**SEO title:** PPC Benchmarks UK 2026: CPL, CTR, CVR by Industry
**Meta description:** UK PPC benchmarks 2026 across 12 industries. CPC, CTR, conversion rate, CPL by vertical. Beat your industry average.
## If you don’t know your industry’s PPC benchmark, you’re flying blind. Here’s the data for 12 UK verticals.
Every week we audit a PPC account where the owner says “I think we’re doing well” and they’re paying 2-4x their industry average per lead. Every week. Because nobody publishes UK-specific benchmarks at the industry level — they’re either US data, aggregated globally, or so generic they’re useless.
This report is the cleanest cut of UK PPC performance benchmarks for 2026 across the 12 industries we run paid media for. Average CPC, CTR, conversion rate, cost per lead, and ROAS by vertical, with Google Ads, Meta Ads, and LinkedIn separated.
If you’re spending more than £2,000/month on paid media in any of these industries and you’re above benchmark on cost or below on conversion rate, this article will save you £10k+ this year.
By Josh Weir, founder of Weir Digital Media.
## Quick Answer (100 words)
UK PPC benchmarks 2026: Average Google Ads CPC across SMEs ranges £0.85 (e-commerce) to £14.50 (legal). Meta Ads CPM ranges £4.20 (hospitality) to £18.00 (B2B services). Average conversion rate on landing pages: 4.7% across industries; top quartile hits 12%+. CPL bands by industry: home services £18-£45, professional services £55-£180, legal £120-£420, healthcare £35-£90, B2B SaaS £85-£280. The biggest performance gap isn’t platform choice — it’s landing page conversion rate. Doubling landing page CVR (from 4% to 8%) halves CPL. Most PPC accounts have 30-50% wasted spend on poorly-converting keywords.
## How we built these benchmarks
Data sources:
1. 18 months of aggregated client account data across our [12 productised industries](/industry/)
2. Public WordStream and Google industry benchmark reports (filtered to UK)
3. SimilarWeb and SEMrush competitive intelligence on UK ad spend
All figures are UK-only, January 2025 to April 2026, SMEs spending £1,000-£25,000/month. London-weighted data adjusted down by 12% to give national average. All in GBP exclusive of agency fees.
## Google Ads benchmarks by industry
| Industry | Avg CPC | Avg CTR | Conversion rate | Avg CPL |
|—|—|—|—|—|
| Home services (plumbing, electrical, HVAC) | £2.40 | 5.8% | 7.2% | £33 |
| Hospitality (restaurants, bars, cafes) | £0.95 | 6.4% | 5.5% | £17 |
| Beauty and wellness | £1.85 | 4.9% | 6.8% | £27 |
| Fitness and gyms | £1.40 | 5.2% | 5.9% | £24 |
| Automotive (service, repair, sales) | £2.80 | 5.5% | 4.8% | £58 |
| Healthcare and dental | £4.20 | 4.2% | 5.8% | £72 |
| Legal (solicitors, family law, conveyancing) | £14.50 | 3.4% | 4.2% | £345 |
| Financial services | £8.90 | 3.8% | 3.6% | £247 |
| Construction and trades | £3.20 | 5.6% | 5.4% | £59 |
| Education (training, tutoring, courses) | £2.65 | 5.1% | 6.2% | £43 |
| Real estate | £4.80 | 4.7% | 3.8% | £126 |
| E-commerce (varies wildly by product) | £0.85 | 4.4% | 2.8% | £30 (cost per purchase) |
## Meta Ads benchmarks by industry
| Industry | Avg CPM | Avg CTR | Conversion rate | Avg CPL |
|—|—|—|—|—|
| Home services | £6.40 | 1.4% | 4.2% | £28 |
| Hospitality | £4.20 | 1.7% | 3.8% | £15 |
| Beauty and wellness | £8.10 | 2.1% | 5.2% | £24 |
| Fitness and gyms | £7.50 | 1.9% | 4.6% | £22 |
| Automotive | £9.30 | 1.3% | 3.4% | £62 |
| Healthcare and dental | £11.20 | 1.5% | 4.4% | £58 |
| Legal | £14.80 | 1.1% | 2.8% | £210 |
| Financial services | £12.50 | 1.2% | 2.4% | £178 |
| Construction and trades | £7.80 | 1.4% | 3.6% | £54 |
| Education | £8.40 | 1.8% | 4.8% | £37 |
| Real estate | £10.20 | 1.5% | 2.9% | £98 |
| E-commerce | £6.90 | 1.6% | 1.9% | £42 (cost per purchase) |
## LinkedIn Ads benchmarks (B2B only)
LinkedIn is the highest-cost platform but produces the highest-quality B2B leads. UK benchmarks for B2B verticals:
| Vertical | Avg CPC | Avg CTR | CVR | CPL |
|—|—|—|—|—|
| B2B SaaS | £8.50 | 0.45% | 6.8% | £125 |
| Professional services | £9.80 | 0.42% | 7.2% | £136 |
| Recruitment | £6.20 | 0.62% | 8.4% | £74 |
| B2B financial services | £12.40 | 0.38% | 5.8% | £214 |
| Consulting | £11.20 | 0.41% | 6.4% | £175 |
| Enterprise tech | £14.80 | 0.35% | 5.2% | £285 |
## The metric that matters most
Most accounts obsess over CPC. Wrong metric. CPC is a vanity number — you can reduce CPC by bidding on garbage keywords. The metric that matters is **cost per qualified lead (CPQL)**.
CPQL = total spend / number of leads that meet your qualification criteria.
We define qualified by industry:
– Home services: lead with verified postcode + service intent
– Professional services: lead with company name + decision-maker title
– Legal: lead with case type + budget range
– E-commerce: completed checkout (not just add-to-cart)
– B2B SaaS: demo booked + ICP-fit (right company size, sector, geography)
Aim for CPQL no more than 2.5x your raw CPL benchmark. Above that, your funnel is leaking.
## Where most UK PPC accounts leak money
Three failure modes account for 80% of wasted spend:
### 1. Broad match without negative keyword pruning (35% of accounts)
Google’s “broad match” hides spend on irrelevant queries unless you actively review search terms weekly and add negatives. We find an average of £400-£1,200/month in waste during PPC audits, every single time, from this failure alone.
### 2. Landing page conversion rate under 4% (45% of accounts)
If your CPC is £3 and your landing page converts at 2%, your CPL is £150. Double the conversion to 4% and your CPL is £75. The fastest way to cut CPL in half is not better keywords — it’s a better landing page.
### 3. Bidding strategy mismatch (25% of accounts)
Smart Bidding (Maximise Conversions, Target CPA, Target ROAS) works once you have 30+ conversions per month per campaign. Below that threshold, automated bidding wastes spend learning. Manual CPC with periodic review beats automated bidding on low-volume accounts. Most accounts get this backwards.
## Industry-specific tactical wins
**Home services:** Run Local Service Ads (LSAs) alongside Google Ads. LSAs typically deliver 40% lower CPL on emergency-intent queries. See our [home services playbook](/industry/home-services/).
**Legal:** Single-keyword ad groups (SKAGs) outperform multi-keyword in legal by 25-40% on conversion rate. Higher build cost, higher returns.
**Healthcare:** Compliance language matters. Yostmark/Google policy enforcement on health claims has tightened. Pre-clear ad copy with platform reps before high-volume campaigns.
**E-commerce:** Performance Max with proper feed optimisation beats standard Shopping campaigns by 18-30% on ROAS — but only when you’ve correctly set up custom labels, merchant centre product ratings, and conversion value rules.
**B2B:** LinkedIn beats Meta for top-of-funnel B2B by 3-5x on lead quality, but only when you target by job title + company size + industry, not just one filter.
## Hourly account audit checklist
If your CPC is more than 30% above your industry benchmark or your CVR is more than 30% below, run this 60-minute audit:
1. Pull last 90 days of search terms (broad/phrase match campaigns only). Sort by cost desc. Add negative keywords for anything irrelevant. Time: 20 min.
2. Check device performance. If mobile or desktop is 2x cheaper per conversion, increase the bid modifier. Time: 5 min.
3. Pull landing page conversion rates by URL. Identify the bottom three pages. Test new variants. Time: 15 min.
4. Audit ad copy quality scores. Anything below 7/10 — rewrite. Time: 10 min.
5. Check audience exclusions. Are you excluding existing customers from acquisition campaigns? If not, you’re wasting spend. Time: 10 min.
We do this audit live on screen during free 30-min PPC consults — book at [/contact/](/contact/).
## What to do this week
1. Pull your last 90 days CPL by industry benchmark. Are you within range?
2. Compare CPC, CTR, and CVR vs the tables above. Find the worst-performing of the three.
3. If CPC is high → keyword pruning. If CTR is low → ad copy rewrite. If CVR is low → landing page rebuild.
4. Pick one. Ship the fix this week.
Want a free PPC benchmark audit specific to your industry and location? Book a 30-min consult at [/contact/](/contact/) or grab the PPC audit template at [/resources/?download=leadgen-audit-checklist](/resources/).
*By Josh Weir, founder of Weir Digital Media. We run PPC for service businesses across [12 industries](/industry/) and [14 locations](/in/) doing £500k-£10m revenue.*
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