What 247 leads at $11 each actually looked like for a rubber resurfacing company

Most agencies show you a ROAS screenshot from an industry you don't recognize, for a job type you don't run, and call it proof. The Safe Step case study is different. It's a rubber resurfacing company, a specific trade with a specific customer, and the numbers are ones you can put math around: 247 leads, $11 cost per lead, $2,800 in total ad spend. This article walks through what that actually looked like, because the numbers on their own don't tell you whether the same model applies to your business.

The baseline before the campaign started

Safe Step is in the rubber resurfacing space, which sits in the same general market as concrete coating, epoxy flooring, and surface restoration. The jobs are project-based, not recurring. The customer has a specific problem (damaged, worn, or unsafe surface) and wants it fixed once. That means the buying window is short, and if a lead goes cold, it's usually gone.

Before running paid ads, this type of business typically depends on referrals and word of mouth. The ceiling on that model is real: you grow until your referral network stops growing, and then you plateau. Paid ads are the logical next step, but they're also where most contractors get burned, so the willingness to try again after a bad experience carries its own friction.

The campaign goal was straightforward: generate leads from homeowners in the target service area who had a surface problem Safe Step could fix. Nothing exotic about the objective.

What the $2,800 actually bought

Total spend over the campaign: $2,800. Total leads generated: 247. That averages to $11.34 per lead.

To put that in context, a single Safe Step job is worth multiples of what the average lead cost. If you close even one in ten of those leads, the math works significantly in your favor. Close two in ten, and the campaign returns the entire ad budget from a single weekend's worth of booked jobs.

The spend itself was not front-loaded. Meta campaigns in this format run continuously at a daily budget, which means the $2,800 was distributed across the campaign timeline rather than charged as one upfront cost. That matters because it lets you see results before the bulk of the spend is gone. A week in, you have real data. Three weeks in, you have enough signal to know whether the campaign is producing or needs adjustment.

The creative used in this campaign followed a format that works consistently in home service: a visual showing the problem state (damaged or worn surface), a clear outcome promise, and a lead form that captures name, number, and service location. No elaborate production. No studio voiceover. The goal of the ad is to get the right person to raise their hand, not to win a design award. What makes it work is specificity, not polish.

What $11 CPL means in practice for a trade business

The number that matters isn't the cost per lead in isolation. It's the cost per lead relative to the job value and your realistic close rate.

A rubber resurfacing job typically runs in the range of a few hundred to a couple thousand dollars depending on scope. Even at the conservative end, one closed job from this campaign covers the cost of 20 to 30 leads. If you're closing at 15 to 20 percent (which is reasonable for a competent operator who follows up promptly), a 247-lead campaign at $11 CPL produces somewhere between 37 and 50 booked jobs from $2,800 in spend.

The variable that breaks this math is follow-up speed. A lead submitted through a Meta Instant Form at 7pm on a Tuesday expects contact. If they don't hear back within a few minutes, they submit the same form to the next result in their feed. By the time you call them the next morning, you're not the first call they're getting. The contractor who responds in 30 seconds books the job. The one who calls the next day gets "I already went with someone else."

That's not a Meta ads problem. It's an infrastructure problem that exists regardless of the channel. The $11 CPL is only real if the follow-up system captures it.

What this tells you about evaluating any campaign result

When an agency shows you a case study, the number to interrogate isn't the ROAS or the lead count on its own. It's the cost per lead against a job value you recognize, in a trade close enough to yours that the targeting logic applies.

The Safe Step numbers work as proof for a few specific reasons. First, the trade is specific enough that a contractor in surface restoration, concrete coating, or epoxy flooring can map it directly to their own business. Second, the spend amount is legible: $2,800 is not a massive commitment, and 247 leads from it is a falsifiable claim you can evaluate without trusting a vague "we get great results." Third, the cost per lead is specific enough that you can do your own math on whether it would work for your close rate and average job value.

Generic ROAS numbers don't give you any of that. A 22x ROAS from a lighting company (Yerim) is a real result, but if you're a painter or a paving contractor, it doesn't tell you anything actionable about your own campaign. Niche-matched, specific numbers are the only proof that actually transfers.

If an agency can only show you results from trades that don't resemble yours, that's a signal, not a minor gap. It usually means they don't have a relevant result to show, and the case study they're using is meant to imply competence rather than demonstrate it.

What to do with this

If the Safe Step numbers match the math of your trade close enough to make this worth a conversation, the next step is to see whether ASN has a case study from a business closer to yours specifically. The point of niche-matched proof is that it should apply to your niche, not just the nearest adjacent one.

There's no setup fee and no contract to start. If the numbers don't show up in your first 30 days, you're not locked in. That's the right structure for a contractor who's already paid once for a promise that didn't hold up. You can reach out at americanservicenetwork.com to see what proof exists for your specific trade before committing to anything.