At the end of every year, owners sit down to plan next year's marketing. Most of them decide by feeling: "Google seems to work, Facebook didn't do much, the mailer was expensive." Without numbers, you keep paying for channels that don't bring jobs and cut the ones that do. The fix is simple: know where every lead came from and how much revenue it turned into.
In this article
The three numbers that matter
For each marketing channel, you need:
- leads: calls, forms and messages that came from it;
- booked jobs: how many of those leads became jobs;
- revenue: how much those jobs brought in.
With these three and what you spent, you get cost per lead, cost per booked job and return on spend. Clicks and impressions don't pay the bills.
Track calls by source
Most service leads still come by phone. Use a different tracking number for each channel: Google Ads, Local Services Ads, Google Business Profile, Facebook, mailers, truck wraps. Call tracking tools record the source of every call automatically and many record the call too, which helps train your CSRs.
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Track forms and messages
Add the source to every form on your website (most ad platforms and website tools can pass it automatically) and ask the same question in chat and text conversations. Every lead in your CRM or field service software should have a source field filled in.
Ask every customer
Even with tracking, ask: "How did you hear about us?" Put it in the booking script and make it a required field. Customers often searched on Google after seeing your truck or hearing from a neighbor, and only asking catches that.
Connect leads to revenue
This is where most companies stop. Each job in your software should keep the original lead source, so at the end of the month you can see revenue by channel. A channel with expensive leads can still be the best if those leads turn into big jobs.
What to cut and what to grow
- Grow: channels with the lowest cost per booked job and good ticket size;
- Fix: channels with many leads but few bookings (often a phone answering problem, not a marketing problem);
- Cut: channels with no booked jobs after a fair test of two to three months.
Start now, before January
Turn on tracking in November and December. Even with the holiday season, you will have real data when you set the 2027 budget, instead of guesses.
An example
A plumbing company in Arizona spent about $9,000 a month across Google Ads, Local Services Ads, Facebook and mailers. After adding tracking numbers and a required source field, it found that mailers cost $410 per booked job and Local Services Ads $95. It moved most of the mailer budget to Local Services and Google, and booked 38% more jobs the next quarter with the same spend.
Common mistakes
Judging channels by clicks, not asking customers, letting the source field stay empty, not connecting leads to revenue and cutting a channel before fixing how the phone is answered.
Price every call so it pays.
We help service businesses set clear policies, book better jobs and turn more calls into profitable work.
Frequently asked questions
How much should I pay for one booked job?
It depends on your average ticket and margin. A common way is to look at cost per booked job as a share of the job's revenue: many service businesses aim to keep it at roughly 10% to 20% of the first ticket, and higher when the customer has strong repeat or membership value. Compare channels against each other with the same math.