Paid media
What a lead costs on Google and Facebook, published
10:1 average ROAS
Spend billed at cost
Your ad account
We run Facebook and Google ads for home service companies in Indian River, Brevard, St. Lucie and Martin counties. The fee is flat — $2,297 a month for Content + Ads. Your ad spend goes to Google and Meta at cost, on your card, never marked up and never taken as a percentage. The ad accounts are opened in your name and stay there. Average ROAS across the businesses we run this for is 10:1.
Here is what a lead costs in these trades, with a source on every figure. Check your invoice against it.
No setup fee. Nothing bills until it’s live. Cancel any month after 90 days.
Published benchmarks
What does a lead actually cost right now?
Between $34 and $228, depending on the channel and the trade. Nobody local publishes these numbers. Here they are.
$53
Local Services Ads lead
$149
Non-branded search lead
Industry benchmarks, not our results. Source on every row.
Google Local Services Ads, home services average
$53
LSA — HVAC
$51
LSA — plumbing
$57
LSA — electrical
$39
LSA — drain and sewer
$59
Google Search — branded
Google Search — Performance Max
Google Search — non-branded
Google Search — HVAC and plumbing average
Roofing, all Google channels
$228.15
HVAC, all Google channels
$84.92
Plumbing, all Google channels
$76.40
Meta — Home & Home Improvement, lead campaigns
$41.26
LSAs run 40–50% cheaper than standard search. LSA book rate is 43.9%. The Google Search figures come from $14.9M in observed spend across 816 contractors. The only Sonar Shores figure on this page is 10:1 average ROAS.
Local Services Ads are the cheapest door. They run 40–50% cheaper than standard search and book at 43.9%. You pay per lead — a call or a message — not per click. That’s the gap between a $53 lead and a $149 one.
Branded search is not a growth channel. Someone who types your company name costs $34. Someone who types the service costs $149, more than four times as much, because they don’t know you exist. An agency reporting one blended cost per lead is hiding that split. Ask for both.
A $149 lead changes what a missed call costs. Responding within five minutes makes a lead 21 times more likely to qualify. Only 0.1% of businesses manage it, and the first company to respond wins 78% of deals. You can afford to lose a few $149 leads to the auction. You cannot afford to lose the one that already called you. Our lead response is 60 seconds.
On Meta, we won’t print a number we can’t stand behind. Nobody publishes a credible 2026 cost per lead by trade the way the Google data exists. The closest defensible figure is $41.26 for Home & Home Improvement lead campaigns — LocaliQ, October 2025. The trade-level Facebook numbers quoted everywhere else trace back to a LocaliQ sample of 4,595 accounts running in 2020 and 2021. Five-year-old data is not a 2026 benchmark.
Where to start
Google or Facebook — which one first?
Google, if people already type what you sell into a search bar. Facebook, if they don’t know they need you yet.
Google catches demand that already exists
A dead compressor, a backed-up main line — those are searches happening today, a few miles from you. Start with Local Services Ads: above the results on Search and Maps, keywordless, and carrying the Google Verified badge.
Facebook creates demand that doesn’t exist yet
Nobody wakes up and searches for impact windows or a memory care tour. They see the job you did three streets over, and then they search. That’s where Content + Ads starts.
One thing your current agency probably hasn’t mentioned. From August 2026 Google moves Local Services Ads into Performance Max with a pay-per-lead goal, starting with US home categories — plumbing, HVAC, electrical, roofing, pest control and four more. Pay-per-lead stays. The placements stay. Everything you manage them with changes.
Weekly becomes a daily average
Manual max-per-lead phased out
History does not transfer into Google Ads
Unchanged — Search and Maps, still pay per lead
Export that history before August or it is gone. Ask whoever runs your account what their plan is.
What connects them: the closed job goes back to both platforms
Click
→
Form
→
Your database
→
Closed job
→
Back to Meta and Google
Most small agencies optimise toward form fills, because that’s all their tracking can see. A form fill is not a job. Once the platform learns which leads became paid work, it buys more of those. That loop is in the Full Engine.
Creative
The creative is the variable, and we shoot it ourselves
Same audience, same budget, same landing page — the ad itself is what moves your cost per lead. The constraint on most contractors’ ads isn’t targeting. It’s four photos and a logo.
We shoot it. Real cameras on real job sites, your crew and your trucks. Aerial by a licensed Part 107 pilot. No stock library, ever.
Four fresh ad creatives a month on Content + Ads
A quarterly shoot day on Content + Ads, monthly on the Full Engine
A landing page built and tested — the ads point at a page built to convert, not your homepage
Full conversion tracking, verified firing before a dollar is spent
Job-site proof
Shot on the job, with your crew.
Before and after
One job, two states.
Owner on camera
You, talking, unscripted.
The offer
The offer, on screen.
How we charge
Why we don’t charge a percentage of your ad spend
Because the percentage model pays an agency to grow your budget, not your bookings.
Percentage-of-spend management commonly runs 10% to 20% of the ad budget. The agency earns more when you spend more, whether or not the extra spend brought a job back — and every dollar of waste they cut out is a pay cut. Bad incentive, dressed up as an aligned one.
When your budget goes up
Percentage of spend
Their fee goes up with it
Flat fee — ours
Our fee does not move
When waste gets cut
Percentage of spend
Their fee goes down
Flat fee — ours
Our fee does not move
What that rewards
Percentage of spend
Spending more
Flat fee — ours
Booking more jobs
Our fee is flat and published: $2,297 a month, $5,444 for the Full Engine, $297 per additional platform. Your spend goes straight to Google and Meta at cost, in an account with your name on it.
What it costs
What it costs
Content + Ads
$2,297
per month
Already getting traffic, want it turned into booked jobs.
14 graphics
4 videos
Meta ads managed
4 fresh ad creatives a month
Landing page built and tested
Full conversion tracking
Quarterly on-site shoot day
Full Engine
$5,444
per month
The whole system run for you.
Everything in Content + Ads
Google ads
Full CRM
AI chat automation
SEO and AI search optimisation
Monthly shoot day
Closed jobs pushed back to Meta and Google
Additional ad platform
$297 per month
Ad spend is billed to you at cost by the platform. We never mark it up and we never take a percentage. $1,500/mo minimum spend on Content + Ads.
No setup fee. Ad accounts stay in your name. Cancel any month after 90 days.
Questions
Questions
At least $1,500 a month — our minimum on Content + Ads. At published benchmarks a non-branded Google search lead runs $149 and an LSA lead about $53. Below $1,500 you don’t buy enough leads in a month to tell a working campaign from a broken one. Spend is separate from our fee and goes to Google and Meta directly.
No. Ad spend is billed to you at cost by the platform, on your card, and we never take a percentage of it. Our fee is flat: $2,297 a month for Content + Ads, $5,444 for the Full Engine, $297 a month for each additional platform.
You do. Ad accounts are opened in your name and stay there. You own the domain, the site, the leads, the content and the ad accounts, with full export within seven days, in writing.
The build takes two to four weeks and nothing bills until the system is live. Ads can serve the day conversion tracking is verified. What takes longer is the platform learning which leads turn into paid work, which starts once closed jobs are pushed back to Meta and Google. We won’t give you a timeline we can’t source — there are no published case studies yet.
Google, if people already search for what you sell. HVAC, plumbing and drain work have live search demand, and Local Services Ads leads average $53 against roughly $104 on standard search. Facebook first if nobody searches for it until something forces them — impact windows, remodels, senior care. Content + Ads starts with Meta; the Full Engine runs both.
They stay with you and keep running, because the ad accounts are in your name. Cancel any month after 90 days with 30 days notice and no exit fee. You get a full export of the domain, site, leads, content and ad accounts within seven days, in writing.