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How Much Should a Contractor Spend on Google Ads? Real Numbers by Trade
Romel PrashadFounder, Fillay“How much should I spend on Google Ads?” is the question I get most from contractors, and the usual answers are useless. “Whatever you can afford.” “Start with $500 and see.” “Ten percent of revenue.” None of those tell you whether the phone will ring.
Here’s how I actually answer it: with real cost-per-lead numbers for your trade, worked backward from the number of jobs you want. There’s a calculator further down so you can run your own numbers.
The short answer
For most home-service trades, Google search ads cost somewhere between $50 and $230 per lead, depending on your trade. For a handful of extra jobs a month, that usually works out to $1,000 to $3,000 a month. Less than about $20 a day usually doesn’t buy enough clicks to learn anything.
The right number for you comes from three things: how many jobs you want, how many leads you turn into jobs, and what a lead costs in your trade.
What a lead actually costs, by trade
The most useful public numbers I’ve found come from LocalIQ’s 2025 home-services benchmarks. They looked at 3,211 U.S. home-services search campaigns between April 2024 and March 2025. Here are the median costs per lead for the trades we work with most:
Average cost per lead from Google search ads by trade
And the detail behind those numbers:
| Trade | Cost per click | Clicks that become leads | Cost per lead |
|---|---|---|---|
| Roofing & gutters | $10.70 | 3.7% | $228 |
| Doors & windows | $8.76 | 4.4% | $200 |
| General contractors | $5.31 | 2.6% | $166 |
| Painting | $13.74 | 10.8% | $138 |
| Plumbing | $10.49 | 7.6% | $129 |
| Heating & furnaces | $9.30 | 7.5% | $129 |
| Air conditioning | $9.68 | 6.6% | $128 |
| Landscaping | $8.76 | 6.4% | $118 |
| Electricians | $12.18 | 9.1% | $94 |
| Handyman | $7.10 | 13.4% | $54 |
Source: LocalIQ’s 2025 home-services benchmarks. Medians, so half of campaigns did better and half did worse. “Clicks that become leads” is the share of ad clicks that turned into a call or form.
Two things jump out. First, roofing and general contracting leads cost the most, mainly because fewer clicks turn into leads (under 4%), not because clicks are wildly expensive. Second, painters pay the most per click ($13.74) but convert so well (10.8%) that their leads land in the middle. Cost per click is a misleading number on its own. Cost per lead, and then cost per job, is what matters.
Work backward from jobs, not forward from a budget
Instead of picking a budget and hoping, start with the jobs:
- How many extra jobs do you want a month? Be realistic about what your crew can handle.
- How many leads does it take to win one? If you close about 1 in 3 of the people you actually talk to, you need 3 leads per job.
- What does a lead cost in your trade? Use the table above to start.
Budget = jobs you want × leads per job × cost per lead. A painter who wants 4 more jobs a month and closes 1 in 3 needs 12 leads. At about $138 a lead, that’s roughly $1,660 a month, or about $55 a day.
Budget calculator work backward from jobs
What a daily budget really buys
Google Ads asks for a daily budget, so it helps to see what each level buys at the home-services medians:
What a daily budget buys at the home-services medians
This is why tiny budgets disappoint. At $10 a day you might get two or three leads a month, which isn’t enough to tell whether it’s working or just luck. I’d rather a contractor start at $30–$50 a day for one focused service in one area than spread $15 a day across everything they do.
Where the money actually goes
Where the money goes an example month
- Budget$1,500 / month
- Clicks≈ 190
- Leads≈ 14 calls & forms
- Booked estimates≈ 7 (if you reach half)
- Jobs≈ 3 (if you close 40%)
Look at the bottom of that funnel. You can have perfectly good ads and still lose money if leads sit unanswered for hours or estimates never get a follow-up. Before raising your budget, make sure every lead gets a reply in minutes (I wrote about that in The Call You Missed Was Probably a Job) and every estimate gets followed up.
The 7 places contractors waste ad money
- No conversion tracking. If you can’t see which searches turned into calls and forms, you can’t cut what isn’t working. Set this up before you spend a dollar.
- Broad keywords with no exclusions. Without a list of searches to exclude, “roofing” ads show up for “roofing jobs,” “roofing salary” and “DIY roof repair.” We add an exclusion list on day one for every client.
- Leaving on Search Partners and Display. Google turns these on by default. For most contractors they bring cheap, low-quality clicks. Start with Google Search only.
- Sending clicks to a weak page. A slow site with no reviews, no photos of real work and no obvious way to call or text burns clicks. The page matters as much as the ad.
- Too many services and towns at once. Small budgets work best focused on your most profitable job in your best area.
- Ads running when nobody answers. If calls at 9 p.m. go to voicemail, either have a text-back in place or schedule ads for when someone can reply.
- Judging it in a week. Google needs a few weeks of data to settle. Give a new campaign about a month before big changes, but check your search terms every week.
Google Ads or Local Services Ads?
Local Services Ads (the boxes with the Google trust badge) charge per lead instead of per click, and they’re often the better first step if they’re available for your trade. I compared the two in detail in Local Services Ads vs. Google Ads. Many of our clients run both: LSA for steady volume, search ads to target specific, higher-value jobs.
How to know if it’s working
Forget clicks and impressions. Track three numbers every month:
- Cost per lead: ad spend ÷ calls and forms from ads.
- Cost per job: ad spend ÷ jobs you actually won from those leads.
- Return: revenue from those jobs ÷ ad spend.
If your average job is $5,000 and ads cost you $500 per job won, that’s a great deal, even if your cost per lead looks “high” next to the table above. If your average job is $400, the same numbers don’t work, and you’re better off focusing on reviews and your Google profile first.
A simple starting plan
- Pick your single most profitable service and your best service area.
- Set up call and form tracking first.
- Start at $30–$50 a day on Google Search only, with tight keywords and a starter exclusion list.
- Send clicks to a page about that service, with real photos, reviews and a one-tap way to call or text.
- Answer every lead within minutes, and follow up on every estimate.
- After a month, look at cost per job, not cost per click, and decide whether to scale up.