Today we are taking an in depth look at the 2022 Performance for a very successful painting company in Northwest Georgia called Dependable Painting and Remodelling. Derek and Tina Epstein manage multiple teams of painters that produce some of the best paintwork the Peach State has to offer. We are proud to serve them by delivering a steady stream of leads for indoor and outdoor residential paintings as well as Commercial Painting and other lines of business.
Their story can best be summarized as one of Growth. In the beginning of 2022 we were working with $4-5K per month budgets, but by May, we were committing to $20K per month and seeing commensurate results out of it.
Before we get too far into the story, let's take a moment to break down Year To Date account performance and get a sense of what the numbers are telling us and why. The comparison period is 2021.
The first thing to point out is that we spent a significant amount more in 2022 than 2021. ~$180K went into google ads this year, which was $144K more than last year. So while Dependable was familiar with Google Ads previously, partnering with Ernst Media really let them leverage the full potential of PPC to their revenue advantage, and their ad spend reflects that.
Account Wide Screenshots
Part of the increased ad spend was the geographic expansion of the business into the Northwest suburbs of Atlanta, Roswell, GA. This affluent and well established area is an ideal market for the company to expand into. Commercial Painting was a new segment within Painting for Dependable advertising efforts. We were able to generate well over $100K in quotes and many tens of thousands in sales.
Commercial Painting
Another reason for the increase in Year-over-Year spend is the addition of Flooring Installation as a service offered. This later change was largely driven by the need to replace business lost from painting with flooring to maintain revenue.
The macro economic conditions were very dynamic this year and smart business owners are very quick to pivot and adapt to changing market conditions. July was really the first month of trouble in the account as summer travel, rising gas prices and overall consumer price increases lead to dwindling discretionary income in the retail market.
This expanding and growing trajectory are self-evident in the data, total impressions came in at 462K ads served, up 359K from 2021. Clicks to the website almost doubled, +8,430 for a total of 10,100 potential customers brought to the website. Now, if $180K for 10K users seems a bit steep, I assure you, you are right. The structure and targeting of the account are largely driving a fairly expensive $17.64 Average CPC. Average Cost Per Acquisition for the Year was $61.83. Most importantly, this account is very heavy in Call-Only Ad Groups, but more about that later.
Total conversion production for the year came in at 2,890, + 1,830 from 2021. Click Through Rate on the Ads registered at 2.11% , which admittedly is just above the minimum threshold we have for Search performance. Conversion rate on the other hand, is at 28% for the year and that is actually down 34% from the year previous. Why do you ask? It again has to do with account structure and the Call Only Ad Groups and our addition of traditional search ads over the course of the year, which we will get to now.
The ability to quickly qualify a lead and build rapport with a potential client is critical. Big companies call these Sales Qualified Leads, if they are the “ideal” client that they are trying to reach and has the ability to purchase. Call Only Ad Groups allow small business owners to quickly and easily qualify leads, as well as take client information for future follow up appointments, or being input into a CRM.
It is important to be clear that the majority of users that interact with our ads were users on mobile devices that clicked on the business phone number to reach the Dependable Painting office. Most of them never reached the website, but for those that do, we also see Phone Calls, Emails and Form Submits coming from Event tracking on the website. These additional, website-based conversion actions are critical for everyone business owners to have.
Standard Operating Procedure with any good SEO or PPC company is going to be getting conversion and event tracking squared away. You can’t have any doubts about what actions users are taking once they get to your site. The reason the conversion rate is down 30%+ from last year is that we have introduced traditional search ads for Painting and Flooring into the mix this year. Yes, this account was at a 55% conversion rate earlier this year and Yes, traditional search ads are only converting at 10%, but the overall conversion volume increase is worth it.
Search Campaigns
Audience targeting is another important element of what has made this account successful. Obviously people that own homes are the best candidates to show our ads to. We are utilizing Google demographic targeting that allows us to target users that Google has identified as homeowners. We also have eliminated users under 34 from seeing our ads, this makes sense as the average first time home owner age has been increasing from the mid-30’s to low-40’s over the last 20 years. Now, we are not disclosing all of our targeting enhancements in this blog post, but these are some of the major drivers of the high-quality leads coming out of this account.
It has been a pleasure working with Dependable in 2022 and we look forward to taking what we have learned the last year and leveraging that knowledge into future growth of the Dependable Brand.
Do you have a home services business that you are trying to scale during the economic downturn? We have extensive experience working with home-service businesses and are happy to provide a consultation.
