Checkatrade, Bark or your own website: where Portsmouth work comes from

Follow one job. A boiler stops in a terrace in Fratton on a Tuesday evening and the owner needs someone tomorrow. She has three doors: a lead platform where she fills in a form and waits for quotes, a Portsmouth Facebook group where she asks for a recommendation, and Google's map, where she rings the first name with recent reviews. Every plumber in the city is behind one, two or all three doors. Which door she uses, what it costs the plumber, and who owns the customer afterwards is the whole subject of this guide.

One job, three doors

Door one: the platform

On Checkatrade, MyBuilder, Rated People or Bark she describes the job and the platform sells the lead to several trades at once. The plumber pays per lead or per month, competes on price with strangers for the same terrace, and if he wins, the customer's next search still starts at the platform. He has bought a job, not a customer.

Door two: the group

In the Facebook group, three neighbours name plumbers they have used. The value of the recommendation is what happens in the next minute: she searches the name. If the profile has forty reviews and the site loads, the recommendation converts; if the only trace is a Facebook page with a phone number, she rings the next name. The group sends the name; the profile and the site close it.

Door three: the map and the site

On the map she sees three names in Fratton with recent reviews, taps one and rings. That plumber paid nothing for the call. He built the profile, asked for reviews at every handover for a year, and has a page about boiler repair with the districts named. The customer now knows his name and the next job comes direct.

What each door is good for

• The platforms: work this week for a new business with no reviews and an empty diary, and a benchmark for what your trade's leads cost.
• The groups: name searches from real recommendations, and a place to answer questions in your trade without selling.
• The map and the site: the urgent and the routine work near the customer, for free, once built, and the considered work that starts with a question rather than a name.

The cost nobody adds up

Trades add up the platform fee and stop. The real cost is the customer who never becomes yours: she came through the platform, she thinks of the platform next time, and she leaves her review there rather than on Google, where it would have built your map. A year of platform leads leaves a business with a year of work and a Google profile that has not moved. The same year of profile and site work leaves it with a map position that keeps sending calls after the spending stops.

A year's exit plan

When to keep the listing

Some trades' customers genuinely start on the platform: a homeowner planning an extension often does, an emergency boiler rarely does. Keep a listing where your customers begin there, cut it where they do not, and make sure the details on it match the profile, because a mismatch on the platform costs you on the map.

The review is the tell. Every review a customer leaves on the platform instead of Google is a brick in their wall, not yours. Ask for Google first, every time.