You're Wasting 20-30% of Your Marketing Budget (And Don't Know It)

You're Probably Wasting 30% of Your Marketing Budget Right Now
If you're a service-based business owner looking to stop wasting ad spend and start scaling with confidence, book a call with my team NOW: https://eastbound.digital/book-now/

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In this episode of Marketing for Tradies, Shannon reveals the single biggest mistake trades business owners make with their marketing and it's not a bad agency or bad ads. It's not knowing which channel is actually making them money. She walks through real client examples, the two costly mistakes that come from flying blind, and the three simple tracking tools that give you complete visibility over your marketing ROI.

This episode covers:
◼️ Why most tradies massively overestimate referrals and underestimate their digital marketing
◼️ The two expensive mistakes you make when you can't see what's working
◼️ A real example: $3,000 in ad spend generating $63,000 in revenue, and the tradie had no idea
◼️ The three tracking tools that show you exactly where every job came from
◼️ How to go from "I reckon it's working" to "I know it's working"

00:00:00 – Introduction
00:01:10 – Welcome to Marketing for Tradies
00:01:30 – Which Channel Is Actually Making You Money?
00:02:30 – Why Referrals Feel Trackable But Digital Leads Don't
00:03:30 – The Real Split: 40% Referrals, 40% Google, 20% Everything Else
00:04:15 – Mistake #1: Killing the Channel That's Working
00:05:00 – Mistake #2: Funding the Channel That's Bleeding You
00:06:00 – How Much Wasted Spend Is Happening Across Australia Right Now?
00:06:45 – Tracking Tool #1: Form and Phone Call Conversion Tracking
00:08:15 – Tracking Tool #2: A CRM That Tags Lead Sources Accurately
00:09:30 – Tracking Tool #3: Asking "How Did You Hear About Us?"
00:10:30 – What Happens When You Can Actually See the Numbers
00:11:15 – Spend Smarter, Stop Second-Guessing, Start Forecasting
00:12:30 – The Tradies Scaling Fast All Have This One Thing in Common
00:13:15 – Three Takeaways From This Episode
00:13:48 – What to Do Next

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I was speaking to a tree recently. He had a solid business he'd been running for many, many years, spending decent money on marketing every single month. He was working with an agency. But I asked him one question: which of those channels is actually making you money? Referrals feel trackable because that person generally announces themselves as a referral, but digital leads don't do that. People who swore 90% of their work was coming through referrals, if they're doing marketing the right way, then find out that it's more like 40% referrals, 40% Google, and 20% everything else. Most trades businesses are wasting at least 20 to 30% of their marketing budget on channels that aren't producing results simply because they can't tell the difference. Welcome to Marketing for Trading, the podcast where we help trades and service-based businesses with straight-up marketing advice to get more leads and put more jobs. I'm your host, Shannon, and my agency has helped over a hundred businesses go from inconsistent work and relying on word of mouth to getting a steady flow of jobs coming in every single week. In this podcast, I'm walking you through simple, practical strategies that actually help you grow your business without the gets more. So let's get into it. I was speaking to a tree recently. He had a solid business he'd been running for many, many years, spending decent money on marketing every single month. Google Ads, a directory listing, some Facebook stuff. He was working with an agency, but I asked him one question: which of those channels is actually making you money? He said, honestly, I have no idea. They send me a report every month, and I don't really understand it, but I mean I'm getting the work, so I'm gonna just keep going. So he pulled up the actual numbers together. We got proper tracking, call recordings, form submissions, match to book jobs, and we found out that Google Ads had brought him 14 jobs last month at an average of four and a half grand per job. That's $63,000 in revenue from $3,000 in ad spend. And he had no idea. See, it's not his fault. That's what happens when you don't have visibility into your own marketing. You can't make good decisions with bad information. So the thing is that his marketing was working, but he didn't know which channel he should double down on. And it was actually bringing him the jobs, the revenue, and the work that he wanted to do and helping him grow his business. So, you know, been able to identify which channel is working and go all in on that, he could have scaled his business faster. Because here's what I see every single week. We talk to business owners every single day, but many, many tradies running. Google ads, Facebook ads, maybe they've got a profile on high pages or OneFlare, they've got referrals coming in. Maybe they did some SEO work on their website. They're dabbling in marketing, right? But when I ask them which channel is making them the most money, they always give me the same answer. We are 100% relying on referrals. But it's not we know for sure, it's that I reckon it's mostly referrals. They don't know, they reckon. And look, the reason that it feels that way is because if you're getting phone calls from people that are actively telling you that their mate sent them or that you did work for their mate the other month or last year, you know where they came from. That person has told you and they're more likely to tell you if they're a referral. But someone that's coming through your website or through ads that goes on to book a job and pays you for it, and you have no idea how they found you, if it was Google, Facebook, a signage, they saw one of your trucks on the road. It often doesn't feel like it came from your marketing. And that's the actual problem. Referrals feel trackable because that person generally announces themselves as a referral, but digital leads don't do that. They just show up. So tradies massively overestimate how much referrals contribute and massively underestimate how much their digital marketing is doing if they don't have proper conversion tracking set up. I've seen this across many, many businesses. When we actually measure it properly, the split is almost a surprise. People who swore 90% of their work was coming through referrals, if they're doing marketing the right way, then find out that it's more like 40% referrals, 40% Google, and 20% everything else. But without tracking, they'd never know and they'd keep making decisions based on vibes and feelings and assumptions, which is not generally the best way to go. So here's where this really gets real. When you can't see which channel is performing, you often are gonna make one of these two types of mistakes. Both of them are really, really expensive, not only just in money, but in time. So mistake number one is that you kill something that's working. Like the guy I mentioned at the start, he had no idea Google Ads was actually bringing him in 63k a month. Without that visibility, he could have easily decided to cut it off and it would have cost him over $700,000 a year in revenue. Not because he's doing anything wrong, just because nobody had shown him the numbers clearly. Mistake number two is that you keep funding something that's not working. This is so, so common. I had another business that we spoke to, a painting company who was paying around $1,500 a month on a premium listing for a trade directory, and he'd been paying it for years. So this had added up to tens of thousands of dollars. But when we actually tracked it, that directory had sent him only 11 inquiries in two years, and he'd booked about three jobs in two years from 36k in spend is not a good return on investment. Meanwhile, his Google ads he kept second guessing because they seemed expensive were actually generating him over 20 jobs per month at a cost per lead of around $100. So he was actually protecting the thing that was bleeding him and second guessing the thing that was working for him. Not because he had made bad decisions, but because he didn't have the information to make good ones. So now multiply this across every trade in Australia who's spending money on marketing without proper tracking and the amount of wasted spend is staggering. Most trades businesses are wasting at least 20 to 30% of their marketing budget on channels that aren't producing results simply because they can't tell the difference. So if you're sitting there thinking, I have no idea which one of my channels is actually working, the number one thing that you need to sort out if you're looking at investing or are currently investing in marketing. Every form feel, every channel match to where that lead was coming from. So there's no guessing, there's no wondering, there's no gut feel, there is only data and numbers and accurate tracking so that you know what is and isn't working. So if you have conversion tracking properly set up, you will be able to identify exactly what channel each lead came in from. Then if you have, you know, a job booking platform where you're managing all your work, because every single lead that comes into your business should be attributed to the channel that they were acquired from. So that tells us what channel is working best, what ones aren't. But not only that, you have to also be able to know which of those leads are turning into jobs so that you can attribute the actual job back to the lead source it came in from. Because at the end of the day, it's not the amount of leads, it's actually the amount of jobs and revenue that come off the marketing and the money that you've invested into your marketing and advertising that is the most important. So, how do you actually track this stuff? And I know what you're thinking, I'm a tradeie, I'm not a data analyst. So let's just keep this really, really simple. It really doesn't have to be overcomplicated because there's basically three main things that once they're set up, run in the background and give you everything that you need to know when you're reflecting on the data and performance of your marketing. The first is form and phone call conversion tracking. So every form and every phone call that you get from your website, your ads, your landing pages, your funnel should be tagged according to which ad, which campaign, and which keywords sent that person there. So if someone fills out a quote request on your website or landing page, for example, you should be able to look at that lead and know that this person clicked an ad for bathroom renovations in Brisbane, not just someone who filled out a form on your site. The second is you need to send that lead into a CRM that tracks the source accurately. So when a lead comes in, they should be automatically tagged based on where they came from so that if you win that job, you can mark it as one and you can run a report that says last month Google ads generated this many leads and this many jobs with a total of revenue attributed to that channel. So that's gonna be your return. It doesn't need to be fancy. We use GoHigh Level for all of our clients, but even just a simple spreadsheet where you can track the source of the inquiry and how much revenue was generated from that lead and from that traffic source, it's better than nothing. The third thing that I recommend that you do is for any leads that come through other sources, whether they're, you know, it feels like referrals or they're contacting you directly or they're just calling you and inquiring, you need to be asking them and tracking manually how they heard about you too. So you can automate a lot of this stuff with, you know, your conversion tracking and your CRM tracking and all of those kind of things. But for those other leads that come through directly and maybe don't come through online sources, you need to ask how did you hear about us? Write it down, record it in their profile. It's not always perfect because people don't always remember or you know, they'll say Google, even though they actually saw your Facebook ad first, but it's another data point for those other leads that are coming in and combine that with the digital tracking and you get a pretty clear picture on what's working. So once these three things are running, you go from I reckon this is working to I know this is working. And honestly, that changes so, so much in how you're allocating your ad spend and how you're growing your business with more confidence, knowing what is and isn't working. Because when you can actually see which channel is bringing in jobs and how much those jobs are worth, these three things happen. The first is you spend smarter. Instead of spending 10 grand a month across Google, Facebook, and your directory listings, if you see that Google is bringing you 80% of your jobs, you can then decide to put more money there and cut the stuff that is dead weight. So even if you have the same amount of spend, you'll get way more jobs because you're investing in the channel that's working best for your business. The second is you stop second guessing yourself. Those a lot of tradies that I talk to are so unsure about their marketing and reacting to a feeling. A quiet week, a few missed calls can really stress you out. But when you've got the numbers and you can look at it and go, actually, I've got this many leads this week and this many jobs booked in for the next week, and that's totally normal. I just haven't followed up on these people, and that's a completely different problem because the tracking gives you clarity, it replaces anxiety with information, and you can make better decisions, which leads me to my next point. So the third thing you can benefit from having this properly set up is that you can actually plan. When you know the thousands of dollars that you put into your ads brings you roughly this many jobs, which generally generates this much revenue, you can forecast. So you can say, if I want to do an extra 10 jobs next month, I need to spend this much on Google. That's running a business, that's not guessing, that's engineering your growth, and it's actually gonna allow you to scale more efficiently because you're actually allocating again to things that are working, and you can be more confident in that investment because it's not an expense, it's an investment into your growth. That's how you need to be seeing, thinking, and feeling about marketing the right way. The tradies I work with who are scaling fast, the ones doing hundreds of thousands of dollars every single month, they all have this one thing in common. They actually know their numbers, they know where every job came from, how much it cost to acquire them, and what the return was on their advertising. It's not complicated. They just bothered to set it up and they're actually interested in those metrics. So, with all that said, the three things I want you to take away from this episode. Firstly, stop making marketing decisions based on a gut feeling. If you can't tell me exactly how many jobs each channel brought you last month and how much revenue those jobs generated, you're working with incomplete information, and incomplete information leads to really expensive decisions and time lost. The second thing I want you to take away from this episode is that tracking doesn't have to be complicated. Unique conversion tracking from forms and phone calls, a basic CRM, and remembering to ask how you heard about us. It's three things you can implement right now in order to get better information about how your marketing's working. This is gonna save you so much in wasted time and money. And the third thing is the biggest risk isn't spending money on marketing, it's spending money on marketing not knowing what's working because you'll either pull back on the thing that's making you money or keep funding the thing that's burning it. And either way, you lose. So if you want us to set up proper conversion tracking and performance tracking for your business so you can actually see what's working, head to our website or click the links in our episode show notes and you'll be able to book a call with me and my team. Or if you know a tradie who's spending money on ads right now and says, I think it's working, if they think they don't know, and they deserve better than that. So feel free to send this episode to them and tell them to reach out to us. But I hope this episode has been helpful and I will see you in the next one. Thank you for tuning in to the Marketing for Tradies podcast. If you got something out of this episode, don't forget to like, follow, and subscribe, or leave us a review on whatever platform you're listening on. And if you're a service based business owner who'd rather have someone handle your marketing for you, book a call with my team using the link below and let's see how we can help.