The estimate nobody confirms
Booked on Tuesday for Saturday, no reminder in between, and a quarter of them are not home.
Windows and doors
Marketing for window companies. One flat monthly fee.
The in home estimate is a real, scheduled, countable event. Of every trade on this site, this is the one the model fits best.
The problem that belongs to windows
You are bidding against national players with budgets that do not care what a click costs this week. They run the same keywords, in your county, with a brand the homeowner has already seen on television, and they can afford to lose money on the first forty clicks in a way you cannot.
Competing on the same words with the same message is how a small operator loses slowly. The way through is not outspending them, it is being the local company that turns up when it says it will, and making the estimate feel like a scheduled appointment rather than a sales visit. That is a follow up and booking problem rather than an ad problem, which is why it tends to go unowned.
Before any of that
The calls you are already missing
Window and door enquiries are slower and more considered than an emergency trade, which makes them easier to lose quietly. Somebody fills in a form on a Sunday evening, hears nothing until Tuesday, and by then they have two other quotes booked.
The front desk replies while they are still thinking about it, answers the questions that do not need you, and books the measure. Anything about the quote itself waits for you, because that conversation is the sale.
$500 to set it up, $500 a month. No contract and no advertising, so it costs nothing to find out whether that is your actual problem.
Web form, answered in a minute
Sunday, 8:40pm
Filled in your form about replacing the windows on the front of the house. Didn't expect a reply tonight.
This is Sierra Window and Door. I'm an AI assistant, and I answer the forms in the evening so they don't sit until Monday. Roughly how many windows are we talking about?
Seven, maybe eight. The front and one side.
That's a normal size job for us. The next step is a measure, which takes about half an hour. I have Thursday morning or Friday afternoon.
Thursday. What's a window like that cost, ballpark?
I'm not going to give you a ballpark, because the ones you see online are usually wrong by a lot. Rob prices it off the actual measurements on Thursday and you'll have it in writing.
Booked for Thursday at 10. I'll text you a confirmation and a reminder the day before.
Booked, Thursday 10:00amMeasure scheduledRob notified
An example of how a call goes, not a recording of a real customer.
The arithmetic
We are not going to put a per window or per project figure on this page. The ones that circulate come from consumer cost guides rather than industry data, and the spread between a three window job and a whole house is wide enough to make an average meaningless.
The number the audit runs on is your own revenue per paid job over the last twelve months, taken from your invoices rather than a cost guide. Source: your books. If that number does not exist yet, producing it is the first useful thing we would do, before a single bid changes.
This trade lives or dies on the estimate to sale rate, not the lead to estimate rate. Getting more estimates booked is easy and does very little on its own. Which is why the number we would put at the top of your report is what a booked job costs you, not what a lead costs you.
What we would run, and why
Google Search for people already shopping. Windows is the trade where Meta earns a conversation soonest, because window replacement is one of the few home improvements a homeowner can be talked into before they went looking, and a before and after in a neighborhood they recognize does work that a search ad cannot. That is a second channel though, so it is something we would talk about rather than assume.
One thing worth knowing about Local Services Ads, stated exactly as far as we have verified it and no further. Window repair is an eligible Local Services Ads category and appears in the first phase of Google's migration into Performance Max with pay per lead goals. Source: Google Ads Help article 17213585. Window replacement is not a category of its own in that list. That is not the same as saying replacement is barred, and we are not going to imply it is: replacement work generally runs under the repair or general contractor category. If this matters to your account we verify it in the signup flow against your actual target area rather than guessing from a help page.
How we would read a windows account
This trade already runs on a scheduled event, so the measurement problem is solvable rather than approximate.
A click can be tied to a booked estimate and a booked estimate to a sold project. That is the chain most accounts in this category never close, and closing it changes what the ad platform buys.
What we would want to check first: your no show rate on booked estimates. If it is high, more leads is the wrong answer and confirmations plus reminders is the right one, and that costs you nothing extra under a flat fee.
What we would want you to explain to us on the call: how you price against the national quote the homeowner already has in their hand. We would rather ask than guess.
What is usually broken
Observations, not accusations. Most of these are true in most of the businesses we have looked at.
Competing on the national message
The same energy efficiency copy as a company with a television budget, on a page that does not mention the town.
Quotes that go cold
A considered purchase with a long decision window and no sequence running through it.
No revenue in the platform
The algorithm optimizes toward form fills because form fills are all it has ever been told about.
The model, short
One flat monthly fee of $3,500 a month, plus $2,500 of ad spend on your own card, direct to the ad platforms. You fund ad spend on your own card, direct to the ad platforms. We never touch your money. 6 month minimum, billed monthly, and everything is in your name from day one.
The full mechanicOr start lower
The front desk is $500 to set it up, $500 a month. It buys no advertising, has no term, and answers the calls you are already getting. Most businesses should start there and only add the campaigns once the phone is covered.
The audit is free, 5 business days from your application, and it is for the marketing package rather than the front desk.
How the front desk worksTell us what your last 90 days looked like and we will tell you whether we would take it on.