Forward Marketing · Creative studio · Rochester, NY

What should your marketing do next?

Forward plans and makes paid campaigns for growing service businesses, along with the landing pages behind them, so the clicks you already pay for turn into inquiries.

Talk to Forward Explore the Work
Social feed ad for Halden Heat Pumps. See the thinking behind it

01Featured campaign

01The brief

Client

Halden Heat Pumps. A heat pump installer with 14 technicians, working on older houses in a cold-winter region.

Goal

More booked home assessments from the same monthly ad budget.

What was happening

The current ads lead with “$1,000 off installation.” They get plenty of clicks, but most callers want a price over the phone, and only a few book the free home assessment, which is where Halden actually wins jobs.

02The creative

The decision

Lead with the question homeowners ask, not the discount.

A discount pulls in people comparing prices, and they’re the callers least likely to book an assessment.

The landing page the ad at the top links to. It reflows to a single column on phones, in the same order.
  1. Same question as the ad. The headline repeats what the ad asked, so the click feels answered instead of redirected.
  2. A checker instead of a quote form. Three taps about the house, then a booked home check. Nobody has to ask for a price over the phone.
  3. The price range up front. It filters out bargain hunters before they call, which is the problem the discount ad created.

03The outcome

What we test

The question-led ads and page against the current discount ad and homepage. Budget split 50/50, same audience and placements, for four weeks.

How we measure it

Cost per booked home assessment, counted from Halden’s booking calendar, with a separate tracked phone number for each version so calls count too. Clicks are reported but don’t pick the winner.

Baseline

The discount ad’s cost per booked assessment over the previous eight weeks.

What counts as a win

A lower cost per booked assessment at the same spend, with at least 30 bookings on each side so the difference isn’t noise.

Read the full case study

02Services

What are you trying to improve?

Start with the problem. Each path leads to the work that fixes it, and to an example of what you’d receive.

Reach the right audience

Paid social and search campaigns

You pay for clicks, but the people clicking aren’t the ones who buy. Or the people who would buy never see you.

You receiveAn ad set built on buyer questions: three concepts, each in feed and story sizes, with matching search ads.

Turn more visits into inquiries

Landing pages and conversion work

People reach your site and leave without asking a question, booking or filling in the form.

You receiveA landing page for one campaign, designed for desktop and phone, with a shorter form and a test plan.

Understand what’s working

Measurement and reporting

You can’t say which campaign, email or page brings in customers, so every budget decision is a guess.

You receiveTracking for the actions that matter, and a one-page monthly report you can read in five minutes.

03Working with Forward

What does hiring Forward look like?

The three questions people ask before they hire an agency, in the order they usually ask them.

  1. Question 1

    What happens in the first conversation?

    It happens by email, so there’s no call to fit in. Tell us what you’d like your marketing to do better. James Baker, our strategy lead, reads it and replies within two business days with first thoughts, a few questions, and what we’d look at first. If it looks like a fit, we ask for read-only access to your ad accounts and analytics, and send a written review within a week.

    • No call needed
    • Read-only access only
    • The written review is yours to keep, whether or not you hire us

    From James Baker, Forward

    Subject Re: Our ads get clicks but not bookings

    Hi Dana, thanks for the detail. Three questions before we look at anything:

    1. Roughly what do you spend a month, and on which platforms?
    2. When someone books, who follows up, and how quickly?
    3. Do you know your cost per booking today, even roughly?

    What I’d look at first: whether your ads and the page they land on answer the same question. Your ad offers a discount and the page talks about the company, which usually means plenty of clicks and few bookings.

    If you send read-only access to the ad account and analytics, I’ll send a written review within a week.

    Sample first reply, by email

  2. Question 2

    What will I see before work goes live?

    A one-page campaign brief: the goal, the one decision the work is built on, what will run and how we’ll measure it. Then the creative itself, shown the way your customers will see it: ads in a phone frame, pages on a staging link, emails as test sends. Nothing goes live until you approve it in writing.

    • A brief you can forward to your team
    • Every piece checked on a phone
    • Written sign-off before launch

    Campaign brief · sample

    Halden Heat Pumps: the winter question

    Goal

    More booked home assessments from the same monthly budget.

    Who it’s for

    Homeowners with oil or propane heat, in older houses, weighing a heat pump before winter.

    The decision

    Lead every ad with the question they ask first, “Will it keep us warm?”, not the discount.

    What goes live

    3 feed ads, 4 search ads, 1 landing page with a three-question checker.

    How we’ll measure

    Cost per booked assessment, from the booking calendar and tracked phone numbers. Read-out after 4 weeks.

    Approved by the client before anything goes live

    Sample campaign brief, one page

  3. Question 3

    How will we decide what to change?

    Each month you get a one-page report: the result against its baseline, what we tested, what we learned and the one change we’d make next. We change one thing at a time, so when a number moves we can tell you why. If something didn’t work, the report says so.

    • One page, five minutes to read
    • Every number shown against a baseline
    • One change at a time

    Monthly report · sample

    Version B booked more assessments for less.

    Example figures
    MeasureA · nowB · newChange
    Cost per booked assessment$212$148−30%
    Booked assessments3144+13
    Clicks2,1401,610−25%

    Next change: Keep B as the control. Next month, test the running-cost question against it.

    Sample monthly report excerpt

04The people

Who you’ll work with

A small team. The person who replies to your first message stays your main contact.

  • James Baker, strategy lead at Forward

    James Baker

    Strategy leadYour main contact

    James reads your first message and writes the reply, runs the review, writes the campaign brief, decides what we test and writes your monthly report. Questions and approvals go to James.

  • Sara Klaars, creative lead at Forward

    Sara Klaars

    Creative leadMakes the work

    Sara writes and designs the ads, landing pages and emails, checks every piece on a phone before you see it, and revises it with you until you sign it off.

  • Mandy Park, media and measurement lead at Forward

    Mandy Park

    Media and measurement leadRuns it and counts it

    Mandy sets up campaigns and conversion tracking, watches spend through the week and pulls the numbers for the report, so every figure can be traced to its source.

05Start a conversation

What would you like your marketing to do better?

Tell us in a few sentences. You don’t need a brief, a budget or a call.

  1. 1You send this form.
  2. 2James, our strategy lead, replies by email within two business days.
  3. 3If it’s a fit, you get a written review of your current marketing.

Please tell us your name.

Please enter an email address we can reply to.

A few sentences is plenty. For example: “Our ads get clicks, but hardly anyone books.”

Please describe the challenge in a sentence or two.

That doesn’t look like a web address. Try something like yourcompany.com, or leave it blank.

James replies by email within two business days. We only use your details to answer you. Privacy