Google PPC Isn’t Dead — You’re Just Running It Wrong

Does Google PPC still work for home service businesses—or is it just an expensive mistake?

In this Clicks to Calls episode of Owned and Operated, John Wilson sits down with Service Scalers CEO Sam Preston to break down the truth about Google Ads (PPC) for HVAC, plumbing, and electrical companies. Some operators swear PPC is dead. Others are spending six figures a month and winning. The difference isn’t the platform—it’s execution.

They walk through why PPC fails for most owners, how it’s fundamentally different from Local Service Ads, and what has to be in place before PPC becomes a scalable, predictable lead channel. From budget minimums and landing pages to tracking revenue (not just calls), this episode lays out a clear framework for deciding if PPC belongs in your business—and how to avoid burning cash if you try it.

If you’ve ever said “Google Ads don’t work for us,” this episode will challenge that assumption.

What you’ll learn in this episode:

• Why PPC still works—and why most operators think it doesn’t
• The real difference between LSA and PPC (and why PPC breaks first)
• Budget thresholds you actually need to make PPC viable
• Why landing pages matter more than ad copy

Shout Out to FieldPulse 🚀

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💼Shoutout to Avoca AI!

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Connect:
John Wilson: https://x.com/WilsonCompanies

Sam Preston: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sampreston

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John Wilson, CEO of Wilson Companies
Jack Carr, CEO of Rapid HVAC

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Chapters

• 0:42 Success Stories and Feedback
• 2:21 Deep Dive into Google Ads and PPC
• 4:37 Challenges and Best Practices in PPC
• 19:23 Effective PPC Campaign Strategies
• 28:23 Final Thoughts on PPC and LSA

Transcript

OAO 284

[00:00:00] Welcome back to Owned and Operated. I am your host, John Wilson. I'm a plumber. I run a plumbing company, an HVAC company, uh, out of northeast Ohio. We've got about 190 team members and, uh, we just went regional, so we're super excited about that. For fun, I run a podcast talking about what we do in our business and the industry in general.

Today I'm joined on the show by Sam Preston, the CEO of Service, scalers, good friend of mine. And we have a continuing, uh, series called Clicks to Calls, where we dive into marketing for home service businesses, the do's, the don'ts, and how to think about it. So make sure you check out the previous episodes in the series.

I think this is number seven or eight inside this series. Mm-hmm. So, uh, we've been creating some good stuff. 

Yeah, we've already done PPC, we've done LSA, or no, excuse me, we've done 

next door. 

GBP we've done, yeah. Next door. 

Yeah. GBP was good. Yeah. 

Uh, we've done a lot of good stuff, but I'm really excited about today.

You know, I got feedback, actually, it was kind of funny. [00:01:00] Um, uh, Dustin Marks from Mother Plumbing. 

Okay. 

Uh, he, he came and visited back in, uh, December, maybe. Time flies. Mm-hmm. And so he came up and visited. And, uh, it was kind of funny 'cause he was like, dude, nextdoor is one of our best channels. And I was like.

I was like, what do you, what do you do? He's like, we do exactly what you, what you said to do, which is, uh, which like, I'm not even doing. Uh, which is like creating like a narrative on nextdoor and posting photos and just like nextdoor content creating. It's kind of interesting. Um, so it, it, it, uh, worked. It was a really big win for him.

So, uh, yeah. Cool. Uh, good, good episode. Check it out. Um, today we're talking. It's like love hate, you know? Some people love, some people hate it. There's not many people halfway in between. 

No, 

we're talking Google ads, which is search and PPC. We're talking some OG Google [00:02:00] spend baby. 

Let's do it. 

Yeah, 

let's do it.

Let's do it. I have a special, uh, place in, uh, my heart for PPC 'cause that's what got me started in the very beginning was a PPC agency. Um, and so I built out my agency and everything from that. Yeah. When we got into a relationship with you, we had already started, we started doing SEO, um, and organic. 

Yeah.

Um, but PPC was my first love. 

Yeah. Yeah. PP C's, uh, it's, it's og um, you know, we've gone through, you know, back in like. Yeah. 20 18, 20 19, I mean, we were, we were spending some pretty real money 

Yeah. 

On, uh, on PPC, um, and PPC, it, it reminds me a little bit of like, lead aggregators. Mm-hmm. So, uh, like, yeah, people are like, oh dude, that doesn't work.

That doesn't whatever. And like, Hey, maybe, 

yeah, 

sure. Maybe, uh, I also [00:03:00] have friends spending like a hundred grand a month on PPC. And she's producing mm-hmm. In big markets. Yeah. Like, uh, Jay Blanton, we've had him on the show, Isaac Zimmerman from Jay Blanton a few times. Nice. Um, I don't know what his PPC spend now is, but like, he was clipping 150 a month.

Mm-hmm. Like it was real dollars. Yeah. Uh, rich Jordan from, uh, Sanford now high ground, they just did their big rebrand. Uh, I wanna say he was in the 80 to 90 a month range. Yeah. Um, and some people were doing it so productively that it was better than their local service ads. So that, which was Isaac's story.

Yeah. So back in 2023, local service ads went through a big kerfuffle and everybody lost a bunch of leads. And Isaac figured out how to replace, uh, LSA with pay per click PPC, which was kind of astonishing to be honest. 'cause everyone has the same opinion of PPC that they have with. [00:04:00] Angie's or ah, it doesn't work.

Um, so just kind of interesting. So I think, uh, yeah, a lot of people love it. A lot of people hate it, uh, but not many people in the middle. 

Yeah. I would say the, the, the thing about PPC is you can't be a noob and run PPC, uh, like LSA if you, and I 

think that's what makes it hard. Yeah. I think that's what makes it hard.

Ls a. Go look up some YouTube videos and, and try it out. 

Yeah. 

Uh, you know, even SEO like just 

write throw. It's a phone call. 

Go ahead. 

It it's a phone call lead for 80 bucks or whatever. It, it's just not complicated. Like put quarter in, get lead out. Yeah. Right. It's like a very straightforward, it's very straightforward, but, um, and I think that anytime people look, you know, I'm gonna like shift away from PPC for a second.

I'll come back, we'll come back. Uh, anytime people are like shitting on a lead source at all, like, Hey, [00:05:00] direct mail doesn't work for me. Angie's List doesn't work for me. My eyes doesn't work for me. LSA doesn't work for me. PPC doesn't like, maybe, yeah, I can also probably in my phone find like 50 people it works for.

So I, I think the question that people should be asking themselves is, how do I get this to work for me? Yeah. Because it clearly is working for someone, like, it's clearly working for someone. Uh, so like lead aggregators, like the obvious answer is like, Hey, what's your callback? Yeah, what's your speed to lead technology?

Yeah. Do you have a CRM, like PPC? Maybe it's landing pages, maybe it's keywords. I, I, I don't know, like, we'll unpack that here, but, um, lead sources are working for someone somewhere they could work for you. So instead of like shitting on it, take a moment, take a breath. And start to try to unpack how are people winning at this game?

One of my favorite entrepreneur moments, uh, in my entire entrepreneur life [00:06:00] is the, um, the owned and operated event that we had here in Charleston where you had, oh yeah, two $30 million HVAC and plumbing companies, or one was just hvac, but one was HVAC and plumbing and, uh, they were competitors. And then they were just like giving away their secrets.

And both of them were talking about how. Uh, one of 'em was like, direct mail to this location, rocks for us. And the other guy was like, 

yeah, 

are you kidding me? I've, we've done that 

campaign in the same market. We can't do it. And it was, it was hilarious. 'cause the guy went out to his car and he got the mailer.

Yeah. And he's just like, this is what we did. This is what worked. And it was, it was so funny 'cause this guy was like, direct mail doesn't work. I Yeah, I remember that. It was, it was hilarious. Yeah. Direct mail doesn't work. What are you talking about? And like. Someone in his market was doing like a 14 times ROI with direct mail, which is crazy, right?

Yeah, it's absolutely crazy. Uh, and it was a comical reminder of exactly this. Like someone is winning [00:07:00] with PPC in your market. 

Yeah. 

Somebody's doing it. Yep. How. Yep. Instead of shitting on it, how someone's winning with direct mail. Some someone's doing it, so how are they doing it? 

Yeah, that's a great question.

Um, and so for those of you who don't know, PPC is pay per call. We, we've kind of discover, uh, talked about that pay 

per click. 

Um, when you go search for your service in your area, the first thing that's gonna show up as a sponsored LSA ad, the second thing that shows up is PPC. And then you get all your organic results.

So PPC is, you know, you are paying for a keyword, uh, to show up. The thing that makes PPC amazing is you have so much control over it. LSA, you don't have a lot of control. It's like location and services, and you are managing. The spend, making sure that that's happening and the cycle that goes through With PPC, there are so many things that you can change.

You can change the ad copy, you can change the search terms, you can change the landing page, you can change the offer. Uh, you can pull in [00:08:00] data from your CRM and push it back into paid ads, uh, from revenue standpoint to show that like, Hey, these keywords are actually driving revenue. Let's keep doing that.

If you've got the right ServiceTitan, um, uh, uh, um. Package, you can actually pull that in natively. Um, so there are so many things that you can do to control it, but that also means there's so many things that can go wrong. So P PC is definitely one of those that I don't suggest someone doing themselves.

If you really, uh, want to give it a try, go for it. Yeah. Uh, just go low budget. Um, but there are a lot of things that can go 

wrong. Back in 2016, we had never marketed before and I bought, I still have the book somewhere. Might even be, I'll look around for it. It might be in my office, but it's like a dummies guide to Google AdWords and, and I read it cover to cover and, um, I'm, I'm pretty sure we got leads, but like it's a lot.

Yeah, it's, it's a lot. And so thi [00:09:00] this, um, well one of the topics in our conversation, I think we did this a couple weeks ago, is when do you hire a marketing manager? And what do you look for that person to do? And obviously some people disagree. Uh, there's, you know, someone's on every side of the aisle. Uh, PPC is one of those things that I'm just, I have, I just don't see any reason to try to figure out how to bring it in-house.

I think it changes a lot. I think it's really complicated. Um, and like, yeah, I can internalize LSA or something, but there's a lot going on with PPC. Um, so I, I don't just, yeah, I agree. Like we, I tried to run it on my own. It was sort of stupid. Some people do successfully do it like way better than we do, but we've, that's always been like a.

Let's, let's externalize that. 

Yeah. And PC is, is definitely, um, it's just a game. Um, and then you can win. Yeah. And you focus on the data and that's where you just continue to move budget around, uh, and try to continue to optimize, uh, the [00:10:00] search terms that are coming in. The people that win at it are always testing out.

Uh, new copy, new ads, uh, and are always adding negative keywords and adjusting the budget to where, uh, it goes. We were, uh, we were doing an audit of one of those a hundred thousand dollars a month, uh, accounts. 

Yeah. 

And um, at first when the team sent it over to me to like look over, I was really excited 'cause we'd found like $15,000 of wasted budget.

Like, oh, look like these key words over the last 90 days have not turned into new clients. Um, yeah. And so I was really excited. I was like, ah, yes, I get to bring it to them. This might be the chance that we can come and manage their account. This would be great. 

Yeah. 

The problem is, is they were all perfect keywords.

Like every single one of them was their service and their area just over the 90 days. Oh. That stuff had not turned in. So I basically went to 'em and was like, Hey, this is actually technically wasted budget because these keywords have not turned into new clients or new customers. Yeah. Uh, any kind of revenue.

However, you're big [00:11:00] enough that you just want to keep showing up on these keywords. So my suggestion is y'all are doing everything really well. Keep doing what you're doing. Um. But, um, yeah, like it, it is a, the goal is to find waste, remove waste, and keep putting budget behind keywords that are driving you new business.

Yeah. Yeah. I think, um, the difference, you know, back to like LSA versus PPC, 'cause I've gotten this comment a lot of like, Hey, it doesn't work. Um, so like, first off, how are you measuring. How are you measuring if it doesn't work? Like do you have access to your CRM? Do you know? Are there tracking phone numbers?

Uh, like there's a lot to unpack it. It's more complicated than LSA to determine if it's working or not. 

Yeah. 

Uh, so I think start there if you're like in an evaluation, like a vibe isn't enough with LSAA vibe's, like kind of enough like, ah, I got 10 phone calls a month, or whatever [00:12:00] from LSA, like, great. It is probably really easy to track.

PPC the way that it functions is, I, I don't, you can, can you send it directly to a phone call? I think you can. 

You can, uh, the call call, like 

most 

people go to the 

website, 

but they are ruling that out, so you're not gonna Oh, really? Yeah, they're not gonna have call only campaigns. You can have a, um, oh, you have to redo this one.

'cause I'm, I'm losing the word. Cut this out. Um, 

Daniel Trim. 

True. Um, what is it? Fricking called? 

Well, there's map pack, PPC. Mm-hmm. There's, uh, I don't, and I don't actually have any idea what that's called, but, um, but yeah, so like, the way that it, it usually works is it's, it's kind of like meta ads, um, where meta ads and, and Google, there is a, a way to press over to a phone call, but for the most part it's gonna send you to a landing page.

And on that landing page. Something is [00:13:00] going to happen. Yeah. You're gonna present someone with an offer. You're gonna present someone with a form fill, a click to call button. Um, you're gonna do something where you explain the business a little bit more. And I think this is where it gets really complicated because it's not like LSA where someone, Hey, you show up, you're on the mat pack, whatever.

I'm gonna click the call button. Boom. Someone's going to your website. 

Yeah, 

probably to a landing page. And the landing page has to be good. So that you convert that click to a call. 

Yeah. 

Clicks to calls. I'm just saying it's the name of our series. Uh, but it's the same thing with med ads. Like if you're running, uh, Facebook ads or whatever, like it's gonna send that click to your website or some website somewhere.

Someone's gonna fill a form out, they're gonna click a call, they're gonna do something. Um, and you have to optimize that landing page to convert. And I think that this is where PPC gets such a bad rap is. There's, uh, there's a lot that goes into that. Yeah. There's a lot [00:14:00] that goes into creating a perfect landing page.

Uh, not even just from like design and like thought process and like, what's my offer and how do I get people to click on the buttons I want 'em to click on. But like, even more importantly, uh, when someone does what I want them to do, do I know? 

Yeah. 

If someone gives me a lead, if they call through my website and they only got to that page from PPC.

Do I know that that's where it came from. Do I have a unique tracking number? Am I watching traffic for those landing pages? Mm-hmm. Like, there's just way more shit going on than LSA and I. I think that's where it's like, Hey, this is confusing. It's not that it doesn't work, it's just that it's complicated.

More complicated than LSA. 

Yeah, it, it is definitely way more complicated than LSA. Um, and so there, there's definitely like, uh, you also need to spend more than you can in LSA. Um, we're starting to put limits on, you know, we used to allow you to come in and say, Hey, let's just [00:15:00] try out a $2,500 budget, uh, and just see how this goes.

Um, and the problem is, is you need more data inside a month. To be able to know whether this is gonna work or not. So we're starting to limit it. So we're like, Hey, if you're not spending at least five grand a month in ad spend, it's probably not even worth running. Um, just because you need enough data. Uh, a good example of that would be, let's, let's say for for easy numbers, you've got a hundred dollars budget and your cost per click is $10.

You're only gonna get 10 clicks that day, and they're not all gonna come from the perfect key word that you want. Yeah. There's gonna be variations of that. So, yeah. Now if that, you know, let's say it's a hundred dollars a day, it's going to take you, you know, another 10 days before you have enough enough information to make good decisions.

Yeah. And that really is, uh, more on the month. So I'd almost rather spend $10,000 in one month. Than, you know, $3,000 over three months, uh, trying to figure out whether [00:16:00] this ad campaign is going to work. Just 'cause you get enough data inside the account, you can make decisions faster, um, and based on what's working and what's working faster, and obviously try to get to that perfect number.

Yeah. Uh, which is revenue. Now with that being said, PBC is unique because it's one of the only campaigns out there that gets you a quick lead. Um, tomorrow or today you can turn it on. Yes. And sometimes get leads the next day. It doesn't always happen that way. Well, I should say, um, lemme rephrase that. PPC is one of the only the few campaigns you can run within the next week.

You can start getting new leads and it's hard to do that pretty much anything else. Organic's gonna take you months, uh, of effort and work trying to get that PPC though, you know, within be quick two to six weeks, you should be able to have some good results inside your account. 

Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's just, it, it's a lot to monitor.

You know, we, we bought a business, [00:17:00] uh, this week and I think they were spending eight grand a month on Google. And, and I just say Google because they didn't know what section of Google. Right. Like they didn't it. Well, I actually thought it was all LSA and then, because it just shows this Google Yeah. On the credit card statements.

Um. Yeah, I started popping it open a little bit and I was like, oh, okay. Like actually five or 6,000 of this is, uh, PPC. Yeah. And 3000 of it is LSA. 

Interesting. 

Hey John, I'm not plugged in. Somehow

go. Thank. Thank you. Mm-hmm. Um, 

where was I going with that? 

So, and like my point is they were spending like that for six months and they had no idea. They actually didn't even know that they were on PPC, uh, 'cause they were just like managing it themselves and they set it up and forgot it. So like, [00:18:00] we cut it.

'cause like if no one's looking at this thing for six months, it is not performing. Uh, it's not converting, no one's looking at the landing pages. Like there's no way there's a win here for anybody. Um, yeah, it, it was kind of interesting. So more complicated, more landing pages. Um. Okay. 

Yeah. The big, the big mistakes we're seeing in in PPC right now is one, not spending enough.

That's gonna be a problem. It's just gonna be hard to win if you're not spending enough. Uh, and that's gonna be dictated on your market. Uh, you know, I, I just, I just mentioned a $5,000, like kind of a limit. If you go into Las Vegas right now and you're trying to bid on h. Um, key words. Oh, yeah. Five thousand's not gonna get you anywhere.

You need to be way closer to like 12, 15 grand a month and be prepared to invest that. Yeah. Um, second mis mistake. 

Alternatively, if you're in the middle of absolutely nowhere, maybe a thousand bucks, I, yeah, there's, I'm telling you, dude, 20 25, 20 26. It's the year. Of rural markets. Yeah. It's the [00:19:00] year of nobody services this place.

Let's just get all the leads. I think I told you there's, I keep talking to these companies that are kind of in like, uh, more rural environments and they're just, they're growing like a freaking weed and you're like, dude, what are you doing? And they're like, yeah, we just turned on Google for the first time.

It's like, what have you, what have you been doing for the last decade? Yeah. Like, this is incredible that this is still an opportunity in these places. 

Yeah. 

Versus like a Vegas where like Yeah, you're, that is less of an opportunity. 

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, absolutely. Uh, so first mistake is gonna be, uh, why 

not spending enough?

Was it? 

Yeah. You said not spending enough. 

Yeah. First mistake is gonna be not spending enough. The second is not monitoring it. Yeah. You do have to be monitoring if you have 

Yeah. Just like set setting it and forgetting it. 

It's not one of those campaigns you are just gonna burn cash. Yeah. Don't do that to yourself.

Yeah. Yeah. 

The third mistake we're seeing, and this happens, um, a a lot, when you have [00:20:00] your agencies, multiple agencies inside you running your marketing. Yeah. If you have a website agency or an SEO agency that is making changes to your pages and they're not communicating that to your ad company. Yeah. Or you don't have a marketing manager whose job is to make sure that everybody's on the same page, uh, you'll change landing pages and not tell us about it.

And suddenly we realize, oh, we're. We're not sending them to a good landing page anymore. That's been changed. Uh, so, 

so, so to give to, just to like, give an example. So it'd be like your ad copy, which somebody searches, plumber, Akron or whatever your ad copy might be like, Hey, free inspection, free service call, whatever, 10% off the repair family owned.

I, I don't know. And then someone sends it to a landing page and it's like HVAC replacements. Click here for financing. Yeah. Right. Like someone had a good intention, but like the ad copy does not match with what you just sent them to. 

Yeah. Yeah. That's actually, 

yeah, that makes sense. 

That, that 

I can see that being like [00:21:00] a normal problem.

That happens a lot. Yeah. Um, but that's not as big as a, hey, this is now re redirecting to a completely different landing page. Right. Um, yeah. That's when it's like, okay, we just lost a bunch of leads. Why this campaign's been working for the last three months. Suddenly it's not working. What happened? Oh, it's the landing page.

Yes. 

Yeah. 

Yeah. Um, 

yeah, 

I have a fourth mistake, man. I don't know why I am, I, I've been sick for the last three days, so like, thinking is really hard. Um, 

I would assume the feedback loop, the feedback loop, um, is' an important part. 'cause I know you have to know and it, it's complicated. Um, well, I've, I have comments on this, but.

It's, it's complicated. It's complicated to understand where every lead comes from, and we've been pitched all the fricking softwares in the world to solve this. And dude, we, we just use like Google Sheets. 

Yeah. 

Like it's, I don't know, [00:22:00] it's, uh, I just, I don't dunno. I'm kind of like software out. Uh, it's 2026.

I'm software out tired. Uh, so. Yeah, so we just use like fucking Google sheets Yeah. To track like where everything comes in and the feedback. And then, uh, ideally we, we have it marked by tags inside our CRM, uh, to pull up like, Hey, how, how do we know if P C's working? Or how do we know if, was this an organic lead?

Um, was this a Google business profile lead? I'll say whatever. Uh, so I think tracking and like showing the data is important. Um, it's really hard to. Like hit something that you don't know where it is. Mm-hmm. And it's really hard to know if a campaign's working, if you can't see if it's driving customers and calls aren't even enough.

Like you need it to drive revenue. Yeah. Like we've driven, uh, we, it was something, it was years ago, but someone, uh, we did this campaign and I wanna say it was direct mail. And we [00:23:00] sent it out and all these people called us thinking that we were the power company. Yeah. Like First Energy, our local electrical supplier.

And um, so like on the surface we had a tracking phone number. I said, dude, we got all these freaking phone calls. Like, hell yeah. Like, this is amazing. We got 50 phone calls, um, but we weren't tracking the next layer down, which is, Hey, what's the. What's the revenue? Yeah. From those 50 phone calls, how do we know, how do we know who those 50 phone calls were?

How do we trace that to the job? Uh, and again, there, I'm sure there's software out there to do it. Uh, we use Google Sheets, so you can just use Google Sheets and you can get there. Uh, you don't have to overcomplicate this. Um. But yeah, I think that's important. And giving that feedback to whoever's running your PPC, like if they're running the landing pages, like, yes, I'm getting conversions from that landing page.

I'm getting form fills, I'm getting phone calls, I'm getting something from them. Uh, and also those are turning into revenue. So it's not just [00:24:00] something, it's here's the revenue that came from it then, and then you can start figuring out, you know, after all of that. That is when I will listen to you tell me if PPC is good or bad because you have enough data to tell me.

Yeah, 

yeah, absolutely. 

Because like, hey, if I got a hundred phone calls and 50 of 'em booked into leads and you sold 10. Maybe that's bad. Uh, like how much were the 10 sold for? Yeah. Right. Like you need to know all the way down to revenue to determine like good or bad. 

Yeah. Yeah. And to piggyback off that, I think that you should be working hand in hand with your PPC team, um, engaged on, yeah.

Leave quality. Um, but the one that I'm not saying, 

yeah, 

it's a sport. It's a contact sport. 

It is, it is. The, the one thing that I'm really interested in, um, I just got off a phone call before this to talk to our, our head of PPC, just to make sure, like, I was prepared for this, this interview, this podcast.

Mm-hmm. And I asked the question of like, Hey, are there any offers in the market that you feel like it's just absolutely crushing it? Like when they offer this Yeah. On their landing [00:25:00] page, they see an increase in leads. And she said, no 

free water heaters. 

Yeah. She said, no BOGOs versus, uh, a hundred dollars off.

Interesting. Versus a, you know, they, yeah. Free water heaters probably go really well. 

Well see. I believe, I believe this. 'cause something that we learned when we first started outbounding was we kept thinking, oh, I need to change this and change that and change whatever. And what we found is like almost the opposite.

Mm-hmm. Like you need an offer that makes sense. That can drive. Action. 

Yeah. 

And then you just need to run that motherfucker into the ground. Yeah. And so we have some promotions we haven't changed in like four years because it continues to work. So like why would, why would we change it? Yeah. And, uh, it drives a lot of performance and like, we're still experimenting with new ones.

Sure. But, um, like when we first started running this type of promo, we were changing it every 30 days. 

Yeah. 

And then after a certain point we're like, why, like. I haven't even called all of our customer lists yet. [00:26:00] Our, the pe the first promo that we had, I still haven't even told 90% of our customers that that promo existed.

Yeah. So like why are we changing it? Um, so yeah, it's kind, it was kind of a, a big mental shift for us. So to me that that totally tracks if you've got one that that works. If it drives leads, like just run it. 

I'm glad that tracks for you 'cause it did not track for me. My first thought was like, there's definitely gonna be an offer out there that's gonna absolutely crush across the other ones.

Which makes me think one of two things. One, 

yeah, 

if you're not testing and you are giving the as much off as possible, you might be, you know, really just cutting yourself short. Maybe you just stick with the very basic offer of a hundred dollars off or hey, just 

yeah, 

book a call. Like we, we'll come, 

which, that would drive, that's gonna drive leads like a hundred bucks off.

We'll drive 

right. So maybe something that's 

basically one of ours, 

but if you don't test those, you don't know. 

Yeah. 

And so you need to be working with your, your team, uh, internal, external, whatever it is. Yeah. To make sure that you're testing [00:27:00] offers to know that one, whatever you are offering is actually generating you more leads or better cost per lead or two.

Yeah. Being able to rip that out so you're just not undercutting, uh, your profit margins when you go to sell, uh, a new water heater. 

Yeah. Yeah. Uh, yeah, that makes sense. But that is, that is funny. But yeah, we've, we've seen the same thing. Um, we had, uh, Jay Blanton, we had Isaac Zimmerman on, uh, and he's running a, a promo called Unclogs for Dogs right now.

It's been the same promo for six, seven months. And like he's not changing it, he's just running it harder. Yeah. And finding slightly different ways to word it. And, uh, but it's the same offer. Yeah, same thing. It's like a nine, basically like a 99 unclogged. Uh, drain promo, which like, not a complicated promo.

Right. And what's kind of funny is all these people are like, dude, what's the promo? Like, what's the magic sauce? Like, how are, how are you doing all these leads? And uh, honestly, it has nothing to do. Like the promo is not that complicated. People have been running 93 or free drain cleanings for like 20 years.[00:28:00] 

So there's nothing like that. Crazy about the promo. It's the follow up. It's the frequency, it's the, uh, mediums. It's like the, all the different places he's running it. Uh, and this, the sales process after that makes it work. Yeah. Um, but not necessarily like the promo. 

Yeah. 

Which I think just like, again, I think it catches a lot of people by surprise.

Uh, but it works. 

Yeah. 

That's funny. 

Yeah. Um, all 

right, so that's PPC. 

So that is. 

Any other closing thoughts on PPC? Like what do we think? 

I mean, I think everyone should try it, uh, for their area. Um, I think you should, uh, use an expert. Don't do it yourself. Um, I think that it can win in every market. You just gotta make sure that you're doing it right, that you have the right, 

someone's winning in your market with it.

Somebody 

is, is like, yeah. 

Um, 

somebody is, yeah. 

Yeah. 

I think, um, my take is PPC. Is not LSA, an l, SA. You don't need to be [00:29:00] very sophisticated to run, uh, which is good and bad. So if you are thinking about, Hey, how do I find another lead source that works? PPC could be good, could be terrible. I have no idea. Uh, for, for you, like most of the determination of that is how good is your process?

Yeah. 

Do you have a clean CRM? 

Yeah. 

Like if you're running pen and paper. Yeah. No, you should not be doing it. Um, if you don't know how to book a call and you don't know your call, if you don't know your call booking rate, you should probably not be doing it. 

Right. 

Uh, so I, I think there's like, it's sort of like a upperclassmen type of marketing where like you, you do need to have some fundamentals built into the business.

You don't need to be as detailed as what we are. We're like, Hey, I know every lead and I know where every lead came from and I know what it turned into revenue or not. Like we know all of that. Yeah. You don't need to be there, but you should be heading there. 

Yeah. 

Because if [00:30:00] you don't have that information, it's, you just can't determine if it's working or not.

Yeah. And if you can't determine if it's working or not, then it's hard. It's hard to make decisions like you need data. 

Yeah. Agreed. And you were asking earlier, does, does PPC still work? I can say that like I was just checking our numbers. Uh, 80% of our clients are what we call on track, which means they're hitting the lead volume for their budget that they need.

In order for that to work. Um, and that number fluctuates in December, it was higher January, it's a little bit lower. Um, 

yeah. 

And so like that, that number, my guess is it'll stay pretty much that way in February and start going up in, um, in March as well. So, uh, it works for 80% of our clients. Um, which is a pretty decent number that like, that's pretty much on track on what you would expect across the board from a marketing.

It's a little lower from ours and our other services, but it's still a really good service. That, and channel for you to drive good leads. 

Yeah, [00:31:00] no, I agree. Awesome. Thanks for uh, everybody. Thanks for joining us. If you like what you heard, make sure you hit that like button, hit the subscribe button, give us five stars wherever.

It's that you listen to podcasts. I appreciate it. Join us next week. See ya. 

Bye.