Cost per lead is the first number most contractors ask about and the last one they should judge a campaign by. It still matters. It tells you whether your money is buying attention or burning off. But a lead price only means something next to the job it turns into.
On the campaigns we run for trades, cost per lead lands between $7 and $24. That is a real range from real accounts, and the spread inside it is not random.
Why the range is that wide
Two forces set the floor. How many people in your market need the work right now, and how many companies are bidding for the same attention.
- Urgency. A roof leak or storm damage creates its own demand. A garage floor coating has to go create it, so it takes more impressions to find the same buyer.
- Gutter work spikes in fall and tree service spikes after wind, so the same budget buys a different number of leads in March than it does in October.
- In a metro with hundreds of competing contractors, attention costs more than it does in a county with a handful.
- A free inspection with a real time slot pulls harder than contact us for a quote, and pulling harder is what lowers the price.
What drives your cost per lead up
Most of the time the platform is not the problem. Four things account for nearly every underperforming account we take over.
- Slow follow-up. A lead that sits for an hour is a different lead. Your close rate falls, so you need more leads to book the same revenue, and your real cost per job climbs even when the dashboard number holds steady.
- A weak landing page. If the ad promises a roof inspection and the page opens with your company history, people leave. You paid for that click either way.
- Targeting that is too broad. Twenty five miles of radius around a shop that only services six of those zip codes means paying to be seen by people you would not drive to.
- One creative running for months. Once the same people have seen the same photo twenty times, the platform works harder to place it and charges you for the effort.
What good looks like
A healthy account is boring to watch. Cost per lead moves inside a narrow band week to week instead of swinging. Calls and form fills both come in, not just one. The leads name the service in their own words instead of asking what you do. And when you raise the budget, the cost per lead moves a little rather than doubling.
If you only check one thing each week, check whether the leads are the kind of work you want. A cheap lead for a job you would rather not take is not cheap.
Track cost per booked job, not cost per lead. The second number is only a means to the first.
When a $40 lead is still profitable
Price on its own tells you nothing. Run it against your own math instead.
Say your average job is nine thousand dollars and you close one in four of the leads you actually speak to. Four leads at $40 each is $160 of ad spend to win nine thousand dollars of work. That is a good trade. Now take a $12 lead for a six hundred dollar repair where you close one in ten. That is $120 in ad spend against six hundred dollars, before materials and labor. The cheaper lead is the worse deal.
- Know your average job value by service, not as one blended number.
- Know your close rate on leads you reached, not on leads you received.
- Multiply leads needed per job by cost per lead. That is your real acquisition cost.
When that number sits comfortably under your gross profit per job, the campaign is doing its work. When it does not, look at follow-up speed and the landing page before you touch the bid. Those two fix more accounts than bidding ever has.
One more habit worth building. Write down the cost per lead you can live with before the campaign launches, not after you see the first week. It keeps you from killing something that was working and from defending something that was not.