GoHighLevel: The Ultimate Marketing Automation CRM?
Today I wanted to talk about marketing automation. And I wanted to focus on GoHighLevel.
I have had a love hate relationship with this software over the years. And as of late it has fundamentally become my "go-to." (And I will explain why)
Most of us are sitting on leads we've already paid for (PPC, Ads, Skiptracing, or with our time) and we're doing nothing with them...
We miss the opportunities because we either are far too slow to reach out initially, we fundamentally just stop following up, or we do not have a proper marketing CRM in place where we actually track and manage leads.
I am very confident that your lead issues stem from one of these 3 issues... So today I wanted to write about resolving it quickly.
Why Would You Use GoHighLevel?
First off, let's talk about GoHighLevel, or “GHL” as many of us call it.
And before I start, I am in no way shape or form affiliated with this company.
It is an all-in-one platform marketing automation software to grow and build your business.
You can literally build websites, create sales funnels, and manage all your communications... Emails, SMS, even WhatsApp. All from one dashboard.
For years, many of us, myself included, were having to juggle five, six, seven different applications to piece together our marketing, our sales, our customer service.
MailChimp for emails, separate tools for text messages, Wordpress + Elementor for website building, calendar booking apps, payment processors, etc... It is a chaotic mess to piece all of this together. And honestly, if you do not have a really strong technical background, this is really inefficient, costly, and ripe for mistakes.
So GHL came into the market and brought all of this under one roof. That is why I say it is an all-in-one marketing and CRM tool.
It integrates with any tool out there and has more than enough marketing automation features to streamline customer engagement and mainly to drive your sales.
One of its biggest strengths?
Automations and AI. And this is why I have come to love it. You do not need to purchase 15 different softwares.
You can set up a workflow for automating just about everything.
This includes things like sending out appointment confirmations and reminders, nurturing leads, requesting Google reviews.
Then you have things like adding AI chatbots to your website or voice AI answering calls to handle common questions, and book appointments directly on your calendar 24/7.
Think about the power of that... Speed to lead is the part that most of us miss. So having an AI agent that can be an option for customers during call overflows is a huge opportunity to avoid losing potential customers.
Why Wouldn't We Use GoHighLevel?
Now, here's the flip side... why wouldn't you use GHL?
GoHighLevel is NOT a dedicated field service management tool or operations software. It is a marketing automation tool.
It is not built for the nitty gritty of scheduling specific jobs, dispatching crews, managing your bookings, tracking invoices in the same way your property management software, Jobber, or Housecall Pro are...
I get asked all the time if "we should switch to GoHighLevel." And the answer is always no. They are not thinking about it correctly.
You need both an operations software and a marketing automation software in your business.
Your ops software is fantastic for scheduling jobs, dispatching & coordinating vendors & staff, tracking maintenance requests, taking payments, and storing customer info.
Your marketing automation software is great for getting leads, nurturing them, and setting up automations.
They are fundamentally different! So, you STILL NEED a specialized tool built for daily business operations.
Another point I'd like to bring up is the learning curve... I found that GHL can be a lot to take in at first. I remember the first time I looked at it. I really disliked it. You really need to get your hands dirty and commit time to learning the system.
For a busy business owner or somebody less technical, this is going to be tough. That time might be better spent in the field, doing marketing, sales, etc... A lot of people just don't have time for learning such complex software. So you might opt for something more basic in that case.
The Scale of Untapped Revenue
So let's dig into this opportunity cost I mentioned.
When you do not have a real marketing automation software you end up dropping the ball.
Either because your speed to lead sucks or your follow up process sucks. One of them is missing.
There are generally 3 categories of leads where huge amounts of money are left on the table:
Demo No-Sales/Closed-Lost: These are leads where a sales meeting was conducted, an estimate/proposal was delivered, but the lead didn't move forward. Most businesses do nothing with these leads. We move straight to the next opportunities instead.
Existing Customers: Many companies do little to nothing with their past customers or existing customer base. There is a massive amount of revenue to be had by cross marketing into additional services or reengaging them. Most people are not experts in all the things your company offers. You need to get these messages in front of them.
Leads Never Worked/Booked: These are leads that came in through various channels (website forms, home shows, aggregators) but were either never contacted or an appointment was never booked. Most of us abandon follow-up after a few attempts. Totally normal. I am guilty of this myself. A massive amount of these leads exist in a company's database, and simple campaigns can drive hundreds of new appointments from them.
Most of us have "new lead addiction." We prioritize what's "shiny" and "exciting" over old leads that might seem less fresh. There's a fear of "bothering the lead" or a mindset that if a lead didn't buy before, they never will. It is just fundamentally not true.
And with GoHighLevel we can implement some powerful campaigns. You can pull these lists or upload them into GHL and launch campaigns with new promotions or offers to re-engage them.
Reactivating those old leads is at least 10 times more cost effective than generating new ones. Imagine closing just one of these existing leads. For most of you, that would pay for the software itself... No ads, no sales reps, just automated email, SMS, and voice mail drops.
So, what's the takeaway?
Almost all of us are sitting on a goldmine of revenue that we are completely ignoring. Either we don't have a proper marketing automation tool to track and manage our leads, or we have one and we're just not using it right.
I know this because I am going through this exact issue right now. If you're not nurturing your leads, following up with old prospects, and re-engaging past customers, you're forcing yourself into working 5x as hard to generate new business.
And to be very clear you still need your day-to-day ops software for coordinating bookings, job management, maintenance coordination, and managing existing clients. Your operations tools are built specifically for this.
But you also need marketing automation. So stop leaving money on the table and chasing new leads all the time. A strong marketing automation system will help close the leads you've already paid for.