Advertising to a tradie costs more than anything a tradie sells. This is the most expensive corner of the whole hub.
What your clicks actually cost, which searches are wasting money, and what your cost per signed customer looks like. Fifteen minutes, and you keep it either way.
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A fifth of the price, twice the search volume, and the same business at the other end of it.
Every other page on this hub is about advertising for a tradie. This one is about advertising to them, and it is a different market entirely. Job management software is $53.62 a click, the dearest search anywhere on this hub. Tradie insurance is $30.71. Tradie marketing is $19.65, and yes, we bid on that one ourselves. The audience is small, the software companies are venture funded, and the clicks are priced accordingly.
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 top of this chart is a software auction. Job management software at $53.62 is bid up by companies with funding rounds behind them and a customer worth thousands a year in subscription. If you are not one of them, that is not your auction.
The lower rows are where a services business can actually compete. Tradie website at $10.08 and tradie app at $15.59 are a fifth to a third of the top, with more volume behind them, and the person searching has a specific problem rather than a category.
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
Real content answering what tradies actually search, comparison pages against the products they are weighing you against, and a site that loads on a phone with two bars of signal. At $53.62 a click, ranking rather than bidding is not a nice to have in this market.
THE FAST LEVER
Campaigns split by the problem being solved, not by your product name, so the expensive category terms never absorb the whole budget. Negative keywords so you stop paying for tradie jobs, apprenticeship listings, licence applications and the very large number of tradies looking for work rather than for suppliers. Form tracking, because this is a considered purchase and the enquiry arrives by email.
THE ONE MOST SUPPLIERS SKIP
The cheapest reach available and unusually effective here, because tradies are a well defined audience who are on their phones at smoko and in the ute. You can reach the same person for cents that costs $53.62 in a search auction.
We start from what a customer is worth over the years they stay, not what a click costs. A software business with a monthly subscription and a services business with a one off sale cannot afford anything like the same cost per click. Google Ads does the fast work, SEO is genuinely important at these prices, and Meta Ads reaches the same tradie for a fraction of it. 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 business selling to tradies, and what each one is actually for.
Built around “tradie website”
1,000 searches a month at $10.08 a click, a fifth of the top of the chart. Somebody searching this has a specific problem and a rough idea of what it should cost. The page needs a price, examples of work you have done for actual tradies, and how long it takes, because the alternative they are weighing you against is a cousin who does websites.
Built around “job management software”
$53.62 a click on 480 searches a month. It is the most expensive search on this hub and the bidders are funded software companies with a subscription customer behind every sale. Enter it if your economics genuinely support it, and stay out if they do not. There is no clever way to make that click cheap.
Built around the searches we exclude
Tradie jobs, apprenticeship listings, licence applications, tickets and certificates, tool retailers, and the very large number of tradies looking for work rather than for anyone to sell them something. At these click prices a single week of that traffic is a serious amount of money.
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.
Ten dollars for the click and somebody who has already worked out what they need. Specific problem searches convert faster, cost a fraction of the category terms, and put you in front of a tradie who is comparing solutions rather than browsing a category. This is where a services business wins in this market.
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 three dollars and change for the click, on 480 searches a month, against companies who can lose money on acquisition for two years because the subscription pays it back. If your customer pays you once, that auction will take your budget and give you very little for it.
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 business selling to tradies.
The category terms are the obvious buy, so the budget goes there, at $53.62 a click against 480 searches a month. If your product is a one off sale you are bidding against subscription economics, and you will lose that fight patiently and expensively.
Tradie website at $10.08 and tradie app at $15.59, both with more volume than the category term above them. Specific problems, faster decisions, and a click price a services business can actually justify.
Most searching that includes the word tradie is a tradie looking for work, a licence or a ticket. At $30 or $50 a click, an account that has not excluded that traffic properly can spend a month of budget in a few days.
A hard negative list from day one, tight match types, and weekly review. In this vertical the exclusions matter more than anywhere else on this hub, purely because of what each mistaken click costs.
Most B2B copy aimed at tradies is written as though it will be read at a desk. It is read on a phone, one handed, on a job site, by somebody who has about forty seconds and a very good radar for people who have never done the work.
Short, specific, priced, and honest about what it does not do. Tradies are the most sceptical audience on this hub and the most loyal once you have earned it, and nothing burns that faster than marketing language.
We start with what a customer is worth over the years they stay and work backwards to what a click can cost, and at these prices that calculation decides everything.
A monthly subscription and a one off sale cannot carry the same cost per click, and at $53.62 that difference is not academic. We work out your customer value and how long they stay first, because it determines which of these searches are open to you at all.
Each problem you solve gets its own campaign, budget and landing page, so the expensive category terms cannot quietly absorb the budget meant for the specific searches that actually convert.
Search terms reviewed weekly and negatives added, because at these click prices the cost of leaving it a month is genuinely serious. Then monthly reporting on cost per qualified enquiry and cost per signed customer.
Worth saying before you enquire, because it saves everyone three months.
If your customer pays you once and not very much, this market will not work for you on search, and we would rather say it now. The clicks are priced by subscription businesses. Reach the same tradies on social for a fraction of it, and spend the difference on ranking for the problems they search.
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 a disclosure, which is why it is on the page. Tradie marketing costs $19.65 a click and we are one of the businesses paying it. Everything on this page is what we have learned spending our own money in this auction, which we think makes it more useful rather than less.
Because the bidders are funded software companies whose customers pay every month for years. They can afford to lose money acquiring somebody because the subscription pays it back. It is the most expensive search anywhere on this hub, and if your product is a one off sale it is not an auction you should be in.
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.
The specific problems rather than the category. Tradie website at $10.08 and tradie app at $15.59 both have more monthly searches than the category term above them, at a fraction of the price, and the person searching has already worked out what they need.
More than most industries on this hub to get meaningful data, because a single click can cost fifty dollars. That is precisely why we would rather point the budget at the ten dollar searches, where the same money buys five times the learning.
High, and only defensible against a long customer relationship. If your customers stay for years the numbers work comfortably. If they buy once, they usually do not, and we will show you that on the call rather than after a quarter of spend.
Two places, and both are expensive here. The category auction against subscription businesses. And tradies searching for work, licences and tickets, which is most of the searching that includes the word tradie. At $30 to $50 a click that traffic burns a budget in days.
Because tradies are an unusually well defined audience who are reachable for cents rather than for fifty dollars. You can put the same message in front of the same person for a fraction of what search charges. That is not true in most industries and it is very true here.
The negative keyword list, then the budget split. Nearly every account we audit in this space is funding the job market and the category auction at the same time, which are the two most expensive mistakes available.
We look at what it is wasting, how much is going to the category terms and to job seeker traffic, whether your customer economics support search at these prices at all, and what your cost per signed customer looks like. If the honest answer is that search is the wrong channel for you, that is what the report will say.
