Ask an electrical contractor where their work comes from and the answer is usually “word of mouth”, followed after a pause by a longer list. A builder who sends a few jobs a quarter. The Google listing. Some ads that someone set up two years ago. A lead site the owner keeps meaning to cancel. A property manager who calls when something trips.
Each of those is a lead source, and they behave very differently. They produce different jobs, at different speeds, with different costs, and they need different things from the business to keep working. Owners tend to judge them all by the same feeling: whether the phone rang. A side-by-side view is more useful.
Why electrical work is its own case
Electrical work spans a wider range than most trades. On one end is the service call: a dead circuit, a breaker that keeps tripping, a flickering light. On the other is project work: panel upgrades, EV charger installs, rewires, remodels, new construction, and commercial tenant improvements. Many of the bigger jobs involve permits and inspections, which stretch the timeline.
That spread matters because lead sources tend to favor one end or the other. A source that is excellent for service calls can be useless for panel upgrades, and the reverse. Before comparing sources, it helps to know which work you want more of.
The comparison
This table is qualitative. It describes how each source tends to behave, not measured figures, and your own market may differ.
| Source | Typical work | Speed to cash | Your control | Cost structure | What it needs from you |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Referrals and repeat customers | Everything, often the best-fit jobs | Fast | Low: you cannot turn it up | No direct cost | Good work, and asking for the referral |
| Google Business Profile | Service calls, some projects | Fast | Medium | No direct cost; time | Reviews, photos, accurate hours and services, fast answers |
| Local Services Ads | Service calls, smaller projects | Fast | Low to medium | Pay per lead | Screening, strong reviews, answering during ad hours |
| Google Search ads | Whatever you choose to bid on | Fast | High | Pay per click | Landing pages, keyword and negative lists, weekly attention |
| Lead marketplaces | Mixed; often price shoppers | Fast if you respond first | Low | Pay per lead, often shared | Very fast response, tolerance for low close rates |
| Builders and general contractors | New construction, remodels, tenant improvements | Slow, with payment terms | Low per job, high over the relationship | Relationship time, bidding | Reliability, bid capacity, cash flow for slow payment |
Source by source
Referrals and repeat customers. Usually the best leads an electrician gets: they arrive trusting you and are less likely to shop on price. The weakness is that you cannot turn them up when the calendar is thin. What you can do is make them more likely: ask at the end of a job, make it easy to leave a review, and keep in touch with past customers so they remember your name when a neighbor asks.
Google Business Profile. The listing that shows on the map when someone nearby searches “electrician near me”. It is free to run, but not free to run well: it needs accurate categories and services, photos from real jobs, steady reviews and a phone that gets answered. The Google Business Profile checklist goes through the fields and habits that decide whether you show up.
Local Services Ads. Google’s pay-per-lead ads. The business passes Google’s screening (license, insurance and background checks, depending on the trade and the state), and the ad carries a “Google Verified” badge, which replaced the older Google Guaranteed and Google Screened badges in late 2025. Check the current requirements before applying. You choose job types and an area rather than keywords. They suit a shop with strong reviews that answers every call during the hours the ads run. We compared them with Search ads in Local Services Ads versus Search ads.
Google Search ads. Pay per click, and the most controllable source on the list. If you want EV charger installs and not outlet repairs, you can bid on one and exclude the other. That control needs looking after: a Search account nobody reviews drifts into expensive, irrelevant searches.
Lead marketplaces. Sites that collect a homeowner’s request and sell it to contractors, sometimes to several at once. They can fill gaps, but a shared lead is a race: the first contractor to call usually gets the conversation. If you cannot respond within minutes, you are often paying to be the third quote.
Builders and general contractors. Steady volume and larger jobs, often repeat work from the same few relationships. The trade-offs are bidding time, slower payment, less control over schedule, and dependence on a small number of customers. A builder relationship can carry a business through a quiet year, and losing one can make the next year very quiet indeed.
Choosing a mix
There is no ideal mix, but a few patterns hold for many shops.
- Do not rely on one source. A business that gets most of its work from one builder, or one marketplace, has handed its calendar to someone else.
- Fund what referrals cannot do. Referrals rarely bring the specific work you want more of. Paid search can, if you target it.
- Fix the free sources first. A thin Google Business Profile or a phone that goes to voicemail makes every paid source more expensive, because the ads send people to the same weak points. Our SEO page covers the local side.
- Match sources to capacity. Marketplaces and LSA reward speed. If nobody can answer in minutes, spend on something that tolerates a slower reply.
- Keep builder work to a share you can survive losing.
Measuring them against each other
The only fair comparison is cost per booked job, split by the type of work, over a quarter or more. A source that sends fewer, bigger jobs can beat one that sends many small ones. Marketplaces often look cheap per lead and expensive per job. Builders look free until you count the hours spent bidding work you did not win.
To make that comparison you need the source recorded on every job, consistently. “Google” is not a source; Business Profile, LSA and Search ads are three different ones. Tracking numbers and a short, clear lead-source list in your field software do most of the work.
Start by listing where last quarter’s jobs came from, as honestly as your records allow. If the answer is mostly “not sure”, that is the first thing to fix. There is more on how we work with electrical contractors on our electrical page.