22 September 2026 · 5 min read · Oscar Markham
How much can a tradesman actually afford to spend winning one job?
Most disagreements about whether marketing is working come from nobody having worked out what a job is allowed to cost to win. It takes about ten minutes and three numbers you already know.
The three numbers
Gross profit on an average job — not the invoice, what is left after materials and labour. How many quotes you give before one says yes. And how many enquiries it takes to produce a quote worth giving.
Nothing else is needed, and every trade knows all three approximately even if nobody has written them down.
Working it through
Say a job leaves you a thousand euro. You win one quote in three, and one enquiry in two is worth quoting. That means six enquiries per job won.
If you are willing to spend a fifth of the profit on winning the work — which is comfortable for most trades — you can afford two hundred euro per job, which is a little over thirty euro per enquiry.
Now any campaign can be judged in a fortnight rather than argued about for six months.
What this stops you doing
It stops you rejecting a channel because the cost per lead sounds high, when the jobs it brings are worth four times the alternative.
And it stops you persisting with cheap leads that never convert, which is the more common and more expensive mistake.
The number most trades get wrong
Almost everyone overestimates their close rate. Ask ten tradesmen and most will say they win half their quotes; the ones who actually count usually find it is nearer a third.
Counting for a month, honestly, will change the arithmetic more than any change to the advertising.
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.