How much should a trade spend on getting work?

Search for how much a small business should spend on marketing and you’ll get a percentage of turnover, usually with a confident number attached. It’s easy to repeat and hard to use. It doesn’t know whether your average job is £150 or £15,000, whether you’re booked solid until March, or whether you make 15% on a job or 50%.

A trade doesn’t need a percentage. It needs to know what a won job is worth, what it’s willing to pay to win one, and which of the things it pays for actually bring jobs in. That’s a sum you can do on the back of an invoice.

Why a percentage of turnover doesn’t help

Many websites quote a percentage of turnover. The US Small Business Administration’s own guide to marketing, read on 2 October 2026, doesn’t give one. It says: “Include a complete breakdown of the costs of your marketing plan.”

That’s the right instinct. Two trades with the same turnover can need completely different budgets. A tree surgeon booked six weeks ahead needs very little. A driveway cleaner who’s quiet every winter needs more, and needs it in the right months. Start from the job.

Step 1: what’s a won job worth to you?

Not the price. The profit.

	Example
Average job price	£400
Materials, fuel, tip fees, labour you pay out	£220
What’s left from an average job	£180

Use your own numbers from last year’s invoices. If you don’t know your average job, add up last month’s invoices and divide by how many there were.

Then think about what else a customer brings. A happy customer may book again, recommend you, or leave a review that wins the next one. You don’t need to put a number on that, but it’s a reason not to set your limit too tight.

Step 2: the most you’d pay to win one

This is your call, and it’s the most useful number in this guide. Ask yourself: if someone could guarantee me another job like my average one, what would I pay for it, every time, without feeling robbed?

With £180 left from an average job, you might happily pay £45 to win one. Some trades would pay £90 and be glad of the work. A firm that’s nearly full might only pay £20. Write your figure down. It’s your ceiling for cost per job won.

Step 3: how many more jobs do you want, and can you do them?

Spending to win work you can’t fit in just makes customers wait, and waiting customers go elsewhere. So be honest:

• How many more jobs a month could you take on without letting anyone down?
• Is it every month, or only the quiet ones?

Then:

Extra jobs you want a month × the most you’d pay to win one = what you can afford to spend a month.

Eight more jobs at up to £45 each is £360 a month. If you’re quiet in winter only, you might spend that from November to February and much less the rest of the year.

Step 4: judge everything on cost per job won

Every way of getting work charges differently, which makes them hard to compare until you turn them all into the same number.

How it charges	Example	What you need to count
A monthly membership	Checkatrade: Approved £30 a month, Growth from £59 a month, memberships for 12 months (its pricing page, checked 2 October 2026)	Jobs won from it in a year
A fee per lead	MyBuilder: a shortlist fee that “can start from £7”, excluding VAT, paid whether or not you win (its help centre and terms, checked 2 October 2026)	Jobs won per shortlist
A fee per click	Google Ads search adverts	Jobs won from the clicks
A monthly fee for doing the work	An agency or us	Jobs won through them

Then for each one, once a month:

What you paid it ÷ jobs you won from it = cost per job won.

Compare that with your ceiling from step 2. Anything under it is earning its keep. Anything over it, or anything where you can’t say how many jobs it brought, is the first thing to look at.

This is also why cost per lead misleads. A £10 lead sounds cheap. If you win one in ten, it’s £100 a job, plus the evenings you spent pricing nine jobs you didn’t get. We go through this for the big lead sites in is Checkatrade worth it and is MyBuilder worth it, and for adverts in are Google Ads worth it for tradesmen.

The same sum, applied to us

Our own pricing page puts it as “two jobs a month pays for it”: at a £300 average job, two jobs won through us more than covers £500. That’s in turnover. Run it through steps 1 and 2 with your own margin, and you’ll see how many jobs a month we’d need to bring in to be worth it to you. That’s the sum we want you to do on us. And any month the work you win through us comes to less than £500 is free.

Step 5: track it, or none of this works

The sums above fall apart if you don’t know where your jobs come from. That’s often not carelessness: nobody asks.

Three habits fix it:

1. Ask every new customer, “How did you find us?” Write the answer down straight away, before you forget.
2. Use a different number for each place you advertise, if you can: one on your Google listing, one on the lead site, one on the van. Then the phone tells you where the call came from.
3. Keep one simple list. A notebook works. So does a spreadsheet like this:

Date  | Name        | Came from      | Quoted | Won? | Value
2 Oct | Mrs Hollis  | Google listing | £480   | Yes  | £480
3 Oct | Ravi Mehta  | Lead site      | £1,200 | No   | -
5 Oct | Ken Doyle   | Saw the van    | £150   | Yes  | £150

Once a month, add it up by source. You’ll have your cost per job won for each one, and the next renewal or the next agency pitch will be a much shorter conversation.

Two things that leak jobs before they ever reach the list: missed calls, and quotes nobody chased. Both cost you work you’d already paid to bring in. See how many jobs you’re losing to missed calls and how to follow up a quote.

What it looks like when you count it

What we have seen

Luke and Dan’s, a tree surgery firm, have had £150,000 of new work over three years, on the owners’ own count, most of it before July 2026. In the 60 days to 11 September 2026 they got about 35 real enquiries a month. Read their case study.

That figure is the owners’ own count. Without a count like it, you can’t say what anything was worth, or what to keep paying for.

Spend on what you keep

One more thing to weigh. Some spending stops working the day you stop paying: adverts, lead-site memberships, paid listings. Some keeps working: reviews on your own Google listing, a website that brings in calls, a customer list you can text when you’re quiet. When you’re deciding where the money goes, the things that keep working are worth more than their monthly figure suggests. For what Google work should cost, see how much does SEO cost.

How we do it, and why it works

We work to the same sum:

• Found: your Google listing set up and worked every week, a review asked for after every job, and a website built to be called. Your listing, reviews and customer list are always yours, and the website and domain too once you’ve been with us 90 days or paid a first invoice.
• Answered: calls ring you, as they always have. A missed call from a mobile gets a text back in your name, every form and message gets a reply in your name, anyone who goes quiet is followed up, and every quote is chased to a yes or a no.
• Counted: after each enquiry, a text asks whether you won it and for how much. Once a month, one page: what came in, what you won, what it was worth. Your cost per job won, done for you.

You pay nothing until you’ve won £500 of work through us. Then it’s from £500 a month, any month the work you win through us comes to less than £500 is free, and there’s no contract, just 30 days’ notice.

The free check shows who Google lists for your trade in your town, where you sit, and whether your town is still free.