The landing page promised a 24 hour cash offer and my process takes five days

Six months, $18,400 all in, and the failure was a sentence of ad copy I approved without thinking about it.

I came at seller leads from the renovation side, so my underwriting starts with a walkthrough and a scope, and my scope takes a few days because I actually price the work. The agency built a funnel around a cash offer in 24 hours, which is the standard promise in that copy and it converts well. It converted here too. 61 leads, cost per lead around $300, which for that market is fine.

Then every single conversation started with the seller expecting a number the next day. I would explain that I need to see it and price the work, and about a third of them were gone by the second call. Two contracts, one closed, and the one that closed was a seller who did not care about speed at all. Worse, three sellers left reviews saying I promised an offer and did not deliver, and those reviews now sit on the same profile the ads point at.

The agency was doing what agencies do, running copy that converts. I was the one who knew my process could not honor it. What I would do differently: write the promise before the campaign, in my own words, and make the agency build to it. Slower offer, more detail, aimed at sellers who want a real number rather than a fast one. I would rather pay $500 a lead for people who will wait five days.

5 replies

2marcus_hale41CG4A

The reviews are the expensive part and they will outlast the campaign by years. Cost per lead is recoverable, a damaged profile that your future ads point at is a slower fix. I would ask the agency whether they have ever built a funnel around a longer promise, and if they have not, that tells you what kind of shop they are. Most of them have one playbook and sell it to everyone in the category.

2dmitri_v6CapitalPRO6

Who approved the copy in writing? In most of these agreements there is a clause saying the client reviews and approves all creative, which puts the promise squarely on you regardless of who typed it. Worth reading your own agreement for the approval language and for anything about claims made in advertising, because consumer protection rules around advertised offers vary by state and an unfulfilled advertised promise can be more than a review problem. That specific question is one for an attorney in your state.

1brandonlee36Passive

A third dropping off by the second call is a real number and I would not assume the promise caused all of it. Some of that is normal attrition on paid seller leads at any speed. What I would separate out is the sellers who explicitly cited the 24 hours versus the ones who just went cold, because if it is mostly the second group then the copy is a smaller problem than the pricing you eventually gave them.

0bmoreno23AB1B

Coming at this with no deals behind me, the thing I did not expect from your post is that the ad copy is a promise about your operations rather than a marketing decision. That reframes what I would even ask an agency in a first call.

1luis_carrera Get yours

@harrow the $500 a lead for patient sellers idea is testable and I would want to see it. You can build the qualifier into the form itself, a question along the lines of how soon do you need a decision, and route anyone who picks 24 hours straight to a page that says this is not that service. Volume drops, cost per lead rises, and cost per contract is the only number that tells you whether it worked. Did you keep the data clean enough to compare a second run against the first six months, or does the tracking restart?

The landing page promised a 24 hour cash offer and my process takes five days

5 replies