VIIRL and eLocal Forge Alliance to End Wasted Spend for Contractors

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – January 06, 2026 – A new strategic partnership announced today aims to reshape how home service businesses acquire and convert customers, tackling long-standing industry challenges of lead quality and marketing inefficiency. VIIRL, an intelligent all-in-one Marketing as a Service (MaaS) platform, is joining forces with eLocal, a leader in pay-per-call advertising, to create an integrated solution designed to deliver measurable revenue growth for contractors nationwide.

The collaboration combines eLocal’s established strength in generating high-intent consumer phone leads with VIIRL’s unified platform for marketing, automation, and analytics. The move promises to provide businesses in sectors like plumbing, HVAC, and electrical services a more predictable and transparent path to scaling their operations.

Addressing a Fragmented and Costly Market

The home services industry, projected to grow into a more than $1.2 trillion market by 2025, remains notoriously difficult for individual contractors to navigate. Fierce competition and the increasing complexity of the digital landscape have made effective marketing a significant hurdle. Many small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) grapple with inconsistent lead quality, spending valuable resources chasing prospects that never convert.

This inefficiency is compounded by rising advertising costs. In 2024 alone, the average cost-per-conversion on Google Ads surged by 16% for HVAC services and a staggering 23% for electrical leads. Even Google’s popular Local Service Ads (LSA) platform saw costs climb, making every lead more precious. Businesses often find themselves pouring money into various channels with little ability to track which efforts are actually generating profitable jobs, a problem the industry refers to as the challenge of 'revenue attribution.'

Furthermore, the modern customer journey has grown more complex, often involving multiple touchpoints across different platforms before a hiring decision is made. For a small business owner who also serves as the lead technician and bookkeeper, managing this multifaceted process is nearly impossible, leading to missed opportunities and wasted ad spend. This partnership is positioned as a direct response to these pain points.

A 'Fuel and Engine' Approach to Customer Acquisition

Leaders from both companies describe the partnership as a synergistic combination of distinct strengths. “eLocal’s leadership in driving high-quality, high-intent demand is the fuel, and VIIRL’s intelligent platform is the engine,” explained Jeff Paradise, CEO of eLocal. “We’ve been incredibly impressed by the VIIRL team’s innovative approach to the market, and together, we are providing service businesses with a sophisticated, data-backed path to scale that simply didn't exist before.”

Under the new integration, the high-intent phone leads generated through eLocal’s extensive network—which includes owned properties like Citysearch.com and partnerships with major search engines—will flow directly into the VIIRL platform. eLocal’s model is built on a rigorous qualification process, using filtering and verification to ensure that a call represents a genuine customer with a real need within the contractor's service area. Businesses typically only pay for these valid, exclusive leads.

Once inside the VIIRL ecosystem, these leads can be managed and nurtured through an automated, centralized system. VIIRL’s platform unifies websites, SEO, paid advertising management, and customer engagement tools, allowing contractors to optimize the entire customer lifecycle. This integration is designed to improve close rates and provide a clear line of sight from a specific lead source directly to booked revenue.

“We have long admired the quality of leads eLocal delivers, and we are thrilled to bring that caliber of demand into the VIIRL ecosystem,” said Jed Winkler, President of VIIRL. “When high-intent leads meet our marketing platform contractors gain a more predictable and measurable path to growth.”

Beyond Clicks to Measurable Revenue

The collaboration speaks to a broader industry shift away from vanity metrics like clicks and impressions toward performance-based marketing focused on tangible return on investment (ROI). The core value proposition is the elimination of the “guesswork that often surrounds customer acquisition.” By providing real-time reporting and analytics that tie every marketing dollar to actual revenue, the joint solution aims to give contractors the confidence to invest in growth.

VIIRL has already built a reputation for delivering this level of accountability. The company’s internal data shows its clients achieved an average 5.5x return on ad spend (ROAS) in 2024. Case studies highlight this impact vividly: one plumbing company generated over $601,000 in revenue through a VIIRL-managed digital strategy, while an air conditioning contractor achieved a 12.8x ROAS and over $1.6 million in new revenue. By injecting eLocal's pre-qualified leads into this performance-driven system, the partnership expects to amplify these results.

This focus on measurable outcomes is critical for home service providers who operate on tight margins. Instead of juggling multiple vendors and trying to manually connect the dots between a Yelp ad, a website form submission, and a final invoice, contractors will have a single dashboard view of their entire marketing funnel. This streamlined workflow allows teams to focus on delivering excellent service rather than chasing down leads.

Empowering Contractors in a Competitive Landscape

Ultimately, the partnership is being framed as a move to empower the tradespeople who form the backbone of the home services industry. It aims to level the playing field by giving smaller contractors access to the kind of sophisticated, integrated marketing technology that was once the exclusive domain of large enterprises. With over a third of SMBs actively considering new marketing technology, the market appears ready for such a solution.

The strategic backing of eLocal’s parent company, Brookfield Asset Management, adds another layer of significance. As a global asset manager with other strategic investments in the home services sector, Brookfield's involvement suggests the partnership may be part of a larger vision for building an integrated ecosystem of services and technologies for the industry.

The initial rollout of the integrated solution is slated for early 2026. Phase 1 will focus on delivering core capabilities for lead routing, comprehensive reporting, and conversion tracking, setting the foundation for what could become a new standard for marketing performance in the home services space.