HVAC Organic Demand Trends - August 2023
👋 Hey, Jon here! This week, we’re diving into SEO / organic revenue data through August 23rd as we start to wind down summer and look ahead to the fall.
Before we dive into that, I’ll give a recap of July’s organic performance, which saw some really interesting performance, particularly a sharp uptick in sold revenue, which we expect will positively influence August closed revenue:
Leads: +12%
Average Tickets: +6%
Sold Revenue: +34.8%
Customer Acquisition Cost: $71.89
Closed Revenue: -4.8%
ROI: +13% | 35x ($35 earned for every $1 spent)
PS - a huge welcome to many of the new subscribers to this list who were at the CAMP Digital / Google event earlier this week. The team at CAMP was kind enough to invite us up on stage to speak about our data and insights. Every single day we continue to be humbled and impressed with the level of collaboration in this vertical - so many of you know that all boats rise with the tide and we’re grateful to have a hand in that.
Okay, enough of the sappy stuff ;) Let’s get into some data!
Organic Lead Volume Increased 4% Month-Over-Month
After a noticable lead increase in July (12%), lead volume increased again but this time by 4%.
Active customers were also up 4% from the prior period.
Note: Active customers are leads grouped by customer plus customers who have appointments booked in the selected time frame to give you an idea of how many opportunities you’re working.
However, match rate and paying customer rate dropped from the prior period by 13% and 8% respectively.
So despite more workable opportunities, fewer of them turned into paying customers, which is something we’ll keep an eye on throughout the rest of this analysis.
It Cost $67.13 to Acquire a Paying Customer From Organic Channels
Customer acquisition costs came down again by another 6% to $67.13.
Spend only slightly rose from the prior period, and despite the paying customer rate dropping, it was a little over $4 less expensive to acquire paying customers from organic channels.
I find this data point fascinating because June is usually the month with the lowest customer acquisition costs, but August now holds that title.
Average Tickets Increased by 2.6% From The Prior Period
For the second straight month, average tickets were up, although this time only slightly at 2.6%.
Not only was it less expensive to acquire paying customers, but on average, they spent more money (just over $3,000 per ticket!).
Average tickets have been very influential for ROAS and closed revenue in 2023, often making up for less demand in terms of total paying customers, so this bodes well for August’s performance so far.
Sold Revenue from Organic Leads Decreased 35.8% from the Prior Period
Last month, sold revenue increased by nearly 35% from the prior period, which I expected to help closed revenue performance for August (we’ll get to that in the next section).
However, this is a really important indicator to keep an eye on. We still have about one week left in August (this year is flying by!) but September is looking to have a smaller pipeline to begin with.
Over the next few weeks, I really encourage businesses to keep an eye on sold (but not yet completed) revenue because the sooner you know you have less in the hopper the you can begin to pivot or adjust strategy earlier (follow-up with customers is encouraged here!).
Especially if some of this sold revenue is closed in the last week of August, we may start September with a really low amount of sold revenue in the pipeline.
Closed Revenue and ROI from Organic Leads Increased by 13% from the Prior Period
As expected (from the increase in sold but not yet complete revenue from the prior month), closed revenue in August so far increased 13% from the prior period!
The ROI was 35x so for every $1 spent on website / SEO management fees, $35 was earned in return.
This is impressive given the time of year we are in and reinforces the idea that the sold revenue data can help us predict an increase or decrease in revenue performance.
Organic channels don’t tend to produce as much volume as PPC, but the economics have hopefully convinced you that it is a foundational part of any digital marketing strategy for any trades business.
Now is the time to start preparing for September - keep an eye on your sold data so that you have an idea of how much revenue you’re going into the month with in case you need to start making adjustments.
I’ll add one more data point - 87% of closed revenue from organic channels came from Google My Business / Google Business Profile. If there were one organic channel to relentlessly focus on accurate information, content, lead handling, etc., it would be the GMB.
Also, for the second week in a row, I have to give a shout-out to Josh Crouch and his team at Relentless Digital whose partnership with us makes it possible to share this organic benchmark data with you.
Until next time . . .
-Jon