22 September 2026 · 5 min read · Oscar Markham
How to price jobs when your leads come from advertising
A tradesman who spends on advertising and prices as though they do not is quietly absorbing the cost out of margin. It is usually invisible until a busy year turns out not to have made any money.
Work out the cost per job, not per lead
If enquiries cost twenty euro and you win one in five, each job carries a hundred euro of marketing before anything else.
That is a real cost of sale, exactly like materials, and it belongs in the quote rather than in the hope that volume covers it.
It is usually smaller than people fear
On a four thousand euro job, a hundred euro of acquisition is two and a half percent. Most trades discount more than that without thinking about it.
Naming the number tends to reduce anxiety about advertising rather than increase it, because the figure is almost always less alarming than the vague sense of it.
It changes which work you want
Once the cost is visible, small jobs look different. A two hundred euro repair carrying a hundred euro of acquisition is not a job worth advertising for, even though it is a perfectly good job when it walks in the door.
That is an argument for qualifying harder, not for stopping — and it is why job-size questions on a form pay for themselves.
What not to do
Do not add a line to the customer's quote for marketing. It reads badly and invites a conversation nobody wants.
Build it into your rate the way you build in insurance, van costs and dead time, which is what it is.
Written by Oscar Markham, founder of Dublin Growth Digital. We run lead generation for Irish estate agents and trades, reported every Friday in enquiries and booked work.