Answers
Straight answers, including the inconvenient ones.
Real questions local owners ask us, answered properly. Several of these conclude that you should not hire anybody, which is the point: if the honest answer costs us a sale, it is still the honest answer.
Every question, answered
How fast should you follow up with a lead?
Inside five minutes at the absolute latest, and under one minute if you can manage it. Response time is the single highest-leverage variable in local lead conversion…
What is a good cost per lead for a local service business?
There is no universal number, and anybody who quotes you one without asking your ticket size is guessing. A $400 service call and a $30,000 remodel justify wildly di…
Why aren't my Facebook ads getting leads?
In local markets it is almost always one of five causes: your ad has no hook, your offer is weak, the campaign is optimizing for the wrong objective, your targeting …
Do boosted posts work for local businesses?
For getting cheap likes and a bit of local visibility, sometimes. For generating enquiries and booked jobs, almost never. Boosting takes a post written for people wh…
How much does a marketing agency cost per month?
For local service businesses, agency fees typically run somewhere between $500 and $5,000 per month, plus your ad budget on top. Where you land depends on how many s…
How do I get more calls from Google Maps?
Four things move the needle, in this order: complete your Google Business Profile properly including a written description for every individual service, make your na…
Why am I not showing up on Google Maps?
The usual causes, roughly in order of likelihood: your profile is not verified, your primary category is wrong, you are physically further from the searcher than you…
Do I need a CRM for my small business?
You need one when you can no longer reliably answer what happened to every enquiry from last month. If you are getting a handful of leads and closing almost all of t…
How do I stop losing leads?
Leads leak in four specific places, and almost every local business is leaking in at least three. Enquiries arrive somewhere nobody is watching. The first reply take…
Is AI actually worth it for a small local business?
For a narrow set of jobs, genuinely yes: answering enquiries instantly at any hour, following up more times than a human has patience for, and removing repetitive ad…
How do AI voice agents work for local businesses?
An AI voice agent answers your phone when you cannot, holds a natural spoken conversation, answers the questions customers ask most often, captures the caller's deta…
How much should a small business spend on marketing?
The common benchmark is 5 to 10% of revenue for a business holding steady, and 10 to 20% for one actively trying to grow. Percentages are a sanity check rather than …
Should I hire a marketing agency or do it myself?
Do it yourself if you have genuine time each week and the patience to be bad at it for a couple of months, because everything we do is learnable. Hire when your hour…
How do I get more Google reviews?
Ask every single customer, right after you finish the job, with a one-tap link straight to the review form, sent automatically so it does not depend on anybody remem…
Do I need a website if I have a Facebook page?
Yes, for three reasons that do not go away: you do not own the Facebook page and its rules can change without warning, a Facebook page barely competes in Google sear…
How do I know if my marketing is working?
One test: can you say where your last ten customers came from and what each one cost to acquire? If not, you do not have a measurement problem to solve later — you h…
What is lead nurturing and does it work?
Lead nurturing is staying in useful, occasional contact with people who are interested but not ready to buy yet, so that when they do become ready they come back to …
How do I get more customers for my service business?
In this order: stop losing the leads you already get, claim the free local channels properly, then pay for demand. Most businesses start with the third step, which i…
What is speed to lead?
Speed to lead is simply the elapsed time between somebody enquiring and you responding. It matters more than almost any other number in local sales because prospects…
What is a good conversion rate for a local service business?
As rough orientation: 2 to 5% of website visitors should enquire, 20 to 40% of leads should become booked jobs, and 30 to 50% of quotes should close. These vary a lo…
Related reading
Find out what your market is actually worth.
A free 15-minute call. We look at your market together and tell you exactly what we would do, whether or not you hire us. No pressure, no pitch.
Book a Free Strategy CallOr reach Kai directly: (272) 394-5885 · kai@sallesmedia.com