Bob Sheehan, Surefire’s SVP of Customer Advocacy, led a discussion on how to create and execute a marketing budget for your home improvement business. He shared insights on what you can do to better understand your customer journey through various marketing channels, ways you can analyze your current performance to understand attribution and how to evaluate media channels and track lead sources to establish better ROI. Watch his webinar on demand at: https://www.surefirelocal.com/register-for-marketing-budget-webinar/

1. Effective Budgeting for Home
Improvement Marketing
marketing@surefirelocal.com

2. Our Story
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Began when a small
business owner taught
his son the value of
hard work
Surefire Local started as
an idea - a way to help
small businesses rank
higher in search engines

3. 3SurefireLocal.com
Today’s Giveaway!
1 lucky attendee is going to win a free Google Home
voice-activated speaker!
Ok Google!
Who is
Surefire Local?
Must stay until end of webinar!

4. 4
Today’s Speaker
SurefireLocal.com
Bob Sheehan
SVP, Customer Advocacy

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6. • Introduction
• Analyze previous performance
• Understand attribution
• Introduce new strategies
• Build a budget
Agenda
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8. Measuring Marketing has Challenges
1. All Leads Are Not Equal
2. Attribution - Where are the leads coming from
3. Too many marketing vendors
4. Weather and Economy is a factor
5. Marketing ROI measurement is confusing
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9. Let's Get Prepared
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10. Budgeting Media for
a Small Business
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11. Budgeting = Tracking
Determine what’s working, and therefore what
deserves a piece of your budget, by tracking it
as it happens
Track now so you can evaluate later
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12. Manage Your Numbers with a Spreadsheet
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13. You Have Many Media Choices
➔ Email
➔ Web sites
➔ BBB
➔ Television
➔ Radio
➔ Billboards
➔ Etc. Etc. etc.
Where do you start?
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14. Start Now
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15. Step 1 - Start With What You’re Doing Today
List all media you’re using and how much
you’re spending on it
Direct Mail $15,000
Radio $17,500
Website $30,000
BBB $1,500
Billboards $5,000
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16. Step 2:
• Create a spreadsheet for tracking by medium & cost per lead
Add the sales you have for each
medium, along with Ad Cost of
Sales and lead cost
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17. Sales to Leads
Media Spending Sales $ Ad Cost # Leads Lead Cost
Direct Mail $15,000 $200,000 7.5% 100 $150
Radio $17,500 $86,000 20.3% 63 $277
Website $30,000 $400,000 7.5% 350 $85
BBB $1,500 $26,000 5.7% 6 $250
Billboards $5,000 $30,000 16.6% 13 $384
Postcards $8,000 $28,000 28.5% 6 $1,333
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18. How Well Do You Know These Sources?
1. Did you guess?
2. Did you estimate?
3. Did you ask your customers how they came to you?
4. Did you track your leads aggressively?
If #4, you’re doing great…
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19. Aggressive Tracking
➔ Phone calls- tracking phone numbers
➔ Leads from web sites- sourcing to origin
➔ Asking customers what made them call
you
➔ Tracking your links with UTM Codes
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20. Phone Calls
Use a different
phone number for
every medium
A call from a tracking number that is nowhere else can’t be
from anywhere else…100% tracking certainty
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21. Website Leads
➔ Subject lines - is there a different subject line on your
web leads than on your pay per click landing pages?
➔ Do you track UTM codes on external referral sources?
➔ Is it easy for your people to understand where a lead
came from? (if not, change it)
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22. Asking Customers How They Heard About You
➔ Least reliable
➔ Customers don’t care how they got to you
➔ They only want to be taken care of
➔ Listen with a grain of salt- when they tell you
something at odds with your tracking, go with your
tracking as the source
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23. Train Your Staff
➔ The person answering your phones should know
your media schedule
➔ Know what every kind of lead looks like
➔ Train your staff to be well versed in your business
➔ If they can’t do this reliably, get someone else to do
it…it’s too important
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24. You have last year’s
data, and maybe even
two years. What next?
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25. Rank lead source statistics by number of leads.
Now you know which pieces of your budget are most important
Media Spending Sales $ Ad Cost # Leads Lead Cost
Website $30,000 $400,000 7.5% 350 $85
Direct Mail $15,000 $200,000 7.5% 100 $150
Radio $17,500 $86,000 20.3% 63 $277
Billboards $5,000 $30,000 16.6% 13 $384
BBB $1,500 $26,000 5.7% 6 $250
Postcards $8,000 $28,000 28.5% 6 $1,333
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26. Now, rank your lead sources by Ad Cost
Lower at the top
Now you know what the most inexpensive media is, and therefore
the ones that should be covered first
Media Spending Sales $ Ad Cost # Leads Lead Cost
BBB $1,500 $26,000 5.7% 6 $250
Website $30,000 $400,000 7.5% 350 $85
Direct Mail $15,000 $200,000 7.5% 100 $150
Radio $17,500 $86,000 20.3% 63 $277
Billboards $5,000 $30,000 16.6% 13 $384
Postcards $8,000 $28,000 28.5% 6 $1,333
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27. Next, Understand These Things About Next Year’s
Media Potentials:
➔ Did I buy everything they had last year? If they
were good, should I buy more?
➔ Do I have more to spend this year?
➔ Are there things on my list that could be cut?
(there’s no risk when you cut non-performing
media)
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28. Build Next Year’s Budget From the Bottom Up
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29. First - Collect Your Building Blocks
➔ Buy as many of the things that work as you can
➔ More frequency
➔ More geography
➔ Move to the next thing on the list
➔ Buy what you can there
➔ Stop when it doesn’t make sense any more
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30. Rinse, Repeat.
➔ Do this exercise annually and monthly- these are
seasonal businesses, and it’s different in December
than it is in June…spend accordingly
➔ Stop when you spend the budget
➔ If you build it this way, you will always buy the most
leads at the most inexpensive cost, and your
marketing budget will provide you with the best
return
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31. What if your marketing
could work harder, helping
you reach your goals?
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32. Introducing the Surefire Local Marketing Cloud
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33. A single platform that
allows you to see &
strengthen all of your
online marketing
activities - from a
single platform
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34. SurefireLocal.com
Paid Search
Local SEO
Organic SEO
Dominate
Page 1 of
Online
Search
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35. Say YES to a tour of the Surefire Cloud!
...and get a Google Chromecast just for chatting!
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36. www.SurefireLocal.com marketing@surefirelocal.com