Fence and deck leads: what LSA, search and Facebook cost

Late September is when deck and fence owners in the North decide what next spring’s leads are worth paying for. The last builds of the year are going in ahead of the freeze, Sun Belt fence crews are heading into a steadier fall, and the March budget has to be settled before the slow months. Two things changed the arithmetic this month and last: WordStream by LocaliQ published its 2026 Facebook ads benchmarks on September 14, and Google has been moving Local Services Ads into Google Ads since August.

Here are the published numbers, the gaps in them, and the two figures we would weigh before any of them.

Nobody publishes a fence or deck benchmark

Start with the gap. We know of no benchmark that reports cost per lead for fence companies or deck builders specifically. The nearest is LocaliQ’s 2025 report on home services search ads, built from 3,211 campaigns that ran between April 2024 and March 2025, with medians by category:

• Construction & Contractors (General): $5.31 per click, a 2.61% conversion rate and $165.67 per lead. LocaliQ notes the category had the best cost per click in the study and the lowest conversion rate.
• Landscaping: $8.76 per click, a 6.42% conversion rate and $117.92 per lead.
• Handyman Services: $7.10 per click, a 13.45% conversion rate and $54.05 per lead.
• All home services together: $90.92 per lead.

For a fresher read on clicks, WordStream by LocaliQ’s 2026 Google Ads benchmarks, covering April 2025 to March 2026, put the broader Home & Home Improvement category at $8.33 per click with an 8.05% conversion rate.

Which of these your account resembles depends on the keywords. In our experience a campaign built on “fence repair near me” and “fence company” searches behaves more like the handyman row, while one that bids on broad deck terms drifts toward the Construction & Contractors row: cheap clicks from people collecting ideas for a project they may never start. Negative keywords for DIY, materials, plans and job seekers are what stop a deck campaign from paying construction-category prices for curiosity.

Facebook ads: cheaper leads that need a fast callback

WordStream by LocaliQ’s new Facebook ads benchmarks, covering April 2025 to June 2026, put Home & Home Improvement campaigns using the leads objective at a median $42.95 per lead, with a 5.32% conversion rate. Across all industries in the same report, the conversion rate was 8.54%.

Cheaper lead, softer intent. A finished composite deck at dusk stops a thumb mid-scroll; it does not mean the person has a budget, a permit or an HOA approval. These leads earn their keep when someone calls back within the hour and the follow-up includes photos of similar jobs, a rough timeline and a straight word about the permit.

Local Services Ads: what changed and what did not

Fences sit in Google’s “Fencing services” category. Decks sit inside “Carpenters”, because there is no deck category. Both pay per valid lead and carry the Google Verified badge.

On price, the only published figure is thin. WordStream’s guide to Local Services Ads says the average cost per lead has historically been about $60, with no sample, date range or category behind it. Treat that as a rough marker, not a benchmark.

Three changes matter more than the price:

• Credits are narrower. Leads that Google files as “job type not serviced” or “geo not serviced” no longer qualify for a credit. A lead for work you do not take is no longer refunded on those grounds, so the job types you switch on now decide how much you waste.
• The move into Google Ads. The first phase, which began in August, named other home services, not fencing or carpentry. Google says service-area businesses without storefronts follow later this year, and every remaining category after that. When your account moves, it becomes a Performance Max campaign with a pay-per-lead goal, and the ads still show only on Search and Maps.
• Manual bidding goes away. Once moved, there is no manual maximum cost per lead to lean on. Your job types, service area, budget and response time do the steering.

Two numbers that matter more than cost per lead

The first is the ticket. Thumbtack’s cost guides, updated in July from its own marketplace data, say most people pay around $2,717 for a fence and around $6,421 for a deck. Marketplace data leans toward smaller jobs, so a design-build composite deck sits well above that. The ratio still holds: a $165 search lead weighs very differently against a typical fence than against a deck at more than twice the price.

The second is the phone. Invoca’s 2026 home services benchmarks put the answer rate for its Construction sub-industry at 32%, the lowest of the groups it measured. Of the calls that were answered, 32% were leads, and 29% of those leads converted on the call. Across all home services, Invoca found 52% of calls answered by a person. Its data comes from its own customers rather than a random sample, but the gap is the point: in the work closest to yours, two of every three calls in that data never reached a person.

At that answer rate, lowering cost per lead is the second job. The first is picking up.

Marketplaces: judge them on signed jobs

Thumbtack runs those cost guides with a “Get a free estimate” button on each, which tells you it wants the same homeowners you do. No independent benchmark covers what marketplace leads cost or how often they close in this trade, so your own records have to decide. Tag every marketplace lead the day it arrives, note how fast someone called back, and count the estimates and signed jobs it produced. If the marketplace wins on signed jobs per dollar, keep it. If it only wins on cost per lead, it is not winning.

What we are telling clients

• Export this season’s leads and mark each with its source, fence or deck, new build or repair, and whether it signed.
• Work out cost per signed job for each channel, once for the spring rush and once for the summer.
• Review your Local Services Ads job types and service area now, since wrong-type and wrong-area leads no longer earn credits.
• Write down what a lead costs you in Local Services Ads today, so there is something to compare against after your account moves.
• Settle who answers the phone from April to June before you raise any budget.
• Set next spring’s spend month by month, heaviest in the weeks just before your local thaw.

A benchmark can tell you what the market pays for a lead. Only a season of your own tagged leads can tell you what the next deck or fence line costs to win. The deck and fence builders page sets out the season plan we start from, and our Google Ads work covers running Local Services and search side by side, with Meta ads as the follow-up layer.