Where enquiries are filtered out before they reach the salesperson
The tradesman sets off in the morning for a site at the other end of the region, takes measurements, photographs it and promises a quote by the end of the week. Some time later the person replies that they are still waiting for a permit and will call in the spring. The day is spent, the quote is written, and the enquiry was never ready to reach a contract.
The expensive part of a construction enquiry is not the click
For an online shop, the calculation for one buyer ends roughly with the click. For a construction service, the click is the small part of it. The real cost is the time of a person who could otherwise be on site: travel, measuring, photographs, itemised estimate, quote, then a reminder and another one. The advertising budget is the smallest item in what you pay for one enquiry.
That is why cost per enquiry is a misleading number. A cheap enquiry that eats a viewing and does not reach a contract works out more expensive than an expensive enquiry that goes straight to a quote. What gets measured is not what the form costs, but what the viewing that has a chance costs. This metric does not sit in the advertising platform, and so it is almost never looked at.
There is a second calculation that rarely enters the conversation. When I look at a tradesman’s week, I see how many viewings fit into it, and every unprepared viewing takes the place of a prepared one coming on the same day. The loss is not only the day spent, but the enquiry that went to another firm while it waited its turn.
The system leads the people it has been taught to lead
Every campaign is optimised towards an event that you have declared a success. When that event is a submitted form, the algorithm looks for the people most inclined to fill in a form. That group is defined by the absence of resistance, not by whether there is anything to build.
The most willing to fill it in are those gathering information: the person with an idea but no project, the owner checking whether the sum will be enough, the neighbour who wants several quotes for comparison. For them filling it in costs nothing, because nothing follows from it. The system finds them accurately and fast. In the report this looks like getting cheaper, while at the same time I see the incoming flow getting worse week after week.
That is why sharper targeting does not rescue a campaign that counts the wrong event. As long as the account sees only the forms, it will find ever cheaper forms and be right according to what it has been told. The filtering has to move down to where the system and the customer meet: in the text, on the page and in the form.
The ad filters before the click
An ad that promises a free viewing and good prices removes the resistance for everyone. For an expensive service that is the opposite of what is needed. A message about construction services in general applies to everyone who sees it, including people who have nothing to build.
Specificity works as a sieve. Type of site, stage, area, scope of work. A line like “roofs on residential buildings” screens out the person with a garage before they have clicked. “Rough construction of houses with a ready design” screens out the one who is still choosing a plot. When I write copy for an expensive service, I look at who will stop reading, not only at who will carry on. The people who stop are the result, not the missed opportunity.
Filtering has a cost, and it grows with every step you put off. In the ad the filter is free, because nobody has spent anything. On the page it costs attention. In the form it costs filling in. At the viewing it costs a day. Every filter you did not put in early is paid for later, and at a higher price.
The form either sorts or only collects
The usual form at a construction firm is a name, a phone number and a message field. It collects a contact and sorts nothing. Everything that decides whether there is work only comes out on the phone or at the viewing itself.
The fields that sort are different ones: type of site, town or village, project stage, planned start period, whether a design and a permit are already in place. Each such field lowers the number of submissions and buys information. The field that lowers submissions the most usually brings the most information too.
The order weighs more than the number. When the phone number is the first field, the people who drop out at the second question are already in the database and the tradesman will still call them, because a contact remains. When the contact comes last, those who gave up halfway simply do not get in. The same fields in a different order produce a different call list.
The place where people drop out is information too. If most people stop at the question about the stage, the ad is bringing people who have not started yet. If they stop at the town or village, the scope in the text is wider than the area you actually serve.
The conversation about money moves; it does not disappear
With an expensive service the conversation about money cannot be avoided. The only choice is when: in the ad, on the page, on the phone, or at the end, when the quote has already been written. Silence on the subject does not postpone it but moves it to the most awkward moment for both sides.
If there is no signal at all before the quote, everyone assumes that the price fits their idea. Then all the filtering falls on the quote, and that is the most expensive place possible, because you reach it after the viewing, the measuring and the estimate.
You do not have to write a price. An order of magnitude does the same: the minimum scope you take on, the type of sites you handle, the way you work with payment stages. Whoever is outside that range drops out on their own and does not take up a day. Whoever stays enters a conversation that starts from a completely different point.
What has been filtered must reach the phone and return to the account
The filter becomes meaningless if what was collected in the form is not in front of the eyes of the person who is calling. A tradesman who starts every call from zero has the same conversation each time, no matter how much has been filtered before him. When the information is in front of him, the call starts from what is known — site, stage, area, period — and gets as far as it used to get only at the very end.
The order of calling changes too. The order of arrival has nothing to do with readiness. The person with a permit and a construction already under way disappears if you call tomorrow, while the one who is still thinking will wait calmly and go nowhere. Ordering by readiness instead of by time of arrival costs nothing extra, which is why it is the change I propose first.
The last link runs in the opposite direction. Every enquiry gets an outcome: no site, no project, no budget, a different area, real. When this outcome is returned to the ad account, the numbers in it stop describing the forms and start describing the viewings. The optimisation gets a truth to learn from.
What you can check today
Open your own form on a phone, the way the customer sees it, and look only at the order of the fields. If the phone and the email come before the questions about the site and the stage, the form is a contact collector, not a sieve, and everyone who gave up halfway keeps entering the call list.
After that, go through the enquiries from the last campaign and write next to each one, in a single word, what was missing. The word that repeats most often points at the same time to the field you did not put in the form and to the sentence you did not say in the ad.
Frequently Asked Questions
Won’t more fields in the form reduce enquiries?
They will, and that is the point. The question is which ones drop off. The fields that sort people mostly remove those who would not have reached a viewing anyway, because they give up first. After such a change, follow not the number of forms but the number of viewings that end with a quote.
Should I put prices in the ad for construction services?
A price is not mandatory. The order of magnitude is enough: what scope you take on, what kinds of sites you work on, how payments are split by stage. This filters out the same people the price would have filtered out, without tying your hands when you quote.
How do I tell which enquiries were real?
By noting what was missing right after the first conversation and keeping that note next to the source the enquiry came from. That shows which source brings what, instead of judging by the total count.
Related: Advertising for construction companies · Seasonality in construction and the advertising budget · Google advertising
