How to Lower Your Cost Per Lead on Google Ads

The average home service contractor pays $90-107 per lead on Google Ads. Some pay twice that. Others pay half.

The gap between expensive leads and affordable leads isn’t about spending more money. The contractors paying $50 per lead aren’t outbidding you. They’re running tighter campaigns, sending traffic to better pages, and eliminating waste that you’re still paying for.

Every tactic in this guide attacks a specific source of wasted spend. Most contractors can cut their cost per lead by 30-50% without reducing lead volume by applying these fixes to their existing campaigns.

Fix your Quality Score first

Google assigns a Quality Score from 1-10 to every keyword in your account. This score directly determines what you pay per click.

A Quality Score of 8 or higher can cut your CPC nearly in half compared to a Quality Score of 4. Google is essentially giving you a discount for running relevant, well-structured campaigns.

Quality Score is built from three components:

Expected click-through rate: How likely searchers are to click your ad. Better ad copy with specific, relevant messaging improves this.

Ad relevance: How closely your ad matches the search query. An ad group targeting “AC repair [city]” should have ad copy that mentions AC repair in that city, not generic HVAC language.

Landing page experience: How relevant and useful your landing page is to someone who clicked the ad. A landing page about AC repair for an AC repair keyword gets a better score than sending everyone to your homepage.

Improving Quality Score is about alignment. Your keyword, ad copy, and landing page should all talk about the same specific thing. Tight ad groups with 5-10 closely related keywords, matched ads, and dedicated landing pages consistently hit Quality Scores of 7-9.

Broad campaigns with generic ads pointing to a homepage get Quality Scores of 3-5 and pay premium prices for every single click.

Negative keywords eliminate waste

Negative keywords save 20-30% of wasted spend by preventing your ads from appearing for searches that will never produce a customer.

Most contractors either don’t use negative keywords or have a token list of 10-20 terms. That’s not enough. A well-maintained negative keyword list has 200-500 terms and grows every week.

Check your Search Terms report in Google Ads. This shows you the actual queries people typed before clicking your ad. Every week, you’ll find searches like:

• “plumber jobs near me” (job seeker, not a customer)
• “how to fix a leaky faucet” (DIY, not hiring)
• “cheapest plumber” (price shopper unlikely to convert)
• “plumbing supplies store” (looking for a store, not a service)

Each irrelevant click costs $20-30 that could have gone toward a real lead. Add every irrelevant term as a negative keyword, and that money stays in your budget for searches that actually convert.

The common Google Ads mistakes that drain budgets almost always include neglecting negative keywords. This is the single highest-ROI optimization most contractors can make.

Tighten your geographic targeting

Geographic targeting that’s too broad wastes 30-40% of budget on clicks from people outside your service area.

A contractor who serves a 25-mile radius but targets the entire metro area pays for clicks from homeowners 40 miles away. Those clicks cost the same but never convert because you either don’t serve that area or the homeowner finds someone closer.

Set your targeting to your actual service area using radius targeting. If you serve a 30-mile radius from your shop, set exactly that.

Also check Google’s location targeting settings. The default option, “Presence or Interest,” shows your ads to people who are interested in your area, not just physically there. A homeowner in Miami researching “plumber in Tampa” shouldn’t trigger your Tampa plumbing ads. Switch to “Presence” only targeting to fix this.

Review your geographic performance data monthly. If certain zip codes or cities consistently generate clicks but no conversions, exclude them. Not every area within your service radius is equally profitable.

Ad scheduling during business hours

Running ads only during business hours saves 20-30% of budget for most contractors.

Clicks that happen at 2am produce leads that sit in your inbox until morning. By the time you call back at 8am, that homeowner has already called two other companies who happened to answer.

If nobody’s answering the phone, you’re paying for clicks that can’t convert. Set your ad schedule to match your staffing hours, with an extra hour buffer on each end.

The exception: emergency service campaigns. If you truly offer 24/7 emergency response and have someone answering calls at 3am, run those campaigns around the clock. But your standard service campaigns for “AC maintenance” or “water heater installation” don’t need to run at midnight.

Review your hourly performance data in Google Ads. You’ll often find that conversion rates crater after business hours. Pausing ads during those dead hours redirects budget to the hours that actually produce leads.

Landing page optimization doubles conversion rates

Most home service landing pages convert at 3-4%. A well-optimized landing page converts at 7-10%. Doubling your conversion rate literally cuts your cost per lead in half.

If you’re paying $25 per click and converting 4% of visitors, your cost per lead is $625. At 8% conversion, that same $25 click produces leads at $312.

The fastest landing page improvements:

Strip your navigation menu. Paid visitors should have two options: call or fill out the form. Every link to another page is an exit opportunity. Landing pages without navigation convert better because there’s nowhere else to go.

Match the landing page headline to the ad. If your ad says “Same-Day AC Repair in Phoenix,” your landing page headline should say “Same-Day AC Repair in Phoenix.” Not “Welcome to ABC HVAC.” Message match builds trust and reduces bounce rates.

Put your phone number at the top and make it clickable on mobile. Over 60% of home service searches happen on phones. If calling requires hunting for a number, you lose leads.

Add social proof above the fold. Your star rating, number of reviews, and a short testimonial should be visible without scrolling. Homeowners need trust signals before they’ll hand over their contact information.

Speed matters. Pages that load in under 3 seconds convert significantly better than slow pages. A 1-second delay in load time can drop conversions by 7%.

If your landing pages aren’t converting, audit the basics before testing fancy design changes. Most conversion problems come from slow load times, missing phone numbers, or a disconnect between the ad and the page.

Single keyword ad groups outperform broad groups

Single keyword ad groups (SKAGs) contain one keyword per ad group, with ads written specifically for that keyword and a landing page dedicated to that exact topic.

SKAGs outperform broad ad groups because the alignment between keyword, ad, and landing page is perfect. Quality Scores are higher, click-through rates are better, and conversion rates improve.

For your top 10-20 keywords by spend, consider creating dedicated ad groups with tailored ad copy and matching landing pages. This approach takes more setup time but pays off through lower CPCs and higher conversion rates on your most expensive terms.

You don’t need SKAGs for every keyword. Use them for your highest-spend, highest-value keywords where even small improvements in Quality Score translate to significant savings.

Call-only ads for emergency services

Call-only ads display only a phone number, no website link. When someone taps the ad on their phone, it initiates a call directly. No landing page visit, no form, just an immediate phone call.

For emergency services like burst pipes, no heat, or electrical failures, call-only ads perform exceptionally well. The homeowner has an urgent problem and wants to talk to someone immediately. Removing the landing page step increases conversion rates because you eliminate the drop-off between clicking an ad and actually calling.

Call-only ads work best when someone is available to answer immediately. Sending a call-only ad to voicemail defeats the purpose and wastes money.

Remarketing at a fraction of the cost

97% of visitors leave your website without converting. Remarketing puts your ads back in front of those visitors as they browse other websites, watch YouTube, or scroll social media.

Remarketing clicks cost a fraction of search clicks because you’re not bidding in the competitive search auction. Instead of paying $25-40 for a new search click, remarketing impressions cost pennies and clicks run $2-5.

The homeowner who visited your “water heater replacement” page last week but didn’t call sees your ad while reading the news. That gentle reminder brings them back when they’re ready to move forward.

Learn how to retarget PPC visitors who didn’t convert and recover lost Google Ads leads to capture the majority of your paid traffic that leaves without converting.

Set up remarketing audiences for:

• All website visitors (past 30 days)
• Visitors to specific service pages
• Visitors who started but didn’t complete a form
• Past customers for upsell and maintenance reminders

Track everything back to booked jobs

Lowering your cost per lead doesn’t matter if those leads don’t book. The number that actually matters is your cost per booked job, which accounts for close rate differences between campaigns.

A campaign with $80 leads that close at 40% produces jobs at $200 each. A campaign with $50 leads that close at 10% produces jobs at $500 each. The “cheaper” leads are actually twice as expensive.

Install conversion tracking that follows leads from click to booked job. Track phone calls, form submissions, and ideally, revenue per campaign. This data tells you exactly where to increase budget and where to cut.

The methodology for measuring marketing performance and proper lead capture tools tie your ad spend to actual revenue. Without this connection, you’re optimizing for cheaper clicks when you should be optimizing for profitable customers.

The compounding effect

Each optimization builds on the others. Better Quality Scores reduce CPC. Lower CPC means more clicks per dollar. Better landing pages convert more of those clicks. Negative keywords ensure those clicks come from real prospects. Tighter geographic targeting keeps spend focused on your service area.

A contractor who implements all of these changes can realistically reduce their cost per lead from $100+ to $40-60 while maintaining or increasing lead volume. At 20 leads per month, that’s a savings of $800-1,200 per month, money that can be reinvested into scaling campaigns or building organic SEO for long-term growth.

The contractors who treat Google Ads as a set-it-and-forget-it expense will always pay top dollar. The ones who optimize weekly, add negative keywords, test landing pages, and track results will consistently outperform competitors who spend twice as much.