Morgul Marketing

    Where a Chicagoland window dealer's ad budget actually goes

    Paid search is the only channel fast enough to catch a Chicago winter. Demand here has two hard peaks, and the winter one arrives overnight with the first sustained freeze, in a shape closer to an emergency than a remodel. An account built for a flat year will overspend in November and run dry the week the phone actually rings. The work is structural: separate the buyers before you separate the geography, bid Cook County and the collar counties as the different jobs they are, exclude the repair and renter traffic that a cold snap generates in volume, and measure to signed contracts rather than to form fills.

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    A two-flat landlord and a Lincoln Park homeowner should not share a campaign

    Three buyers hide inside a window and door account, and averaging them produces a cost per lead that describes nobody.

    The whole-house homeowner is a long consideration, high ticket, multiple quotes, decided over weeks. The entry or patio door buyer is faster and smaller. The two-flat or three-flat owner is buying openings by the dozen and thinks in per unit pricing.

    Each one deserves its own campaign, its own budget and its own landing page. Their keywords barely overlap and their acceptable cost per job differs by a wide margin.

    Blend them and the account optimizes toward whichever is cheapest to acquire, which is almost always the smallest job. You end up buying door handles with a budget meant for whole elevations.

    Naming the campaigns after the buyer rather than the product keeps the reporting honest when somebody else looks at it in six months.

    Bid Cook County and DuPage separately, because the paperwork is not the same job

    Geography in Chicagoland is not just drive time, it is a change of regulatory world.

    The city and the surrounding counties run separate licensing and permitting regimes. A job in the city and a job in Naperville can carry different administrative overhead before a single window is ordered, and that belongs in the bid.

    Add access. A narrow lot with rear alley access in Pilsen or Bridgeport is a different staging problem from a suburban driveway in Schaumburg. Crew time is cost, and cost sets the bid.

    Build geographic targets around where you are set up to work, not around a radius circle. Radius targeting from a shop on the North Side will happily buy clicks from towns where your paperwork is not current.

    Review location reports monthly and cut the towns that produce inquiries you never quote. Silence in a location report is information.

    Half the January clicks come from renters with a drafty window and no authority

    Winter generates enormous search volume for a trade that only sells to owners.

    Cold weather produces symptom searches from everyone in the building. A tenant in a three-flat with frost on the inside of the glass will search the same words as the owner, and the tenant cannot buy anything.

    Alongside that sits the repair traffic: a single failed pane, a broken balance, a sash cord, a storm window panel. Real problems, valuable to somebody, not your job if you sell replacement.

    Build the exclusion list before the season, not after the invoice. Add qualification to the landing page so the wrong visitor self-selects out instead of filling in a form.

    Search terms reports during the first freeze week are the most useful reading of the year. Set aside time for them rather than catching up in March.

    Budget for two peaks and treat the winter one as unscheduled

    Even monthly budgets are the wrong instrument in a market where demand arrives in a burst.

    Spring and early summer bring planned projects with lead time. Winter brings a spike that follows the weather rather than the calendar, and it can start in a week you did not plan for.

    Hold budget in reserve rather than spending it evenly. Set daily caps that can be lifted quickly and give one person authority to lift them without a meeting.

    Match the spend to crew capacity. Buying clicks in a week your installers are already booked into February converts into annoyed callers and no revenue.

    Watch the install calendar as closely as the ad account. Ads that outrun capacity cost twice, once in media and again in reputation.

    In January the ad's job is to book a measure, not to sell a whole house

    The winter caller and the spring caller need different promises, and one ad cannot make both.

    Somebody searching in the middle of a freeze wants to know that a person will come out, look at the opening, and tell them what can be done now versus in April. Efficiency claims and financing offers are noise at that moment.

    Write winter copy toward speed and toward the appointment. Write spring copy toward the project, the scope and the range. Swap them on a schedule so it happens even in a busy week.

    A note about heating costs lands harder here than almost anywhere, but keep it grounded. Talk about a room that stays cold and a ComEd bill that climbs when the space heaters come out, not a percentage saving you cannot support.

    Never promise a January install date in ad copy. Weather cancels days, and a promise made in an ad is remembered on the phone.

    Judge the account on signed jobs, because winter and spring leads close at different speeds

    Cost per lead is a comfortable number that will let a bad account look healthy for an entire season.

    Pass a lead identifier from the form into your CRM and report on cost per booked measure, cost per held measure and cost per signed contract by campaign. Anything less and you are optimizing toward whatever produces the most form fills.

    Expect the lag to differ. A February inquiry may sign in April once the ground thaws and the spring calendar opens. A May inquiry often moves faster. Reading them on the same thirty day window makes winter look worse than it is.

    Segment the reporting by city and suburbs. A cost per job that averages a Wicker Park two-flat and an Elmhurst single family tells you almost nothing about either.

    No agency can promise you a lead volume or a cost per job, and any that does is guessing. What is committable is the structure, the exclusions, the pacing discipline and the reporting.

    Questions we get

    How should we split budget between the city and the suburbs?
    Start by splitting the campaigns so you can see them separately, then let the booked job data set the ratio. Costs differ because the permitting, the access and the drive differ. A single blended budget across Cook and the collar counties hides which half is carrying the account.
    Is paid social worth running for window replacement here?
    It can be, but treat it as a different job from search. Search catches people who already decided. Paid social is where you reach an owner who has lived with a cold room for three winters and has not searched yet. Budget it separately and expect a longer path to a signature.
    What should we exclude first?
    Repair intent and renter intent. Single pane replacement, broken balance, sash cord, screen and storm panel repair, plus anything phrased as a tenant complaint. Then anything relating to new construction if you do not serve builders. Review the search terms report weekly through the freeze season.
    Should we advertise during weeks our crews are fully booked?
    Usually at a reduced level rather than off entirely, and with copy that sets expectations about scheduling. Going dark loses the pipeline for the following month. Running full speed into a booked calendar buys frustration. The install schedule should be visible to whoever manages the account.
    What is a realistic cost per booked job for us?
    There is no honest benchmark we can quote you, and any number offered before your account has run is invented. What we can do is instrument the path from click to signed contract from day one, so that within a season you have your own number by campaign, buyer type and county.

    Written by KC Thompson, Morgul Marketing. Updated .

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