What a Renovation Lead Really Costs: The Actual Numbers
Cost per lead is the number everyone looks at and almost nobody uses properly. The one that decides whether your marketing is sustainable is a different one, and it takes three steps to calculate.
Quick answer
The cost per qualified lead in renovation sits between €20 and €60, with wide differences by type of job and region. But it is an incomplete number: what matters is the cost per signed contract. With a €35 cost per lead, 40% of leads becoming site visits and 25% of site visits becoming contracts, you need around ten leads per job, so acquisition costs about €350. On an average contract worth €30,000 to €150,000 that is less than 1% of the value. This is why the problem is almost never the price of the contact: it is how many contacts are lost between the enquiry and the signature, where response speed, qualification before the site visit and follow-up after the quote all weigh heavily.
"What does a contact cost me?" is the first question nearly every construction company asks us. It is half the right question: cost per lead tells you what you pay to make someone raise their hand, not what it costs you to sign a contract. And in renovation, the gap between those two things is enormous.
How much does a qualified lead cost?
The realistic range is €20 to €60 per qualified lead. Three variables move it:
- Type of job. A lead for a bathroom refit costs less than one for a full renovation: there is more search volume and less competition on the keywords.
- Region. Large cities have more demand but also more companies bidding on the same clicks. Outside the cities you pay less and compete with fewer.
- Channel. Intercepting an active search costs more per click and converts better; creating demand costs less per contact and produces colder leads.
The number that actually matters: cost per contract
Cost per lead on its own says nothing about sustainability. You have to follow it all the way through:
| Step | Example | Cumulative cost |
|---|---|---|
| Cost per lead | €35 | €35 |
| Lead → site visit (40%) | 2.5 leads per site visit | ~€88 |
| Site visit → contract (25%) | 4 site visits per contract | ~€350 |
Roughly €350 per signed contract, on a job worth between €30,000 and €150,000. Less than 1% of the value. These are example percentages: the first thing to do is measure your own, because that is where the money is hiding.
Where the cost actually moves. Raising the site-visit-to-contract conversion from 25% to 35% brings the cost per contract down from €350 to €250, without touching the advertising budget. Achieving the same result by lowering cost per lead would mean taking it from €35 to €25 — much harder, and often impossible.
Why two companies pay the same per lead and get different costs
It happens regularly: same area, same budget, same cost per lead, opposite results. The difference is always in the same three places, and none of them is advertising.
- Response speed. In this sector, whoever responds within five minutes gets the site visit in roughly nine cases out of ten. Whoever calls back the next day finds someone who has already spoken to two other companies.
- Qualification before the site visit. A site visit is half a day of a technician's time. Spending it on someone who only wanted a rough price is the biggest hidden cost in construction, and it appears in no advertising report.
- Follow-up after the quote. On five-figure jobs the customer thinks it over for weeks and asks for other quotes. Whoever does not keep the conversation alive loses deals that were already won.
Portals or your own leads?
Portal leads arrive immediately, and that is their only advantage. They are almost always shared with three or four other companies, so the conversation starts from a price comparison you did not choose and do not control.
Leads you generate yourself cost more at the start — campaigns, landing pages and tracking all have to be built — but they are exclusive, and above all they stay yours: a contact that does not close today stays in the CRM and may reopen in six months. Over the medium term the cost per contract is lower, and your contact base grows instead of resetting every month.
What budget you need to start
The right question is not "what is the minimum", it is "what is the minimum to find out whether this works". Below a certain volume of contacts you cannot tell a campaign that is failing from an unlucky week.
At around €35 per lead, you need several dozen leads before the appointment and close rates become reliable. A steady budget over three months beats the same figure concentrated into three weeks: campaigns need continuity to optimise, and you need data to decide.
In summary
Between €20 and €60 per qualified lead, around €350 per signed contract, on jobs worth tens of thousands. The margin is there, and it is wide. What erodes it is not the price of the contact: it is leads going cold while they wait for an answer, site visits given to people without a project, and quotes left to die in silence.
If you want to measure your real numbers instead of estimating them — and find out where the margin is going — that is exactly the work we do on marketing for renovation companies.
Do you know what a signed contract costs you today?
In 30 minutes we calculate your real numbers together — cost per lead, per site visit and per contract — and see which of the three steps is losing you the most.