Pay per lead has been around for years, but it’s exploded more recently with the development of Thumbtack and Home Advisor. I offer a pay per lead program that is a cost-effective solution if you want to generate new leads through a free website I build for your business. This way, you don’t spend thousands of dollars on a website and you still generate more business. There are no monthly fees, hidden costs and there is no contract.
In this article, I’ll explain the pros and cons of large lead generation companies and my pay per lead program. We will start with the basics.
What is a lead?
Well, a lead is another word for potential customer. Leads are typically generated through a phone call or contact form submission on your website. If one of your past customers says their friend is interested in hiring you, that new person is a lead.
What is pay per lead?
Pay per lead is exactly what it sounds like. You pay a set amount for each lead you receive.
I will now explain the pros and cons of pay per lead with large companies such as Thumbtack or Home Advisor.
What are the benefits of pay per lead?
- You only pay when you have a chance to sell your services.
- You don’t have to spend money on advertising.
- You don’t have to compete with the big companies with big budgets.
- You don’t need to have a website.
What are the disadvantages of pay per lead?
- You’re at the mercy of these large companies.
- They control the price per lead, and you’re stuck paying it if you want more business.
- Normally, you aren’t the only one receiving these leads.
- You have to bid lower than the others to get the job, resulting in less profit.
- The potential customers knows nothing about your company.
Are using large lead generation companies worth it?
In my opinion, there are more disadvantages of using large pay per lead companies to generate your business. The deciding factor to me is your competition. You and 3-4 other companies who provide the same service as you all purchase the same lead and all make an effort to sell that person. If each company bids $1000 for the job except one company that bids $850, that’ll be the company they choose. The potential customer bases it upon price because they know nothing about any of the companies.
When purchasing leads, you should typically only buy leads if they are exclusive. That means, you are the only company to purchase them. The downside of purchasing exclusive leads is you’ll pay more for it. The large companies charge so little, lets say $7 per lead, because they sell it to 5 companies and make $35 total. You’ll typically have to pay that $35 for that exclusive lead. However, you don’t have to share it with the competition, which makes the job much easier to sell. And, because you’re selling more jobs, your ROI will be much higher.
How can I get exclusive leads?
There are two ways to get exclusive leads. Building a website that uses your domain or creating a new lead generation website focused on your services and area.
Your website can be used to generate exclusive leads. Rather than paying a company to build a new website and you pay a flat fee without knowing if it will generate more business, I can build your company a website for free. You only pay for the leads that it generates.
A lead generation website is a website that is built specifically to generate certain types of leads in a certain area. For instance, if your company only paints the interior of residential homes in a city, I can build a website specifically for that which will rank within search engines (typically listed above your website) and then it will begin generating the leads you are looking for.
Which exclusive lead option is better?
A website I build that’s on your domain. Plain and simple. It’s much faster to start generating leads on a website that I build for your business on your domain for several reasons. It can show off your portfolio, it already had a website previously established and your website is focused on your company. A lead generation website uses a generic business name with no address or company photos, since it’s not an actual business like yours. This is what separates a lead generation website from an actual companies website.
How much do exclusive leads cost?
For me, there is no contract, hidden fees or monthly fees. You simply pay for each new lead generated from the website. The price you pay varies depending on what type of business you are in and the services you offer. You’ll typically pay between $25-$150 for a single lead.
For instance, a full interior painting lead might cost $50 whereas a lead to completely remodel a kitchen may cost $150. However, when you close the job for 50 times or more what the lead costs, it will cover that lead and the next 10. If you are interested in getting the exact pricing per lead for the services your offer, contact me here.
How will you deliver the exclusive leads?
A majority of the time you will receive an email in real-time, immediately after it’s approved. However, we can forward you the calls after their information has been recorded. This allows you to talk directly to the potential customer.
Where can I get more info or how can I get started?
You can contact me or learn more about my pay per lead program here.
I believe they are all the same and a worthless time of money. After 40 years in the business I still feel local ad and word of mouth is the best way to market ones self…..just my opinion…..
Arthur,
Word of mouth is definitely a great way to market, but you can only reach so many people and you don’t have any control over what your previous customers say or do.
With local advertising, you are doing the same thing as pay per lead, but instead of paying for results, you’re paying to get your name in front of people who may or may not be interested. It’s hard to track the exact ROI from that specific source of advertising to even know if it turned a profit or not, and that’s one of the downsides.
Appreciate the input!
So what you are saying is “Pay per lead” is better because this is what you are selling and offering based on Affiliate marketing or your own experience? Sorry but I find this nonsense. I am not going to base my decision on what an affiliate marketer is trying to sign me up for. They usually don’t care if you win the lead or not. In most cases they are looking for the residual business income from the monthly billing. However the real money comes in from all the great new tools to increase your exposure to the market lists that have been acquired over time, C’mon I have been in business too long to know how it’s done and like I said it’s all predomentaly done the same as any other Pay per lead system and I will still stand on my opinion about this. I have studied marketing for nearly 4 decades and the industry changes like everything else. Right now the internet is nothing more than traffic controlling ad mongers and no longer can be trusted by small business and now everything has come full circle once again, The numbers simply don’t lie. To put it quite simply as soon as these social medias went public then came the greed of the board of directors and share holders and has ruined what was once a great sale generator on it’s own. My market presence was once huge around the world through SEM but now it is near nothing unless I pay for it dearly…….No thanks
Arthur,
I don’t think you quite understand how pay per lead works. I’m not an affiliate of some large company and I’m not “selling” anything besides qualified leads that have the potential to generate you revenue.
My job is to generate you leads and yours is to close them. It’s not my fault if 10 qualified leads come though and you’re unable to close any of them, for whatever reason. A qualified lead is different from a normal lead. They are at a different stage in the buying process, which makes it a lot harder to bring in “wallet out, ready to buy” customers.
There are no monthly fees.
I agree that the internet is full of large companies controlling the traffic. It’s because they have such a large budget and spend countless hours working on their sites so they get ranked ahead of small businesses, like yours. That’s where I come in. I’ll build a site for free and only get paid when a lead comes through the site. If it never gets a lead, you never pay anything.
Plus, you won’t get the same qualified lead as 3-4 other companies in your area. I’ve outlined this problem in the section above called “Are using large lead generation companies worth it”? Are they worth it? No, they’re not. They don’t care about small businesses and if they convert the lead or not because they can find another business in a matter of days with their giant sales team.
My job is much harder, since I don’t have a large site and gets millions of leads a month. I start from the beginning and create a site focused strictly on your target areas and services you offer to get results.
You can hate every internet company out there, but at the end of the day, they’re ranking in search engines and that’s not going to change. It’s up to you to figure out how you want to go about generating new customers through the internet whether you pay dearly for it or another method. And, if you choose another marketing company to take over, what guarantees do they offer?
The large companies are not easy to outrank and you’ll be spending thousands on a new site. If you can’t outrank them and produce results, you practically just gave them free money. Instead, you could have received X amount of qualified leads each month for the same price and you actually have a chance to convert them since they’re being only sent to you.
Hmmmm very interesting indeed, Then yes I would have to agree that you surely not like the rest as to offer an exclusive to the lead is something I did try many years ago but did not work because of the nature of my business which was understandable. My market is unique and very high end and leads are few So when you say “build a site” what does that entail and how would it relate to my current one?
I agree that this can be very beneficial to a particular painter. Pretty much if you are able to rank the website on the first page of Google, it gives you the opportunity to send these fresh leads to this one painter. I think it is a great opportunity.