The generic search costs the most, tells you nothing, and has a third of the volume of the job you should be advertising.
What your clicks actually cost, which searches are wasting money, and what your cost per booked job looks like. Fifteen minutes, and you keep it either way.
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Cheaper per click, 14,800 searches a month, and a job with engineering and machinery attached rather than a vague tidy up.
This is one of the cheapest trades on the hub. Nothing on that chart breaks five dollars, which means the question is not how to get clicks cheaply, it is which cheap clicks are worth having. Landscaping near me is $4.26 and could mean anything. Retaining wall is $3.96 with 14,800 searches and means a structural job with a real value attached.
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 whole chart sits under five dollars, which is unusual and is the reason this trade is so easy to waste money in. When clicks are cheap the account fills with enquiries, and it takes months to notice that most of them were never going to be jobs.
The rows worth having are the specific ones. Retaining wall, paving and artificial grass are defined pieces of work with a measurable area and a price per square metre. Landscaping near me and garden design are conversations, and conversations cost you a site visit before you know anything.
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 job type with completed projects instead of a gallery, a Google Business Profile built properly, and a review process after every job. Slow to arrive, and the thing that eventually stops you paying for clicks at all.
THE FAST LEVER
Campaigns split by job type, not one campaign called Landscaping, so retaining walls never compete with garden design for the same budget. Negative keywords so you stop paying for landscaping courses, landscaper wages, turf prices, plant nurseries, and the enormous number of people looking for ideas. Call tracking, because this trade is quoted on site.
THE ONE MOST LANDSCAPERS SKIP
The cheapest reach available, and the obvious channel for a trade where the product is a photograph. A finished backyard sells this work better than any ad copy, and people plan gardens for months before they search for anyone.
We start from what a job is worth, not what a click costs. A landscaper building retaining walls and one doing garden makeovers cannot afford the same cost per click, or the same number of site visits. Google Ads does the fast work, SEO eventually takes the paid clicks off your bill, and Meta Ads is where finished gardens do the selling. 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 landscaper, and what each one is actually for.
Built around “retaining wall”
14,800 searches a month at $3.96 a click, nearly three times the volume of the generic search and slightly cheaper. Brisbane is built on slopes, so this is structural work with engineering, drainage and often council involved. The page has to answer height limits, materials and whether you handle the certification.
Built around “paving”
$2.64 a click on 6,600 searches, and artificial grass at $3.66 on 8,100. Both are measurable areas with a price per square metre, which means you can give a range on the phone and only drive out to the jobs worth driving to. That is worth more in this trade than the click price is.
Built around the searches we exclude
Landscaping courses, landscaper wages, apprenticeships, turf prices, plant nurseries, garden ideas, and the very large number of people collecting inspiration with no intention of hiring anybody this year. On broad match you buy all of it, and cheap clicks make it hard to notice.
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.
Under four dollars for the click, and a job you can scope over the phone from a height and a length. Retaining walls are structural, they are priced by the square metre, and in a city built on slopes there are 14,800 people a month looking for one. It is the best value search in the trade.
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.
Four dollars and change for the click and an enquiry that could be a full backyard or a lawn mow. Because the clicks are cheap the phone rings a lot, which feels like the account working. Then you spend your Saturdays driving to quote jobs that were never going to happen.
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 landscaper.
Nothing in this trade breaks five dollars a click, so the enquiry count looks excellent from month one. It takes a quarter to notice that the enquiries are ideas gatherers and lawn mowing requests, and by then the account has a reputation for producing leads that go nowhere.
Retaining wall at $3.96, paving at $2.64, artificial grass at $3.66. All under the generic search, all with a measurable area and a rate, and all telling you what the job is before you get in the car.
Landscaping is quoted on site, and in a trade with clicks this cheap that is where the money actually goes. It is not the ad spend that hurts, it is the four hours of Saturday spent quoting work you were never going to win.
Rates per square metre on the page, a minimum job size in the ad, and a service radius held to what you would really travel. The enquiry count drops and the share worth quoting goes up, which is the opposite of what a cheap click account usually optimises for.
Landscaping demand moves with the weather and the calendar. Accounts that spend evenly across the year are competing hardest in the months when everyone is enquiring and quietly absent in the months when the good jobs get planned.
Budget pushed into the months when people plan and book outdoor work, and pulled back when the diary is full or the ground is wet. It is simple and almost nobody does it.
We start with what a job is worth and work backwards to what a click can cost.
A retaining wall and a garden tidy up cannot carry the same cost per click, and in this trade the click is rarely the real cost. We count the quoting visit, because a landscaper who drives to every enquiry is spending far more on quoting than on advertising.
Retaining walls, paving, turf and artificial grass, design and maintenance each get their own campaign, budget and landing page, so the structural work never shares a dollar with the enquiries that want ideas.
Search terms reviewed weekly and negatives added, because this trade attracts an enormous volume of ideas, prices and nursery searches. Then monthly reporting on cost per booked job by type, with the quoting visits counted.
Worth saying before you enquire, because it saves everyone three months.
If you cannot bear to turn enquiries down, do not start here. Cheap clicks produce a lot of them and most are not worth your Saturday. And if you are booked out through the season, this buys you quotes you cannot honour and people who will remember that you never called back.
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.
It is the thing that makes this trade dangerous. Cheap clicks fill the phone quickly, so the account looks like it is working from month one. The real cost in landscaping is not the click, it is the Saturday spent driving to quote jobs that were never going to happen.
Volume and definition. It has 14,800 searches a month against 5,400 for the generic search, and it costs slightly less per click. Brisbane is built on slopes so the demand is real, and a wall has a height and a length, which means you can scope it on the phone instead of in the car.
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.
Modestly. It has volume and some real jobs in it, and it also has no information in it at all, so every enquiry starts with a visit. Keep a presence and put the money on the searches that describe a job.
Less than you would think, and not the same every month. With clicks under five dollars a modest budget buys plenty of data. The bigger lever is pushing spend into the months when outdoor work gets planned and pulling it when you are booked or rained out.
Low, and largely beside the point. Leads are cheap in landscaping. What matters is what share of them are worth quoting and what a quoting visit costs you in time. We report cost per booked job by type with the site visits counted, which is a much less flattering number and a far more useful one.
Three places, in this order. Site visits for enquiries that were never going to convert. Ideas, prices and nursery searches, which this trade attracts more of than almost any. And even spending across a year where demand plainly is not even.
Put a price range on the page and a minimum job size in the ad. In a trade with clicks this cheap the enquiry volume is not the problem, the quality is, and nothing filters better than a number the customer can see before they call.
Yes, and they are easy here. A retaining wall page needs heights, materials, drainage and whether you handle certification. A paving page needs a rate per square metre and finished photos. A design page needs the process and what a plan costs. A Services list answers none of it.
We look at what it is wasting, how many ideas and price searches you are paying for, whether the specific job types are split out, and what your cost per booked job looks like once quoting visits are counted. You get it in writing and you keep it whether or not you hire us.
