Count The Right Thing
Your ad platform heats whichever room the thermostat hangs in. Hang it where your customers actually are: a real inquiry, counted once, and a booked job on its own line.
A laptop, your phone, last month's report if somebody sends you one, and a couple of hours.
The weekend version.
A laptop, your phone, last month’s report if somebody sends you one, and a couple of hours on Saturday morning.
1Fill in the lead map
List every way an inquiry reached you last month. For each, write the signal that proves it happened, whether it should count, who answers it, and whose login holds the count. Leave blanks blank. A blank is a finding.
2Line up last month's three counts
Write down what your analytics or ad report called conversions or leads. Next to it, write the real inquiries from your Lead Log, inbox and phone. Next to that, write the jobs you actually booked. If the first number is much bigger than the second, something is counting that should not be. If the second is much bigger than the first, your tracking is missing doors.
3Test your own form, then refresh
Fill out your contact form from your phone, with a made-up name you will recognize. When the thank-you page loads, refresh it twice. Tomorrow, check whether your analytics counted one lead or three. Three means the goal counts every reload.
4Tap your own phone button and hang up before it rings
If that shows up as a lead or a call tomorrow, your report is counting taps as calls. Move taps to their own row on the lead map, as interest.
5Check who owns the accounts
Open your analytics and each ad account and look at who is listed as owner or administrator. You want your own email there with full rights. If the only owner is a vendor or a former employee, ask them this week to add you as owner. Ask politely and put it in writing.
6Add the last column
Put "what it became" in your Lead Log and fill it in for every inquiry from today on.
The worksheet.
Fill it in on your phone. It saves on your device and prints clean.
Lead Log and One-Page Lead Map
Saves on this device as you go. Nothing is sent to us.
Keep one line per inquiry in the Lead Log, fill in the Lead Map for every door, and once a month sit the three counts side by side and explain each gap.
Lead Log
What it became: quote sent, job booked, went with somebody else, never heard back.
One-Page Lead Map
Leave blanks blank. A blank is a finding.
The three counts
Check it took.
next month, sit the three counts side by side. You should be able to explain every gap out loud in one sentence each. "Six form leads in the report, five real ones in my inbox, and the sixth was my test." That is a business that knows what it counted.
Where it stops being a weekend job.
The handoff is a decision rule, not a phone number. What failed, who fixes it, and the proof to ask for. Use it on anybody, including us.
The weekend version showed you a gap you cannot close yourself. In the setups we see, it is usually one of four things: two tags counting the same form, a goal that counts every reload of the thank-you page, a page view wired up as a lead, or no way to connect an ad click to a sale that closes weeks later.
Someone who can read your tag setup and your ad account’s conversion settings, and explain both to you in plain words. That might be the person who built your site, the provider who runs your ads, a sharp employee with an afternoon, or us. Hand them your lead map and ask them to start from it, not from their dashboard.
A test inquiry from a known source that appears exactly once in analytics and once in your inbox, and, if it came through an ad click, once in the ad account. Not twice. Not zero. Once in each place, on a day you choose, under a name you made up. If they can show you that, the count is honest. If they cannot, the job is not done, whatever the invoice says.
Write the test inquiry’s name and date on the lead map. Six months from now, when somebody changes the website, you can run the same test and know within a day whether the counting broke.
Ryan, can't I just ask every customer how they found us?
Yes, and you should. That question is about the cheapest tracking there is, and the answer belongs in your Lead Log.
But it is one count, not the whole picture, for two reasons. First, people answer it loosely. In the businesses we see, "I found you on Google" can mean a search, the map listing, an ad, or a link a neighbor texted them, and those are four different rows on your lead map with four different fixes. Second, your notebook cannot teach the ad platform anything. The thermostat only reads what is wired to it. If the truth lives only in your memory, the machine keeps heating the kitchen.
So ask, write it down, and then use the answers to check the dashboard, not to replace it. If customers keep saying "Google" and the dashboard says almost nothing came from Google, one of the two is wrong, and now you know where to look.
If you run a small shop with a handful of inquiries a week and no ads, the asking and the log may honestly be enough for now. The day you start paying for clicks, it is not.
As you spend hundreds a month on ads, you need to make sure you are counting real conversions: a call that connected, a form that arrived, not a tap or a page view. As you spend thousands, you need to make sure Google sees who actually booked, for how much, and when, all tied to their original GCLID. That stands for Google Click Identifier. When someone clicks your Google ad, Google adds a long code to the web address they land on. Think of it as a claim ticket stapled to that one click. If your form or CRM saves the ticket with the lead, then when the job books, it can hand the ticket back to Google with the dollar amount and the date. Now Google can see which clicks became paying work, not just which ones touched a button.
Tools for counting.
Tagged links tell your analytics where a click came from. The calculators turn inquiries and booked jobs into numbers you can run a budget on.
UTM Link Builder
Build the tagged links for your Google listing, your ads and your social profiles so each door shows up on its own line.
Open the builder →Free toolsROI and conversion calculators
Cost per inquiry, conversion rate, lifetime value and break-even, from your own counts.
See the calculators →Tools and next.
The two tools the book points to, then the chapters on either side of this one.
Elevated Page Check
Click it on any page for a score out of 100, the fixes that matter most, and eight tabs that show the headings, links, photos, schema, share preview and business details behind the page, in plain English. Nothing here for it to check. Count with the lead log and the Lead Map; the extension is for the pages themselves. Nothing it reads leaves your computer.
How it works and where to get it →Done for youFree online presence report
Your listing, your business details, your reviews, your site speed and the heat map, scored from the outside. It asks for your email so we can send it.
Get the report →Nearby chapters
- Chapter 9
- Chapter 10
- Chapter 12
- Chapter 13
Page last updated October 26, 2026. The steps get updated when Google changes something. Found a step that no longer matches your screen? Email ryan@elevatedideas.com or call or text (217) 724-8153.
Maintained by Elevated Ideas, a U.S.-based agency in Jacksonville, Illinois. All chapters.
Count a real inquiry once, and a booked job on its own line.
The free online presence report is the one thing in the book we ask you to let us run: the outside view of your listing, your details, your reviews, your speed and the map.
Prefer to talk? Call or text (217) 724-8153 or email ryan@elevatedideas.com.