What is the Average Cost Per Lead on PPC For Pest Control & Lawn Care Companies?

Hi, guys, Andrew here. Today, I have a great question from Jason. Jason asks, “In your experience, what is the average cost peer lead using pay-per-click advertising?” This is a great question; this is a common question that I get, but not just for pay-per-click advertising, but also for search engine optimization, for direct mail, for door hangers, all of these different marketing strategies that we can employ to sell your services and market your business, so really good question. Unfortunately, it’s not a simple answer. It’s not $5 per lead and it’s not $500 per lead. It’s going to vary drastically, depending on a number of different factors.

Let me give you a couple of different samples and we will start with pay-per-click, of course. Pay-per-click advertising; every pay-per-click system out there basically works on a bidding system. You’re bidding along with all of your competitors for very specific key word combinations. Some key word combinations cost less per click than other ones; it just depends on how many different competitors are bidding on that phrase. If you are in a market and there’s 50 lawn care companies all bidding for Lawn Care Tulsa, Oklahoma, then it’s probably going to be pretty expensive. It could be five, it could be $10 a click; it’s going to depend on your market. Then again, if you’re on a smaller market that’s less competitive and there’s only 10 or five people bidding on your key words on Lawn Care Tulsa or Lawn Care Small City, USA then the cost per click is going to be a lot less. It might be $2 a click, it might be $3 a click. It’s going to be completely dependent on your market and the service that you’re trying to sell and get clicks for.

Another example … and consider yourself lucky in the market that you’re in, because some of the markets that I’ve worked, such as insurance and doctors’, cosmetic surgery: very expensive clicks. Insurance companies, sometimes, they’re paying $75 per click. $75 per click; that’s not even signing up a new customer, that’s just somebody clicking on their link to get to their website, so if you’re feeling like $10 a click is crazy, consider yourself lucky because in other industries it’s much, much more, so this is a really good question. This also … I want to take this question a little bit further because it also applies to direct mail and search engine optimization and all of these different strategies that we can employ. The cost per lead, if you’re doing a direct mail campaign or door hanger, even that can be affected by the weather, it can be affected by the quality of the copy, the text that you have on your direct mail campaign: all of these things play a huge factor on if that person’s going to call or visit your website or contact you to actually become elite.

The quality of your direct mail piece, just like the headline and the quality of your pay-per-click ad affects how many people click on the add. The same is true with your direct mail. The quality of your copy, your headlines, the photos you use: these all have an impact on the percentage of people who pick up the phone and call you. Pay-per-click: it affects the percentage of people who click through your ad and go to your website or click on your phone number and call you. That’s where an expert really comes into play because experts know what to write, how to write it and they can really get those click through rates and those call rates up higher and generate more leads than your business owner who’s trying to do it himself to save a buck.

Often times, what happens when business owners try to do everything themselves when they’re not really a master of these different marketing methods, they cost themselves money rather than saving money. It’s much deeper than just setting up an ad. Your competitors, the fifty competitors in your market who are all bidding on the key phrases as you in pay-per-click advertising, some of those ads are performing a lot better than other ads because of the way they’re written and the call to action that they have in ads and a number of different factors. There’s lots of different factors that some into play, but unless you’re an expert at that particular field of marketing, you’re not going to be able to maximize your marketing dollars in those areas.

Another example … let’s touch briefly on search engine optimization while we’re talking about this because this is another area where your cost per lead can vary greatly. It can vary greatly in the same ways that what’s on your actual website … is your website laid out in a way that encourages people to call? Is the information that they need in order to make a decision presented in a way that they can digest it quickly without hitting that back button? Is it easy for them to request an estimate through their website? All of these factors play a part in whether or not they become a lead, which can affect your cost per lead: how much you’re spending to get somebody to call you or give you their information. The same is true when you’re in the middle of a search engine optimization campaign and your website is slowly, slowly climbing up to that number one position on Google for any given key phrase. As you climb up on that search results page on that first page of Google, you’re getting more and more and more leads as you get up to that number one position. Your ranking also has a big impact on how many leads you get from a search engine optimization campaign, so that also affects the customer acquisition costs for that particular marketing strategy.

There isn’t a set number; it’s going to depend on: “how will you execute the competition in your market?” and a number of different factors. That’s pretty much an overview, so this is where it really pays to hire and expert who really knows what they’re doing in any of these different strategies that you’re trying to implement. Hope I answered your question. I wish it was a simple number, but that’s not how it is. It’s a complicated topic; there’s a lot of factors that play a part, but I hope that gave you an idea of the things that we deal with with our clients on a day-to-day basis. These are the strategies that we implement and we’re trying to get them the lowest client acquisition cost possible. Fantastic question, keep them coming and be sure to visit the website, send me an email, ask me another question, I’d love to answer it for you. In the meantime, sign up for a podcast; there’s a link on here. Go check out our podcast, subscribe to that. We post a new episode every week on iTunes. Good stuff. All right, guys, take care. Good luck.

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