What a $300 shared water damage lead really costs a restoration company
The arithmetic on lead aggregators for restoration companies: shared leads, close rates, the race to the phone, and what the same money produces on your own Google profile and search ads.
Someone from a lead company called you this week. The pitch is familiar: water damage leads in your zip codes, $200 to $400 each, "high intent", "verified", sometimes "exclusive". Many restoration owners buy them because the phone is quiet and the pitch sounds like math. Here is the actual math.
The lead was sold three times
A standard aggregator lead goes to three or four companies at once. The homeowner filled out a form or called a number on the aggregator's own Google ad, and within a minute four phones ring. Whoever answers first and sounds best gets the job. The other three paid for the privilege of coming second.
So a $300 lead that your company closes one time in four costs $1,200 per booked job. On a $4,200 average mitigation job, that is 29% of revenue spent on acquisition before the crew leaves the shop. On a $2,500 small dry-out it is nearly half.
"Exclusive" leads are sold once, at $400 to $700, and typically close one in three. That is $1,200 to $2,100 per booked job. Better odds, same arithmetic.
The lead came from your own search
Here is the part the pitch leaves out. The aggregator generated that lead by running a Google ad on "water damage restoration near me" in your city, bidding against you and every other local company. Their ad sent the homeowner to a form. The form sold the homeowner to you.
In other words, the aggregator is a middleman standing between your company and the search you could have won directly. Their margin is the difference between the $50 click they bought and the $300 they charged you, multiplied by the four companies they sold it to.
What the same money does directly
Take the $3,000 a month a company might spend on ten shared leads. From the Google Ads guide, a tracked emergency call from your own Search campaign in most metros lands between $90 and $250, and a Local Services Ads lead between $60 and $180. Those calls are yours alone. The homeowner called your number from your ad and is not being dialed by three other companies.
At $180 per exclusive call and a 40% close on calls that are answered immediately, $3,000 produces about 16 calls and 6 or 7 booked jobs, at roughly $450 per booked job. Against $1,200 for the shared lead, that is less than half the acquisition cost for more jobs, and the calls go straight to the company that does the work.
The catch is the same catch as always: the phone has to be answered. Run the missed-call calculator before spending anything on ads or leads, because an unanswered exclusive call costs more than an unanswered shared one.
The free version is better than both
The reviews and the Google profile cost nothing but attention. The median restoration company has 16 reviews and 41.3% have fewer than 10. Only 13.7% have passed 100, and those are the companies winning the map pack without paying anyone per lead. A company that asks for a review at every final walkthrough, keeps its hours accurate and posts a job photo a week moves up that list over a year. Every call from the map pack is free and exclusive.
The reviews guide and the profile guide cover the whole process.
When a shared lead makes sense
There are two cases. A brand new company with no reviews, no profile history and no campaign yet can use aggregator leads for a few months to get the first jobs and the first reviews, as long as the owner knows the cost and plans to quit. And a company in a storm surge with more crew capacity than calls can buy leads for a week to fill it. In both cases the lead company is a bridge, not a plan.
Signs it has become a plan: the lead bill is the largest marketing line, the owner cannot say the cost per booked job, and the Google profile has not been touched since the account was opened.
The question to ask the lead company
"How many other companies receive this lead, and what is your average close rate for companies in my market?" A straight answer tells you the real cost. An evasive one tells you more. Then ask yourself what the same money would produce on your own ads, your own profile and your own phone.
If you want the direct version built, with your own search campaign, call tracking and the review process behind it, any of those services can be started in the free 14-day trial. Ad spend stays on your own card and nobody sells your calls to anyone else.
Steven has spent the last several years running growth campaigns for local service businesses, restoration companies among them, and builds the benchmark datasets on this site from public Google listings. About the editor