THE SHORT ANSWER
Exclusive home-improvement leads in Cork are modelled at EUR 45 to EUR 170 depending on trade, which is roughly 5 percent above the Irish national average. The metro holds roughly 170,000 households, of which an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 commission qualifying work in a year. The practical channel order for a contractor starting here is local search first, exclusive purchased leads for immediate volume, and paid search only once you know your close rate.
National averages are useless to a business that works within a forty-minute drive. This page treats Cork as its own market: what a lead costs here, how much demand the metro can realistically supply in a year, and which channels are worth the effort at this scale.
The defining local feature is the second city, with enough installer competition to run a real auction but a small enough audience to saturate quickly. That single fact shapes both which trades find work easily and how much a quote is worth once it converts.
The numbers, at a glance
Metro premium: the local auction runs roughly 5 percent above the Irish national average, which is where the lead price below comes from
Exclusive lead price: EUR 45 to EUR 170, depending which of the trades below you work in
Households you can sell to: about 170,000, inside a metro population of roughly 400,000 people
Live projects per year: modelled at 5,000 to 10,000 across all home-improvement trades combined
Worked example: one windows and doors customer costs about EUR 440 to acquire at these prices
The harbour employers define the buyer profile
The pharmaceutical, medical device and technology plants around the harbour produce a large base of stable, well-paid, salaried households in specific suburbs. They plan work, they finance it conventionally, they respond to written detail, and they are unusually consistent from one enquiry to the next. That is a market you can build a repeatable sales process against, which is rarer than it sounds and worth more than a slightly lower cost per lead somewhere less predictable.
How much campaign this metro can carry
There is a ceiling, and it is set by the audience rather than by your budget. With a modelled 5,000 to 10,000 projects a year, Cork produces roughly 400 to 800 enquiries a month across every home-improvement trade combined.
Spread across ten trades that is something like 40 to 80 a month in any single specialism, before you subtract the share going to firms that have been here for twenty years. That is the number to plan against, and it is why doubling spend in a small metro raises frequency rather than reach.
Watch frequency rather than impressions. When cost per lead starts climbing without any change in the auction, you have run out of people, not out of money, and the answer is new creative or a wider area rather than a higher bid.
Irish support runs through one national agency and its registered lists
Residential energy upgrade support in Ireland is administered nationally, with grant amounts published per measure and, for the fuller packages, delivery through managed schemes. Crucially, work generally has to be carried out by a contractor on the relevant registered list for the grant to be paid. That list is the market. If you are not on it you are competing for the shrinking share of work that nobody is claiming support for.
Winning the local search results in Cork
Local acquisition is won on proximity and proof, not on cleverness. In a metro auction the businesses that appear in the map pack for a suburb are the ones with an address near it, recent reviews mentioning that suburb by name, and pages that actually reference local conditions.
Name the suburbs. A page that says Cork and lists the districts you cover beats a page that says the country.
Ask for reviews the same week you finish a job. Recency counts more than total volume in local ranking.
Photograph the local building type. Recognisable local housing stock converts better than stock photography, and it gives an answer engine something specific to cite.
Publish your travel radius honestly. Enquiries from outside it cost you time and lower your conversion rate, which raises your effective cost per job.
Enough competition for a real auction, small enough to exhaust
Cork has sufficient installer density to bid prices up, and a small enough addressable audience that a moderately funded campaign can show the same advertisement to the same people repeatedly within weeks. Watch frequency rather than impressions. When cost per lead starts climbing here it is usually saturation rather than competition, and the fix is new creative and a wider radius, not a higher bid. Plan a creative rotation from the start instead of reacting when performance sags.
Drive time is the real boundary of your Cork market
Contractors draw their service area in kilometres and then lose money in minutes. In a metro the two are barely related: congestion, rivers, ring roads and one-way systems mean a job ten kilometres away can be further in practice than one twenty kilometres out on a clear route.
Price the difference. If a crew hour is worth EUR 55 to you, then two extra hours of travel a day is EUR 110 daily and roughly EUR 2,420 a month in capacity you never invoiced. That is more than most contractors spend on leads, and it is invisible because it never appears as a line on anything.
The fix is unglamorous: set the radius in minutes measured at the hour you actually travel, cluster surveys by direction so one trip serves three addresses, and turn off targeting outside the boundary rather than accepting the work and absorbing the drive.
Cork lead prices, trade by trade
Take the mechanism before the number. A metro auction is a fixed quantity of high-intent searches divided among more bidders than the surrounding region carries, so the clearing price rises even though the homeowner behind the click is identical. In Cork that settles at EUR 45 to EUR 170 per exclusive lead, roughly 5 percent above the Irish national average.
Solar panel: EUR 100 to EUR 170 per exclusive lead. 3 to 5 leads normally convert into one customer, and the buyer is a homeowner comparing three quotes for a roof-mounted system. Peak demand runs spring and early summer.
Windows and doors: EUR 70 to EUR 105 per exclusive lead. 4 to 6 leads normally convert into one customer, and the buyer is a homeowner replacing single or early double glazing. Peak demand runs late winter and spring.
Painting and plastering: EUR 45 to EUR 80 per exclusive lead. 5 to 8 leads normally convert into one customer, and the buyer is a homeowner or landlord preparing a property. Peak demand runs spring.
Read that as a menu rather than a price index. If two of these trades sit inside your competence, the cheaper one is usually the better way into a new metro: it buys local reviews and local photographs at a lower cost per attempt, and those are the assets that make the expensive trade affordable later.
A first ninety days in Cork
Weeks one and two: fix the local business profile, the service area and the review request process. This is unpaid and it compounds.
Weeks three to six: buy exclusive leads in one trade only and answer every one within five minutes. Speed to first contact moves close rate more than any other single variable.
Week six: calculate your close rate honestly. Multiply it out to a cost per customer and compare it against your average job value of about EUR 8,500 in windows and doors.
Weeks seven to ten: add the second trade only if the first one is converting. Two half-run trades lose to one well-run trade every time.
Week ten onwards: open paid search with a bid ceiling derived from your measured numbers, not from what the platform suggests.
Review the drive-time boundary once a month. If the crew is spending more than ninety minutes a day travelling, the boundary is wrong, not the lead source.
How these figures were built
These figures are a benchmark model, not a survey. They combine an industry base range observed across Western European home-improvement campaigns with a country multiplier for local auction pressure. Treat them as a band to negotiate against, not a quote. City figures are national bands multiplied by a metro premium, here roughly 5 percent above the Irish national average. Household counts come from metro population divided by an average household size of 2.3, and the annual pool from an assumed 3.5 to 6 percent of those households commissioning work. Treat all three as estimates to be replaced by your own data once you have it.
How Flock Leads prices this
Flock Leads sells Cork leads in blocks, exclusive to one business, at these per-lead rates. Set against the modelled local band of EUR 45 to EUR 170, larger blocks buy below the metro auction.
Starter - 10 leads for EUR 750, which is EUR 75 per lead
Growth - 25 leads for EUR 1,750, which is EUR 70 per lead
Scale - 45 leads for EUR 2,925, which is EUR 65 per lead
Pro - 70 leads for EUR 4,340, which is EUR 62 per lead
Max - 90 leads for EUR 5,400, which is EUR 60 per lead
No retainer, no contract term, and no lead sent to a second business. Unused volume rolls over under the Flock Lead Promise.
Want leads like this in your pipeline?
Flock runs the campaigns, screens the enquiries and hands you only the ones that match your service area, job size and capacity. You pay per lead, not per month.
Book a 15-minute fit check | See lead package pricing
Related answers
Frequently asked questions
Are purchased leads better than running my own ads here?
They are faster, not cheaper. Purchased exclusive leads give you volume this week at a known price. Your own local search presence is cheaper per lead once it matures but takes months to build. Most contractors in Cork should run both and let the numbers decide the ratio.
How much does a signed customer actually cost?
Multiply the lead price by the number of leads it takes to close one. For windows and doors work in Cork that models at about EUR 440 per customer against an average job value of roughly EUR 8,500, or 5.2 percent of revenue.
How far outside Cork should I advertise?
Set the boundary in minutes rather than kilometres, and measure it at the time of day you actually drive. Widening the radius raises enquiry volume but lowers jobs completed per crew per week, and the second effect is usually the larger one.
Is Cork a good market for a contractor to expand into?
It depends on what you sell. The defining local condition is the second city, with enough installer competition to run a real auction but a small enough audience to saturate quickly, which suits some trades and punishes others. Check that against your own specialism before committing budget.
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