Sink or Swim Marketing

Sink or Swim Marketing Accelerate your business online, operated by some of the best results-driven growth marketers. 🚀🎯

02/10/2026

4 leads one month, 16 the next, same ads and same budget. Most owners blame the campaign, but one month tells you almost nothing.

On our managed painting campaigns, conversion has dipped to about 3.4% in a quiet month and climbed to nearly 14% in a strong one with nothing changed. Weather, holidays, a competitor sale, one big job eating your week, it all shows up in a small sample.

Judge performance on a rolling 90 days. Cost per tracked lead on our accounts typically lands between $45 and $140, so a single spike inside that range is noise. Change one thing at a time and give it four weeks.

Do your leads swing like this? Tell us in the comments, and follow for more.

Jargon buster: cost per leadAd spend divided by enquiries. Spend 200 euro, get 10 enquiries, that's 20 each.Work out you...
02/10/2026

Jargon buster: cost per lead

Ad spend divided by enquiries. Spend 200 euro, get 10 enquiries, that's 20 each.

Work out yours this week and see if the number surprises you.

01/10/2026

If you do great work but never hear from people again, this is usually why. The follow up is missing.

Send it three days after the job, name the exact job you did, ask how it's holding up, then tell them what you'd look at next, like the back fence before winter. That one line gives them a reason and a rough deadline, which is what turns a thank you text into a booked job.

Then save the date and check in again in a few months. Follow for more straight talking tips for local trades.

30/09/2026

Most local service businesses take thirty seconds to explain what they do, and that costs them work.

Here's the fix in four steps: name exactly who you help and where, say the problem using your customers' own words, add one proof detail that's genuinely true for you, then cut every word that doesn't earn its place. If you can't say it in one breath, trim it again.

It ends up sounding like this: we repaint tired homes in Galway, start to finish, in one week.

Drop your one line in the comments and we'll tell you if it's tight enough.

Name the town on the pageIf you cover Greystones, Bray and Delgany, say so in plain words on the page. Search engines an...
30/09/2026

Name the town on the page

If you cover Greystones, Bray and Delgany, say so in plain words on the page. Search engines and people both need to read it.

Open your services page tonight and see if the town is even on it.

29/09/2026

Before you boost another post, run these four checks: decide what the post actually has to achieve, tighten the targeting to the distance you'd genuinely drive to a job, make sure the click lands on a page or a call button instead of back on the post, and only put money behind posts that already got engagement for free.

On one managed paving account, a single month brought 27 phone calls against 25 web form submissions, so that call button matters more than most people think.

Follow for more no-nonsense ads advice for local service businesses, or comment with the last post you boosted.

29/09/2026

Two plumbers in the same town. Same services, same prices, nearly identical listings. One has a handful of reviews, the other has dozens of recent ones.

Guess who the homeowner with a burst pipe calls.

Reviews are the cheapest advantage in local business, and most owners just forget to ask. Make it part of the job: finish up, then ask while they are happy.

Follow for more simple wins like this, or comment with how many reviews you have right now.

28/09/2026

If you run a local service business, the posting, chasing, replying and reporting probably eats your evenings, and none of it wins you a job on its own.

Here's the fix in five steps: write down every marketing job you repeat for one week, use AI for first drafts only, automate your review requests and follow ups when a job is marked complete, turn one job's photos into a week of content, and write a one page voice file so everything still sounds like you.

Which bit of marketing admin steals the most of your week? Tell us in the comments, and follow for more.

Jargon buster: bounce rateIt is the share of visitors who land, look, and leave without doing anything. High bounce on a...
28/09/2026

Jargon buster: bounce rate

It is the share of visitors who land, look, and leave without doing anything. High bounce on a quote page usually means slow loading or no clear next step.

Check your own quote page on your phone, off wifi.

27/09/2026

If your blog is sitting there doing nothing, it's usually because it's written for keywords instead of customers.

Start with the questions you answer on the phone every week: how much does this cost, how long will it take, why is that other quote cheaper. One question per post, answered the way you'd say it out loud, with your own job photos as proof. Then link each post to the service page it supports so Google sees a cluster instead of scattered articles.

And the bit nobody wants to hear: updating an old post that already gets traffic usually beats writing a brand new one.

What question do you get asked most? Drop it in the comments and that's your first post.

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