A good cost per lead for an Australian electrician sits between $50 and $120 for general residential work, and $30 to $60 for specialised high-intent services like EV charger installation. Anything above $150 in 2026 means something is broken at the account level. Anything below $30 usually means the leads aren’t qualified buyers. The right number for your business depends on the service mix and the close rate. A $40 CPL with a 15% close rate is more expensive than a $90 CPL with a 50% close rate.
The benchmarks across the trades we run
- General electrical CPL band: $50–$120
- Emergency electrical CPL band: $60–$150
- EV charger installation CPL band: $25–$60 (high-intent niche)
- Switchboard upgrades CPL band: $80–$140
- Smart home / data installation CPL band: $70–$130
- Average close rate on electrical leads: 35–55%
Here’s the long version. What “good” actually means, what the trades close rates look like, and the moves that get a struggling sparky account from $200 CPL to $60 CPL inside 60 days.
What we actually mean by “good” cost per lead
We track lead-to-job for every paid-ads client we run. Across the electricians on the book, the median CPL last quarter was $74. The best account hit $34. The worst was $194. The difference between best and worst wasn’t budget, suburb, or competition. It was account hygiene.
A “good” CPL for an electrician should mean three things at once. It’s profitable against your average job value. It’s repeatable month to month, not one good week. It’s coming with leads that close at 35% or higher.
A $40 CPL that closes at 12% is worse than a $90 CPL that closes at 55%. Looking at CPL alone gives you the wrong answer four times out of five.
The benchmarks by service line
Australian electrical work splits into roughly six paid-ads buckets. The CPL bands look very different across them.
| Service | CPL band | Close rate | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| General electrical (callout, small jobs) | $50-$120 | 40-55% | Most accounts live here |
| Emergency electrical (after hours, no power) | $60-$150 | 45-60% | Higher intent, higher value job |
| EV charger installation | $25-$60 | 35-50% | Currently underpriced relative to demand |
| Switchboard upgrades | $80-$140 | 35-50% | Higher CPL acceptable because job is $2-5k |
| Smart home / data / underfloor heating | $70-$130 | 30-45% | Longer consideration cycle |
| Solar + battery | $80-$180 | 20-35% | Highly competitive auction, lower close rate |
Two things stand out. EV chargers are anomalously cheap right now because demand has outrun the competition for those keywords. We expect this gap to close by mid-2027 as more agencies catch up. Solar leads are the most expensive across the board because the auction is dominated by national installers running unsustainable bid strategies.
The Sydney sparky we audited in May
A Sydney electrician came to us in May running a $1,500/month Google Ads account. He’d been with a previous agency for 14 months. CPL was sitting at $187. Conversion rate 1.2%. He’d been told “the market is just expensive” and “Google Ads costs more in Sydney”.
We pulled the account. Three structural problems compounding.
His “Near Me” campaign was matching searches like “electrician courses near me” and “TAFE electrical near me” because the keyword was set to broad match and there were no education-related negatives in the campaign-level negative list. That accounted for 22% of spend on lookers, not buyers.
His landing page hero said “Servicing all of Sydney since 1998”. Mobile heatmaps showed visitors were bouncing within 6 seconds. The phone number was a tiny hyperlink in the footer. No form above the fold.
His tROAS bidding strategy had been set up by the previous agency to maximise conversions. The “conversion” wasn’t a booked job. It was any form submission, including the contact-us form on the about page. So Google was optimising for the worst kind of lead the business had.
Six weeks after we restructured: CPL at $61. Conversion rate at 4.7%. Same suburb, same trade, same Google.
We tell this story because it’s the most common pattern we see. Bad numbers usually don’t mean a hostile market. They mean a hostile account.
The metric that beats CPL
Cost per booked job is what actually matters. CPL divided by close rate.
Take two campaigns running in the same account.
Campaign A: $40 CPL, 12% close rate. Cost per booked job: $333.
Campaign B: $90 CPL, 55% close rate. Cost per booked job: $164.
A looks cheaper on the dashboard. B is half the cost per booked job. If you defund B and double-down on A based on CPL alone, you’ve just made your worst commercial decision of the quarter.
The fix is one Google Sheet. Every quote your office writes this month, log:
- Date
- Campaign source (Google Ads / Meta / GBP / referral)
- Quote value
- Outcome (booked / lost / pending)
By month two you’ll see which campaigns close. By month three you’ll be moving budget toward the campaigns that book and away from the ones that just generate dashboard noise.
Six fast moves for electricians sitting on a bad CPL
If your CPL is north of $150 right now, work this list in order. Most accounts recover 30–50% within 30 days.
Open the Search Terms report. Sort by cost. Read the top 30 queries. Negate everything that isn’t a real customer in your service area. Pay special attention to: “courses”, “TAFE”, “apprenticeship”, “DIY”, “wiring diagram”, “how to fix”.
Set match type to phrase or exact only. If anything is on broad match, change it. Most accounts drop 15-25% of waste on this single move.
Switch geo targeting to “presence only”. The default “presence and interest” silently serves your ad to people not actually in your service area.
Add a call extension. Approximately 60% of electrical leads convert via phone. Without a call extension you lose half the volume.
Move the form above the fold on your landing page. Open your site on your phone. If you have to scroll to see the form, that’s why your conversion rate is below 3%.
Set up proper conversion tracking. A “conversion” should be a phone call or a form that fills out at least 4 fields, not just a click on the contact-us link. If your conversion tracking fires on the contact page load, Google is optimising for the wrong thing.
If you’ve done all six and the numbers still won’t move, the problem is bigger than the account. It’s probably the offer, the service area, or the sales process. That’s a different conversation, but at least you know.
What “good” CPL actually means for your business
The shortest test: divide your CPL by your close rate to get cost per booked job. Divide cost per booked job by average job value. If that number is below 25%, you’re profitable. If it’s between 25-40%, you’re surviving. Above 40%, you’re funding the agency more than the business.
For most Australian electricians, that means a CPL of $50–$120 paired with a 40%+ close rate and a $400+ average job value is sustainable. A CPL of $200 paired with a 20% close rate and a $200 average job value isn’t.
The number on the dashboard isn’t the answer. The maths under it is.
If your sparky business is running Google Ads and you’re not sure what your real cost per booked job looks like, we audit accounts for free and tell you exactly where you sit on these benchmarks. Or if you’re thinking about Meta Ads as well, we covered the cost-per-lead trade-by-trade benchmarks last week and that’s a useful companion read.
If you want the full picture of how we run accounts in your trade, see Google Ads for electricians, and the benchmarks reference for all Australian trades.