There is no universal good cost per lead. The right number comes from your own average job value and close rate, and anyone quoting a figure without those is guessing.
- Cost per lead is ad spend divided by genuine enquiries. Count wrong-suburb calls or job seekers and the number flatters you.
- Work the ceiling backwards: a $600 average job closed one in three makes a lead worth up to $200. Comfortably under that makes money.
- Two sparkies can run identical ads and have different good numbers, because urgency, job size and city bidding all move the maths.
- Cost per booked job is the truer test. A lead is only a maybe, and the fastest way to improve it is answering the phone.
- Inflated costs trace to the same leaks: no negative keywords, ads landing on a slow homepage, no tracking, or targeting outside your area.
Keep asking about it in
Quick answer: there is no universal good cost per lead for a plumber or electrician, and anyone quoting one without knowing your business is guessing. The right number comes from your own maths: what an average job is worth to you, times how many leads you turn into jobs. That tells you what a lead is worth. A good cost per lead sits comfortably under it. And the number that matters even more is the cost per booked job, because a lead is only a maybe.
What cost per lead actually means
Cost per lead is simple arithmetic: what you spent on ads, divided by the enquiries those ads produced. Spend $1,000 in a month and get ten enquiries, and each one cost you $100.
The trap is in what you count as a lead. A call from someone in a suburb you do not service is not a lead. Neither is a job seeker, or a form fill that never answers the phone. If those get counted, your cost per lead looks better than it is. Real tracking counts genuine enquiries only, which is why the same report can flatter one account and tell the truth in another.
Why nobody can quote you a universal number
Two electricians can run the same ads and have completely different “good” numbers.
- An emergency plumber doing after-hours burst pipes has high-value urgent jobs, so they can pay more per lead and still win.
- A sparky doing small residential jobs has less room, so the same cost per lead that works for the plumber would eat their margin.
- A big city with heavy bidding costs more per click than a regional town, before either business changes anything.
What a lead is worth also depends on charging properly in the first place. The going rates for nine trades, with call-out fees and award floors, are in our Australian tradie rates and benchmarks dataset.
So when an agency promises “leads for $X” before looking at your trade, your area and your jobs, treat it the way you would treat a customer asking you to quote a bathroom over the phone, sight unseen.
Work it out backwards from your own jobs
Here is the maths that actually answers the question, using your numbers instead of someone else’s benchmark.
- Take your average job value. Say a call-out for you averages $600.
- Take your close rate on enquiries. Say you book one in three.
- A lead is then worth up to $200 to you ($600 × 1/3). That is your ceiling.
A cost per lead comfortably under that ceiling makes money. One near or over it does not, no matter how normal it looks on a report. Bigger jobs move the ceiling up: a repipe or a switchboard upgrade buys a lot more room per lead than a tap washer. Run your own numbers through this and you have a better benchmark than any industry average, because it is yours.
The number above cost per lead
A lead is a maybe. It becomes money when it turns into a booked job, and plenty can go wrong between the two. Leads that ring out. Quotes that never get sent. Enquiries answered two days later, after someone else already got the job.
That is why cost per booked job is the truer test of an ad account, and it is the one we report on. It also explains a pattern we see often: the fastest way to improve your cost per booked job is not cheaper clicks, it is answering the phone. A missed call is a lead you paid for, handed to the next tradie on the list. We wrote about what that habit costs in why tradies lose jobs to missed calls.
How to bring your cost per lead down
Most inflated lead costs trace back to the same few leaks:
- No negative keywords, so the budget pays for searches that will never book
- Ads landing on a slow, cluttered homepage instead of a focused landing page
- No conversion tracking, so losing keywords quietly spend for months
- Broad targeting that buys clicks outside the area you actually service
None of these are exotic. They are maintenance, done or not done. A smaller budget with these leaks fixed regularly beats a bigger budget without, which is the same conclusion as our guide to what Google Ads cost for tradies.
How Web Blend tracks it
We track every call and form back to the click that caused it, count only genuine enquiries, and report your cost per lead and your cost per booked job side by side each month. Our Google Ads management is a fixed monthly fee agreed up front, separate from your ad budget, so you always know exactly what a job cost you to win.