The short version
Three separate costs
The work (agency fee), the ad spend (your money, never marked up), and the website build. Judge each one on its own.
A lead runs $45 to $230
Local Services Ads come in cheaper, Google Search higher, by trade. The home-services average is $91 (LocaliQ, 2025).
Budget 7 to 10 percent of revenue
Fee plus ad spend combined, per the U.S. Small Business Administration, and toward 12 percent when you are pushing to grow.
Watch the hidden costs
Markup on your ad spend, long contracts, and not owning your own accounts.
Cost per booked job is the number
Not cost per lead. It is the only one that pays your bills.
You got a marketing quote with one big number on it and no breakdown. That is not an accident. The number is built so you cannot tell what you are actually paying for. Here is the whole bill, in plain figures.
Our one piece of proof. At our own shop, the conversion tracking had been broken for six months, so most calls and forms were never counted. We fixed it and rebuilt the campaigns, and qualified leads (real calls and form fills) went from about 10 a month to 58. That is the only first-party number anywhere on this site. Every other figure below is sourced public industry data, labeled as such. We never dress up an industry average as a result we got for someone.
You are paying for three different things
Almost every contractor marketing quote bundles three things that have nothing to do with each other. Keep them separate and the bill gets easy to judge:
- The work. The fee for the people and tools that run your marketing: building the site, running the ads, managing the profile, watching the numbers.
- The ad spend. Money that goes straight to Google, Bing, and Meta to buy clicks and leads. This is yours, not the agency’s, and it should never be marked up.
- The build. The one-time cost of the website itself, if you need one. Sometimes folded into the monthly fee, sometimes billed up front.
When those three get mashed into one number, you cannot tell whether you are overpaying for the work, overspending on ads, or both. We show all three separately on our pricing page for exactly that reason.
What the ad spend actually buys
A lead costs different amounts depending on the channel and your trade. Here are the 2025 to 2026 ranges from public benchmarks:
| Channel | What it is | Cost per lead |
|---|---|---|
| Local Services Ads | Pay per lead, Google Verified badge | ~$45 to $90 by trade |
| Google Search (non-branded) | Pay per click, you write the page | ~$110 to $230 by trade |
| Home-services average | All channels blended (LocaliQ, 2025) | ~$91 per lead |
By trade, Google Search cost per lead runs roughly:
| Trade | Google Search cost per lead (non-branded) |
|---|---|
| HVAC | ~$130 to $150 |
| Roofing | ~$125 to $230 |
| Plumbing | ~$120 to $185 |
| Electrical | ~$110 to $130 |
The point is not the exact dollar, it is the shape: Local Services Ads are usually the cheaper lead, and search ads cost more but reach people the badge does not. Run well, they work together, one system rather than two line items.
About these numbers. These are public industry benchmarks (LocaliQ's 2025 home-services data plus trade reports). They are ranges because cost per lead moves with your market, your trade, branded versus non-branded campaigns, and the year. They are not Fullboard's results.
What a fair fee for the work looks like
Set the ad spend aside. What should the work itself cost? The U.S. Small Business Administration puts marketing at 7 to 8 percent of revenue for shops under $5 million, rising toward 10 to 12 percent when you are pushing to grow. Plenty of established shops run leaner, around 3 to 5 percent, just to hold steady. That figure is fee plus ad spend combined, not the fee alone:
| Annual revenue | Growth budget (7 to 10%) | Per month, fee + ad spend |
|---|---|---|
| $750k | $52k to $75k | $4,400 to $6,300 |
| $1.5M | $105k to $150k | $8,800 to $12,500 |
| $3M | $210k to $300k | $17,500 to $25,000 |
Those are total numbers, not a management fee. The fee for the work is usually a smaller slice, and the ad spend (the bigger slice) is money you were going to put in front of Google anyway. Whatever the split, a fair fee has a few things in common:
- It does not move with your ad spend. If the fee is a percentage of what you spend on ads, the agency makes more by spending more of your money. A flat fee for the work keeps everyone honest.
- No markup on the spend. You pay Google and Meta directly, from your own accounts, and see the real cost. An agency that runs your spend through its account and bills you a marked-up number is taking a cut you cannot see.
- It covers the whole system. A site that converts, the ads, the Google Business Profile, and the tracking that ties it together are one machine. Paying four vendors to each run a piece is how the pieces stop talking to each other.
The costs that never make it onto the quote
The sticker price is not the real price if any of these are hiding in the contract:
- Markup on ad spend. The most common hidden cost in the business.
- Long contracts. A twelve-month lock-in protects the agency during the months it is not producing. Good work earns the next month.
- Accounts you do not own. If the agency owns your Google Ads account, your domain, or your Business Profile, leaving means starting over and losing the history. You should own every account from day one.
- Reports that measure the wrong thing. A monthly PDF full of impressions and clicks looks like value and proves nothing. More on that in how to tell if your marketing agency is actually working.
So what should you budget?
Take your revenue, figure 7 to 10 percent for total marketing if you are growing, and make sure the ad-spend slice can clear enough leads at the costs above. A roofer who needs 20 jobs a month and books a third of qualified leads has to budget for the leads to get there, not just a flat fee.
Want your number instead of a range? Run it through the free budget calculator. It does the math from your trade, your market, and your monthly lead goal, using the same public benchmarks above. It will not be exact, but it gets you in the right neighborhood before anyone tries to sell you anything.
The number that actually decides everything
Cost per lead is useful, but it is not the number that pays your bills. A $40 lead that never books is worse than a $120 lead that turns into a $14,000 job. The figure that matters is cost per booked job, and almost no agency reports it because it is harder and less flattering. It is the only number worth optimizing toward, and it is the one we build every plan around.
Who this is and is not for
If the only number you are shopping on is the monthly fee, there is always someone cheaper and you should hire them. If you want every dollar tracked to booked work, here is the offer.
A free game plan reads your site, your ads, and your top local competitors and sends back a plain report: where your leads are leaking and what each fix is worth in booked jobs. It comes back in a few days, there is no call unless you want one, and you keep it either way. If you do bring us on, you walk your finished site before a dollar moves, the scope is in writing, satisfaction is guaranteed on the build, and everything is yours from day one: month to month, walk anytime and keep it all. Get my free game plan.
Sources: LocaliQ 2025 Home Services Search Advertising Benchmarks; U.S. Small Business Administration marketing-budget guidance. Industry ranges are indicative and vary by market, trade, and year.