The residential search costs the same as the commercial one and brings you a homeowner collecting three quotes.
What your clicks actually cost, which searches are wasting money, and what your cost per accepted quote looks like. Fifteen minutes, and you keep it either way.
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A third of the price, and a building that gets painted again on a cycle.
House painters near me is $13.76 a click with 8,100 searches a month, and almost all of it is a homeowner about to ring three painters. Commercial painting is $13.94, effectively the same price. Strata painting is $4.99 and roof painting $6.51. The residential search is the most contested thing in this trade and the least loyal customer at the end of it.
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 every painter in the city bids on the same two residential searches. There is nothing wrong with the work. There is something wrong with paying commercial prices for a homeowner who is getting two other quotes this week.
The cheaper end of this chart is where the repeat work lives. Strata painting and roof painting are booked by people managing a building rather than decorating a house, and they come back on a cycle rather than once a decade.
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 job. Slow to arrive, and the only thing that eventually takes the expensive residential clicks off your bill.
THE FAST LEVER
Campaigns split by job type so strata and commercial work never compete with residential repaints for the same budget. Negative keywords so you stop paying for painting courses, painter wages, paint colours, how to paint, and the enormous volume of people looking for a tin of paint rather than a painter. Call tracking, because quotes are booked by phone.
THE ONE MOST PAINTERS SKIP
The cheapest reach available, and the right channel for residential work. People decide to repaint months before they search for anyone, and what they remember is the painter whose work they have already seen.
We start from what a job is worth, not what a click costs. A painter chasing single room repaints and one 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 residential 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 painter, and what each one is actually for.
Built around “strata painting”
$4.99 a click, a third of what a homeowner costs you, and a building that needs doing again on a cycle. It is a small search at 170 a month, which is exactly why almost nobody bids on it. The page has to answer scheduling around residents, insurance, height access and how you stage a block.
Built around “roof painting”
$6.51 a click, less than half the residential search, and a job with a clear trigger: the roof looks bad from the street. Worth running only if you genuinely do height work, because it is a different quote, a different insurance position and a different crew.
Built around the searches we exclude
Painting courses, painter wages, apprenticeships, paint colours, how to paint, paint calculators, and the enormous number of people looking for a tin of paint. Exterior painting sits at $0.81 a click for exactly that reason: it is mostly people researching, not hiring. On broad match you buy 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.
Five dollars for the click and a building that gets repainted on a schedule rather than a whim. Strata work is slower to win and larger when it lands, and the client is a manager with a maintenance budget rather than a homeowner deciding between you and a cheaper quote.
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.
Thirteen dollars and change for the click, a homeowner, and two other painters quoting the same house this week. Good work when you win it, and a poor thing to build an account around when it costs the same as the commercial search and comes back once a decade.
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 painter.
House painters near me and painter near me are the obvious buys so they take the whole budget, at $13.76 and $9.25, against homeowners who are collecting quotes by definition. The account counts enquiries and never asks how many turned into work.
Strata painting is $4.99 a click and roof painting $6.51, both well under the residential searches, and both attached to buildings rather than houses. Cheaper clicks, repeat clients, and far fewer painters bidding against you.
A quote count is the easiest number in this trade to make look good and the least useful. Painting is a quoting business. What matters is what share of those quotes convert and at what margin, and almost nobody reports it by job type.
Cost per click, then cost per quote, then cost per accepted quote by job type. A residential quote and a strata quote convert at completely different rates, and blending them hides which campaign is actually paying.
At these click prices a painter who quotes every enquiry spends most of the week driving. Most accounts we audit carry no qualification at all in the ad or on the page, so the phone rings for jobs the painter would never have taken.
Minimum job size stated in the ad and on the page, service area held to what you would really drive, and job type made obvious before anyone picks up the phone. It lowers the enquiry count and raises the number that turn into work.
We start with what a job is worth and work backwards to what a click can cost.
A single room repaint and a strata block cannot carry the same cost per click, and neither can a painter who converts one quote in three against one who converts one in eight. We work out your job value and your quote conversion rate first, because together they decide what a click can be worth.
Residential, strata, commercial and roof each get their own campaign, budget and landing page, so the repeat contract work never competes with one off repaints for the same dollar.
Search terms reviewed weekly and negatives added, because paint attracts an enormous volume of product and DIY searches. Then monthly reporting on cost per accepted quote by job type, not clicks and impressions.
Worth saying before you enquire, because it saves everyone three months.
If you cannot get a quote back within a day or two, do not start. A homeowner collecting three quotes takes the first one that arrives more often than the cheapest. And if your diary is already full through the season, this buys you quotes you will not have time to honour.
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, but not as the whole account. That search is a homeowner who is going to collect three quotes, and it costs effectively the same as the commercial search. It is worth running. It is not worth being the only thing you run, which is what we find in most painting accounts.
By bidding on the work that comes back. Strata painting is $4.99 a click against $13.76 for the residential search, and roof painting is $6.51. Both are attached to buildings with maintenance cycles rather than houses that get done once a decade, and far fewer painters 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.
Because almost nobody typing it is hiring anyone. It is mostly people researching colours, comparing paints and working out how to do it themselves. Cheap clicks are not automatically good clicks, and that search is the clearest example of it in this trade.
Enough that the data means something. At $13.76 a click a very small budget buys too few clicks to learn from, and you end up guessing for months. We would rather run strata and roof work properly than run residential thinly across the whole city.
Cost per lead is the wrong target in a quoting business. Two painters with identical cost per lead can have completely different businesses depending on what share of quotes they win. We report cost per accepted quote by job type, which is slower to produce and the only number that matters.
Three places, in this order. The whole budget on the two residential near me searches. Product and DIY searches, which paint attracts more of than any trade on this hub. And driving to quote jobs you would never have taken, because nothing in the ad or on the page qualifies anyone.
The search terms report, every time. Paint generates an extraordinary volume of irrelevant searches and it costs nothing but attention to cut them. After that, adding strata and roof painting as their own campaigns, because in most accounts they are not being bid on at all.
For anything above about five dollars a click, yes. A homeowner wants to see finished houses, a price range and how long you will be on site. A strata manager wants insurance, height access, how you schedule around residents and which blocks you have done. Sending both to a Services page wastes the expensive click.
We look at what it is wasting, how much of the budget sits on the two residential searches, whether strata or roof work is being bid on at all, and what your cost per accepted quote looks like by job type. You get it in writing and you keep it whether or not you hire us.
