Where is your ad budget leaking?
Nine questions, about two minutes. Score how much of your ad spend survives the trip from click to booked job, and see what to fix first.
Budget leak check
The checklist, explained
The nine places home-service ad budgets leak.
Each question above is one point between the click and the booked job. Here is what each leak costs and how it is usually fixed — weighted by how much spend it typically touches.
- 01MeasurementWeight 14
Call tracking
Calls are usually most of a contractor’s leads. Without call tracking by campaign, budget gets moved on clicks and form fills — the minority.
The fix: Tracking numbers on the site and in the ads, so every call is tied to the campaign and keyword that paid for it.
- 02MeasurementWeight 12
Booked-job import
Google bids toward whatever you count as a conversion. If that is “any call over 60 seconds”, it finds more of those — wrong numbers and job seekers included.
The fix: Import booked jobs, and their value, as offline conversions so bidding learns what a real customer looks like.
- 03AnsweringWeight 14
Missed calls
A paid call that rings out is the most expensive lead you will buy: you paid for it and nobody heard it.
The fix: Overflow routing to a second line or an answering service, and a weekly look at the missed-call rate.
- 04AnsweringWeight 10
After-hours calls
Emergency demand does not keep office hours. A caller who reaches voicemail usually rings the next company in the results.
The fix: Live answering or an on-call rotation for the hours you advertise — or stop bidding on hours nobody answers.
- 05Follow-upWeight 12
Form follow-up speed
A form lead is often shopping several companies at once. The first one to call back usually gets the job.
The fix: An instant text acknowledgment, then a call inside five minutes during business hours.
- 06Conversion pathWeight 10
Service landing pages
A homepage answers every question except the one the ad asked. Visitors who cannot find it in seconds leave.
The fix: One page per service: the offer, the service area, reviews and click-to-call above the fold.
- 07BiddingWeight 10
Service-line bidding
A repair call and a system replacement can cost about the same click and be worth very different amounts.
The fix: Campaigns split by service line, with targets set from each line’s ticket and margin.
- 08BiddingWeight 8
Search terms
Broad matching drifts: DIY, parts, jobs and out-of-area searches spend quietly in the background.
The fix: A search terms review weekly in season, monthly otherwise, with shared negative lists by service.
- 09ReportingWeight 10
Cost per booked job reporting
If nobody can say what a booked job cost, nobody can tell whether the budget is working — or which channel to cut.
The fix: One monthly report: spend, calls, booked jobs and revenue by service line and channel.
How the leak score works
What is a budget leak in home service advertising?
A point between the click and the booked job where demand you have already paid for goes missing: a call nobody answers, a form nobody follows up, an ad that lands on the wrong page, or bidding that cannot tell a booked job from a wrong number. The ads did their job; the lead still never became revenue.
How is the leak score calculated?
Each of the nine questions carries a weight based on how much ad spend it usually touches, and the weights add up to 100. Yes keeps the full weight, Partly or not sure keeps half, and No keeps none. The score is the total kept. The weights are: call tracking 14, missed calls 14, booked-job import 12, form follow-up speed 12, after-hours calls 10, service landing pages 10, service-line bidding 10, cost per booked job reporting 10, search terms 8.
What is a good leak score?
80 or above reads as Tight: most spend reaches a booked job and what is left is refinement. 50 to 79 is Patchy: some paid-for demand is going missing. Below 50 is Leaking at several stages, and fixing the first two gaps usually matters more than any change to the ads. It is a checklist score, not a measurement of your account.
Is the leak check free, and what happens to my answers?
It is free and it runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you choose leaves the page unless you attach your answers to a free account audit request, where we check them against the last 90 days of your ad data and send back a written three-fix priority list.
The free 90-day account audit
We'll show you the leak before you pay us anything.
Three business days. A written three-fix priority list, and your real cost per booked job — calculated properly, probably for the first time.