If you run a plumbing or heating business, you have almost certainly had the call. A friendly voice from a lead company, promising a steady stream of local jobs for a fixed price per lead. It sounds like the easiest decision in the world. You pay, the leads land, you quote the work. What could be simpler?
I spent 24 years in this trade before I moved into marketing, and I have watched a lot of good businesses pour money into bought leads and quietly wonder why it never quite adds up. So let us be honest about what you are actually buying.
The price on the tin is not the price you pay
Most lead brokers sell the same enquiry to several companies at once. That boiler-quote lead you just paid for? Three or four of your competitors got it too, at the same moment. Now you are not winning a customer, you are entering a race to the bottom on price with people who are just as keen as you to fill a quiet week.
The headline cost looks tidy. The real cost is everything that happens after.
1 in 4Win one in four shared leads at £35 each and you have spent £140 in lead fees to land a single job, before you have bought a single fitting or driven a single mile. And that is a good conversion rate on shared leads.
What you are actually paying for
Here is the part that matters. A bought lead is a stranger. They filled in a form on a comparison site, they have never heard of you, and they are now fielding calls from four firms who all sound the same. They have no reason to pick you except price. So you discount, or you lose, or you spend an evening writing a quote that goes nowhere.
You are not paying for a customer. You are paying for the chance to compete for a customer who was taught, by the very way they were generated, to shop on price alone.
An enquiry that already knows your name is worth ten that do not.
There is a better way, and the numbers prove it
When we build marketing around a real picture of your ideal customer, the person, their worries, the words they use, something changes. By the time someone gets in touch, they have seen your work, read your posts, and decided they trust you. They are not price-shopping. They are choosing you.
On a recent campaign for a heating client, built around exactly that approach, here is what £15 a day produced in the first 36 hours:
£6.05Cost per lead. Five enquiries from just over £30 of ad spend, every one of them exclusive to the client, and every one already familiar with the brand. Compare that to £15 to £60 for a lead that three of your rivals also bought.
It is not magic, and it is not luck. It is the difference between shouting "we fit boilers" at strangers, and showing the right person, at the right time, that you are the obvious choice.
What to do if you are not ready to spend on ads
You do not need a big budget to start. You need to stop renting other people's strangers and start building your own audience. A few honest steps:
- Post like a human, not a brochure. Show the jobs, the before-and-afters, the team. People hire people.
- Answer the questions customers actually ask. "Why has my radiator gone cold at the bottom?" earns more trust than any sales post.
- Be consistent. A quiet account that posts twice a year tells a customer nothing. Showing up regularly tells them you are reliable, which is the whole game.
Do that for a few months and you build something a lead broker can never sell you: a local audience that already trusts you before they ever need a plumber.
Bought leads are not evil, and now and then they fill a gap. But if they are your main plan for growth, you are building your business on rented strangers who were trained to haggle. Build your own audience instead, and the enquiries that come in are warmer, cheaper over time, and yours alone.
Rob Davis, Founder of Delta T Growth
24 years at the top end of UK plumbing & heating, now Google-certified in digital marketing. Rob helps trade businesses get found, get trusted and get booked, without the agency jargon.