"How much does a lead cost?" is usually the first question an owner asks before putting money into advertising, and nobody can answer it honestly with a single figure. An enquiry for a full home extension and an enquiry for a photo session do not carry the same value, do not take the same effort to obtain and do not cost the same. Between the two, the gap runs from one to ten.
So this guide does two things. First, it sets out the ranges commonly observed on the French market in 2026, industry by industry. Then it gives you the part that actually matters: how to calculate the maximum your business can pay for a lead without losing money. A lead at 60 EUR can be an excellent deal for one company and a disaster for another. It all depends on what that lead is worth once it closes.
Why the price of a lead varies by a factor of ten
Four factors explain most of the gap between industries.
- Deal value. The more a sale is worth, the harder companies will bid to win the customer, and the more a lead costs. That is why a conservatory enquiry costs more than a photo shoot enquiry: one leads to a five-figure project, the other to a three-figure package.
- Demand maturity. In some markets people are already searching (a pool as summer approaches). In others the need has to be created (a pergola nobody felt they needed until they saw one). Creating demand costs less per person reached, but produces colder leads.
- Seasonality. Demand squeezed into three months, as with pools or weddings, is expensive at peak when everyone bids at once, and close to cheap out of season.
- Qualification level. A lead who gave their name, town, budget and timeline is worth more than a bare email address, and converts incomparably better. Plenty of companies who find leads "too expensive" are in fact buying leads that are not qualified enough.
The 2026 ranges, industry by industry
The ranges below reflect what is commonly seen in France on local paid campaigns in 2026. They are orders of magnitude, not guaranteed prices: your own result depends on your catchment area, your offer and the quality of your capture system.
| Industry | Common range per lead (French market) | What moves the number |
|---|---|---|
| Conservatories, pergolas, extensions | 25 to 70 EUR | Catchment area, season (spring costs more), how much qualification you ask for |
| Pools | 20 to 60 EUR | Heavy seasonality: very competitive from April to July, affordable in autumn |
| Wedding photography | 10 to 35 EUR | Demand is already warm, and the cost drops when the portfolio does the convincing |
| Building trades and fit-out (renovation, joinery, masonry) | 20 to 80 EUR | Huge spread by job type: a painting quote does not cost what an extension costs |
| General local services (repairs, maintenance) | 10 to 40 EUR | Urgency drives bids up, and emergency call-outs are the most contested of all |
Two things are worth reading into this table. First, the figures look high right up until you compare them with what a signed customer is worth, which is the next section. Second, the top of each range almost always comes down to the same mistake: a poorly qualified lead, captured on a generic page, called back too late. The bottom of the range is reachable by a business that works on its system properly, without cutting corners on quality.
The only question that matters: how much can you pay?
Benchmarks give you a direction. Your own ceiling is calculated backwards from margin, in three steps.
1. Start from margin, not from budget. A 12,000 EUR conservatory project at 30% gross margin leaves 3,600 EUR. The question becomes: how much of that margin are you willing to put into winning this customer? Say 20%, which gives you an acceptable acquisition budget of roughly 700 EUR per signed customer.
2. Bring in your conversion rate. If you sign one project out of every five qualified enquiries, you need five leads to make a customer. Your maximum cost per lead is therefore 700 divided by 5, or 140 EUR.
3. Compare against the benchmark. In this example, the conservatory range of 25 to 70 EUR leaves a comfortable safety margin: even paying top of market for every lead, the model still works. A company converting one in ten, by contrast, would see its ceiling shrink to 70 EUR, and would be better off fixing its sales process before raising its ad budget.
The calculation takes ten minutes and changes everything, because it turns an anxious question ("am I being ripped off?") into a numbered decision. Redo it every time your average price or your close rate moves.
Headline leads or qualified leads: compare the right number
The cost per lead shown in your ads manager is a headline figure: money spent set against the number of forms submitted. It counts everything, including wrong numbers, duplicates and browsers with no real project. The figure that actually weighs on your margin is the cost per qualified lead: the same spend, set this time against only the enquiries you can reach and that are serious.
A fictional example, with the same 3,000 EUR spend:
- Short form: 300 submissions, so 10 EUR each. After sorting, 60 usable enquiries, which means 50 EUR per qualified lead.
- Form with filtering questions: 100 submissions, so 30 EUR each. After sorting, 70 usable enquiries, which means roughly 43 EUR per qualified lead.
The second setup looks three times more expensive on the dashboard, yet costs less where it counts. That qualified cost is the one to hold against your ceiling: the calculation above works in qualified enquiries, not raw form fills. Tracking it only takes a note after each callback on whether the enquiry was usable.
When cost per lead climbs: the formula that pinpoints the problem
A rising cost per lead is not fixed by changing every setting at once, because then there is no way of knowing what actually moved. On a paid campaign, that cost breaks down into three measures:
Cost per lead = CPM ÷ (1,000 × click-through rate × conversion rate)
- CPM: what the platform charges for 1,000 impressions of your ad.
- Click-through rate: the share of people who see the ad and click.
- Conversion rate: the share of visitors who complete the form.
With a 15 EUR CPM, a 1.5% click-through rate and 10% conversion, the calculation gives 15 ÷ (1,000 × 0.015 × 0.10), or 10 EUR per lead. The value of breaking it down is that each term points to a specific part of the setup:
- CPM goes up: the audience is too narrow, it is a period when everyone bids (year end, peak season in your trade), or the ad is landing badly with the people who see it.
- Click-through rate stays low: the visual or the opening lines of the ad are not stopping the scroll.
- Clicks arrive but forms do not follow: the page or the form does not deliver on the ad's promise, loads slowly on mobile, or asks for too much effort at once.
Spotting which term slipped tells you where to act among the levers below, instead of starting again from scratch.
Three levers that lower the cost without sacrificing quality
Once you know your ceiling, the goal is to stay well below it. These three levers make the biggest difference.
1. Qualify before you capture. A form that only asks for an email produces cheap, useless leads. Three or four well-chosen questions, such as project type, rough budget, timing and town, filter out the browsers and mechanically raise the value of every lead that remains. Cost per qualified lead goes down even when cost per submitted form goes up.
2. One dedicated page per offer. Somebody searching "pergola price" should land on a page about pergola prices, not on a generic homepage. Specialised pages convert clearly better, and ad platforms reward them with lower costs. One offer, one page, one campaign.
3. Call back fast. A lead cools off within hours. An enquiry called back inside the hour has a far better chance of going somewhere than one called back two days later. This is not an admin detail, it is a direct driver of cost per signed customer: the same ad budget returns more simply because leads are handled while they are still hot. If you cannot call back quickly, fewer leads handled systematically beats more leads handled loosely.
Paid leads are only half the equation
The ranges above cover leads that come from advertising. There is another source, free but slower: the customers already looking for you, through a well-maintained Google listing, steady reviews and a real local presence. The two channels are not rivals. The organic base reassures the paid lead, who will go and check your reviews before signing anything, and advertising covers the gap while organic search builds up. The guide to generating qualified local-service enquiries with Meta Ads covers the paid side in detail, and setting a Meta Ads budget turns these benchmarks into a test amount. The rest of the acquisition guides sit in the resource library.
Keep the key point: the right price for a lead is not the market price, it is the price your margin allows. Work out your ceiling once, compare it with the ranges in your industry, and you will know straight away whether your acquisition is healthy, or whether it is your conversion that needs fixing first.