Sample layout. Not a real client.
Trade, city: the problem in one line
- Starting point
- Rank grid before any change
- What changed
- The one or two changes that moved it
- Result
- Rank grid after, and the change in calls
A shared lead goes to several electricians at once, and the fastest caller often wins it. I build the channels where the customer calls you directly, and measure which of them produce booked work.
No long contracts. You talk to Simon.
Map pack: electrical repair El Cajon
A
B
C
Scientific SEO
To generate electrical leads without sharing them, you build the places where a customer finds and calls your company directly (the map pack, your own website, your reviews and ads you control), so that fewer of your jobs depend on a marketplace passing the same inquiry to several electricians. Other trades face the same choice, and my home services SEO work rests on the same idea.
A lead marketplace, such as Angi or Thumbtack, takes a homeowner’s request and makes it available to more than one contractor. The homeowner hears from several companies and tends to compare on price and speed, because at that point the companies look alike. For an electrician this is a weak position. Your strongest argument is that you can be trusted with work the customer can’t check, and a lead form leaves no room for it.
Someone searches “panel upgrade La Mesa”, sees you in the map pack, reads your reviews and calls. Nobody else was sent their number. They found your company by name or by job and chose to call you.
Calls like this arrive through things that belong to you: your Google Business Profile, the job pages on your site, and the reviews past customers left. Those stay in place when you buy no leads.
I usually start with the planned jobs, because the customer takes time to choose and trust decides it. Someone considering a panel upgrade, an EV (electric vehicle) charger or a rewire reads about the companies involved before calling, and that is when your own pages and reviews can do their work. Small urgent jobs are decided fast from the map pack, so for those the work is mostly the profile and how far you are from the caller. I ask which jobs you want most, measure where you rank for each with a rank grid, and work on the widest gap.
Rankings take time to build, and how many calls a given position will bring in your area can’t be known in advance. So I don’t advise canceling marketplace leads until the owned channels are producing calls you can count. Tag every call by source, watch whether the owned share grows, and reduce marketplace spend as the evidence allows. A marketplace that still pays for itself may be worth keeping, as long as you no longer depend on it.
Search ads cost money, but the call goes to you alone. A search campaign for one job type, sending clicks to your own page and your own phone number, covers the gap while rankings are built, and you can see what each call cost. Unlike a marketplace lead, the customer has already seen your name before they call.
The homeowner whose outlet you fixed last year may now be buying an EV or adding solar. If they remember your name they will search for it, and that search should lead straight to your profile and your site with nothing confusing in between. No marketplace can pass that customer to a competitor. Asking past customers for reviews also builds the record the next stranger reads.
Every engagement starts and ends with the same measurement.
Sample layout. Not a real client.
That depends on how many people search for your jobs in your cities, where you rank, and how your profile and reviews compare, so there's no number to give before measuring. I ask which jobs you want most, measure where you rank for each with a rank grid, and work on the widest gap. Rankings take time to build, and as that starting point changes I show you calls by source, so you can watch whether the owned share grows.
Not yet, in most cases. Keep them running while the owned channels are built, compare the cost of a booked job from each source, and reduce marketplace spend when your own calls can replace it.
They work differently from marketplace leads. With LSA (Local Services Ads), Google's pay-per-lead listings, the customer contacts the business they picked from the list. You're still renting the placement, and whether the format is available to electricians in your area should be checked. I treat it as a paid channel to measure against the others.
The rate varies by company, and any figure I quoted would be invented. The mechanism is easy to see: a customer who chose you after reading your reviews isn't being called by other electricians at the same moment. Tag your calls by source and your own booking records will answer it.
Once I know the jobs you want and what you rely on for leads today, I measure where you rank for each job.
Prefer to talk? Call (619) 675-7678, 9am to 6pm.