If you’re a plumber, electrician, landscaper, or any other local service business, you’ve probably done the mental calculation. A lead on Thumbtack costs £40–80. You close 1 in 4. So your cost per job is £160–320. That seems fine until you realise three things.
The three things nobody tells you
First: That same lead went to four other businesses. You’re not buying a customer — you’re buying a chance to compete for one. And you’re competing at your worst: cold, no context, against people the prospect has never heard of either.
Second: You own nothing. Every lead you buy is a transaction. You’re not building a list, a brand, or a relationship. The moment you stop paying, the calls stop. There’s no compounding effect. You’re on a treadmill.
Third: The costs keep rising. Platform lead prices have roughly doubled in the last three years. They’re not going down. Every business that gets squeezed out of Google Ads flows back to Thumbtack, and the auction pressure increases.
What the businesses winning in your market are doing differently
The service businesses that are consistently busy — without the hustle of platforms — have usually done one or more of these things:
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They rank locally on Google. When someone searches “emergency plumber in Leeds,” the business with 200 reviews and a well-structured Google Business Profile gets the call for free. Every time.
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They run their own Google Ads. Not through Thumbtack. Their own account, their own creative, their own data. When the campaign is profitable, they scale it. They own the customer relationship from the first click.
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They have a content presence. A handful of well-ranked articles — “how to fix a dripping tap” or “what does a boiler service include” — drives qualified visitors to their site every month. Customers who arrive this way close at a much higher rate than cold platform leads.
The transition strategy
You don’t have to stop using Thumbtack tomorrow. The strategy is to build an alternative in parallel — starting with the channels most likely to produce results in your specific market.
That’s exactly what the Free Competitor Analysis is designed to show you. We’ll look at what your top 3 local competitors are doing to generate leads, and build you a plan that doesn’t require you to keep feeding a platform that owns your customers.