How much does a lead cost in Norway?

The numbers

All numbers come from the Google Ads accounts of five of our clients, active campaigns, June 9 – September 6, 2026. For business leasing the period is July 3 – September 6. We use numbers from July 3, when tracking was set up the way we wanted it. “Lead” means whatever the account counts as a conversion, and that isn’t quite the same in all five. That is covered under caveats.

The right-hand column is the one that tells you what it costs to win new customers. Branded searches are people searching for the company name, and most of them would have found their way anyway.

Search and Performance Max separately

Three of the accounts run both regular Search campaigns and Performance Max (PMax). The two campaign types buy different things, so we keep them apart. Branded searches are excluded here.

The cost per click for move-out cleaning is an average of two Search campaigns: NOK 57 in the main Oslo campaign and NOK 50 in the campaign for the surrounding municipalities. Branded searches cost NOK 4–13 per click in the same five accounts.

A PMax click is cheaper because PMax also buys placements on YouTube, Display and Gmail, where clicks are cheap and intent is lower than in a search. So never compare cost per click across the two. Compare cost per lead.

What the numbers show

Cost per click explains little. Saunas have the cheapest search click (NOK 14) and the most expensive lead. Business leasing has the most expensive click (NOK 79), but 15% of the people who click submit a form. What decides it is how many of the people who click get in touch. A sauna costing tens of thousands of kroner is a purchase people spend weeks on, and many click to check prices long before they are ready.

Region matters a lot. For facade and roof cleaning, cost per lead ranged from NOK 145 in Trondheim (85 leads) to NOK 341 in Østfold (9 leads, a new region with little data), for the same service, same client and same period. Oslo came in at NOK 237. With one national campaign, Google would have allocated the money itself, and you wouldn’t have seen the difference. How we build accounts with many regions.

Branded searches move the average. In the facade cleaning account, 95 of 549 leads came from branded searches, at NOK 47 each. Include them and the average drops from approx. NOK 188 to 163. In the leasing account, 7 of 32 leads came from branded searches for a total of NOK 55, which pulls the average from NOK 517 to 406. If you get a report with cost per lead, ask whether branded searches are included.

“Retargeting” in PMax looks cheapest, but it isn’t a clean finding. Both the move-out cleaning and moving company accounts have a PMax campaign aimed at previous visitors, and both have the account’s lowest cost per lead (NOK 116 and 310). Much of that is attribution. The campaign reaches people who have already been on the site, often after arriving through a search ad, and gets the credit when they come back and submit a form. Some of them would have gotten in touch anyway. You only see how much the campaign actually adds if you turn it off for a period or in an area and watch the total.

What a lead should cost you

The table tells you what a lead costs. Whether that is expensive or cheap depends on what a lead is worth to you:

This is the number we use when we set target CPA in accounts with smart bidding. If you set the target higher than the customer can bear, Google will happily buy more leads, but you lose money on every one of them.

Caveats

• Facade and roof cleaning counts “every” conversion per click. If the same person submits a form twice after one click, it counts twice. That causes some double counting, so the real number of unique leads is slightly lower and the cost per lead slightly higher than the table shows. Phone calls aren’t counted in this account, so some leads are also lost the other way.
• Move-out cleaning includes clicks on the phone number and email (65 of 244, or 27%). These are clicks, not calls that actually took place. Counting only submitted forms, the price is approx. NOK 276 per lead.
• The moving company number is bookings via form, measured on the thank-you page. Signed contracts are not included.
• The sauna number mixes several types: contact form, popup, chatbot, Calendly bookings and signed orders. Leads alone cost NOK 978 on average. The value of a lead varies a lot by type, so the account is managed on value and not on cost per lead.
• Business leasing has only 32 leads. The number is directional, not conclusive.
• A lead is not a customer. How many become customers depends a lot on how quickly you call back.
• Season. June–August is low season for facade cleaning and high season for moving. The numbers fluctuate by month.
• One account per industry. These are not industry averages, just what we measure in the accounts we manage. Your account may be above or below.

Levers that move cost per lead

1. A dedicated landing page per service, with the form visible without scrolling on mobile. The share of clicks that become leads ranges from under 1% to 24% in the table, and the landing page is a big part of the explanation.
2. A separate campaign per region, so you see the difference and can move budget to where leads are cheapest.
3. Review search terms every week. Searches with “selv” (DIY), “jobb” (job), “lønn” (salary) and “gratis” (free) are mostly people who aren’t going to buy anything.
4. Branded searches in their own campaign, so the new-customer numbers aren’t flattered.
5. Correct conversion counting. For leads, Google should count one conversion per click, and only what you actually want to pay for should be a primary conversion.

Click prices for more industries, including online stores, are in What does Google Ads cost?. The method industry by industry: cleaning, moving, B2B and service businesses in general. We update the numbers when we have a new quarter of data.