Ask a shop owner what a customer is worth and you'll often hear a big number. Ask what it costs to get one and the answer gets fuzzy.
Based on the data we've looked at, here's a plain look at both, for a typical 10-truck electrical, HVAC or plumbing company. Where we had to estimate, we say so and show the math.
What shops spend on marketing
There's no single number, but the range is consistent.
- HVAC contractors spent about 6% of revenue on marketing in 2024, according to an EGIA survey of more than 300 residential HVAC companies (reported by Homepros, 2025).
- A long-time trades marketing advisor puts most residential HVAC and plumbing shops at 8% to 12% (ACHR News, 2026).
- Jobber's guidance for electricians is 5% to hold steady and 10% to grow.
- ACCA's 2025 Contractor of the Future Study found HVAC contractors who spent at least 12% on marketing reported higher net profit (9% vs 5%). That's a correlation, not proof, but it shows the serious shops aren't spending small.
From the data we've looked at, here's how that plays out for a 10-truck shop. There's no measured public benchmark for revenue per residential truck. Mechanical service contractors mostly report $250,000 or more per vehicle (MSCA, 2025), and one CFO firm uses $310,000 as a residential planning number (Level, 2026). Using the low end:
ESTIMATE: $250,000 x 10 trucks = $2.5 million in revenue. At 6% to 10%, that's
$150,000 to $250,000 a year in marketing, or $15,000 to $25,000 per truck.
What a lead costs
Most of that money goes to finding people who need you right now. Those leads keep getting more expensive.
- Google Local Services Ads: Across $44 million in home services spend, the average cost per lead rose 23% in one year, from $49.33 to $60.60 (CAMP Digital, 2025). One agency's clients pay about $80 per HVAC lead and $69 per plumbing lead (The Media Captain, 2025). Electricians tend to run lower, around $39 (Searchlight data via Jobber, 2026).
- Google search ads: Median cost per lead was $93.69 for electricians, $127.74 for AC and $129.02 for plumbing and heating (LocaliQ, 2025). Costs went up for 69% of home services advertisers.
- Lead sites: Angi sends each homeowner request to as many as five pros, and you're charged whether or not you get the job (Angi Help Center).
A lead isn't a customer
You don't close every lead. Jobber's electrician benchmarks put close rates at 30% to 50%.
ESTIMATE: At $93.69 to $129.02 per search lead and a 30% to 50% close rate, a booked job costs roughly $190 to $430. That lines up with an older ACCA figure of about $270 to win a service customer (ACCA, 2017) and Jobber's $150 to $350 range for electricians.
What that customer is worth
This is where owners tend to guess high. A marketing analytics firm looked at roughly $9 to $10 billion of mostly residential HVAC and plumbing transactions. The average lifetime value was $2,679 for an HVAC customer and $1,055 for a plumbing customer. Contractors tended to guess $15,000 to $20,000 (Stochastic Marketing, reported by Contracting Business, 2019).
And most of it comes early. HVAC shops collected 60% of a customer's lifetime value in year one. Plumbers collected 73%.
So the second and third calls are what turn a $270 customer into a profitable one. Lose those calls to a competitor and you've paid to acquire someone else's customer.
Running just to stand still
One trades advisor says a shop has to replace about 20% of its revenue every year just to stay flat (ACHR News, 2026). That's one person's number, not a study, but here's what it means at 10 trucks.
ESTIMATE: - 20% of $2.5 million = $500,000 to replace each year. - First-year value of a new customer, from the figures above: about $1,600 for HVAC and $770 for plumbing.
Call it $1,000. - $500,000 / $1,000 = about 500 new customers a year. - At $190 to $430 each = $95,000 to $215,000.
That's most of the marketing budget, spent replacing customers you already had.
Why pay to land the same customer twice?
Where the leak is
A lot of those lost customers didn't leave unhappy. They forgot. In a national homeowner survey, 45.1% couldn't name the last plumbing company they used, and a quarter of those went straight to an internet search (Zion & Zion, 2019).
ESTIMATE: A 10-truck shop serves roughly 3,900 households a year (about 6,200 jobs at 1.6 visits each). If about 11% (the 45% who forget times the quarter of them who search) start their next call on Google, that's around 430 households a year. If even 100 of them call you directly instead, you skip about $27,000 in acquisition cost and keep $105,000 to $268,000 in lifetime revenue.
Your numbers will be different. Plug in your own. The pattern holds.
Stop paying twice for the same customer
The cheapest customer you'll ever get is the one standing in front of your tech right now, happy with the work.
You already did the hard part. You won the customer. Billet Coin puts you in that customer's phone before you leave. Your crew keeps a solid metal coin with a lasermarked QR code. Made in our shop in Fort Wayne, Indiana. At job complete, the customer scans it and your shop's contact card saves to their phone. The tech pockets the coin.
Show, scan, saved.
1. Get a crew quote: three styles to choose from.
2. We laser-mark your shop's contact info as a QR code.
3. Show your coin. They scan. You're in.
The best customer is the one you just made happy. One scan keeps them.
Sources: Homepros/EGIA (2025); ACHR News, Tracy Paul (2026); Jobber Academy (2026); ACCA Contractor of the Future Study (2025); MSCA 2025 Benchmark Survey; Level (2026); CAMP Digital (2025); The Media Captain (2025); LocaliQ (2025); Angi Help Center; ACCA HVAC Blog (2017); Contracting Business (2019); Zion & Zion (2019).