Yes, I've been using SM for over 5 years now. You can do a search and find lots of threads here on Lawnsite over the years where I've discussed my experience with them.
As time passes, I am becoming more and more frustrated with SM. The quality of the leads are not always very good. We're quicker to respond than almost all of our competition is in this area because I have a full time dedicated office staff who are responding to leads almost instantly. And still, we get a pretty high percentage of leads who just don't return our calls. And that's frustrating because we have paid for those leads already. I'd say probably 40% of the leads we get never call us back. I don't know if they've lost interest, maybe it was a passing whim, they already found someone else, someone else was more persistant, I don't know. But for whatever reason, we get a LOT of them who won't even respond to our calls and book an appointment for a free estimate. So that really sucks.
Of the ones who do respond and book appointments with us, I find that we get a decent percentage of tire kickers. They are just feeling us out for price, but once they hear our rates, they aren't as interested anymore. I guess I'd generalize by saying that SM customers, overall, seem to be more "cheap" than customers we receive through our own website or from word of mouth or our truck lettering. So that's frustrating too.
My selling percentage is definitely a LOT lower with SM leads than it is with customers that come from another method of advertising.
Still, we got over $100,000 in jobs last year from Service Magic leads. I haven't added it all up. But it's possible maybe we even got more - like $200,000. And we did $1Mil in revenues last year. So I can't totally say SM isn't worth it. We probably spent $6K - $8K in lead fees last year. So my frustration is premised by the fact that SM customers are cheap, harder to land jobs with, don't return our calls, and compromise 80% of our advertising budget, yet only provide 10-20% of our revenues.
Some days I can't stand SM because I've given 20 bids in 2 or 3 weeks from them and not landing one freakin' job. But then all of a sudden I land a $25,000 job from one of their leads and all of a sudden I love them again!
It's a tough call. I am not quite ready to ditch Service Magic. But every year, I think about doing it more and more.
I think part of the problem is that I've raised prices fairly significantly - each year - over the last several years. My labor rates for 2007 are 45% higher than they were in 2004. So we're probably slowly working our way out of that market where people compare prices and into the market where people don't care so much about price and just want good quality and reliability.
I'd say it depends on where you are in your market. If you would consider yourself VERY competitive, when compared with other landscapers in your area, you'd probably do VERY well using SM. But if you would consider yourself more on the high end, then you may have a lot of the same frustrations I have with them.
One good thing is you are in full control. It doesn't cost much to try them out. You set your monthly and daily spending limits. You set the territory you want to receive leads from. You set the job tasks you want to get leads for. So you can limit all these things initially, just to try them out. And then expand your spending limits, territory, job tasks, etc. if you end up liking the service.
I've probably got more experience with Service Magic than any 5 guys combined here on Lawnsite. So if you have any more questions, let me know.