How do you get boiler leads? The quick answer
You can buy them (£10 to £40 each, shared with competing installers, through platforms like Checkatrade or Bark) or you can generate your own through Google: a strong Google Business Profile, a website that ranks for “boiler installation” in your area, and a steady flow of reviews. Bought leads are faster. Your own leads are exclusive, and the cost per enquiry falls instead of repeating every month.
Boiler installs are some of the most valuable jobs in the trades: £2,000 to £4,000 a time, often decided in a hurry when the old boiler gives up. That’s exactly why boiler leads are among the most expensive to buy, and why the gas engineers who generate their own do so well.
Here’s how the options stack up, and the order we’d tackle them in.
What bought boiler leads actually cost
Lead sellers and directories love the boiler market, because installers will pay properly for a £3,000 job. That shows up in the prices:
- Directories charge either a monthly membership (Checkatrade Growth from £59 a month on a 12-month term) or per lead (Bark credits work out at roughly £5 to £40 a lead). Boiler and heating enquiries sit at the top of those ranges.
- Dedicated lead sellers charge per boiler enquiry, and the same enquiry is typically sold to three or four installers. You’re paying for a race.
- Google itself charges advertisers around £12 a click for boiler lead searches. A click, not a customer.
None of this makes bought leads worthless. It makes them expensive, shared and permanent: the price per lead is the same in year five as in month one. Our comparison of the big directories covers which are worth it as a stopgap, and the alternatives if you’d rather not pay at all.
The searches that bring boiler work
Almost every boiler job starts the same way: someone types into Google. The searches worth being visible for fall into three groups:
- Emergency and replacement: “boiler replacement [town]”, “boiler installation near me”, “new boiler fitted this week”. High urgency, high value, the homeowner calls the first credible result.
- Research: “new boiler cost”, “combi boiler vs system boiler”, “how long does a boiler installation take”. Lower urgency, but the installer who answers these questions earns the enquiry when the decision comes.
- Trust checks: your business name plus “reviews”. This is where your Google profile either closes the job or quietly loses it.
A directory listing rents you a slice of group one. Your own website and profile can cover all three.
Start with your Google Business Profile
For a local trade, the map results are the highest-value real estate on Google, and they’re free to compete for. For gas engineers specifically:
- List your services in full: boiler installation, boiler repair, servicing, landlord certificates. Each is a search someone makes.
- Add photos of real installs, not stock images. Homeowners notice.
- Show your Gas Safe registration number prominently. It’s the first trust signal in this trade.
- Ask for a Google review after every install, while the relief of having heating back is fresh. Our guide to getting more Google reviews has scripts that don’t feel awkward.
Then work through our profile setup guide and how to rank in the map results. Done properly, this alone can outperform a paid directory listing in most areas.
A website that ranks for boiler searches
The map pack has three spots, and on many searches Google shows regular results first. A website gives you a second and third way onto the page, and it’s where research-stage homeowners end up reading.
What matters for a gas engineer’s site: a dedicated boiler installation page for your main town, honest pricing guidance (pages that answer “how much” win boiler traffic), photos of your work, your Gas Safe details, and reviews pulled through where people can see them. This is exactly what our SEO for gas engineers service builds, and our marketing guide for tradesmen explains how the pieces fit together.
Time it for boiler season
Boiler demand isn’t flat. Enquiries climb from September, spike with the first cold snap, and stay strong through February. Two things follow:
- Build in summer. Rankings and reviews compound slowly. The profile work and website pages you sort in August are what put you in front of the November surge. Starting your marketing in November is like fitting the boiler after the freeze.
- Buy in winter, if at all. If you do use directories or credits, use them to top up capacity during the peak, not as a year-round subscription that drips money through the quiet months.
The order we’d do it in
- This week: claim and complete your Google Business Profile, and ask your last five happy customers for a review.
- This month: get a website in place with a proper boiler installation page for your area, or fix the one you have.
- Before the cold: keep reviews coming weekly and add photos of every install.
- Ongoing: treat any bought leads as a top-up, and track what each channel actually costs you per booked job.
If you’d rather have it done for you, that’s our whole business. SEO for gas engineers starts at £99 a month including the website, and we’ll tell you straight if your area is winnable. Get in touch before your competitors’ boiler season starts.