What a Coquitlam lead is worth, and what you should pay for one

Why this number matters more than any marketing metric

The short answer: clicks, impressions and rankings don't pay wages. Booked jobs do, and the cost per lead is the closest early signal you have to whether marketing is producing them profitably.

Without a break-even figure, you can't judge whether $90 a lead is cheap or ruinous. A Coquitlam roofer might happily pay $250 for a lead that sometimes becomes a $15,000 job. A house cleaner paying $90 for a lead worth a $180 visit is in trouble. The same price means opposite things.

Owners who skip this step usually make one of two mistakes. They either cut marketing that was quietly profitable because the monthly bill felt large, or they keep paying for a directory or campaign that never covers its cost because nobody checked.

Step 1: Find your real average job value

Pull your last 30 to 50 completed jobs from your invoices or accounting software. Add up the pre-tax totals and divide by the number of jobs.

Watch for distortions:

• Remove one-off outliers. A single $40,000 commercial job can make a residential average meaningless.
• Split very different services. If you do both $300 service calls and $8,000 installs, calculate each separately. They deserve different ad campaigns anyway.
• Use completed jobs, not quotes. Quotes that never closed inflate the figure.

Worked example: a Coquitlam electrician reviews 40 residential jobs totalling $64,000. The average job value is $1,600.

Step 2: Work out gross profit per job

Gross profit is what's left after the direct costs of doing the job: materials, subcontractors and the wages of the crew on site. It doesn't include rent, vehicles, insurance or your own salary; those come out later.

If you know your gross margin percentage, multiply. If not, estimate from a few typical jobs.

Continuing the example: the electrician's gross margin is 45%. Gross profit per job is $1,600 × 0.45 = $720.

Step 3: Measure your close rate honestly

Your close rate is the share of genuine enquiries that become paid jobs. Count only real prospects: remove spam, job seekers and suppliers, but keep tyre-kickers and people who went with a competitor.

If you haven't tracked it, take the last 20 enquiries you can remember or find in your phone and inbox and count how many booked. Most local trades land somewhere between one in five and one in two, depending on price point, response speed and how warm the lead was.

Example: the electrician books 7 out of 20 enquiries, a 35% close rate.

Step 4: Calculate break-even cost per lead

Multiply gross profit per job by close rate.

At $252 a lead, the electrician's marketing pays for itself in gross profit but contributes nothing to overheads or profit. That's the ceiling, not the target.

Step 5: Set a target below break-even

A sensible target is 40% to 60% of break-even, so the remaining gross profit covers overheads and leaves a profit. For the electrician, that's roughly $100 to $150 per lead.

Use the target to judge every source:

• Google Ads: if a campaign runs at $180 a lead for two months after fixes, it's eating into profit. Cut or rebuild it. Our Google Ads service works to exactly this kind of cap.
• Directories and lead-sharing sites: divide the annual fee by the number of genuine enquiries it produced last year.
• Print or sponsorships: use a dedicated phone number or web page so you can count responses.

Step 6: Add repeat and referral value carefully

Some customers come back. A homeowner in Ranch Park who hires you for a panel upgrade may call again for EV charger wiring and a hot-tub circuit. Others refer neighbours, which is especially common in tight-knit townhouse complexes and new streets on Burke Mountain.

To include this without fooling yourself:

1. Look at customers from two or three years ago. What share hired you again?
2. Multiply that share by the gross profit of a typical repeat job.
3. Add the result to your gross profit per job, then recalculate.

Example: 25% of the electrician's customers return within three years for a job averaging $600 at 45% margin. That adds $600 × 0.45 × 0.25 = $67.50 to the value of each new customer. Gross profit per customer becomes $787.50, and break-even rises to $787.50 × 0.35 = about $276.

Use this higher figure for long-term channels like local SEO. For paid campaigns that need to justify themselves monthly, stay with the lower one.

Step 7: Adjust for seasons and capacity

Demand in Coquitlam shifts through the year. Wet months bring drainage, roofing and leak calls; spring and summer bring landscaping, decks, fencing and exterior painting; the run-up to the holidays is busy for cleaners and some renovation finishing work.

Two adjustments help:

• Different ceilings by season. In your busy season, close rates often rise because people need the work done now, which lifts break-even. In slow months, close rates fall and you may need a lower ceiling or a smaller budget.
• Capacity limits. If you're booked six weeks out, extra leads add little and can damage your reputation when you can't serve them. Lower spend rather than turning people away.

Common mistakes

• Using revenue instead of gross profit. This makes every lead look three times more valuable than it is.
• Counting all calls as leads. Supplier calls, spam and existing customers inflate lead counts and make cost per lead look better than reality.
• Ignoring response time. A lead nobody calls back for a day is worth a fraction of one answered in minutes. If your close rate is low, check how fast you respond before blaming the marketing.
• Comparing with someone else's numbers. A Burnaby competitor's cost per lead tells you nothing about your margins.

A one-page worksheet

Copy these lines into a note and fill them in:

1. Average job value: $____
2. Gross margin: ____%
3. Gross profit per job (1 × 2): $____
4. Close rate: ____%
5. Break-even cost per lead (3 × 4): $____
6. Target cost per lead (5 × 0.5): $____
7. Repeat value per customer (optional): $____
8. Long-term break-even ((3 + 7) × 4): $____

Bring that sheet to any conversation with a marketing company, including ours. If the proposal doesn't refer to those numbers, ask why. Our pricing page shows how plan fees and ad spend combine, and the contact page explains how to send us your figures for a second opinion.