Buying Moving Leads vs. Generating Your Own

Every moving company owner eventually faces the same question: should you buy leads from aggregator platforms like Angi, Thumbtack, and HomeAdvisor, or invest in generating your own leads through a professional website and marketing? The answer has major implications for your profitability, growth trajectory, and long-term business value. Let's break down both approaches so you can make the right decision for your company.

How Bought Leads Actually Work

When you buy leads from platforms like Angi, Thumbtack, or HomeAdvisor, you're paying for contact information of someone who submitted a moving request on that platform. Here's the catch: every lead you receive is simultaneously sold to three to five other moving companies in your area. That means the moment a lead hits your inbox, you're already in a race against competitors who received the exact same information at the exact same time. Pricing typically ranges from $30 to $80 per lead for local moves and $50 to $150 or more for long-distance moves. The economics quickly become brutal — you're paying top dollar for shared leads, competing on speed and often on price, which drives a race to the bottom on margins. Worse, none of this activity builds your brand. The customer remembers the platform, not your company. And the moment you stop paying, the leads stop coming entirely. You're renting access to customers rather than building a lasting asset.

How Generating Your Own Leads Works

When you generate your own leads, a customer finds your company directly — through a Google search, your website, a referral, or your social media presence. They fill out a quote form on your website or call your number because they already want to work with you specifically. These are exclusive leads. No one else gets that contact information. The customer came to you, which means they're already warmer and more likely to book. Generating your own leads does require upfront investment. You need a professional, mobile-friendly website with lead capture forms, search engine optimization to rank in local results, a CRM to manage and follow up with incoming inquiries, and a system for instant notifications so you can respond quickly. But here's the critical difference: your cost per lead drops over time. As your website gains authority and your online presence strengthens, you attract more and more leads without proportionally increasing your spend. You're building an asset that compounds in value.

The Real Cost Over 12 Months

Let's look at the numbers side by side. With bought leads, assume you purchase 50 leads per month at an average cost of $50 per lead. That's $2,500 per month, or $30,000 per year. With shared leads, your close rate typically lands between 10% and 15% because you're competing against multiple companies for every single lead. That means you're spending roughly $330 to $500 to acquire each actual customer. Now compare that to generating your own leads. With a professional website and lead generation platform, your monthly investment is a fraction of that cost. Within a few months, a well-optimized site can generate 30 to 60 leads per month at effectively $0 per lead beyond your platform subscription. And because these are exclusive leads from people who specifically chose your company, close rates jump to 25% to 35%. Your customer acquisition cost drops dramatically, and every dollar you invested in your website and SEO continues paying dividends month after month.

The Hybrid Approach

You don't have to choose one or the other overnight. The smartest strategy for most moving companies is a hybrid approach. Start with both: keep your aggregator leads flowing to maintain revenue while you invest in building your own lead generation engine. As your website and organic presence grow, gradually reduce your spend on bought leads. Track your cost per acquisition from each source monthly so you can see exactly when your own leads become more cost-effective — which they almost always do. Most of our customers find they can significantly reduce or completely eliminate their aggregator spend within six months of launching their own lead generation platform. The key is starting now, because every month you delay is another month of paying premium prices for shared leads with no lasting return.

What to Look for in a Lead Generation Platform

If you're going to invest in generating your own leads, you need a complete system — not just a website or just a CRM, but everything working together seamlessly. Look for a platform that includes a professional, mobile-optimized website designed specifically for moving companies, built-in lead capture forms on every page, a CRM to organize and track every lead through your sales pipeline, instant notifications via email and mobile so you never miss a new inquiry, and automated follow-up sequences to nurture leads that don't book immediately. An all-in-one platform eliminates the gaps that cause leads to slip through the cracks. When your website, forms, CRM, and follow-up tools are disconnected, leads get lost, response times suffer, and you leave money on the table. The right platform ties everything together so every lead is captured, tracked, and followed up on automatically.