How Much Should a Contractor Spend on Google Ads? Benchmarks by Trade
“How much should I spend on Google Ads?” is the first question every contractor asks and the one most agencies refuse to answer plainly. Here is the plain answer, with benchmark tables by trade, the formula for working backward from your revenue target, and the signals that tell you when to scale up or pull back.
How much should a contractor spend on Google Ads per month?
Most contractors should start at $2,000–$5,000 per month in ad spend, paid directly to Google, and hold that budget for at least 90 days before judging it. Below roughly $1,500 a month, most trades in most metros cannot buy enough clicks to generate statistically useful data — you are not running a campaign, you are buying a lottery ticket. Above $10,000 a month, the limiting factor usually stops being budget and becomes answering capacity, service area and close rate.
Two things are not included in that number and should never be confused with it: the management fee (ours is flat and published on our pricing page) and your one-time setup. Ad spend goes straight to the platform — if an agency cannot tell you exactly how much of your money reaches Google, walk away.
What do clicks and leads actually cost by trade?
Trade is the single biggest driver of cost per lead — emergency trades pay more per click but convert harder, while considered purchases are cheaper per click and slower to close. Planning ranges for typical metro markets across the five countries we serve:
| Trade | Typical CPC | Typical cost per lead | Suggested starting budget /mo | Typical job value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HVAC | $10–$45 | $60–$150 | $2,500–$6,000 | $150–$12,000 |
| Plumbing | $12–$60 | $70–$180 | $2,500–$6,000 | $150–$8,000 |
| Roofing | $8–$30 | $80–$250 | $3,000–$8,000 | $6,000–$20,000 |
| Electrical | $8–$30 | $50–$130 | $2,000–$4,000 | $150–$5,000 |
| Landscaping | $4–$15 | $35–$90 | $1,500–$3,500 | $500–$25,000 |
| Restoration | $15–$60 | $100–$300 | $3,000–$8,000 | $2,500–$30,000 |
Read the table in the direction of cost per booked job, not cost per click. Roofing clicks at $25 look expensive until a $12,000 re-roof closes from one of every four real leads — at which point $25 clicks are a rounding error on the best-margin work you will ever buy.
How do you work backward from a revenue goal to a budget?
Start with the job you want, not the budget you have, and divide down the funnel. The formula: target revenue ÷ average job value = booked jobs needed; booked jobs ÷ close rate = leads needed; leads × cost per lead = required budget. A roofing company wanting $120,000 a month in new work at a $10,000 average ticket needs 12 jobs; at a 30% close rate that is 40 leads; at $150 per lead that is a $6,000 monthly budget. If any step in your chain is a guess, fix that number first — usually the close rate, which call recording makes measurable within a week.
This is also how you find the ceiling. If 40 leads a month would swamp your two salespeople, the right budget is the one that produces 25, not the one that produces missed calls and one-star reviews about nobody phoning back.
Does market size change the budget?
Yes — big-metro auctions cost more per click, but smaller markets need less total spend to dominate. Toronto, New York, London and Sydney sit at the top of every CPC range; Calgary, Brisbane, Leeds and Christchurch run meaningfully cheaper; and small markets like Dunedin or Hamilton can be led outright on $1,000–$2,000 a month. Currency follows the market too: budget in your local currency and benchmark against local job values, not converted US figures. Our location pages — from Toronto to Houston to Glasgow — publish market-by-market starting budgets for exactly this reason.
How do budgets differ across Canada, the US, Australia, New Zealand and the UK?
The benchmarks above are in local currency and roughly comparable in purchasing power, but each country has quirks. Canada: Toronto and Vancouver price like major US metros; everywhere else is friendlier, and Montreal’s French-language keywords are a genuine discount. United States: the widest range — New York and Los Angeles can double the CPCs of mid-size Texas and Florida metros, and storm seasons move budgets on 24 hours’ notice. Australia: Sydney and Melbourne are the expensive pair, Brisbane is catching up fast, and Perth and Adelaide remain the best value-per-click capitals we buy in. New Zealand: modest CPCs everywhere; even Auckland rarely punishes a $2,000 budget, and the smaller centres can be owned outright. UK: London is its own economy, Manchester and Birmingham sit comfortably mid-table, and Leeds and Glasgow let heating trades buy serious volume on £1,500–£3,000 a month.
What are the warning signs of an underfunded account?
An underfunded account tells on itself in predictable ways. Impression share lost to budget climbs past half, meaning your ads simply sit out most auctions. The campaign exhausts its daily cap by lunchtime, so evening emergency searches — often the best leads of the day — go to competitors. Learning never completes: Google’s algorithms need roughly 30 conversions a month to optimize, and a starved budget keeps the account permanently in the expensive learning phase. And the report starts showing decent cost per click with too few clicks to matter. The fix is not always “spend more”: narrowing geography, pruning keywords and tightening hours can concentrate the same money into auctions you can actually win. But if the math says your market needs $3,000 and you are spending $800, no structure trick will close that gap.
When should you increase or cut ad spend?
Scale spend when cost per booked job is comfortably below your margin threshold and your team has capacity to answer more leads. Cut or pause when close rate collapses (usually an intake problem, not an ads problem), when the season genuinely ends for your trade, or when lead quality degrades and stays degraded after a month of tuning. The mistake to avoid is the panic cut after two slow weeks: Google Ads accounts learn from conversion data, and resetting budgets constantly starves the learning you paid for. Judge on 90-day windows, manage on weekly ones. One more trigger, in the good direction: when you hire another truck or another crew. Capacity is the only ceiling that matters once cost per booked job is proven — a campaign with $80 leads and 40% margins should scale every time your ability to answer and serve grows.
What else belongs in the budget besides ad spend?
Three line items beyond the clicks themselves: management, landing pages, and tracking. Management should be a flat, published fee — percentage-of-spend pricing is an incentive to waste your money. Landing pages are a one-time build that pays for itself every month; doubling a page’s conversion rate is mathematically identical to doubling your budget, and it is permanent. And call tracking plus analytics is non-negotiable plumbing — typically a small monthly software cost — because a budget you cannot attribute is a budget you cannot defend.
We build all of it as one system: managed Google Ads, landing pages and CRO, tracking in accounts you own, month-to-month terms, and a guarantee of leads within 14 days of launch. If you want a budget recommendation for your trade and market — with real local CPCs, not a generic range — check your market’s availability and we will put numbers on the first call.