Google Ads for Canberra Tradies

It depends on your trade and the exact search. The Cost to Compete table above shows the top-spot range on your trade's main Canberra search. Those are Google's estimates of the bid it takes to show at the top of the page, and what you actually pay is often lower. The number that matters more is what each booked job costs you, and that's what we report on.

Work backwards from the jobs. Say you're an electrician paying $15 a click, inside the top-spot range for "electrician Canberra". If 1 in 10 clicks becomes an enquiry and you book 1 in 3, each job costs about $450 in ad spend, so five extra jobs a month needs a budget of about $2,250. If you make well over $450 profit on an average job, that works. If you don't, we'll tell you before you spend anything. These are example numbers. On the call, we'll run them with yours.

That question covers two different things. Showing your ads only to people in the suburbs you service is almost always worth doing. It won't necessarily make each click cheaper, but it stops you paying for customers across the lake or over the border. Bidding on searches that name a district, like "plumbers Canberra Belconnen", is different. The top spot there runs $19.71 to $86.22 a click, against $14.20 to $70.37 for "plumber Canberra", so budget for it before you chase it.

Yes, and in Canberra it's less about kilometres than the drive between town centres. A plumber in Tuggeranong may happily drive to Woden but not out to Gungahlin in the afternoon peak. Google's default setting also shows ads to people elsewhere searching about your area, so we target people who are in, or regularly in, the suburbs you work, exclude the rest, including Queanbeyan if you don't cross the border, and review location performance as the data builds.

Sometimes not, and we'll tell you. The top spot on "blocked drains Canberra" typically runs $9.35 to $30.78 a click, so a small call-out only pays back if enough clicks turn into jobs and there's repeat work behind it. Trades with higher job values, or ones that turn small jobs into bigger work, usually get more out of paid search.

We check the searches your ads actually showed for and block the ones that don't fit, using negative keywords. Plenty of Canberra builder searches name another business, a project-home brand or a builder's licence, and some are about home builder grants. You pay for those clicks whether or not they become enquiries, so blocking them is ongoing work rather than a one-off setup task.

You can, but it's the expensive fix. Position depends on your bid and your ad quality together, so a more relevant ad and a landing page that matches the search can lift you for less. On "emergency plumber Canberra", where the top spot typically runs $14.86 to $81.37 a click, outbidding a bigger budget is a race worth staying out of.

Ads can get clicks within a day or so of Google approving them. A steady flow of the right enquiries usually takes a few weeks, because the account needs real search data before we know what to cut and what to back. Six of the seven main Canberra trade searches we tracked, from "plumber Canberra" to "plasterer Canberra", are rated High competition by Google, so early refinement is where the money gets saved.

If your existing service page clearly shows you do that job, in that part of Canberra, with an obvious way to enquire, it can work. Most tradie websites don't. A page matched to the ad and the area, such as bathroom renovations in Belconnen, usually turns more clicks into enquiries, which does more for your cost per job than chasing cheaper clicks.

For eligible campaigns, if we don't generate at least one qualified lead within the first 14 days after launch, we refund your first month's management fee. Eligibility and full guarantee terms apply.