Free tool
Do the math before you turn the ads on. Customer value × close rate against the cost per lead. A yes, a test, or a no. Built on the same numbers the articles use. Nothing is stored; the address carries your inputs, so a result can be shared by copying the link.
A lead is worth about $375 to you and costs about $91. That is 4.1 times the cost, which leaves room for the campaign to be imperfect and still pay.
Break-even close rate: 6.1%. Below that, every lead loses money at $91 each. The fastest lever is usually answering leads within the hour, which lifts the close rate without touching the ads.
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How it works
- 01
A lead is worth average first-year customer value multiplied by your close rate. If that number clears the cost per lead with room to spare, ads make sense. If it does not, no amount of optimizing will save the campaign.
- 02
The cost-per-lead benchmarks are WordStream's 2025 averages for Google search ads across more than 16,000 US campaigns: about $70 overall, $91 for home services, $104 for business services and $132 for attorneys. Mid-sized markets tend to run below big-metro averages, and your own campaign data beats any benchmark, so enter it when you have it.
- 03
The verdict thresholds: three times the cost per lead or better is a clear yes, 1.5 to 3 times is worth a careful test, 1 to 1.5 is marginal, and below 1 is a no at these numbers. The break-even close rate is the cost per lead divided by customer value.
- 04
Leads a month is budget divided by cost per lead; customers is leads times close rate; the return multiple is first-year revenue divided by ad spend. None of it counts a management fee, and none of it counts repeat business, which is why a marginal result can still be right for a business with long customer relationships.
Questions
One that is comfortably below what a lead is worth to you, which is customer value times close rate. National averages run about $70 per lead overall, around $91 for home services, $104 for business services and $132 for attorneys. A $150 lead is fine for estate planning and a disaster for gutter cleaning, so judge it against your own numbers, not the average.
Related reading
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