Your Cost Per Lead Isn't the Problem. Your Average Job Is.
A lead for a big job costs about the same as a lead for a small one. So the same $150 lead is unaffordable on a $600 job and cheap on a $4,000 job. Here's why your average ticket is the lever, and why it's decided at intake, not at the quote.
Your cost per lead isn't too high. Your average job is too small to afford it.
Those sound like the same problem. They are not, and the difference decides whether your marketing works next year.
I run a door company in Dallas-Fort Worth, and I run Hivelead, where I help owners of $2M to $6M businesses figure out why they stopped growing. In Why Your Marketing Got More Expensive, I walked through why lowering your cost per lead is a race against an auction you can't win. This article is about the number you can actually move: what each job is worth.
A lead for a big job costs about the same as a lead for a small one
This is the fact that makes everything else work.
In a local service business, the lead cost does not scale with the job. Same ad, same click, same phone call, same person answering it. A $600 job and a $4,000 job come in through the same front door for roughly the same price. There is some variation, but not much.
The math: the same lead, two different jobs
Say a lead costs you $150 and you close one in three. That's $450 to land a customer.
On a $600 job, you just spent most of the invoice getting the phone to ring. That lead is far too expensive.
Same lead, same close rate, on a $4,000 job, and $450 is a bargain.
Nothing about the lead changed. The job changed, and the lead went from unaffordable to cheap. That is the difference between what a lead costs and what you can afford to pay for one. If you want the mechanics of that distinction, Cost Per Lead vs Cost Per Acquisition covers it.
Ticket is the lever
You can't control what a lead costs. You can control what you can afford to pay for one.
Of the five numbers that make up your marketing revenue (leads, contact, close, ticket, repeat), ticket is the one the market can't touch. Contact and close rates can be tightened, and should be, but they cap out. Ticket doesn't cap the same way, because it's a decision about who you sell to and what you sell them.
See which of your five numbers is leaking the most with the Revenue Leak Calculator. It takes about two minutes and there's nothing to sign up for.
Where the good-better-best advice goes wrong
Search this topic and every answer is about the estimate. Good, better, best options. Add-ons. Packages. Put pictures on the quote.
That advice is legitimate. But it all happens at the very end, after you've already paid for the lead, driven to the house, and found out what kind of customer you're standing in front of. If it's a $600 customer, the best quote in the world turns it into an $800 job. You didn't fix the ticket. You polished it.
The ticket is decided at intake, not at the quote
The ticket is mostly decided before the quote exists. It's decided by two things: which calls you say yes to, and who the ad was pointed at in the first place.
The jobs you shouldn't have taken
Think about the jobs you took last month. Some of them you shouldn't have. You knew it when the call came in: small job, price shopper, wrong side of town. You said yes because saying no to work feels wrong.
Every one of those cost you a full lead's worth of marketing and returned a fraction of the revenue. And it took a truck and a tech for half a day that a $4,000 job could have had.
The customer who pays four times as much for the same truck
Now think about the customers who pay four times as much for the same truck and the same tech. In my business, that's commercial. Same door, same hardware, same installer. The invoice is a different animal.
In your trade it might be property management, the higher end of residential, or the customer who's buying the whole system instead of the repair. They're already calling businesses like yours. The question is whether your intake and your ads are set up to catch them or to filter them out.
Two cheap moves
Set a floor. Decide what a job has to be worth for you to roll a truck, and stop taking the ones under it. That's not turning away money. That's turning away a loss that looked like revenue.
Point the marketing at the four-times customer. Different keywords, different landing page, often the same budget.
Do those two things and your cost per lead can stay exactly where it is, maybe even go up a little, and your marketing starts working again. The problem was never the lead. It was what you let the lead turn into.
This is also why a plateaued business rarely fixes itself by buying more leads. If you've been flat for a few years, Why Your Business Stopped Growing walks through finding the leak, and How to Break Through a Revenue Plateau covers which one to fix first.
Frequently asked questions
Is my cost per lead too high?
Probably not on its own. Whether a lead is affordable depends on what the job is worth and how often you close. A $150 lead at a one-in-three close rate costs $450 per customer, which is unaffordable on a $600 job and cheap on a $4,000 job. Judge lead cost against the ticket it produces, not in isolation.
How do I increase my average job size in a service business?
Most advice focuses on the estimate: tiered options, add-ons, packages. Those help at the margin, but the ticket is mostly decided earlier, at intake. Set a minimum job value for rolling a truck and stop taking work below it, and point your marketing at the customer segment that already pays more for the same work.
Should I turn away small jobs?
If a job is worth less than what it costs you to acquire and deliver it, yes. A small job consumes a full lead's worth of marketing plus a truck and a tech for half a day, and returns a fraction of what a larger job would in the same slot. That isn't turning away money. It's turning away a loss that looks like revenue.
How do I find higher-paying customers without changing my business?
Look for the segment that already buys your exact service at a higher price. In the trades that's often commercial, property management, higher-end residential, or the customer buying a full system rather than a repair. Adjust your keywords, landing page, and intake questions to catch them. The trucks, techs, and lead cost stay the same.
Related reading
See how much your ticket is costing you
If you want to see how much this is costing you right now, the Revenue Leak Calculator takes about two minutes and shows you which number in your business is leaking the most. It's free and there's nothing to sign up for.
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