Turn PPC Reports Into Phone Calls: 5 Moves Contractors Actually Act On
This article explains how to turn PPC reports into action for contractors by focusing on business outcomes like booked jobs, revenue, and margins instead of vanity metrics. It recommends tailoring reports to each stakeholder, stripping data to a concise, decision-driving set, and using a few clear visuals with annotations. Each section should translate findings into dated, capacity-aware recommendations tied to phones, schedules, and P&L, framed within a concise Goal → Change → Impact → Next narrative. Finally, it stresses updating reports on a cadence aligned with calendar and seasonality so decisions happen in the meeting, not later.
Turn PPC Reports Into Phone Calls: 5 Moves Contractors Actually Act On
TL;DR—Stop sending pretty dashboards. Build reports that make an owner say “approve the budget shift” or “fix the phones.” Tailor for the audience, strip to the signal, present clear next steps, tell a simple story, and update at a cadence that matches your calendar and seasonality.
1) Start With the Boss’s Outcome, Not Your Platform’s Widgets
Contractors don’t want “clicks.” They want booked jobs and profitable routes. So your report needs to be built backwards from those outcomes. Before you drop a single chart, answer three things for the intended reader:
- What they need: Owners want booked jobs, cost per booked job, revenue, margin. Controllers want wasted spend and trendlines. CSR managers want call quality and spam rate. Ops wants job mix and capacity fill for the next 7–14 days.
- How they should feel: Confident we’re on plan, not trapped in a fire drill. If there’s a problem, show it plainly and show the fix.
- What they should do next: Approve a budget move, fix call routing, adjust hours, tighten negatives, raise bids on high-margin services, or pause a loser.
When a report is tailored like this, decisions happen in the meeting—not “let’s circle back.”
2) Strip the Data to Signal Only
Most PPC reports drown owners in “interesting” but useless numbers. Here’s the contractor-core set I use to drive action fast:
- Spend (by campaign/service area)
- Leads segmented: calls, forms, chats
- Qualified Leads (after spam/duplication filtering)
- Booked Jobs and Cost per Booked Job
- Revenue and simple MER (total revenue / total ad spend)
- Search Impression Share Lost (Budget) on money campaigns
- Top search queries with adds/negatives highlighted
Three visuals usually cover it:
- Trend: Leads vs Booked Jobs (last 8–12 weeks)
- Efficiency: Cost per Booked Job trend
- Opportunity: Lost IS (Budget) on core services
Skip vanity. CTR and average position only show up when we’re diagnosing. Keep charts clean, labeled, and annotated where a change happened (new geo, new ads, budget shift).
3) Translate Findings Into Clear, Capacity-Aware Actions
Data without decisions is a progress report, not a growth lever. Every section should end with recommendations that are sized, dated, and tied to revenue or risk. Examples:
- Shift budget: “Move $2,000 from Non-Brand to ‘HVAC Repair—Emergency’ for the next 10 days. Based on last 30 days, expect ~18 additional booked jobs at ~$110 CPBJ. Approve today to catch weekend demand.”
- Cut waste: “Add negatives: ‘free,’ ‘DIY,’ and city outside our service radius. Last 14 days wasted ~$640.”
- Dayparting: “Calls after 7pm convert 60% worse due to no live answer. Reduce bids 40% after 7pm; extend hours next month if we want to chase after-hours jobs.”
- Offer alignment: “Promo ‘$0 diagnostic with repair’ lifted booking rate from 38% to 49% on AC repair terms. Roll to top three service areas through month-end.”
- Capacity-aware bidding: “Board full Wed–Fri. Cap bids on ‘Install’ midweek, push ‘Repair’ and ‘Drain Clearing’ to fill open AM slots.”
Tie every action to the phone, the schedule, or the P&L. That’s how you get approval on the spot.
4) Tell a Short Story: Goal → Change → Impact → Next
Don’t bury context. One narrative block beats eight disconnected widgets:
- Goal: “June target: 210 booked HVAC repair jobs at <$125 CPBJ.”
- What changed: “Heat wave started 6/3. Competitor upped brand bids. Google auto-applied broad match expansion.”
- What we did: “Raised emergency ad group caps, added 14 negatives, tightened radius, refreshed ad copy with ‘2-hour arrival.’”
- Impact: “Booked +23% WoW, CPBJ -14%, brand CPL up 9% due to competitor—mitigated with exact match brand and sitelinks.”
- What’s next: “Propose +$3k to emergency for 10 days; QA call routing (3 missed during peak); test price-anchored headline.”
This story gives leadership confidence that someone is driving—eyes up, hands on the wheel.