Marketing for builders · Construction marketing · From $500K revenue
Marketing for builders measured on signed contracts, not enquiries.
Home building clicks are cheap and the decisions behind them are not. Keyword Planner shows 5,400 searches a month for 'home builders' in Australia, with top-of-page bids of $2 to $10 a click (October 2026), and the customer can then take months to choose. We track the whole path, from first enquiry to design consultation, site visit and signed contract, and run your Google Ads, Meta, Google Business Profile and SEO against the stages that predict a contract.
30 min · No pitch · Senior operator on the call
Engagement intake, currently open
$2 to $10
Top-of-page bids for 'home builders', a search made 5,400 times a month. Keyword Planner, Australia, October 2026.
90 days
How long after a click Google Ads accepts an imported conversion, such as a site visit booked.
From $500K
Where our work with builders starts: $500K a year in revenue and $1,500 a month going into ads.
How we run marketing for builders
Four principles for selling builds that take months to decide.
Principle 01
Cheap clicks, expensive decisions
A click on 'custom home builders' has top-of-page bids of $4 to $17 (Keyword Planner, Australia, October 2026), and it can lead to the biggest purchase a family makes. The click is not the cost that matters. Cost per qualified consultation and cost per signed contract are, and they only show up if every enquiry is followed through your CRM to the end.
Principle 02
Bid on early signals, report on contracts
A build can take months from first enquiry to signature, too long for Google or Meta to learn from the contract alone. So the account bids on the earliest stage that reliably leads to a contract, usually a design consultation or a site visit booked. Google accepts imported conversions up to 90 days after the click, so any stage that lands inside that window goes back against the click that started it. Contracts that land later are reconciled in the reporting instead.
Principle 03
Show the work
Builders are hired on proof. Project galleries with real photos, the suburb, the build type and how long it took do more selling than any slogan, and they give each page something specific to rank for. Custom homes, knockdown rebuilds, granny flats, extensions and renovations each get their own page and their own gallery.
Principle 04
Qualify before you quote
A knockdown rebuild enquiry from someone without land, budget or finance costs a site visit and a quote for nothing. The enquiry form asks the questions that matter (do you own the land, what is the budget range, is finance arranged) and only enquiries that pass count as conversions, so the ads learn to find people who can build.
Deliverables
What we build, track and run for a builder.
01
A builder website organised by what you build (custom homes, knockdown rebuilds, granny flats, extensions, renovations), each with a project gallery and a qualifying enquiry form. Two to three weeks to build, then hosting, updates and small changes on a monthly care plan.
02
Every stage tracked in your CRM or job system (HubSpot, Pipedrive, simPRO, ServiceM8 or similar): enquiry, qualified, consultation booked, site visit, quote sent, contract signed.
03
Consultations and site visits uploaded to Google Ads and Meta as offline conversions, with signed contracts added when they land, so bidding learns from qualified buyers instead of form fills.
04
A Google Business Profile set up for a building business: project photos, your build types as services, the areas you build in, and a review requested at every handover.
05
Google Ads and Meta, plus your Google Business Profile and SEO, managed by build type, with budgets reviewed each week against cost per qualified consultation and cost per signed contract.
06
A monthly pipeline report: enquiries, consultations, site visits, quotes and contracts by channel and build type, reconciled to your CRM. The playbook and decision log stay yours.
Who this is for
- Australian residential builder, renovator or construction business with revenue of $500K and up
- A marketing budget of at least $1,500 a month, spread over Google Ads, Meta or lead platforms
- A CRM or job system that records where each enquiry ends up (HubSpot, Pipedrive, simPRO or similar)
- Willing to ask enquiries about land, budget and finance before booking a site visit
Who it isn't
- Need contracts signed this month. A build sales cycle does not move that fast for anyone.
- Want enquiry volume, whether or not the people can build
- Will not record what happens to an enquiry after the first call
How we work with builders
Three ways in. Each one quoted before anything starts.
Pipeline tracking and management are each priced as one fixed fee for an agreed scope, set out in a written proposal after the free audit call and never tied to a share of your ad spend. A website is quoted from the same call. For an outside read before any of that, the two-week diagnostic looks without touching anything and leaves you the report.
01 · Website
A builder website with galleries that sell
Pages by build type, project galleries, qualifying enquiry forms, click-to-call and tracked numbers. Launched two to three weeks after kickoff and kept current on a monthly care plan.
02 · Setup
Pipeline tracking
Every enquiry followed from first contact to contract in your CRM, consultations and site visits fed back to Google Ads and Meta as they happen, calls tracked, and your Google Business Profile tidied up.
03 · Ongoing
Ongoing management
Weekly management of Google Ads, Meta, your Google Business Profile and SEO by senior operators, bidding on consultations and site visits and reporting on contracts. Decisions are written down with their reasons.
Where the numbers say our fee cannot earn its way at your level of spend, we say so before you sign anything.
Where to go next
Related work and the cities we run it from.
Related services
Cities we work with builders in
Run your numbers
Proof, with the working shown
We'd rather show you the maths than the buzzwords.
“Profit Geeks rebuilt our whole sales engine, and not just the ad accounts. They went after the systems sitting behind them too. Sales are up 140% and we've pushed past $25M. Honestly the bit I didn't see coming was the operation running leaner than it did back when we were half the size.”
“We were quietly bleeding about a thousand dollars a week and had no idea why. They found the leaks, sorted out the measurement and the offer, and now we'll do more than $10K in a single day. Same product. Completely different business.”
“We went from scraping together two installs a week to running four crews and fifteen-plus jobs a week, north of $10M turnover. The clever bit was they tied the scaling to what we could actually deliver, so growth never broke the operation. Booked jobs, not vanity leads.”
“After iOS, our Meta numbers stopped matching the bank, and we'd basically been writing the gap off as “just tracking.” Profit Geeks rebuilt our measurement server-side and reconciled it straight back to the P&L. Turned out about $1.42M of ad spend in year one had been working all along. They're the first team that showed me the maths instead of a dashboard.”
“We didn’t spend a dollar more on ads. What they did was fix how we counted a booked job versus a platform “conversion,” cut the wasted spend, and by week twelve our blended ROAS had more than tripled. Revenue went from $4.8M to $9.1M. Same senior bloke on every call too. No juniors, no relay race.”
Reasonable questions
What you're probably thinking.
01
We've been burned by an agency before.
Most of our intake has. The difference is structural. A senior operator runs your account, not a junior hidden behind a dashboard, and you leave the first call with written findings you own even if we never work together. No relay race, no account manager translating between you and the people doing the work.
02
How do I know it'll actually work for my business?
You don't yet, and neither do we until we've seen your numbers. That's why the first step is a diagnostic, not a contract. We've documented this in DTC and home services (the case studies show the full working) and run the same playbook in professional services. If the maths isn't there for you, we'll tell you on the call.
03
What if there's nothing worth fixing?
Then you've spent thirty minutes and walked away with a second opinion that cost you nothing. We'd rather say no than take on an engagement we can't earn, so we turn away intake that isn't a fit. There's no pitch and no follow-up sales sequence.
04
What does it cost, and what am I signing up for?
A fixed fee for the tracking set-up, then a fixed fee for ongoing management, both quoted in writing after the call. No per-channel markup and no percentage of your ad spend. If your spend is too small for the fee to pay for itself, we will say so on the call. Budgets only climb when booked jobs show the extra spend is paying.
Frequently asked
Eight questions about marketing a building business.
What are some effective marketing strategies for home builders?
Five that hold up. A page for each build type you want more of, with a real project gallery. A Google Business Profile with project photos and a review asked for at every handover. Search ads on the build types with clear intent: Keyword Planner shows 2,400 searches a month for 'granny flat builders' at $3 to $18 a click, 880 for 'knockdown rebuild' at $4 to $20 and 720 for 'home extensions' at $4 to $20 in Australia (October 2026). An enquiry form that asks about land, budget and finance. And Meta, to put finished projects in front of local people who are planning to build. Throughout, show your licence number: NSW and Queensland both require licensed builders to include it in advertising, websites included, so check your own state's rule with your regulator.
How do you do marketing for a construction business?
Start by separating residential from commercial, because they sell differently. Commercial construction is usually won on relationships, tenders and reputation, where search plays a supporting role: a clear website, finished-project case studies, and a Google Business Profile that checks out. Residential is where search and social do the heavy lifting, and where construction marketing has to cope with a sales cycle measured in months. Either way, record each enquiry's outcome in your CRM, so you can see which channel produced the contracts and not just the clicks.
What is SEO in construction?
Being found when someone searches for the kind of building you do, in the area you build. SEO for builders means a page for each build type, project galleries with real detail, a Google Business Profile set to the right categories and service areas, and structured data that identifies you as a building contractor (schema.org's GeneralContractor type, for example). Links from suppliers, local associations and industry bodies help show the business is real. SEO for construction companies takes longer to show results than paid search, which is why it pairs well with ads on the build types you want this quarter.
Is $10 a day enough for Google Ads?
It buys a builder more clicks than most trades get, and it is still not enough. At $10 a day you are spending around $300 a month, and Keyword Planner shows 'home builders' at $2 to $10 a click for the top of the page in Australia (October 2026). That is somewhere between 30 and 150 clicks. The trouble is what follows: a handful of enquiries, fewer consultations, and quite possibly no contract that month, which leaves Google's bidding nothing to learn from. With a budget that size, pick one build type in your core area, count qualified enquiries as the conversion, and give it a full quarter before you judge it.
How much do Google Ads cost for builders?
Per click, far less than the emergency trades pay. Keyword Planner shows top-of-page bids in Australia (October 2026) of $2 to $8 for 'new home builders', $2 to $10 for 'home builders', $4 to $17 for 'custom home builders' and $5 to $25 for 'renovation builders'. What you pay per contract depends on how many of those clicks become qualified consultations and how many consultations you sign. That is why the account bids on qualified enquiries and is judged on cost per signed contract, not cost per click.
How do we stop paying for enquiries from people who cannot build?
Three changes, all on your side of the ad. Ask the qualifying questions in the form: do you own the land, what is the budget range, is finance arranged. Count only the enquiries that pass as conversions, so Google and Meta learn to find more of them. And keep the search terms report clean, adding as negatives the searches that will never become a contract, such as jobs, apprenticeships, house plans, and kit homes if you do not build them. Unqualified enquiries will still arrive, but they stop setting your bids.
Do you build websites for builders?
Yes. Our builder websites are organised by build type, with a project gallery on each page, an enquiry form that qualifies, click-to-call and call tracking, and every enquiry recorded in your CRM from day one. It is quoted after a free call and takes two to three weeks to build, with hosting, updates and small changes on a monthly care plan afterwards.
How we build tradie and builder websitesHow much does marketing for builders cost?
The going rates for Google Ads management in Australia are 10 to 20 percent of spend, with the percentage dropping as budgets grow, or a flat monthly fee of roughly $1,500 to $3,000 when the account is small and $3,000 to $8,000 when it is mid-sized. Digital marketing for builders from us is priced differently: one fixed fee for an agreed scope, never a percentage of your spend. Pipeline tracking comes first, unless yours already works, then the week-to-week running of your ads, Google Business Profile and SEO, both priced in a single written proposal once the free audit call is done.
How much a Google Ads agency costs in AustraliaFurther reading
What you actually buy
We connect the tracking, then we run the account. It starts with a free call.
Which of these sounds like your week?
- Meta says one number, Google says another, the CRM says a third, and the bank says something else again.
- The leads come in and most of them are rubbish.
- Traffic is fine. Not enough of them buy.
- You cannot spend more without losing margin.
- Something is wrong and you cannot say what.
All five come back to the same gap: nobody can say which job came from which dollar. We close that first, then the same senior operators run the spend against booked jobs. The free call is where we work out what your business needs first.
00 · Free
Run your own numbers
Six calculators and an attribution reference. Work out your break-even ROAS, your CAC payback, and whether the spend is structurally profitable, before you talk to anyone. The calculators need no signup.
01 · Free · 30 minutes
The profit audit call
A senior operator looks at your real spend, revenue and attribution gap on a call. You leave with a written fix list you keep, whether or not we ever work together. No deck, no follow-up sales sequence. We reply within one business day with three times to choose from.
02 · Optional · Two weeks
The two-week diagnostic
Read-only. We change nothing in your accounts. Every tag, event and consent rule mapped and written up: 20 to 35 pages, every issue rated P0 to P3 with an engineering-day estimate, and a 90-minute walk-through on day twelve. Yours to hand to us, your own team, or your existing agency. About a third of clients run this first, then decide.
03 · The engagement · Ongoing
The tracking set-up, then we run it
First the phones, the forms and your job software get connected to Google Ads and Meta, so every booked job traces back to the search, ad or page that produced it. From there the same senior operators run Google Ads, Meta, your Google Business Profile and SEO week to week, with budgets decided against booked jobs and the reasoning written down. The scope and timing of the set-up are in the written proposal.
What it costs
Four things set the number
- The size of your stack
- How many ad platforms are live
- The state of your CRM integration
- How many service lines and locations you run
Two things do not
- Your industry
- How much you spend on ads
Revenue only matters because a bigger business is usually a bigger scope. We do not price off a percentage of it. We charge for the work, not for what you look like you can afford.
How it is billedThe set-up is fixed scope. Ongoing management is a fixed fee for the agreed scope. Both are quoted in one written proposal after the call. No hourly billing and no percentage of ad spend.
Included at no extra costThe decision log and the tracking set-up, yours to keep whether we run the account or you take it back in-house.
What happens after you book
Three steps. No mystery.
Step 01 · Within 1 business day
30-minute audit call
A senior operator on the call. We look at your real numbers, spend, revenue, attribution gap, and tell you on the call whether the rebuild is worth doing for you and where it would start. No pitch deck.
Step 02 · Within 1 week
Written proposal
Fixed scope, fixed number, written up. The proposal names deliverables, timeline, the people involved, and the price. No hourly billing, no retainer drift.
Step 03 · Within 2 weeks
Engagement starts
Senior operators from day one. The measurement rebuild starts, we take over day-to-day buying on the channels we can measure, and the first working session lands. Inside two weeks of the call.
Next step
Fewer site visits for people who were never going to build.
If your enquiries look healthy but the contracts do not follow, book the free 30-minute profit audit and bring the last three months of enquiries from your CRM, how many became consultations, site visits and contracts, and what you spent to get them. We will show you in writing where the pipeline leaks and which stage your ads should be bidding on.