A quick summary of our average Google Ads results in 2025 (TL;DR):
- Not all green industry services are treated equally. Some services have really low costs per lead, while others, with higher net margins, have higher costs per lead.
- If a service is heavily seasonal, like snow removal, people are more likely to convert at higher rates.
- If a service can be performed year-round, it will generally have a higher cost per lead as competition is consistent.
- If you have multiple services in this list, don’t give them each their own budget. Run campaigns and ad groups with a shared account budget. This will prevent missed opportunities when consumer demand is higher for one service over another.
Table of Contents
Google Ads Results by Service Type
- Hardscaping Google Ads Benchmarks
- Holiday Lights Google Ads Benchmarks
- Irrigation Google Ads Benchmarks
- Landscape Lighting Google Ads Benchmarks
- Landscaping Google Ads Benchmarks
- Lawn Care Google Ads Benchmarks
- Organic Lawn Care Google Ads Benchmarks
- Pest Control Google Ads Benchmarks
- Mosquito & Tick Google Ads Benchmarks
- Exterminator & Indoor Pest Control Google Ads Benchmarks
- Pressure Washing Google Ads Benchmarks
- Snow Removal Google Ads Benchmarks
- Tree Services Google Ads Benchmarks
Closing
Every year, our agency grows an average of 30%. As a consequence, the amount of data we have grows in proportion. Each year, we dissect the data to shed new light, context, and expectations on how Google Ads performs for our clients.
Previously, we’ve lumped everything into one category, “landscaping and lawn care”. This year, our growth has allowed us to segment the data by industry and service type.
With this, we can now set more appropriate expectations for what we can expect when it comes to average costs per lead and conversion rates for each service our clients offer.
But first, let’s take a look at our overall performance across all services within the green and outdoor living industries.
Overall Google Ads Performance
- Click-Through Rate (CTR) = 4.56%
- A decrease from 5.05% last year
- Cost per Click (CPC) = $4.14
- An increase from $3.65 last year
- Cost per Acquisition/Lead (CPA/CPL) = $85.48
- A decrease from $87.80 last year
- Conversion Rate (CVR) = 4.85%
- An increase from 4.16% last year
When landscaping businesses call us and ask, “What kind of results can I expect working with you?” I can send them to one of these articles that we publish every year. But this data, and without knowing exactly what service they’re wanting leads for, I can confidently say that the expectation is $85/lead.
We expect the CPC to increase every year simply due to inflation. The trick is to combat that with higher CTRs and CVRs in order to get lower cost leads. Despite not attaining a higher overall CTR, we were able to increase the conversion rate on our clients’ ads high enough to net an overall drop in cost per lead.
That’s the name of the game and why I tell clients not to worry about CPC so much. Worry about your cost per lead. We’d be happy with $25 clicks if it landed us a 30% conversion rate.
For what it’s worth, the things we do to increase conversion rate are usually related to better landing pages, better ad schedules, and better keyword targeting.
Comparing Google Ads Metrics by Service
We’ll start by comparing the expectations for click-through rate, cost per click, conversion rate, and cost per lead by service and industry. Afterwards, we’ll dive into some notes and contextual information about why we think the results are the way they are by service.
Average Cost Per Lead (CPL) by Service
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| Hardscaping | $153.27 |
| Holiday Lights | $129.57 |
| Irrigation | $43.17 |
| Landscape Lighting | $77.39 |
| Landscaping | $104.15 |
| Lawn Care | $84.24 |
| Organic Lawn Care | $105.40 |
| Pest Control | $98.12 |
| Mosquito & Tick | $97.71 |
| Indoor Pest Control | $106.35 |
| Pressure Washing | $126.57 |
| Snow Removal | $37.61 |
| Tree Services | $120.36 |
A lot of these make sense.
Hardscaping leads and sales net higher margins on a project and client basis. It’s obvious why these leads average $153.27 while irrigation leads average $43.17.
A qualified hardscaping lead should be worth more than a sprinkler repair lead.
Average Cost per Click (CPC) by Service
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| Hardscaping | $4.81 |
| Holiday Lights | $5.23 |
| Irrigation | $2.69 |
| Landscape Lighting | $4.39 |
| Landscaping | $3.81 |
| Lawn Care | $4.67 |
| Organic Lawn Care | $10.19 |
| Pest Control | $5.99 |
| Mosquito & Tick | $2.39 |
| Indoor Pest Control | $8.49 |
| Pressure Washing | $9.64 |
| Snow Removal | $2.18 |
| Tree Services | $8.57 |
The thing that sticks out the most to me here is how high the average cost per click isfor organic lawn care, despite having a lower cost per lead for it. When people search for it, they want it, and this I would expect people to convert at higher rates.
I assume hardscaping has a lower CPC because there isn’t as much competition for that. Competitors are focusing on more specific queries like “retaining walls” or lumping it into a “landscaping” campaign.
Average Click-Through Rate (CTR) by Service
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| Hardscaping | 3.65% |
| Holiday Lights | 10.49% |
| Irrigation | 4.91% |
| Landscape Lighting | 5.87% |
| Landscaping | 4.51% |
| Lawn Care | 4.69% |
| Organic Lawn Care | 3.76% |
| Pest Control | 2.66% |
| Mosquito & Tick | 2.52% |
| Indoor Pest Control | 2.61% |
| Pressure Washing | 3.54% |
| Snow Removal | 6.82% |
| Tree Service | 3.80% |
The two outliers here for click-through rate are holiday lights and snow removal. That makes a lot of sense considering those are timely services. For holiday lights, you generally have between November 15th and December 15th to get leads for search. People waiting this long are likely just clicking whoever shows up first.
Same for snow removal. You’ll get people planning for the winter, but you’ll also get those people who don’t reach out until the first big snow of the year.
Average Conversion Rate (CVR) by Service
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| Hardscaping | 3.13% |
| Holiday Lights | 4.03% |
| Irrigation | 6.24% |
| Landscape Lighting | 3.74% |
| Landscaping | 3.66% |
| Lawn Care | 5.54% |
| Organic Lawn Care | 9.67% |
| Pest Control | 6.11% |
| Mosquito & Tick | 2.45% |
| Indoor Pest Control | 7.98% |
| Pressure Washing | 7.61% |
| Snow Removal | 5.80% |
| Tree Services | 7.12% |
Organic lawn care being as high as it is makes sense. When people want organic and natural lawn care, they are very intentional, and there generally isn’t as much competition as with the other services.
I can’t say why mosquito and tick services have low conversion rates. Our best-performing mosquito and tick campaign had a 9.17% conversion rate, while our lowest had a 0.32% conversion rate. This one seems to just vary wildly by local market.
Google Ads Benchmarks for Hardscaping
Hardscaping is one of those services that don’t get a ton of volume, as “hardscaping” is generally not a consumer-known term. However, some consumers do know these terms, and the ones that do are very qualified.
- Click-Through Rate (CTR) = 3.65%
- Cost per Click (CPC) = $4.81
- Cost per Lead (CPL) = $153.27
- Conversion Rate (CVR) = 3.13%
These metrics above are primarily based on the following keywords:
- “hardscaping services
- “hardscaping companies near me”
These make up about 75% of the metrics above. Whenever we have clients that only do hardscaping, we tend to break out the services in different ad groups based on the services, like:
- “fence installations”
- “patio contractors”
- etc
However, if you get too narrow, you start to run into much higher CPCs, which in turn means higher CPLs. That’s why we primarily target categories with Google Ads and let SEO do the heavy lifting on the granular services.
Google Ads Benchmarks for Holiday Lights
Holiday lights actually encompass two types of holiday lights.
- Christmas and holiday light installation
- Permanent holiday light installation
- Click-Through Rate (CTR) = 10.49%
- Cost per Click (CPC) = $5.23
- Cost per Lead (CPL) = $129.57
- Conversion Rate (CVR) = 4.03%
I had mentioned earlier that it makes a lot of sense that holiday lights have over a 10% CTR. Although I would expect the conversion rate to be higher.
We did have two outliers from a couple of clients that had a large service area and a very heavy budget. Their conversion rate was only around 1% in a highly competitive market. If I remove those from the reporting, we’re actually at an 8.93%.
Our highest conversion rate was 14.29% where as the lowest was 1.7%.
Despite the high variance in CVR, we didn’t actually see much of a variance between cost per lead or cost per click. The CPC range is from 6% – 14%. The mode for the cost per lead was between $100 and $150, but we had two outliers from $44/lead and $200/lead.
Christmas Lights vs Permanent Lights
One key thing about holiday lights is that if you’re running Google Ads for temporary lights, you really only have 30 days to run them, and that’s between November 15th and December 15th, and that’s it. People generally don’t look for this until after Halloween. Additionally, too early before Thanksgiving, and it’s still not on people’s minds.
If you want to book temporary holiday light services, I would recommend running Nextdoor or Facebook ads for these at the beginning of October to bring it to the top of mind for people.
One new service we started running ads for at the end of 2024 and all of 2025 was permanent holiday lights. The key here is that they are relevant for all holidays, not just Christmas. That means they can be sold and marketed for:
- “The Big Game” (we all know what game this is…)
- Mardi Gras
- St. Patrick’s Day
- Independence Day
- Halloween
- Christmas
That means we can run these campaigns all year-round.
At the end of 2024, we didn’t see a lot of traction on these, but by mid-2025, it really picked up. We can thank Govee for that. They’re putting a lot into online advertising, showing homeowners their DIY solutions (which aren’t that great).
But now our clients’ ads are serving and targeting Govee permanent lights. It’s up to us to “wow” them and hire the “experts” instead of the cheap DIY solutions.
“But I want to sell the service annually. Permanent lights I only get to sell once…”
First, the installation price for permanent lights should be much higher than the installation of one season of C9 lights. Second, you still have tree wrapping and wreath hanging services that permanent lights don’t solve.
Google Ads Benchmarks for Irrigation & Sprinklers
Irrigation can get pretty broad and include anything from French and channel drains to sprinkler repair. We have multiple clients who only do landscape drainage, like the former, as well as other clients who only do sprinkler repair.
For the sake of this report, all of this has been aggregated into “irrigation”.
- Click-Through Rate (CTR) = 4.91%
- Cost per Click (CPC) = $2.69
- Cost per Lead (CPL) = $43.17
- Conversion Rate (CVR) = 6.24%
You would think that the cost per lead would be higher for irrigation installation services and much cheaper for small services like “sprinkler repair”. But that isn’t true, at least from our data. The opposite isn’t true either.
All irrigation services do extremely well with these low cost per leads and affordable CPCs.
A 6.24% conversion rate is higher than normal, and I imagine it’s the nature of the problem the service is solving. Most people don’t look up these services for fun; they look them up because there is a problem.
It’s also important to understand seasonality. These averages are weighted downward because we advise our clients to jack up their ad spend in March, April, September, and October for spring startups and winter blowouts.
The search volume is extremely high, and so is the opportunity.
Google Ads Benchmarks for Landscape Lighting
This is one of those services that we struggled with when we first started running ads for.
- Click-Through Rate (CTR) = 5.87%
- Cost per Click (CPC) = $4.39
- Cost per Lead (CPL) = $77.39
- Conversion Rate (CVR) = 3.74%
There are two rules to running landscape lighting campaigns:
- The volume is not high, so they cannot have a huge budget.
- “outdoor lighting” is the target keyword! Not “landscape lighting”.
It took us longer than we’d like to admit on that second one…
Google Ads Benchmarks for Landscaping
- Click-Through Rate (CTR) = 4.51%
- Cost per Click (CPC) = $3.81
- Cost per Lead (CPL) = $104.15
- Conversion Rate (CVR) = 3.66%
We spent almost $150,000 alone in 2025 on “landscaping” keywords and campaigns, so this is our most accurate data.
We always tell our clients that $100/lead is the target to beat for “lawn care and landscaping” leads. Obviously, with the idea that “lawn care” leads are less than that, and “landscaping” leads can afford a higher cost per lead due to the higher margins.
All things considered, $104/lead for a landscaping job is good. Remember, the average close rate on Google leads is between 30-50%, putting the customer acquisition cost (CAC) around $200 – $300.
Google Ads Benchmarks for Lawn Care
Lawn care service is another category we spent near $150,000 on in 2025. $155,321.62 to be exact…
- Click-Through Rate (CTR) = 4.69%
- Cost per Click (CPC) = $4.67
- Cost per Lead (CPL) = $84.24
- Conversion Rate (CVR) = 5.54%
The main thing here is the seasonality of lawn care performance. We generally see lawn care costs per lead drop to $40 and $50 during late April and early May, and then level out to mid $80s and $90s during the summer.
A lot of our clients that only offer lawn care services keep their ads on during the winter in case they catch anyone looking to switch seasonal providers after they get their renewal letters. It’s also a good strategy to show up for commercial accounts when everyone else is turning their ads off.
That’s when costs per lead rise to over $200 and weigh the average up. If we only ran lawn care ads during peak seasons for all accounts, this average would be lower.
Google Ads Benchmarks for Organic Lawn Care
If you’re a lawn care company that only does organic lawn care (including electric maintenance), you’d understand why this deserves its own category.
- Click-Through Rate (CTR) = 3.76%
- Cost per Click (CPC) = $10.19
- Cost per Lead (CPL) = $105.40
- Conversion Rate (CVR) = 9.67%
If you only offer organic solutions to lawn care, you’re likely not the cheapest, nor do you even compete with any standard lawn care companies. Your materials cost more, and your work is more laborious. However, when customers want organic lawn care… they want organic lawn care, and it doesn’t matter what standard lawn care companies are charging. If you’re the only option or one of a very few, you’re going to see higher conversion rates.
However, with that, you’re going to see a higher average cost per lead, closer to that of landscaping services.
Our target per lead is $100, but I would be happy with a $105.40 lead for organic lawn care services.
Google Ads Benchmarks for Pest Control Services
Pest control can mean a lot of things. In the lawn care industry, it typically means perimeter pest control or mosquito and tick control. It might also include lawn pests like sod webworms, grubs, lanternflies, and even emerald ash borers.
The following metrics also include indoor pest control services like bed bugs, cockroaches, ants, and even rodents.
- Click-Through Rate (CTR) = 2.66%
- Cost per Click (CPC) = $5.99
- Cost per Lead (CPL) = $98.12
- Conversion Rate (CVR) = 6.11%
2025 was actually our first year we ran ads for pest control that wasn’t related to perimeter pest control or mosquitoes and lawn pests. It’s a whole different industry to be targeting keywords like “exterminator” and learning the negative keywords that go along with that.
I don’t have a lot to say on these combined metrics, so we’ll break them out between lawn and perimeter pests and exterminator-type Google Ads benchmarks.
Google Ads Benchmarks for Mosquito & Tick Services
Most of our clients who offer mosquito control also provide flea and tick lawn treatments, as well as perimeter pest control. The following metrics are a mix of all of that, with the majority of the campaigns being specifically for mosquito control services.
- Click-Through Rate (CTR) = 2.52%
- Cost per Click (CPC) = $2.39
- Cost per Lead (CPL) = $97.71
- Conversion Rate (CVR) = 2.45%
All things considered, these aren’t bad numbers. They’re within our target of $100/lead. However, we did learn some things about mosquito control services that we didn’t have enough data to pick up on in previous years.
Targeting keywords like “mosquito spraying” pulls in search queries from searchers like “mosquito spray”. The keywords are so similar, but they have completely different intents. The former is looking for a service while the latter is looking for a product.
Potential reasoning for lower costs per click than other services is that the vast amount of search intents is being picked up. This would also explain the lower average conversion rates.
I have no doubt our metrics this year will be substantially better as we’ve narrowed in on the strategy of ensuring we’re targeting the service-related queries and not the product-related queries.
Google Ads Benchmarks for Indoor Pest Control & Rodent Services
Similar to mosquito, tick, and perimeter pest control, this one needed its own segmentation as well. Indoor pest control is vastly different than perimeter pest control, not only in keywords and services, but also in actual campaign structure.
- Click-Through Rate (CTR) = 2.61%
- Cost per Click (CPC) = $8.49
- Cost per Lead (CPL) = $106.35
- Conversion Rate (CVR) = 7.98%
The main thing to point out with this service is the higher average CPC. It’s substantially higher than perimeter pest control, as well as mosquito and tick prevention. That’s because those services are preventative. When people are looking for this kind of pest control, it’s because there is already a problem and they need a solution right now. That’s why we see much higher conversion rates. Customers take less time deciding on a provider.
If they are dealing with bed bugs, they want help now. If they have mice or rat problems, they’re not going to wait and take their time and get multiple quotes. The business that answers their phone will likely get the sale.
The main thing we learned about pest control campaigns is how the ad groups and campaigns should be broken out. We will do a separate post on what we learned for this, but these are the main things we learned;
Targeting “pest control” is not enough
People also search for “exterminator”, “pest killing services”, “rodent removal”, etc.
Service intent keywords are close to product intent
Similar to the mosquito spraying situation, you can target “bed bug extermination” but accidentally pick up clicks from people looking to DIY. Understanding the intent behind queries generating clicks is important in building a robust negative keyword list to prevent spending money on DIYers.
Ad Groups need to be separated by the pest
With landscaping and lawn care, it’s better to have categorical and topical ad groups that aren’t granular. Instead of having an ad group like “Fertilization”, it’s better to just have a “Lawn Care” ad group and call out “fertilization services” with “assets”. We talked about this extensively in our Google Ads for lawn care guide, as well as our Landscaping Keywords: 101 post.
For the exterminator and pest control industry, it’s a whole different story. The ad group and the corresponding keywords should be focused on the very specific rodent or pest being searched for.
Google Ads Benchmarks for Pressure Washing
Pressure washing was something we had limited data on, so it may not be fully indicative of what we are capable of. With that being said, it was still worth it to list our results here from our few power washing clients.
- Click-Through Rate (CTR) = 3.54%
- Cost per Click (CTR) = $9.64
- Cost per Lead (CPL) = $126.57
- Conversion Rate (CVR) = 7.61%
These conversion rates are pretty high. If they’re closing around 30-50%, depending on the job, it can be considered an expensive cost per lead. However, this doesn’t include revenue earned from upselling an annual or semi-annual service or upselling to a soft washing service if you have that as well.
Google Ads Benchmarks for Snow Removal Services
Snow removal is one of those services we can bank on to always perform well. When someone needs snow removal, they need it.
- Click-Through Rate (CTR) = 6.82%
- Cost per Click (CPC) = $2.18
- Cost per Lead (CPL) = $37.61
- Conversion Rate (CVR)
Every metric here is great. I would take leads from Google that only cost $37.61 all day long. But the important thing to remember is the seasonality and weather conditions for this to happen. Snow removal isn’t a service you can really plan for. Your best bet is to put $500 towards Google Ads during months that snow and then set a maximum CPC bid limit of $5 and wait for the weather.
The big mistake that a lot of people run into when they run Google Ads is that they just turn on automatic bidding and set no bid limit caps. Well, if you give Google $10,000, they’ll figure out how to spend $10,000… and that’s usually by raising your CPC so you’re paying $10, $20, even $50/click.
To put that in perspective, it takes us roughly 17 clicks to get a lead. If you don’t have a max CPC set and Google is inflating your CPC to $10, your lead would now cost $170. Max CPC bid limits are extremely important.
The (somewhat) downside is that when you set a bid limit and you give Google $500, you may not be able to spend that budget because the demand wasn’t there to justify it.
This is something we deal with regarding budgeting our clients’ ad spend every month.
Tree Services
Tree services are a higher cost per lead service to target, but the average target customer acquisition cost is much higher than lawn care or even some landscaping work.
- Click-Through Rate (CTR) = 3.80%
- Cost per Click (CPC) = $8.57
- Cost per Lead (CPL) = $120.36
- Conversion Rate (CVR) = 7.12%
The tree service category considers a few different types of tree services we run Google Ads for:
- Tree removal (large and small)
- Tree trimming and shrub pruning
- Stump grinding and removal
The conversion rate is a bit higher, and our guess is because of the tree removal category. When people need tree removal, they generally need it soon. We said the same thing about snow removal, but our costs per lead and click were so much lower with that service. I have two possible explanations for that:
- Tree service ads run all year round. We never know when someone needs a tree or stump removed. That means we’ll have high-performing months and low-performing months when demand is low. There will be times of the year when people are considering tree removal, but not taking action because it’s not an immediate necessity. This means that competition is also running tree service ads year-round, which keeps the average CPCs inflated and thus the average costs per lead
- Snow removal ads only really run between November and March, and then the demand for them drops to zero completely, and they don’t spend. Most lawn and landscaping businesses have a very natural progression when it comes to snow removal and business growth:
- Step 1: Offer residential and commercial snow removal and try to sell it
- Step 2: Reduce snow removal to commercial contracts only and existing residential clients only
- Step 3: Reduce snow removal to commercial contracts only
- Step 4: Stop offering it
Once step 2 is reached in a business, most don’t want to run snow removal ads because commercial work leans more on outbound sales and bidding, and they only offer it to existing residential clients as a gesture. That means the competition is almost completely removed from the picture because the ones still in step 1 don’t often run ads.
Obviously, this isn’t true for everyone; it’s just a common trend we’ve seen.
What to Take Away From This
Almost all of our clients run Google Ads in combination with at least two of these services above. All of these were aggregated by how we segment campaigns and ad groups.
Why this matters is that we generally don’t set specific budgets for different services based on the time of year. We create campaigns and ad groups based on service category and use a shared budget on the account, which lets demand take control of what people are actually looking for.
The biggest mistake you can make is forcing ad spend to a service that doesn’t yet have the demand; if you do, one or a combination of these things will happen:
- You won’t spend your budget
- Your CPCs will be inflated
- You will miss the increased demand opportunity for a different service
That last one is important if you have an overall Google Ads budget.
Imagine you have $1,000 you want to split evenly between lawn care ads and landscaping ads in a month.
Your lawn care leads might cost you $250/ea because the demand wasn’t there, whereas your landscaping leads might have only cost you $100/ea. Since the demand wasn’t as high for lawn care leads, Google inflated your CPCs, or you had more window shoppers who weren’t exactly needing lawn care services at that point in time. But the demand for landscaping was high, and you could have spent $800 that campaign and gotten 8 leads at the same CPL.
A shared budget would have done this for you. It would have allocated $800 to landscaping and only $200 to lawn care, so you can maximize your leads and, inevitably, your profit.
But as always, if you enjoyed this and found it helpful, let us know! We love getting feedback on these!
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