What does a lead cost you, and what does a booked job?
Enter last month’s numbers. See your cost per lead, your real cost per booked job, where the leads went, and which fix would pay most.
Lead-to-job calculator
Where ten more points pays most
Arithmetic on the numbers you enter — nothing more. It is not a benchmark, a forecast or a claim about your account. The starting values are illustrative; replace them with your own. Nothing you type leaves this page unless you choose to send it with an audit request.
The arithmetic
How cost per lead is calculated, and what it leaves out.
Three formulas. The first is the one most reports lead with; the second is the one that pays the bills; the third tells you how much room you have.
Cost per lead
Ad spend ÷ leads
Counts every call and form the ads produced, booked or not.
Cost per booked job
Ad spend ÷ booked jobs
Counts only the leads that became a job on the schedule.
Break-even cost per job
Average ticket × gross margin
The most a job can cost in ads before it loses money.
Same cost per lead. Very different business.
Two contractors each spend $12,000 and get 300 leads: a $40 cost per lead for both. The first books one lead in two, so a booked job costs $80. The second books one in five, so a booked job costs $200. Their marketing reports look identical. Their bank accounts do not. The difference is rarely the ads alone — it is usually missed calls, slow callbacks and the wrong landing page.
How is cost per lead calculated?
Divide ad spend by the number of leads that spend produced, over the same period and from the same source. $12,000 that produced 300 unique calls and form fills is a $40 cost per lead. Count each person once — repeat calls and spam are not new leads.
What is cost per booked job?
Ad spend divided by the jobs that made it onto the schedule from that spend. It includes every lead nobody answered and every caller who did not book, which is exactly why it is the more honest number.
What is a good cost per lead for HVAC, plumbing or roofing?
There is no single good figure: it moves with the market, the service line and the season, and a repair lead and a replacement lead are worth very different amounts. A more useful test is the one in the calculator above — is your cost per booked job comfortably below your break-even, which is average ticket × gross margin?
Why can a lower cost per lead make results worse?
Cost per lead falls fastest when you buy cheaper, broader traffic: DIY searches, price shoppers, out-of-area calls. If those leads book less often, cost per booked job rises even while cost per lead looks better. That is why we report on cost per booked job instead.
The free 90-day account audit
We'll show you the leak before you pay us anything.
Three business days. A written three-fix priority list, and your real cost per booked job — calculated properly, probably for the first time.