Start with the jobs you can profitably take.
A tree surgery marketing budget should fit your job contribution, available team-days and cash flow. A percentage of turnover can be a useful cross-check, but it cannot tell you whether the next campaign will pay for itself. Two businesses with the same turnover can have very different labour, disposal, equipment and travel costs.
Start with three questions: which jobs do you want more of, how many can you deliver, and what does each extra job leave after its delivery costs? Then work backwards to the enquiries and spend needed. Our free marketing break-even calculator does the arithmetic, including management fees and first-month setup.
Separate ad spend, fees and setup.
Your full marketing cost is larger than the amount paid to Google. Include management, tracking, any recurring software and work on your website. Keep one-off setup separate so you can see both the first-month cash requirement and the ongoing cost.
For a concrete example, our published Starter plan is £397 a month plus £297 setup. With an illustrative £300 monthly advertising budget, that is £697 a month and £994 in month one. The ad budget is paid to the platform separately. The actual budget is agreed for your business; this example is not a forecast of enquiries.
Growth is £797 a month and Scale is £1,497 a month, each with separate ad spend and £297 setup. Read the current pricing page for scope and terms, including the upfront-payment setup waiver. Compare the total cost and work included, rather than the management fee alone.
Use contribution, not invoice value.
For this calculation, job contribution means the income from an extra job minus the costs of delivering it: labour, disposal, fuel, equipment hire and other job-specific costs. The full invoice value is not the amount available to pay for marketing. Use a consistent approach to VAT across your inputs.
Suppose an extra job contributes £250 and your recurring marketing cost is £697. Divide £697 by £250 and round up: three extra jobs cover that marketing amount. Including £297 setup raises the first-month target to four jobs. These figures do not cover a separate profit target, tax or fixed overheads you have not already allowed for.
Use the mix of work you actually want to win. A day of pruning, a removal needing access equipment and a small stump-grinding visit can leave different contributions and consume different amounts of team time.
Turn the job target into an enquiry target.
Your enquiry-to-job rate is booked jobs divided by genuine enquiries from the same group. It includes the enquiries that never reached a quote. If half your enquiries reach a quote and you win half those quotes, your enquiry-to-job rate is 25%, not 50%.
In the example above, a 33% enquiry-to-job rate means planning for ten enquiries to reach three jobs, or thirteen enquiries for four jobs in month one. Round up whole jobs and enquiries. The rate is an assumption to test, not a guarantee that a particular number of calls will produce the work.
Record each source and follow the enquiry through to its outcome. Comparing this week's new enquiries with this week's completed jobs can mislead you, because those jobs may have been quoted weeks earlier. Our weekly enquiry checklist helps keep follow-ups and outcomes visible.
Check capacity before increasing the budget.
If the budget needs eight extra jobs but you only have room for three, more advertising does not solve the mismatch. Revisit the spend, target work, contribution or available team-days. Include any extra hiring, vehicle or equipment costs that would be needed to deliver the work.
For an owner who is still building a steady diary, start by making the business easy to find and contact: an accurate Google Business Profile, a clear website, honest customer reviews and a reliable reply process. If you already have enquiries, check unanswered calls and outstanding quotes before paying to generate more.
Use the one-page business plan to connect the marketing decision with the wider business. Set a target you can deliver and a review date, rather than increasing several channels at once without knowing what changed.
Choose a channel you can measure.
Paid search can put your offer in front of people searching for work you provide, subject to campaign approval, budget and auction conditions. Track suitable enquiries and booked jobs; clicks alone do not tell you whether the spend is worthwhile.
Local SEO develops your website and local search presence over time. It needs ongoing work, and rankings and traffic are not guaranteed. Do not treat organic enquiries as permanently free or assume that a fixed number of months will produce a particular result.
If you are comparing Google Search Ads and Local Services Ads, distinguish clicks, charged leads and actual jobs. They are different measures. Our Local Services Ads guide explains that route in more detail.
Use real evidence without turning it into a promise.
In March 2026, TreeCut recorded 53 charged Local Services Ads leads from £594.03 in advertising spend, averaging £11.21 per charged lead. The TreeCut case study sets out the evidence and what the figures do and do not show.
That result describes one campaign and one period. It is not a general tree surgery cost-per-lead benchmark, a booked-job figure or proof of profit. Your location, offer, competition, response process and job mix can produce different results. Management fees must also be considered separately when assessing the total marketing cost.
Review actual spend, genuine enquiries, suitable quotes, booked work and the contribution from completed jobs. Allow for delays between enquiry and completion. Make the next budget decision from that record, rather than from a supplier's headline lead price.
Questions to settle before you commit.
What percentage of revenue should I spend on marketing?
There is no single percentage that fits every tree surgery business. Set the budget from contribution, capacity and cash flow, then compare it with turnover as a cross-check. A percentage alone does not show how many extra jobs are needed or whether you can deliver them.
How much does TreeLine cost with advertising included?
Starter is £397 a month plus your separate ad budget and £297 one-off setup. With an illustrative £300 ad budget, that is £697 a month and £994 in month one. See the pricing page for current scope, terms and the upfront-payment setup waiver.
Does the calculator predict how many leads I will get?
No. It calculates the jobs needed to cover the costs you enter, then estimates the enquiries needed at your assumed win rate. It does not predict demand, advertising performance or profit.
What if I do not know my enquiry-to-job rate?
Record genuine enquiries and their eventual outcomes by source. Until you have a useful record, compare several clearly labelled scenarios and keep the spend within what you can afford to test. Do not present a guessed rate as measured performance.