Know your cost per booked job, by source
Not cost per lead. Cost per booked job — the only number that tells you which vendor to keep paying and which one to cut.
Every home-services business buys leads the same way: a bit of Angi, a bit of Thumbtack, Google Local Services, the website, and word of mouth. Every one of them reports on those the same way too — how many came in, and what each one cost.
That number is close to useless on its own. A source sending cheap leads that never book is worse than an expensive one that books half the time, and cost per lead cannot tell the two apart. The only way to know is to follow each lead all the way through to the job and the money, then add it back up by source.
That is what I build first. Everything else — faster follow-up, cleaner CRM, better reporting — works better once you can see which leads were worth chasing.
Moving companies
Leads go cold in minutes and half the quote requests never get a callback. The clearest money story of the lot, which is why it is the first case study.
Roofing
High job value, long consideration, and storm season spikes that bury the office in leads nobody sorts by source.
Plumbing & HVAC
Emergency calls where the first company to answer wins, mixed with planned work that needs weeks of follow-up.
Solar
Expensive leads, long sales cycles, and a real risk of paying twice for the same homeowner across two vendors.
General contractors & remodelling
Few jobs, large tickets. One misattributed lead source can swallow a quarter of the marketing budget.