Paying a 3rd party company up to $140 per lead. Any ideas on first steps to reducing cost or bringing the lead generation in house?

Expensive. What is your closing rate?

We have some experience building platforms for such purposes. Here is essentially what you need.
Servers now a days can generate dummy place holder websites (landing pages) that are optimized for search marketing.

Search Marketing is more than SEO is a web of social media interactions, content creation, links used in your social media, location enabling each time you upload, branding, shares, etc. having server generate websites you can have hundreds of simple lead generation pages created after each Google query. You couple them with blogs, reviews, videos, pay per click...

I would say that you are looking at spending about $100 per hour or more creating this system but once is done the cost could reduce itself to $10 per lead or so. Maybe less depending on your industry and brand strength.

Tip: While conducting your research never query a Google search and click on your competitors links. In googles "mind" this tells its crawlers that you searched and found something relevant so it will from now on include that link to the search you typed, hence giving more SEO power to your competitors link.
If you must, right click and copy the link then in an incognito window paste the link itself. Never off a search result.

Happy marketing. ;)

While you may want to bring lead generation in house, you first need to ask these questions:
-- Do you know what the lifetime customer value is?
-- Does the cost of this lead generation tactic exceed the LCV? If so, then it's imperative to seek out alternatives.
-- Are these highly qualified leads?
-- What is the conversion rate of these leads?
-- How long is the sales cycle?
-- Consider the costs of in-house lead generation staff such as marketing strategist, copywriter, web developer, content writer, sales people, etc.
-- Then think of the marketing spend to acquire a lead such as search, remarketing, email lists, direct mail, print, trade shows, etc.

I would recommend testing a few new easy to implement tactics and comparing costs and lead quality to existing lead generation tactics.

Please let me know if I can help strategize. -- Sara

You don't sound confident about building your own funnel. Why is that?

The cost of a lead is irrelevant on its own. It has meaning in relation to something: the value of the sale, and the lifetime value of the customer (LTV).

If your lead cost is averaging $100, and your margin on a sale is $500, then you can afford about 5 leads to convert that sale and break even. That means you need a 20% conversion rate, which further means these leads had better be good ie. pre-qualified.

If your margin is $5000, then the $100 lead price pales in comparison. You have a large number of "at bats" to convert one sale and it doesn't really matter how many you need as long as it is reasonable. For instance, even if 20 leads are required on average to get a sale, and that adds up to about $2000, you still make $3000 profit and that's the name of the game.

Get it running first so you can measure and therefore manage the funnel you've got. Then you can optimize for higher conversions and/or better pre-qualified traffic sources.

Right now I don't see an understanding of how a funnel works, or a baseline. I highly recommend getting those things straightened out first.

1. Stop buying leads!

If you can buy leads, everyone else on the planet can buy leads, too. Buying leads is both ineffective and immoral. Besides the fact that purchasing leads is a violation of a person's privacy and a fantastic way to destroy trust, purchased leads are usually complete garbage.

Like most people, you probably get angry when you receive spam, cold calls, etc. Why, then, do you think that people are happy to receive spam and cold calls from you? Are you really that special? Is your business really that amazing? Probably not. You are just another spammer trying to buy your way into a person's or business' wallet.

2. Create a marketing strategy based on content.

To distinguish yourself from the countless businesses that are just like you, you need to create unique, compelling, and valuable content and give it away for free. Content marketing builds trust, and trust builds revenues. If a customer trusts you, they will pay you. The more a customer trusts you, the more they will pay you.

If you need help developing a content marketing strategy, let me know. I am happy to help you. But, you need to stop purchasing leads immediately because you are wasting your time, energy, and money.

There is no such thing as a "better list." Stop trying to find it. Instead, invest in your business and create assets (i.e., content) that sustain your business over the long run.

1) start lead scoring and ROI tracking by source (agency, campaign)
2) work with more than one agency to make them compete
3) explore agencies that will help you build an in-house team

I could ping my network if you want referrals on agencies
...H