What a Thumbtack or Angi lead really costs a cleaning company
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The full math on shared leads, why move-out work makes marketplaces look worse than they are, and the one number that tells you whether to keep paying.
A cleaning company owner told me last month that Thumbtack was working fine. He was spending about $900 a month, getting roughly 26 leads, and booking 7 of them. On the surface that is $129 per booked job, which sounds acceptable.
Then we looked at what those 7 jobs were. Five were move-out cleans. One was a one-time deep clean before a party. One went recurring. So the real result was $900 for one recurring client and about $1,700 of one-time revenue that will never repeat.
That is not a disaster. It is also not what he thought he was buying, and the difference between those two things is where most marketplace spending goes wrong in this industry.
The shared-lead model, stated plainly
On Thumbtack you pay when a customer contacts you, typically $15 to $40 per lead for residential cleaning depending on the metro and the job type. On Angi you pay for the lead too, usually $25 to $60. In both cases the same request goes to three or four companies. You are buying a race, not a customer.
The race rewards speed above everything. Companies that respond in under five minutes book at several times the rate of companies that respond in an hour. If you cannot reliably answer within minutes, marketplaces are a bad purchase before you consider anything else. That is a phone problem, not a platform problem, and it is the same problem covered in the missed calls guide.
The one number to track
Recurring conversion rate on marketplace clients. Nothing else settles the question.
Take every marketplace client from the last 90 days. Count how many are still on a schedule today. Divide.
- Above 25%: the channel is profitable for you. Keep it, and work on speed to improve it.
- Between 10% and 25%: it is a cash flow tool. Fine to run alongside owned channels, not something to grow.
- Under 10%: you are renting one-time jobs at a high price and the platform keeps the relationship.
Most cleaning companies who run the numbers honestly land in the second band, and most assumed they were in the first.
Why the mix skews one-time
Marketplaces are built around a request, and requests are written by people with a specific immediate need. Move-out cleans and one-time deep cleans generate urgent, well-defined requests. Recurring service is a slower decision that people research rather than request, so it shows up on Google and on neighborhood recommendations far more than in a bidding app.
That means the mix is structural. You are not doing it wrong. The platform is simply pointed at the part of your business with no repeat value.
Comparing against the alternatives
Google Ads for residential cleaning runs about $18 to $55 per lead in most metros, and you control which keywords produce it, so you can push budget toward recurring intent instead of move-out intent. The lead is yours, the phone number is yours, and the person found you rather than a list. Details in the Google Ads guide.
Neighborhood recommendations cost nothing and convert best of all, because a neighbor vouched for you. They are slow to build and they compound. The Facebook and Nextdoor guide covers how to get recommended without getting thrown out of the group.
Reviews and a real website are the base under all of it. Across 45,428 house cleaning listings the median company has 6 reviews and 37.3% have no website. A homeowner comparing three marketplace bids will open each company's Google listing before replying, and the one with 60 reviews and a site with prices wins that comparison without paying for the privilege.
How to use marketplaces well
If you keep them, use them deliberately:
- Set a monthly cap and hold it. Marketplace spend expands quietly.
- Turn off job types with no repeat value if your recurring conversion is low. Bidding only on recurring requests costs more per lead and converts to more revenue.
- Answer in under five minutes, every time, including evenings.
- Ask for the second visit on the doorstep of the first, every single job. That is how a $175 move-out client becomes a $4,000 recurring one.
- Ask every marketplace client for a Google review, not a platform review. The platform review helps the platform. The Google review helps you forever.
What the owner did
He capped Thumbtack at $400, turned off move-out requests, and moved $500 into a Google search campaign aimed at recurring keywords. Two months later he was booking fewer total jobs and had signed four recurring clients instead of one. Total revenue dipped slightly in month one and passed the old number in month two, and the recurring roster is the part that compounds.
That is the trade. Fewer jobs, better jobs, and a customer list that belongs to you.
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