Three ways to pay for customer acquisition
If you hire someone to bring you customers, you will usually come across three models: a monthly retainer, pay per lead and commission per closed job. None of them is best in every case. What changes is who carries the risk if customers do not arrive.
Monthly retainer
You pay a fixed monthly amount for a service such as SEO or campaign management. It works well when you want to build something long term that stays with your company: your website, your profile, your reputation.
- Advantage: a predictable budget and continuous work.
- Risk: you pay even in a month with no new customers.
- What it requires: clear reports on what was done and what effect it had.
Pay per lead
You pay for each contact you receive, whether or not it becomes a customer. Spend is tied to activity, which makes contact quality the key issue.
- Advantage: you only pay when a contact comes in.
- Risk: you also pay for bad contacts, and the same contact is sometimes sold to several companies.
- What it requires: a definition of a valid lead, whether it is exclusive and what happens with wrong contacts.
Commission per closed job
You pay when a contact turns into a job. Whoever captures the contact carries the investment and the risk of it not closing, so both sides have the same incentive.
- Advantage: the cost appears once the revenue is in sight.
- Risk: if the commission is badly set, your margin suffers.
- What it requires: trust and data in both directions, because closing happens on your side.
What should be clear before you start
Paying per closed job only works with written rules. Check these points:
- What counts as a closed job: an accepted quote, a completed job or a paid job. Decide what happens with cancellations too.
- How much and when: the commission amount, when it is paid and how it is invoiced.
- Area and service: where and for what exclusivity applies.
- Records: every contact should be stored with date, source and status, and you should be able to see it.
- Reporting closed jobs: who reports them and how often.
- Repeat customers: whether commission applies only to the first job or to later ones as well.
- Ending the relationship: who owns the website and other assets, and what happens to open contacts.
When it fits and when it does not
It fits if you can take on more work, if people search for your service when they need it and if you are willing to report your closed jobs honestly. It fits less well if your calendar is already full, if the value of each job cannot support a commission or if nobody searches for what you offer. In those cases, a retainer focused on building your brand may make more sense.
How we approach it
With our on-demand leads there is no upfront investment. We agree a fixed commission per closed job before we start, contacts are exclusive and each one is logged, filtered and delivered automatically. First we check with data whether there is real demand in your area. If there is not, we tell you.
This model is only healthy if both sides win. That is why we set the commission according to your service and area, so each job stays profitable for you and the work stays sustainable for us.