How much should a trade business spend on marketing?

Key facts

• Recommended minimum: A$5,000 a month in ad spend for most businesses.
• Median cost per enquiry across 37 trade and home-service accounts: A$117, middle half A$61 to A$157 (Sep 2025 – 24 Sep 2026).
• At the median, A$5,000 a month buys about 35 plumbing, 42 electrical or 86 cleaning enquiries.
• The largest companies we work with invest up to A$30,000 a day in advertising; enterprise programmes run above that.
• Ad spend and agency fees are separate. Our fees are custom and not published.

How we measure. An enquiry is a recorded phone call or a submitted form, not a booked job. Cost per enquiry is ad spend divided by enquiries, in Australian dollars excluding GST and excluding agency fees. Each figure is the median across accounts, and ranges are the interquartile range: the middle half of accounts, from the 25th to the 75th percentile. Inclusion rule: Accounts with at least A$2,000 of spend and 20 enquiries in the window, whose conversions are at least 75% calls and forms, and whose phone calls are tracked as calls. Taps on a phone number or email link are never counted as enquiries. Duplicate accounts counted once. A vertical is published only with 5 or more qualifying accounts.

We do not publish separate ranges for roofing, pest control or painting yet, because too few of those accounts meet the inclusion rule. The all-accounts row includes 1 other trade account that is too small a group to publish on its own.

Google sets no minimum budget. The floor comes from what a budget has to do in the first months: produce enough enquiries to tell a working campaign from a lucky one.

• Enough enquiries to learn from. At the rates in the table, A$5,000 buys roughly 32 to 82 enquiries a month across trades. Split across two or three services and a few groups of suburbs, that still gives each part of the account enough volume to compare. Halve it and each service sees a handful of calls, where one good week and one bad week look the same.
• Enough clicks for the search terms to show a pattern. At the all-trades median of A$15.51 per click, A$5,000 buys about 322 clicks a month. That is the raw material for the weekly review of what people actually typed, which is where most wasted spend is found.
• Enough conversions for the bidding to work. Google Ads optimises toward the actions you tell it are valuable, such as calls and forms. Thin conversion data gives it little to learn from.
• The set-up work costs the same at any budget. Tracking, landing pages and search-term reviews take similar effort whether the account spends a little or a lot.

If A$5,000 a month is not possible yet, narrow the account rather than thinning it: one service, your closest suburbs and the hours you can answer. Our earlier guide on setting a Google Ads budget by working back from one job covers that case.

Work back from the jobs you want, not forward from a figure that feels comfortable:

1. Decide how many extra jobs a month the team can take on.
2. Divide by your enquiry-to-job rate to get the enquiries you need.
3. Multiply by a cost per enquiry from the benchmark for your trade.

An illustrative example, not a forecast: a plumber who wants 20 more jobs a month and wins one enquiry in three needs about 60 enquiries. The table shows what 60 enquiries cost at each point of the plumbing range, and the same for the other trades.

If the answer comes out below A$5,000 a month, the market or the job target is small, and a narrower account will read more clearly. If it comes out far above, check that the searches exist in your area and that the team can do the work before committing. Your enquiry-to-job rate matters as much as the benchmark: our guide on conversion rates for trades explains how to measure it.

Scaling works when enquiries rise roughly in step with spend. These accounts show what that looks like, each compared with itself. We publish a client's measured improvement and rates, never their enquiry counts or spend.

Where the improvement shows ad spend and enquiries rising together at a steady cost per enquiry, the account grew without giving back its efficiency. Where spend rose faster than enquiries, each extra enquiry cost more, and the question became whether the extra jobs were worth it. The accounts that scale well share a pattern:

• Grow what already converts. Add budget to the services and suburbs with the best cost per enquiry first, then open new ones as separate campaigns.
• Change one thing at a time, a month apart. A new account’s volume keeps building for months: in launches we measured, enquiries in month 4 ran at a median 2.2 times month 1. See how long Google Ads takes to get leads.
• Scale to capacity. More enquiries than the team can answer or attend raises cost per job, even if cost per enquiry looks fine.
• Keep the review rhythm. More spend means more search terms; the weekly exclusion work grows with the budget.

The largest companies we work with currently invest up to A$30,000 a day in advertising, and enterprise programmes run above that. At that size the account looks different, not just bigger:

• campaigns for every service line and every region, each with its own landing pages;
• call handling built for volume, with call tracking by campaign so busy periods do not lose enquiries;
• reporting against booked job value, not enquiry counts, because small changes in the conversion rate are worth more than any bid change;
• search-term review at scale, because a wasted pattern costs more every day it runs.

No business needs to start there. The same method that works at A$5,000 a month, measured properly and scaled to capacity, is what gets an account to that size. Our Google Ads management page explains how we run accounts at each stage.

No. Ad spend is what Google charges for clicks. A marketing budget also covers the people and assets that make those clicks pay:

Always compare proposals with ad spend and management fees shown as two separate numbers, and ask how the ad account is set up and who runs it. We own and run the accounts we build; on long-term agreements, ownership and handover options are available to discuss. Our management fees are not published: every engagement is custom-built around your channels, markets and the volume of work you want. Our guide on how Google Ads agencies charge explains the common models.

For trade-specific set-ups, see our pages on marketing for plumbing businesses, electricians and cleaning businesses. When the website is the constraint, our website design team builds the pages, and our lead generation work ties ads, pages and follow-up together.

What is the minimum Google Ads budget for a trade business?

Google sets no minimum. We recommend at least A$5,000 a month in ad spend for most businesses, because at the median cost per enquiry across 37 trade and home-service accounts we manage (A$117, Sep 2025 – 24 Sep 2026) it buys about 43 enquiries a month. That is enough to see which services and suburbs produce jobs.

How many leads does A$5,000 a month buy a trade business?

At the median cost per enquiry in our benchmark (Sep 2025 – 24 Sep 2026), A$5,000 a month buys about 35 plumbing, 42 electrical or 86 cleaning enquiries. The real figure depends on your suburbs, services, competition and how well calls and quote requests are handled. An enquiry is a call or form, not a booked job.

Should ad spend and agency fees be quoted separately?

Yes. Ad spend is paid to Google for clicks; a management fee pays for the people running the account. Seeing them as two numbers is the only way to compare proposals. SoudCoh's fees are not published because each engagement is custom-built around your channels, markets and the volume of work you want.

How large can a trade business's Google Ads budget get?

The largest companies we work with currently invest up to A$30,000 a day in advertising, and enterprise programmes run above that. What limits a budget is demand in your area and your capacity to answer and attend jobs, so scale in steps and keep cost per enquiry close to where it started.

Should a trade business spend a percentage of revenue on marketing?

A percentage of revenue tells you what you can afford, not whether the spend will pay. Work back from the jobs you want instead: jobs needed, divided by your enquiry-to-job rate, multiplied by a realistic cost per enquiry for your trade. Then check the result against what the business can afford.