Results
Plumbing: Profitable From Launch at $101 Per Lead
On this page
Local Service Ads and Google Ads launched together, generating 39 leads a month profitably at $101 each. Lead costs elsewhere on this site range from $8.79 for a custom builder to $125 for water treatment, and lining them up against each other is exactly the mistake this page exists to correct.
$101 is a good cost per lead or a ruinous one depending entirely on close rate and average ticket. Those are the only two numbers that decide it.
Why $101 can be profitable
Take a plumbing business with a $600 average ticket at 55% gross margin and a 40% close rate on paid leads:
- Gross profit per job: $600 × 55% = $330
- Leads needed per job: 1 ÷ 0.40 = 2.5
- Acquisition cost per job: $101 × 2.5 = $253
- Gross profit remaining: $77 per job, before any repeat work
Thin on the first job, and it becomes comfortable the moment repeat value is counted — a plumbing customer is rarely a single transaction. The arithmetic is here and it's worth running with your own figures.
Change the close rate to 15% and the same $101 lead loses money. That's the whole point — the lead cost is not the story.
What we found
Our usual advice is one channel, funded properly. So a launch running both needs explaining rather than assuming:
- LSA verification takes three to four weeks, so starting it immediately and running Google Ads meanwhile fills the gap rather than waiting
- They do different jobs. LSA is pay-per-lead and sits above everything; Google Ads reaches searches LSA categories don't cover
- Budget was sufficient for both —
What we did
| Phase | What | Why then |
|---|---|---|
| LSA verification started | — | Runs on its own clock — start day one |
| Google Ads built and launched | — | Produces leads during the verification wait |
| Tracking | — | Without it, neither channel can be judged |
A new account has no conversion history, so the first six to eight weeks cost more per lead than the steady state.
What happened
| Metric | Result |
|---|---|
| Cost per lead, blended | $101 |
| LSA cost per lead | $117 |
| Google Ads cost per lead | $85 |
| Leads per month | 39 |
The channel that most people assume is the cheap one was the expensive one here. Local Service Ads produced leads at $117; Google Ads at $85. That ordering surprises people, and it matters for anyone deciding where a first budget goes.
It doesn't mean LSA was the worse buy. LSA leads arrive as phone calls from people who picked you off a verified listing at the top of the page, and they tend to close at a higher rate than a form fill from a search ad. A more expensive lead that closes more often can easily be the cheaper job.
It also means the blended $101 hides the decision. At roughly an even split between the two channels, the account's cost per lead is an average of two quite different products. That's the figure the client faces next quarter, and a blended number is no help with it.
Is your situation similar?
This fits a business starting paid media from scratch with a budget that can genuinely fund it — roughly $3,000 a month in media for two channels, less if you pick one.
Run your own numbers before deciding whether $101 would work for you. With a $600 ticket and a 40% close rate it does. With a $200 ticket it does not, and no amount of optimisation would fix that.
If your trade is LSA-eligible, start verification today regardless of what else you decide — three to four weeks runs whether you've made a decision or not.
More on Local Service Ads, Google Ads and marketing for plumbers · what we charge
Written by Jared DeValk, founder of Nashville Digital. Published with the client's permission. Last reviewed September 2026.