It is the question we get asked more than any other, usually about ten minutes into a call. Somebody is paying for leads through one of the big platforms, they are not sure it is working, and they want to know whether to stick with it.

The honest answer is that it depends on where your business is right now. Anyone who tells you these platforms are always a rip-off is selling you something. So is anyone who tells you they are all you need. Here is how we would actually think it through.

Three platforms, three different deals

They get lumped together, but you are buying quite different things.

• Checkatrade is closest to a paid directory. You pay to be listed as a vetted member, and the value is in being findable and in the trust the badge carries with certain customers.
• MyBuilder works around jobs posted by homeowners, where you pay for the ability to quote on the ones you want.
• Bark sells you credits to contact people who have made an enquiry, across a very wide range of services.

Pricing on all three changes, varies by trade and by area, and is often negotiable, so we are not going to quote figures that will be out of date by the time you read this. Ask them directly and get it in writing before you commit to anything annual.

What you are really buying

Strip away the branding and most of these platforms sell you the same underlying thing: access to somebody else's enquiry. That matters in three ways.

First, the lead usually is not exclusively yours. Several trades typically get the same enquiry, which means you are quoting against people you cannot see, and the customer is comparing prices before they have any reason to prefer you. That pushes everyone towards competing on price, which is the worst ground to fight on.

Second, you generally pay whether or not you win the job. That is not unreasonable in itself, but it changes the maths. Your real cost is not what you paid for one lead, it is what you paid for all the leads it took to win one job.

Third, and this is the one most people miss, you are renting the customer relationship rather than owning it. The reviews build on their profile. The traffic builds their brand. If you stop paying, it all switches off and you have nothing left over.

When they genuinely make sense

We would be lying if we said never use them. There are situations where they are the right call.

If you are just starting out with no reviews, no website and no reputation, these platforms give you something very hard to get otherwise: customers willing to take a chance on you. Trading a slim margin for your first twenty jobs and twenty reviews is a reasonable deal.

They are also useful for filling gaps. If you have a quiet fortnight, buying a handful of leads to plug it is a sensible tactical move. And if you are testing a new service or a new area, it is a cheap way to find out whether there is demand before you commit properly.

When they stop making sense

The turning point usually comes when you have built something of your own worth using. If you have a decent number of reviews, a Google Business Profile that ranks, photos of your work and a phone number people recommend to neighbours, you are paying for access to customers who could have found you directly.

The other signal is when the maths stops working. Work out roughly how many leads it takes you to win one job, multiply that by what each lead costs, and you have your true cost per job. Compare that against what the job is worth. A lot of trades have never done that sum, and are surprised by it.

The comparison worth making

The fair comparison is not "platform leads versus nothing". It is "platform leads versus running your own".

With your own campaign, the enquiry comes to you and nobody else. You are not one of five quotes arriving in the same hour. The reviews go on your profile. Over time the brand, the reputation and the customer list are yours, and they keep working when you turn the spend down.

The trade-off is honest: it takes longer to get going, it needs someone to manage it properly, and the first month is about cutting waste rather than winning work. A platform lead lands in your inbox on day one. That immediacy is worth something, particularly if you need work this week.

Plenty of trades run both, and there is nothing wrong with that. What we would push back on is paying platform fees for years while never building anything of your own, because at the end of it you have bought jobs but not a business asset.

Questions to ask before you renew

• How many leads did I pay for last quarter, and how many became jobs?
• What did those jobs cost me in lead fees, per job won?
• How many of those customers came back or referred somebody?
• If I stopped tomorrow, what would I still have?
• Am I being asked to sign for twelve months, and why?

If those answers look fine, stay. Genuinely. If they do not, that is worth knowing before the renewal rather than after it.

Where we come into it

We build and run campaigns that send enquiries straight to you rather than to a shared pool, whether that is Google Ads for people actively searching or Facebook and Instagram Ads for people who have not started looking yet. We also only work with one business per trade in each area, so we are never selling the same enquiry twice.