Interested in Digital Marketing? Why not try pay per appointment/show model? Ask anything you need!

[Ronak]

In my niche the clients are terrible at following up, so even if you're the world's greatest marketer if the leads aren't getting called it's a waste of time. I had one client on a retainer go to Barcelona for 5 days and didn't tell me, the leads didn't get called until a week later. Guess what happens at the end of the month? They moan and say the leads are terrible.

Yes, that is not uncommon. In fact, conversions would go up dramatically with simple followup.

Quicken Loans is a great example of this. If you filled out a mortgage/refi inquiry, you will get a call back within seconds.

I would be interested to hear how you solved the followup issue.

 

[Stargazer]

Presumably the clients are giving you access to their calendars for you to book the appointments in?

Dan

 

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[Stargazer]

Sounds good.

Best of Luck.

Dan

 

[Paul David]

Thanks for the great thread!



Why is this? I guess so that your clients need to call you for the appointments and then those count as scheduled?

If not, how do you keep count of appointments that did show?

We do this because we don’t want my clients system sending appointment reminders and our system doing the same thing.

We assume every lead we refer has shown up unless our clients mark them as no show on our calendar.

 

[Paul David]

Awesome. I'm a bit confused, when you say leads do you mean your clients or shows? I know you run FB Ads to get clients but do you also use them for shows? And what do you mean by yo target around their business address?

Is there a specific calendar platform you like? Do customers book directly to the calendar or could it work with a simple email/call back form before booking for them? Nevermind. I see you use High-level (which btw looks amazing).

I'm still worried about the middle man aspect. Are you just upfront about it on the LP? Example: "We'll book you with a trusted service provider in your area."

One example is 1800unlocks.com. They're obviously a lead generator vs "JoeLocalLocksmith.com". How do you create enough trust with the customer?

LAST question I promise! What would you think about doing this for residential and commercial cleaners? I've got a good idea for a brand name for the niche and the domain is available.

Leads are customers for my clients. When I say shows i mean showed up for their appointment.

So if another client signs up for my referral program, I duplicate the same ads I'm using for other clients and change the targeting on facebook to within 8km of where they are based.

We're not up front at being a middle man. The leads don't know that. When we book an appointment and give the address for the client we put our brand name inside their store. For example - Our address is Dominate Dental (inside HGL Dentists & Son), address. We've never had a problem.

We create trust by having a professional looking website with all our clients addresses on there and also a facebook page with lots of fans and regular posts.

Yes I think it would work for cleaning niche, it was something I'd considered myself at one point.

 

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[Paul David]

Cool. I just signed up for Highlevel. How do you manage your account? Did you add your brand as an account or is your brand the agency and your sub accounts are your clients?

I should have sent you my affiliate link! ha.

My brand is a sub account and I run everything on that account for my clients. I have another sub account set up for signing clients.

 

[Paul David]

Ha! Totally forgot about that.

Ok. I think I get it. I’ll probably just have to play around with it.

I saw that each sub account has its own calendar and client portal login.

How do you manage all of your clients with different calendars if you only have one calendar for them to log into and mark no shows?

Maybe I’m misunderstanding it.

Shouldn’t it go:
—AGENCY ACCOUNT (Your brand)
——CLIENT SUBACCOUNT (The client)
———CALENDAR (The clients calendar, portal, site, etc)

Like if you've got 2 different clients in two different cities, how do you manage leads coming in for those different locations, if you're managing both from one sub account?

Yes that’s the way most people who do it that are running ads on their clients Facebook pages.

As I’m running all ads on my own page I use one sub account. I have multiple calendars set up inside that sub account for each client and also different campaigns and triggers for automation. I add a tag when the lead comes in so it goes into the correct campaign for that client.

Then I just give my clients access to their own calendar only which you can do in settings.

 

[Paul David]

How do you come up with an offer for the people that want a treatment? Do you do this in consultation with the client that is providing the treatment? I think you need to because the price lists of the treatments will be displayed in the building of the treatment provider, so you cannot make something up like from €200 discounted to €160. Of course you want to provide a legit offer not a fake one. How you deal with this?

We use the same offer for every client. So the client has to agree to the offer to become a partner.

We tell them the offer not the other way around.

 

[PizzaOnTheRoof]

That's a smart move because it simplifies the system indeed. But how do you sell the treatment provider to the idea of having to pay you €60 per appointment + also giving a discount to the people that want a treatment? Doesn't this take up a large amount of their profit?

I’d imagine you would want to go for high ticket services or lots of volume.

 

[Paul David]

Setting up some automations in HighLevel now and reading through this thread again.

Can you describe your funnel that leads go through? From Facebook Ad to booking?

Because I assumed every part of your funnel is automated but after reading here again and using HighLevel, it sounds like you talk to the lead and manually book their appointment to make sure their time slot is ok.

And the fact that you have a team in place to follow up and book appointments for leads.

Have you set up a chatbot system in HighLevel to automate this stuff?

Also, do you book people through a landing page or just through the actual Facebook Ad?

The way I have it set up is this:

1. Lead fills out form on location specific landing page
2. Lead is added to a campaign that sends a booking link (my calendar) to them
3. Lead books on my calendar with their info
4. Send a review request or follow up if marked no show

The funnel used to be Facebook Lead Form Ad> Highlevel>Phone call within 3 mins. Then follow up for 10 days later using more phone calls/messages etc. However we found that 90% of people never answered the phone and a lot specifically asked for text instead. It was also costing a lot of money in sms and phone calls (twilio inside highlevel)

So now we run Facebook messenger ads> Chat bot>Highlevel follow up. The bot qualifies the lead by asking certain questions, provides information (that lots of people used to ask by text or on the phone) and then asks them when they can come in for an appointment. At that point we manually take over and book them. If they don't book they go into highlevel for follow ups by text message.

I've tested quite a lot this week and found that people are claiming the voucher we're running then when we ask do you want to schedule the FREE consultation they are saying not at the moment. So today I'm going to change the bot, to basically say you get a voucher when you schedule the appointment. What we don't really want is people thinking I'll get a voucher and I might use that in a few months.

We have found that some people provide a day and time, or say sometime next week for their appointment and when we reply with the availability they don't reply. So I'm going to introduce a phone call for these leads to see if we can get them over the line.

 

[Paul David]

I see now. Cool stuff. Thanks for the detailed response.

Just curious, are you on the $97 or $297 HighLevel plan?

I have two locations inside HL, one for my brand and one for outreach so I pay $297 a month.

 

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[Clay Alexander]

Aaaaand .... my mind is blown yet again, thanks Paul for the clarification!

 

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[Paul David]

My bad. This is for leads for myself. Potential clients.

When I was running lead ads I’d just call them straight away but it was during lockdown then so everyone was at home.

I would probably now suggest sending an automated text asking when the is best time to call them.

 

[BizyDad]

So many threads, so little time. Glad you guys have made this an active one. The constant reminders got me to finally read through it all. I second this emotion.

I'm still very much in awe of your concept

This exact model has been in the back of my mind for a few years now. So many do pay-per-lead, and that always struck me as having certain hurdles that I didn't care for, so I've always stayed with my agency model. Buuuut this model is something I've always thought to try... at some point. Pay for results. I'm happy to hear someone actually taking this approach and making it work. It really is a no brainer.

My question is more on the fulfillment side. You mentioned having a team. How many worker bees do you have? Do they focus on calls/email/chat or...? How do you structure pay for them? Do you think you'll ultimately replace them with chatbots or will there always be some labor component, a small team? Ultimately, after ad cost and employee expense, what kind of gross profit margin do you see?

It's interesting to me that there's all these folks on this forum that want an "easy money" solution, they'll study copywriting, take courses, etc, and yet this thread isn't more active...

 

[Paul David]

So many threads, so little time. Glad you guys have made this an active one. The constant reminders got me to finally read through it all. I second this emotion.



This exact model has been in the back of my mind for a few years now. So many do pay-per-lead, and that always struck me as having certain hurdles that I didn't care for, so I've always stayed with my agency model. Buuuut this model is something I've always thought to try... at some point. Pay for results. I'm happy to hear someone actually taking this approach and making it work. It really is a no brainer.

My question is more on the fulfillment side. You mentioned having a team. How many worker bees do you have? Do they focus on calls/email/chat or...? How do you structure pay for them? Do you think you'll ultimately replace them with chatbots or will there always be some labor component, a small team? Ultimately, after ad cost and employee expense, what kind of gross profit margin do you see?

It's interesting to me that there's all these folks on this forum that want an "easy money" solution, they'll study copywriting, take courses, etc, and yet this thread isn't more active...

I only have 2 worker bees! They are from the Phillippines and I pay them $250 a month each. Both work full time.

I'll probably always need them as we have to manually book appointments with working with so many different calendars - it's going to be difficult to automate.

Some areas (clients) are doing better than others and we're continually testing new follow ups with leads to increase the conversion rate. I have a target of 15 appointment arrivals per month (180 a year) which would yield around £600 profit per area once I extract ad spend. And would like to have 100-200 areas within 12 months.

 

[BizyDad]

Very true. Although I go a step further than pay per lead, I do pay per show. So I only get paid when the leads show up for their appointment.

That's part of what I really love about this. This is pay per result.

It's an easy differentiator from all the pay per lead people, and all the service providers.

And theoretically, you should be able to command a higher price point for the service. Plus you have greater control, because you're empowered to follow up if someone doesn't show up for their appointment.

There is a particular industry where I'm going to be setting up this model. Or at least very very similar. That's 2 verys. There's some legal issues I have to overcome first, but I hope to be starting a progress threat on this sometime in 2021.

 

[Paul David]

I forget who it was, it's been a while.

The difference may simply be control. I know that I wouldn't pay for a service like Paul's unless I had full control over the offer. That's a done deal for me.

Other business owners want to have much more control over their customer acquisition process as a whole. They want to have the data for themselves and utilize it in decision making. They wanted the customer info and they wanted to have full control over how they service the customer. I worked with a company that didn't play ball with Amazon for this purpose, despite the fact that it probably cost them hundreds of dollars in revenue on the platform.

Yes I can understand this. The clients I work with have control over the offer. So we'll both agree a price point that firstly I think will work to attract leads and secondly is also profitable for the client.

My current niche works on a flat fee, £60 per appointment arrival. That's because we don't know what the leads pay eventually. However, the new niche is going to be a percentage model because my team are booking a service where we can quote the price upfront.

With this model, clients can also still conduct their own internal advertising as normal, as everything is done under my brand so it doesn't interfere with that.

 

[Paul David]

If this question is too invasive by all means dont answer it.

How do you price your offer? I think dans model is (AOV/3) * 10% which basically gives your client the ability to break even after 3 leads.

Since his mode is pay per lead, how are you pricing pay per show?

I know of another website. Basically what they do is they capture lead information. And somehow they have the ability to monitor if that lead makes a deal with one of their clients. At any point that lead makes a deal with a client, the client pays the website the first months payment.

I don’t know how they monitor if that lead does business with the Client. Probably some kind of contract that keeps the websites access to the CRM.

Do you have a certain formula for how you price your offer to clients?

I don't use a formula. I research on average whats it going to cost to get the lead/appointment/sale etc and what vaule that's worth to the client and price profitably for both sides.

 

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[Paul David]

Paul, I've been playing with this model as a side hustle.

Figured out a good pay per result offer that would resonate, reached out to my network and got my first client.

Launched first campaign, got leads, and proceeded to spend nearly $2k with no conversions. That client referred me to 2 others.

One of those wanted to put me through the wringer, asking me dozens of questions. I started to answer, then paused, deleted what I wrote, and said, essentially-- "good questions..my answer to all of them is, you don't get results, you don't pay, and I don't get paid. Our interests are aligned here. I'm very selective about clients since I am at risk for ad spend, so if you want to go with someone else who are more "slick" with their answers, please proceed without hesitation." A few days later, they came back wanting to move forward.

I was hesitant because the 1st client was costing me money. Moved forward anyway. Already got them dozens of leads, 5 figures in revenue, and my cut is 4 figures. This is within the first week of launching.

To anyone on the sidelines, just fricking do it. You'll figure it out as you go. I'm so glad I didn't stop after the first loss.

Since this is a side hustle, I'm struggling now with how far to take it, its so tempting to scale it up, but it would take away from my main venture. Good problem to have. I'm going to look into high-level.



How do you find qualify, and train them?

That's amazing well done!

If you're going to try High Level let me know and I'll send you my affiliate link, I'll then help you set anything up on there.

For the VA's I find them on onlinejobs.ph and first thing i do is get them to send me a voice note of them reading a script to instantly disqualify any who don't speak perfect english. Then I just train them over time with guides and watching over them, giving advice etc.

 

[Paul David]

Thanks for your input Ronak, there's a lot of useful stuff in there. Facebook is an unusual beast i feel.

I've been looking into Pauls system for the last few weeks and I feel I want to replicate it as closely as possible.

In terms of choosing and evaluating a niche, I need to really have proof that I can get a number of leads per month for any client *before* I go looking for clients, sign them up, onboard them, negotiate offer, share access to calenders etc. I don't want to do all that and then find out I can't supply any leads. I definitely don't feel I can say to clients that I have no idea how many leads I can get them. I feel I need to prove the market first, preferably at as low a cost as possible

So I'm staying focused on this part right now and hoping Paul will still find time to chime in.

Worst case scenario you can spend $10 a day in ads and offer to run them for free to one company to give you an idea of how many leads you can get

Remember though it’s not just about getting leads it’s following up with them and converting. In my niche we handle everything, my clients or I call them partners get a message in their phone app that we supply to tell them we’ve booked a new job and all they have to do is confirm or reschedule with the client.

Yesterday we had 200 leads from 10 partners to deal with!

 

[Clay Alexander]

I won't feel like this tomorrow but today i feel like giving up. Getting a job in a supermarket or anywhere for that matter turn up do the work, get paid and go home and forget about it.

Speaking as someone currently working in a supermarket I can assure you that you're not missing anything. All it takes is a few a-holes around you, rude public, idiot managers, shift work or a low hours contract and you'll be fantasising about being your own boss again, lord knows I daydream about it most of my shifts.

Keep a cool head mate, bottom line is if this has gone wrong it's 0% your fault. You built a working system and as such you will be able to build another. It's only human to feel knocked down but you don't seem to be a person to stay down. I'm sure you'll bounce back!

 

[Paul David]

Ok so today is a new day.

Time to climb over this hurdle. I've created lead ads now and just waiting for them to go live. Then see how these ads compare to the messenger ones before.

As for giving up and working for someone else, I read this post earlier and it re-emphasizes why I'll keep moving forward.

NOTABLE! - MINDSET - YOU HAVE NO CHOICE

YOU HAVE NO CHOICE What am I talking about? We like freedom round these parts. We choose what we want to do & when. No boss breathing down our necks. We always have options. We're not beholden to anyone. Ah. There it is though. The first of the unfinished sentences we pretend is complete...

www.thefastlaneforum.com

 

[FastNAwesome]

Thanks for the great thread!

Yes we book directly on there but we only add their name, our email address and phone number.

Why is this? I guess so that your clients need to call you for the appointments and then those count as scheduled?

If not, how do you keep count of appointments that did show?

 

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[B22]

Yes we book directly on there but we only add their name, our email address and phone number. We then add them to our own internal calendar and use our automated system for reminders etc.

Hello @Paul David I found this thread by reading your post in the execution/progress section of the forum. Nice read! Good to see that you are making profit after hard work on building the system.

I've got a question about the act of planning the bookings. How do you make sure that the people that want a treatment, schedule an appointment on a time slot that is free for your client (the treatment provider)? You mentioned that you have access to the calendar of your client, but connecting this calendar to your booking system and make sure that the people that want a treatment can only schedule at time slots that are free is a whole other level. Definitely when given every client uses other calendar software. How do you deal with this?

Thanks and good luck on your journey.

 

[Paul David]

Hello @Paul David I found this thread by reading your post in the execution/progress section of the forum. Nice read! Good to see that you are making profit after hard work on building the system.

I've got a question about the act of planning the bookings. How do you make sure that the people that want a treatment, schedule an appointment on a time slot that is free for your client (the treatment provider)? You mentioned that you have access to the calendar of your client, but connecting this calendar to your booking system and make sure that the people that want a treatment can only schedule at time slots that are free is a whole other level. Definitely when given every client uses other calendar software. How do you deal with this?

Thanks and good luck on your journey.

Thanks!

Its quite simple really. Yes we have access to their calendars and book then on there. However we only add the leads name and our email and phone number.

Then we have a calendar set up on our CRM which we add the bookings to also. And we add the full details for the lead. Then this calendar follows up and send reminders etc.

The clients then have access to our CRM and they simply mark any as no show otherwise they are charged automatically

 

[Paul David]

Thanks for the insight Paul! Seems you have a good system figured out.

Are you doing a full suite of services, like web design/seo/Google ads in order to generate leads for the clients your service, or are you sticking with one particular avenue to acquire them?

I use Facebook and Google Ads to generate leads qualify them and book appointments. I've got no plans to go into anything else. It's much easier to scale by offering 1/2 services max.

 

[DrWumbo]

I use Facebook and Google Ads to generate leads qualify them and book appointments. I've got no plans to go into anything else. It's much easier to scale by offering 1/2 services max.

Thanks for your reply Paul. I'm assuming for GAds, you create a custom landing page for the ad, separate from their website?

 

[Paul David]

Thanks for your reply Paul. I'm assuming for GAds, you create a custom landing page for the ad, separate from their website?

Yes. I don't run any advertising under their brand or company. It's all run under a brand I created inside this niche. So the leads I attract are essentially mine until they arrive for their appointment at my clients. Then they take over.

 

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[PizzaOnTheRoof]

Yes. I don't run any advertising under their brand or company. It's all run under a brand I created inside this niche. So the leads I attract are essentially mine until they arrive for their appointment at my clients. Then they take over.

I really, really like this business model. Sorry for another barrage of questions but you're really helpful!

Do you invest in any brand awareness in your niche or just run PPC?

Does it concern you that leads might be uncomfortable giving their info to a "lead mill"? How do you create trust?

I've had some people say my landing page just looks like an info grab that doesn't care about the customer. But then again Booking.com is a billion dollar company, they don't actually own the assets.

How are you capturing the leads? Landing page only, full brand website, Google Ad lead form/call ads, content?

Do you charge a flat rate for shows or based on location or warmth of the lead?

I'd really like to start with this model off the bat, but you said I should try a retainer for a while to get an average cost per lead. My only concerns are competition and actually getting clients to sign up. Seems like your model solves those issues and would be far easier to get clients.

I've got some cash in the bank to fund me if I accidentally lowball my prices and lose money at first. Should I still go for retainer first or jump in with this model?

Once again thank you so much!

 

[Paul David]

What price range are you talking about here?

I think it'd work great in a low/mid-range - and it's a new interesting manner of doing it

But I do see some problems doing this in the higher-ends. But it's definitively a new opportunity that if appropriate, others should test out as well.

It all depends on the niche and the offer of course. In my situation I spend around £300 a month per client and get paid £60 for every appointment that's conducted. So with 100 clients I'd be spending out £30,000 a month in ad spend so you have to work up to scaling.