Concrete has the lowest conversion rate of any home-service category on Google Ads — 2.61%. It has no Local Services Ads category. And it has a problem no other trade on this site has: a large share of the inquiries it generates are worth less than the lead that produced them.
That is not a marketing problem. It is a structural one, and the only trades that solve it are the ones that stop treating repair and replacement as the same business.
The core arithmetic
A Google Ads concrete lead costs $94 to $166.
Crack sealing a Houston driveway is $0.50 to $3 per linear foot with a $100–$250 minimum service fee — realistically a $150 to $400 job.
At a 25–40% gross margin, that job earns $38 to $160.
The lead costs roughly what the job pays.
Every other trade covered here has a comfortable ratio between lead cost and ticket — foundation repair at 3.5%, roofing at 2%, windows at 1.5%. Concrete repair runs at 40% to well over 100% of the job value. Concrete replacement, at a $6,310 Houston driveway average, runs at 2.6%.
Same trade. Same phone. Same lead price. Two completely different businesses.
What a concrete lead costs
| Channel | Cost per lead | Close rate | Cost per acquired job |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Ads, category benchmark | $165.67 at $5.31 CPC | 2.61% site conversion | — |
| Google Ads, working range | $70–$230 | 12–20% | $350–$1,900 |
| Angi / HomeAdvisor, shared 3–5 ways | $15–$85 | 5–10% | ~$714 |
| Thumbtack, shared | $10–$100 | 6–12% | $150–$1,000 |
| Houzz Pro, shared | $30–$90 | — | — |
| Facebook / Meta | $30–$60 | — | — |
| Exclusive Meta leads | $50–$200 | 20–35% | ~$480 |
| Google Local Services Ads | no category exists | — | — |
The cleanest comparison in the trade: a $50 shared lead at a 7% close is about $714 per acquired job; a $120 exclusive lead at a 25% close is about $480. The shared lead is 58% cheaper to buy and 49% more expensive to win work with.
Some agencies quote $40–$80 Local Services Ads leads for concrete contractors. There is no concrete category on Google’s list. Those leads are coming through General Contractor — which means you are paying for exclusive placement against a general-contracting intent pool, and a good share of the calls will be about something other than concrete. Ask any agency which category the account is enrolled in.
Houston concrete pricing
| Job | Houston figure |
|---|---|
| Crack repair / sealing | $0.50–$3 per linear ft, $100–$250 minimum |
| Pothole / patch | $100–$395 each |
| Spalling and scaling repair | $3–$5 per sq ft |
| Resurfacing | $3–$5 per sq ft |
| Slab leveling / mudjacking | $600–$2,700 |
| Sidewalk and flatwork, average | $1,073 (range $510–$1,702) |
| Driveway repair, average | $1,601 (range $750–$2,496) |
| Driveway replacement, average | $6,310 (range $2,662–$14,297) |
| Per sq ft, replacement | $8–$20 |
| Demolition and removal | $2–$6 per sq ft |
| Houston labor | $35–$60/hr |
By slab size: a 10×20 pad runs about $1,950, a 20×20 about $3,900, a 24×24 about $5,600, a 24×36 about $8,400.
What to do about the repair problem
There are only three real answers, and pretending otherwise is how concrete contractors end up quietly subsidizing their marketing.
- Advertise the replacement work and take repair as a by-product. Run paid channels against driveway replacement, patios and decorative flatwork — $6,000 to $20,000 jobs that can carry a $165 lead cost easily. The crack-seal calls will arrive anyway through organic search and word of mouth, where they cost nothing.
- Convert repair inquiries at the door. A cracked driveway on Houston clay is very often a symptom of something a patch will not fix. An honest assessment that turns a $250 crack seal into a $6,000 repour is not a sales tactic — on a lot of this housing stock it is the correct recommendation. But it only happens if someone is on site, which means the repair call has to be worth a truck roll.
- Set a minimum, and hold it. A $250 minimum service fee is what makes small repair work possible at all. Contractors who quietly waive it to be nice are the ones who cannot understand why their marketing does not pay back.
Houston seasonality
Most published concrete seasonality advice is written for northern markets and talks about spring thaw and freeze-thaw cracking. That is largely irrelevant here. Houston’s constraint is the opposite one: hot-weather pouring. Rapid slump loss and plastic shrinkage cracking limit mid-summer afternoon pours, which pushes the practical window toward spring and fall — the same shape as foundation repair, and for related reasons.
Demand-side, decorative and outdoor-living planning searches lift in late winter and early spring, so campaigns want to be live six to ten weeks ahead of the pour season rather than during it.
We should be straight about this: there is no rigorous Houston concrete demand-seasonality data available. The pattern above is reasoned from local pour conditions and regional planning behavior, not measured from call volume.
Why concrete has no exclusive channel
It is worth stating what the absence of a Local Services Ads category actually means. In roofing or HVAC, a contractor unhappy with shared leads has an alternative: pay more, get exclusivity, get placement above the organic results. In concrete there is no such option. The choices are shared marketplace leads at a 5–10% close, self-managed search against the worst conversion rate in home services, or ranking organically.
That is a genuine vacuum rather than a competitive disadvantage, and it is the single most useful thing to understand about marketing this trade. There is nothing cheaper and better waiting to be discovered. The contractors who do well in concrete are the ones who own a ranked local presence and stop renting inquiries entirely.
Common questions
Should I bother with Angi for concrete work?
At a 5–10% close and roughly $714 per acquired job, it works only if your average job is well into four figures. On repair-weighted volume it does not work at all. Run the division on your own last ninety days before renewing.
Why is concrete’s conversion rate so bad?
Because the category mixes homeowners wanting a $200 patch with developers pricing flatwork, plus a large share of pure research traffic. The clicks are cheap — $5.31, well below the home-services average — and that cheapness is a warning, not a bargain.
Is stamped and decorative work worth targeting?
It is the strongest paid-channel target in the trade: $8,000–$20,000+ jobs, a homeowner who has already decided to spend, and a lead cost that is a rounding error against the ticket. It also demands portfolio photography that repair work never needs.
About these figures. Houston pricing is 2026 consumer cost survey data. The $165.67 cost per lead and 2.61% conversion rate come from a 3,211-campaign home-services benchmark, in the “Construction & Contractors” category — the nearest published match, which also averages concrete with other general construction work. Concrete gross margin is the weakest-evidenced figure in this entire set: no industry association publishes audited gross margins for the trade, and the 25–40% band comes from undocumented benchmark sources. Treat it as a prior to check against your own books, not a finding.
See what an exclusive local site produces before you pay anything
We build and rank the site, and one contractor per trade, per territory gets every inquiry that comes through it. The first couple of weeks of leads are free — no setup fee, no contract, nothing to cancel — so you can price it against whatever you pay now. Tell us your trade and your service area and we’ll confirm whether it’s open, usually within one business day.
Check My Trade’s Availability →