23 September 2026 · 6 min read · Oscar Markham
Should you buy shared leads?
Every trade in Ireland gets the same call: leads, ready to go, pay per lead, no commitment. The price sounds excellent compared to running your own advertising. The arithmetic underneath is worth doing properly before you sign up, because it is not the comparison it appears to be.
What you are actually buying
Most lead platforms sell the same enquiry to three, four or five businesses. You are not buying a customer, you are buying a place in a race, and the customer has been told to expect several calls.
That changes the economics completely. If a lead costs €15 and is sold to four contractors, one of you converts it, so the true cost per job is at least €60 before you have driven anywhere.
Why conversion rates are lower than you expect
A homeowner expecting four calls behaves differently from one who rang you directly. They compare on price, because that is the only variable they can see across four near-identical quotes.
So shared leads push you toward competing on price with people you have never met, on a job you have not seen. That is the worst position in any trade.
The honest comparison
Your own campaign produces an exclusive enquiry, from somebody who chose you, who is not being rung by three competitors, and who arrives on your website having seen your work.
It costs more per enquiry and converts at a much higher rate, and the customer is not price-anchored against three other quotes. When people compare shared leads with their own advertising, they usually compare the wrong numbers.
- Shared: low price per lead, low conversion, price-led customer, no asset built
- Own campaign: higher price per lead, higher conversion, exclusive, and it compounds
- Compare cost per WON JOB, never cost per lead
When they genuinely make sense
Filling gaps in a slow month when the alternative is idle staff. Testing whether demand exists in a new area before committing to a campaign. Or a business with spare capacity and a very fast, very good sales process that reliably beats three competitors on the phone.
Those are real cases. What does not work is building a business on them, because you own nothing at the end of it and the platform controls your supply.
The thing nobody mentions
Every euro spent on a shared lead buys one job. Every euro spent on your own site, your own reviews and your own campaigns makes the next euro cheaper.
That is the actual difference, and it only shows up after a year or two — which is precisely why the platforms never frame it that way.
Written by Oscar Markham, founder of Dublin Growth Digital. We run lead generation for Irish estate agents and trades, reported every Friday in enquiries and booked work.