BoomReach vs Lead Marketplaces: Exclusive Leads or Shared Ones
Angi, HomeAdvisor and Modernize sell the same homeowner to several contractors. We sell a lead once. Here is what changes on your side when the exclusivity does.
Contents
A lead marketplace and an exclusive lead-gen partner look like the same purchase on the invoice. Both bill you for homeowner contact details. What you are actually buying is different enough that comparing the two on cost-per-lead tells you almost nothing.
The two models
A marketplace runs traffic, collects an inquiry, and sells that inquiry to several contractors in the area. Its revenue per homeowner goes up with every extra buyer, so its incentive is to keep selling the same record. Nothing about that is dishonest; it is the model working as designed.
We run the traffic ourselves, our own agents call the homeowner, and the record is sold once, to one contractor, and never resold. Our revenue per homeowner is capped at one sale, so the only way the account works for us is if that one sale closes and you buy again next month.
Side by side
| BoomReach | Lead marketplace | |
|---|---|---|
| Buyers per lead | One. Sold once, never resold. | Typically several contractors in the same market. |
| Qualification | Our own agents speak to the homeowner before the lead is released. | Usually a web form, sometimes a short screening call. |
| Who owns the traffic | We do. Campaigns are built and run for your market. | The marketplace does, across every contractor on it. |
| First contact | The homeowner has just been on the phone with us and is expecting your call. | You are one of several numbers calling in the same few minutes. |
| Pricing | Scoped per market and trade, month to month. | Per lead, with the price set by category demand. |
| Replacement | A lead that fails our own bar is replaced. | Credit policies vary and are argued case by case. |
What that changes in the field
Your opening call stops being a race. On a shared lead the homeowner has already spoken to two or three contractors before you dial. On an exclusive one, the last conversation they had was with our agent, about you.
Your close rate is the number that moves, not your lead price. Two providers with very different cost-per-lead can end up at the same cost per acquired customer. If you have not modelled it that way yet, our note on cost-per-acquisition is the arithmetic in full.
Your crew stops burning hours on unqualified calls. A form fill costs nothing to submit. A conversation with a live agent filters out renters, wrong trades and projects a year out before the record reaches you.
Where a marketplace is the better buy
We are not going to pretend the answer is always us. A marketplace is a reasonable fit when you want volume with no commitment, when you are testing a new market and want throughput before quality, or when you have the staff to dial fast and the discipline to work a shared lead in seconds. Marketplaces are also everywhere: they cover trades and territories we do not run campaigns in.
Where we are the better buy is the opposite case: you have a crew to keep busy, a close rate you want to protect, and no interest in paying to be the fourth caller.
What running with us looks like
We scope the trade, the markets and the volume on a call, build the campaigns, and our floor calls every homeowner before the lead goes out. Recordings are attached to the record, so what the homeowner said is not a claim you have to take on trust. Month to month, no annual lock-in.
If you want to see the mechanics before you talk to anyone, the journey of a single lead walks through it end to end.