Are paid electrician and plumbing leads worth it?
Paid electrician and plumbing leads are worth it as a short-term top-up, but most trades do better with their own ads once a website exists to send clicks to. A lead site often sells the same customer to several trades at once, so the job goes to whoever calls first and quotes lowest. Your own ads, which Social Agencies runs for trades, bring enquiries nobody else received.
What is a shared lead?
A shared lead is one customer's enquiry that a lead site sells to more than one tradesperson, so several businesses pay for the same job.
Charge Home Solutions, writing about lead platforms for electricians, describes the model plainly: "the same customer contact is sold to several contractors at once, so you pay for the chance to race competitors to the phone", often to "three to five" electricians per lead.
The customer is not always aware of this either. They fill in one form and then receive a stream of calls, which is why many shared leads go quiet by the time the fourth tradesperson rings.
Why do shared leads turn into price fights?
Shared leads turn into price fights because every tradesperson on the lead has the same information, so speed and price are the only things left to compete on.
The same source puts it in one line: "The pro who calls first and quotes lowest tends to win." That rewards the cheapest quote, not the best workmanship, and it squeezes the margin that pays for proper compliance and a CoC.
Forum talk among electricians, summarised in search results from the Mike Holt forum, says the best work comes from Google and word of mouth, while lead services bring customers "just asking for pricing".
When is a lead site worth using for a trade business?
A lead site is worth using as a short-term top-up when you are new, have no website yet or need to fill a quiet fortnight.
Directories such as Local Pros and Builder Pros list South African trades, and none of them published pricing in our research. Treat any lead site as a test: track what you paid, how many leads became quotes and how many quotes became paid jobs.
If the numbers work, keep it as one channel among several. If most leads end in price shopping, move that budget to something you own.
What does running your own ads as a tradesperson involve?
Running your own ads means paying Meta to show Facebook and Instagram ads to homeowners in your area and sending every click to your own website or WhatsApp.
The ads show real jobs: a finished bathroom, a new DB board, a geyser installed and compliant. The click lands on the matching service page with a call button and a short form. Every enquiry comes to you and nobody else.
Pay the ad budget straight to Meta from your own card, so you can see every rand spent. Your Google Business Profile runs beside the ads and costs nothing but time.
| Shared lead site | Your own ads and profile | |
|---|---|---|
| Who else gets the enquiry? | Often several competitors | Nobody |
| What wins the job? | Speed and lowest price | Your work, reviews and reply |
| Who owns the customer record? | The platform | You |
| What you build over time | Nothing lasting | Reviews, audiences and a known name |
How do you move from lead sites to your own leads without a quiet month?
Run both side by side, and cut lead-site spend only once your own ads and profile are bringing enquiries you can count.
Switching overnight is how a trade business gets a quiet month. Overlap the two for a few weeks and compare cost per paid job, not cost per lead.
- Get the website and Google Business Profile right first.
- Start a small Meta campaign showing real jobs in your area.
- Log where every enquiry came from and whether it became a paid job.
- Reduce lead-site spend channel by channel as your own enquiries grow.
How do you measure whether a lead source is worth it?
Measure cost per paid job, not cost per lead: add up what the source cost in a month and divide it by the number of jobs it produced that were actually paid.
Cost per lead flatters sources that send many enquiries which go nowhere. Cost per paid job counts only what matters. A lead source with dear leads that close can beat one with cheap leads that do not.
Keep a simple log for every enquiry: the date, the source, whether you quoted, whether you won and the job value. A notebook works; a quoting app that records the source works better. After a month, the numbers show which channel deserves the budget.