The most expensive search in the vertical gets 1,600 searches a month. The one at less than half the price gets 49,500.
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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Less than half the price, and thirty times the search volume.
Emergency locksmith is the search every locksmith bids on, and at $36.10 a click it is the most expensive in the vertical. It gets 1,600 searches a month. Locksmith near me costs $16.32 and gets 49,500. Car locksmith is $15.27 and rekey locks $10.83. The panic search is not where the volume is, it is only where the bidding is.
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 expensive end is expensive because everybody wants the lockout. It is urgent, it converts on the first call, and every locksmith in the city bids on the same handful of emergency terms against a search volume that is smaller than most people assume.
The cheaper end is not lower quality. Locksmith near me, car locksmith and rekey locks are all real jobs with real customers. Those people simply are not panicking, so fewer locksmiths bid on them and the click costs less.
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 instead of a Services list, a Google Business Profile built properly, and a review process after every callout. Slow to arrive, and the only thing that eventually takes the expensive emergency clicks off your bill.
THE FAST LEVER
Campaigns split by job type so residential rekeys never compete with emergency callouts for the same budget. Negative keywords so you stop paying for locksmith courses, locksmith wages and people looking up how to pick a lock. Call tracking, because a lockout is never booked by form.
THE ONE MOST LOCKSMITHS SKIP
The cheapest reach available, and the right channel for planned work. Nobody scrolls social media looking for a locksmith, but a rekey after a break in or a master key system for an office is a decision people sit on, and that is where being familiar helps.
We start from what a job is worth, not what a click costs. A locksmith chasing car lockouts and one chasing commercial master key systems 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 planned work. 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 locksmith, and what each one is actually for.
Built around “locksmith near me”
Forty nine thousand five hundred searches a month at $16.32 a click, against 1,600 for the emergency term at more than twice the price. Most of these people have a problem right now and have not thought to type the word emergency. The page needs your phone number, your response time and your service area above everything else.
Built around “car locksmith”
Car work is its own business. $15.27 a click, 2,900 searches a month, and a customer who cannot go anywhere until you arrive. Worth running only if you actually cut and program keys, because a lockout that ends in a dealer referral is a click you paid full price for.
Built around the searches we exclude
Locksmith courses, locksmith wages, apprenticeships, how to pick a lock, key cutting machines for sale, and the large number of people researching a lock they intend to fit themselves. 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.
Three dollars and change for the click and 8,100 searches a month. On its own key cutting is small money, and it only works if you have a shopfront, because the value is in the second problem the customer mentions while they are standing there. For a mobile only locksmith it is the wrong buy, and we will say so.
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 six dollars for the click, and a customer standing on a footpath who will ring the next locksmith in about ninety seconds. Emergency work is worth having. It is only worth the most expensive click in the vertical if somebody actually answers the phone, at eleven at night, every night.
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 locksmith.
The emergency terms are the obvious buy so they take the whole budget, at $36.10 a click, against 1,600 searches a month that every locksmith in the city is fighting over. Meanwhile the term with thirty times the volume sits at less than half the price.
Locksmith near me costs $16.32 a click against $36.10 for emergency locksmith, car locksmith $15.27 and rekey locks $10.83. Cheaper clicks, real jobs, and far fewer locksmiths bidding against you.
Impressions, clicks and a click through rate tell you the ad worked. They do not tell you whether the phone rang, whether anyone answered it, or whether the job was worth driving to.
Cost per click, then cost per lead, then cost per booked job by job type. That last number is the only one that tells you whether to spend more next month, and almost nobody reports it.
Locksmithing is booked by phone and almost never by form. Without call tracking you cannot tell which searches produce jobs, so at $36.10 a click you are guessing with the most expensive traffic in the account.
Call tracking that ties a booked job back to the search that produced it, including the calls that rang out. Missed calls are the most expensive line item in a locksmith account and most owners have never seen the number.
We start with what a job is worth and work backwards to what a click can cost.
A car key replacement and a rekey after a break in cannot carry the same cost per click. We work out your average job value by type first, because that is what decides which searches are affordable. Most accounts have never had this conversation.
Emergency, automotive, residential rekeys and commercial each get their own campaign, budget and landing page, so the planned work never competes with lockouts for the same dollar.
Search terms reviewed weekly and negatives added, because at these click prices the waste compounds fast. Then monthly reporting on cost per booked job by job type, not clicks and impressions.
Worth saying before you enquire, because it saves everyone three months.
If you cannot answer the phone after hours, do not run the emergency terms. At $36.10 a click a missed call is the most expensive thing you can do. And if your service radius is wider than you would really drive at midnight, you will pay for lockouts you end up declining.
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 $36.10 click that books a car key replacement can still work. The same click that rings out at eleven at night is pure waste. The question is never what a click costs, it is what a booked job costs, and that depends on which searches you buy and whether you answer.
By buying the terms other locksmiths ignore. Locksmith near me is $16.32 a click against $36.10 for emergency locksmith, and it has thirty times the search volume. Car locksmith is $15.27 and rekey locks $10.83. Those are real jobs. The people searching are simply not panicking, so fewer locksmiths bid on them.
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. At $16.32 a click a very small budget buys too few clicks to learn from, and you end up guessing for months. We would rather run one job 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 too much by job type for a single honest number, which is why we will not quote one before seeing your account. Emergency work costs more per lead and converts on the first call. Rekeys and commercial work cost less per lead and take longer to close.
Three places, in this order. Calls that go to voicemail, which at $36.10 each are the most expensive thing in the account. Searches you should never have bought, mostly courses, wages and people planning to do it themselves. And a service radius wider than you would really drive at midnight.
The search terms report, every time. That is where the waste is visible and it costs nothing but attention to fix. After that, moving budget off the emergency terms and onto locksmith near me, which has thirty times the volume at less than half the price, and getting call tracking in so you can see which searches produce booked jobs.
For anything you are paying over fifteen dollars a click for, yes. Sending an expensive click to a general Services page is the most common way locksmith accounts waste money. The emergency page needs your number enormous and your response time stated. The car page needs to say which makes you cut and program keys for.
Hours, usually. Google Ads is the fastest channel available to a locksmith, which is also the reason it is the easiest to waste money on quickly. The first month is mostly cutting waste and getting call tracking right, so the numbers from month two onward mean something.
We look at what it is wasting, how much of the budget is going to the emergency terms, whether calls are tracked at all, how many rang out, and what your cost per booked job looks like by type. You get it in writing and you keep it whether or not you hire us.
