Every business owner wants a number: "what should a lead cost me?" The honest answer is that a $50 lead can be a steal and a $5 lead can be a rip-off — it all depends on what a customer is worth to you. Here's how to actually judge it, with real numbers from live campaigns.
Cost per lead — CPL — is simply your ad spend divided by the number of leads it brought in. Spend $500, get 50 enquiries, that's a $10 CPL. Simple to calculate. The trap is judging that number in a vacuum.
A $40 cost per lead would horrify a pizza shop and delight a roofer. Same number, opposite reaction — because a roofing job might be worth thousands and a pizza is worth $20. The only CPL that matters is one measured against two things:
Instead of made-up benchmarks, here's what actual local campaigns we've run looked like — framed honestly as past results. Yours will vary, and nothing here is a guarantee:
Look at the roofing line closely — the CPL matters, but the 10.7% close rate is the hero. A slightly higher cost per lead with a strong close rate beats rock-bottom leads nobody books. That's the number most people forget to look at.
CPL is a stepping stone. What you really want to know is your cost per customer — and it's easy once you know your close rate.
$8.96 per lead ÷ 10.7% close rate ≈ $84 per booked customer
If a roofing job is worth several thousand dollars, spending ~$84 to win one isn't a cost — it's one of the best trades in the business. That's the lens to judge everything through: not what a lead costs, but what a customer costs versus what they're worth.
If your cost per lead feels high, the usual culprits aren't mysterious:
Forget the internet benchmarks. Run your own quick check:
| Ask yourself | Because… |
|---|---|
| What's one customer worth? | Sets your ceiling on a "good" CPL |
| What % of leads do I close? | Turns CPL into cost per customer |
| Do they buy again? | A repeat customer justifies a higher CPL |
| Is the lead quality good? | Cheap junk leads aren't a win |
If cost per customer sits comfortably below what a customer is worth, your CPL is good — whatever the raw number says.
Not sure where yours lands? That's the daily job of a good ads team — watching these numbers and pushing them the right way. Our Meta and Google ads are managed against exactly these metrics, pointed at pages built to convert, and websites start at $30/month. Tell us your numbers and we'll tell you honestly whether they're working.
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