CAC, Attribution, and Operator-Led Growth

Most home services operators measure CAC wrong. They look at ad platform "cost per lead" and call it a day. That number is the platform telling you what it wants you to hear.

Real CAC is cost per booked job, tied back to the CRM. And it's almost always 3–5x higher than the platform CPL number.

Why platform CPLs lie

Google Ads tells you you're paying $42 per lead. Sounds great. But:

• 30% of those "leads" are spam, wrong-number calls, or out-of-area.
• Of the qualified ones, 40% never book a quote.
• Of the quoted ones, 50% don't close.

Do the math: $42 CPL × (1 / 0.7) × (1 / 0.6) × (1 / 0.5) = $200 per booked job. That's the number your P&L sees.

The attribution model that actually works for home services

You don't need a fancy MMM platform. You need three things:

1. A unique tracking number per channel (CallRail handles this — Google Ads gets one number, GBP another, LSAs another, organic another).
2. Call outcomes coded back to the CRM (booked / quoted / not qualified / wrong number).
3. A weekly dashboard that shows CAC per channel based on booked jobs, not leads.

That's it. Most operators skip step 2 because it requires CSR discipline. It's the most important step.

The metrics that actually run the business

Once you have real CAC, the next layer is LTV. For home services, LTV is:

• Average ticket × repeat rate × referral rate

A $1,200 average ticket with a 2.1x lifetime multiplier (membership + referrals) gives you $2,520 LTV. If your CAC is $200, you're at a 12.6:1 LTV:CAC. Scale aggressively.

If your CAC is $800, you're at 3.15:1. Profitable but tight — focus on conversion before adding spend.

What changes when you have the real numbers

Three things, every time:

1. You stop pouring money into the channel that looks cheap but doesn't book.
2. You start investing in channels that do book — usually GBP, LSAs, and referral programs.
3. You can hire and pay marketing people against a clear unit economic target, not vibes.

That's operator-led growth. The marketing function reports to the P&L, not to the dashboard.