Glossary
The words this site uses, defined once.
This glossary explains calls, forms, and booked jobs in plain words. It also explains the budget and end date I agree with you before ads run. Every guide links back to these terms.
- Lead
- An enquiry: a call, form, message, or chat that arrives from an ad. It records interest, not a commitment. A lead is the first countable event, and the furthest thing from revenue that still deserves counting.
Also called: enquiry, contact.
- Qualified enquiry
- A lead that fits the service, the location, and the basic criteria the business can actually serve. It is not yet a booking. It is a lead that has passed the first filter and is worth a follow-up.
Sits between a raw lead and a booked job.
- Booked job
- An enquiry that reached the outcome the business defines as a booking: a confirmed date and time, an accepted work order, a signed estimate, a deposit, or a dispatched job. The definition is written down before results are reviewed, so it cannot move to flatter a number.
Not the same as a completed or paid job.
- Completed job
- A booked job that was actually delivered. It is closer to revenue than a booking, because a booking can still cancel, but it is not profit until the costs of delivering it are known.
Precedes client-confirmed revenue.
- Charged lead
- In Local Services Ads, a lead Google has billed for. A charged lead is not automatically a valid lead, and a valid lead is not automatically a valuable one: a charged lead can still be out of area, out of scope, or a wrong number eligible for a credit.
Contrast with: valid lead, credited lead.
- Valid lead
- In Local Services Ads, a lead that meets Google’s criteria for a legitimate customer enquiry and so is not eligible for a credit. Valid describes billing eligibility. It says nothing about whether the job was serviceable or profitable.
Valid is a billing status, not a business outcome.
- Contribution margin
- The revenue left from a job after the variable costs of delivering it: labour, materials, disposal, travel. It is the money a booked job actually contributes toward overhead, acquisition, and profit. Not the same as gross margin, and never assumed: it is the owner’s own figure, stated and held stable between periods.
The basis for the maximum allowable cost per booked job.
- Cost per booked job (CPBJ)
- Attributable advertising spend divided by the number of attributable booked jobs. The number a platform lead report cannot give you, and the one compared against the contribution a single booked job can carry.
See the Cost Per Booked Job calculator.
- Your one-page monthly report
- A short monthly report of spend, recorded calls and forms, quality checks, and a next step. Calls and forms are counted separately, once each.
The report you get each month.
- The test plan
- Before ads run, I write down your budget limit and end date. On that date, I review the results with you. You choose what happens next.
The test has a written budget and an end date.
- A fixed test with an end date
- A test with a set budget and end date. I set its length around how your trade books jobs.
You approve the budget and end date before ads run.
- End date
- The date when I review your results with you. You choose whether to continue, change, or stop.
Set it before ads run.
The form sends your details to me by email. I reply personally.