The short answer. If a lead service, directory, or marketing company sends most of your demolition or excavation calls, you are renting your phone ringing. That can be a fine deal while it lasts. The risk is that the day the service raises its price, changes its rules, drops your area, or shuts down, the calls stop that same day, and you have nothing of your own to fall back on. The fix is not to quit the service tomorrow. It is to know exactly what you own, collect what you can, and spend the next 90 days building a source of calls that comes straight to you.
This guide is for demolition, excavation, land clearing, and site work companies that buy leads by the month or by the lead. If you have never bought a lead, the land clearing leads guide is the better starting point.
How lead programs for dirt work usually work
There are three common setups:
- Pay per lead. You pay for each homeowner or contractor who fills out a form. Shared leads go to several companies at once. Exclusive leads cost more and go only to you.
- Monthly budget. You set a monthly amount and the service sends as many leads as that budget buys in your area. A demolition company we spoke with in November 2026 had been paying $500 a month this way.
- Directory or profile listing. You get a profile page on a site that ranks for searches like “demolition contractors near me,” with your phone number or a quote button on it. Sometimes free, sometimes paid for a better spot.
All three can work. Many dirt-work companies built their first few years on one of them. The question is not whether the service is good. The question is what happens to your phone if it goes away.
What you are renting and what you own
Walk through this list for your own business. Be honest about which column each item falls in.
Usually rented (it goes away when the service does):
- The ranking. The service’s website ranks for “demolition near me,” not yours.
- The customer’s first click. They found the service, then you.
- Tracking phone numbers. Many services publish a number they own that forwards to you. When the account closes, that number stops forwarding.
- Reviews collected on the service’s platform. Those usually live on its site and do not move to Google.
- Your profile page and any badges linking to it.
Usually owned (it stays when the service leaves):
- Your company name, your truck lettering, and your reputation in town.
- Your Google Business Profile, if you are the owner on it. Check this; see below.
- Your website and domain, if they are registered and hosted in your name.
- Your list of past customers, if you kept one.
- Every phone number you control directly.
Most companies we look at have more in the rented column than they thought.
The week your lead source changes
If a lead service or marketing company tells you it is ending, cutting back, or handing things back to you, do these in the first week. Most of it costs nothing.
- Ask for an export of every lead they sent you. Names, phone numbers, addresses, dates, and what the job was. These are people who already wanted your kind of work. Many of them will need you again or know someone who does.
- Find out which phone numbers they published. If any number on your website, your Google listing, or the directory was theirs, replace it with yours now, before it stops forwarding.
- Check who owns your Google Business Profile. Open business.google.com while signed in to your own Google account. If you are not listed as the owner, request ownership now. The Google Business Profile guide covers the setup.
- Get your website logins if they built or hosted your site. The handed-back website guide has the full checklist, including the domain, email, and Search Console.
- Write down what each job from them was worth. You need this number to judge any replacement, including us.
What the service was really costing you
Do the math with your own numbers. Here is the shape of it.
Say you paid $500 a month and booked three demolition jobs a month from it at an average of $6,000 each. That is about $167 in lead cost per booked job, which is a good deal. Now say it sent ten leads a month and you booked one. That is $500 per job, and you also paid for the nine that went nowhere.
The number that matters is cost per booked job, not cost per lead. If you do not know which calls came from the service and which came from your own name, start tracking it today. A notebook in the truck works. So does the missed call text back setup, which records every call.
Building calls that come to you directly
Here is the order we use, cheapest and fastest first.
1. Your Google Business Profile
For dirt work, the map box sends more calls from strangers than anything else. It is free. Set it up as a service-area business, pick the right categories (Demolition Contractor, Excavating Contractor), add real job photos every week, and ask every finished customer for a review. Look at the three companies in the map box for your town: you will usually see steady reviews and recent photos, not a big budget.
2. A website with one page per service
A homeowner searching “mobile home removal near me” or “pool removal” wants a page about exactly that. One page per service you actually want more of, with real photos, the towns you cover, and your phone number at the top, does more than a fancy homepage. The excavation website guide lists what a dirt-work site needs.
3. A phone that gets answered
The calls you already get are the cheapest calls you will ever get. If you are on a machine all day, a text that goes out automatically when you miss a call keeps the customer from calling the next company. That alone often recovers more jobs than a lead service sends.
4. Past customers and the people you work for
Builders, realtors, insurance adjusters, and property managers send repeat demolition and site work. A short note to past customers and a call to the general contractors you already know costs nothing and pays for years.
Should you keep paying for leads?
Keep a lead service if it books jobs at a cost per job you are happy with. Just stop letting it be the only source. A sensible goal for the next 90 days is simple: by the end of it, at least half of your new calls should come from your own name, your own listing, and your own website. Then the service is a bonus instead of a lifeline.
If you want a second set of eyes on where your calls come from and what to build first, we will look at your listing and your site and tell you the three things we would fix first. Two business days, no charge. Show me what you would fix.