Are Angi, HomeAdvisor & Thumbtack Leads Worth It? The Real Math

0:00 Angi HomeAdvisor Thumbtack Real Math
Hey, I’m Jeremy Ashurn with Push Leads and I help small businesses get more leads without struggle or frustration. And answering the question, are Angie, Home Advisor, and Thumbtac leads actually worth it? So, you’re paying for that lead, but so did three other companies, right? So, the main thing you have to understand here is you’re not buying a customer, you’re buying a race.

0:24 You Are Buying a Race Not a Lead
So, when you purchase the same shared lead, right? shared lead. Three or four other contractors are receiving the same contact and trying to call them at the same time that you do, but you’re all praying paying the same price. So, whoever calls first wins, right? And the what the real math that no one shows you is that let’s say the the cost on average is around $50 a lead. And your close rate is going to be one out of eight on average when you’re competing with three to four other people at the same time. And so your real cost is around $400 for the job just before you even done a dollar of work. And the formula here is the cost per lead times the leads I need to close the job equals your real cost per book customer. [snorts] And most owners don’t actually have to run this number, but that number that number is kind of high. Now

1:14 When Marketplace Leads Make Sense
marketplace leads aren’t worthless, right? So if you are a brand new business um you have zero online presence, they’re a useful bridge. it’s fast to start. Um, and staying on that bridge every day means that your lead flows are coming in, right? Um, the problem is it is the grind. You’re constantly grinding away to get those leads, right? Um, now when you’re talking about um these services like

1:40 What You Are Really Paying For
Home Advisor, what you’re really paying for is convenience, right? You’re signing up and the leads start flowing. You don’t have to do any strategy. You don’t have to work with the company. You just hit the go button more or less. The competition though, you’re also paying for the competition because three or four other contractors, three or four other roofers or whatever you do are actually racing to call the same person at the same time. And there’s no equity.

2:04 Better Channels to Own Your Leads
Every dollar spent evaporates. Nothing compounds. Nothing is yours. So, what replaces this? What’s a better option? There are much better options, right? Your Google business profile. You could be posting a Google business profile. You could be doing SEO. You could be working with a company or doing it yourself. Um, but you could be working on your on your local SEO. Um, your Google business profile. I would be blogging at least once a week. I would be publishing inner hidden pages on your website. If you’re working with an SEO company, insist that they share their work with you, right? Because so many companies I I discovered after doing cold calling people outside of the area where I live in Asheville is like, "Oh man, everybody thought I was trying to scam them." Is that kind of crazy? But there are so many like maybe half of SEO companies out there are scams and don’t do any work. So if you have a company working for you and you’re getting good results, still actually ask them to send you a bullet point list of what they’re doing. Anyway, rant over. You could also be doing local service ads. You could win leads with Google guaranteed. You could do Google ads. Um, if you want, you could try Facebook ads. Be careful with it. Um, there are a lot of people on Facebook, but you have to have the right strategy for Facebook ads to work. Quite often or not, quite often Facebook

3:20 Shared Leads vs Owned Channels Compared
ads doesn’t work for service-based businesses. I’m trying to see if I can change that and investigate that, but I just haven’t seen up to this point in 15 years that Facebook ads has worked. But you could be doing a paid strategy and of course you’d be doing SEO organic content. So I’m making these videos and publishing these videos on YouTube, on LinkedIn, and now on Facebook and different places. So this is organic content. I’m not paying for this. This is just my time to make this video, right? And all of that um helps people see you, get to know you, and understand you. And that builds trust, right? Because there’s this whole spectrum, the know, like, and trust. get people to know you, get people to like you, and then start getting people to trust you. Um, so none of these, it’s instant, but they compound. And by month 12, you’re closing leads from organic. Um, you you already have assets built and you’re getting leads that are coming in organically. So, let’s talk about the shared leads versus the owned channels, right? A shared marketplace is sort of a fixed cost per lead, right? It’s shared with three or four other competitors. There’s no equity. the same. It’s the same price forever. It’s always $400 a lead. Um it’s instant, but it’s temporary. Your own channels like SEO and your own Google ad account and different things like that. The cost over time decreases. Um and your exclusive leads are just coming to leads are just coming to you. They’re exclusive and that [snorts] starts compounding, you know, monthly. And this does require an an upfront build and

4:53 Speed Up With LSA and Google Ads
strategy. It’s a slow start, but but the slow start is actually awesome because the slow the what is it? The slow turtle wins the race. I’m probably butchering that. Um but it’s the whole idea of racing um being the the rabbit and the turtle. Um the turtle wins because the turtle is consistently moving. Um and so you can actually speed up the turtle, so to speak, by doing paid ads. So you don’t But I would do Google ads and and Google guaranteed over doing anything else. Um, if you want to get some more leads faster, and by the way, if you are working with an SEO company and you don’t want to change, you don’t want to, you know, give anyone else a try, you can just ask them to do paid strategies for you. Hey, can we do Google ads? Can we do Facebook ads? Can we do LSA, local service ads? Get them to do that for you. If you already have a trust with your current company, I always say I’m a fan of if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Don’t switch companies unless you’re happy with um unless you’re not happy, right, for some reason or another. Okay. And [sighs] so what I would suggest is you pull your

6:00 Run Your Own 90-Day Cost Audit
last 90 days, your total spent on the marketplace leads on these places and also your total jobs closed from these places and then divide that and that’s your real cost per lead, per booked customer. If that number is higher than a well-round Google Ads campaign, if you’re spending two, four or $6,000, $400 a pop times 10 is $4,000, right? So, you if you’re a roofing company, you could get um a lot for $4,000. So, maybe consider putting that um putting that somewhere else. But if you’re but if you have something at least three to four or $5,000, consider putting um Home Advisor one of these on hold for a month and try Google Ads for a month. Try LSA for a month and and and and you should get better results. At least we get better results. So the question to ask yourself is this is my cost per book customer from the these marketplace leads, is this lower than what I’d pay for a local service ads or an organic lead? If yes, then keep running them, but keep also working on your own SEO. If no, then you’re building out sub you’re paying someone else. You’re subsidizing someone else’s platform, and I would redirect that budget. Now, we’ll run that math for you

7:17 Free Cost-Per-Customer Calculation Offer
for free. You can, if you wanted to bring us your last 90 days of market spend. We’ll calculate your real cost per customer and show you what it would take to replace the those leads with leads you actually own. No pitch, no commitment, just the number. And I’m really big on just sort of letting you have the numbers and making your own decision. And so just let respond to this, you know, video and make a comment, something like that. Um, reach out to us. Um, you can call us as well. You can look look us up on online. It’s we’re pushed. We’re based out of Asheville, North Carolina. And uh, and love to help you out. So the main thing is that you we have a conversation and figure out if we’re the right fit. And if so, then we go to the next step. And if not, then you can do what you want. So, I’m Jeremy Ashurn with Push Leads and helping small businesses get more leads without struggle and frustration. Talk to you soon.