How much does a lead cost?

6th March 2025

It’s a question we’re asked on a regular basis. Of course, the answer is…it depends!

If you’re looking for a very top-line answer, in our experience, third-party PPL (pay-per-lead) campaigns in the life science and healthcare industry tend to range from around $60 per lead. But there are several caveats to that, not to mention numerous other ways to acquire leads (that don’t use the PPL cost model).

A more helpful question to answer first is, how much should a lead cost? Put another way, how much is your current cost per lead, and can you do better?

Calculating cost per lead 

In theory, calculating your cost-per-lead is quite simple:

Direct marketing costs ÷ Total leads generated

Ideally you would be able to identify the cost per lead for all products, from all sources, allowing ROI analysis of each channel for every product/service in your portfolio. Of course, in reality it’s not always possible to isolate direct costs or even to track the source of a lead. The stage at which a product is in its life-cycle will also add to the complexity. But don’t let perfect be the enemy of good here. An educated estimate is better than nothing at all. It’s a starting point, and will hopefully give you a measure to improve on.

Quality vs quantity when evaluating cost per lead:

I mentioned caveats to the top-line PPL cost provided above…quality is the main one. When purchasing leads from a third party, we would obviously expect to pay a higher price for higher quality. The more qualification involved, i.e. the more steps taken by the prospect, the more likely they are to be genuine. This obviously reduces the total number of leads but you can be more confident that the leads you gather are promising – and so it should prevent time/effort wasted following up with tyre-kickers. Purchasing high-volume, unqualified leads is perhaps only viable for larger companies, where sophisticated CRMs and automated lead nurture programs can provide low-cost, in-house qualification.

Lead generation tactics and some cost per lead expectations

I also mentioned that there are numerous other ways to acquire leads. These methods all have their place on the quality vs quantity spectrum.

Content hosting – Perhaps due to the relatively low investment required, hosting gated content is probably the most common method of lead generation. This is certainly true in the scientific marketing sector where educational, informative content is sought after by the target audience. It also seems to be the method to which third-parties will most often apply a PPL costing model.

Expect to pay $50+ per lead with a minimum purchase of 25 leads, so roughly $1,250 minimum investment.

Webinars – A higher initial investment than content hosting but much more viable than even five years ago. Often costed with a guaranteed minimum number of leads, most trade media now offer comprehensive end-to-end production plus promotion services. Unless you have the dedicated resource to churn these out on a regular basis, there seems little benefit to DIY webinars. Sponsorship of a webinar on a relevant topic also provides another lower cost option in this category.

Expect to pay $15,000 for a custom webinar and 200+ leads

Email – When considering custom emails (A.K.A list rentals) with third parties that offer leads it’s important to establish the level of qualification involved. If it’s just a list of anyone who clicked a link on the email then the quality may not be as high and this should be reflected in the cost.

Expect to pay $500+ per thousand recipients and anything between $50 to $100 per lead

Social (paid) – In the life science sector this generally means LinkedIn of course. And the services are essentially variations of content hosting or email with data capture. The beauty of social options though is the control it allows, over targeting and budget in particular.

Expect to pay…whatever you want! Set your budget to suit your means. In our experience, cost per lead for this sector is usually around the $100 mark but of course it depends on the specific segments targeted in your campaign.

Trade shows/exhibitions – Often the largest expense in the marketing budget, exhibiting at shows is obviously about more than generating leads…but it is also largely about generating leads! At least, it should be. With a relatively small increase in investment, technology enables tracking and qualification of visitors to your booth, making shows more accountable than has historically been the case. In my experience though, adoption of such technologies is still puzzlingly low.

Expect to pay $5000 at the very least for the space alone, plus booth design/build and transport. It’s hard to put just one number on, but you should expect to leave with a good number of leads, though they’ll probably be a mixed bag!

How to choose the best lead generation tactic and cost per lead  

Once again, it’s a nuanced picture and the costs given above are generalisations. There are countless lead gen tactics with differing cost-per-lead metrics to choose from. Each should be judged on its own merit in the context of your target cost per lead for a particular product/service.  

If you need support selecting the best lead gen tactic for your campaigns, we have decades of experience helping clients with their life science lead generation and media planning strategy.

Contact us now for an initial, obligation-free consultation.