Tradie marketing scored on booked jobs, not leads.

Digital marketing for tradies runs on tighter channels: Google search and Maps, the quote marketplaces (hipages, ServiceSeeking, Airtasker), your Google Business Profile, and Meta for some trades. The conversion is usually a phone call rather than a form. And most trade businesses are not spending $20K a month on ads, so the work has to pay for itself on a smaller budget. That is why we start with trades from $500K in revenue and $1,500 a month in spend, with the same measurement our bigger clients get.

Where your customers look when they need the job done, then wherever your own numbers say the booked jobs come from. Urgent work, like a burst pipe, a power fault or a leaking roof, is won on Google search and Maps, because the customer rings one of the first businesses they find. Planned work, like renovations, extensions, solar or landscaping, suits the quote marketplaces and Meta, where people compare before they choose. Your Google Business Profile and your own website sit underneath all of it. Good tradie advertising runs the channels side by side and judges each one on cost per booked job, not cost per lead.

It varies widely between trades. In Keyword Planner's Australian figures (October 2026), the top-of-page bid range is $3 to $10 a click for 'landscaping', $4 to $13 for 'concreters near me', $7 to $19 for 'arborist', $11 to $28 for 'removalists' and $12 to $52 for 'plumber'. Those ranges are roughly the 20th to 80th percentile of what advertisers have bid to appear at the top of the page, not a price you are promised. The cost that matters is the click price divided by the share of clicks that become booked jobs, which is why we track every call through to the job.

Neither, across the board. They charge at opposite ends of the job. hipages sells a monthly subscription, from $139 plus GST, that comes with credits you spend to accept job leads, each lead shared with no more than three businesses, and it takes no commission on the work. Airtasker is free to quote and takes a service fee of 12.5 to 20 percent of the task price, plus GST, from the tasks you win. So one costs you before you quote and the other costs you after you win (prices from each platform's own pages, 1 October 2026). Which suits your trade is a question for your own numbers: add up three months of fees plus the time spent quoting, then divide by the jobs that actually booked. That is cost per booked job, the only fair way to compare either of them with Google or Meta.

Sometimes, and rarely across the board. A marketplace can pay well on your highest-value job types and lose money on the small ones, so judge it job type by job type rather than as one line on the bank statement. Tag every marketplace job in your job software, compare its cost per booked job with Google and your Google Business Profile, and cut the categories that do not clear your margin. Segmenting the spend usually beats killing the account outright.

Not according to Google's own pages. On 1 October 2026, the Local Services Ads help centre listed eleven countries, from Austria to the United States, and Australia was not one of them. Several Australian marketing blogs say otherwise, so ask to see Google's page before you pay anyone to set it up. The pay-per-lead options open to Australian trades today are the lead marketplaces, and the closest thing on Google is a well-run Business Profile beside search ads bid on booked jobs.

It depends which job you want the app to do. Lead apps such as hipages, Airtasker and ServiceSeeking bring enquiries in. Job management apps such as ServiceM8, Tradify, simPRO and Fergus run the quoting, scheduling and invoicing once the work is yours. For marketing, the job management app matters more than most owners expect, because it is where a booked job and its value are recorded, and so the only place that can tell Google Ads and Meta which enquiries became paid work. Some of them make that easy to connect and some do not, which is worth knowing before you choose.

Work it out from the job, not from a percentage someone quoted you. Take your average job value, subtract materials and labour, and decide how much of what is left you would pay to win one more job. That is your ceiling for cost per booked job. Your monthly budget is that ceiling multiplied by the extra jobs you can actually staff. The ROAS calculator works the same sum from the other side, as the break-even return your ads have to clear. For context, we start with trade businesses spending from $1,500 a month, and if your spend is too small for our fee to pay for itself, we will say so on the call.

Yes, as part of ongoing management. Tradie SEO is mostly local: a Google Business Profile with the right categories, services and service areas, a steady flow of reviews, a dedicated page for each kind of job you want more of, suburb pages for the areas you really cover, and the technical basics (speed, mobile, structured data) done properly. Google says its local results depend mainly on relevance, distance and how well known the business is, and that nobody can pay for a better local ranking, so this is the work that counts in Maps. We also make your business easy for AI answers, such as Google's AI Overviews and ChatGPT, to cite. It is scored on booked jobs from search and Maps, not rankings. You can do the basics yourself, and the audit call will tell you which to start with.

Yes. We quote each site after a free call and build it in two to three weeks from kickoff to launch, on whichever platform suits your business. Every site is measured from launch day: calls tracked, quote forms tied to your job software, booked jobs sent back to Google Ads. Once it is live, hosting, updates and small changes come under a monthly care plan.

Yes. For most trades the Google Business Profile is the most valuable free channel there is, and it is often half set up. The tracking setup fixes the big things (categories, services, service areas, photos, citations and the way you ask for reviews), and ongoing management keeps it current and measures the calls and enquiries it produces against booked jobs. Organic social posts stay with you or a specialist we recommend.

No. Organic social posting, the weekly photos and updates on your business's Facebook and Instagram pages, is not part of what we sell. That stays with you or a specialist we can recommend. What we do run is paid advertising, including Meta ads on Facebook and Instagram, measured against booked jobs like every other channel. If a monthly social media package is what you are after, we are the wrong people for it, and we would rather say so here than on a call.

Trade and home services businesses from $500K a year, whatever the trade. We have written pages for plumbers, electricians, builders, roofers, pest control, commercial cleaning, and air conditioning and HVAC. The same model applies to garage doors, landscaping, fencing, concreting, carpentry, removals, pools and the other trades: calls tracked, job software connected, and Google Ads, Meta and SEO run against booked jobs. What changes from trade to trade is the price of a click, the season and the value of a job, so the plan is built from your numbers.

Yes. Plenty of trade businesses already have a local agency, a hipages account manager or a virtual assistant on the marketing. Some keep them on part of the work while we take over the paid media and the tracking; others hand everything over. Either way, we agree who owns what before anything changes, so nobody ends up bidding against your own business.

Agencies usually charge for Google Ads management as 10 to 20 percent of ad spend, falling as spend rises, or as a flat retainer, commonly $1,500 to $3,000 a month for small accounts. Ours is a fixed fee for the agreed scope, never a percentage of your spend: the tracking setup first, unless yours is already sound, then ongoing management, both quoted in one written proposal after the free audit call. A website, if you need one, is quoted separately, along with its monthly care plan. If your spend is too small for our fee to pay for itself, we will say so on the call.

Smaller than the rest of our work, yes. Our other clients mostly turn over $2M to $20M and spend $20K or more a month on ads. Trades start at $500K in revenue and $1,500 a month in spend, because there is less to connect: fewer channels, one job system, mostly phone calls. Below that, the money is usually better spent on reviews, quoting speed and pricing than on an agency, and we will tell you so.