Home Service Marketing Benchmarks: What Should You Actually Be Paying Per Lead?
Key Takeaways
- Average home services CPC is $7.85 but painters pay $13.74 and construction pays just $5.31 (LocaliQ 2025)
- Roofing leads cost $228.15 each while pool and spa leads cost $45.15 (LocaliQ 2025)
- Home services average CVR is 10.22% - well above the all-industry average of 7.52%
- Multi-touch follow-up (7 messages over 5 days) achieves 89.86% response rate vs 8.56% for single-touch
- Keep cost per acquisition under 10-15% of average job value and factor in lifetime value
88% of home services businesses saw their click-through rates increase over the past year, according to LocaliQ’s 2025 report analyzing 3,211 US-based home services campaigns. But 75% also saw their cost per click go up.
You’re paying more per click and getting more engagement. Whether that math works in your favor depends entirely on your trade, your close rate, and whether you’re tracking the right numbers. Proper attribution in home service marketing goes beyond lead counts to reveal what you’re actually paying for results.
Why cost per lead lies to you
Say you run two ad campaigns side by side for a month.
Campaign A delivers 100 leads at $50 each. Campaign B delivers 50 leads at $100 each. You spent $5,000 on both.
Most contractors pick Campaign A as the winner. Twice the leads for the same money.
Run the numbers further. Campaign A had an 8% close rate, turning 100 leads into 8 jobs at $625 per acquired customer. Campaign B had a 25% close rate, turning 50 leads into 12 jobs at $417 per acquired customer.
Campaign B produced 50% more jobs and cost you $208 less per sale. The “expensive” leads were the cheap ones all along.
One contractor on ContractorTalk put it bluntly: “if the customer doesn’t call me within a week or so, he’s not going to.” That mindset is why benchmarks without close rate data are misleading. A $45 lead you never follow up on costs you infinitely more than a $228 lead you close.
You have to track all the way to revenue. Cost per lead is just the opening number, not the final score. Learn more about tracking marketing attribution through to closed jobs.
What the 2025 benchmarks look like
LocaliQ analyzed 3,211 US-based home services campaigns running on Google and Microsoft Ads from April 2024 through March 2025. The report uses medians rather than means, which gives you a more accurate picture by filtering out the outliers that skew averages.
Two macro trends are driving the numbers. High interest rates and low housing inventory mean fewer people are moving. Instead, homeowners are investing in renovations and repairs, which is pushing demand (and ad costs) up across most trades.
The overall home services average cost per click is $7.85 and the average cost per lead is $90.92. But those averages hide massive variation by trade.
CPC benchmarks by trade
What you pay per click depends heavily on your trade. Painters and electricians pay two to three times what construction contractors pay.
| Trade | Median CPC |
|---|---|
| Construction & Contractors | $5.31 |
| Garages | $5.75 |
| Pools & Spas | $5.81 |
| Roofing & Gutters | $10.70 |
| Electricians & Electrical | $12.18 |
| Paint & Painting | $13.74 |
| Overall Home Services | $7.85 |
Paint and painting contractors pay the highest CPC at $13.74, more than double what construction and garage contractors pay. If you’re a painter running Google Ads and your CPC is under $14, you’re at or below the median for your trade.
Electricians aren’t far behind at $12.18 per click. Roofing sits at $10.70. If your CPC is significantly above these numbers, your keyword strategy or quality scores may need attention.
CPL benchmarks by trade
Cost per lead tells a different story than cost per click because conversion rates vary by trade. A low CPC doesn’t guarantee a low CPL.
| Trade | Median CPL |
|---|---|
| Pools & Spas | $45.15 |
| Cleaning/Maid Services | $46.99 |
| Handyman Services | $54.05 |
| Construction & Contractors | $165.67 |
| Doors & Windows Sales | $200.34 |
| Roofing & Gutters | $228.15 |
| Overall Home Services | $90.92 |
The spread here is dramatic. Roofing and gutter contractors pay $228.15 per lead while pool and spa companies pay $45.15. That’s a 5x difference.
A roofing lead at $228 that converts into a $12,000 roof replacement is a completely different calculation than a $45 pool cleaning lead that converts into a $200 service call. You have to measure CPL against what the job is actually worth.
If you’re a roofer and your CPL is under $228, you’re performing at or below the industry median. If you’re a cleaning company paying $90 per lead, you’re paying nearly double what the median shows and should investigate why your ads may not be converting.
Conversion rate tells the real story
The average conversion rate for home services is 10.22%, according to the same LocaliQ data. That’s meaningfully higher than the all-industry average of 7.52%.
Home services convert better because the intent behind the search is strong. Someone searching “emergency plumber near me” at 11pm isn’t browsing. That urgency drives higher conversion rates across the board.
But conversion rate only measures who became a lead. It doesn’t tell you who became a customer.
A contractor on ContractorTalk described his follow-up approach for different job sizes: “Full remodel/or about 20K plus (three times, approx once every 4-5 days). Dinky job or service call (ONCE).” Another replied: “In general we try for at least 6 contacts to get name recognition.”
Follow-up behavior varies wildly, and that variation is where the real gap between winning and losing contractors shows up. A 10% conversion rate means nothing if your close rate on those leads is 5%.
Understanding why leads aren’t converting to jobs matters more than obsessing over your CPL.
The follow-up multiplier
Most of the money you’re leaving on the table isn’t in your ad spend. It’s in the leads you already paid for but never properly worked.
Hatch’s analysis of 132K+ HVAC campaigns found that single-touch follow-up gets an 8.56% response rate. A multi-touch sequence of 7 messages over 5 days pushes that to 89.86%. That’s a 10x difference in responses from leads you already paid to generate.
Wilson Plumbing built an inside sales team specifically to follow up on unsold estimates. That team now generates $400K per month by working leads that would have otherwise gone cold.
If you’re spending $5,000 a month on ads and only following up once, you’re effectively throwing away 90% of those leads. You don’t need a bigger ad budget. You need a better follow-up system.
Speed to lead is the first piece of that puzzle. The second piece is persistence, reaching out multiple times through multiple channels before you give up on a lead.
What’s a good cost per acquisition?
The standard rule for home services: keep your cost per acquisition under 10-15% of your average job value.
A $5,000 average ticket means you can afford $500-750 to acquire that customer. A $500 average ticket means you need to keep acquisition cost around $50-75.
That math changes when you factor in customer lifetime value. A first-time HVAC customer who signs a maintenance agreement, calls you for repairs, and refers two neighbors over the next decade is worth far more than the initial invoice. If your average customer is worth $15,000 over their lifetime, paying $1,500 to acquire them is a 10% acquisition cost even though it looked expensive on day one.
The contractors who can afford to outspend competitors on ads are almost always the ones who’ve figured out retention. Maintenance agreements, seasonal check-ups, and referral programs turn a one-time job into a multi-year revenue stream. That gives you permission to pay more upfront because you know the payback period.
Monthly review framework
Tracking benchmarks once is useful. Tracking them every month is what actually moves the needle.
Pull these numbers from every lead source each month: cost per lead, cost per sale, close rate, and total revenue generated. A simple spreadsheet works. Your CRM works better if it supports full-funnel attribution.
Compare your CPL and CPC against the trade-specific medians above. If you’re a roofer paying $300 per lead, you’re above the $228 median and should look at your targeting, landing pages, or ad copy. If you’re a pool company at $30 per lead, you’re outperforming and might benefit from increasing spend.
Watch the ratio between cost per lead and cost per sale. If your cost per lead is low but your cost per sale is high, your leads aren’t closing. That’s either a quality issue, a speed-to-lead problem, or a sales process issue.
If both numbers are high, you’re overpaying for leads that don’t convert.
Track quarter over quarter, not just month to month. Seasonal swings distort monthly comparisons. Build at least a year of data before making major budget shifts.
The contractors who grow aren’t the ones spending the most on marketing. They’re the ones who know exactly what every dollar produces and cut what doesn’t work fast.
Where to go next
Response time kills more good leads than bad targeting ever will. The 5-minute rule explains the data behind that claim. If you’re generating leads but not booking jobs, read why your leads aren’t converting. To understand how retention changes the acquisition math, dig into customer lifetime value. And for a deeper look at how to connect every marketing dollar to actual revenue, see our measurement and attribution framework and feature set.
Written by
Pipeline Research Team