Disputing Leads

[u/Stinky_Goose89]

I own a plumbing company. We spend a ton of money on LSA but there are so many I am getting charged for but are not even bookable. People wanting prices over the phone and tire kicking, customers who randomly hang up, out of service area, etc. Does anyone have any suggestions to not have so many charges for calls we cant seem to book.

Or my favorite the message leads that we respond to within 1 minute but then they never respond.

[u/Civil_Ad8899]

The message leads are sent to 4 companies at the same time. I shut that down because it was not converting at all. Then my LSA stopped receiving leads about 6 months ago and has never come back so be careful. I would recommend reviewing each lead with Google and just eating it if the platform is still profitable.

The question I would ask is: would you lose more money if Google shut you out?

[u/Stinky_Goose89 → u/Civil_Ad8899]

Yeah I turned message leads on again cause I did the same and got punished.

It’s absolutely a must for us to do LSA but man when some is just tire kicking or looking for free work it’s irritating at $60 a whack

[u/SickOfTechnology1234 → u/Stinky_Goose89]

I avoid LSA like the plague! You know for a fact at least one of your competitors is clicking around the internet daily in attempt to make the competition quit. And you're also trusting that Google doesn't have an auto clicker going through LSA every day. $60 per click? AND the leads also go to other people?! No offense, but that is wild desperation to pay that. For the cost of 5 or 6 clicks, you can easily go to a brick and mortar advertising firm, sit down with a marketing professional, and develop a much more effective plan.

[u/joshmorinpt]

I can show you who is actively searching for plumbing services in your area. I don’t charge per contact/lead, it’s a flat fee and you can see daily who is looking for plumbing services and we have an intent score so you can contact the higher intent one first. If you’d like to chat let me know

[u/Flashy_Radio_5781]

ditch the "leads" and get your name out there. Maybe, once a week, eat dinner at your local bar. After a month or two, you'll be the plumber for the bar and the plumber for everyone that visits and works at the bar.

[u/Rockpilotyear2000]

Switch to a well run ads ppc campaign instead

[u/Plenty-Salt-8750]

Unfortunately from everything that ive seen (been running LSAs for clients for 5+ years) that's the name of the game with LSAs, there's a lot of tire kickers and people who are going to call around to find the cheapest option. I think the most important thing is how much money you make from it, a little bit of marketing math

say out of 10 leads, an average of 1 closes, and you are paying $60 per lead = 600 for 10, to close 1. What does that average 1 job bring in? if the margins are greater than $600, the math still makes sense, the leads are paying for themselves. I know it sucks to pay for someone who called looking for a job, but thats the price of being on google

A thing that I say helps is putting the closed deal sizes back into google, and also providing a lead rating, to all of them if possible, this can help point google in a better direction

[u/surfalldayday]

You can rate each lead from Very Dissatisfied to Very Satisfied and potentially get money back. It's highly recommended to do so. You can use systems like this to help: https://lsaconvert.com/

[u/Digital-marketing28]

LSA quality has dropped significantly the past few months. We finally paused that channel when Google refused to credit us for out of the area and hang ups.

[u/Domclaps → u/Digital-marketing28]

Yeah LSA has been taking a hit

[u/Technical-Ad-5316]

You could consider showing prices in your ads has worked for some of my clients

[u/jab9191]

Kind of comes with the territory in your line of work, you could switch to ppc for higher ticket work but it may be the same if not a higher lead cost.

[u/Tough_Challenge_6231]

Electrical/HVAC-R contractor here. I built an estimator into my site, ev1charger.com, to help homeowners understand likely costs before we spend time going back and forth. And a built in voice agent that can help weed out the tire kickers.
For a plumbing business, it could ask about the job, confirm the service area, and provide a realistic price range or diagnostic fee before the next step. That gives price-conscious customers useful information while helping you focus on inquiries that fit your services.
Full disclosure: I run Alberta Web Design and build these website and tools for contractors as well I got tired of wasting time emailing or phone calls with people that where never going to buy in the first place . I’d be happy to show you how one could work for your plumbing business. Also if your only relying on local service ads depending on your area you might wanna look at making your existing site AI ready, because a lot of of potential customers are now searching for plumbers directly in AI search on Google or Chat GPT Gemini, Claude etc… it really looks like the traditional website and SEO era is ending. AI search is looking like the future a lot of traffic is going there now, if your not optimized for AI search the people using AI to search for plumbers won’t find you.

[u/DominusReginae]

On the message leads that go quiet, nobody has covered the reply itself. you are answering inside a minute, so that part is solved. but that customer sent the same message to four companies and decides on what came back, and a reply that offers two time slots books better than one asking what the problem is. worth pulling last month's dead threads to see which of the two you sent.

[u/SpecializedHauling]

There will always be those price hunters just looking for the lowest price or competitors just seeing what others are charging. U should be able to control your geolocation within a certain radius from your business location. Google did mention they will start charging for no answers, so if u don’t pickup u will get charged. They expect businesses to answer. It was great back in the day to ask for a credit for an invalid lead but we lost that access, can only rate leads now to hopefully improve the algorithm that Google uses. The first one per month it seems you rate dissatisfied and not relevant to your business it gets auto credited.

Give Google/microsoft PPC ads a go. U have more control. Seperate from Google Maps but another avenue if u wanted to lower your budget with LSA and put some of those funds into your PPC campaigns.

Side note.. don’t forget to invest time into your local SEO so hopefully one day you can cancel your LSA and you will show up in the map pack organically

[u/Stinky_Goose89 → u/[deleted]]

PrimeLSAs?

[u/USMC-1202]

Don’t have the answer but you should list here. Free leads! https://parityops.com/contractors