Plain words for
expensive things.
44 terms contractors meet in marketing, defined without jargon — and, where it matters, a note on how each one gets used to mislead you.
What it
costs.
What things cost, and which cost is the one that decides whether a campaign works.
- Cost per leadCPL
-
Cost per lead is your total advertising spend divided by the number of leads it produced.
The most quoted number in contractor marketing and the least useful on its own. It says nothing about whether those leads answered the phone, were in your service area, or could afford the work. A campaign at $30 per lead can lose money while one at $180 prints it.
- Cost per booked job
-
Cost per booked job is your advertising spend divided by the number of jobs actually sold from it.
The number that decides whether marketing is working, because it survives every step where leads leak away — unanswered calls, no-shows, lost bids. Two companies with identical cost per lead can differ threefold here.
- Max cost per lead
-
Max cost per lead is the highest price you can pay for a lead and still make money on the work it produces.
Derived from average job value, gross margin and the rate at which leads become sold jobs. It is the only benchmark that matters, because it is yours — anything priced below it is worth buying and anything above it is not, regardless of what the industry average says.
- Customer acquisition costCAC
-
Customer acquisition cost is the full cost of winning one customer, including advertising, agency fees, software and sales time.
Broader than cost per booked job, which usually counts media only. If your CAC excludes the salary of whoever works the leads, it is describing a business you do not run.
- Return on ad spendROAS
-
Return on ad spend is revenue produced divided by advertising cost, expressed as a multiple.
A 4x ROAS means four dollars back for every one spent. It is a revenue measure, not a profit measure — at 30% gross margin, a 4x ROAS is roughly break-even once the cost of doing the work is counted.
- Break-even ROAS
-
Break-even ROAS is the return on ad spend at which advertising exactly pays for itself and no more.
It is the inverse of your gross margin: at 25% margin you need 4x just to break even, at 50% you need 2x. Knowing it stops you celebrating a number that is quietly costing you money.
- Lifetime valueLTV
-
Lifetime value is the total gross profit a customer produces across every job they ever buy, not just the first.
It is what lets you outbid competitors for the same lead. A trade with genuine repeat work — tree care, landscaping, HVAC service — can pay far more for a first job than one-off trades can, and stay profitable.
- Gross margin
-
Gross margin is what remains from a job after materials and labour, before overhead and advertising.
Every advertising decision runs through this number. It sets your break-even ROAS and your maximum cost per lead, which is why a marketing plan built without it is guesswork.
- Blended cost per lead
-
Blended cost per lead averages the cost of leads across every channel you run, rather than reporting each separately.
Useful for budgeting, dangerous for decisions. A blended figure hides the channel quietly wasting half your spend, which is exactly why underperforming agencies prefer to report it.
- Dealer feeMerchant fee
-
A dealer fee is the percentage a financing lender deducts from your payout to fund the promotional rate offered to the homeowner.
The reason "0% for 12 months" is not free to you. Longer promotional terms and lower customer rates mean larger fees, so a financed job deposits less than the contract value. Price it in deliberately rather than discovering it at reconciliation, because it moves your effective margin and everything calculated from it.
- Triggering terms
-
Triggering terms are the specific credit details that, once stated in an advertisement, legally require further disclosures alongside them.
Under the US Truth in Lending Act and Regulation Z, naming a monthly payment, a down payment, the number of payments or the finance charge obliges you to disclose more, including the annual percentage rate. "From $99 a month" triggers it; "financing available" generally does not. Widely violated in contractor advertising and genuinely enforced.
- Mobilisation costMobilization
-
Mobilisation cost is what it costs to start a job before any productive work happens — crew, equipment, materials delivery, permits and travel.
Roughly fixed regardless of job size, which is why small jobs in equipment-heavy trades earn disproportionately less rather than merely less. A week of them can keep everyone busy while the business goes backwards.
- Route density
-
Route density is how tightly your day’s jobs cluster geographically.
At low job values drive time is the dominant cost rather than overhead, so four jobs on one street and four across a county produce an identically full schedule and completely different profit. The reason the problem goes unnoticed is that nobody investigates a fully booked week.
- Churn rate
-
Churn rate is the share of recurring customers who stop buying over a given period.
The number that decides whether advertising produces growth or merely replaces losses. A maintenance business losing a quarter of its book each year is running hard to stand still, and almost no contractor can state the figure on demand.
- Last-click attribution
-
Last-click attribution credits a sale entirely to the final ad or link the customer touched before converting.
Google Ads and Google Analytics have defaulted to data-driven attribution since 2023, but last click is still what many CRMs, dashboards and reports use — and it is systematically misleading in long-cycle trades. A homeowner who saw a paid social ad in March, read two guides, then searched your name in May is recorded as a branded search win — so early-stage channels understate themselves and paid search flatters itself. Data-driven models do not fully fix it either, because each platform only sees its own touches.
What a lead
actually is.
What a lead is, what it becomes, and where the funnel quietly leaks.
- Qualified appointment
-
A qualified appointment is a booked meeting with a homeowner who owns the property, is in your service area, knows the rough price, and wants the work done.
The definition matters commercially: any guarantee counted in appointments is only as good as the qualification behind it. Ask what specifically has to be true before something counts.
- Exclusive lead
-
An exclusive lead is sold to one contractor only, rather than shared among several competing for the same job.
The word is used loosely. Some platforms call a lead exclusive while selling the same homeowner’s details under a different service category, or reselling after a set period. Get the definition in writing before signing.
- Lead-to-appointment rate
-
Lead-to-appointment rate is the share of leads that become a booked appointment.
The single most diagnostic number in the funnel. A low rate almost never means bad leads — it usually means slow follow-up, and it is the cheapest thing to fix.
- Show rate
-
Show rate is the share of booked appointments where the homeowner is actually there when you arrive.
Invisible in most reporting and brutal in practice: a 50% show rate doubles your true cost per sit-down. Confirmations and reminders move it more than better targeting ever will.
- Close rate
-
Close rate is the share of appointments that become signed jobs.
Set by your pricing and your sales conversation, not by your ads — but it governs what you can afford to pay for a lead. Doubling it halves your effective cost per job with no change in spend.
- Crew capacity
-
Crew capacity is the number of jobs your crews can actually complete in a period.
The ceiling on useful lead volume. Buying leads beyond it produces long lead times, cancellations and bad reviews — spending more to damage the business.
- Review gating
-
Review gating is asking customers how their experience was first, then directing only the satisfied ones to leave a public review.
It violates Google’s policies, and in the United States the FTC’s rule on consumer reviews addresses suppressing negative feedback. Several review platforms removed the feature for that reason. Ask everybody or do not run the programme — a suspension takes your profile and its reviews offline, and reviews removed for a policy violation do not come back.
- Maintenance agreementService plan
-
A maintenance agreement is a recurring contract for scheduled service visits, usually paid monthly or annually.
Converts a project business into a recurring one, which changes what you can afford to spend acquiring a customer. It also fills the shoulder seasons, puts you inside the property before the failure, and produces replacement work on your timetable rather than under duress.
- Trade channel
-
The trade channel is work referred by other businesses — designers, builders, remodelers, or trades that reach the customer before you do.
Frequently higher volume and higher value than consumer advertising, because the intermediary has already framed the decision and you are chosen as a supplier rather than compared on price. Built over about a year on reliability rather than bought.
- Design fee
-
A design fee is a charge for drawings or a design consultation, usually credited against the job if the customer proceeds.
A qualification tool more than a revenue line. A homeowner willing to pay for drawings has a project; one who is not was collecting quotes. It also makes the design step affordable to do properly rather than as free work squeezed between jobs.
Where they
come from.
Where the leads come from, and what you actually pay for on each.
- Local Services AdsLSA
-
Local Services Ads are Google listings that appear above the normal search results, where you pay per lead rather than per click.
Carries the Google Verified badge and requires licence and insurance verification. Invalid leads are credited automatically; there has been no manual dispute since 2024, and wrong-area or wrong-service leads are no longer credited — so the job types and service area you switch on decide much of what you actually pay. From August 2026 Google is moving LSA into Google Ads as Performance Max pay-per-lead campaigns, with the same placement and pricing model.
- Google Verifiedformerly Google Guaranteed
-
Google Verified is the badge on Local Services Ads, shown on businesses that have passed Google’s screening — background, licence and insurance checks, depending on the trade and location.
It replaced the Google Guaranteed, Google Screened and License Verified badges on 20 October 2025. The checks did not change; the money-back guarantee that came with Google Guaranteed ended. For emergency trades the placement and the badge together are usually worth more than any ad copy.
- Negative keyword
-
A negative keyword stops your ad showing for a search term you do not want to pay for.
Without an aggressive list, contractor search campaigns pay for job seekers, DIY researchers and students. It is the highest-return hour of maintenance in any Google Ads account.
- Click-through rateCTR
-
Click-through rate is the share of people who saw your ad and clicked it.
A diagnostic, not a goal. High CTR with no booked jobs usually means the ad promised something the landing page does not deliver.
- Cost per clickCPC
-
Cost per click is what you pay each time somebody clicks your ad, regardless of what they do next.
Relevant on Google Ads and Meta, irrelevant on Local Services Ads, where you pay per lead instead. Falling CPC is not progress if cost per booked job is rising.
- Cost per thousand impressionsCPM
-
CPM is what it costs to show your ad a thousand times, whether or not anybody responds.
Mostly a measure of how contested your audience is. Rising CPM in a seasonal trade usually means competitors have arrived, not that anything is broken.
- Attribution
-
Attribution is deciding which advertising touch gets credit for a job that eventually sold.
Harder than dashboards admit. A homeowner may see a Facebook ad, search your name a week later and phone from your website — three systems will each claim that job, which is why totals rarely reconcile.
- Google Business ProfileGBP
-
A Google Business Profile is the free business listing that produces your entry in Google Maps and the local search results.
For most home-service companies it is where a majority of enquiries are decided, and it costs nothing to appear in. Unlike advertising it compounds and does not stop working when you stop paying, which is why it should be set up before any paid channel rather than after.
- Map packLocal pack
-
The map pack is the group of local business listings shown with a map above the normal search results.
Ranking in it rests on relevance, distance and prominence. Distance is the dominant factor and cannot be influenced, so the controllable work is a complete, accurate profile and a steady flow of recent reviews.
- Service area businessSAB
-
A service area business is one that serves customers at their location rather than at its own premises, and hides its address on its Google listing.
The correct setting for most contractors. Displaying a residential address customers cannot visit is both a policy problem and a practical one, and it does not help you rank anywhere you are not physically near.
- NAP consistency
-
NAP consistency means your business name, address and phone number appear identically everywhere they are published online.
Local ranking relies on it partly, which is why scattering call tracking numbers across your site, footer and directory listings can quietly cost you map visibility. Contractors usually do this while trying to measure better, and end up measuring a smaller total accurately.
- Dynamic number insertionDNI
-
Dynamic number insertion shows a different phone number on your website depending on which campaign the visitor arrived from.
The safe way to attribute calls: the page shows your real published number by default and swaps in a tracking number only for campaign traffic, so crawlers and organic visitors still see the consistent one.
- Drive-time targeting
-
Drive-time targeting sets an advertising area by how long it takes to reach a location rather than by distance in miles.
Closer to how a contracting business actually works. Rivers, motorways and traffic mean two addresses the same distance out can be twenty-five and fifty-five minutes away, so a mileage radius is the shape of a compass rather than the shape of your business. Neither Google Ads nor Meta offers it as a setting; on Google it is built from the ZIP codes or towns inside the drive time.
What happens
next.
What happens after the form is submitted — usually the cheapest thing to fix.
- Speed to lead
-
Speed to lead is the time between a homeowner submitting an enquiry and somebody from your company making contact.
The most researched number in lead management. The 2007 Lead Response Management Study found that contacting at five minutes rather than thirty changed connect odds by 100x and qualification odds by 21x — and most contractors still answer in hours.
- Instant text-back
-
An instant text-back is an automated SMS sent within seconds of a lead arriving, usually carrying a link to book a time.
The practical answer to speed to lead for contractors, who cannot answer a form fill while on a roof. It works because it is a text — read within minutes — rather than an email nobody opens. In the US the sending number must be registered for business texting (A2P 10DLC); carriers have blocked unregistered business texts since February 2025.
- Nurture sequence
-
A nurture sequence is a planned series of follow-up messages sent to a lead who has not yet booked.
Most contractors stop after one attempt. Each touch needs an actual reason — a price alternative, a photograph of comparable work, an honest lead time — because "just checking in" trains people to ignore you.
- No-show
-
A no-show is a booked appointment where the homeowner is not there when you arrive.
Costs the appointment, the travel and the slot a real prospect could have taken. Confirmation the day before and a reminder the morning of are the cheapest fix available.
- Database reactivation
-
Database reactivation is contacting old leads and past customers who never booked or have not bought recently.
The highest-return marketing available in a slow month, because the list is already paid for. A quote that went cold eighteen months ago is a different conversation once the problem has visibly worsened.
Where these numbers come from
Most of the terms above are arithmetic you can run on your own business, and the calculators do exactly that — no signup, no email.
If you want to know what other companies are paying rather than what you should, the 2026 benchmark reference collects the published figures by trade and channel, and is honest about how much they disagree.
Know the words.
Now see the numbers.
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