An emergency plumbing click costs over fifty dollars. A hot water system click costs about seven, and more people search for it.
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An eighth of the price, and four times the monthly searches.
We are not going to tell you plumbing clicks are cheap. Emergency plumber runs to $55.70 and plumber near me $30.95 on Google’s own figures. What we will tell you is that those are not the only terms in the account, and for most plumbers they should not be the biggest line in it. Hot water systems cost $7.24 and get 18,100 searches a month, against 4,400 for the emergency term. Most accounts we audit have never bid on them.
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.
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 reviews after every job. Slow to arrive, and the only thing that eventually takes the expensive clicks off your bill.
THE FAST LEVER
Campaigns split by job type so planned work never competes with emergency for the same budget. Negative keywords so you stop paying for apprenticeships and DIY searches. Call tracking above all, because plumbing is booked by phone.
THE CHEAP ONE MOST PLUMBERS SKIP
The cheapest reach available on this trade, and the one most plumbers skip. Best for hot water replacement, which people put off for months, and for staying familiar in your suburbs so the emergency call comes to you without the click.
We start from what a job is worth, not what a click costs. A plumber whose average job is two hundred dollars and one who fits hot water 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 jobs cheaply. 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 plumber, and what each one is actually for.
Built around “hot water system”
The cheapest real clicks in the trade and the ones most accounts never buy. Bigger jobs, calmer customers, and far less competition. The landing page has to do real work though, because this customer is comparing gas against electric against heat pump.
Built around “emergency plumber”
Expensive, and still worth running if you answer the phone. A missed call here is not a missed lead, it is fifty five dollars already spent. We run it tight: your real hours, your real service area, and a landing page with the number enormous.
Built around the searches we exclude
Apprenticeships, wages, TAFE courses, how to fix a leaking tap, and everyone who intends to do it themselves. On broad match you pay full price for all of it. Fixing the negative keyword list is usually the fastest win in the account.
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.
Seven dollars for the click, and the job is a four figure replacement. Even at a modest conversion rate the cost per job lands somewhere sensible, and the customer usually comes back for the servicing.
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.
Fifty five dollars for the click, a job worth under two hundred, and an hour of driving. Run enough of those and the account looks like it is failing when the real problem is which jobs it is buying.
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.
Hot water systems cost $7.24 a click against $55.70 for emergency, on four times the monthly searches, and gas fitting $11.90. Bigger jobs, calmer customers, and a cost per lead the emergency campaign cannot match.
Worth saying before you enquire, because it saves everyone three months.
If you cannot answer the phone, do not run the emergency campaign. At $55.70 a click a voicemail is the most expensive thing in your account, and those callers ring the next plumber within seconds. Either commit to answering or put the budget on the planned work. And if you are already booked three weeks out, ads buy you a longer queue rather than more revenue.
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 $55.70 click that books a four figure hot water replacement can still work. The same click that books a $180 tap washer forty minutes away cannot. The question is never what a click costs, it is what a booked job costs, and that depends on which searches you buy and which you exclude.
By buying the terms other plumbers ignore. Hot water system is $7.24 a click against $55.70 for emergency plumber, and it has more monthly searches. Gas fitting is $11.90. Those are real customers with real jobs, they are simply not panicking, so fewer plumbers bid on them. That is where a sensible cost per lead comes from, not from hunting for cheap emergency clicks, which do not exist.
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 $14 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 faster. Planned work costs less per lead and takes longer to close. Anyone quoting a cost per lead without knowing your job mix is guessing.
Three places, in this order. Searches you should never have bought, like apprenticeships, wages, TAFE courses and DIY repairs, which on broad match you pay full price for. Calls that go to voicemail, which at $55.70 each are the most expensive thing in the account. And a service radius wider than you would really drive, which fills the diary with jobs that lose money on travel.
The search terms report, every time. That is where the waste is visible and it costs nothing but attention to fix. After that, splitting the account by job type so the cheap planned work is not competing with emergency for the same budget, and getting call tracking in so you can see which searches produce booked jobs.
For anything you are paying $14 a click for, yes. Sending an expensive click to a general Services page is the most common way plumbing accounts waste money. The emergency page needs your number enormous and your response time stated. The hot water page needs to actually compare gas, electric and heat pump, because that customer is deciding rather than panicking.
Days. Google Ads is the fastest channel available to a plumber, which is also why it is the easiest to waste money on quickly. The first month is mostly cutting waste and getting tracking right, so the numbers from month two onward mean something.
We look at what it is wasting, which searches cost the most for the least, whether calls are tracked at all, and what your cost per booked job looks like by job type. You get it in writing and you keep it whether or not you hire us.
