This report compiles marketing spend data for home services businesses, plumbers, electricians, HVAC contractors, roofers, and pest control operators among them, from seven sources published between 2019 and 2026. It draws on U.S. Small Business Administration benchmark data, the 2025 Gartner CMO Spend Survey, and 2025–2026 cost and budget-allocation research from LocaliQ, SearchLight Digital, Home Services Marketing Pros, and Now Booked Marketing. The tables below cover marketing spend as a share of revenue by business size, budget allocation by channel, and cost per lead by trade across paid search, Google Local Services Ads, and lead-gen directories.
The core question this report was built to answer: how much of revenue home services companies put toward marketing, by annual revenue tier.
| Annual Revenue | Marketing Spend (% of Revenue) | Typical Monthly Spend |
|---|---|---|
| $500K–$1M | 10–15% | $4,000–$12,000 |
| $1M–$3M | 8–12% | $7,000–$30,000 |
| $3M–$10M | 6–10% | $15,000–$85,000 |
| $10M–$25M | 5–8% | $40,000–$170,000 |
| $25M+ | 4–7% | $85,000+ |
Figures compiled by Home Services Marketing Pros from budgets it manages across more than 40 home services clients, plus input from trade groups including Blue Collar Roundtable and Service Nation, not an independently audited industry census. For context, the U.S. Small Business Administration cites 2018 benchmark data putting average spend at 11.8% of revenue for business-to-consumer service companies broadly, above the top end of the larger-revenue tiers here, while Gartner's 2025 CMO Spend Survey put cross-industry marketing budgets at 7.7% of revenue, a figure drawn mostly from companies with more than $1 billion in annual revenue and a different cost structure than most home services operators.
Among companies in the size range where paid channels typically get a dedicated budget line, this is how that budget tends to split.
| Channel | Share of Marketing Budget |
|---|---|
| Paid search & Local Services Ads | 35–45% |
| SEO & content | 20–30% |
| Meta (Facebook/Instagram) ads | 10–20% |
| Reputation, reviews & Google Business Profile | 10–15% |
| Marketing automation, CRM & speed-to-lead tools | 5–10% |
As reported by Home Services Marketing Pros from its own client accounts, not an independently audited allocation study. None of the sources reviewed for this report isolate referral or word-of-mouth programs as a distinct share of paid marketing budget, even though contractors often name referrals as a primary customer source.
Search ad cost varies sharply by trade, which is one reason a flat percentage-of-revenue rule undersells what growth-stage contractors in the pricier categories actually need to spend.
| Trade | Avg. Cost Per Click | Avg. Cost Per Lead |
|---|---|---|
| Roofing & gutters | $10.70 | $228.15 |
| Doors & windows sales | $8.76 | $200.34 |
| Painting | $13.74 | $138.38 |
| Plumbing | $10.49 | $129.02 |
| Air conditioning installation & repair | $9.68 | $127.74 |
| Landscaping | $8.76 | $117.92 |
| Electricians & electrical contractors | $12.18 | $93.69 |
| Handyman services | $7.10 | $54.05 |
| Cleaning / maid services | $8.50 | $46.99 |
Based on LocaliQ's analysis of 3,211 US home services search advertising campaigns running April 1, 2024 through March 21, 2025, with a minimum of 103 campaigns per category. Figures count phone calls and form fills as leads, not confirmed bookings.
Local Services Ads price leads differently than standard search ads and convert at a different rate, worth tracking on its own rather than folded into the figures above.
| Trade | Cost Per Lead | Book Rate |
|---|---|---|
| Drain & sewer | $59 | 39.5% |
| Plumbing | $57 | 44.5% |
| HVAC | $51 | 44.0% |
| Electrical | $39 | 43.4% |
| All trades (blended) | $53 | 43.9% |
From SearchLight's analysis of $6.72 million in Local Services Ads spend across 888 contractor accounts during February 2026, covering 126,650 leads and $52.7 million in closed revenue. Blended cost per paying customer across the dataset was $233.
Directories and aggregator platforms mostly price per booked job rather than per lead, which changes the comparison with the ad-platform figures above.
| Lead Source | Avg. Cost Per Booked Job | Booking Rate |
|---|---|---|
| Google Local Services Ads | $168 | 31% |
| Thumbtack | $250 | ~18% |
| Angi | $542 | ~12% |
From Blue Grid Media's analysis of more than 100 contractor accounts, published April 2026 and cited via Now Booked Marketing, a single-firm analysis rather than an independently audited industry-wide survey. The same analysis found about 45% of Local Services Ads leads are unbookable without active dispute management (spam, wrong numbers, out-of-area requests), and that contractors typically recover 6–7% of total Local Services Ads spend by filing disputes on those leads. The same convention Solvo Index uses for single-source and self-reported data in its own directory applies here: a single firm's client-book analysis is labeled as such rather than presented as an industry consensus.
If you'd like a PDF copy of this report, reach out here.