Real cost-per-lead figures, sector by sector, taken from live Meta Ads and Google Ads campaigns in Quebec. Delivered by email in 2 minutes.
Cost per lead, or CPL, is what you pay on average to get one enquiry: a phone call, a completed form, a quote request.
Example: $1,500 spent on Google Ads over a month, 50 quote requests received. CPL = 1,500 ÷ 50 = $30 per lead.
Count everything that goes into generating the enquiry: media budget, management fees and tools. Otherwise you are comparing a flattering number with complete ones.
A lead is not a customer. The number that matters is cost per signed customer: your cost per lead divided by your close rate.
With a $30 cost per lead and one quote in five signed (20%), each customer costs you $150 to acquire. If your average contract leaves a $3,000 margin, the campaign pays; at a $300 margin, it no longer does.
That is why a low cost per lead is not always good news: cheap but poorly qualified leads push up your cost per customer.
Read more: why your leads do not convert · Google Ads and Meta Ads management · lead generation
Divide what the campaign cost by the number of leads it produced over the same period. For example, $2,000 spent for 40 enquiries gives a cost per lead of $50.
There is no meaningful average across all industries: the range runs from a few dollars for an e-commerce sign-up to well over a hundred dollars in industrial B2B. The table above gives the ranges by industry, and the full benchmark breaks them down.
A lead is someone who has shown interest: a call, a form, a quote request. They become a customer when they sign. What happens in between is your response time, your quote and your follow-up.
No. A $150 cost per lead is excellent if one lead in three signs a $20,000 contract. Always judge cost per lead alongside your close rate and your margin, never on its own.
Get your score out of 100 and your top 3 priorities. No commitment.
Take the test →