There are four main ways an Australian installer can pay for new work. Each one is sold on a different number - cost per lead, cost per appointment, cost per click. Only one number tells you which is cheapest: what it costs to sign a deal. Here is the ranking, the reasons behind it, and the one thing that changes the order.
If you only read one part of this article, read this. For a typical installer with a decent setter - someone whose job is to call new enquiries quickly and book them in - the four lead sources rank like this on cost per signed deal, cheapest first:
Without a setter, bought appointments move up to second. When nobody is calling leads quickly, every lead source loses value - but appointments arrive already booked, so they hold their value while exclusive leads fall behind them. Your own ad account usually stays first either way. We cover exactly why in the setter section below.
We have deliberately kept prices out of the main article. What you pay for leads, appointments and ad spend depends on your trade, your area, your offer and the provider, so any single figure would be right for some installers and wrong for most. The order is what holds. If you want to see it with numbers, the calculator further down lets you put in your own - it starts with example figures, clearly marked as examples.
Every lead source is priced in the unit that makes it look best. Shared leads are sold per lead because the price per lead is low. Appointments are sold per appointment because an appointment sounds like it is most of the way to a sale. Ad platforms report cost per click and cost per result because those numbers are small and easy to improve.
None of those numbers tell you whether you made money. A cheap lead that rarely closes can cost you more per job than a dearer lead that closes often. You cannot see that from the invoice. You can only see it once you divide what you spent by what you signed.
That last part - the cost of the person who calls and books - is the part most comparisons leave out. It is also why the ranking changes depending on whether you have a setter. Leads need someone to turn them into appointments. Appointments do not. If you compare a lead source and an appointment source on price alone, you are comparing a raw ingredient against a half-cooked meal.
For a quick check on a lead source, divide what you pay per lead by your close rate. Then add your labour and fees on top. If you want the long version, our guide to calculating cost per acquisition walks through it step by step.
Every lead source comes down to the same four things. Where a source sits on each of them explains where it lands in the ranking.
Running ads on your own account means paying the platform directly, with nobody's margin in between. Every other source is a business running ads or a call centre and selling you the result - which is fair, because they carry the risk and the overhead, but their costs and margin are built into the price.
An enquiry that went to your business only, from a homeowner who saw your name, closes far more often than one that went to four other businesses at the same time. Exclusive, consented leads typically close at 25 to 45 per cent with good follow-up. Shared leads typically sit at 5 to 15 per cent.
Leads need calling, chasing and booking. That is setter time, and it is a real cost. Appointments come with that work already done - you pay for it in the price instead.
Dead numbers, tyre-kickers and homeowners who were never going to buy on the lead side. No-shows, reschedules and appointments that were never a real opportunity on the appointment side. Every bit of waste is paid for by the deals that do sign.
| Factor | Own ad account | Exclusive leads (pay per lead) | Bought appointments | Shared leads |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cost per enquiry | Lowest | Higher | Highest | Low |
| How often it closes | High | High | Depends on show rate and booking quality | Low |
| Setting work for you | Yes | Yes | None | Yes - and the most of it |
| Main source of waste | Unqualified enquiries if the funnel is weak | Varies by provider | No-shows and reschedules | Losing the race to other businesses |
Read across the table and the ranking falls out. Your own ad account wins on the first factor and matches the best on the second. Exclusive leads match it on close rate but cost more per enquiry. Appointments save you the setting work but charge the most per unit and carry no-shows. Shared leads are cheap per enquiry and lose on everything else.
Running campaigns on ad accounts in your business name - usually Meta first, with Google Search layered on as you scale - wins for one simple reason. You are paying the platform directly for the enquiry, with nobody's margin in between. Every other source on this list is someone else running ads (or a call centre) and selling you the result at a mark-up. That mark-up is fair - they carry the risk, the testing and the overhead - but it is still a mark-up.
The second reason is brand. A homeowner who enquires through your own ad has seen your name, your offer and usually your face before they type in a phone number. When your setter calls, it is the call they were expecting from the company they chose. Close rates on your own enquiries are at least as strong as on bought exclusive leads, and often better.
An ad account on its own is not a lead source. The installers who get the lowest cost per deal have a few pieces working together: campaigns and creative that get refreshed, a landing page and short survey that filters out renters and tyre-kickers before contact details are captured, instant follow-up so the lead hears from you within seconds, and a CRM pipeline so nothing goes missing between enquiry and quote.
The third benefit takes longer to show up. Everything you build on your own account - the pixel data, the audiences, the creative that worked, the list of past enquiries - compounds. The campaign you run in month twelve is better than the one you ran in month one because the account has learned who your buyers are. That learning stays with your business.
A done-for-you set-up usually comes with a one-off build fee, and ongoing management if you keep it. When you work out cost per deal, spread the build fee across the deals it produces over the first year, and add the monthly management to that month's spend. The build fee is paid once and the system keeps running after it, so its share of each deal shrinks over time.
By exclusive leads we mean exclusive leads bought on a pay-per-lead basis. You pay a set price for each lead delivered, and that lead goes to your business only. There is no ad spend, retainer or build on your side.
Exclusive leads close about as well as leads from your own account, and they cost more per lead. That is the whole reason they come second. You are paying a provider to carry the ad spend, the testing and the risk - and for many installers, that is a trade worth making.
The good versions of exclusive leads look a lot like your own campaigns from the homeowner's side. The homeowner answers a short survey, sees your business named in the consent, and agrees to be contacted by you only. They arrive in real time with their details verified, and the better providers start follow-up instantly. You get a warm, single-business enquiry without building anything.
Exclusive leads make the most sense when you want predictable volume next week rather than in a month, when you are entering a new area and want to test demand before building a campaign there, or when you simply do not want to manage ad accounts. They also make a sensible top-up alongside your own account: when your own campaigns are in a learning period or you want more volume than your budget supports, exclusive leads fill the gap at a known price.
The key word is exclusive. Check that it actually means one business. Ask whether consent names your business specifically, whether you receive the consent wording and timestamp, how disconnected or fake numbers are handled, and how fast leads are delivered. A lead that is "exclusive" but three days old is not worth exclusive pricing.
Your own ad account stays ahead only while your cost per enquiry stays comfortably below the price of an exclusive lead. If your area or trade is expensive to advertise in, or your volume is small enough that management fees take a big share of each deal, exclusive leads can come out cheaper. Run the formula on both before you decide.
An appointment provider generates the lead, calls it, qualifies it and books it into your calendar. You turn up and quote. On paper it is the most convenient option on this list - and it is a perfectly good product. It ranks third for an installer with a setter because that installer is paying for a service they already have in-house.
Think about what is inside the price of an appointment. There is the cost of generating the lead. There is the provider's call centre doing the job your setter does. There is the cost of all the leads that did not book. And there is a margin on all of it. If you already employ a setter, paying a provider to do the same work again at a mark-up will almost always cost more per deal.
The biggest variable with appointments is not the price - it is what happens between the booking and the sit. No-shows, reschedules and appointments that were never a real opportunity all land on your calendar, and on your salesperson's fuel and time. Every appointment that does not sit is paid for by the ones that do, so a drop in show rate pushes cost per deal up fast.
The second variable is how the appointment was set. A homeowner who agreed to a visit to get a persistent caller off the phone is not the same as one who asked for a quote. Ask how the provider sources its leads, whether the same homeowner is offered to anyone else, and what script they use to book.
Shared leads come last for a structural reason, not because the people selling them are doing anything wrong. The same enquiry goes to three to five businesses at once. Even with a fast, skilled setter, you are only going to win a fraction of the homeowners you pay for, because a fraction is the most the model allows.
Speed helps more here than anywhere else - the first business to respond wins the job most of the time - but every other business buying the same lead is trying to be first too. The homeowner gets four calls in twenty minutes, puts their phone on silent, and the advantage you paid your setter to create disappears. That is why shared leads also cost the most setter time per lead: more dials, more voicemails, more dead ends.
The result is usually the smallest monthly invoice and the most expensive deals. We have written about the mechanics in detail in You Paid for That Lead. So Did Three Other Businesses.
Shared leads have a place. If you are brand new, have no budget for a campaign and need conversations to practise your sales process, they generate activity cheaply. They can also fill a short gap or test whether a new postcode has any demand at all. Where they stop making sense is as the main growth engine for an established installer - by then you have a setter, a sales process and a team, and you are paying for a race rather than an enquiry.
The cheapest invoice on this list usually buys the most expensive deals. Price per lead is not the price of growth.
Everything above assumes a decent setter - someone who calls new leads within minutes, works a proper follow-up sequence and books appointments as their main job. Take that person away and the ranking changes.
Without a setter, leads get called by the owner or salesperson in between site visits and quotes. The average callback for a home improvement business already sits around 3.2 hours, and around 78 per cent of homeowners go with the first business that responds. A lead called back that afternoon, or the next morning, is worth a lot less than the same lead called in five minutes. Close rates on every lead source drop.
Appointments are the only source that does not care. The setting was done by the provider, so the appointment arrives in your calendar whether you are on a roof or not. Exclusive leads, which cost more per lead than your own enquiries, lose enough value from slow follow-up to fall behind appointments. Shared leads fall furthest, because without a setter you are almost never the first caller.
It is not because your own leads are immune to slow follow-up - they lose value just like exclusive leads do. It is because they start from a much lower cost per enquiry, so even at a weaker close rate they usually come out ahead of appointments. Instant automated follow-up helps here too: an AI SMS that replies within seconds, confirms the homeowner's details and books a callback time holds the lead warm until someone can ring.
The margin is thinner, though. Your own account is still the cheapest source without a setter, but by less than it was with one. That gap is the real lesson of this section.
Compare what a setter costs with what they change. A setter's time is a small cost next to what you spend on leads, and they lift the close rate on every lead you buy or generate. No other single change on this list moves cost per deal as much. Even a part-time setter, a virtual assistant working a tight script, or a salesperson who blocks out set calling windows each day will recover a large part of the difference.
So the honest recommendation for an installer without a setter is not "buy appointments forever". It is: buy appointments if you need deals now and have nobody to call, and put the first spare dollars toward someone who can call leads quickly. Once you have that, leads - and especially your own leads - become the cheaper path.
What happens to a lead in the hours after it is submitted, and why the first responder wins most jobs, is covered in The Home Improvement Business That Responds First Wins. If you are buying leads without a setter, start there.
| Factor | Own ad account | Exclusive leads (pay per lead) | Bought appointments | Shared leads |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rank with a setter | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | 4th |
| Rank without a setter | 1st | 3rd | 2nd | 4th |
| Who else gets the enquiry | Nobody | Nobody | Depends on provider | 3 to 5 businesses |
| Homeowner has seen your brand | Yes - your ad, your page | Usually, in the consent | Usually only on the booking call | Rarely |
| Needs a setter | Yes, or strong automated follow-up | Yes | No | Yes - a fast one |
| Time to first enquiries | Days to set up, weeks to optimise | Days | Days | Same day |
| Who carries the risk | You - you pay for ad spend | Provider | Provider | Provider |
| What you keep if you stop | Ad accounts, data, audiences, funnel | The leads you bought | The appointments you bought | The leads you bought |
| Best for | Established installers who want the lowest cost per deal over time | Fast, predictable volume without building anything | Installers with no one to call and book leads | New businesses learning to sell, short-term gaps |
Put in what you actually pay and how often each source closes for you, and the calculator ranks the four sources by cost per signed deal. If you are not sure of a number, start with the example figures and change the ones you know.
The calculator starts filled in with example numbers, not real prices or results. They are rough estimates to show how the maths works. We are not claiming that is what any source costs or what you will get. Replace them with your own figures. How we estimated each example is listed under the calculator.
No setter? Lower your close rates - leads called back hours later close far less often. The "Without a setter" example does this for you.
These are illustrations, not quotes or promises. Real prices and close rates vary a lot by trade, area, offer, provider and how well your team follows up.
Own ad account - $40 per lead, $690 a month. Residential installers running Meta campaigns commonly see roughly $25 to $50 per enquiry; $40 is a middle figure. $690 a month is our own Branded Lead Gen System management fee (+ GST), used as an example fixed cost. Put in yours, or zero if you run ads yourself.
Exclusive pay-per-lead - $80 per lead. Roughly the middle of the $50 to $100+ range for verified, consented leads sent to one business.
Bought appointments - $250, 80% go ahead, 50% of those sign. Our estimate. Residential appointments are commonly priced from about $150 to $300 or more, and show rates vary widely by provider. At this price, appointments only stack up if most of them go ahead and a good share sign - check the provider's real show rate before you buy.
Shared leads - $45 per lead. Our estimate; shared lead prices vary widely by trade and platform.
Close rates - 25% for own and exclusive leads, 7% for shared. Taken from the low end of typical ranges: 25 to 45 per cent for exclusive, consented leads and 5 to 15 per cent for shared leads. The "Without a setter" example lowers them to 12% and 3% to reflect slow callbacks - that drop is our judgement, not measured data.
Setter cost - $8 per lead. About 15 minutes of calling, texting and booking per lead at roughly $32 an hour.
The ranking holds for a typical installer. Here is what it takes to move each source up or down, so you can tell whether your situation is the typical one.
Regional areas with small audiences, very competitive metro postcodes or a weak offer can push the cost of your own enquiries up until exclusive leads are cheaper per deal. If that is you, fix the offer and funnel first - and use exclusive leads in the meantime.
Management fees are fixed, so they weigh more on a small month. If you only want a handful of enquiries a month, running the campaigns in-house or topping up with exclusive leads can make more sense until volume grows.
Strong closers narrow the gap between the top two, because a higher close rate takes a bigger bite out of the more expensive lead. They rarely change who is first, because the same closer lifts your own leads too.
A provider with tight qualification and a high show rate brings appointments closer to exclusive leads. A provider with loose booking and lots of no-shows can make appointments as expensive per deal as shared leads.
A very fast setter can lift shared leads ahead of bought appointments. It happens, but it is the exception, and it relies on winning the race every single day.
For each source you use now, take one recent month and write down: total spent (including fees and setter time), number of leads or appointments, and number of signed deals. Divide spend by deals. That is your real cost per deal for that source. Or put your figures into the calculator above.
If you do not track which source each signed deal came from, that is the first thing to fix. Without it, every lead source looks equally good on the invoice - and you will keep buying the one with the smallest bill rather than the one with the cheapest deals. Our lead and job cost calculator does the arithmetic for you.
Most installers do not use one source forever. The sensible mix changes as the business grows - and the setter question decides a lot of it.
Shared leads or a small number of bought appointments keep the calendar moving while you learn to sell. Treat it as a training phase, not a growth engine, and track cost per deal from the very first month.
Bought appointments are a reasonable way to keep deals coming while you are on the tools or out quoting. Put your own ad account in place at the same time with instant automated follow-up, and make hiring a setter - even part-time - the next priority. That is the single change that unlocks the cheaper sources.
This is where the ranking in this article applies in full. Your own ad account should be the core of your pipeline, with exclusive pay-per-lead leads as the top-up for extra volume, new areas or quieter weeks. Appointments and shared leads become occasional tools rather than the main supply.
More campaigns on your own accounts - separate service areas, batteries alongside solar, Google Search alongside Meta - with exclusive leads used to test a new area before you commit budget to building campaigns there.
The source with the smallest invoice is rarely the source with the cheapest deals. Measure what you sign, not what you buy.
For a typical installer with a decent setter, running ads on your own ad account produces the lowest cost per signed deal, followed by exclusive pay-per-lead leads, then bought appointments, then shared leads. Your own ad account usually wins because it has the lowest cost per enquiry and every enquiry has already seen your brand. Exact costs depend on your trade, area and offer, so check the order against your own numbers.
Bought appointments are worth it when you do not have anyone to call and book leads. They cost more per deal than your own ad account or exclusive leads for an installer with a setter, but they remove the setting work completely. Without a setter, bought appointments move up to second place behind your own ad account, because leads that are called back hours later lose most of their value. Check the show rate, what counts as a qualified appointment and the replacement policy for no-shows before you buy.
Add up everything you spent to win deals from one source in a month - lead or appointment fees, ad spend, management fees and the cost of the person who calls and books - then divide by the number of signed deals from that source. For leads, a quick version is what you pay per lead divided by your close rate, with labour and fees added on top.
A setter turns leads into booked appointments quickly and consistently. Without one, the owner or salesperson calls leads back between jobs, the average callback stretches to hours, and close rates on every lead source drop. Bought appointments are not affected because the setting has already been done, so they climb above exclusive leads. Your own ad account usually stays first because its cost per enquiry is low enough to absorb the drop.
Shared leads can make sense for a brand new installer learning to sell, for filling a short gap, or for testing a new area cheaply. For an established installer they are usually the most expensive source per deal, because the same enquiry goes to several businesses and close rates sit around 5 to 15 per cent even with fast follow-up.
The Branded Lead Gen System runs campaigns on your own ad accounts, with a survey funnel, AI SMS follow-up within seconds and a CRM pipeline built into your business. Live in 24-48 hours. Everything we build stays yours.