Foundation Repair Marketing, Judged on One Number
By Luis Johnson, founder of Lunere Digital. Published
Foundation repair marketing is worth exactly one thing: the number of homeowners your estimator stood in front of this month who owned the house and had a real symptom. Everything else on a report is a step on the way to that, and steps are cheap to produce. Impressions are cheap. Clicks are cheap. Form fills are cheap, because a form with one box on it will fill all day with people who rent. The scarce thing in this trade has always been a dated slot with an address on it, so that's the only unit I'll sell you and the only one worth paying for.
The short version
- Judge every channel on inspections attended, not on calls, clicks or form fills.
- Directories sell the same homeowner to several shops, which divides your close rate by how fast the others answered.
- Search picks up people already looking, so it caps out at the size of the search demand in your county.
- Ads to homeowners reach people who have the symptom but haven't started looking, which is most of them.
- Speed decides the outcome more than copy does, because a homeowner who waited an hour has already called somebody else.
- Some shops shouldn't run anything. The decision block below says which ones.
Where the work comes from today
Almost every shop I talk to is running some mix of four things. Referrals and repeat work, which are the best work you'll ever get and the hardest to turn up on purpose. A directory or lead reseller. Search, either paid or earned. And something physical, like trucks, yard signs and door hangers on the street where you just finished a job.
The directory is the one that earns the most complaints, and there's a public record behind the complaints. The Federal Trade Commission issued its decision and order in the matter of HomeAdvisor, Incorporated, which also traded as Angi Leads, on 21 April 2023, over how the company marketed its home improvement leads to service providers, with up to $7.2 million for redress. I'm not telling you that to score a point off a competitor. I'm telling you because it's the clearest public description of the gap between what a lead is sold as and what shows up on your phone.
Per-lead pricing has the same shape wherever you find it. Google Local Services Help describes charging per lead with a dispute path, and says a successful dispute is credited in the United States and Canada. A dispute path exists because some of what you get charged for was never a customer, and you're the one who has to notice and argue it. That's unpaid admin work sitting on top of a cost per lead.
Which demand are you buying?
Search finds people who already decided they have a foundation problem and typed it in. That's good work and you should take all of it, but it has a ceiling, because the number of people typing it in your county this month is a fixed number and your competitors are bidding on the same fixed number.
The bigger pool is the homeowner who has the symptom and hasn't named it yet. He thinks the door swelled. He thinks the house is settling the way old houses do. He isn't searching for anything, so the only way he becomes a job is if somebody puts the symptom in front of him while he is scrolling and he recognizes his own hallway. That's what I mean by ads to homeowners, and it's why the ad has to show a cracked brick rather than a logo.
The trade-off is honest. Found demand closes faster because the homeowner already believes he has a problem. Made demand is bigger but needs a form that filters hard, because the person who just recognized his own hallway hasn't yet decided he will spend five thousand dollars. The four questions on the form are where that gets sorted out, before a calendar ever opens.
Who shouldn't run ads this quarter
This is the part most people selling marketing leave out, so I'll put it in a box. Run through it honestly, because every one of these turns spend into a worse month rather than a better one.
Read down the left. If one of these is you, do the thing on the right first.
- Your estimator is booked solid three weeks out
- Do nothing yet. More appointments on a full calendar push your quote date further away, and homeowners who wait three weeks buy from whoever came Tuesday.
- Nobody answers the phone between 5 PM and 9 PM
- Fix coverage first. A homeowner who fills a form at 6 PM and hears nothing until morning is gone, and no amount of spend buys that hour back.
- You've no way to fund the first weeks of ad spend from working capital
- Wait. The spend sits on your card, it runs daily, and the jobs it books get paid when they get paid. Starting underfunded means switching it off halfway, which is the most expensive version.
- You only do one narrow repair type and refuse everything else
- Expect a thinner yield. A form that has to reject most symptoms books fewer slots, and the cost per inspection goes up accordingly.
- You can't name your close rate on in-home appointments
- Measure it for thirty days first. Without that number you can't tell a bad month from a bad channel, and you'll blame the wrong one.
- Your crews are two to three weeks behind on completion
- Catch up first. Booking work you can't start produces cancellations and the kind of reviews that cost you the next twelve months.
The scoreboard
Three numbers, written on the same sheet every week. Inspections your estimator attended. Of those, how many he quoted. Of those, how many signed. If you've those three, you can price any marketing offer put in front of you, including mine, because you know what one appointment is worth to you and you can refuse anything that costs more than that.
What you shouldn't accept is a report that leads with reach. Reach is the cheapest thing in the world to buy and it has never put a pier in the ground.
Should I keep buying from the directory while this runs?
Keep it for a month and compare them on the same sheet. If the directory still earns its place on inspections attended, keep it, because I'd rather you kept something that works than took my word for it.
Who owns the ad account?
You do. It's your account and your card, so the history, the audiences and the data stay with you if we ever stop working together.
How is this different from an agency on a monthly fee?
There's no retainer here. You pay per qualified inspection that actually happens, so a slow month costs you less rather than the same.
Sources
- Decision and order issued 21 April 2023 in the matter of HomeAdvisor, Incorporated, also trading as Angi Leads, over the deceptive marketing of home improvement leads to service providers, with up to $7.2 million for redress. Federal Trade Commission.
- Local Services Ads charges per lead and provides a dispute path, with a successful dispute credited in the United States and Canada. Google Local Services Help.
Read next
- 10+ Booked Inspections Every Month. Or I Pay You Back.The guarantee in full, with every condition on it: when the count starts, the spend it applies at, the cap on what comes back, and how you claim it.
- The Foundation Fix Pipeline, Step by StepHow a homeowner with a cracked wall becomes a dated inspection on your calendar: the ads, the form, the one minute callback, the booking and the reminders.
- Every Homeowner Is Yours AloneWhat exclusive actually means when somebody sells it to you, how to check a vendor is telling the truth, and why the ad account being yours is the real test.
- Break-Even Calculator for a Booked InspectionThe most you can pay for one booked inspection before the job stops paying, worked out from your job value, margin, show rate and close rate.
- What Foundation Repair Leads CostWhat a foundation repair lead costs, why almost no vendor publishes a price, and how to work out what one signed job is costing you from your own books.
- What This Costs, and How the Math WorksHow the money works: a one time setup, then a flat fee per qualified inspection that happens, no retainer, and ad spend that goes to the platform on your own card.