It's the first question almost every contractor asks before running ads: how much should I spend? The honest answer is that there's no single number. The right budget depends on your trade, your towns, the time of year, and how many jobs you can actually handle. But there is a clear way to figure out your number, and that's what this guide walks through.
Start with jobs, not clicks
Most contractors set a budget by picking a monthly number that feels comfortable. A better approach is to work backward from the jobs you want. Ask three questions: how many new jobs do you want each month, what's an average job worth to you, and what are you willing to spend to win one?
If a roof replacement brings in thousands in profit, spending a few hundred dollars in ads to win one can be a great deal. If a service call is a small ticket, your cost per job has to be much lower. Your budget should match the math of your business, not a round number.
The factors that change your budget
Trade. High-ticket trades like roofing, remodeling, and HVAC replacements usually see more expensive clicks, because the jobs are worth more and more companies compete for them. Lower-ticket trades often have cheaper clicks but need more volume.
Location. Clicks in Greater Boston generally cost more than in Manchester, Worcester, or rural Maine and Vermont, because more companies bid on the same searches. A budget that books plenty of work in one market may barely register in another.
Season. In New England, demand swings hard. Heating searches climb with the first cold snap, roofing spikes after storms, and landscaping demand starts building in late winter. Your budget should flex with the season instead of staying flat all year.
Service area. Covering ten towns costs more than covering three. Tightening your targeting to the towns where you actually want to work is one of the easiest ways to make a budget go further.
A simple way to estimate your starting budget
Here's a quick example of the math. The numbers below are illustrative, not a quote, but the method works for any trade.
Example: Say clicks for your main service average $15 in your area, about 1 in 10 clicks becomes a call or form lead, and you close about 1 in 3 leads. That works out to roughly $150 per lead and $450 per booked job. If you want 10 new jobs a month, a starting budget around $4,500 makes sense, and you'd refine it as real data comes in.
Once your campaigns are running, replace the guesses with your real numbers: actual cost per click, actual lead rate, and actual close rate. Within a couple of months, you'll know what a booked job really costs you.
How to tell if your budget is working
Clicks and impressions don't pay the bills. The numbers that matter are cost per lead and, even more important, cost per booked job. That means tracking calls and form submissions back to the campaigns and keywords that produced them, and following up to see which leads turned into work.
If your cost per booked job is well below what a job is worth, you have room to spend more. If it's too high, the fix is usually tighter targeting, better negative keywords, or a stronger landing page, not just a bigger budget.
Why your agency's client list matters
Here's a question most contractors never think to ask: does your agency run ads for your competitors too? If an agency manages Google Ads for several roofers in the same town, those campaigns can end up competing for the same searches, which pushes up costs for everyone involved.
That's why TRADEWRK works with one company per trade, per service area. Your budget never competes against another client's budget in your own market.
The bottom line
There's no magic number, but there is a right number for your business. Work backward from the jobs you want, account for your trade, towns, and season, track cost per booked job, and adjust as real data comes in. Start focused, prove it works, then scale.