Planning Tool
Marketing Budget Calculator for Builders
Work backwards from the pipeline you actually want, then pressure test the spend against your margin rather than a percentage of revenue. Free, and nothing is gated.
Your numbers
Rough is fine. We are after the shape of the answer, not the decimal places.
Sets the click cost: NZD 5 is our measured median in New Zealand.
What you want to build, not last year.
The jobs you actually want, not the average of everything you have ever quoted.
Of the enquiries worth a conversation, how many become a signed contract. Your word-of-mouth rate will be far higher and is not the number to use here, because these people have never heard of you. 5% is our working assumption; 10% with organised follow-up.
Most residential builders sit between 20% and 25%. This decides whether the spend is affordable.
Enquiries needed
12 /mo
145 across the year, of which about 100 are worth a conversation
Ad spend to get them
NZD 1,663 /mo
NZD 19,959 across the year
Of those 12 a month, expect roughly:
4 ready to talk (33%)
Right project, right budget, moving now
4 real but not ready (36%)
Good fit, wrong timing. These convert later if you nurture them
4 not a fit (31%)
Wrong job, wrong budget, or tyre-kickers
Measured across 7,142 graded enquiries in our client accounts over 180 days. The middle group is where most builders leak money, because nobody follows up.
- Projects you need to sign
- 5.0
- Marketing cost per signed project
- NZD 3,992
- Share of gross profit
- 1.8%
2% of your gross profit
Comfortable. If the system converts, there is room to push harder.
The same 12 enquiries a month, at four levels of efficiency
Nothing below changes except how well the page converts a visitor into an enquiry. Same target, same market, same click cost. This is the difference between marketing being affordable and not.
| Visitor to enquiry | Clicks needed | Ad spend / month | Cost per enquiry |
|---|---|---|---|
| 805 | NZD 3,881 | NZD 321 | |
| 345 | NZD 1,663 | NZD 138 | |
| 201 | NZD 970 | NZD 80 | |
| 134 | NZD 647 | NZD 54 |
Click the row to apply it. Our portfolio median sits at 3.5%.
Common questions
- How much should a builder spend on marketing?
- The honest answer is that it depends on your margin and your conversion rate, not on a percentage of revenue. The common rules of thumb (1% to 3% of revenue) break down for builders because a builder turning over $3M on a 20% gross margin has far less room than the number suggests. Work backwards instead: how many projects you need, how many enquiries that takes at your close rate, and what each enquiry costs. Then check the total against gross profit.
- Why does this measure against gross profit and not revenue?
- Because revenue is not yours to spend. Most residential builders run a 20% to 25% gross margin, so a spend that looks like a harmless 2% of revenue is closer to 10% of the money the business actually keeps. Measuring against gross profit is what stops the budget quietly eating the year's profit.
- What if I do not know my cost per enquiry?
- Start at $150 and adjust once you have real data. Across Australia and New Zealand, residential building work typically lands between $100 and $250 per enquiry on paid search, with higher-value custom work at the top of that band. If your own account is running well outside that range, that is worth investigating on its own.
- What conversion rate should I use?
- Use your own if you know it. If you do not, 10% is a fair starting assumption for a custom builder with organised follow-up. If your real rate is 3% to 5%, the calculator will show you why the budget looks unaffordable: the problem is almost never the ad spend, it is what happens after the enquiry arrives.
Want the reasoning behind the numbers? Read how much builders should actually spend on ads.