Paid marketing · Quarter to date · Apr 1 – Jun 22 2026

vs $573

Beating benchmark

Blended cost to win a job across all paid channels · vs the $573 industry-average benchmark, scaled to our $4,500 job

The headline industry benchmark is just $233 to win a job, but that's on a $1,826 job, under half the size of ours. Scale that same rate up to our $4,500 job and the average shop would spend about $573. We spend $553, $20 under. LSA is far under; only Google Paid is over.

Summary

3 POINTS

Our return and close rates meet or beat industry-average home-services benchmarks. This isn't the agency's opinion, it's measured against published 2025–26 industry data, using our own closed-deal revenue and spend.

Our cost-per-lead looks high in raw dollars, but only because our average job is worth far more than the typical home-services and contracting job ($4,500 vs the $1,826 the benchmarks assume). Scale the benchmark up to our job size and the average shop would spend $573 to win one; we spend $553.

One channel drags: Google Paid in Utah, where cost-per-click runs 3× the norm. And overall we spend just 5–6% of revenue on marketing, below the 8–12% benchmark for a business trying to grow, so there's room to invest more.

What the top performers in our trade do: the best contractors close 30 to 40% of leads into jobs (ServiceTitan, 100,000+ businesses). In concrete coating specifically, Local Service Ads convert about 31% of leads to customers versus 12% for regular Google search, which is exactly why LSA is our strongest channel. And speed wins: shops that answer a new lead within 2 minutes convert 62%, versus a 28% average.

Our highest-leverage moves are fixes, not more spend: top contractors run Google cost-per-click around $5 to $6, so Utah at $21 to $23 is the clear opportunity (quality score, tighter keywords, a better landing page). Pair that with faster lead response and our cost-to-close drops well under the benchmark.

This quarter

PAID ONLY

Paid channels only, quarter to date. “Blended return” is revenue divided by ad spend across all three, $8.10 back for every $1 spent.

Paid revenue mix · where the $233K came from

● Meta 58% ● LSA 22% ● Google 20%

Channels

TAP FOR DETAIL

Three paid channels, ranked by efficiency. Tap any one to see what it is and how it's performing. “Return” is dollars of revenue per $1 of ad spend; “close” is the share of qualified leads that become jobs.

Revenue

Return

Per job

Organic ($319K) and direct / word-of-mouth ($132K) are larger but aren't paid, kept separate.

What a job is worth

Why this matters for the comparison: the industry benchmarks are built on an average job of about $1,826. Ours is roughly 2.5× that, $4,500 this quarter and higher across the year. So comparing raw dollars makes us look expensive when we aren't; scale the benchmark to our job size and the average shop would spend $573 to win one of our jobs, vs our $553. YTD splits: Utah $5,402 · Dallas $3,377.

The fair comparison

Both views show our actual dollars to win a job, those don't change. The only thing that moves is the benchmark line: the headline $233 (set on a $1,826 job) versus that same rate scaled to our $4,500 job ($573). Flip it to see why a high raw number is fine.

Benchmarks: home-services search CPL $90.92 (LocaliQ); in concrete coating, LSA runs $40 to $80 and Facebook $15 to $30, with LSA converting 31% of leads vs 12% for search (Concrete Marketing Crew); LSA dataset 7.84× return (Searchlight).

Are we spending enough?

5–6% of revenue on marketing

0% GROWTH 8–12% 15%

Maintain

We spend roughly 5–6% of revenue on marketing. Established contractors run 5–7%; businesses trying to grow run 8–12%. We're at a maintain level. Given the efficiency above, there's room to push budget toward the growth range without hurting returns.

Is the agency right?

Mostly yes, and now we can back it with outside data instead of taking their word. Our return and close rates are at or above the industry average across paid. But the strong blended numbers shouldn't hide the one real problem below.

The one pushback

Google Paid Utah CPC is 3× benchmark ($21–23 vs $8). That's the one thing to hold them to, search-term and quality-score cleanup.

Sources

ServiceTitan 2025 Benchmark Report (100,000+ businesses) · Concrete Marketing Crew (lead cost by source) · Invoca 2025 Home Services Call Conversion Report · LocaliQ (3,211 home-service campaigns) · Searchlight Digital LSA dataset (888 contractors)

From our own attribution tracker, compared to published 2025–26 home-services benchmarks.