THE SHORT ANSWER
For landscapers, Meta ads costs EUR 13 to EUR 162 per enquiry and works out at EUR 65 to EUR 1,458 per signed job once you allow for 5 to 9 enquiries per customer. Workable for landscapers, on two conditions: a concrete offer rather than a brand message, and someone whose job it is to filter what arrives.
Most channel comparisons compare cost per click. Cost per signed job is the only comparison that decides anything. This page runs Meta ads specifically for landscapers: the modelled cost, the volume ceiling, the skill it demands, and a plain verdict at the end.
The relevant economics for this trade: a typical project is worth EUR 2,000 to EUR 8,000, the buyer is a homeowner planning a terrace, fence or full garden redesign, demand peaks March to June and bottoms out in November to January, and it takes 5 to 9 genuine enquiries to sign one customer.
The numbers, at a glance
What one enquiry costs: EUR 13 to EUR 162, being clicks at EUR 0.48 to EUR 1.95 against a landing page converting at 1.2 to 3.5 percent
What one signed job costs: EUR 65 to EUR 1,458, after allowing 5 to 9 enquiries for every customer signed
Time from a standing start to the first enquiry: days, but the learning phase eats the first two weeks, assuming you begin with nothing in place
Straight answer for landscapers: Workable for landscapers, on two conditions: a concrete offer rather than a brand message, and someone whose job it is to filter what arrives.
How Meta ads behaves in this trade
Meta ads (Facebook and Instagram) produces enquiries whose intent is low at the moment of the click and manufactured by the offer, because nobody opened the app to buy a heat pump. Clicks are a fraction of search prices, and you can reach people who have not started looking yet.
The constraint nobody mentions in the sales pitch: around 50 conversions a week per ad set for the delivery system to optimise properly, which most contractors never reach. For a garden and landscaping business working a single metro, that is the thing to check before anything else.
Against that, the cost of being wrong. Enquiry quality is markedly lower and the volume of unqualified contacts will occupy someone's whole morning unless you filter hard. Skill required: Creative is the whole job. The targeting is largely automated now; the difference between a working and a failing account is the offer and the first three seconds of the video.
The offer and creative that work for landscaping on social
Landscaping performs well on social in a narrow annual window and produces an enormous volume of enquiries with no formed budget. Every element of the campaign has to carry a price signal or the enquiries are unusable.
Offer: a design consultation with an indicative build cost, presented alongside three named budget bands so the household self-selects before you travel
Creative that works: a time lapse of a build from excavation to finished terrace, geographically tight, published in the first warm week of the year
Creative that fails: finished-garden photography with no price context, which produces the highest engagement and the lowest quality enquiries in the trade
Filter hard: a budget band question is mandatory here. Without it this channel will fill a diary with visits that cannot convert
Your dashboard and your diary will disagree, and the diary is right
Platform attribution counts view-through and click windows that generously assign credit to itself. A contractor comparing reported leads against the enquiries their office actually logged will find a gap. The workable discipline is to treat platform numbers as a relative signal for comparing one creative against another, and to judge the channel as a whole on enquiries recorded in your own system.
The full cost chain from click to signed job
Here is the full chain for garden and landscaping, with every assumption visible so you can substitute your own.
What a click costs: EUR 0.48 to EUR 1.95 on garden and landscaping terms, a range set by job value more than by the number of competitors.
What the page converts at: 1.2 to 3.5 percent, on a page built for this single service rather than a homepage listing everything.
What that makes an enquiry: EUR 13 to EUR 162, being the click price divided by the conversion rate.
How many enquiries per customer: 5 to 9 here, since some never answer, some never quote and some never proceed.
What a signed job therefore costs: EUR 65 to EUR 1,458.
Set the worst case of EUR 1,458 against a midpoint project of EUR 5,000 and acquisition is 29.2 percent of the contract. Whether that works is a question about your gross margin rather than your turnover, which is the step almost everybody omits.
A defensible first ninety days
Decide before you start what would make you stop. For garden and landscaping work at 5 to 9 enquiries per customer, a fair test needs enough volume to expect two or three signed jobs. Anything smaller measures luck.
Fix the service area and job types in writing before the first enquiry arrives.
Record median time to first call attempt from week one, because if that number is poor you are measuring your own follow-up rather than the channel.
Review at the end of the period on cost per signed job, not on cost per enquiry.
Change one variable at a time afterwards, or you will never know which one worked.
The learning phase punishes small budgets split many ways
Delivery needs a run of conversions per ad set before it stabilises. Splitting a modest budget across five ad sets guarantees none of them reach it, and every edit restarts the process. Fewer ad sets, larger budgets each, and a rule against touching a campaign for the first week or two are worth more than any targeting refinement available in the interface.
Levels, access and spoil are what blow a landscaping quote
A sloping site, a house with no side access and several tonnes of excavated material to remove will move a price further than the choice of paving ever does. All three are invisible in an online enquiry and all three are cheap to establish with two photographs and one question about whether a barrow can reach the rear garden. Landscapers who ask before travelling quote faster and lose fewer days.
Landscaping enquiries arrive with no scope and no number
The first warm weekend produces a wave of contacts saying some version of we want to do something with the garden. There is no defined scope, frequently no formed budget, and often an expectation shaped by television. A quoting process that treats these as ready to price burns site visits at an extraordinary rate. The productive approach is a short structured conversation before any visit, covering approximate size, the two or three elements they most want, and a budget band offered as a choice.
Before you spend anything on Meta ads
Start with your gross margin on a typical garden and landscaping job as a percentage. Not turnover, margin.
Compare your maximum per enquiry against the EUR 13 to EUR 162 per enquiry modelled above. If your ceiling is lower, fix conversion or job value before you touch the channel.
Commit to a fixed test volume and a fixed review date before you start, so the decision to continue is made on data rather than on hope.
Name the person responsible for the first call attempt and the target time. Every number on this page assumes contact inside minutes rather than hours.
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.
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Related answers
Frequently asked questions
How much should a garden and landscaping business budget for Meta ads?
Work backwards from a signed job rather than forwards from a budget. At EUR 65 to EUR 1,458 per job and a typical target of one to two jobs a week, the monthly figure follows arithmetically. Setting a round number first and hoping it produces work is the most common and most expensive mistake in this channel.
How long before Meta ads produces a signed job?
First enquiries take days, but the learning phase eats the first two weeks. A signed job takes that plus your own sales cycle, which for garden and landscaping work runs from a few days on urgent jobs to several months on planned ones. Judge the channel on cost per qualified enquiry early and on cost per signed job only after a full cycle has completed.
Should landscapers use this channel or a different one?
Workable for landscapers, on two conditions: a concrete offer rather than a brand message, and someone whose job it is to filter what arrives. The wider point is that these are not competing options. Local search is the long-term asset, purchased leads cover the gap while it matures, and paid advertising is the accelerator you switch on once you know your numbers well enough to calculate what a click is worth.
What should a garden and landscaping enquiry contain before it is worth quoting?
At minimum garden size, scope, budget band and start date. Those answers are what separate an enquiry from a phone number, and collecting them at the point of enquiry rather than on the call removes most of the wasted quoting time in this trade.
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