If you ask five different business owners to define "digital marketing," you will likely get five different answers regarding SEO, social media, or paid ads. But if you ask them how much profit those activities generated last month, the response is less exciting.
This is the "digital marketing" trap.
For too long, digital marketing has been treated as a silo—a creative department whose job is to "get the name out there" under the assumption that brand awareness alone will bring in the leads. Meanwhile, sales and operations teams are left wondering why the phone isn't ringing with qualified buyers and questioning the efficacy of their marketing campaigns.
This is where digital marketing breaks. Success online is no longer just about generating clicks or impressions - it’s about building a mature Revenue Operations (RevOps) engine.
TLDR: You don’t have a traffic problem, you have a maturity problem.
The missing link: Feedback
Marketing maturity isn't just about software; it's about alignment.
In a siloed organization, marketing creates content based on what they think the buyer persona is. There may be some initial vetting and iteration, but too often it’s based on assumptions and hearsay from one-off conversations with Sales and Operations. In contrast, a mature organization sees marketing working hand-in-hand with Sales and Operations to create content based on what Sales and Operations know the buyer experiences.
When Sales doesn't pass back objections from prospect calls, or when Operations doesn't share the obstacles that specific customers run into, marketers run the risk of heading off in a wild direction. They might target the wrong audience entirely, bringing in leads that your team can’t close or serve.
A RevOps engine joins these teams together. It ensures that the "pain points" marketed on the website match the reality of the sales conversation.
The benchmarks: Are you meeting industry standards?
When we audit businesses, we often find that while the effort is there, the execution falls below the baseline required to compete in the modern attention economy. Rather than marketing based on “gut feel”, teams must measure their activity and results against what the industry data says.
Spoiler alert: not all metrics are marketing-owned. Take these broader, mission-critical metrics for local service area businesses:
1. The "Golden window" (Speed to lead)
Benchmark: 5 Minutes
Who owns this? Sales
Generating the lead is only half the battle. Industry standards dictate that the "Golden Window" to respond to a web lead is just 5 minutes.
- Stage 1 Reality: Leads sit in an info@ inbox for hours or days.
- The Fix: If you aren't using automation to acknowledge and route that lead instantly, your conversion rate will plummet, regardless of how good your ad was.
2. Social proof and velocity
Benchmark: 5 Reviews Per Month
Benchmark: 90% Response Rate
Who owns this? Customer service
You cannot "set and forget" your reputation. A mature local service business maintains a velocity of at least 5 new reviews per month to signal relevance to search engines. Furthermore, having a 90% response rate to all reviews (both positive and negative) is table stakes for service businesses today.
3. Engagement over vanity
Benchmark: ~1.3% Engagement Rate
Who owns this? Marketing
Don't get distracted by follower counts. For local businesses (specifically home services), the benchmark for a healthy engagement rate on platforms like Facebook and Instagram hovers around 1.3%. If you have high followers but low engagement, your content isn't landing with your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP).
Why we stopped looking at just the "marketing"
We didn't always look at business growth this way.
Like many in the digital marketing and consultancy world, we used to focus heavily on the tactical trees like SEO rankings, ad clicks, and traffic reports. But we realized we were missing the forest. We saw clients hitting their traffic goals but missing their revenue targets.
We recognized that by looking at marketing in a silo, we were ignoring the non-obvious issues stalling growth. A great SEO strategy fails if the "Speed to Lead" is too slow. A great paid ad campaign burns cash if the "Customer Acquisition Cost" (CAC) isn't tracked against "Lifetime Value" (LTV).
This realization drove us to develop our multi-check diagnostic. We stopped auditing just the website and started auditing the entire RevOps engine.
Think bigger: Engineering your revenue
If your marketing feels like it isn't working, it’s likely not because you are "doing it wrong." It is because you aren't thinking big enough.
Digital marketing in a silo only tackles a fraction of your revenue driver. In an era where every piece of media is competing for audience attention, successful marketing requires engineering. It requires understanding exactly how your audience consumes media, reaching them where they are, and directing them down a path that Sales and Operations are ready to support.
Don't just audit your ads. Audit your maturity.
Contact us to schedule your Local Service Business Marketing Maturity Audit today.
Stop Guessing. Start Engineering Revenue.
Don't let vanity metrics hide your profit leaks. Audit your digital maturity to bridge the gap between leads and revenue.