Marketing for tradesmen has three jobs: get found when someone searches for your trade, get chosen over the next name on the list, and make the call easy. Start free with a complete Google Business Profile and steady reviews. Add Google Ads when you need work within weeks, and local SEO to lower your cost per job over time.
Tradesman, tradie, tradesperson: Australians search for the same help under all three words, and the marketing is identical whichever one you use. This guide says "tradesmen" in the headings because that is how many people search, and "tradie" in the body because that is how most of us talk. It applies to plumbers, electricians, builders, concreters, roofers, landscapers and every other trade.
Scalepoint is a Williamstown, Melbourne studio that runs Google Ads, Meta Ads and SEO for trades and local service businesses across Australia. We put every price on the page, so the costs below are the ones we charge, ex GST.
What marketing has to do for a tradesman
Strip out the jargon and tradesman marketing has three jobs, in this order. Most tradies spend their first marketing dollar on the first job and ignore the other two.
| Job | What the customer does | What does the work |
|---|---|---|
| Get found | Searches "plumber near me" or "electrician Geelong" and scans the first few results | Google Business Profile, local SEO and Google Search Ads |
| Get chosen | Compares two or three businesses on reviews, photos of finished work, and how quickly someone answers | Reviews, real job photos, a clear service area, a fast reply to every enquiry |
| Get called | Taps the number or fills in a form, and expects an answer quickly | A tap-to-call number on every page, a short enquiry form, call tracking |
A visitor who finds you but cannot tell whether you are any good, or cannot reach you, is a click you paid for and lost. Fix all three jobs before you add more spend to the first.
Which marketing to start with, by situation
There is no single best channel. The right first move depends on what is holding your phone back from ringing. Advertising for tradesmen (Google Ads and Meta Ads) is the fast lane. Your profile and local SEO are the slow lane that gets cheaper the longer you run it. Prices below are Scalepoint’s, ex GST.
| Where you are | Start with | Why | What it costs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Few Google reviews, patchy profile | Your Google Business Profile and a review routine | The cheapest way to show up in the map results for "near me" searches | Your time, no fee |
| Quiet weeks, need jobs this month | Google Ads | Puts you in front of people already searching for your trade, so booked jobs can start within weeks | A$990/month + ad spend |
| Busy now, want to stop paying per click | Local SEO | Enquiries arrive with no per-click fee once your profile and suburb pages rank. It builds over months, not weeks | From A$890/month |
| Good work, but few people see it | Meta Ads and organic social | Shows finished jobs to people in your suburbs and retargets people who visited your site | Meta Ads A$790/month + ad spend; organic social from A$290/month |
| Want several channels working as one plan | A bundle (a separate way to buy, never added to the rows above) | Spark runs two channels and Surge runs three, with one plan and one weekly report | Spark A$1,490/month, Surge A$2,290/month, both + ad spend |
Ad spend is separate from every fee above. It goes straight from your card to Google or Meta, and Scalepoint never marks it up. See pricing for every tier.
Do the three-number check before you spend
Marketing works for a tradesman when a booked job pays for itself. Before you spend on any channel, write down three numbers: your average profit per job, the most you would pay to win one job, and the share of enquiries you turn into booked jobs. Divide the second by the third and you have the most you can pay per enquiry.
Worked example (illustrative): an average job leaves A$600 profit. You would spend up to 20% of that, A$120, to win it. You book 1 in 3 enquiries. So you can pay up to about A$40 per enquiry and still come out ahead.
The cost per lead guide runs this maths on small, mid-size and large jobs, and the Google Ads budget guide turns it into a monthly figure.
A 30-day plan you can run yourself
None of this needs an agency. Do it yourself first, or do it before you hire anyone.
- Week 1, finish your Google Business Profile. Choose the right main category, list the suburbs you actually service, add real photos of finished work and keep your hours accurate. Google says local results rank on relevance, distance and prominence (Google Business Profile Help). You cannot change distance, but you can improve the other two.
- Week 2, build a review routine. Ask every happy customer the day the job finishes, make the Google review link easy to find, and reply to every review within a couple of days. Recent, regular reviews tend to count for more than a pile of old ones.
- Week 3, fix the website basics. Put a tap-to-call number at the top of every page, give each main service its own page, and write out the suburbs you cover in plain words.
- Week 4, start counting. Use a tracked phone number and log where every enquiry came from. Without that, you cannot tell which channel earns its money. If you want the tracking wired up properly in your own accounts, Google & Tracking Setup is an optional one-off at A$650 ex GST.
After day 30, keep in touch with past customers. A short email or text to people who have already hired you is some of the cheapest marketing there is. Australian spam law, the Spam Act 2003 that the ACMA enforces, requires their consent, your business details in the message, and a working unsubscribe. The burden of proving consent sits with you.
Do these four things even if you plan to hire someone. An agency cannot make a thin profile or a slow reply look good, and you pay less for the work when the basics are already done.
What to skip, or treat with care
- Directory leads as your only channel. Lead directories often send the same enquiry to more than one business, and you own none of the data or the ranking. They can fill a quiet week, but they rarely build anything you keep. See own your leads vs renting them and the Hipages alternative.
- Boosted posts with no target. A post that reaches the whole state spends your money on people who will never hire you. Set a suburb radius and a goal, or leave it.
- Pages that name only the capital city. People search by suburb, so a page that says "Sydney" and nothing smaller gives Google little to match.
- Reports full of reach and impressions. Ask for booked jobs and the cost per booked job instead.
- Long contracts. If a supplier needs 12 months to prove the marketing works, ask why. Month-to-month vs lock-in contracts covers what to check.
Should a tradesman do it alone or hire someone?
Do the 30-day plan yourself either way. Hire when your hours are worth more on the tools than inside an ad account. If you do hire, four questions decide it: is the contract month-to-month, do you own the accounts, does the report show booked jobs, and does your ad spend pass through without a markup. The full agency checklist goes deeper.
At Scalepoint the answer to all four is yes: month-to-month with 14 days notice, you own every account from day one, a weekly numbers email, and no markup on ad spend. No contract holds anyone here, and our 12-month client retention rate is 92%.
Where you work changes the detail, not the order
Competition and click costs differ between a Sydney suburb and a regional Queensland town, but the order above holds. Scalepoint works from Williamstown and runs campaigns for trades across Australia, with most clients in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland. Find your city on the locations page.
If you work in Melbourne, the guide to a digital marketing agency for tradies in Melbourne covers what to expect on pricing, reporting and account ownership. For the inner west, read local SEO for trades in Altona and Williamstown. For a worked cost example in one trade, see Google Ads for a plumber, and for the channels we run across trades, see trades and construction.
If you would rather have a second opinion on where your phone is losing jobs, the free audit reviews your website, your Google Business Profile, your top three suburb rankings and your top three competitors, then lists the three highest-impact moves for this month. It arrives by email within 3 business days, with no call required.
Marketing for tradesmen has three jobs: get found, get chosen, and get called. Fix your Google Business Profile, reviews, website basics and call tracking first, then add Google Ads for work within weeks and local SEO to lower your cost per job over time. Judge every channel on booked jobs, not clicks.
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