Why Cost Per Lead Is the Wrong Number: The $230 Pond Inquiry That Turned Into Two Jobs
I hope you enjoy reading this blog post.
Author: Brady Carlson | Dirt2Dollars
Published: 3 November, 2026
If you’ve ever run your own Facebook ads, or paid someone to run them, you’ve stared at one number more than any other: cost per lead.
$18 per lead feels like winning. $230 per lead feels like getting robbed.
In October 2026 one of our clients had a campaign running at $230 per inquiry. We paused it. Then we turned it back on. Here’s why, and here’s why the number you’re staring at is probably the wrong one.
What Happened on Brian's Campaign
Brian runs forestry mulching and dirt work in Texas. He’s a $2,000-a-day mulcher, and he wanted more excavator work: ponds, pads, real dirt.
So alongside his land clearing campaign, we launched a pond campaign.
Pond inquiries came in slow and expensive. $230 each. In a world where our land clearing campaigns regularly produce inquiries for $30 to $70, that looks like a disaster. Our media buyers paused it after two inquiries.
Then Filip, Brian’s client success manager, did what he does every two weeks. He went through every appointment on Brian’s calendar one by one.
Both pond inquiries had become on-site appointments.
Both property owners said yes.
One approved a $14,000 pond job. The other booked a pond build.
Filip’s words on the October 26, 2026 call:
“On the front end, those two leads cost us $230 per lead, and we shut it off. Those two became an appointment. Those two appointments became your closes.”
He turned the campaign back on before the call ended.
Do the Math the Way a Contractor Should
Two inquiries at $230 each is $460 in ad spend.
One of those is a $14,000 pond. The other is a pond build in the same range.
Even if only one of the two actually gets dug, that’s $460 to generate a $14,000 job. Call it 30 times return on the ad dollars.
Now compare that to the land clearing campaign on the same account. Cheaper inquiries, more of them, and a lot more of them were $2,000 one-day mulching jobs. Great work. Brian likes that work. But a $2,000 job and a $14,000 job don’t deserve the same cost-per-lead target.
Cost per lead tells you what you paid for a name and a phone number. It tells you nothing about what that name is worth.
The Numbers That Actually Matter
When we review a campaign with a contractor, cost per lead is the last thing we look at. Here’s the order.
Inquiry to appointment rate. Did our in-house sales team turn the form fill into a truck in a driveway? On Brian’s pond campaign that was 2 for 2. On one of our septic clients the same month it was 5 of 7. If this number is low, the targeting is wrong or the qualifying is wrong.
Appointment to quote rate. Did the contractor actually get to put a number in front of the property owner? If appointments are happening but quotes aren’t going out, the contractor is showing up to projects that aren’t real, and we need to fix the intake form.
Average quote size. This is where ponds beat mulching every time. A pond campaign that produces three appointments a month at $20,000 average is worth more than a clearing campaign that produces fifteen at $2,500.
Cost per booked appointment. This is the number we actually manage to. If a $230 inquiry becomes a $230 appointment because the conversion rate is 100%, that’s cheap. If a $25 inquiry takes four of them to book one appointment, that’s $100 an appointment, and a lot of wasted calling.
Cash collected per dollar of ad spend. Measured over 90 days, not 30. More on that below.
Why the 90 Days Matter
Here’s the part that trips up contractors who’ve only ever worked word-of-mouth referrals.
A referral calls you ready to buy. Their neighbor vouched for you. They’ve already decided.
A property owner who clicked an ad was not looking for you. Our ad interrupted them. They were thinking about the pond, or the lot, or the overgrown back five acres, and we showed up in their feed and said “want a quote?” That person is real, but they’re earlier in the decision than a referral.
That’s why the pond homeowner who approved $14,000 went quiet for a week and a half afterward. That’s why the second pond homeowner pushed his job to December 1 the morning Brian’s trucks were rolling. Not because the inquiries were fake. Because real people buying $14,000 projects take time and do stupid things.
Filip said it to Blaine, another October client, almost word for word:
“People you spoke with on a first month will start closing in a second and third. That’s why I look at it on a three-month basis.”
If you judge a campaign on 30 days of cost per lead, you’ll kill the one that was about to pay for your year.
What Expensive Inquiries Usually Mean
When we see a campaign running at $150 to $250 per inquiry, it almost always means one of two things.
Either the targeting is off and we need to fix it. That happens, and we catch it fast because somebody is looking at every account every day.
Or the service is high-ticket and low-volume by nature. Ponds. Site prep for a new build. Commercial clearing. Driveway installs over 500 feet. There just aren’t that many people in a 60-mile radius who want a pond dug this month. The ones who do are serious, because nobody casually fills out a form about a $30,000 hole in their property.
In the second case, expensive is fine. Expensive is correct. We’d rather pay $230 for a homeowner who wants a pond than $20 for a homeowner who wants “a few trees looked at.”
What We Changed for Brian
Turning the pond campaign back on wasn’t the whole fix. Filip also split the account into three separate campaigns: ponds on their own, dirt work (excavation, grading, pads) bundled together, and land clearing with mulching.
Why separate? Because property owners buy the end product. Nobody searches for “excavation.” They search for “pond.” A pond ad with a pond video and pond copy gets a pond buyer. A generic “dirt work” ad gets a generic inquiry.
The goal is to get pond inquiries under $100 each. But if they stay at $230 and keep converting two for two, we’ll keep buying them all day.
What This Means If You're Running Your Own Ads
If you’re boosting posts or running a $25-a-day campaign yourself, you’re probably optimizing for the cheapest possible inquiry because that’s the number Facebook shows you in big letters.
Stop. Ask three questions instead.
How many of those inquiries did I actually meet in person? If it’s under half, cheap doesn’t matter.
What was the average quote on the ones I met? If it’s $1,500, you’re paying for ad clicks to find yard cleanups.
Of the ones I quoted 60 days ago, how many have closed since? If you don’t know, you’re not following up, and no amount of ad optimization fixes that.
How Dirt2Dollars Handles This Differently
Dirt2Dollars is a done-for-you marketing agency. We are not a coaching program. This is not a course. We run your ads, build your website and landing pages, and handle all of your marketing. Our in-house sales team books qualified on-site appointments directly on your calendar. All you have to do is show up and close the deal.
Because our in-house sales team is the one calling every inquiry, we see the conversion rate in real time, not the cost per lead. And because our guarantee is 30 on-site appointments in 90 days, we’re measured on appointments, not clicks. We do not write checks back. We deliver the appointments.
Most of our clients see an 8x to 12x return on their ad spend over the program. Brian’s pond campaign is on pace to blow past that on two inquiries.
Ready to Stop Optimizing for the Wrong Number?
If you’re a land clearing, excavation, or forestry mulching contractor and you’ve been judging your marketing by cost per lead, let’s look at the numbers that actually pay your crew.
We’ve generated over $100 million in on-site estimates for more than 250 contractors.
Book a Demo Call with Our Team
Brady Carlson / Dirt2Dollars
