“Which of my ads actually works?” Without a record, the honest answer is a feeling: the phone seemed busier the month the mailer went out. A feeling cannot tell you whether to renew a lead service or cancel it, or whether the yard signs earn their keep.
The record does not need software. It needs one question asked every time, tagged links on everything you print or pay for, and one table filled in once a month. Here is how to set up all three, and what the table tells you.
Why counting calls is not enough
The easiest number to collect is calls, and it is the least useful. Invoca, a company that sells call tracking, published home-services benchmarks in 2026 drawn from calls on its platform across nine trades, from HVAC and plumbing to pest control and lawn and tree work. Across home services, only 52% of callers spoke with a person. Of the calls a person answered, 38% were leads, and 45% of those leads converted on the call. The other 62% of answered calls were not leads at all.
Those are averages across Invoca’s customers, not your business. But they show why a channel that makes the phone ring is not the same as a channel that makes money. Count leads, not calls, and jobs won, not leads.
Invoca also found that channels differ in kind, not just in volume. In its data, calls referred by ChatGPT had the highest lead rate of any channel at 45%, against 40% for paid search, but converted at 41%, while paid search converted at 48%. Invoca adds that the number of those calls is still very low. The point for a small contractor is not ChatGPT; it is that each source has its own mix of real buyers, and only your own numbers by source will show it.
Step one: one question, asked the same way every time
At the end of every booking call, ask: “How did you hear about us?” Ask it the same way each time, and write the answer into one of a short, fixed list of sources. Tape the list by the phone:
On the website form, put the same list in a required drop-down. Keep the two lists identical, or the monthly table will not add up.
The answer is what the customer remembers, not a measurement. Someone who saw your truck and then searched your name may well say “Google.” That is why step two exists, and why consistency matters more than precision: if you ask the same way every month, at least you are comparing like with like.
If you pay customers for referrals, the referral line is also your payout record. Referral Rewards That Stay Within the FTC’s Rules covers doing that properly.
Step two: tag every link you control
Google Analytics reads campaign tags added to the end of a web address, and three of them do the work. In Google’s words: utm_source is the referrer (its examples: google, newsletter4, billboard), utm_medium is the marketing medium (cpc, banner, email), and utm_campaign names the product, slogan or promo. Google says that when you add parameters to a URL, “you should always use utm_source, utm_medium, and utm_campaign,” and the values then show up in the Traffic acquisition report.
For a contractor, that means one tagged address per channel you control. For example:
Two rules from Google’s own best practices save a lot of grief. The tags are case-sensitive: “Meta and meta, are treated as different values,” so use lowercase everywhere. And give each platform one source name and stick to it. Google points to its Campaign URL Builder, which assembles the address for you; write every tagged address you create into a list so you never invent a second name for the same thing.
Step three: read what Google already counts
Your Business Profile keeps its own numbers under Performance. Google’s help page lists them: calls (“the number of times a customer clicked on the call button on your Business Profile”), website clicks, direction requests, messages, and the search terms people used to find you. You can set a date range and download the data. Google notes that performance data includes views, searches and actions from both organic results and Google Ads.
A tap on the call button is not a lead, for the reasons above. Use the Business Profile count as a ceiling and your own question as the record. For what people typed into Google before they reached your website, see Search Console for Contractors.
Step four: the monthly table
Once a month, total the leads and the jobs won by source, add what you spent on each and the gross profit on the jobs it brought. Look at three months together, because one month is too few jobs to judge. Say a gutter company’s quarter looks like this (made-up numbers, with the same 40% gross margin on every job to keep the math simple):
| Source | Spend | Leads | Won | Cost per lead | Cost per won job | Gross profit | Profit per $1 spent |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google Ads | $3,000 | 40 | 10 | $75 | $300 | $6,400 | $2.13 |
| Lead service | $1,800 | 45 | 6 | $40 | $300 | $2,640 | $1.47 |
| Mailers | $1,500 | 10 | 4 | $150 | $375 | $3,680 | $2.45 |
| Business Profile | $0 | 30 | 12 | — | — | $7,680 | — |
| Referral and repeat | $0 | 15 | 11 | — | — | $7,040 | — |
| Don’t know | — | 12 | 3 | — | — | $1,920 | — |
Cost per won job is spend divided by jobs won; Lead Services Compared shows why it beats cost per lead. This table adds the column that settles ties. Google Ads and the lead service both cost $300 per won job, but the lead service’s jobs were smaller, so each dollar spent there brought back $1.47 of gross profit against $2.13. The mailer had the most expensive leads in the table and the best return, because its jobs were the biggest.
The decisions it makes easy
What the table cannot tell you
A customer may meet you more than once before calling: a truck in the neighborhood, then a search, then a review. The question records the source they remember; a tag records the last click. Neither gives credit to the truck that started it. Treat the table as a steady, imperfect measure you read the same way every month, and judge on seasons and quarters, not on the difference between three jobs and two.
Start this week with the question by the phone and the drop-down on the form. In three months you will have the first table, and your next marketing decision will rest on a number.