What directories and lead platforms really cost you per job won.
Checkatrade, Bark, Yell and the national "asbestos removal near you" networks all look cheap per lead. Work the arithmetic through to jobs won, add the cost of the enquiries that went to four other firms, and the picture changes. This is not an argument against using them. It is an argument for knowing the number, and for noticing who is answering your customers' questions while you pay for the leftovers.
- Cost per lead is the wrong measure. Cost per job won, including the quotes you lost, is the only number that decides whether a channel pays.
- A shared lead is sold to several firms at once, so you are competing on speed and price before anyone has judged your work.
- Worked through, a £25 shared domestic lead typically costs £250 to £330 per job won. A commercial lead can be far more.
- The platforms rank for your towns and answer your customers' cost questions because most local contractors give Google nothing better.
- Use platforms as a bridge with a capped budget while you build the channel you own.
The model behind every platform
Every lead platform works the same way. It spends money ranking for the searches you would like to rank for, collects the enquiry and sells it. The more firms it can sell each enquiry to, the more it makes. Checkatrade and Bark do it with memberships and credits. Yell does it with listings and paid placement. The national asbestos networks do it with programmatic pages, one for every town in the country, and route the enquiry to whichever contractor pays for that patch; one such network describes itself as covering more than 2,500 UK locations.
None of this is dishonest. It is a business model whose interests are not yours. The platform wants volume and several buyers per lead. You want one buyer per lead, and you want them to have chosen you.
Working the number through
Take a shared domestic lead at £25, a realistic figure for a garage roof or Artex enquiry on the larger platforms. Then apply conversion rates that reflect a lead which has also gone to three or four other firms.
| Leads bought | 40 at £25 | £1,000 |
| Reached by phone (60%) | 24 | |
| Quoted after contact (50%) | 12 | |
| Won against the other bidders (30%) | 3 or 4 | |
| Cost per job won, before quoting time | £250 to £330 |
Those rates are generous. Many contractors report lower contact rates because the homeowner has already booked the first firm that rang. Then add the eight quotes you prepared and lost. If a site visit and a quote take two hours, that is sixteen hours a month spent pricing work for other people, which is the cost the platform never invoices.
Compare an enquiry from your own website or from an AI recommendation. The person found you, read your credentials, saw your price range and chose to make contact. Nobody else has the enquiry. Contact and close rates are higher, there is no per-lead fee, and the page that produced it will produce another next month for nothing.
The quieter cost: who is answering your customers' questions
There are 1,900 UK searches a month for "asbestos removal cost" and 590 for "cost of removing an asbestos garage roof", according to Google's Keyword Planner. Open those results and you will not find contractors. You will find guide sites, and they disagree with each other wildly. One puts a single garage roof at £400 to £1,200; another at £1,800 to £5,500. Both collect the enquiry at the bottom of the page and sell it on.
Every one of those searchers is a customer you could have answered yourself, in your own prices, on your own page, with your own phone number underneath. Instead a third party answered badly and charged you for the introduction. The fix is a cost guide on your own site, which we build into every website as standard.
The cost question is the most common one your customers ask. Right now a guide site answers it and sells them to you and four others.
Every Envirorank website includes a cost guide page in your own price ranges with an estimate form underneath, plus area pages that compete with the networks for your towns. The enquiry lands with you alone. £3,500, with no hidden fees, and it keeps working after the platform budget stops.
Why it gets worse as you grow
A contractor with two vans can live on platform leads. A contractor with six cannot, because the platform controls the tap and raises prices when demand rises. Dependence on a shared feed also quietly reshapes the business around speed and low quotes, which is the opposite of what commercial buyers reward. The firms winning housing association and school contracts are not winning them on Bark; they are winning them on the checks we describe in what buyers check before they shortlist you.
The reputational cost nobody invoices
When four firms ring a homeowner within ten minutes of a form being submitted, the homeowner does not feel matched with specialists. They feel sold. The firm that wins inherits that experience, and asbestos is a trade where people talk to their neighbours. Enquiries through your own site start from a different place.
What to do with this
- Work out your own cost per job won on each platform, including lost quoting time. Most contractors have never done it and most are surprised.
- Keep the platforms that still pay, as a bridge, with a defined monthly cap.
- Build the channel you own: a site that passes the four stages, a cost guide in your own prices, area pages with real substance, reviews that mention the job, and the verification signals that get you named by AI assistants.
- If you need enquiries before the owned channel matures, run Google Ads built for asbestos work. The enquiries cost money, but they come to you alone and you keep the data.
- Measure the crossover. When owned enquiries pass platform enquiries, turn the platform budget down.
The owned channel takes months, not weeks. That is the whole argument for starting before the next platform price rise rather than after it. Your Google Business Profile is free and is the first thing to fix; the HSE's own asbestos pages are where buyers go to check you, so your site should confirm what they find there; and Google's guidance on doorway pages explains why the networks' town pages are vulnerable to a local site with real content.
Every year on a lead platform is a year not building your own visibility.
Lead platforms sell the same enquiry to several firms while AI assistants increasingly answer buyers directly, naming contractors whose own websites prove their work. A new website and monthly AI visibility build an asset that keeps producing exclusive enquiries long after a platform budget stops. See how AI search chooses asbestos companies.
Questions this raises
Are the national asbestos networks different from Checkatrade?
In effect, no. They rank town pages, collect the enquiry and route it to a contractor who pays. Some vet their contractors well; the model is the same. The difference is that they compete directly with you for your own town's searches, which is one reason local contractors struggle to rank.
Should we stop using platforms?
Not immediately. Stop treating them as the strategy. Keep the ones with an acceptable cost per job, cap the budget and build the channel you own alongside.
How long until owned enquiries replace platform ones?
Verification fixes show within weeks. Steady owned enquiry volume takes six to twelve months of pages, reviews and case studies. Google Ads can bridge the gap with enquiries that at least arrive alone.
Own your enquiries instead of renting them.
Envirorank builds asbestos contractor websites with the cost guide, area pages and credentials that keep the enquiry on your site. £3,500, with no hidden fees, and it is still working when the platform budget stops.
