How To Find Lucrative Niches for Local Lead Generation | 9 Actionable Steps Towards High Value Clients |IPPEI

Look for industries with a high volume of companies
Look for expensive services
Copy popular niches that other marketers are targeting
Identify services that require larger teams
Interview business owners
Test your lead generation campaigns across different industries
Focus on becoming an expert in one niche
Focus on niches you understand well
Don’t overlook B2B services

You can find industries with many clients to sell leads to by checking the amount of businesses listed on member directories like the Plumbing-Heating-Cooling Contractors Association and local directories like Yelp. Discover services with high profit potential by reading home improvement cost guides and looking for unique features on luxury home listings. Learn which local lead generation niches other marketers are having success with by reading conversations on forums like Reddit. Identify services that require larger teams to operate by searching Google for service providers that operate around the clock. Speak directly to business owners to uncover the intimate details about their business, like their average profit margin.

I’ve been finding lucrative niches for local lead generation for over a decade now. In the following article, I reveal some of my favorite tactics for finding the most profitable lead generation niches.

1. Look for industries with a high volume of companies to find lucrative niches for local lead generation

Check industry specific databases or directories, like the National Roofing Contractors Association for the roofing niche, to see how many results appear for your target niche in different locations.

Search your target niche on local directories, like Angi, Yelp, or Foursquare, to see how many results appear for your target niche.

Check local government databases, such as the official website of the City of Chicago, to see how many contractors have active licensing. Although you’ll usually only find these databases for major cities, they typically include contractors for the smaller surrounding cities you may want to target as well.

Search Google for your target niche in different geographic locations to see how many businesses have Google My Business (GMB) listings and websites in the target niche.

An industry with a high volume of business owners indicates a lucrative niche for local lead generation because there are more opportunities to make money. There are more business owners to secure as clients. Furthermore, many businesses performing the same service indicates a high demand for that service. That means there are likely many customers seeking that service, so there are more opportunities to generate and sell leads in the niche.

2. Look for expensive services to find lucrative niches for local lead generation

Browse home improvement cost guides from websites like Home Guide, Home Advisor, and Thumbtack. Home improvement cost guides disclose the cost of a service in the home improvement niche. For example, the difference in price between installing a bay window compared to a vinyl window.

Review listings of luxury homes in wealthy areas on real estate platforms like Zillow, Realtor, and Redfin to identify common premium features. Premium features can include swimming pools, spa facilities, home theaters, smart home systems, and solar panels. These are luxuries rather than necessities, often coming at an expensive price for wealthier home owners.

Use Google to research the average cost range of these luxury premium features to verify pricing.

Expensive products and services often allow for higher profit margins. Esteemed digital marketing and sales expert Lilach Bullock says that high ticket sales can generate profit margins up to 10 times greater than low ticket sales. As such, targeting more expensive offers can allow you to generate more money per lead you generate.

3. Copy popular niches that other marketers are targeting to find lucrative niches for local lead generation

Read experiences from lead generators on public online forums like Reddit, Black Hat World, and Warrior Forum. Here is a discussion snippet from a Reddit thread titled “What are your favorite niches for local lead-gen?”

Join a private local lead generation community and see what niches other group members mention targeting frequently. Students in our program often post the niches they are targeting in our private Facebook group.

Watch local lead generation content creators, such as myself or my former student, Nick Wood, to see what niches we recommend to our audience. For example, Nick often recommends the concrete niche. I often recommend the roofing niche because of my success getting lucrative 2%-10% commission deals for roofing projects ranging from $10,000-$100,000.

Leveraging the knowledge and experiences of other people who are successful with local lead generation is a smart tactic for finding lucrative niches. If someone else is making good money from a local lead generation niche, there’s a good probability that you can, too.

4. Identify services that require larger teams to find lucrative niches for local lead generation

Ask ChatGPT to list services that typically require teams of 5 or more people to carry out projects.

Search Google with “24/7 service” [city] to find businesses that offer 24/7 services. Businesses that can offer round-the-clock service typically require larger teams to operate.

Larger teams signal bigger project capacity and a higher volume of lead generation opportunities. Roofing, for instance, is a lucrative niche typically requiring a 5-person crew. Roof replacements can cost between $6,000 and $50,000, according to NerdWallet.

Many roofers work as contractors for larger companies like Elo Roofing in Jacksonville, which has around 75 roofers (Buzzfile). Supplying leads to companies like this allows your agency to feed multiple teams and get paid for more jobs, unlike smaller businesses that may only handle one project per week.

5. Interview business owners to find lucrative niches for lead generation

Identify business owners that you are interested in generating leads for. Reach out to the business owners to have a brief meeting so you can learn about their business operations from a first-hand perspective. Offer value, like free marketing consulting, to get them to take the meeting.

Prepare a list of questions to uncover more about their business and niche. Some questions to ask include:

What is your most profitable service, and what’s your average profit margin on it?
Do you have a consistent stream of new customers, or do you rely mostly on repeat business?
What challenges do you face in attracting high-quality leads, and where do you typically get them from?
How do you currently nurture leads, and what’s your conversion rate from leads to customers?
What is the average lifetime value of a customer, and what services do they tend to buy most frequently?

Speaking directly with business owners is one of the most effective ways to gauge a niche’s potential. It gives you insider insights and real financial data, which is far more valuable than the generic numbers you can find online.

6. Test your lead generation campaigns across different industries to find lucrative niches for local lead generation

Choose at least 5 - 10 different niches to test. Perform due diligence to find low competition markets where you have a good chance to rank websites for these niches. Implement a local SEO campaign to get these sites to rank and generate leads. Once a site is ranking, get a CallSling tracking phone number and put it on the website so you can easily transfer phone calls to potential business owners in the niches you’re testing.

Find a business you want to work with and configure CallSling to forward the calls that your website generates to them. Add a whisper message in CallSling to inform the business owner that your business is sending them the leads.

Call the business owner and inform them that you have been sending them leads. They should already know who you are because of the CallSling whisper message and be interested in working with you. Sell them on a commission deal so they have minimal risk in trying your service and nothing to lose by receiving leads from you. Coordinate a commission rate between 2%-10%.

Track key metrics to measure performance of your local lead generation sites in different niches, including:

Lead volume: How many leads a website in a niche is producing.
Lead value: The average amount of money each lead makes you in the niche.
Cost per lead (CPL): How much money you are spending to generate each lead in the niche.
Conversion rates: How often are the leads converting into customers for the business owner so you can earn a commission.

Testing your lead generation campaigns across different industries allows you to directly evaluate which niches are the most profitable through your own experience. By keeping track of key metrics, you can identify which industries deliver the best ROI and double down.

7. Focus on becoming an expert in one niche to find lucrative niches for local lead generation

Research local lead generation niche options and choose one to focus your business on. Develop a deep knowledge of the niche by reading industry trade publications, talking to business owners, and studying the types of services the niche offers and their typical profitability. Attend niche events like conferences, expos, and local business networking meetups to form direct connections with business owners and key players in the niche.

Build out a portfolio of digital properties to generate leads in the niche. Use the process to learn the most precise actions you can take for efficiently ranking websites in the niche.

Being the best at generating leads for one specific niche can enable you to make a niche lucrative through your superior knowledge and connections. You can optimize your profit margins by understanding the most efficient way to generate leads in the niche. By attaining a deep understanding of the niche’s business owners and their common pain points, you can increase your sales conversion rate to sign more clients. You may even develop a positive reputation among business owners in the niche and get more opportunities through referrals.

8. Focus on niches you understand well to find lucrative niches for local lead generation

Create a list of your education history, work experience, and hobbies. Consider each list item in the context of local business to uncover local lead generation niche ideas where you might have a competitive advantage.

For example, maybe you spent your college summers working for a lawn care maintenance business. You probably have insider knowledge about how a lawn care business secures and retains clients, how much money employees make, and the common problems a lawn care business owner faces.

You can use your firsthand experience with an industry to create better messaging and offers that attract and convert prospects more effectively. Any niche can become lucrative if you can stack enough paying customers. Furthermore, understanding a niche well can enable you to uncover potential sub niches to target that may prove lucrative. Continuing with the lawn care example, lawn aeration is a sub niche beyond simple lawn trimming services. Lawn aeration costs $140 on average, according to Angi.

9. Don’t overlook B2B services to find lucrative niches for local lead generation

Consider whether a niche is common in the B2B space, not just B2C. Prompt a generative AI tool like ChatGPT to come up with a list of B2B local services. Validate these ideas by searching for your target B2B service keyword in the markets you want to target. Look if there are already businesses offering that B2B service appearing in Google SERPs. Use a keyword research tool like Ahrefs to see if there is search volume for the B2B service keyword.

Many people choose to target B2C services for local lead generation because there are more opportunities to generate leads. However, some B2B services can offer sufficient opportunities and be highly lucrative. That’s because B2B service contracts are often much larger than B2C.

Consider the difference between a residential versus a commercial roofing project. Data from Angi highlights that residential roofs cost between $5,867-$13,213 on average. Commercial roofing projects range anywhere between $4,500-$600,000 typically. That’s because commercial roofing projects cost between $5-$15 per square foot depending on the materials used, according to Lancaster Roofing. Data from Built-Mor Buildings shows that commercial buildings typically range from 900 to 40,000 square feet.

I have a roofing client who does both residential and commercial roofing projects. They recently won a commercial roofing project for $3.4 million. Although I was mostly focused on generating residential roofing leads for them, I’m looking for more commercial roofing opportunities now because we have a commission deal in place. By targeting commercial roofing projects, I can earn a much higher commission payment from my leads.

commercial roofing vs residential roofing

What are the most lucrative niches for local lead generation?

The most lucrative niches for local lead generation include:

Fence installation ($2,500-$7,500 per 100 feet)
Tree removal ($500-$2,000 per tree)
Gutter installation ($1,284-$3,725 per project)
Roof installation (around $10,000 for residential)
Siding replacement ($10,000-$32,500 per project)
Solar panel installation ($15,000-$25,000 per project)
Exterior house painting ($1,700-$6,800 per project)

How to start a local lead generation business that is lucrative?

Start a local lead generation business that is lucrative by:

Choosing a profitable local lead generation niche
Performing due diligence to find low-competition markets
Creating websites and Google Business Profiles targeting that niche in those markets
Using local SEO to rank your digital assets on the first page of Google for target keywords
Selling the leads these assets generate to motivated business owners
Building more lead generation properties to scale your income

Conclusion: Why is generating leads with SEO more lucrative than using PPC ads?

Generating leads with SEO is more lucrative than using PPC ads because it’s more cost-effective, provides long-term ROI, and delivers higher-quality leads.

Ranking a website with local SEO typically costs between $500–$5,000 total. In contrast, data from SEMrush shows that most small businesses spend $500–$10,000 per month on Google Ads just to keep generating leads.

With SEO, once your website ranks, the leads come from free organic traffic. There’s no ongoing ad spend. After the initial investment, you can continue generating leads at no extra cost and sell them to business owners for $500–$2,500+ per month. With PPC, the leads stop the moment you stop spending.

SEO leads from local lead generation websites also tend to be more valuable because they come from people actively searching for a solution, showing high purchase intent. In contrast, PPC ads, especially on social media or display networks, often target users who aren’t actively looking for a service, making those leads colder and harder for a business owner to convert.