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Google and Meta ads for tradies
Google and Meta ads for tradies.
Google Ads, still called AdWords by half the trade, puts you at the top of the page the day you switch it on. Facebook and Instagram ads put you in front of people before they need you. Either way, the ad is only ever as good as the page it lands on.
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Your budget, your callCalls counted, not clicksLanding page checked first
O★★★★★ “Tom really knows his stuff” Oliver Heneberry, Google review
one tap to call, every screen
What Google Ads actually does
Rented attention, and the fastest thing in marketing.
When a hot water service dies or a fence comes down, people search and they ring the first business that looks safe to ring. Google Ads buys you the top of that screen in your suburbs, on the searches you choose, for as long as you keep paying. Turn it off and you disappear the same afternoon.
SEO and your Google Business Profile are the parts you own, and they take months. Most tradies we speak to need both. The order matters, and it starts with what the click lands on.
Our own research
What a paid click actually lands on.
Every ad platform sells you the click. Nobody sells you the thing the click arrives at, so we measured it. We are not naming any of the businesses; the point is the rate, not the roll call.
51% make you scroll to call
We opened 500 Australian trade businesses on a real phone screen in September 2026. Of the 391 live sites, 199 did not put a tappable phone number in front of the visitor without scrolling.
1 in 6 did not load at all
72 of the 463 real business addresses did not load a working homepage. Google is still listing them as that business's website.
Some were taken over
Nine were expired site builder accounts. Five landed on one broken redirect. Three had been taken over outright: one now points to a review spam site, one to an online casino, one to a software demo.
What it means for your budget
An ad buys one visit and delivers that person to a page. On roughly half of tradie sites that page asks them to scroll before they can ring, and on one in six the page is not there at all.
Australia is different
No Google Guaranteed badge in Australia.
A lot of tradie marketing advice tells you to chase Local Services Ads and the green Google Guaranteed tick. If you are in Australia you cannot have it. Google's own getting started page lists eleven countries, and Australia is not one of them. We checked this on 4 September 2026.
So for an Australian tradie, "Google Ads" means ordinary paid search: a text ad, in the auction, above or below the map. The trust other countries buy with a badge, you earn here with reviews on your Google Business Profile and a website that looks like it belongs to a real business.
How a tradie campaign is built
The part that decides whether the money comes back.
Emergency and planned work, split
A burst pipe and a new deck behave differently and never sit in the same campaign. Emergency searches ring whoever answers. Planned work gets compared over a fortnight, so photos of finished jobs do more than speed.
Suburbs, not "Melbourne"
The default will show your ad in Werribee when you work in Ringwood. We target the suburbs you actually drive to, and people in them, not people merely interested in them.
The search terms report
It shows what Google actually matched you to. That is where a painting campaign pays for "painting courses". Every one becomes a negative keyword so it never costs you twice.
Count calls, not clicks
Clicks are a bill, not a result. Calls are tracked on the ad and the landing page, so you know how many phone calls came from last month's spend.
AI Max, with the controls on
From September 2026 Google is automatically moving some Search campaigns to AI Max, which can pick which page of your site a click lands on. We review those settings and exclusions instead of accepting the upgrade blind.
Then the landing page
Everything above delivers a person to a page, so we check that page on a real phone before a campaign goes live, not after the first invoice.
Ads or SEO first?
The honest answer depends on your diary.
| Google Ads | SEO and Google Business Profile | |
|---|---|---|
| How fast | Same day | Months |
| If you stop paying | You vanish that afternoon | Visibility can carry on, but rankings can rise or fall |
| Do you own it | No, you rent it | Yes |
| Cost shape | Ongoing spend plus management | Front loaded work, low upkeep |
| Best for | Quiet weeks, a new suburb, a new service | Being the name people already know |
| Needs a decent website | Badly, you are paying per visit | Yes, but a slow leak, not a fast one |
If your diary is empty next week, ads. If your diary is fine and you want it to still be fine in a year, SEO. If your website is not finished, neither. Start there, because both end at the same front door.
Facebook and Instagram
Meta ads do a different job.
Google catches somebody who already has a problem and is looking for a tradie right now. Facebook and Instagram put you in front of people who are not looking yet, so that when the problem turns up they already know your name.
We run them, and for some trades they work well: anything visual, anything people plan for months, anything where seeing the finished job is the sell. Landscaping and painting sit squarely in that bracket. For emergency work they are usually the wrong tool, and we would rather put a small budget on Google properly than split it across two platforms badly.
What we do when we run your ads
- ✓Campaigns built around your suburbs
- ✓Call first setup and call tracking
- ✓Landing page checked on a phone
- ✓Negative keywords and AI Max controls
- ✓Your budget, reported plainly
- ✓An honest no when ads are the wrong move
No fine print
Before you hand anything over, here is exactly where you stand
The questions a sensible tradie asks before paying a small business every month. Straight answers.
What does it cost?
$237 a month on Essential, $487 on Growth, $887 on Dominate, with no setup fee for the website. One predictable price with hosting, security and maintenance already in it.
What do I pay upfront?
Nothing. No deposit. We design your homepage and show you. You only pay once you are happy with it and you want us to build the rest of your site.
Can I leave?
Any time. Every plan is month to month. No lock in contract and no exit fee. We would rather earn it each month than trap you in a year.
Who owns the domain?
You do. We help you register a new one or point the one you already have, and it stays in your name.
Who controls the ad budget?
You do. You set the monthly number, we manage the campaign inside it, and you get a plain report of what went out and what came back. We never move your budget without asking you first.
How much should a tradie spend on ads to start?
There is no honest single figure, because it depends on your trade and how many others are bidding in your suburbs. The failure mode is a budget too small to gather data. We would rather tell you it is not enough yet than take a fee for a campaign that was never going to work.
Can Australian tradies get the Google Guaranteed badge?
No. Local Services Ads, where that green tick comes from, runs in eleven countries and Australia is not one of them. Checked 4 September 2026. If anyone offers to get you Google Guaranteed in Australia, ask them to show you the sign up page.
Do ads still work if my website is not finished?
People will click. They will not ring. One in six tradie websites we checked did not load at all, and 51% of the rest made a phone user scroll before they could tap a number. Paid traffic to a page like that is the fastest way to spend a budget on nothing.
What is changing in Google Ads in 2026?
Google is upgrading campaigns that use automatically created assets or campaign level broad match to AI Max for Search, with Dynamic Search Ads following in February 2027. Google takes more of the decisions, including which page a click lands on, unless you set the controls yourself.
Websites built for your trade
We build for every trade. These pages go deeper on what works for specific ones, including our own research on that trade's websites.
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Google and Meta ads
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Four details. We’ll text you what we’d run, a sensible budget and our fee, within one business day.