The same broken ceiling costs you $22.14 or $8.34 depending on which words the customer happened to use.
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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A third of the price, two and a half times the searches, and the same ceiling.
Water damage ceiling is the most expensive search in this trade at $22.14 a click, and it gets 390 searches a month. Ceiling repair costs $8.34 and gets 1,000. Plasterer near me is $4.97 with 4,400. A customer watching a stain spread across the ceiling might type any of those three, and what you pay swings four and a half times depending on which one they chose.
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 water damage is an insurance job with urgency attached, and restoration companies with far larger budgets bid on the same words. You are competing with firms that are not really plasterers.
The cheaper end is the same work described plainly. Ceiling repair, plasterer near me and gyprock repair are what a homeowner types before they have decided the problem is a disaster. Cheaper click, same job, and often the same insurance claim behind it.
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 water damage clicks off your bill.
THE FAST LEVER
Campaigns split by job type so repair work never competes with new build plastering for the same budget. Negative keywords so you stop paying for plastering courses, plasterer wages, how to plaster, and the very large volume of people pricing sheets and compound. Call tracking, because repair work is booked by phone.
THE ONE MOST PLASTERERS SKIP
The cheapest reach available, and the right channel for renovation work. New walls and ceilings get decided months out as part of a bigger job, and the plasterer people call is usually one somebody has already mentioned to them.
We start from what a job is worth, not what a click costs. A plasterer chasing insurance repairs and one chasing new build work 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 renovation 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 plasterer, and what each one is actually for.
Built around “ceiling repair”
1,000 searches a month at $8.34 a click, against 390 at $22.14 for the water damage phrasing. Same ceiling, same customer, and frequently the same insurer paying at the end of it. The page needs a photo of a finished repair, a response time, and a clear line on whether you deal with the insurer directly.
Built around “water damage ceiling”
The most expensive click in the trade at $22.14, and you are bidding against restoration firms with much bigger budgets. Worth running if you can attend quickly and handle an insurance job properly. Not worth running if the call goes to voicemail, because that customer has water coming through the ceiling right now.
Built around the searches we exclude
Plastering courses, plasterer wages, apprenticeships, how to plaster, plasterboard prices, cornice prices, and the very large number of people pricing materials rather than hiring anyone. Plastering sits at $1.36 a click on 9,900 searches for exactly that reason. 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.
Eight dollars and change for the click, two and a half times the search volume of the expensive phrasing, and frequently an insurance claim behind it. Ceiling repair is the best value search in this trade and most plasterers do not run it as its own campaign.
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.
A dollar and change for the click and 9,900 searches a month, which looks like the bargain of the trade until you ask who is typing it. Plastering is what people search when they are pricing materials or working out how to do it themselves. Cheap clicks are not automatically good clicks.
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 plasterer.
Water damage ceiling at $22.14 is not expensive because plasterers are fighting each other over it. It is expensive because water damage restoration companies with national budgets bid on the same words. A local plasterer competing there is in an auction that was never built for them.
Ceiling repair is $8.34 a click and gyprock repair $3.71. The same damage and often the same claim, described the way a homeowner describes it rather than the way an insurer does. Cheaper click, and you are back to competing against other plasterers.
A call count treats a small patch and a full reskim as the same event. It also counts the calls that were never worth driving to, which in a trade with this much small work is most of them.
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.
Plastering generates a very high volume of tiny jobs. At these click prices a plasterer who drives to every one of them loses money on travel and never gets to the work that pays. Most accounts we audit qualify nothing at all.
Minimum job size in the ad and on the page, and a service radius held to what you would really drive. It reduces the call volume and raises the share of calls worth taking, which is the opposite of what most agencies optimise for.
We start with what a job is worth and work backwards to what a click can cost.
A patch and a full ceiling replacement cannot carry the same cost per click. We work out your average job value by type first, including how much of your work arrives through insurers, because that is what decides which searches are affordable.
Repairs, water damage, new build and renovation each get their own campaign, budget and landing page, so the expensive insurance searches never eat the budget that should be buying repair work.
Search terms reviewed weekly and negatives added, because plastering attracts a huge volume of materials and DIY searches. 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 most of your work already comes from builders on repeat, this will mostly buy you small domestic patches. And if you cannot answer the phone on site, do not bid on water damage at all, because that customer has water coming through the ceiling and will ring the next name 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, but usually not on that search. It is the dearest click in the trade, it only gets 390 searches a month, and you are bidding against restoration companies with national budgets. Ceiling repair describes the same job at $8.34 with two and a half times the volume, and there you are competing against other plasterers.
Very often, yes. Somebody watching a stain spread across a ceiling might search water damage ceiling, ceiling repair, or plasterer near me. Those cost $22.14, $8.34 and $4.97. The job and the insurer behind it can be identical. That spread is the single biggest opportunity in this trade.
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 a plasterer. It is people pricing sheets, comparing compounds, and looking up how to do it themselves. It is the clearest example on this hub of a cheap click that is cheap for a reason, and it is why we judge searches by who is behind them rather than by price.
Enough that the data means something. At $8.34 a click a very small budget buys too few clicks to learn from. We would rather run repair work properly across a tight radius than run four job types thinly across the whole city, and we will say so on the call.
It varies too much by job type for a single honest number. A patch and a full ceiling replacement are not comparable, and neither is insurance work against private work. We report cost per booked job by type rather than one blended figure.
Three places, in this order. Materials and DIY searches, which plastering attracts more of than almost any trade. The water damage terms, where you are outbid by restoration firms. And driving to tiny jobs, because nothing in the ad or on the page sets a minimum.
The search terms report, every time. Then moving budget off the water damage phrasing and onto ceiling repair and gyprock repair, which describe the same work at a third of the price. That change alone usually drops the blended click cost without losing a single real job.
Yes. Somebody with a leaking ceiling needs a response time, a photo of a finished repair and a clear answer on insurance. Somebody planning a renovation needs to see new work, your availability and how long you will be on site. Sending both to a Services page wastes the expensive click.
We look at what it is wasting, how much of the budget is going to the water damage terms, how many materials searches you are paying for, 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.
