Where a general contractor's next big remodel comes from

Late September is when general contractors settle next year’s marketing money, and two things have changed since last year’s budget. In August, Google began moving Local Services Ads into Google Ads. And remodeling demand is cooling: the National Association of Home Builders’ remodelers rated their current flow of leads and inquiries at 51 in the second quarter, down from 62 at the end of 2024, on a scale where 50 means as many call it good as poor. Both change where next year’s dollar should go.

What a general contracting lead costs on Google

The closest benchmark for this trade is LocaliQ’s 2025 report on home services search ads, built from 3,211 campaigns that ran between April 2024 and March 2025. Its Construction & Contractors (General) category behaves unlike any other in the report:

• Cost per click: $5.31, the cheapest of the 16 home service categories.
• Conversion rate: 2.61%, the lowest of the 16. Fewer than three clicks in a hundred became a lead.
• Cost per lead: $165.67, the third highest, behind Roofing & Gutters at $228.15 and Doors & Windows Sales at $200.34, and well above the $90.92 median for home services overall.

For contrast, Handyman Services clicks cost $7.10 in the same report and 13.45% of them turned into leads, at $54.05 each.

Cheap clicks with a weak conversion rate tell you who is searching. Plenty of people typing “general contractor” are a year from starting, comparing what an addition might cost, or looking for a small repair. That is why the number to judge is not the lead. Houzz’s 2026 Houzz & Home study put the median 2025 renovation at $20,000 and the 90th percentile at $150,000. A $165.67 lead that turns into a whole-house remodel is cheap. Ten that turn out to be small repairs are not.

The calls nobody answers

Invoca’s 2026 home services report, published in July and drawn from calls tracked across its customers, found that calls to construction businesses were answered by a person 32% of the time, the lowest of the nine home service groups it measured, against 52% for home services as a whole. Of the answered construction calls, 32% were real leads, and 29% of those converted on the call.

Run a hundred calls through those rates and you get 32 answered, about ten leads and about three that convert on the spot. In our experience Invoca’s customers are larger operations, so an owner who is also the estimator may answer even less. Whatever the channel, a lead that rings out during a site visit costs full price and returns nothing.

Local Services Ads: what the General contractor category asks

Google has a General contractor category, which it describes as covering “material and builds services necessary for building construction”. Every advertiser in it needs a business background check and an owner background check, general and professional liability insurance, and state business and owner licenses where local law requires them. Passing earns the Google Verified badge, and Google puts screening at three to four weeks on average.

The move into Google Ads matters for budgeting even though general contractors were not named in the first phase. Google’s notes name nine home service categories for August, then service-area businesses without storefronts in late 2026, which describes most contractors, and the remaining categories next year. When an account moves:

• Pay per lead stays, and so do the Google Verified badge and the Search and Maps placements.
• Manual bidding goes. No more setting a maximum cost per lead. Different targets for different categories are merged into one campaign-level target unless you split the categories into separate campaigns.
• Photos get room. You can upload up to 100 additional business photos, which suits a trade that sells on finished work.
• Old reports do not come across. Google says previous performance reports will not carry over, and the account administrator gets an email 14 days before the move. Download your lead history when it arrives.

Houzz, BuildZoom and the other platforms

Houzz says its platform is used by more than 70 million homeowners and 3 million construction and design professionals, its own figures, and it sells lead generation through Houzz Pro. BuildZoom describes “pre-vetted and licensed construction talent” and a system for homeowners to “compare bids”.

We could not find independent data on what any of them cost per signed contract, so your own records decide. A request that starts as a comparison of bids starts as a price conversation, which can still be worth having in a thin month. Tag each request the day it arrives and follow it to a site visit, a bid and a contract before renewing.

Your own site and profile, where the referral lands

Houzz found general contractors were the most hired construction professionals of 2025, engaged by 29% of renovating homeowners. Most of those jobs still start with a name passed along by a past client, an architect or a designer, and the name gets checked. BrightLocal’s 2026 Local Consumer Review Survey found 54% of consumers visit a business’s website after reading positive reviews, 66% keep researching rather than buying, and 47% will not use a business with fewer than 20 reviews. Use of AI tools for local recommendations rose from 6% to 45% in a year in the same survey, and in our experience those tools draw on the same reviews and pages.

None of that has a cost per click, which is why it gets skipped in budget meetings. It is also the one channel every other channel sends people to.

Where we would put the next dollar

For a licensed firm doing additions and whole-house remodels, this is our usual order:

• First, the site, profile and reviews: project pages by type, license number, insurance proof, fresh reviews.
• Second, the phone: someone, or a proper answering setup, picks up during site visits.
• Third, search ads on large-project terms, with a long negative list for repairs, jobs and how-to searches.
• Fourth, Local Services Ads, once reviews are solid and calls are answered live.
• Fifth, the platforms, kept only where your records show signed contracts.
• Last, Facebook and Instagram, for project stories and retargeting. WordStream by LocaliQ’s 2026 Facebook ads benchmarks, published earlier this month, put lead-form leads in Home & Home Improvement at a median $42.95, cheaper than search and slower to qualify.

What we are telling clients

• Export the past twelve months of inquiries and tag each with source, project type, rough size and outcome.
• Work out cost per signed contract for each channel, not cost per lead.
• Check how many calls reached a person last month before adding a dollar of budget.
• When Google’s 14-day migration email arrives, download your Local Services Ads lead history the same week.
• Add photos of finished projects to your Business Profile now.
• Plan search campaigns to be live by February for spring starts.

A general contractor’s next large job will probably still begin with someone saying your name; what the budget decides is whether that name holds up when it gets checked. Our page for residential general contractors explains how we plan that work, and our Google Ads and Local Services Ads management covers the paid side.