The Real Problem Most Businesses Don't See

When I asked Aaron how he thinks about conversion optimization, he started with something I didn't expect. He said most people don't even think about conversions until they realize they're spending money on traffic but not getting enough leads.

"In the beginning in digital marketing, we're just all about acquisition. We're just trying to get eyeballs, as much traffic, where can we be seen," Aaron explained. "And conversion for a lot of people really doesn't come up as something to look into until they're like, wow, I feel like I'm spending a good amount of money. I'm getting a good amount of traffic, but I'm still not loving or I feel like there's more juice to squeeze out of this into the leads."

He broke down conversion into three main stages. First, does your ad actually get clicked? Second, does your website convert visitors into leads? Third, do you convert those leads into paying customers?

But here's the thing that hit me: it's not just one element of the funnel. There are multiple steps, and each one needs optimization. You can't just focus on getting traffic and expect everything else to work itself out.

The Golden Rule That Changes Everything

Aaron dropped something on me that's become my new framework for thinking about local business success. He said the golden rule of business today is how easy are you to work with.

"Our world has evolved to the golden rule of business is how easy are you to work with and this is where I think a lot of people get conversion wrong," he said.

Think about it. Most businesses only let you call them or fill out a form. But what if the customer wants to text? What if they want to email? You're forcing them into your preferred method instead of letting them choose what's easiest for them.

Even worse, some businesses put up forms with 18 questions. They're so excited to qualify the lead that they forget they're making people work way too hard just to ask a simple question.

"You're leaving all kinds of others on the table that saw that 18 field form and was like, no way. I'm not taking five minutes to fill this out. Why did they need all this info? I just have one question that I want to ask," Aaron explained.

Every extra field, every missing communication option, every unclear process adds friction. And friction kills conversions. It makes people say "skip it, I'll deal with it later" or jump to the next search result.

The Amazon Effect on Local Business

I brought up Amazon because they've mastered making things easy. Aaron immediately ran with it, pointing out all the friction Amazon removed over the years.

They added reviews so people could trust buying things online without seeing them. They created one-click ordering because filling out shipping forms was annoying. They launched Prime so you wouldn't have to think about shipping costs changing at checkout.

"Amazon did. They made it easier to work with them and definitely part of what catapulted them into the stratosphere that they're in now," Aaron said.

The lesson? Local businesses need to become the Amazon of their area. You have to be way easier to work with than everyone else. Even in competitive markets like pest control where I work, most companies still aren't doing the basics right.

The Most Shocking Stat You'll Hear Today

Last year, Aaron and his team did a study that blew my mind. They filled out 225 contact forms across home services, professional services, and medical businesses. They acted like hot buyers, giving clear buying signals like "I have a 10 by 8 patio that I want stone pavers. I'd like it done this month."

The average response time? 17 hours and 49 minutes.

Let me say that again. Seventeen hours to respond to a hot lead who's ready to buy.

"The speed to lead in today's digital age felt like a tortoise," Aaron said.

Think about what happens in those 17 hours. The customer starts wondering if you even got their submission. Maybe the form was broken. Maybe they typed their info wrong. So they fill out forms with your competitors. The longer you wait, the more they lose confidence in your process.

It Gets Worse: The Auto-Reply Disaster

Here's what really got me. Only 15% of those businesses sent an automatic reply when someone filled out their form.

Fifteen percent.

That means 85% of businesses are leaving customers completely in the dark about whether their message was even received. No confirmation. No timeline. Nothing.

"It takes you 3 to 5 minutes to set up an auto reply that's going to fire for months, years, however long you leave it up and running," Aaron said. "So to take five minutes to do that and be able to set expectations instantly connect with that lead that you connected with, it's mindblowing that that number was so incredibly little."

And get this: 4% of the forms they tried were completely broken. Just didn't work at all. Those businesses only found out when Aaron's team told them.

How many potential customers tried those broken forms, got frustrated, and moved on to a competitor? We'll never know.

The Simple Contact Form Rule

I had to ask Aaron what should actually be on a contact form. His answer was refreshingly simple.

"Look at every field as like a row of bricks on a wall and the lower that wall is for that prospect to be able to get over the top of or to hurdle, the better off that you are," he explained.

Think about what you need to have a valuable conversation. It's probably not 18 fields. You need name, main contact info, maybe address if you're a home services business so you can see the project size.

His rule of thumb? Keep it under eight questions. Better yet, make it even shorter.

"Most consumers have one or two things they need to ask or clarify or gain trust on to take the next step," Aaron said. "So when you make it more effort than asking that one or two things to complete your information, you're really missing the point."

Don't make your form do all the work of qualifying, converting, and closing customers. Get them to identify themselves, then let your sales process do the rest.

The One Channel Mistake Killing Your Follow-Up

Aaron's study tracked responses for three weeks after filling out forms. What they found was shocking.

71% of businesses only used one channel for follow-up. If they followed up by email, they only used email. If they called, they only called.

"If I send an email and I don't get something back, our process is email first. I'm going to send a text message hours or later that next day," Aaron explained. "If that doesn't work, I'm going to call."

But most businesses? They send one email and if they don't hear back, they give up.

Even worse: 65% of businesses made just one attempt to follow up. One attempt. The customer fills out your form, you reach out once, they're busy or miss it, and you just move on.

"You actually have a customer's information and you just give one shot to try to land that. Pretty incredible that those numbers are so staggering," Aaron said.

Think about all the things that can go wrong with one attempt. They're driving. They got 30 emails and accidentally deleted yours. They were doing something else. One attempt is throwing away leads you already captured.

Why Text Messaging Is Taking Over

I asked Aaron about trends in preferred contact methods over the years. His answer confirmed what I've been seeing with my own generation.

"Look at how they communicate in their personal life and how much we gravitate and have moved in the last decade towards text messaging," he said.

We have group texts with family and friends, not group emails. COVID accelerated this even faster because businesses needed ways to communicate when people couldn't walk through their doors.

Two years ago, Aaron's team surveyed 2,000 consumers. The results were clear: 37% said text was their number one communication channel. Phone was second at 30%. Email was almost half of texting at just 19.6%.

Text messaging is asynchronous. You get an alert and can handle it however you want. You can read and respond to a text while doing anything else. A phone call requires your full attention right now.

"I can be doing anything else and read a text message or fire off a quick reply," Aaron explained.

Plus, text messages are cleaner than email inboxes that have been used to sign up for every discount and mailing list for 20 years. It's easier for emails to get buried in spam or lost among 80 other messages.

The Age Group That Texts the Most Might Surprise You

I assumed younger people texted the most. Aaron corrected me with data that honestly shocked me.

The highest users of text messaging? Ages 35 to 54.

"They texted over 44% of the time said texting is their number one channel and then phone calls were second at like 23%," Aaron said. "So texting to phone calls almost 2 to 1 and almost 3 to 1 over email."

This is critical because for most home service businesses, that 35-54 age group is your target market. That's where the disposable income is. These aren't just young early adopters. These are your customers actively choosing text over everything else.

From Agency Life to Building Leadferno

Aaron spent 15 years in the agency world building websites, running search campaigns, managing social media for businesses of all sizes. Two things from that experience led him to create Leadferno.

First, website conversion felt janky. You needed different solutions for forms, email providers, and everything else. He wanted one tool that powered everything on your website and put all leads in one place instead of swimming in your regular email with customers, spam, and vendors.

Second, in his six years leading GatherUp (an online reputation platform), he saw something across tens of thousands of businesses: communication was the biggest factor in earning five-star reviews versus one-star reviews.

"Nothing more as like a single theme affected super poor reviews and super great reviews than communication," Aaron said.

He combined those insights into Leadferno: a conversion platform that makes it easy for businesses and gives prospects what they want, which is the ability to text you instantly.

How Leadferno Actually Works

Think of those floating chat buttons you see on websites, usually in the bottom right corner. That's similar to what Leadferno does, but with a crucial difference: it's web-to-text instead of live chat.

Live chat sounds great in theory, but Aaron explained the problems. Small business owners are already wearing 12 hats. They might be loading a truck or on another call when someone starts a chat. The system says "agent not available, please wait" but the customer has no idea how long.

Or worse, it says "give us your email" which completely defeats the purpose of wanting instant communication.

"I just went from an instant connection to maybe the shittiest business connection of email that can get buried, spam, everything else," Aaron said.

Plus, live chat creates pressure. Most employees don't love it because they feel like they have to respond instantly and say the right things. It's stressful.

With web-to-text through Leadferno, it's asynchronous. The person asks a question via text. They know you got it because it's a text message. If you're using Leadferno, they get an automatic reply instantly saying someone will be with them shortly.

It's more manageable for your team too. Everyone knows how to text. You don't need special training or worry about being "live" or "offline" in a system.

The Features That Make the Difference

Leadferno isn't just a basic texting app. Aaron's team built in features that actually help businesses convert better.

Their widget doesn't just show an icon that people have to decode. You can configure it to say "text us" or "message" or "contact." You can display your reputation like "4.9 stars out of 350 reviews" or your average reply time like "we reply in 5 minutes."

You can even add a custom call to action like "questions on a boat" for a marina or "get $100 off first service" for a pest control company.

"You can really configure these three different elements that are in our buttons to build social trust and proof," Aaron explained.

They also have different auto-replies for business hours versus after hours. Someone texts at midnight? The system tells them "our office opens at 8 a.m., that's when we'll reply to your text."

Their form builder lets you replace your contact form so submissions go straight into text messaging conversations. No more broken forms, no buried emails, instant notification in the app people use most.

The Live Chat Versus Text Messaging Reality

Aaron was honest about where AI and automation fit into all this. They're pro-automation but not full automation yet.

"At the end of the day, there's still a little bit of a gap between expectations on what a bot, what an AI agent, what those things can deliver, especially in a sales process," he said.

AI is good at step-by-step processes and answering questions when you feed it information. But it's missing empathy and motivation. It's different from a salesperson on commission who wants to close the deal or someone who understands when a customer's in a hard spot.

Leadferno has automation features like keywords. Your auto-reply can say "if you're a new customer, type new. If you're existing, type customer." Now you've segmented them automatically. If they say "new," ask for their address. Now a human picks up a qualified lead.

"The last thing we want is somebody coming back and be like, hey, that's great. You helped me capture these 40 leads this month, but here's these five that could have added to my bottom line that the AI agent failed on," Aaron explained.

For large businesses, maybe AI handling some leads is fine. But for small businesses, every lead is precious. You've paid money to get it whether through a billboard or digital ad. You can't afford to waste opportunities.

The Comparison to Other Tools

I asked Aaron how Leadferno differs from competitors like Podium. His main point was about live chat creating pressure versus asynchronous text messaging being manageable.

With live chat, there's pressure to respond instantly. Most employees don't thrive under that. You might get one person willing to do it.

With Leadferno's approach, your whole team can handle it because everyone texts. If you have 10 people, all of them can manage text conversations in Leadferno without the stress of live chat.

Plus, Leadferno has features like transferring conversations between team members. If someone starts helping a customer but realizes another person is a better fit, they can transfer the thread. The customer keeps texting the same number, and the new person jumps in.

"It's like, no, you keep them right in the same thread. Cheryl jumps on. Hi, this is Cheryl. I'm the perfect person to help you with that," Aaron said.

Looking Toward the Future of AI

Aaron was transparent that they're actively working on AI features. They've been speccing out what happens if they turn the whole lead qualification process into AI.

They're constantly testing and tweaking, but they're cautious. They don't want to waste lead opportunities because leads are too precious.

"Do I think it'll get there? Yes, I think it'll get there and we'll have things where AI is doing a fantastic job and you can still connect with a human when you want to," Aaron said.

He thinks it'll eventually be a choice where businesses can decide: do I want a human or AI to handle this? Do I want to mix them? At what point does AI cut in?

Large businesses can probably afford to shed some personal touches. But small businesses shouldn't sacrifice touchpoints with leads yet. The technology isn't quite there.

He also recommended checking out Hey Rosie for AI call answering if you're a business missing phone calls. It's not perfect, but if calls are going to voicemail and you're doing projects yourself, an AI answering and qualifying is better than nothing.

My Main Takeaway

The biggest lesson from talking to Aaron is that conversion optimization isn't complicated. It's about making it easy for customers to work with you.

Most local businesses are failing at the basics. They're taking 17 hours to respond to leads. They're not sending auto-replies. They're using only one communication channel. They're making one follow-up attempt and giving up.

These aren't hard problems to solve. An auto-reply takes five minutes to set up. Using multiple channels just means sending a text if email doesn't work. Making three follow-up attempts instead of one is a simple process change.

But the impact is massive. When 85% of businesses aren't doing these things, you have a huge opportunity to stand out just by being responsive and available through the channels your customers actually want to use.

Text messaging isn't just a trend for young people. It's the preferred channel for your target market, especially that crucial 35-54 age group with disposable income. They're texting almost 2-to-1 over phone calls and 3-to-1 over email.

The golden rule Aaron shared has stuck with me: how easy are you to work with? That's what determines whether someone chooses you or your competitor. Make it easier, and you win.

If you want to dive deeper into conversion optimization and see the full data from Aaron's studies, definitely check out the complete episode. He shares even more tactical advice and specific examples than I could fit here.

Want to learn more from Aaron? Visit leadferno.com to check out their blog with research studies and feature highlights, or connect with Aaron on LinkedIn. He mentioned if you heard about Leadferno on this podcast, he'll give you 50% off your first month on top of their 14-day free trial.

Listen to the full episode to hear more of Aaron's insights on conversion optimization, text messaging strategies, and building tools that actually help local businesses win more customers.