The generic commercial search costs nearly three times what the contract searches cost, and brings you a request for a quote.
What your clicks actually cost, which searches are wasting money, and what your cost per won contract looks like. Fifteen minutes, and you keep it either way.
"*" indicates required fields
A third of the price, and the same thing at the end of it: a contract that renews every month.
Cleaning has the widest click price spread of any service we advertise. Commercial cleaning is $32.16 and office cleaning $29.46, bid on by every contract cleaner in the city. Strata cleaning is $12.30 and NDIS cleaning $10.39, both recurring, both contracted, and both largely ignored. The cheap end of this market is not the domestic end, it is the commercial work nobody has thought to bid on.
Average cost per click across Australia, from Google Keyword Planner. What your account pays will differ with location, competition and quality score. The gap between these rows is the argument, not the exact figures.
The top of this chart is expensive because commercial cleaning is the obvious buy. Every contract cleaner bids on it, the search is generic, and a good share of the people typing it are collecting three quotes rather than choosing a cleaner.
The middle of the chart is where the sensible money goes. Strata, NDIS and bond cleaning are all recurring or high frequency, all cost roughly a third of the commercial term, and all have far fewer cleaners bidding against you.
Three numbers, and only the last one decides anything. It is the same chain our Brisbane digital marketing agency works through in every industry, only the dollar figures change.
We work it right to left. What a job is worth sets what a lead can cost, which sets what a click is worth bidding.
Cost per click is the easiest number to improve and the least useful one. Bid on cheaper searches and it drops immediately, whether or not those searches ever turn into work. That is why we will sometimes tell you to pay more per click rather than less.
Google Ads is the fastest of the three and the only one you pay for by the click. Here is what the other two do, and where the expensive clicks eventually stop.
THE SLOW ASSET
A real page per contract type instead of a Services list, a Google Business Profile built properly, and a review process after every clean. Slow to arrive, and the only thing that eventually takes the expensive commercial clicks off your bill.
THE FAST LEVER
Campaigns split by contract type, not one campaign called Cleaning, so bond cleans never compete with strata work for the same budget. Negative keywords so you stop paying for cleaning positions, cleaning courses and cleaning products. Call tracking, because contract enquiries come by phone far more often than by form.
THE ONE MOST CLEANERS SKIP
The cheapest reach available, and the right channel for domestic work. Nobody searches for a house cleaner on a schedule. They decide when they see the one their neighbour uses, which is a social decision rather than a search.
We start from what a contract is worth over a year, not what a click costs. A cleaner chasing one off bond cleans and a cleaner chasing strata contracts cannot afford the same cost per click. Google Ads does the fast work, SEO eventually takes the expensive clicks off your bill, and Meta Ads covers the domestic side. We will tell you if one is not worth running.
Not a strategy document. These are the three campaigns we would build first for a Brisbane cleaning business, and what each one is actually for.
Built around “strata cleaning”
Body corporates and NDIS providers buy cleaning the same way: a scope, a schedule, and a contract that renews. The click costs $12.30 against $32.16 for the generic commercial term, and the page has to answer scope, insurance and how you work around residents.
Built around “end of lease cleaning”
The biggest search volume in the vertical at 8,100 a month, and a click price of $16.06 that only works if you answer. Bond cleaning is booked in a hurry by somebody whose lease ends on a date, and they ring three cleaners and take the first one who picks up.
Built around the searches we exclude
Cleaning positions, cleaner wages, cleaning courses, cleaning products, carpet cleaner hire, and the very large number of people looking for a cleaning job rather than a cleaning company. On broad match you pay full price for all of it.
Send us access to your Google Ads account and we will come back with what it is wasting, which searches are costing you the most for the least, and what we would change first. Fifteen minutes, no obligation, and you keep it either way.
Two clicks can cost the same and be worth completely different amounts. That gap, not the click price, is what decides whether an account works.
Twelve dollars and change for the click, and a scheduled contract at the end of it. A third of the price of the generic commercial term and worth the same or more across a year. This is the best value search in the vertical and most cleaners do not bid on it.
Your Google Business Profile, suburb pages, and local listings optimised so customers in your area find you first.
Technical fixes and service-focused SEO that make your site easy for Google to understand and trust.
Build your reputation through reviews, with monthly reports tracking rankings and leads from organic search.
Thirty two dollars for the click, a request for a quote, and two competitors quoting the same site. Perfectly good work when you win it, and a poor thing to build an account around when the generic term costs nearly three times what the contract terms do.
Site speed, crawlability, schema markup, and Core Web Vitals sorted so Google can index and trust your site.
Service pages and suburb landing pages written to rank and convert, not just fill space.
Backlink building and on-page optimisation that compounds month over month.
Three things come up in nearly every Google Ads account we audit for a cleaning business.
The generic commercial term is the obvious buy so it takes the whole budget, at nearly three times the price of the contract terms, against searchers who are collecting quotes. It brings a quote request and calls it a win.
Strata cleaning costs $12.30 a click against $32.16 for the generic commercial term, and NDIS cleaning $10.39. Cheaper clicks, buyers who already know what they need, and work that renews rather than ending.
An enquiry count treats a one off bond clean and a strata contract as the same event. They are not, and averaging them hides which campaigns are actually paying for themselves.
Cost per click, then cost per enquiry, then cost per won contract by contract type. That last number is the only one that tells you whether to spend more next month, and almost nobody reports it.
Cleaning contracts are won on the phone and a large share of enquiries never touch a form. Without call tracking you cannot tell which searches produce contracts, so budget gets spread evenly across searches that are not evenly worth it.
Call tracking that ties a signed contract back to the search that produced it, so we can put money behind the terms that win work and stop the ones that only produce quotes.
We start with what a contract is worth over a year and work backwards to what a click can cost.
A one off bond clean and a strata contract that renews every month cannot carry the same cost per click. We work out your average contract value by type first, because that is what decides which searches are affordable. Most accounts have never had this conversation.
Commercial, strata, NDIS, bond and domestic each get their own campaign, budget and landing page, so the recurring work never competes with one off cleans for the same dollar.
Search terms reviewed weekly and negatives added, because in a market where clicks run past thirty dollars the waste compounds fast. Then monthly reporting on cost per won contract by contract type, not clicks and impressions.
Worth saying before you enquire, because it saves everyone three months.
If you have no capacity to take on another site, more marketing buys you enquiries you have to turn down. And if nobody answers the phone during business hours, expect to pay for clicks that go nowhere, because a building manager chasing a quote rings the next cleaner on the list.
Fast answers, clear decisions.
Spend, leads and trends at a glance.
Your data, your accounts.
Budget goes to what converts.
4+ years average client retention.
Specialists across each platform.
Yes, and the click price is the wrong place to judge it. A $32.16 click that wins a site you clean every week for three years is cheap. The same click that produces one of three quotes on a job you lose is not. The question is never what a click costs, it is what a won contract costs, and that depends on which searches you buy.
By buying the contract terms other cleaners ignore. Strata cleaning is $12.30 a click against $32.16 for the generic commercial term, and NDIS cleaning is $10.39. Both are recurring, contracted work with a real buyer at the other end. Fewer cleaners bid on them because they are less obvious, not because they are worth less.
Agency fees usually work one of three ways: a percentage of ad spend, a flat monthly retainer, or a base fee plus a percentage above a threshold. Percentage models get expensive as you scale and quietly reward the agency for spending more of your money. Ask which model an agency uses and why before you ask for a number.
Enough that the data means something. When clicks run past thirty dollars a very small budget buys too few of them to learn from, and you end up guessing for months. We would rather run one contract type properly than four thinly, and we will say so on the call if the budget you have in mind cannot support what you are asking for.
It varies far too much by contract type for a single honest number. A bond clean enquiry and a strata tender are not comparable, which is why we report cost per won contract by type rather than one blended figure.
Three places, in this order. Searches you should never have bought, mostly people looking for cleaning work rather than cleaners, which on broad match you pay full price for. Calls that go to voicemail, which at these click prices are the most expensive thing in the account. And a service radius wider than you would really service, which fills the diary with sites that lose money on travel.
The search terms report, every time. That is where the waste is visible and it costs nothing but attention to fix. After that, splitting the account by contract type so the recurring work is not competing with one off cleans for the same budget, and getting call tracking in so you can see which searches produce signed contracts.
For anything you are paying above ten dollars a click for, yes. Sending an expensive click to a general Services page is the most common way cleaning accounts waste money. The strata page needs scope, insurance and how you work around residents. The bond page needs your price, your availability and whether you guarantee the inspection.
Days for bond and end of lease work, which is booked in a hurry. Commercial and strata take longer, because a building manager is running a process and often collecting quotes on a schedule that has nothing to do with when your ad ran.
We look at what it is wasting, how much of the budget is going to the generic commercial term, whether calls are tracked at all, and what your cost per won contract looks like by type. You get it in writing and you keep it whether or not you hire us.
