Multi-brand home services, aging-in-place remodelling
Five brands dependent on bought leads, and the margin it was costing.
A five-brand rollup dependent on third-party lead aggregators, with volatile acquisition cost, seven systems held together by Zapier and no measure of the dependency the sponsor wanted to break.
- Sponsor
- Middle-market PE, rollup platform
- Thesis
- Break third-party lead dependency
- Scope
- Five brands
- Stage
- Diagnostic audit
−60%
CAC reduction opportunity identified on owned acquisition channels
Identified in audit
3x
organic and Google Business Profile lead share, current state to category benchmark
Identified in audit
80%+
of CAC variance attributed to six funnel metrics
Identified in audit
5 / 3 / 1
brands, pillars and one operating system
Identified in audit
Quantified across the tech stack, BI and marketing and four digital channels, benchmarked against the client's internal CAC data and home services category norms.
The situation
A PE-backed rollup of five regional home services brands depended on third-party lead aggregators for most of its acquisition. Cost per acquisition was high and volatile, the tech stack caused recurring outages and reporting could not measure the cost of the dependency the sponsor wanted to break.
What we found
- 01
Aggregator dependency capping margin
The largest source of leads across all five brands was the one with the least operating leverage: bought leads, limited quality control and no ownership of the customer.
- 02
A fragmented stack breaking attribution
Seven or more systems connected through Zapier, with monthly errors and annual outages that stopped sales. Tracking parameters failed in the workflows, so attribution broke at source.
- 03
Siloed reporting, no cross-brand view
Reporting spread across Excel, Power BI and disconnected sources. No unified data model and no cohorted CAC or lifetime value, so leadership could not measure the cost of the dependency.
Recommended transformation
- 01
Tech stack
Move to HubSpot integrated with ServiceTitan, consolidate the stack and remove the Zapier dependency, with attribution built into the data layer.
- 02
BI
One cross-brand data model and live dashboards for CAC, cost per lead, lifetime value, return on ad spend and lead-stage timing.
- 03
Marketing
Acquisition rebuilt around owned channels: paid search and social with proper attribution, SEO and local search across every location.
- 04
Customer path
Automated lead routing and nurture, with speed-to-lead targets tied to CAC.
- 05
Operating model
Core marketing capabilities consolidated across the five brands into one operating model with local brand expression.
Anonymised at sponsor request.
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