How much should a home-service company spend on ads in 2026?

The honest answer to "how much should I spend on ads" is: enough to win profitable jobs, and not a dollar more on channels that don't. That sounds evasive, so this guide turns it into a number you can actually set this week.

Start from revenue, not from a competitor's budget

A common rule of thumb across home services is to reinvest roughly 5–10% of revenue into marketing. A newer company fighting for visibility usually sits at the higher end; an established brand with strong word-of-mouth can sit lower. If you did $1.2M last year, that's a $60k–$120k annual marketing envelope, or roughly $5k–$10k a month across everything — ads, your website, call tracking, and the people running it.

That percentage is a sanity check, not a strategy. The number that actually matters is what it costs you to acquire one paying customer.

The only equation that matters: CAC vs. job value

Customer acquisition cost (CAC) is total marketing spend divided by the number of customers it produced. Compare it to the profit on an average job — not the revenue.

1. 1.Take your average job value. Say a roofing job is $12,000 with a 30% gross margin = $3,600 gross profit.
2. 2.Decide what fraction of that profit you'll pay to win the job. Most contractors are comfortable spending 10–20% of gross profit on acquisition.
3. 3.That gives you a target CAC. At 15% of $3,600, you can profitably pay up to ~$540 to land a roofing customer.

Now you can judge any channel honestly. If Google Local Services Ads bring you a customer for $300, scale it. If a lead-resale site costs you $450 in shared leads that close at 1-in-5, your real CAC is $2,250 — and you should walk away.

Where the budget should go

For most roofing, HVAC, and plumbing companies, the highest-intent spend is on people actively searching for a service right now:

• •Google Local Services Ads (LSA) — pay-per-lead, shows the green "Google Guaranteed" badge, sits above search ads. Usually the best first dollar in home services.
• •Google Search Ads — captures "emergency plumber near me" intent LSA doesn't fully cover.
• •Google Business Profile + local SEO — the compounding asset. Slower, but it lowers your paid CAC over time.
• •Retargeting — cheap insurance so the people who visited your site don't forget you.

Notice what's not at the top: brand awareness campaigns, billboards, and shared-lead marketplaces. Those can have a place once the high-intent channels are saturated — not before.

Don't let the platform mark up your spend

One quiet budget killer is the agency markup. Some agencies bill your ad spend through their own account and add a margin, so you never see the real cost-per-click. At Proforged you pay Google and Meta directly — we never touch or mark up your ad spend — so your CAC math stays honest. That's the whole point of the equation above.

A simple starting point

If you're not sure where to begin: set your monthly budget at the lower bound of 5–10% of revenue, put 60–70% of it into Google LSA and Search, 20% into your Business Profile and local SEO, and hold 10% for retargeting. Then watch CAC by channel for 60 days and move money toward whatever beats your target.

Want this modeled for your specific trade, city, and job value? See live availability in your market or claim your slot and we'll build the plan with you.