Also called CPL.
Cost per lead is channel spend divided by the number of contact records it produced, regardless of whether any of them were reachable, qualified, or in the service area.
It is the most quoted number in contractor marketing and the most misleading, because it rewards whichever channel produces the largest pile of names rather than the most jobs.
The arithmetic hides the thing that matters. A source at a third the cost per lead and a fifth the close rate wins on this metric and loses on the bank account, and it will keep winning for as long as this is the number on the dashboard.
It is also the easiest metric for a vendor to improve without helping you. Loosening the targeting, widening the radius, or dropping a qualifying question all push cost per lead down and cost per booked job up. If a vendor is proud of a falling CPL, ask what happened to close rate in the same period.
Use it as a diagnostic, not a scorecard. A sudden change in cost per lead is worth investigating because something moved; the level itself tells you almost nothing without the conversion rate sitting next to it.
Related terms
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