The cheapest clicks anywhere on this hub, and the hardest market on it to win from a shopfront.
What your clicks actually cost, which searches are wasting money, and whether paid search is the right thing for your shop at all. Fifteen minutes, and you keep it either way.
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Cheaper again, far smaller, and the only search here that a warehouse in another state cannot fill.
Every row on this chart is under a dollar, which makes hobby retail the cheapest market anywhere on this hub. It is also almost entirely product searching. Pokemon cards gets 90,500 a month, warhammer 74,000, board games 33,100. Those people are comparing price and stock, and most of them will buy from whoever ships cheapest. Hobby shop near me gets 6,600 and is looking for somewhere to go.
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.
Nothing here reaches a dollar. That is not generosity, it is what happens when a market is dominated by online retailers competing on price and shipping, and the clicks are cheap because the margin behind them is thin.
The bottom row is the one a physical shop owns. Hobby shop near me is somebody who wants to walk in, look at things and talk to a person. It is small, it is the cheapest click on the chart, and it is the only one where being local is an advantage rather than a handicap.
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
This is where hobby retail should be spending. Stock pages that rank, release calendars, event listings and a Google Business Profile with your game nights on it. The product searches are winnable over time through content in a way they are not winnable through bidding.
THE FAST LEVER
If you sell online, shopping campaigns rather than text ads, because that is how retail competes on product searches. If you do not, a small local campaign and not much else. Negative keywords so you stop paying for free print and play files, rules queries, wiki pages and the enormous volume of people looking up how to play rather than what to buy.
THE ONE MOST SHOPS SKIP
The right channel for this industry by a distance, and the one we would fund first. Hobby retail runs on community: game nights, painting sessions, release days and tournaments. None of that is a search, and all of it is why people choose a shop over a website.
We start from what a customer is worth across a year of visits, not what a click costs. A shop with an online store and one with a counter and a game table cannot afford the same strategy, let alone the same cost per click. Google Ads does the fast work, SEO earns the product searches over time, and Meta Ads is where a hobby shop actually builds a customer base. We will tell you if one is not worth running.
Not a strategy document. This is the one campaign we would build, the one we would build only if you sell online, and the one we would not build at all.
Built around “hobby shop near me”
6,600 searches a month at $0.31 a click, the cheapest on the chart. This person wants to go somewhere. The page needs your opening hours, what you actually stock, when your game nights run and whether the table is free on Thursday, because none of that exists on an online retailer’s site.
Built around “warhammer” and the rest
Warhammer gets 74,000 searches a month at $0.47 and pokemon cards 90,500 at $0.38. Enormous, cheap and entirely transactional. This campaign is worth building if you sell online and can compete on stock and postage. If you cannot, we would rather you did not, and we will say so before you spend anything.
Built around the searches we exclude
Rules queries, wiki pages, print and play files, how to paint guides, tier lists, and the very large number of people researching a hobby rather than buying anything. Dungeons and dragons gets 22,200 searches at $0.34 and a great deal of it is somebody looking up a spell.
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.
Thirty one cents for the click and a person who wants to stand in a shop and look at things. That customer buys on the day, comes back for release weekends, and brings friends to a game night. It is the smallest search on this chart and the only one where you have an advantage.
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 eight cents for the click and the largest search in the market. Most of those people are comparing price and postage across five tabs, and the shops winning them are competing on shipping cost rather than on knowing anything about the hobby. That is a fight about logistics, not about retail.
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 hobby store.
At under a dollar a click it is very easy to buy an enormous amount of traffic and feel like the account is working. Then the sales figure never moves, because most of that traffic was comparing postage and a shopfront was never going to win on postage.
The local search, your events, and shopping campaigns only if you genuinely sell online. In this industry we will usually recommend a smaller paid account and considerably more effort elsewhere, which is not what most agencies are selling.
If you do sell online and you are running text ads on product terms, you are bringing the wrong tool. Shopping is how retail competes on those searches, because the customer wants to see the item and the price before they click.
Shopping for product, text ads for local and events, and separate budgets so they never compete. If the shopping feed is not in good shape there is no point running either, and fixing the feed is usually the highest value hour available.
Game nights, painting sessions and release day events are the actual reason somebody chooses your shop over a website. Most accounts treat them as an afterthought and put the budget into product terms they cannot win.
Events on your Google Business Profile, on your site, and promoted where people actually see them. It is cheaper than any of these clicks and it is the only durable advantage a physical hobby shop has.
We start with what a regular customer is worth across a year and work backwards to what a click can cost, which is usually not very much.
A one off booster box and somebody who comes in every Thursday cannot carry the same cost per click. In hobby retail the second customer is worth many times the first, which is why the cheap local search beats the cheaper product one.
A local campaign, an events campaign, and shopping only if the online store is real. This is one of the few industries where we will tell you the paid account should be small and the money should go somewhere else.
Search terms reviewed weekly and negatives added, because these hobbies generate a colossal volume of rules, wiki and how to searches. At these prices an unmanaged account will buy thousands of them without the spend ever looking alarming.
Worth saying before you enquire, because it saves everyone three months.
If you have no online store and no events worth promoting, there is very little here for you, and we would rather say that than take a retainer. Sort out your Google Business Profile, get your events listed, and spend the money on the community that makes people choose a shop over a website.
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.
No, and this is the clearest example on the hub of why cheap clicks are not automatically good ones. Pokemon cards gets 90,500 searches a month at $0.38 and most of those people are comparing postage across five tabs. A shopfront does not win a postage competition, no matter how cheap the traffic is.
A small amount of it, honestly. The local search at $0.31 is worth owning, and events are worth promoting. Product campaigns are worth building only if you have a real online store and can compete on stock and shipping. If you do not, we would rather tell you now.
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. In an industry with clicks this cheap, a percentage of spend model makes very little sense for either party, and a modest flat fee on a small account is usually the honest structure.
The product searches become worth having, but through shopping campaigns rather than text ads. The customer wants to see the item and the price before clicking. It also means your product feed matters more than your ad copy, and fixing the feed is usually the highest value hour available.
Less than you have probably been quoted. The local and events campaigns have a natural ceiling, and everything beyond it goes into product searches where a shopfront is at a structural disadvantage. This is one of the few industries where we will argue you down.
Because it is the only durable advantage you have. Nobody drives to a shop for a price they could get online. They come for a game night, a release weekend, a painting session and somebody behind the counter who knows what they are talking about. That is worth more than any bidding strategy in this market.
Two places, and both are enormous. Product searches you cannot win from a shopfront, and rules, wiki and how to play traffic, which these hobbies generate in colossal volume. At under a dollar a click an unmanaged account can buy thousands of both without the spend ever looking alarming.
Very low per click and largely meaningless. The number that matters is what a regular is worth across a year, because somebody who comes in every Thursday is worth many times a one off online order. That is the calculation that makes the local search obviously better than the cheaper product ones.
Cut the product campaigns unless you have a real online store, and put your events on your Google Business Profile. In most hobby store accounts we look at, the entire budget is going to searches that a shopfront has no way of winning.
We look at what it is wasting, how much is going to rules and research traffic, whether the product campaigns have any chance of working given your setup, and whether the local and events side is being run at all. If the answer is that you should be spending less here, that is what the report will say.
