Find your problem below. Each one has 2–3 actions. Numbers with a blue tag have data proof at the bottom. Partner page: Launch Pack — The First $600.
Judge it by impressions, never by days. (Impressions work the same in cheap and expensive CPM markets.)
Kill switch label: Spam/Bad Number
The ad or the form is letting the wrong people through. This is a plumbing problem, not bad luck.
Kill switch label: No response — but setters rarely select it. A lead with no label and no booking usually means No response.
Real numbers, but no one picks up. Could be the leads, could be our side. Check our side first.
Kill switch labels: Changed Mind · Price Shopper · Job too small
People reply, then back out — real homeowners the ad gave the wrong idea about the price, the offer, or what jobs we do. This is the most dangerous signal on this page. Count kills — never percentages. (1 bad lead out of 3 is "33%" and means nothing. The count is what matters.)
Kill switch label: Out of range
Leads from outside the service area — targeting is leaking. Three checks, in order.
Usually no label at all (= treat as No response) · sometimes CANCELED (booked, then fell through — that's a setter/confirmation problem, tell Griffin, not an ad problem).
Below 20% is below every market's natural rate — now you are judging the account, not the ads. Check in this order.
Work backwards from the appointments the client wants. Use YOUR market's natural booking rate — the rate a healthy account settles at. It barely moves once the account works; a broken account sits below it until repaired. proof 9
The example is Boost. Market booking rates: Weather Masters ~35% · Boost ~20–25% · Sam's & State ~50%. If the budget can't support the leads needed, lower the appointment target — don't pretend the math away.
1. Ads with a lead early are only ~2× more likely to end up good than ads starting at zero — half of good ads have zero-lead days at normal budgets. One day tells you nothing.
2. Zero leads at 1,000 impressions: ~15% recover. At 3,000 impressions: ~0% — none in our history became a good ad. "Good ad" = 5+ leads at $55 or less.
3. OTP took Paramedics from ~32% booking to 51–55%. OTP ads book 51% vs 43% for the rest of that account (138 leads).
4. Every account where "changed mind / too expensive / not interested" passed 24% of leads has died (Go Ecco, Turn Key, NC Quality). Healthy accounts: 3–7%. Creative swaps have never fixed it.
5. Turn Key's form said "Attention Arizona Homeowners" — 56% of leads came from outside the service area, and both early appointments were from bad zips. It cost a $1,350 refund.
6. A healthy account goes 0-for-4 about 18% of the time (normal). 0-for-10 happens ~1–2% of the time (real alarm).
7. Boost booked 20% in February, was repaired (targeting + new creative style), and reached 47–50% by spring. Paramedics went 32% → 55% the same way.
8. Boost right now: booking ~30% but $69–79 per booked appointment — its best unit cost ever, at double the volume. Booking % says "look closer"; cost per booked appointment says "pass or fail."
9. Weather Masters has stayed ~30–40% booking across every ad style we ever ran — a healthy account's rate is a property of the market, not the creative. But a broken account sits BELOW its natural rate until repaired (Paramedics 32% → 55% after OTP, Boost 20% → 47% after the fix). Stable does not mean stuck.
10. The 4th-kill counter was replayed against every launch in the lead sheet (6,188 leads, replayed 2026-08-03). All 7 accounts that later died or churned hit their 4th kill before the 20th judged lead: Go Ecco at lead 6, Turn Key at 7, NC Quality at 8, QPS Charleston at 11, Air Mavericks at 12, Act Right at 18, Onestop at 18 — every one, weeks before anyone called it. No clean healthy launch ever tripped it (State Heating's 4th kill came at lead 76; Garden State and Grace never reached a 3rd). The accounts that tripped and survived — Air Synergy, Paradise — are the ones where the fix happened. The counter fires where the fix should start.