Q3 2026 edition · Instagram + TikTok · 1,274 videos
What content actually generates leads in your industry
Organic lead generation means getting customers from content instead of buying them. We measured 678 Instagram reels and 596 TikTok videos posted in 2026 by 76 US business accounts, scored each on comment rate, and set it beside what a paid lead costs in the same industry.
What a bought lead costs
- Life insurance $50 to $110
- Junk removal $36 to $70
- Contractors & remodeling $165.67
- Roofing $228.15
LocaliQ and InsureLeads, 2026
Median comment rate
Q3 2026- Life insurance 0.13% / 0.13%
- Junk removal 0.11% / 0.22%
- Contractors & remodeling 0.03% / 0.09%
- Roofing 0.01% / 0.05%
678 Instagram reels · 596 TikTok videos
Organic lead generation benchmarks by industry
Instagram and TikTok side by side for each industry, beside the cost per lead by industry when you buy it instead, so you can do the math yourself.
- Life insurance
Q3 2026 · paid lead $50 to $110 per final expense lead
View the life insurance dataInstagram0.13%
Top 10%: 0.68%
No comments: 26%
Likely customers: 0 of 42
TikTok0.13%
Top 10%: 0.64%
No comments: 33%
Likely customers: 3 of 53
- Junk removal
Q3 2026 · paid lead $36 to $70 per lead (search ads)
View the junk removal dataInstagram0.11%
Top 10%: 0.96%
No comments: 27%
Likely customers: 0 of 77
TikTok0.22%
Top 10%: 0.86%
No comments: 8%
Likely customers: 4 of 66
- Contractors & remodeling
Q3 2026 · paid lead $165.67 per lead (search ads)
View the contractors & remodeling dataInstagram0.03%
Top 10%: 0.42%
No comments: 33%
Likely customers: 1 of 47
TikTok0.09%
Top 10%: 0.44%
No comments: 25%
Likely customers: 5 of 41
- Roofing
Q3 2026 · paid lead $228.15 per lead (search ads)
View the roofing dataInstagram0.01%
Top 10%: 0.44%
No comments: 46%
Likely customers: 1 of 37
TikTok0.05%
Top 10%: 0.37%
No comments: 26%
Likely customers: 4 of 48
- Real estate: not measured yet. Next edition.
Your results may vary
Beat the median and you are beating the odds
These numbers are medians across 76 accounts in different cities, markets and audience sizes. Your account is not an average, and it may not follow the same pattern.
You might get more comments on TikTok than on Instagram, or the other way around, and turn more of them into leads. If your numbers sit above these, you are doing better than most businesses in your industry. If they sit below, the scale shows how far, and the index shows what the top accounts do differently.
Platform comparison
Instagram vs TikTok, industry by industry
Median comment rate
Instagram solid, TikTok lighter. Half the videos land below each bar.
Life insurance
Junk removal
Contractors & remodeling
Roofing
Comments from likely customers
Of the comments we read on each industry's top videos: price, location, appointment or product questions.
Life insurance
Junk removal
Contractors & remodeling
Roofing
How to read these numbers
Comment rate is comments divided by plays. We use it instead of views because a view is passive and a comment is someone raising a hand. It is the first measurable step toward a lead, and it is the number a business owner can compare across accounts of different sizes.
Median means half the videos landed below it. Top 10% is where the best performers start. Each industry's report has the full, filterable list of reels behind its row.
What is a good comment rate for a small business?
In our Q3 2026 index of 1,274 Instagram and TikTok videos from US businesses, the median comment rate ranged from 0.01% to 0.22% depending on industry and platform; the top 10% started between 0.37% and 0.96%.
Is TikTok or Instagram better for local business leads?
In this edition TikTok had the higher median comment rate in 3 of 4 industries, and more of its comments came from likely customers (16 of 208 on TikTok vs 2 of 203 on Instagram).
Is organic lead generation cheaper than buying leads?
It costs time instead of money. Paid search leads in these industries average $74.44 to $228.15 each in LocaliQ's latest search ad benchmarks; organic content has no cost per lead, but only a small share of comments come from likely customers, so it needs a follow-up system to pay off.
Which industries get the most engagement on social media?
Of the 4 industries we measured, on Instagram life insurance had the highest median comment rate (0.13%) and roofing the lowest (0.01%). On TikTok: life insurance 0.13%, junk removal 0.22%, contractors & remodeling 0.09%, roofing 0.05%.
Industry reports
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Q3 2026 · 142 reels
Life insurance
On Instagram, agents who get comments ask for them.
Open the index
-
Q3 2026 · 193 reels
Contractors & remodeling
Project videos get views, not conversations.
Open the index
-
Q3 2026 · 194 reels
Roofing
Roofers post to be seen, not to be answered.
Open the index
-
Q3 2026 · 149 reels
Junk removal
Junk removal reels that ask for the booking get it talked about.
Open the index
What holds true in every industry we've measured
- 01
Most videos get almost nothing
Between 8% and 46% of videos in each industry and platform got zero comments. A quiet video is normal, not a failure.
- 02
The account matters more than the format
On every platform and in every industry, the best account's median comment rate sat far above the weakest one's. Life insurance on Instagram: 0.42% vs 0.00%. Life insurance on TikTok: 0.25% vs 0.00%.
- 03
Most videos never ask for anything
64% to 84% of videos ended with no call to action at all, on both platforms: no keyword, no DM prompt, no “call us”.
- 04
Comments are rarely leads, but TikTok’s are closer
Of the 203 comments we read on top Instagram reels, 2 came from a likely customer. On TikTok it was 16 of 208: people asking for a price, a location or an appointment.
What does not transfer between industries
Social media lead generation advice is usually written as if it applies everywhere. In this data, the tactics that worked in one industry often did nothing in the next.
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Comment keywords
Life insurance, Instagram: 0.24% with a keyword (15) vs 0.12% without. Life insurance, TikTok: 0.04% with a keyword (15) vs 0.18% without. Contractors & remodeling, Instagram: 0.07% with a keyword (7) vs 0.03% without. Roofing, Instagram: 0.00% with a keyword (6) vs 0.01% without. The same prompt helped in some places and hurt in others: on insurance it lifted Instagram and sank TikTok.
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Video length
Life insurance: best at over 60s on Instagram, 15 to 30s on TikTok. Junk removal: best at 15 to 30s on Instagram, over 60s on TikTok. Contractors & remodeling: best at under 15s on Instagram, over 60s on TikTok. Roofing: best at 31 to 60s on Instagram, 31 to 60s on TikTok. There is no universal ideal length.
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Platform
TikTok had the higher median comment rate in 3 of 4 industries (junk removal, contractors & remodeling, roofing).
How we collect this
- One method, every industry
- For each industry and platform: hashtags to find accounts, 10 US businesses kept on written criteria, their 2026 videos, comments on the top videos and transcripts of the best. Instagram: 8 hashtags × 20 reels, up to 20 reels per account. TikTok: 6 hashtags × 15 videos, up to 15 per account (smaller caps to fit the scraping budget). Same labels, same rules, same day.
- Tools
- Apify Instagram Scraper, Instagram Reel Scraper and TikTok Scraper, run September 29, 2026. Labels are caption keyword rules, identical across industries and platforms. On TikTok, paid ads and sponsored posts are excluded.
- Choosing the industries
- We score candidates on search demand for “[industry] leads”, keyword difficulty, what advertisers pay per click, whether a paid cost-per-lead benchmark is published, and whether we work in the industry. Roofing and contractors scored highest after life insurance; junk removal joined because we work in it; real estate is next.
- Coverage
- 678 Instagram reels and 596 TikTok videos from 76 accounts. US businesses only. 411 comments read on the top videos.
- What is missing
- DMs, calls, website visits and sales are invisible to a scraper, so comments stand in for interest, not for leads. Ten accounts per industry is a sample, not a census. Facebook and YouTube are not covered yet.
- License
- Every dataset is free to reuse under CC BY 4.0, with credit to Digital Vibes Design.
- Refresh
- One industry added per quarter, and the oldest row refreshed at the same time, at these same URLs.
We run this for one industry per quarter. Tell us yours.