Adam: One of our clients asked us how many leads it takes to get to one customer. Honest answer? That's the wrong question. The number that matters is how many you're losing after the phone already rang.
Welcome to Pest Control Marketing That Actually Works, the podcast for pest control operators who want real growth, not empty promises. I'm Adam Bennett.
Elisabeth: And I'm Elisabeth Pallante. We're from Cube Creative Design, and for over twenty years we've helped pest control companies stop wasting money and start growing.
Adam: Today's episode, we're changing it up a little bit. This is Listener Q&A, part two. We've got more real questions from pest control owners, and here's what we're answering today.
Elisabeth: How many leads does it really take to land a customer, and where are you losing them? How long does SEO take, and why is "wait until you're bigger" the wrong answer? And lastly, if referrals built your business, what do you add first?
Adam: Elisabeth, why don't we dig into the first question?
Elisabeth: Sure. How many leads does it take to land one customer?
Adam: Honestly, I think between three and five. What do you think?
Elisabeth: I actually think at least four is my first thought.
Adam: That's great. So really, that's three to five cold leads. And I would say around two referrals. With referrals, that's word of mouth, where you're already passing the friend test. Most shops lose a third of their leads after the phone rings. If you're not picking up the phone, I think that's one of the biggest reasons it takes so many. People just don't answer the phone, and they don't get back to a customer quickly enough.
Elisabeth: Right. This is going to depend on how you're handling your leads and where they come from. Like you said, a referral is a pretty solid lead. But what are you doing with leads as they come in? Are you responding to them? Do you have a website? Do you have the information up for them to see? There are a lot of variables here. You might need a lot more leads if you're not responding quickly or you don't have good information online as a backup. You'll need fewer leads if you're calling back quickly and giving people what they want.
Adam: So what happens after the phone call? Say a customer calls and nobody picks up. How do you follow back up with that customer? Maybe they left a message, maybe they didn't. But if you're not following up over email or phone, you're going to lose a lead you've already paid for. You might as well follow up. It could turn into a customer if they haven't called your competition yet.
Elisabeth: And I'd add a little fail-safe here. If you have a website, and hopefully you do, this is where pricing comes in. Even if you're a little slow to get to somebody, if they can find your pricing, they have a general idea of where you stand. Even if they're calling other pest control companies, they know what you cost and can decide whether you're a good fit to come out to their house.
Adam: Absolutely. And by having a website with a form on it, you can put that potential customer into a sequence. Say they call and you don't pick up, or they email and don't respond back. You can put them into what's called a nurturing sequence. You email them back that afternoon, three days later, five days later, and just say, "Hey, we're still here. Here's why you should go with ABC Termite. Here's what our customers say about us." Nurture that customer, so even if they found a competitor to use now, maybe they'll come back down the line.
Elisabeth: Absolutely.
Adam: So here are some numbers. Cold leads close around twenty to thirty percent. We talked about that a few months ago. That's about two referrals, or three to five cold leads, per customer.
Elisabeth: And about thirty-five to forty percent of inbound callers never actually book. We talked about that before as well. It's a significant number.
Adam: A lot of times we call those the tire kickers. That's why what you said about pricing is so important, Elisabeth. If you have it on your website, maybe those tire kickers won't call, and you'll get a better close rate. Or maybe they will call, because you've been upfront with your pricing.
Elisabeth: Right. They've qualified themselves before they call.
Adam: But most importantly, if you're not tracking your lead source, you can't answer the question of what's actually working.
Elisabeth: Right. You've got to have some sort of window in.
Adam: Let's take a look at question number two. This one's about reviews. Do reviews still matter once I have a bunch of them? What do you think, Elisabeth?
Elisabeth: They matter. Absolutely, yes. They matter a lot. Even if you have a lot of reviews, if they've stalled out and you haven't had a review in the last six months or the last year, I think recency matters regardless of how many you have. So yes, reviews still matter even if you have a bunch.
Adam: I totally agree. Recency is so important. You'll go to a place that might have fifty or a hundred reviews, and the last one was six months or a year ago. That tells you maybe this business isn't in business anymore, or customers just aren't wowed by their service.
Elisabeth: Right, or there was an ownership change, or who knows what. I feel like reviews are the currency people use before they ever reach out. That's the net they go to. So if there's a big blank stretch, that's a red flag for potential clients.
Adam: And what I've seen on Google reviews is that reaching twenty-four is a pretty big hurdle. Reaching fifty is a huge hurdle. A hundred is the next big one. So if you set these goals for you and your technicians, that's going to help Google, and even AI, show you higher up, because it's showing a lot of good signals from your customers.
Elisabeth: And to add to that, your responses count too. If you're responding to clients, good or bad, and hopefully more good, those responses matter both for the people reading your reviews and for SEO. If you say, "It was great treating your yellow jacket problem in Salem," it's a small thing, but those answers compound for you, both with people reading the reviews and with AI scanning them.
Adam: Absolutely. And the Cube Score we talk about on this podcast all the time, that's our proprietary system for judging how well pest control sites are doing. One thing we look for is how many reviews you have on your website and how many you have out there in the wild. You can pull your Google reviews onto your website and show them to your customers. That's really important.
Businesses with fifty or more reviews convert at two to three times the rate of those with under ten. I know we're talking to small and medium-sized pest control operators here, so I'd set a goal. If you don't have any reviews, work on the first ten, then get up to twenty-four, and keep pushing. That could mean a difference of thousands of dollars a month. When it comes to reviews, Google Business Profile really is still the king of the castle.
Elisabeth: And that's yours. You own it. Once you have those reviews, they're not going away. And to get those reviews, it really helps to text the requests. Texts get about a ninety-eight percent open rate versus about twenty percent for email. It's worth it a million times over to text them. Don't harass people over and over, but that'll make a big difference.
Adam: Absolutely. I'd send it once, right after the job or even while the tech is still on the job. If they haven't responded three days later, send one more, and that's it. Don't keep harassing them. But a good texting system is really important. If your booking system does it, fantastic. If not, tools like Podium, Birdeye, or HubSpot can help get those reviews for you.
So Elisabeth, is there a point where you stop chasing reviews? Say you have four hundred reviews. Where do you stop?
Elisabeth: I don't think you do. I think you keep going, especially at that point. If you've got it automated, where the tech finishes the job and a text automatically goes out to request the review, then another one goes out three or five days later, that's not a big deal. It's a great muscle to keep strong. Keep it in your wheelhouse. You need those recent reviews, so it's important enough to keep doing.
Adam: So fifty gets you in the game, and fresh ones keep you in the game.
Elisabeth: Absolutely. Okay, question number three. How long does SEO really take?
Adam: Oh my gosh. I answer this question all the time, and it's hard to say. We've seen some customers do really well after a couple of months, and some where it takes longer.
Elisabeth: It does depend. If I have to give a number, I'll say twelve months, because I feel like that's overestimating in a way. We've definitely seen it take twelve months for clients, depending on the market and what else is happening there. But we've also seen results after three months, after six, after nine. So I'd go in expecting it to take a year. That way, if anything happens sooner, you'll be pleasantly surprised instead of discouraged for eleven months.
Adam: That's a good point. We have operators ask, "If it's going to take six to twelve months, why should I even do this?" Because in six to twelve months, you're going to be in a much better position than where you are now. That's the game. Great content on your website helps with SEO, and now with AEO and GEO too, the AI readers. That's where it's even more important, because if you don't have great content on your website, ChatGPT has nothing to recommend to people.
Elisabeth: Right. Six months always sounds like a long time. Twelve months sounds like a long time. But it comes around quickly, and it's worth it. In the meantime, keep your content working in the background. And there are things you can move in just weeks: Google Business Profile updates, adding starting prices, or fixing a contact form.
Adam: That's a great point. Adding posts to your Google Business Profile also helps your SEO and your AI visibility, so AI can start recommending you before your website takes off.
Elisabeth: Yes, absolutely. It's worth it.
Adam: Content and rankings are the slow part, but they build over time. That's exactly why starting late costs so much. You may be starting at zero, but in six to twelve months that keeps compounding, and in two years it's even greater. You keep building on the foundation of great content on your site.
Elisabeth: And you own it. It doesn't go away. It's not like an ad that's gone when you stop paying. It keeps working for you.
Adam: Absolutely. You can't wait until you're a million-dollar company to do your SEO.
Elisabeth: Exactly. That's the advice we hear: wait until $1 million to do SEO. But if it takes a year to work, waiting just starts the clock a year late. At some point you're going to want to do this, so just get going.
Adam: Looking at the customers we work with, web traffic is up over 150% and sessions are up over 140% year over year. That's changing with AI, because a lot of people don't even land on your website now. But it's so important to have a website with content, so people searching in ChatGPT and Claude can find you.
Elisabeth: Right. Overall, organic search takes about six to twelve months to reach a strong cost per acquisition.
Adam: But it's scary. It's like, "I need the leads now." There are ways to get leads now, but you have to build both to be successful now and later.
Elisabeth: And one note on this: SEO doesn't fix a site that doesn't convert in the first place. More traffic to a poorly written or poorly laid-out page is still a bad page. Don't put your blinders on and focus only on content while you ignore everything else on your site. Keep the content machine running, and make sure everything else is tuned up too.
Adam: So to answer this question, the best time to start your SEO was last year. The second best time is before your competitor does.
Next question. What happens to my rankings if I move?
Elisabeth: The short answer is they're going to drop when you first move. What's your take?
Adam: Yes. If you've changed your Google Business Profile address, you're going to drop. And it depends on how far you moved. Are you still in your area, or did you move out of it? That's huge.
Elisabeth: Map pack rankings lean on proximity. So if you move your address, you can drop in areas you used to be close to. That affects them directly.
Adam: We've got a customer who's moving their home office from their current location to another one. They do want to target cities near the new location. But because of the SEO work done over the past six months, not even that long, they're getting great results at their current location. Now they're asking whether we can start building up for the new area, but they'll have to travel farther to reach the customers they're getting now. That's a quandary.
What I've always told people is, if you're opening up in another market, open another Google Business Profile with a small office or an address in that actual location. That's going to help you immensely with new customers. But if you move and change that address, Google won't be able to recommend you in the same location. So make sure your address is actually in the area you want to serve.
Elisabeth: And just to warn people, changing the address on your Google Business Profile can trigger a re-verification. Be prepared for that. It's pretty typical.
Adam: And if you're at a home office and you have to re-verify, that process is not fun, and you only get a few tries. So read all the directions before you do it.
Elisabeth: Absolutely. Once you do this, make sure you update your NAP everywhere at once: your name, address, and phone. We went over that in Episode 24, so that might be one to go back and listen to. You'll be surprised how many places your NAP is listed. It can be a lot.
Adam: And even if it's listed with an apartment or suite number, if it's different, it has to be the same everywhere so Google and AI know it's the same place.
Elisabeth: And really the same. Even "Dr" with a period versus "Dr" without one can goof it up. You want it exactly the same.
Adam: That's crazy, because we know what "Dr." means. Also, look for duplicate profiles. With a different name, address, or phone number, sometimes Google will create a second profile for you, and it might show your old address. Make sure you don't have more than one.
Elisabeth: And if you serve customers at their homes, you may be able to run as a service-area business and hide your address. That's a possibility too. It depends on your situation.
Adam: That keeps changing with Google right now, though. A lot of it is up in the air. We've had good success with some and not so much with others. So really, moving your office is fine. Moving it without a plan is where you're going to lose your map.
Elisabeth: Okay, we've got another question here. Question number five: I live on referrals. What do I add first?
Adam: Great question. Referrals will usually build you up to around $800,000 to $1.2 million, and then they stall. We've talked about that in previous episodes. Referrals can only take you so far. Do you want me to say where I think you should start?
Elisabeth: Yeah, give me your answer, and then let's compare.
Adam: I hope it's the same. I really think you should fix your website first. If your website isn't great, that's the ticket.
Elisabeth: This one's kind of wide open to me. It depends on what they've got. Do you have a website? If you live on referrals, is it completely referrals? My first thought is to make sure your Google Business Profile is working. If you get a referral, that person needs to be able to look you up and make sure you're legitimate, that you exist. Most people have that, so it's kind of a given. But if you don't, that's the first thing. If you do have your Google Business Profile, then make sure your website's right: that you have one and that it converts.
Adam: Okay, I guess I want to change my answer. You're right.
Elisabeth: But you're right that it's a given. Most people do have a Google Business Profile, except we've had clients who don't, and it hurts them fast.
Adam: It's like what we've talked about. You want to own something that's yours. Owned assets make your referrals land even better. If you've got a great website, referrals will increase, because people will say, "These people really know what they're talking about." They've got proof on their website, great pictures, all their services, and they might even have pricing, which is great. But people are still going to Google, so absolutely, Google Business Profile.
Elisabeth: And to speak to owned assets making referrals land better: referred people still Google you before they call. They'll still do some homework. Those assets work for you, you own them, and they help you.
Adam: Can you create a referral system? If you're relying on referrals that happen naturally through word of mouth, create a system where you ask, "Hey, can you refer us? Here's a card. Do you mind telling a few people about us?" You can see your referrals increase that way too.
Elisabeth: Right. You can offer an incentive. That's a great way to use email marketing, actually. Email your clients with some sort of referral incentive.
Adam: That's such a great point. I think we're going to talk about that in another episode, but how do you get back to your current customers with the services you provide? A lot of companies don't do that. So referrals got you here, but the owned stuff gets you past it.
Elisabeth, what's one thing to fix this week, based on all this?
Elisabeth: Your one thing to fix this week: pull last month's leads and last month's booked jobs. Divide one by the other, and that's your real close rate. That's where I'd start.
Adam: And if you can't get those numbers in fifteen minutes, that's the fix. Add a lead source field to your job software yesterday.
If this helped, follow the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify so next Tuesday's episode shows up on its own.
Okay, Elisabeth, quick gut check before we go. Did we answer these three?
Elisabeth: Number one: it's a leak problem, not a lead volume problem. Your real close rate, booked jobs divided by leads, tells you more than any lead count. Before you buy more, count how many you already lost after the phone rang.
Number two: SEO is a six to twelve month channel, and that's the argument for starting now, not against it. Waiting until you're big enough just starts the clock a year late. There are fast wins, like your Google Business Profile, starting prices, and a short, working contact form. But the content that compounds is the slow part, which is exactly why starting late is more expensive. You just need to get started.
Number three: when referrals stall, add something you own before something you rent. A site that converts, a complete Google Business Profile, a real way to ask for reviews. Owned assets make referrals land harder too, since people Google you before they call.
Adam: These are such great questions. Thank you, everybody, for sending them. If you want help getting any of this started, visit marketingthatactuallyworks.ai for your free pest control marketing audit. We'll show you exactly what's working and what's costing you money.
Elisabeth: And if you want to see how your site looks to AI search, get your free Cube Score at thecubescore.com. While you're at it, grab our 20-point Pest Control Marketing Checklist, the same one we use with all our clients.
Adam: And if you got any value today, leave us a five-star review. There it is, asking for the review. It helps other pest control operators find the show. Next Tuesday, we're talking about creating a marketing calendar that actually gets executed.
Elisabeth: Thanks for listening to Pest Control Marketing That Actually Works. We'll see you next Tuesday.
