PERMITS BEAT LEAD-GEN ADS BY 3.2X
Permits are public, refreshable, and high-intent. We compared $/contract across paid leads, door-knocks, and permits.
We compared cost-per-signed-contract across three lead sources for a single 12-crew roofing company over six months: paid Facebook/Google leads, traditional door-knock canvass, and permit-driven outreach.
Paid leads: $1,840 per contract. Door-knock canvass: $920. Permit-driven outreach: $290. That's 3.2x cheaper than door-knocks and 6.3x cheaper than paid digital.
Permits work because they're a public-record signal of high-intent activity. A homeowner pulling a permit for siding, gutters, or solar already has crews on their property and is in 'house project' mode. The marginal cost of pitching them on a roof inspection is nearly zero.
The hard part is freshness. A permit pulled three weeks ago is half as good as one pulled this morning. A permit pulled today, with owner skiptrace and intent classification on top of it, is gold. Most contractors don't run permits because it's manual and stale within a week. Automated, refreshed daily, they become the cheapest customer-acquisition channel in the industry.