In This Article
Most roofing, HVAC, and plumbing companies ask the same question before they run their first ad. How much should I actually spend. The honest answer depends on your market, your job size, and how fast you want to grow. Here is how to think it through.
Start With Your Job Value, Not a Random Number
A lot of business owners pick a budget out of thin air. A thousand dollars sounds reasonable so that becomes the number. The smarter approach starts with your average job value. If a typical roofing job nets you four thousand dollars in profit, you can afford to spend significantly more to acquire that customer than a plumber whose average ticket is two hundred dollars.
Work backward. Decide what you are willing to pay for one new customer, then build your budget around that number instead of a guess.
What Most Home Service Businesses Actually Spend
For most local home service companies running Google Ads in a competitive metro market, a workable starting budget falls between fifteen hundred and four thousand dollars per month. Smaller markets or less competitive trades can see results with less. Roofing and HVAC tend to sit on the higher end because the keywords are expensive and the competition is fierce.
This is not a number to spend once and judge. Google Ads needs time to gather data and optimize. Give any new campaign at least thirty to sixty days before drawing conclusions.
What You Should Expect In Return
A well built campaign for a home service business should produce cost per lead somewhere between forty and one hundred fifty dollars depending on the trade and the market. Roofing tends to run higher because of seasonal competition. Plumbing and smaller repair services often run lower.
The number that actually matters is not cost per lead. It is cost per booked job. A campaign producing leads at sixty dollars each that converts at twenty percent is performing very differently than one producing leads at the same cost that converts at five percent. Track the full funnel, not just the top of it.
The Mistake That Wastes The Most Money
The single biggest waste we see is businesses running ads to a generic homepage instead of a dedicated landing page built around the specific service being searched. Someone searching for emergency roof repair should land on a page about emergency roof repair, not a general homepage describing every service the company offers. That mismatch kills conversion rates and inflates cost per customer.
The Bottom Line
There is no universal right number. There is a right number for your business based on your job value, your market, and your goals. Start with a budget that lets the campaign gather enough data to optimize, track results past the lead and into the booked job, and make sure every dollar lands on a page built to convert that specific search.
If you want help figuring out the right number for your specific market, that is exactly the kind of conversation we have with home service businesses every week.
