A full diary feels good. But if you cannot measure cost per booked job, you do not know whether your marketing is making you money or simply keeping your phone busy. For a trade business, the number that matters is not clicks, impressions or even raw enquiries. It is what you spent to win confirmed, worthwhile work.
That figure gives you a clear way to judge Google Ads, lead suppliers, referrals, local advertising and any agency you pay. It also highlights where the real problem sits. You may be paying too much for enquiries, responding too slowly, quoting poorly, or accepting jobs with margins too tight to support your marketing spend.
What is cost per booked job?
Cost per booked job is the total amount spent to generate work, divided by the number of jobs you actually secure.
The basic calculation is:
Total marketing cost ÷ number of booked jobs = cost per booked job
Say you spend £2,000 in a month on Google Ads and lead generation management. That produces 20 enquiries. You survey 12 properties, send 10 quotes and win four jobs. Your cost per booked job is £500.
The calculation is simple. The discipline is in using the right numbers.
A booked job should mean more than a homeowner saying, “That sounds good.” Count it when the customer has accepted the quote and committed to the work. Depending on how your business operates, that may mean a signed acceptance, written confirmation, a deposit paid or a fixed start date in the diary. Pick one definition and use it every month.
Otherwise, one person in the office may count verbal maybes while another counts deposits. Your figures will look better than reality, and you will make decisions on bad information.
Why enquiries alone do not tell you enough
An enquiry is an opportunity, not revenue. A roofer can receive ten calls about small repairs, insurance queries and jobs outside their area, then book nothing. Another roofer may receive five solid replacement-roof enquiries and book two valuable projects.
If you only track cost per lead, the first campaign can appear cheaper. But it may be the worse investment.
Cost per booked job connects marketing to the work that pays your wages, staff, materials and overheads. It shows the full chain:
Advertising spend → enquiry → contact → survey → quote → booked job
Every stage matters. If leads are coming in but jobs are not being booked, do not immediately blame the ads. Check whether calls are answered quickly, whether the right person follows up, how long quotes take to send, and whether pricing is competitive for the type of work you want.
This is particularly important with shared-lead platforms. A lead may look affordable on paper, but if four other firms receive the same details, you are paying for a race to call first and a lower chance of winning the work. The real cost per booked job can be far higher than the upfront lead price suggests.
How to measure cost per booked job accurately
Start with one calendar month. Do not try to rebuild every marketing decision from the last two years. A simple, repeatable process will give you better information than a complicated spreadsheet nobody updates.
Add up the full marketing cost
Include the money directly used to generate enquiries: your Google Ads spend, lead-generation service fee, directory fees, paid social campaigns and any other advertising channel you want to assess.
If you are reviewing Google Ads, include both the ad budget and the management fee. Looking only at ad spend makes the channel appear cheaper than it is. Equally, do not throw unrelated business costs into the total. Your vans, tools and labour are not marketing costs.
You can measure all channels together first, then break them out once your tracking is consistent. The channel-level view is useful because it stops a poor source hiding behind good referral work.
Record every enquiry and its source
When a homeowner calls, fills in a form or sends an email, log where they came from. Keep the labels straightforward: Google Ads, organic Google search, referral, checkatrade-style marketplace, Facebook, van signage or repeat customer.
You also need a status against each enquiry. At a minimum, record whether it was contacted, surveyed, quoted, booked or lost. A short note on lost jobs is valuable too. “Outside service area”, “price too high”, “small repair only” and “customer stopped replying” are more useful than a blank cell.
This does not need to create office work for the sake of it. It should take seconds per lead. The point is to replace guesswork with a reliable record of what happened.
Match bookings to the right period
Trade sales cycles vary. A driveway quote may turn into a booking within days, while an extension can take months. If you count only jobs booked in the same month the enquiry arrived, a longer sales cycle can make a good campaign look weak.
Use a sensible reporting window. For fast-turnaround work, 30 days may be enough. For bigger projects, review leads after 60 or 90 days before deciding their final outcome. Keep the enquiry month attached to every job so you can see which campaign created it.
The aim is not perfect attribution. It is a fair comparison that helps you spend with confidence.
Work out what a sensible figure looks like
There is no universal “good” cost per booked job. It depends on your average job value, gross profit and capacity.
A £400 cost per booked job may be unacceptable for a small fence repair but very healthy for a £12,000 resin driveway. The key question is: after labour, materials, subcontractors and overheads, does the job leave enough profit to cover the acquisition cost and still make commercial sense?
For example, a landscaping firm spends £3,000 on marketing and books six jobs. Its cost per booked job is £500. If the average project is worth £6,000 and produces £2,000 gross profit, that £500 is likely a workable investment. If the average booked job is £1,100 with only £350 gross profit, it is not.
Do not use turnover alone as your benchmark. High-value work can still be low-margin work. Your target figure should be based on gross profit, not hope.
It also depends on how full your diary is. If your best team is already booked for three months and you cannot recruit, paying more to generate immediate work may not be sensible. In that situation, target larger, higher-margin jobs or reduce spend until capacity opens up.
Find the leak before increasing spend
Once you measure cost per booked job, you can see where to improve. A campaign producing quality, exclusive enquiries may not need more budget yet. It may need faster call handling or better quote follow-up.
Look at the conversion between each stage. If 30 enquiries become 25 conversations but only eight surveys, you may be qualifying poorly or taking too long to respond. If eight surveys become seven quotes but only one booking, review your pricing, presentation, timescales and follow-up process.
Fast responses matter. Homeowners often contact several firms when they need roofing, tree work or a new patio. Calling back while they are still looking can be the difference between a booked survey and a lost opportunity. The same applies after the quote goes out. A polite follow-up is not pushy when it helps a customer make a decision.
Common mistakes that distort the number
These errors make marketing look better or worse than it really is:
- Counting quotes or surveys as booked work.
- Ignoring management fees and only counting ad spend.
- Treating every lead as equal, regardless of job type, location or value.
- Forgetting to log missed calls, slow follow-ups and lost-job reasons.
- Judging large-project campaigns before enough time has passed for customers to decide.
There is also a temptation to chase the lowest possible cost. Cheap leads are not automatically profitable leads. A higher-cost source that delivers exclusive enquiries for the work you actually want can produce a far stronger return than a stream of bargain enquiries shared with competitors.
Use the number to make better decisions
Review your figures monthly, but do not overreact to one quiet week. A small sample can move sharply when one large job lands or falls through. Look for patterns across at least two or three months, especially if your trade is seasonal.
Keep a simple scorecard: total marketing cost, enquiries, surveys, quotes, booked jobs, booked value and cost per booked job. If possible, add estimated gross profit. That is enough to have a proper commercial conversation about where your next pound should go.
A managed campaign from Win Jobs can make this easier by focusing reporting on enquiries, calls and booked work rather than vanity metrics. But the final part still sits with your business: answer promptly, track outcomes and know which jobs are worth winning.
The best marketing is not the campaign that produces the most leads. It is the one that puts profitable, manageable work in your diary at a cost your business can comfortably afford.