Siding Leads Without Paying a Broker $100+

Every siding contractor knows the drill: pay a broker $40 to $120 for a lead, then find out four or five other contractors got the exact same homeowner's name and phone number at the same time. You're not buying a lead. You're buying a seat in a bidding war you didn't ask to enter. There's a cheaper, faster way to get siding leads that belong to you alone, and it starts with running your own ad instead of renting someone else's list.

Why Shared Siding Leads Cost So Much and Convert So Little

Lead broker economics are simple and not built to help you. A homeowner fills out one form on a site like HomeAdvisor, Angi, or a regional siding directory. That single form submission gets sold to 4-5 contractors, each paying $40-120 depending on the market and how detailed the job description is (full siding replacement leads price higher than repair leads). The broker collects $200-600 total from one homeowner while you're competing against three or four other trucks pulling into the same driveway that week.

The math gets worse when you look at close rates. A homeowner who's already talked to two other contractors before you even call isn't shopping anymore, they're comparing. Shared leads close at roughly 5-8% for most siding contractors, and that's if you call fast. If you're the fourth or fifth call, your odds drop further because the homeowner has usually picked a favorite by then. At $80 per lead and a 6% close rate, you're paying roughly $1,333 in lead fees alone for every signed job, before materials, labor, or your own overhead.

Compare that to a lead that's yours exclusively. No one else got your homeowner's phone number. You're not racing three trucks to the driveway. That's the entire argument for generating your own siding leads instead of buying them shared.

What Exclusive Siding Leads Actually Cost (Real Numbers)

Running your own Facebook and Instagram ads for siding, cost per lead typically lands in the $35-90 range. Where you fall in that range depends on a few concrete factors:

• Market size and competition: A siding contractor in a mid-size metro like Columbus, Ohio might see $35-55 per lead. A contractor targeting a dense, high-competition suburb near a major city could see $70-90.
• Targeting tightness: Ads aimed at homeowners in ZIP codes with older housing stock (25+ year old homes) and recent storm activity generally cost less per lead because the audience is naturally more responsive.
• Creative quality: Ads with real before/after photos of siding jobs typically pull a lower cost per lead than generic stock-photo ads, sometimes by 20-30%, because the visual proof does the selling for you.
• Season: Spring and early fall (storm season and pre-winter prep) tend to run cheaper per lead than the dead of winter in cold climates, when siding isn't top of mind for most homeowners.

Even at the high end of $90 per lead, exclusive leads beat shared leads on cost-per-closed-job almost every time, because the close rate is roughly double.

The Math: CPL, Close Rate, and Job Value for Siding

Here's the full picture for a hypothetical but realistic siding contractor, using numbers pulled from typical exclusive-lead performance:

Take a concrete example: Riverbend Exteriors, a siding and gutter contractor in Grand Rapids, Michigan, generates 20 leads in a month at $60 average cost per lead, spending $1,200 total. At a 12% close rate, that's roughly 2.4 signed jobs. At an average job value of $12,000 for full-home vinyl or fiber cement siding, that's $28,800-$31,200 in signed revenue against a $1,200 ad spend. Even accounting for materials, labor, and overhead eating most of that revenue, the lead acquisition cost is a rounding error compared to buying the same 20 leads shared at $80 each ($1,600) and closing 6-8% of them (1.2-1.6 jobs).

For a broader look at what cost-per-lead ranges look like across trades, see Facebook ads cost per lead by industry. Siding sits in a similar band to roofing and window replacement since all three involve high-ticket exterior work with a visual before/after story.

Who to Target: Homeowners Who Actually Need Siding

The targeting decision matters more for siding than for almost any other home improvement trade, because siding is a highly discretionary purchase most homeowners delay for years. You're not looking for everyone who owns a house. You're looking for three specific signals:

• Home age: Homes built 20-40 years ago are the sweet spot. Original siding from that era (aluminum, older vinyl) is visibly faded, warped, or cracking by now.
• Storm exposure: ZIP codes that took hail or high wind in the last 6-18 months produce homeowners actively comparing bids, often with insurance money already approved. This is the single highest-converting audience for siding ads.
• Visual cues: Faded color, chalking (that powdery residue on old vinyl), warping, and visible gaps are things homeowners notice on their own home and recognize instantly in your ad photos, which is why before/after creative outperforms generic copy.

Geographically, you want a radius tight enough to match your actual service area, usually 10-20 miles from your base depending on how dense the market is. Going too broad wastes spend on homeowners you'd never actually drive to. Going too narrow in a low-density rural area can starve your ad of enough audience to hit a reasonable cost per lead. For more on getting the radius and audience right, see targeting local customers with Facebook ads.

Before/After Photos: The Creative That Sells Siding

Siding is one of the most visual home improvement categories that exists. A homeowner scrolling Facebook isn't going to stop for a paragraph about your 15 years of experience. They'll stop for a photo of a house that looked exactly like theirs, faded and dated, next to the same house with crisp new fiber cement siding and modern trim color.

If you don't have before/after photos from your own jobs yet, this is the first thing to fix, even before you touch targeting or budget. Shoot wide, well-lit photos of the full front elevation, not close-up detail shots. Homeowners need to see the whole house transformation, not a swatch. Ads built around a strong before/after pair typically see a meaningfully lower cost per lead than ads using generic stock photography or a logo graphic, because the image itself proves you can do the job before the homeowner ever reads your copy.

Video works too, especially a 15-second walk-around of a recently completed job with a quick voiceover on the material and timeline. But if you're choosing between spending time on video production or just getting a clean before/after photo pair from your next job, the photo pair is the higher-leverage move for a first campaign.

The Qualifying Form and Speed-to-Lead

Not every siding lead is worth the same amount of follow-up effort. A qualifying form on the lead capture step should ask 3-4 quick questions: approximate home size or square footage, current siding material, whether they have storm damage or an active insurance claim, and rough timeline (this month, this season, just researching). This takes 20 seconds for the homeowner to fill out and lets you triage your call list instead of treating every lead identically.

Speed matters even more here than in most trades because siding leads are almost always comparing multiple bids. Data across home improvement categories consistently shows that calling within 5 minutes of form submission produces dramatically higher contact rates than calling an hour later, and contact rate is the single biggest lever on close rate for this kind of purchase. If you're getting leads and not calling until end of day, you're giving your competitors (even other contractors running their own ads, not just shared-lead brokers) a window to get there first.

The Long Decision Cycle: Why Siding Leads Need Nurturing, Not Just a Call

Here's the part most lead-gen advice skips: siding is not an impulse purchase. At $12,000-18,000 for a full-home job, most homeowners get 3 bids and take 2-6 weeks to decide, sometimes longer if they're also weighing insurance claims, financing options, or waiting on a spouse to sign off. A lead that doesn't book a job on the first call is not a dead lead. It's a lead in the middle of a normal decision process.

This means your follow-up needs a schedule, not a single attempt. A reasonable cadence: call within 5 minutes of the lead coming in, a text follow-up same day if no answer, a second call 2-3 days later, and a check-in call or text at the 2-week mark if they haven't decided. Contractors who give up after one unanswered call are leaving signed jobs on the table that a slightly more patient competitor picks up instead. Track every lead in a simple spreadsheet or CRM with a follow-up date, because