ROI Calculator for Local Advertising

ROI = (gross margin from new customers − ad spend) ÷ ad spend. The honest version layers in repeat business: a single new customer is worth more than their first ticket because most local services have meaningful retention. We use LTV (lifetime value = avg ticket × (1 + repeat-rate × 2.5)) × gross margin as the per-customer value, then compare LTV-margin to CAC for the LTV:CAC ratio.

3:1 or better is the rule of thumb this calculator flags against, and we are calling it a rule of thumb on purpose: no source at our sourcing bar publishes an LTV:CAC benchmark for local home services, so we do not dress it up as one. Below 3:1 you are spending a lot to acquire customers relative to what they are worth; above 5:1 you may be underspending on growth. Treat the thresholds as a conversation starter with your own P&L, not as a published standard.

Pull it from your own CRM or invoicing system: of the customers you acquired in a 12-month window, what share had at least one further invoice in the next 12 to 24 months? That is the only repeat rate worth putting in the box. We deliberately do not print category rules of thumb here, because no source at our sourcing bar publishes repeat rates by trade and the ones circulating online come from agency blogs. If you have no history yet, run the calculator at 0% repeat and treat anything it shows as the floor.

If your LTV:CAC drops below 2:1 sustained, you're losing money on growth. Pause that channel and diagnose. Common causes: auction inflation (CPLs rose without your noticing), lead-quality degradation (close rate dropping), pricing erosion (avg ticket falling), or seasonality you didn't budget for. Don't pause too fast: month-to-month variance is normal; trend across 90 days.

The unit cost is published and fixed rather than set by an auction, which makes the CAC denominator forecastable at planning time. WilDi Maps prices from $0.25 per verified delivery on the background tier, set by monthly deposit: Enterprise $0.25 at $3,000 a month or more, Pro $0.32 at $1,000, Local $0.40 at $250, Starter $0.50. So a $500 monthly deposit is the Local tier and buys 1,250 background deliveries, not 2,000. Tunnels and zones cost more than background for hyper-local precision. Be careful feeding this into the calculator above: a delivery is not a lead and not an impression, so deliveries belong in the spend side of your own funnel arithmetic, with leads counted only where someone actually got in touch.

The published comparison points, both national medians and both auction-priced: LocalIQ's home-services benchmark covering April 2024 to March 2025 puts the median plumbing lead at $129.02, HVAC at $127.74, roofing and gutters at $228.15, electricians at $93.69, and home services overall at $90.92. Google publishes no Local Services Ads lead prices at all. A verified delivery starts at $0.25 and is a different unit: an offer that reached one opted-in person driving through the area you chose, not somebody who asked you for a quote. We show both numbers and let you do the arithmetic at your own close rate, which is exactly what the calculator above is for.

Your actual blended gross margin from the last 12 months of finished jobs, taken from your own books. We used to print category ranges here; they came from agency roundups rather than any source that states a method, so they are gone. Gross margin is what you keep after the cost of doing the job, not revenue per customer, and yours is knowable in a way an industry average never is.

Because the funnel between a paid lead and a booked job is longer than most budgets assume. Invoca's 2025 home-services benchmark, drawn from more than 70 million calls, found 52% of inbound calls answered, 38% of answered calls qualifying as leads, and 45% of qualified leads booking, which works out to roughly 17% of calls becoming a booked job. ServiceTitan's 2022 data, dated but useful for the spread between trades, put call booking rates at 43% for plumbing, 41% for electrical and 38% for HVAC. If your close rate in the box above is much higher than your books support, every number this calculator returns is optimistic.

Four public tiers: Starter ($50 minimum deposit, background only), Local ($250, up to 2 tunnels and 1 zone), Pro ($1,000, up to 8 tunnels and 5 zones), and Enterprise ($3,000, up to 25 tunnels and 15 zones). Per-delivery background rates step down by tier, from $0.50 on Starter to $0.25 on Enterprise. An Agency tier is available through sales.

The Starter tier opens with a $50 deposit, and that deposit becomes your ad budget. Background deliveries on Starter run $0.50 per verified delivery, so the first deposit buys 100 GPS-verified deliveries to the phones of real local people out on the road. There is no auction and no platform fee stacked on top.

One verified delivery of your offer to the phone of one real person who was physically inside your chosen geography at that moment, confirmed by GPS on the device itself. That person also taps to acknowledge the offer, so a delivery is never an invisible impression. Bots, background tabs, and off-screen impressions cannot generate one. You are billed only when a verified delivery happens.

Background reaches everyone active in the WilDi app: nationwide by default, or limited to one area you choose (your city, your side of town) so budget is never spent outside it. A zone is a neighborhood-sized area you hold exclusively: while it is yours, no competitor can run there. A tunnel is a one-mile stretch of road you can place anywhere, and it follows the road's contours, ideal for the approach to your shop or a route your customers already drive.