The clicks convert but the jobs don't book. How do I find which layer is broken?
Measure each layer with its own denominator instead of looking at one blended number. Query to click, click to contact, contact to answered, answered to booked, booked to completed. Each ratio has a different owner and a different fix. Blended cost per booked job tells you something is wrong; only the layered ratios tell you where, and usually only one of them has actually moved.
One number, five possible causes
Cost per booked job is a product of every step between the auction and the dispatch board. When it rises, the instinct is to blame the media, because the media is the thing with a bill attached. But the media only owns the first two steps.
Build the chain explicitly and put a rate on each link: impressions to clicks, clicks to contacts, contacts to answered or replied, answered to booked, booked to completed and paid. Then compare each rate to the same period last year and to the prior quarter. Almost always, one link moved and the rest did not.
The tell for each layer
- Query to click. Broken when the search terms drift toward information-seeking or DIY phrasing. Symptom: click volume up, contact rate down proportionally.
- Click to contact. Broken by page speed, a form that fails on mobile, a phone number that is not tappable, or a message mismatch between ad and page. Symptom: a rate change on a single device type.
- Contact to answered. Broken by staffing, hold times, and after-hours routing. Symptom: contact volume steady, answered volume falling at specific hours or days.
- Answered to booked. Broken by handling — pricing objections, no availability offered, no attempt to schedule. Symptom: good calls that end without a date on the calendar.
- Booked to completed. Broken by dispatch, cancellations, and unqualified jobs that should never have been booked.
Where the evidence lives
The first two layers are visible in the ad platform and analytics. The last three are not, and that is why most accounts stop diagnosing after layer two. The evidence for answered, booked and completed lives in the phone system and the field service system.
Joining those records to the campaign that produced the call is what turns this from a theory into a report. Field service integration supplies the booked and completed side; call analysis supplies the answered and handled side, including whether the call was even bookable in the first place.
The most common answer, and the least popular one
In service businesses the layer that moves most often is contact to answered, followed by answered to booked. Neither is a media problem, and neither gets fixed by pausing keywords. That is uncomfortable when the person doing the diagnosis is also the person managing the ads.
The value of layering the funnel is that it makes the finding falsifiable. If booking rate within a source is flat and the source mix shifted, that is a media problem and you should act on it. If booking rate fell inside every source at once, no keyword change will save you, and the fix belongs to coaching and staffing.
Topics: diagnostics · booking rate · funnel · call handling
Have a version of this question about your own business?
The useful answer usually depends on which systems you run and how they're connected. That's a conversation, not a blog post.