The Road to Profit: How Long Does It Really Take For A PPC Campaign To Work?

"Hello and welcome back to another episode of The Collective Clicks podcast. This is your host Brandon Baitman, and today I'm here with Landon Heeden, a member of my team. We're going to talk all about how long it takes for a Google Ads campaign to work. There are a lot of different directions we can go with this discussion. We'll talk about leading metrics, lagging metrics, platform learning versus optimization, and how those things often get mixed up. Ultimately, we'll address how long it takes for a campaign to work. Landon, how you doing today?"

"Doing well, how are you doing?"

"Fantastic! Excited to have you here. This is your... second? What's a better word for that? Um, this is your debut, the Landon Heeden premiere on the Collective Clicks podcast. Very excited to have you here, to have you be a part of the team."

"It's good to be here."

"Yeah, so we're going to get into the topic today, which is basically how long it takes for a PPC campaign to work. But before that, just because you're newer, would you mind giving a brief introduction so people know who they're talking to and where this random guy came from out of nowhere?"

"Yeah, you bet. So I'm Landon Heeden, I'm the director of account management here at Baitman. I've been in the digital marketing world for over 20 years, which makes me feel old, but it's true. I've been through... I mean, I've worked in a ton of different industries and areas in e-commerce, lead gen, bunch of stuff. It took a while to find a company that I wanted to land with, and I found Baitman in December, and I'm glad I'm here. So yeah, it's really, really good to be here."

"Yeah, I'm excited for you to be here too. Actually, I sometimes actively caution people against working with people who've been in digital marketing for a long time because sometimes they just... like to get some context here, I mean, you were basically doing Google Ads like when they first started existing, similar with..."

"Years after."

"Two years after, which I mean, in the world of ad tech, is so... like primitive in terms of the targeting and stuff. There's... in my experience, there's very few people who've like kept up well with the changes. If we're being honest, like this landscape is completely different than it was like three or five years ago in terms of how do you win with online marketing campaigns. Completely different game than it was five years ago, and a lot of people just have a hard time keeping up with that. You seem to do a good job with that, so I'm excited to have you like bring that wealth of knowledge and experience to the team with, you know, the ability to learn some new tricks and have..."

"There's always something new to learn. I think that's what's kept me in this for so long, is that it's always changing. It doesn't get boring, for sure."

"Yeah, so the topic today is really difficult. Really difficult question. Basically, let you know where this came from. I asked my team that manages our social media like, 'What's the most common question that you're getting right now?' And the most common question that we're getting is, 'How long does it take for a campaign to work?' Which is like the epitome of a loaded question. But where... you know, the answer to a question is a little bit complicated. I think it's good that we have time to just dig into a couple different facets of that and how those work. But yeah, where would you start? Like when you're thinking, let's just say you're talking to somebody and they're asking, 'How long does it take for a PPC campaign to work?' I mean, a lot of times they're asking because like maybe 'I have X amount of runway and it's got to work by whatever date' or maybe like 'I've been with another agency and it's been however many days and it's not working' or whatever the case is. Like everybody has their own reasons, but yeah, what are some of the things that come to your mind when you think about how long it takes for it to work?"

"Yeah, and I always translate that when a client's asking, it's 'How long till we can start making money?' basically. When they say 'How long does it work?' Which also, that's a whole another loaded question. But I think there's really no standard answer as far as how long it'll take to work. I think it depends on a lot of different things. It depends on targeting, it depends on budget, conversion cycles. And I've always broken it into two different areas: we've got learning and then we've got optimization. And so, I think a lot of people could confuse those two. They say, you know, 'It takes about three to six months for the campaign to learn.' That's not true. The campaign learns within about two conversion cycles, whatever that is. So if you're selling cars, it's different. In this particular industry, it's very, very quick. We've got motivated sellers and it happens, you know, generally within a week, I would say, sometimes a little longer. So if you talk about two to three of those conversion cycles, that's how long it takes a campaign to learn. So very, very quickly."

"Now when you talk about optimization, now we're into a whole different world. That's more what the client's asking is, 'How long is it going to take for this to work?' That's more the optimization stage. And I think there, you know, we talk about patience, profit, growth, and we can break them into like three, six, nine months. That's more of where we get into..."

"Yeah, yeah, that totally makes sense. I just add like a ton of clarity to what you're saying. You know, when we say conversion, what'd you say? Conversion cycle?"

"Conversion cycle, yeah."

"A lot of people were just... just thinking like real estate investors, they probably heard that like, 'Oh, cash conversion cycle, a week? You serious? What kind of business do you think we're in?' So I mean, that's where... and that's kind of why we're doing this, like break down these different pieces and how they work. You know, so what Google's looking at is how long does it take for Google to get a conversion, which is basically a sign of success of something from the leads, which is usually going to be like... everybody measures it differently. The way we usually do it by default is we're going to measure what we call a 'qualified lead' as a conversion. It's not exactly a lead, it's not exactly a deal, it's like somewhere between where we like verify it's a lead that meets certain quality criteria. That's what we're going to call a conversion."

"So it's how long does it take between a click happening and us getting that conversion to Google Ads, because it's got to get feedback happening a few times for it to get smarter. This is like the... this is like the stereotypical like digital marketing learning of a campaign. Like you turn it on and then the first two weeks of the campaign are just garbage. Like that's what we're talking... like you can't... get it to like spend your money correctly, does it, and you have a high cost per lead, whatever the case may be, right?"

"So that's like the... a lot of people call it like a learning phase of the campaign. And you're totally right, a lot of people think it takes three to six months for that to happen. Not really, it takes probably two weeks. I mean, some... depends on your budget. You got a tiny budget, then... 'cause there's the conversion cycle that needs to happen, and then there's also like a certain amount of data for Facebook or for Google to even know that the conversion cycle happened and have like statistical significance around that learning. So there's an element of both that's definitely important there. But a lot of people don't realize, yeah, that happens pretty fast. Maybe it's like two weeks, but it also can happen again and again, you know."

"Something some people know, some things about... like you kind of with PPC campaigns, sometimes you want to be a little bit slow to touch them because the more you touch them, the more you go back into the learning phase, right? In your experience, what are some things that kind of reset that learning? Like what kind of changes are you worried about making?"

"Still, the biggest change would be bid strategy. I think that's the biggest change. You know, and I've had plenty of clients do that where they get a week or two into it and it's like, 'Hey, let's... we should... we should try this strategy instead' or 'Can't we just... can't we just manage the clicks manually?' Bid strategy is the biggest one. That's... I mean, that's 100% starting right over from square one."

"And then another one, this is probably the most common one, is budget. So a client will start out with, you know, let's just say $5,000 per month, and then you get a week into it and they're like, 'Hey, we just talked and had a marketing meeting. We actually want to spend $10,000 and we want to add another state or another metro area.' So budget and targeting, I think, are also... if done correctly, budget won't change things as much as targeting will. But if you change the budget, and that's not just adding, that's also taking away, because you got to realize that within those two weeks of learning, Google now has X amount of money, right? And if you change that, you're pretty much starting that over again. So it's a whole different discussion when we get into optimization with budget. But yeah, the learning phase: budget and targeting and bid strategy."

"Yeah, 100%. You know what I also noticed? When we started using Target CPA as a bid strategy, it's not nearly as sensitive to budget changes as something like Max Conversions. Because Max Conversions, if you change your budgets without actually trying, you just change your bids also."

"Yep."

"And so now you have budgets that changed and bids that changed. So it's more learning versus Target CPA. You can keep your bid steady and change your budget, which is... yeah, which is interesting. But it's kind of like the magnitude of the change, right? This is why a lot of marketers recommend like incrementally increasing budget. You don't want to just 10x your budget all at once. Like go up 20% and then go up another 20%, etc., so you avoid like deeply putting the campaign into learning."

"I think targeted locations would be the same. You know, if you're going to add one little city, increase the population your campaign's targeting by 5%, that's... it's not really that big of a change. But if you're going to go from just targeting Columbus, Georgia to targeting Florida and Georgia, North Carolina, that's... that's a big, big change. Like that's a different campaign. A lot of the things that Google learned before aren't... aren't as applicable. So would you agree with the statement that like the magnitude of the change is... you know, roughly correlates with the magnitude of the learning that's going to need to happen in the algorithm after the change is made?"

"Yeah, I would agree with that."

"That makes total sense. So... so about the first level, right? Like... and I think that's how most marketers would look at it, is like if you're being asked, 'Well, how long does it take for the campaign to work?' Like, well, the algorithm's got to get like past its learning phase. But here's the thing: let's just say we start that today and then in two weeks we're out of the learning phase. Do we have more money in our bank account than we did when we started? The answer is probably no, right? So I think the answer to this question from like a business owner standpoint is really different than how like a lot of marketers would approach it. What... so let's just say we're taking out like the algorithmic... what else are we thinking about? Taking it out of... taking out the..."

"So you're talking about after the learning phase?"

"Yeah, after the learning phase. Like, what else needs to happen for us to work?"

"Yeah, so that's... and that's where this kind of opens up into a like Pandora's box of like a million different things. It's funny because, you know, clients often ask questions exactly like this, and I always tell them like, 'I could write a book on this answer.' And oftentimes, like if any clients are watching that's worked with me, they've probably seen a book come over in like an email form. But it's true because there's so many different things that... when we talked about working or optimization or how long till we can get to a 3X return, that's where all these things come into play."

"So you got to remember that Google, when it's trying to... take the budget you have, your targeted locations, the product or service that you're offering, it's got to learn when to serve ads. When I say 'when,' like time of day... you... the serving overnight... it's like Google can know, 'Hey, I can serve an ad at 2 AM and I know I can get a third of the cost per click that I could if it was 4 to 6 PM, you know, on a Thursday.' But the leads that come in at 2 AM might not be the same quality. Like, we might not... might not be the same quality lead. Or I can... even though I'm getting a cheap cost per click, maybe I'm not getting conversions during that time."

"So that's just two quick examples of like all of the things that Google's trying to learn to actually optimize the account and/or to quote-unquote 'work.' And that's where we talk about the optimization and actually working. We talk about it in like three-month periods, right? So three months of patience. That's not patience to say... sometimes I... I'm careful with the word 'patience' with some clients because I know to some clients that could mean like, 'We're not going to make any money in the first three months, like I got to be patient.' It's not true, doesn't mean that we're not going to make any money. But that patience phase is basically letting Google, now that it's learned, optimize and say, 'Okay, how can I be more efficient?' And that's exactly what Google's doing. I've got to get the client conversions at a good cost and learn how to be efficient within all these parameters. And that would be the first stage, patience is what we call it, I guess the first three months."

"Yeah, yeah. And this is... so... so kind of what you're alluding to, and where you... everybody listening to this, if you notice, as a company, if you talk to our sales team or if you're a client or seen enough of our marketing materials, you know that we talk a lot about this framework that we call patience, profit, growth. And it's... it's really specific. A lot of people think it's just like, you know, like things are slow and then they get better, and like that's all what it means. Yeah, really... and it talks... it addresses this question because the first thing I hear when I hear the question 'How long does it take to work?' is 'How do you define the word work?' right? And how you define that word greatly affects the outcome."

"The question is... how long does it take for us to get the right leading metrics, meaning we're getting the right number of leads and we're getting the right lead quality? Roughly, that takes probably within 3 months... is realistic for most companies. That's what we call the patience period, where we're just trying to get those leading metrics in order. But once you have your leading metrics in order, there's other things that need to happen too. Like if we just got our leading metrics in order today, that means that we still haven't seen them consistently come in, right? So we got to have a period of consistency there."

"And then when we have that consistency, we have to take enough sample size to do deals because just the fact that I figured out our cost per lead and I got us two leads doesn't mean that we're doing deals, because we might need 15 to get to a deal. And we might need to do that 10 times over to get enough data to actually know what our conversion rate is. And then we also have cash conversion cycle on top of that. The moment we get a contract, we have the potential of revenue in our pipeline in the future, but we don't yet have that revenue. And all those things are things that like... take... take more time."

"So that's why we call like months three to six usually the profit period, because that's usually the time where like your cash conversion cycle catches up with you enough that you're starting to make some profit. It's where you start to get enough data from a sample size standpoint to understand with lagging indicators. And then once you get through that, then we have a growth period, and that's where you're like doubling down, you're trying to make things more efficient, you're increasing volume, you know, all those different things, all those different levers that you can pull."

"But that's why I kind of break it out to like leading metrics versus lagging metrics. The way that I kind of think about it is in the first three months, what you... what you're talking about was learning, this optimizing. It's totally feasible for those things to happen in the first three months towards leading metrics. But fall optimization is way, way different. I was just reviewing some data for a client today that's running a national campaign, and they're running a campaign in some major markets in Texas. And for them, what we're seeing is their... Texas is like their home market. National campaign's a little bit newer to them. They thought they could do... they could do deals in any area."

"What we're seeing in the data is that in that national campaign, their lead qualification rates are really low, and the leads are converting to contracts at a really low rate. And if they convert to contracts, they're converting to deals at a really poor rate versus in that local Texas campaign. The lead quality looks stellar, they're converting to contracts really well, they're converting to deals really well. So what we're noticing is that their company from an operational standpoint, even with like the same keywords and the same landing page and, you know, targeting all that kind of stuff, the company from an operational standpoint is managing leads significantly better in one market than they are in the other markets."

"That kind of thing you don't learn really quick. It takes us a lot of data. Like, for you to know that your number of opportunities per contract is high, you need heck a lot of opportunities and heck a lot of contracts to actually know that that's true. And that's where I think people get like tripped up about like how long exactly it takes. Because you look at like, okay, maybe we're like two weeks for the algorithm to get past its learning phase, but then after that, you know, getting the leading metrics in order could take up to about 90 days. And then we have to have cash conversion cycle, we have to have enough sample size for those things."

"And then sometimes in six months, you're like, 'Oh shoot, I just wasted half my budget for six months because now I finally have enough data to know this half of my campaign wasn't working well.' But you can't end up like throwing the baby out with the bathwater at that point. You got to understand like what's working and what's not within your campaign, and that... that's like an even deeper level of optimization that like never ends, right? You're always gathering that data."

"Yeah, it's so true. I always talk about the... I call them the four S's: so strategy, success, sustainability, and scalability. And it kind of... it follows the patience, profit, growth. So you have strategy, and that's what... what you come up with with our team and marketing team, and then you start to see, you know, get learning and optimization. You start to see some success."

"I think one thing clients miss is when they start seeing success, they skip sustainability and they go right to scalability. And a lot of those things that you're just talking about, how, you know, they find that... that the efficiency or, you know, different areas, that's kind of what... what happens. So you've got to have that strategy, you gotta have success, you got to sustain that success. And that's part of this three-month period, is clients love when we start having good quality leads in, they start getting some opportunities, contracts, they start closing deals, and they immediately want to scale."

"And you have to remember that we've got to be able to sustain that success, not only for Google's algorithm but also for like... internally in... in a client's business. You got to make sure that you can sustain that, right? Not just close a couple deals, but like it continues. And then we start to talk about scalability, which would be like six plus months, right? After those first six months. So it kind of... it follows hand in hand. You can't skip sustainability. It's like... that's the one part that most people miss."

"Yeah, well, I think... I think as an industry we have a problem, and it... it's exactly along the lines of what you're talking about. Everybody wants to skip the sustained success. They... and... and like we're just naturally attracted to what's most viral, what's most interesting, and that's just like the coolest thing that's happening, and it's just like big success and it's new. And that's also true like... I've had in my business big successes and they're a lot more exciting at the beginning than it... it's... it's a lot more exciting to find the success than it is to sustain the success."

"True, because once you are successful, you're just like, 'I'm just getting more of what I've already gotten, like onto the next thing. Like, I'm not excited about that anymore.' But like, that's the real win. Like that's... that's where the money's made. It's not in like finding a way to get three deals from a marketing channel, it's in like finding a way to do more than a million dollars a year from a marketing channel for the next decade. That's like real business success that builds wealth."

"Um, we had one of our members of our sales team was at a mastermind the... the other day, and we had this client there that just started with us like 3 weeks prior. And they were super happy, they were telling like all a bunch of people there like about all the success that they'd had with us. And really what happened is like in the first three weeks of their campaign, they just got like three deals, like $1,000 cost per deal, and they were big deals, and they were like tracking toward like a 60x return or something like that. And they were like really excited about this."

"So... so this sales guy reaches out to me, was wanting to like, you know, thinking he's like spreading some of the love, and he's just like, 'Hey, look, this is what's happening. This is awesome.' And I'm just like, 'Will you just tell him to shut up? Stop telling people about this.' Like... this is not normal. Like, I don't want more people out there thinking that this is normal results for a digital marketing campaign, that you're going to get $1,000 cost per deal in the first three weeks."

"Like... and I think it took him aback a little bit because he was like just... like all positive about it, and I just came in and just like destroyed his... just like happy moment. I'm just like, 'No, your happy moment is stupid.' Because I... like that's what happened to this industry. Like... like the... the biggest successes and the biggest failures are like what we focus our time on, and... and the sustained success just doesn't get enough attention."

"And yeah, so... so then we run into like these clients that like after 3 weeks, they're like, 'This isn't working.' And you think like, well, where did they get the idea that it needs to work? It's 'cause they heard from someone else that they got these three deals in the first three weeks in the PPC campaign and they were killing it. And like... so... so I guess what I'm... like what... what a lot of people think is that a campaign just by nature just gets better and better and better over time, and that's just like the natural ramp up and how it works. And like, there is some truth to that, but like what you see in actuality, it's like we have clients that get like a bunch of deals in their first few weeks and then they drop off for two months, just don't close a lead, and then they come back."

"Just... just like how you'd be flipping a coin and you can start out with three heads in a row, and then you could end up with... yeah, a bunch of tails for a period of time, and then the heads come back. Like there's... there's an element to... and... and really, I... I guess what I'm saying is like sample size is like a crazy important piece of this. I think of it like... like we talked about performance versus results before, you know, but the... the core differences between those where like performance is when I flip a coin, I've got a 50% chance of getting heads, I've got a 50% chance of getting tails, versus results is like I flipped my coin twice and I got two tails."

"Yeah, performance being a lot more predictive of future success. 'Cause I flipped twice, I got two tails, didn't mean I'm always going to get tails with this coin. Probably not, no. But that's where, you know, sometimes we focus a lot on the result, not on the performance, but they kind of approach each other over time."

"I'll get off my... my soapbox, but I think I... like it requires diligence. Like I'm... I'm seriously thinking like... you... there's a lot of our... like case studies as a company, they're like six month plus case studies. And the way we talk about their clients, like six month plus... like we don't highlight our clients that are like, 'Hey, I got all these deals in the first couple weeks' or anything like that, because like that's what I think we're missing in this industry, is that sustained success. And sustained success is what makes you money, not like discovering some awesome marketing channel that hits it big in two weeks."

"It's so true, and you got to think... I go like even one step further now, talking about Google and kind of what the Google algorithm is doing. Because you do see that... I wouldn't say often, but you hear stories like that where somebody, you know, the first week they get two... two deals right off the bat. What Google's thinking when that happens... so they're just starting to serve ads, right? So Google serves some ads to this particular area and three deals come from it. Okay, Google is also trying to be the most efficient and the most sustainable that it can. It wants long-term success. It wants people to continue to pay for advertising for a long time."

"So Google now says, 'Okay, I got three deals in the first two weeks from this area. I'm going to table that and I'm going to go work on the rest of this area for a minute.' Like, 'I know I can get deals here, now let's see if I can get deals over here, and let's see if I can get deals over here.' So Google starts learning, it gets smarter as it goes. It starts learning the areas and the time of day and... and the people that it can serve ads to, and has to get to all of that area, right? Because it's not sustainable if Google knows that there's this particular little pocket where it can serve ads to and get deals. If it just keeps serving ads there, eventually those deals are going to run out in that area, and then you've got no learning for the rest of the targeting area, if that makes sense."

"So that's kind of... sometimes that happens, and it... and it's not as common in this industry as it... like e-commerce, but that's the main point, is that Google is trying to be efficient and sustainable at the same time. Well, you can see those pockets of spurts, right? But they'll go away and then they'll happen again, and then they'll go away."

"So... random variation is a real thing, you know. There's like... there's an entire industry built on the idea that people think they see things in numbers that they don't actually see. It's called the gambling industry."

"Just know what we're dealing with here, you know. Like... like you're sometimes when you have like those times where your campaign's going super well and then those times where it's not... like it's not... like it was any hotter than just a roulette table at a casino where you got the same odds every time, but everybody's seeing something and there... and they're... they're all taking their own meaning from what they're seeing, and... and it can be totally different."

"So it's funny, it's uh... rocky road, like you know, ups and downs. Funny when you're walking into a casino and you see the roulette, you know, they got the window there above the wheel and it's got like nine reds in a row, and you'll see the table fill up so fast. I mean, like next time you're there, watch it. If there's a period of like five or six red or black in a row, that table will be jam-packed with so much money on the other one. Like, 'It's got to hit black this time.' It's like, no, it doesn't. It's the same... it's the same odds that it would hit red before that streak even started."

"It's that whole performance versus results, right? Like... but we know that in a roulette wheel, you might get eight reds in a row, but if you... if you do it a 100 times, you're going to be right about 50/50, right? So you're going to have slow times in a campaign, you're going to have uh... super fast times where stuff is... is cooking. So we're trying to sustain and be efficient over a long period of time. Like you said, how do we make $10 million over the next three years? Like that's what we're looking at, and Google's looking at it the same way."

"Yeah, 100%. So I hope for anybody listening to this, you have some clarity around like how long... I guess like here's the most simple way I could say this: like you have a funnel. At the top of your funnel, you have top of funnel metrics. We also call them leading metrics, right? Your ad spend turns into impressions, your impressions turn into clicks, your clicks turn into conversions, your conversions turn into qualified leads, etc., right? That's... that's just how we work all... all the way down to like deals, revenue. If the way that you defined that it works is something high in that funnel, then the answer is it's a short, short amount of time. If the way that you define the word 'works' is something low in that funnel, then it's going to be a longer period of time. And everything in between... is everything in between."

"And that's where like, honestly, my favorite way to deal with this is a really solid goal-setting framework. Because that's the thing, like... like when... when people hear like, 'Oh, just give the marketing campaign six months and then see if it works,' I can tell you as a business owner, the first thing that I hear is, 'I'm going to have to wait six months just to find out that I wasted all my money over six months,' right? Nobody likes that, right? But that's not exactly how it works. You want to talk about like the... you know, goal setting, how you can do that with like leading metrics and lagging metrics, and... and adjust campaigns accordingly?"

"Say that again, you kind of cut out."

"I just said, do you want to talk about goal setting and how you can do that with like leading metrics and lagging metrics? And that's a good way to know like, maybe we're not there, maybe we're not at the point that you could say this quote-unquote 'works,' but are we on track for it working or are we off track for it working?"

"I love that. So trending, right? Just what... what leading metrics trend into. Yep. And when you were... when you were talking about that, I thought a good way to answer this question when someone says, 'How long does it take for the campaign to work?' You could easily answer and say, 'How long does it take for it to work once or a hundred times?' And that's right, because once is super quick. A hundred times, and that's when we start talking about like leading metrics and trends."

"As a... as a marketer, that's what I'm always looking for. So I'm looking at, just like you said, I'm looking at... at impressions, impression share, I'm looking at the cost per click, I'm looking at the conversion rate. Now, if all of those... and then, you know, a client could say, 'Well, how do you know if those are good?' Right? I don't worry too much about them being quote-unquote 'good' as I do that it's consistent. So if I see a consistent cost per click over a three-week period or a month period... if someone says, 'Is that cost per click that you're seeing over that month period good or bad?' That... if it's consistent, it's where it needs to be."

"Now, that might be high to a client because a client's say all the time like, 'Wow, the cost per click in this industry is super high.' Yeah, comparatively, it might be, right? But if it's consistent and it's trending in a good direction and I'm getting conversions, right? That's what I'm looking for. So as far as like goal setting in those trends, I... I tend to focus on... I don't like to do leading metrics as far as goals as much as I do... let's set goals for the next month to have... to have five contracts or whatever it is, right? And then as... at a marketer, what I'm looking at during that time frame is I'm making sure those leading metrics are solid."

"And I don't... would you say I don't think it's super common to have... it's very few and far between that we get clients that actually care what their cost per click is. Once in a while it happens, but their clients are focused on, like you said, the big picture. They want to know like what their cost per deal is and stuff like that. It's our job as a marketer to look at the details and how that affects the bigger picture, basically."

"Yeah, yeah, I 100% agree. I also think there's merit to the fact that like, if... if what we care about is a return on investment, we know that a certain return on investment correlates with different... from a leading metric standpoint. I can tell you one of the biggest like issues or like... word that we deal with on a day-to-day basis is that people are like, 'Well, I want to achieve a 5x return and I need 100 leads per month' or whatever the case is. I'm just making up like... making up like two things. And then you calculate in your head like, well, if you got 100 leads per month and everything worked out completely average, you'd actually have a 25x return, not a 5x return. And we realize we don't need as many leads as we think we need and stuff like that."

"That's why I think it's really important... I... I like to call it reverse engineering ROI. You figure out if I am to accomplish this end goal... you know, simple examples: you have... you know, roughly a two-hour drive south of me, you live in Cedar City, Utah, and... and I live in Lehi, Utah, right? If... if I want to get there within two hours, then I can reverse engineer how fast do I have to drive in order to get there. And then I could also make milestones so I'm not just like finding out that I wasted all my time when I realize, 'Oh, I spent two days and I only made it 10 miles.' Like you can kind of see like, 'Okay, we've... we've gone 10 miles. How long did that take and are we on track for that or not?'"

"You can kind of do that with your leading metrics. So if you have... if you have your right data set, what you do is you reverse engineer and you say, 'If we're going to get this kind of return on investment, how many deals do we need to get that return on investment? And if we're going to get that number of deals, how many contracts do we need?' So basically contract fallout and how does that work into things. And if we're going to get that number of contracts, how many opportunities do we need? If we're going to get that number of opportunities, how many leads do we need to get on the phone who have a house to sell? And if we're going to get that many people on the phone, how many qualified leads do we need altogether? And if we're going to get that many qualified leads, how many leads altogether do we need?' And then you have your whole funnel."

"And then what you can do when you're one month in is say like, 'Okay, maybe we don't have the ROI that we're looking for, but we do see that compared to what we need to get to achieve that end return on investment, we're either trending towards it or we're trending against it.' And that helps us know like, are we on track or are we not? That's... for me, that's the big sign of like when do you need patience and when do you not? Because I'm... I'm not a fan of like burning money on a bad marketing channel, but if you see that the leading metrics are in order and there's not yet enough sample size to tell you that the lagging metrics aren't... to me, that's a sign of a successful marketing campaign that just needs more time versus if your leading metrics are across... like if I'm trying to get down to Cedar City, Utah, and I realize I'm driving north instead on accident, yeah, it doesn't take me driving 200 miles to realize I'm driving the wrong direction. Like that... it's just bad, right? It doesn't take a lot of time to know that's a problem."

"So for me, that's like... that's what I'm most passionate about for that. And I think if you play those cards right, then you understand just when you have to like ease back a little bit and let the marketing channel do its thing and when you got to be making active changes, making a U-turn, turning that car around so you can get... go in the right direction."

"I think that's one of the hardest things when we talk about like... like a... a client-marketer relationship, right? Or as an account manager, it's... there's a lot of like... we... we ask as... as... as account managers, we ask a lot of clients, right? And at the company, you know, Baitman, we... we ask a lot of clients. We're asking them to trust us, you know, with their hard-earned money to do what we're going to do to be successful, right? And so... so that, I think, that's one of the biggest challenges is how do I... and different account managers do it differently, you know. Like how do I gain this client's trust? Do I just talk about the numbers, the details, the leading metrics? Do I just sound smart and then they'll trust me, right? Or can I really talk about the things that matter the most, right?"

"So it's basically how... how can we convey to a client that those leading metrics are trending in a good direction, right? Like, do they just take our word for it, or is there actually a way that we can show you? And it's exactly what you... you just said, by backing into goals. I think that's a really, really good way to determine if this is going to quote-unquote 'work' over the next month or two is by those leading metrics. So it's... it's like trust me based on what I show you, not on what I tell you kind of thing."

"Yeah, totally fair. That... that makes sense. Well, thank... thank you for your time, Landon. Down at least a few of the rabbit holes... there's... there's so many more. Um... anything else you... you'd say is like part of what's... like most important? Um, or should we wrap this up?"

"No, I think we... I think we covered the... the main topics for sure."

"Okay, awesome. Well, for everybody listening, thank you for listening to this. We're always open to your feedback on what you're getting the most value from and what you're not. Feel free to reach out if you have any ideas around that, and I will see you next week."

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