How Much Should a Contractor Spend on Marketing?

Why "how much should I spend" is the wrong first question

Most contractors set a marketing budget the same way: pick a number that feels safe, spend it for a month or two, decide it "didn't work," and cut it. The problem isn't the number. It's that nobody decided what the money was supposed to buy.

A marketing budget is really a purchase order for booked jobs. So the useful question is: how many jobs do I need, and what am I willing to pay to win each one? Once you answer that, the budget almost writes itself — and you can tell within weeks whether it's working instead of guessing for months.

The quick benchmark: a percentage of revenue

If you want a starting point, the most common rule of thumb for small businesses is to put somewhere around 5–10% of gross revenue into marketing. The U.S. Small Business Administration has long pointed small businesses toward roughly 7–8% when revenue is under a few million a year. Here's how that tends to break down for contractors:

• Around 3–5% — you're established, your phone rings from referrals and repeat customers, and you mostly want to protect your spot and fill slow months.
• Around 5–10% — you want steady, predictable growth: more crews busy, more of your calendar filled by your own leads instead of shared lead sites.
• 10% or more — you're newer, entering a new trade or part of the valley, or pushing hard to grow fast. You're buying market share, and it costs more at the start.

Percent-of-revenue is a sanity check, not a strategy. It doesn't know whether your average job is a $250 service call or a $15,000 roof. The next method does.

The better method: work backward from booked jobs

This is how we build a budget with contractors, and you can do it on a napkin. You need four numbers:

1. Average job value. What a typical booked job is worth to you. If you have a first-job-then-maintenance model, count what a customer is worth over a year or two, not just the first ticket.
2. Gross margin. What's left after materials and labor. This is the money marketing actually comes out of.
3. How many new jobs you want per month from marketing — not counting referrals and repeat work you'd get anyway.
4. What you're willing to pay to win one job. Many contractors are comfortable spending a slice of the first job's gross profit to win a customer they'll keep.

Multiply the jobs you want by what you'll pay to win each one, and that's your monthly budget. Here's a simple illustration (made-up round numbers, not a quote):

Notice the roofer spends twice as much for far fewer jobs — and it's still the better deal, because each job is worth fifteen times more. That's exactly why copying another contractor's budget rarely works. Your job value and margin decide your number.

What that budget actually has to cover

Contractors often compare "ad spend" from one company with an all-in number from another, and it makes everything look confusing. A real marketing budget has three buckets:

• Ad spend — the money paid straight to Google and Meta for clicks and impressions. This is the part that buys the attention.
• Management and creative — the person or agency building campaigns, writing the ads, making the photo and video creative, and adjusting every week.
• The system that catches leads — phone answering, missed-call text-back, a CRM, follow-up texts and emails, and review requests. This bucket is the one most contractors skip, and it's the reason their ad spend "doesn't work."

For most Las Vegas contractors we work with, ad spend starts somewhere around $1,000–$2,500 a month, paid directly to the platforms from their own account. On top of that, our flat $750/month covers the management, creative, and the whole lead-catching system — so the budget math stays simple.

Where contractors waste the most money

Paying for leads nobody answers

The single most expensive thing in contractor marketing isn't a high cost per click. It's a paid lead that rings to voicemail while you're on a job. Homeowners with a leak or a dead AC call the next company in about a minute. If you're missing a meaningful share of calls, you're effectively paying double for every job you do win. Fix the answering first — an AI receptionist that picks up 24/7 is usually cheaper than one lost job a month.

Judging the budget by cost per lead

A cheap lead you never close is more expensive than a pricey lead that books. Track cost per booked job, not cost per lead. We break down why in what contractor leads actually cost.

Turning it on and off

Google and Meta both reward consistency. Campaigns that run steadily learn who your buyers are and get cheaper over time. Budgets that stop every time the calendar fills up restart the learning each time — and the slow month shows up right on schedule.

Spreading a small budget across every channel

$1,500 split five ways buys you five weak campaigns. Start with the channel closest to buying intent — usually Google search and your Google Business Profile — get it profitable, then add Meta ads to create demand before people search.

Adjusting for the Las Vegas seasons

Vegas demand is lopsided, and your budget should be too. HVAC calls explode once the valley hits triple digits. Roofing picks up around monsoon storms. Pool and outdoor-living projects get planned in late winter and spring so they're done before summer. A smart budget leans in ahead of your rush — building reviews, retargeting audiences, and a warm list — so you're the obvious choice when demand spikes, then uses slower months to reactivate past customers instead of going dark.

A simple way to start this month

1. Write down your average job value and gross margin.
2. Decide how many new jobs a month you want from marketing, and what you'll pay to win one.
3. Set your ad spend from that number and commit to it for at least 90 days.
4. Make sure every call gets answered and every missed call gets a text back before you spend a dollar more on ads.
5. Review cost per booked job monthly, and scale the channels that produce jobs, not just leads.

If you'd rather not build this yourself, it's exactly what our done-for-you marketing for Las Vegas contractors does — and you can see what the full system produced for one client in the Connecticut Turf Pros case study.

Frequently asked questions