Cost per Booked Job for Remodelers: How to Track It

Short answer

Cost per booked job is your total marketing spend divided by the number of signed remodeling contracts it produced, counted over a window long enough for remodeling's slow sales cycle. Robert Reign, founder of Roving Revenue, reports every client this way - every dollar traced to booked jobs, not leads - which is how he tracks $1.2M in client ad spend to $4.7M in booked revenue over the last 12 months.

A kitchen remodeler called me last spring to fire his ads. Call him Nick.

"Three weeks, nothing signed. I'm shutting it off."

I asked him one question. "How long did your last kitchen take from the first call to the signature?"

He thought about it. Two design meetings. A cabinet showroom visit. The wife wanted a second quote. The husband wanted to wait for a bonus. "A few months, I guess."

So he was judging a few-month sale on three weeks of data. That's like pulling a brisket off the smoker after twenty minutes and complaining it's tough.

He left the ads on. Later that summer, some of those "dead" leads signed kitchens.

Here's the one idea in this post: in remodeling, the only marketing number that matters is cost per booked job - and you have to give it time to show up.

What is cost per booked job?

It's what you spent on marketing for every signed contract. Some people call it cost per sold job or cost per acquisition. Same thing.

Not cost per lead. Not cost per click. Not cost per "appointment set." A signature on a contract with a deposit attached.

"A click doesn't pay you - a booked job does." A remodeler can't pay a crew with leads. Every number in your marketing report should walk toward the signed contract, or it's decoration.

How to calculate cost per booked job for a remodeling company

Pick a window that fits your sales cycleA bathroom can sign fast. A whole-home remodel can take a season. Look at the last 90 days at minimum - and for big projects, count jobs that signed later from leads that came in during that window.

Add up every marketing costAd spend, agency fees, lead-site subscriptions and per-lead fees, your CRM and call-tracking software. If you only count ad spend, your number looks better than your bank account.

Count signed contracts, by sourceOnly jobs with a signature and a deposit. Tag each one: Facebook, Google ads, Google Maps, referral, repeat customer, lead site. Quoted-but-lost jobs don't count.

Divide, per channelSpend on a channel divided by the signed jobs from that channel. Now you can see which dollar actually built a kitchen.

The math is grade school. The hard part is step three - knowing where every signed job came from. Most remodelers I talk to can tell me last month's lead count from memory and have no idea which ad paid for their biggest job of the year.

Why cost per lead lies to remodelers

Remodeling is a big, slow, two-signature purchase. The homeowner is spending real savings, often borrowing, and usually has a spouse who wants to sleep on it. That's why cost per lead fools you in three ways:

01 Cheap leads hide their price Shared lead sites sell one request to several contractors - often 4 to 8. The lead is cheap. The race to the bottom on price isn't. More on that in Angi vs. Facebook ads for remodelers.

02 The lag kills good campaigns Judge a kitchen campaign in week three and you'll shut off the ads that would have signed in month three. Nick almost did.

03 Leads ignore job size A lead for a vanity swap and a lead for a full gut look the same on a lead report. They don't look the same on your P&L.

What's a good cost per booked job for a remodeler?

Honest answer: it depends on your average job size. A cost per booked job that's fine for a full kitchen is a disaster for a tub-to-shower conversion. You'll find agency blogs with tidy national ranges - I don't trust them for your town and your price point.

So read it next to revenue. Divide booked revenue by total spend and you get your return per dollar. Here's what that looks like across my clients, straight from their dashboards:

$4.7M Booked revenue in the last 12 months from $1.2M in client ad spend.

~4x About $4 in booked jobs for every $1 spent on ads.

$10-30K Typical new work per month on around $5,000 a month in ads, plus $10-20K a month from SEO.

My Miami remodeler is the best example of patience paying off. Two agencies had burned his budget. I asked for a $10K test, tracked it to signed contracts, and only scaled once it booked - up to $100K in ad spend at about 4x, and around $500K booked in one quarter, plus about $100K from SEO.

How to lower your cost per booked job

Answer in minutes. Instant lead reply and missed-call text-back. The remodeler who calls back first gets the design meeting.
Show real work. Ads built from your own job footage pull in homeowners who already like your work. I break that down in real job footage ads.
Follow up for months, not days. A remodel is a slow yes. Keep showing up until they're ready.
Own the map. A top-3 Google Maps spot has no cost per lead once you've earned it, and it keeps paying while ads rest.
Steady beats spiky. My bathroom remodeler went from one big month and a dead calendar to a steady $40K a month - $204K total, +67% year over year.

The only number on my dashboard that matters

Every client of mine gets one shared dashboard. Every dollar traced from the ad to the signed job. In accounts they own, so they can check it themselves - I wrote about why that matters in the highest-ROI agency lets you check.

Nick doesn't ask me about his cost per lead anymore. He asks how many kitchens signed.

That's the right question. If you want me to run your cost per booked job by channel, book a call or email head@roving-revenue.com. You get a free demo website either way - and you keep it. The full remodeler setup is on my remodeling marketing page.

FAQ

What is cost per booked job in remodeling?+

Cost per booked job is total marketing spend divided by the number of signed remodeling contracts it produced. Robert Reign, founder of Roving Revenue, uses it as the main number for every remodeler client, tracking each dollar to booked jobs instead of leads.

How do you calculate cost per sold job?+

Add up all marketing costs for a period (ads, agency fees, lead-site fees, software), count the contracts that signed from leads in that period, tag each by source, and divide spend by signed jobs per channel.

Is cost per booked job better than cost per lead?+

For remodelers, yes. Cost per lead ignores whether the homeowner ever signed, how many other contractors got the same lead, and how big the job was. Cost per booked job measures what actually pays the crew.

How long should I wait before judging remodeling ads?+

Long enough to match your sales cycle. Kitchens and whole-home remodels often take months from first call to signature, so judging a campaign after a few weeks can kill ads that would have booked jobs later.

What is a good cost per booked job for a remodeler?+

It depends on average job size, so read it next to booked revenue. For reference, Roving Revenue's contractor clients booked about $4 in revenue per $1 of ad spend over the last 12 months - $4.7M from $1.2M.

What should I include in marketing cost when calculating cost per booked job?+

Everything you pay to get the job: ad spend, agency or management fees, lead-site subscriptions and per-lead fees, and marketing software like your CRM and call tracking. Counting only ad spend makes the number look better than it is.

More about Robert in Who is Robert Reign?

Cost per Booked Job: The Only Remodeling Number