GUIDE
PAY PER LEAD VS AN AGENCY.
With pay per lead, you buy each lead from a marketplace or a lead seller, and it is often shared with other contractors. With a marketing agency, you pay a fee to have ads run for your business, plus the ad spend, and the leads come from your own ads. Which costs less depends on how many leads book and close, not on the price of a lead.
How the two models work
| What differs | Pay per lead | Marketing agency |
|---|---|---|
| What you pay for | Each lead, at a price per lead | A monthly fee, plus the ad spend itself |
| Who else gets the lead | Often other contractors, unless it is sold as exclusive | Nobody, if the ads run for your business alone |
| Who runs the ads | The lead seller, for many contractors at once | The agency, as your own campaigns |
When pay per lead fits
- Smaller jobs, where buying one lead at a time is enough.
- Trying a new trade or area before you commit.
- No time or budget to run ads of your own.
You also control the price: Thumbtack lets you set your price per lead, and Modernize lets you set a ceiling. The trade-off: shared leads mean a race to the first call, and you can pay for leads you never reach. Angi, for example, charges for a lead whether or not you open or respond to it.
When an agency fits
- High-ticket jobs, where one signed contract pays for many leads.
- A sales team that can call every lead fast.
- You want leads no other contractor gets.
- You want to see cost per appointment and per sale, not only cost per lead.
The trade-off: you pay for the ads whether or not they work, so check how the agency is measured. An agency that reports clicks and leads but not booked appointments and sales leaves you guessing.
Do the math both ways
Put both on the same footing: what you spend in a month, divided by the appointments it books. An example:
- Pay per lead: 100 leads at $80 is $8,000, and if 8 book, that is $1,000 per appointment.
- An agency: $8,000 of ad spend plus a $2,000 fee is $10,000. If 12 book, that is about $833 per appointment; if 8 book, it is $1,250, and pay per lead comes out ahead.
The cheaper month is not always the cheaper appointment, and the other way round. These are example numbers to show the math, not a quote or a promise. What ADU leads cost works the same math through to signed contracts.
Questions to ask either one
- Is each lead exclusive to you, or sold to other contractors too?
- What exactly do you pay for: a lead, an appointment or the ads?
- Who follows up with each lead, how fast, and on which days and hours?
- Can you see cost per appointment and per signed contract?
- How long is the contract, and what does it take to leave?
Where BINA fits
BINA works like an agency, with the leads and the follow-up built in. We run your ads on Meta and Google with AI at every step, and every lead is exclusive to you. AI follows up 24/7, the dialer we set up puts your rep on the call, and Bina One, our CRM, tracks each lead to booked and sold. You pay 20% of your ad spend each month plus a one-time $1,500 setup fee, with no per-lead charges, a $5,000 monthly minimum in ad spend and no long-term contract. How we charge has the full breakdown, and exclusive vs shared leads goes deeper on who gets each homeowner.
Sources
Prices and policies change, so check each company's current terms on its own pages:
- Angi help center, on how leads are matched and charged.
- Thumbtack for pros, on fees and lead prices.
- Modernize pricing, on how leads are priced.
