After we published 56 leads for $700 for a gutter company, the obvious question was what the same kind of site does for a trade where the jobs are bigger and the calls are fewer. Mannino Excavation is that trade. Frank Mannino runs an excavation, grading, drainage, demolition and concrete company in central New Jersey, and he's been on Atlas since April.
How many leads did Mannino Excavation get from its website?
27 project inquiries from mid-April through October 12, 2026. They came through the main quote form, the town pages for Red Bank and South Brunswick, and the individual service pages. We counted every submission in Netlify and took out seven sales pitches (estimating services, "AI search" consultants, a topsoil supplier and a recruiter), our own test submissions, and two repeat submissions from the same person about the same project.
What does that cost per lead?
About $22. Six months at $100 a month, April through September, is $600, and $600 divided by 27 is $22.22. For a sense of scale, LocaliQ and WordStream's 2026 benchmarks put the average Google Ads lead in home and home improvement at $90.92.
Why does an excavation company need fewer leads?
Because one job can be worth more than years of the website. A gutter company lives on volume: lots of cleanings, some installs. An excavation company doesn't need 56 inquiries. It needs a few of the right ones. Here's what Mannino's 27 were actually asking about:
| Type of request | Examples from the inquiries |
|---|---|
| New construction and big site work | Excavation and a foundation for a new home in Saddle River. A 30x40 pole barn pad. A general contractor to help rebuild a home after a house fire. |
| Contractor and commercial work | A pool company looking for an excavation subcontractor. A snow removal company with commercial sites looking for help. |
| Drainage and grading | A dry well for sump pump and gutter water. A soil void next to a foundation wall. Regrading a backyard for usable space. Clearing chips and roots and regrading an old wooded area. |
| Demolition | A wood shed outbuilding. Twelve old pool deck pilings. A demolition project scheduled for October. |
| Concrete and patios | A concrete patio off a pool deck. Converting part of a lawn into a parking area. A pad for an above-ground pool. |
| Community projects | An Eagle Scout project and a patio for a church's outdoor classroom. |
Not every one of those will become a job, and some are small. But a new-home excavation, a commercial snow account or a steady subcontract with a pool builder isn't a $300 ticket. If even one of them closes, the site has paid for itself many times over.
Where did the leads come from?
All three types of pages pulled their weight. The general quote form caught people who knew they needed "an excavator." The service pages caught people searching for the specific thing, like drainage or demolition. The town pages for Red Bank and South Brunswick caught people searching locally. One homeowner wrote that Mannino was recommended on a Freehold community Facebook page. They didn't call from the Facebook thread. They looked the company up, found the site and filled out the form. That's a referral the website caught, not one it created, and it would have been easy to lose without a site.
What's the catch?
The same honest ones as any case study. This is one contractor in one area. We count inquiries, not closed jobs, and Frank knows his close rate better than we do. Some requests came from well outside his usual area, and a couple were community projects on a tight budget. And seven of the submissions were people selling something to Frank, which is why we take those out before counting anything. An earlier post of ours counted three of those pitches as leads. We've since corrected it.
Should an excavation contractor pay for a website?
If your average job is in the thousands, the math is hard to argue with. At about $22 per inquiry, one decent excavation, drainage or demolition job covers the site for years. What made Mannino's site work wasn't anything clever. It has a page for each service, pages for the towns it serves, and a quote form that's easy to find. We made the general case in why not spend $100 a month on a website that brings in leads.
Sources
- Mannino Excavation lead count: Netlify form submissions for manninoexcavationnj.com (main quote form, town pages and service pages), April to October 12, 2026, with sales pitches, tests and repeat submissions removed.
- LocaliQ, Search Advertising Benchmarks for Every Industry (2026 data, last updated June 1, 2026)
