What is a good cost per lead in Google Ads?

There is no single number. A good cost per lead for a law firm chasing £10,000 cases looks nothing like a good cost per lead for a boiler engineer. The honest answer depends on what a customer is worth to you and how many leads turn into customers. Here is how to work out your own number instead of chasing someone else’s.

Business owners ask me for a benchmark all the time. What should my cost per lead be? The trouble with benchmarks is they ignore the only two things that decide whether a lead price is good: your close rate and your customer value. Until you know those, any number is just a number.

Work backwards from what a customer is worth

Start at the end. If a new customer is worth £3,000 to you, and one in five leads becomes a customer, then five leads cost you one customer. You can pay up to £600 a lead and still break even on the first job, before you even count repeat work or referrals. If your customer is worth £300 and you close one in ten, the maths is brutal: £30 a lead just to break even.

That is the whole game. Cost per lead only means something next to close rate and customer value. A £100 lead is a steal for a kitchen fitter and a disaster for someone selling a £40 product.

Rough ranges, with a health warning

People want numbers, so here are honest ranges from the lead-gen accounts we see, with the caveat that yours will differ:

Trades and home services. Often £15 to £60 a lead, depending on the job value and how competitive the area is.
Dental, clinics and health. Frequently £30 to £120, higher for high-value treatments like implants or cosmetic work.
Legal and professional services. £50 to £200 and up is common, because a single case can be worth thousands.

Treat those as a feel for the landscape, not targets. The right number for you is whatever still leaves a profit once leads become customers.

Why the cheapest leads are usually the dearest

It is tempting to drive cost per lead as low as possible. Resist it. Broadening your targeting and loosening your keywords will always bring the number down, because you start hoovering up cheap, low-intent clicks. The leads get cheaper and worse at the same time. You end up paying your sales time chasing people who were never going to buy. Cheap leads you cannot close are throwing good money after bad.

The opposite move usually wins. Tighten the targeting, bid for the high-intent searches, accept a higher cost per lead, and watch the cost per actual customer fall.

What pushes your cost per lead up or down

A handful of levers move the number more than anything else:

Intent. Someone searching emergency plumber near me converts far better than someone searching how to fix a leak.
Competition and area. The more firms bidding in your patch, the higher the click price.
Landing page. A sharp, single-purpose page can halve your cost per lead without touching the bids.
Tracking. If you are not feeding lead quality back to Google, you are paying for volume, not value.

The number to actually chase

Forget the benchmark. Work out what a customer is worth, know your close rate, and set a cost per lead that leaves you a profit. Then drive cost per acquired customer down by improving quality, not by buying cheaper, worse leads. If you want a read on whether your current cost per lead is healthy or flattering, the Free Audit will tell you.

We have also written on why lead quality beats volume, and how lead gen differs from ecommerce, if you want the fuller picture.