Stop buying leads when the cost to win a customer keeps climbing and those leads book worse than the ones from your own channels. Then don’t just cut. Move the money into channels you own, and track every lead once so you can see what’s working.
Watch cost per customer, not cost per lead
Bought leads usually look cheap. The real number is what it costs to turn them into a customer. At a 14-office dental group, our search ads still showed a 5.5-to-1 return for the year. Month by month, the cost to get a new patient had more than doubled. The SEC’s guide to financial statements is a good reminder that a revenue-to-spend ratio isn’t profit. [1]
Compare booking rates by source
Put every lead source side by side: how many leads, how many booked, how many showed up. In our case, one paid lead service booked 23% of its leads. Another booked 80%. That gap tells you where the next dollar should go.
Move the money, then measure honestly
We cut bought leads by about 90% and moved the money to Google, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. We used Liine to track every call, form and Facebook message, counting each person once. From October to January, new patients booked from our own channels went up 56%.
Two cautions. First, give results time. Google notes that recent results can look worse until delayed conversions come in. [2] Second, not every ad adds new demand. Research on eBay’s paid search found that some ads mostly caught customers who were coming anyway. [3] Test your biggest assumptions before you scale.
My rule: Rent leads to learn. Own the channels that work.