What is the trade promising, and what does your discount really cost you?
Every offer 210 bath remodelers were running on 8 October 2026, and how many of them make each one. Then put in your own job and see what close rate a discount has to buy before it pays for itself.
What the trade is promising
| Promise | Companies | Share | Ads |
|---|---|---|---|
| free consultation, estimate or quote | 160 | 76% | 2,182 |
| one-day install | 67 | 32% | 2,727 |
| a dollar amount off | 66 | 31% | 376 |
| a percentage off | 49 | 23% | 2,558 |
| financing, no interest or no payments | 42 | 20% | 362 |
| a lifetime warranty | 41 | 20% | 1,624 |
| "looking for N homeowners" | 16 | 8% | 1,341 |
How we counted this
| Promise | Pattern (case-insensitive, over title and body) |
|---|---|
| free consultation, estimate or quote | (?<!barrier-)\bfree\b[^.!?\n]{0,25}\b(consultation|estimate|quote|design) |
| one-day install | \b(one|1)[- ]day\b |
| a percentage off | \b(\d{2})\s?%\s*off\b |
| a dollar amount off | \$\s?\d{1,2}?,?\d{3}\s*(off|savings|instant|in savings)|\b(save|savings of)\s*\$\s?\d{1,2}?,?\d{3}\b |
| financing, no interest or no payments | \bno (interest|payments?)\b|\bfinancing\b|\b0\s?%\s*(apr|interest|financing) |
| "looking for N homeowners" | \blooking for \d+ homeowners\b |
| a lifetime warranty | \blifetime warranty\b |
A company counts once, however many ads carry the offer. 104 of the 210 are locations of two franchise systems, which run shared ad templates, so a promise in a template counts once per location. We count the board again every month.
How we checked the arithmetic
Each example below is run by this page every time it loads, against the answer worked out by hand.
A free consultation costs an estimator's afternoon and nothing off the job. A percentage off comes straight out of your profit on every job it sells.
How we worked this out
The arithmetic
A discount comes off the price, so all of it comes out of gross profit. Gross profit on a job is value times margin; after the discount it is that minus the discount. At the same close rate you earn less per visit by exactly close rate times discount. The close rate that earns it back is today's close rate times gross before over gross after. If gross after is zero or negative, no close rate reaches it: the discount is larger than the profit.
Typing in one discount box clears the other. "Per 100 visits" is the discount times the number of jobs those visits sell at today's close rate.
Read it against the board
The board says what the trade promises; the arithmetic says what a promise costs you. A free consultation costs an estimator's afternoon and nothing off the job. A percentage off costs a share of gross that rises with the percentage and falls with margin. The board shows how many companies make each promise; it cannot show what any of them earned from it.
What it leaves out
- Volume. A discount can raise leads as well as close rate. This page holds visits fixed and asks only what each visit has to do.
- Financing offers, which cost a fee to a lender rather than a share of the job. Different arithmetic.
- Anchoring: a "50% off" on an inflated list price is not a 50% discount. The board counts the words, not the truth of them.
How many booked estimates happened is the number most owners can only guess, from memory. The system behind this site counts each one.