Most home services owners can tell you what they spent last month. Almost none can tell you what each dollar actually produced, by source. That's the first problem to fix.
If you read yesterdays's post, you ran the rough numbers on your purchased leads and probably found the real CAC was bigger than you thought. Good. That's the starting point. Now let's do the harder thing: audit every channel you spend on, honestly, and see which ones are actually paying for themselves.
This takes about an hour. You need one spreadsheet. The payoff is that you'll know, probably for the first time in years, which dollars are working.
The channels that show up on most home services P&Ls
Before you audit, list every channel you spend real money on. A typical home services business at $2M–$20M has some mix of these:
- HomeAdvisor / Angi / Thumbtack (shared leads)
- Google Local Services Ads (LSAs)
- Google Search ads (not LSAs — the regular paid search)
- Facebook / Meta ads
- Home shows / trade shows
- Direct mail
- Yard signs, truck wraps, uniforms
- Radio / local TV
- SEO agency retainer
- Social media agency retainer
- Website hosting / software
- Sponsorships (Little League, school events, local charity)
Most owners I work with are paying for 8–12 of these simultaneously. Nobody has any idea which are producing.
The four columns that tell you the truth
Open a spreadsheet. Four columns:
- Channel
- Monthly spend (include agency fees and platform fees)
- Closed jobs directly attributed to this channel last 90 days
- Gross revenue from those jobs
From those four columns, two calculated columns fall out:
- CAC: (Monthly spend × 3) / closed jobs = cost per customer
- Revenue multiple: 90-day revenue / 90-day spend = the dollar-in-dollar-out ratio
You're going to find that you have no idea what the right numbers are for several rows. That's the point. The gaps in your data are more useful than the data itself.
How to attribute when your tracking is bad
You don't need perfect attribution. You need honest attribution. Here's the rough hierarchy:
Ask the customer
Every closed job should have the source recorded on the invoice. "How did you find us?" becomes a mandatory field in your CRM, your spreadsheet, whatever you use. If you haven't been doing this, start this week. You'll have real data in 90 days.
Use your call tracking
If you're running any paid ads, you should have unique phone numbers per source. A call from the HomeAdvisor number is a HomeAdvisor lead. A call from the Google LSA number is LSA. A call from your website is organic / direct. If you're not tracking calls by source, install CallRail or similar this month. It pays for itself inside 30 days.
Match by timing
For channels without direct tracking (yard signs, truck wraps, sponsorships) you can often match by timing and location. The Little League sponsorship probably produced jobs within the zip code of the fields. Look for clusters.
Use the "last-click plus probably" rule
A customer who saw your truck wrap three times, then searched your name on Google, and called from the website is attributable to both the truck wrap and organic search. Don't drive yourself crazy. Credit it to the last-click channel, then mark the assist. Over 90 days, assists pattern up and you learn what channels enable others.
The numbers you'll see, and what they mean
After an hour, you'll have something like this (rough numbers from a real home services client, HVAC, $6M annual revenue):
- HomeAdvisor: $3,600/month spend → 11 jobs → $32,000 revenue → 2.9× multiple, $327 CAC
- Google LSA: $2,800/month → 14 jobs → $48,000 → 5.7×, $200 CAC
- Google Search (regular paid): $1,500/month → 4 jobs → $14,000 → 3.1×, $375 CAC
- Facebook ads: $800/month → 1 job → $2,800 → 1.2×, $800 CAC
- Home show (June): $4,000 → 2 jobs → $7,200 → 0.6×, $2,000 CAC
- Direct mail (one drop): $2,500 → 0 jobs → $0 → 0×
- SEO retainer: $1,500/month → 18 jobs (organic/direct) → $61,000 → 13.5×, $83 CAC
- Sponsorships: $500/month → 1 job (attributable) → $3,400 → 2.3×
Read that table. Look at the spread.
SEO is producing 13.5× at $83 per customer. Home shows are producing 0.6× at $2,000 per customer. Facebook is barely positive. Direct mail produced zero.
The combined Facebook + home show + direct mail spend is over $84,000 per year. It's generating less revenue than the SEO retainer at a tenth of the cost.
Here's the part that matters: most owners in this situation know Facebook and home shows and direct mail aren't really working, but they keep running them because "we've always done home shows" or "the Facebook rep said our reach is up."
Running the numbers makes it impossible to ignore.
What to do after the audit
Don't make sweeping changes in week one. The data is noisy at 90 days; some seasonal channels look worse in one quarter than another. But you now have a ranked list of channels by real ROI, which gives you three concrete moves:
- Double down on your top two by ROI. Whatever they are — SEO, LSA, referrals, your best paid channel — put 20–30% more budget into them for the next 90 days and measure whether the lift comes.
- Cut the bottom one entirely. Not "test it differently." Cut it. Use the savings to fund #1 above.
- Put the middle on probation. Set a 90-day performance threshold. If they don't hit a minimum revenue multiple (I use 3× for home services as a rough floor), they get cut in the next review.
You'll save money in month one. You'll generate more revenue in month three.
Why this never gets done
The audit is simple. Almost nobody does it. Three reasons:
First, the data is genuinely missing, and getting it feels tedious. But an hour of tedium is cheap compared to a year of guessing.
Second, it's emotionally uncomfortable. You're going to find out that some things you've been spending money on for years haven't been paying for themselves. That's not a nice feeling. Do it anyway.
Third, the agencies who get paid by you have every incentive not to do this audit. The SEO agency doesn't want you comparing their number to the home show number. The Facebook rep doesn't want you seeing the 1.2× multiple next to a 5.7× channel. You have to run this yourself, or hire someone whose incentive is aligned with you running lean.
What to do this week
Block one hour. Open the spreadsheet. Pull the last 90 days. Fill in whatever columns you can, and mark the gaps. The gaps tell you what to track starting this week.
In the next post, we go after the channel that, done right, is usually the #1 highest-ROI lever for home services businesses: your Google Business Profile. It's free. Most owners treat it like an afterthought. The ones who treat it like an asset run circles around them.
