What does a tree service lead actually cost?
There is a number your dashboard shows you, and there is what your leads really cost. On Google they are routinely not the same number, and the gap runs in the direction that makes your advertising look worse than it is.
The target we work to
On an established Google account, meaning one running ninety days or more, we treat a cost per lead above $30 as the point where something needs attention. That is a target we hold ourselves to rather than an industry average, and we are stating it plainly so you have something concrete to hold an agency against.
New accounts sit higher and should. The first weeks are partly the platform learning who responds, and judging an account on its first fortnight tells you almost nothing.
Your reported cost per lead is probably too high
Google's own conversion tracking under-reports leads. Calls that do not get attributed, forms that fire late or not at all, people who see the ad and phone the number without ever clicking. The spend is counted accurately; the leads are not.
That inflates your cost per lead, because the arithmetic divides real spend by an undercounted number of leads. The fix is unglamorous: count the actual enquiries and correct the figure by hand at reporting time.
Which creates a trap in month-over-month comparisons
If one month was counted by Google's tracking and the next was counted properly, the cost per lead will appear to improve. Nothing improved. One month was measured badly and the other was not.
That artefact is extremely convenient for an agency and we have written our reporting so it cannot use it: where two months were not counted the same way, the report is forbidden from calling the difference an improvement or attributing it to our work. It states both figures and says why they are not comparable. If your current reports have never mentioned this, it is worth asking how their leads are counted.
Cost per lead is not cost per job
A cheaper lead is not automatically a better one. Lower cost per lead on a broader audience often means more tyre kickers, more quotes that go nowhere and more of your day spent driving to estimates that were never going to close.
The number that actually matters is what a booked job costs you to acquire, and that depends on your close rate as much as on the ads. A $45 lead you close half the time beats a $25 lead you close a fifth of the time, and no ad platform will ever tell you that.
Questions
What is a good cost per lead for a tree service?
We treat above $30 on an established Google account as the point to investigate. Facebook typically differs because the person was not searching when they saw you. Any figure quoted as an industry average should be treated with suspicion, since it depends heavily on market and season.
Why does my agency's lead count differ from what my phone rang for?
Usually because they are reporting Google's tracked conversions rather than the calls you actually took. Ask whether the figure was corrected by hand, and how.
Does a lower cost per lead mean the campaign is better?
Not on its own. Ask what happened to the close rate at the same time. Leads that cost less and convert worse are a step backwards wearing a better number.