, the ask used to wait. He does not wait now. Once they are happy and you have been paid, ask for a five-star Google review and, in that same note, whether they know someone who needs the work. A review is not only a compliment. It is a way the original spend starts ranking you for searches you are no longer paying for. He has done separate episodes on that search work. This one only makes the point that a review is part of the return.
For a job that is a year old, or two, or three, do not open with the review. Open with the project. How is it holding up, and is there anything you should look at. If the note comes back happy, then ask for the review and the referral. You can attach some kind of incentive to the referral. He did not name one, so do not invent a gift card and call it his.
His picture of the math, using the same $1,000, is that $50,000 of work might become $75,000 if that client sends you someone. Again, an illustration. The habit is the point. Ask.
After the past clients, open every old inquiry. You went quiet. They went quiet. Or they never answered the first email. Last year that pass put work on his schedule. Where he had dropped it, he said so. They had reached out the year before, he had missed it, and he asked if this year still needed help. Where they had never answered him, he only asked whether there was anything to do this year. A lot of people inquire, then stop, because they were not ready or they shoved the job to the next season and never told you. A note this year is often the first time they say they want it done.
Start with last year. Go to the year before that only if you still need names.
Trade partners are the inexpensive version of the same idea. An asphalt company that does not build the front walk still needs that walk replaced or repaired so the new asphalt meets a straight edge. The walk can become the steps up to the porch, and the porch can become an overlay. You will not always sell the stack in one visit. Give a range for the later piece, with no fake precision, and write them next year about that overlay. He described it as a kickback or a low-cost lead, not as a contract you have to sign to be allowed to work.
None of this replaces the ad. It stretches one. He was clear that hiring the management out does not move the job onto the agency. They can buy the click. You still have to answer it, show the work, and go back when the first reply dies. Money you put into the website is a different clock. He does not expect that spend to return this month. It is there so the next few years of jobs have somewhere serious to land.
How to Start This Week
- Write last month’s ad spend next to the revenue those leads have sold, including extras and any return work you can honestly tie to them. See whether you are near the 2 to 2.5 percent he is budgeting, the old 1 percent, or somewhere looser because the ads are new or someone else is paid to run them.
- If that share has moved by about half a point, put the difference into the budget for the rest of the year. He treated half a point as $1,000, $2,000, or $3,000 of real money. Recover it in the price of the work.
- Submit your own website form. If you changed the plugin this season, do it today and put a monthly test on the calendar. His form failed in the spring two years running, once for about a month and once for a few weeks.
- Turn off any live ad for work you will not schedule. Keep one problem in the ones you leave on. His are step repair and patio repair, with his face on a job that actually looks broken.
- If more than one ad is spending, check which one is carrying the leads and cut or shrink the others.
- Send the welcome package, or a short PDF if you do not have his, on the next lead before you talk features out loud. Portfolio video, the install in order, and only the add-ons you can build. Lighting, fire, and water are his list.
- On the next small repair, note the phase you did not sell. The overlay, the pergola, the extension. That note is the follow-up next season.
- Email last year’s inquiries. Say so if you dropped the conversation. If they never answered, ask only whether this year is the year. Then do the year before that if the schedule is still open.
- For jobs you finished and got paid on, ask for the Google review and a referral once you know they are happy. For anything a year or older, ask how the work is holding up first, and ask for the review in a later note.
- Hear the episode before you treat any of these dollars as yours: ROAS: Make the Most of Your Leads. The $1,000, $50,000, $75,000, $500, $10,000, and $25,000 figures are his examples of the ratio, not a campaign result.