Phone calls have dropped off a cliff

[Clutchy]

Bit of a strange one. 

 

We have gone from consistently averaging 4-6 calls per day in winter and 9-12 a day in spring / summer time over the last 3 years to 1-2 a day if I'm lucky these last 3 weeks. 

 

Has literally gone from insanely busy to dead as a door knob. 

 

Is everyone else still really really busy? Nothing has changed with our advertising, so confused and now worried.... 

 

Cheers 

[Retired Climber]

How are you advertising? Any chance of a slap from Google? If your site is anything like quite a few members of this forum your organic ranking is likely to take a hit soon. Are you using Google ads?

[Gav73]

The amount of people who had their gardens done over the lockdown periods might also be having an impact and now that things have started opening up, there’s not the urgency to get work done

[Clutchy]

We are looking to move the ad words in house or off to somewhere where we have more control of the budget. 

 

Currently we spend around 1.2k plus vat a month for a landing page unrelated to our actual website. A company  handles all of this and in turn i just get calls and emails from it. 

 

I know the leads are from them as it plays a special tone when i answer the call.

 

For example www.treesurgonsnorthlondon.co.uk 

 

We have 3 areas (3 separate landing pages). Up until now this has worked really well and allowed us to target very lucrative areas. 

 

Our actual website has no spend, we do get calls from it but nothing compared. 

 

I know this is a bit naughty but its never been an issue with customers so far. 

 

 

Good point Gav, would like to ascertain if others have felt that or just us! 

Edited May 18, 2021 by Clutchy

[topchippyles]

Might be a daft question but after 3 years have you not built up a customer base of some kind or is it all new work you undertake

[Clutchy]

1 minute ago, topchippyles said:

Might be a daft question but after 3 years have you not built up a customer base of some kind or is it all new work you undertake

We do get a lot of old customers calling back but thats back when we were really cheap lol and they rarely take us up on the new pricing structure 🤭

[Clutchy]

3 minutes ago, topchippyles said:

Might be a daft question but after 3 years have you not built up a customer base of some kind or is it all new work you undertake

It is predominantly new work, we have never had a bad review and have tonnes of 5 star reviews on various platforms, just not a whole heap of repeat work.

 

We only win approx 10-20% of quotes (high prices). Well comparatively speaking.

[topchippyles]

5 minutes ago, Clutchy said:

It is predominantly new work, we have never had a bad review and have tonnes of 5 star reviews on various platforms, just not a whole heap of repeat work.

 

We only win approx 10-20% of quotes (high prices). Well comparatively speaking.

Maybe come back to bite you if pricing that high. 1 in 10 jobs after quotation seems a lot of pricing for very little work. 

Edited May 18, 2021 by topchippyles

[Clutchy]

16 minutes ago, topchippyles said:

Maybe come back to bite you if pricing that high.

I think so. We are reducing our prices as there's not enough phone calls at the moment. 

 

When the calls were coming in thick and fast winning 10-20% was fine. We just kept increasing the ad budget. 

 

I'd happily do 100 quotes a month, win 10 and average 1.1-1.7k + vat  a day for a 3-4 man team than quote 30 times a month and work for 700 a day.

 

However this seems to have come to an end. Pretty crap business to be in as no one wants to work for profit. Just wages and costs... 

 

But you're right, we need to adapt, I just hate the idea of working for peanuts 

Edited May 18, 2021 by Clutchy

[topchippyles]

4 minutes ago, Clutchy said:

I think so. We are reducing our prices as there's not enough phone calls at the moment. 

 

When the calls were coming in thick and fast winning 10-20% was fine. We just kept increasing the ad budget. 

 

I'd happily do 100 quotes a month, win 10 and average 1.1-1.7k + vat  a day for a 3 man team than quote 30 times a month and work for 700 a day.

 

However this seems to have come to an end. Pretty crap business to be in as no one wants to work for profit. Just wages and costs... 

 

But you're right, we need to adapt, I just hate the idea of working for peanuts 

3 good years you said and cannot always have the cream so to speak. As mentioned with things opening up and people looking to spend money on holidays abroad its bound to have a knock on effect.