You're spending money on marketing. But is it actually working?
Not "am I getting leads?" — that's a low bar. Is it working at a level where every dollar you spend comes back as four, five, ten dollars in closed revenue?
Most investors I talk to can't answer that question confidently. They know roughly what they're spending and roughly what they're closing, but they don't know the conversion rate at each stage of their funnel. So they make gut decisions: "I think PPC is working" or "I feel like the leads have been worse this month."
Gut decisions are how you burn through budgets.
Here's a 30-minute audit you can do right now — using the same framework we use with every client — to know exactly where your marketing is working, where it's broken, and what to fix first.
Step 1: Pull Your Numbers (10 minutes)
Open your CRM and your ad accounts. For the last 90 days, get these numbers:
From your ad accounts / marketing spend:
- Total marketing spend (all channels combined)
- Total leads generated (all channels)
From your CRM / pipeline:
- Total net leads (leads your team spoke with who own a home and want to sell)
- Total appointments (leads with motivation beyond price, want to sell within 30 days)
- Total offers made (specific numbers given to sellers)
- Total contracts signed
- Total closed deals (money in your account)
- Total revenue from those deals
If you can't pull some of these, that's your first finding — you need to start tracking them. You can't optimize what you don't measure.
Step 2: Calculate Your Conversion Rates (5 minutes)
Now divide to get the conversion rate at each stage:
- Cost Per Lead = Total spend ÷ Total leads
- Lead to Net Lead % = Net leads ÷ Total leads
- Net Lead to Appointment % = Appointments ÷ Net leads
- Appointment to Offer % = Offers ÷ Appointments
- Offer to Contract % = Contracts ÷ Offers
- Contract to Deal % = Deals ÷ Contracts
- Cost Per Deal = Total spend ÷ Total deals
- ROI = Total revenue ÷ Total spend
- Average Deal Size = Total revenue ÷ Total deals
Write them all down. These are your baseline numbers.
Step 3: Compare to Benchmarks (5 minutes)
Here are the targets. Compare your numbers to each one:
| Metric | Target (Facebook) | Target (PPC) | Target (Cold Call) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost Per Lead | $50–$100 | $150–$400 | $25–$35 |
| Lead to Net Lead | 65% | 65% | 85% |
| Net Lead to Appointment | 40% | 70% | 20% |
| Appointment to Offer | 90% virtual | 90% virtual | 80% |
| Offer to Contract | 25% | 25% | 20% |
| Contract to Deal | 65% virtual | 65% virtual | 65% virtual |
| Average Deal Size | $20k+ | $20k+ | $20k+ |
| ROAS | 5x+ local / 8x+ multi | 4x+ | 5-7x+ |
Circle every number that's significantly below the benchmark. Those are your problem areas.
Step 4: Identify the Bottleneck (5 minutes)
Your first number that's significantly below target is your #1 priority. Fix it before touching anything else — that's where the biggest ROI on your effort lives.
CPL is too high? Marketing issue. Your ads aren't efficient, your targeting is too narrow, or your creative is fatigued. If on Facebook: are you producing new creative every 2 weeks? Are you running pain-focused ads or generic "cash offer" ads? Is your market population large enough?
Lead to Net Lead is low (under 55%)? Lead quality issue. Leads are fake, spam, listed properties, or non-owners. Fix your filtering. Add 2FA phone verification. Add qualifying questions to your lead form.
Net Lead to Appointment is low? Either lead motivation is low (creative/targeting issue) or your team's initial call isn't converting (speed to lead, script, or sales training issue). Check: how fast are you calling leads? Under 5 minutes = good. Over 30 minutes = you're losing them.
Appointment to Offer is low? Your team is over-qualifying or not making offers to people who deserve them. If they have a reason to sell and want to start in 30 days, they should get a number.
Offer to Contract is low (under 20%)? Sales process issue. Your team is leading with price instead of the seller's situation. They need training on building the gap and positioning the offer as a solution to the seller's specific problem. Also: do you have multiple exit strategies? If you can only wholesale, you're saying no to deals that should be novations.
Contract to Deal is low (under 60%)? Dispo problem, retrade problem, or seller maintenance problem. Break this out by exit strategy — novations close lower than cash deals (50–60% vs 70–80%). Also check by acquisitions rep — one rep at 80% and another at 40% means a training issue, not a systemic one.
Deal size is low (under $15k)? Exit strategy mix is wrong. You're wholesaling everything instead of cherry-picking the best deals for wholetails and flips. Add novations to capture higher-margin deals without additional capital.
Step 5: Build the Fix Plan (5 minutes)
Take your #1 bottleneck and create a specific action plan:
If it's a marketing issue (CPL, lead quality):
- Refresh ad creative with pain-focused scripts
- Add lead form filtering (listed properties, non-owners, 2FA)
- Consider adding markets to increase population and lower CPL
- Get feedback from sales on which ads produce the best conversations
If it's a sales issue (appointment rate, offer-to-contract):
- Review recorded calls — where are reps losing deals?
- Train on situation-based selling, not price-based selling
- Implement follow-up cadence (day 1, day 3, day 7, day 14)
- Add exit strategies so you can say yes to more deal structures
If it's an operations issue (contract-to-deal):
- Audit dispo process by market — where are deals falling out?
- Implement retrade process for missed condition
- Build seller maintenance system (regular check-ins between contract and close)
- Track by rep to find individual performance gaps
Give the fix 2–4 weeks to show in the data, then re-run the audit. Fix the next bottleneck. Repeat.
The Compound Effect
Here's why this audit matters so much: small improvements at each stage compound into massive revenue growth.
A business with these numbers on $5k/month in ad spend:
- 15% offer-to-contract, 50% contract-to-deal, $15k deal size = $11,250/month revenue (2.25x ROI)
The same business after optimizing each conversion:
- 25% offer-to-contract, 65% contract-to-deal, $22k deal size = $57,200/month revenue (11.4x ROI)
Same leads. Same ad spend. 5x the revenue. That's the power of knowing your numbers and fixing the bottlenecks.
Want Us to Run the Audit For You?
On a strategy call, we'll pull your numbers together, compare them to our benchmarks across 26 managed accounts, identify your biggest bottleneck, and map out the fix — whether that's on the marketing side, the sales side, or both.
If it makes sense for us to run your marketing, we'll show you what the numbers would look like. If it doesn't, you still walk away with a clear picture of what to fix.
Book a Free Strategy Call →Chandler Saine | CEO of Level Up REI
leveluprei.io
We've helped 43 companies scale to $100k/month. 100+ five-star reviews. Clients doing 20 to 300 deals per year.