A plumbing enquiry from Google Ads cost a median A$141 across 15 Australian plumbing accounts managed by SoudCoh (Sep 2025 – 24 Sep 2026). The middle half of accounts paid between A$110 and A$174 per enquiry, and 75% of enquiries were phone calls. An enquiry is a recorded call or form, not a booked job.
Below is the full benchmark, why two plumbers in the same city can sit at opposite ends of that range, what budgets from A$5,000 to A$20,000 a month typically buy, and what moved efficiency in four plumbing accounts.
What does a plumbing enquiry cost on Google Ads in Australia?
Key facts
- Median cost per enquiry: A$141 (15 plumbing accounts, Sep 2025 – 24 Sep 2026).
- Middle half of accounts: A$110 to A$174 per enquiry.
- Median cost per click: A$16.84; median click-to-enquiry rate: 12.3%.
- 75% of 4,044 recorded enquiries were phone calls.
- 74% of 31,162 ad clicks came from mobile phones.
The figures come from a read-only pull of the Google Ads accounts we manage for plumbing, drainage and leak detection businesses, and show what Google charged, not total marketing cost.
| Measure | Median | Middle half of accounts |
|---|---|---|
| Cost per enquiry | A$141 | A$110 to A$174 |
| Cost per click | A$16.84 | A$15.38 to A$20.49 |
| Clicks that became an enquiry | 12.3% | 11.8% to 16.6% |
| Click-through rate | 5.70% | Not published |
| Enquiries by phone | 75% of all enquiries (pooled) | |
| Clicks from mobile phones | 74% of all clicks (pooled) | |
Pooled across every enquiry in the sample, total spend divided by total enquiries came to A$116. A pooled figure is weighted toward the largest accounts, so we lead with the median: it describes a typical plumbing business rather than the biggest one in the group.
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.
If you want the same figures for other trades, see our electrician cost-per-lead benchmark and the cleaning benchmark. We do not publish figures for roofing, pest control or painting yet: too few accounts meet the inclusion rule for a range to mean anything.
Why do some plumbers pay far more per enquiry than others?
The spread between the cheaper and dearer quarter of plumbing accounts is wide. Four things explain most of it.
| Factor | Tends to push cost per enquiry up | Tends to pull it down |
|---|---|---|
| Type of work | Chasing planned, high-value jobs that people research and compare | Urgent jobs such as blocked drains, burst pipes and no hot water, where the searcher calls the first capable plumber |
| Account structure | One broad campaign with generic ads for every service | Campaigns split by service and by suburb, so each ad and page matches the exact search |
| Call handling | Ads running while nobody can pick up the phone | Ad hours matched to the hours someone answers, and missed calls returned quickly |
| Search filtering | Ads showing for DIY, job-seeker and out-of-area searches | Negative keywords reviewed every week from the search terms people actually typed |
Emergency and planned work behave differently. Someone with water through the ceiling searches, calls and books. Hot water replacement, renovations and gas fitting are researched and quoted, so more clicks end without an enquiry. An account weighted to planned work usually sits higher in the range, which can still pay if those jobs are worth more.
Service and suburb campaigns keep the match tight. The accounts we run best are split two ways: by job (blocked drains, leak detection, hot water) and by place (the suburbs the team can actually reach). The ad names the job and the suburb, and the landing page answers it. That is the work described on our Google Ads management page, and it is the main lever we pull when an account sits in the dearer half.
Unanswered calls are paid for anyway. Google charges for the click whether or not anyone picks up. With most plumbing enquiries arriving by phone, a missed call is the most expensive thing in the account. Our guide to matching ad hours to the hours you answer calls covers the setting that fixes it.
What does a monthly budget of A$5,000 to A$20,000 buy a plumber?
Divide a monthly budget by the benchmark range and you get a planning range for enquiries. The left column uses the dearer quarter of accounts, the middle uses the median, and the right uses the cheaper quarter.
| Monthly ad spend | At A$174 per enquiry | At the median, A$141 | At A$110 per enquiry |
|---|---|---|---|
| A$5,000 | 29 enquiries | 35 enquiries | 45 enquiries |
| A$10,000 | 57 enquiries | 71 enquiries | 91 enquiries |
| A$20,000 | 115 enquiries | 142 enquiries | 182 enquiries |
Read this as a range, not a quote:
- It is a straight division. The first dollars in an account buy the cheapest searches. As spend grows, it reaches further into dearer suburbs and less urgent jobs, so cost per enquiry tends to rise at the margin.
- Enquiries are not jobs. Multiply by your own enquiry-to-job rate to estimate booked work. Our guide on conversion rates for trades explains how to measure it.
- Your market sets the ceiling. A plumber covering a few outer suburbs cannot spend A$20,000 a month usefully; the searches do not exist.
This is why we recommend a minimum of A$5,000 a month in ad spend for most businesses. At plumbing rates that is roughly 29 to 45 enquiries a month: enough to see which services and suburbs produce work, and to make changes based on evidence rather than a handful of calls. Our guide to how much a trade business should spend on marketing explains how to scale from there.
A missed call is the most expensive thing in a plumbing account, because Google has already charged for it.
Are plumbing leads mostly phone calls or forms?
Mostly calls. In the plumbing accounts we measured, 75% of enquiries were phone calls and 25% were website forms, and 74% of ad clicks came from mobile phones. A plumbing account is, in practice, a phone-call business run through a mobile screen.
That changes where the money is won or lost:
- Call tracking has to be right before anything else. Google Ads can count calls from the ad itself and calls to a tracked number on your website, and it only counts a call once it passes a minimum length you set. If calls are not being recorded, cost per enquiry looks far worse than it is and the bidding optimises toward the wrong thing.
- The phone number and call button must be impossible to miss on a phone. See what that means in our guide to a trade website that converts calls and forms.
- Forms still matter for planned work. Quotes for hot water systems, renovations and commercial maintenance often come through forms, sometimes after hours. A short form with the suburb and the job type gives the office what it needs to call back.
What moved cost per enquiry and conversion in real plumbing accounts?
Four plumbing accounts from the sample, each compared with itself over time. We publish each client's measured improvement and rates, not their enquiry counts or spend.
| Business | Measured improvement | Compared over | Clicks that became an enquiry (whole account) | Enquiries by phone |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aussie Plumbing | 1.8× ad spend, with enquiries up 2.1×, so each enquiry cost less | Latest full month compared with the first full month | 11.9% | 76% |
| Alliance Plumbing | 1.8× ad spend, with enquiries up 2.1×, so each enquiry cost less | Best full month compared with the first full month | 21.6% | 81% |
| Aussie Leak Detect | 16.4% → 23.5% click-to-enquiry rate | Latest full month compared with the first full month | 21.1% | 84% |
Read the improvement column in two ways. Where ad spend and enquiries rise together, the account grew without giving back its efficiency: each extra dollar still bought enquiries close to the earlier rate. Where cost per enquiry falls or the click-to-enquiry rate rises, the same budget is buying more work. When spend rises faster than enquiries, cost per enquiry drifts up, and the test is whether the extra jobs are worth it.
The work behind those numbers followed one playbook, applied to what each account needed: campaigns built by job and by suburb, ads matched to the job searched, regular exclusion of searches that would never book, and calls measured separately from forms. Aussie Plumbing took 76% of its enquiries by phone and Aussie Leak Detect 84%, which is why call handling sits alongside the ads in every review. None of these results is a forecast for another business.
Read the benchmark as a range to plan against, then measure your own enquiry-to-job rate to turn it into jobs.
How do you get to the cheaper end of the range?
Most of the gap comes from work you can check yourself:
- Confirm every call and form is counted once. Duplicated or missing conversions distort cost per enquiry more than any bid change.
- Split campaigns by job and by suburb. One ad for “plumber” cannot speak to a blocked drain in one suburb and a hot water failure in another.
- Send each ad to a matching page. A blocked-drain search should land on a blocked-drain page, not the home page.
- Review search terms weekly. Exclude DIY, job-seeker, supplier and out-of-area searches as they appear.
- Answer the phone, or pause the ads. Match the ad schedule to real call cover.
- Judge it over months, not weeks. In accounts we launched, enquiries in the second month ran at a median 1.9 times the first month’s, while cost per enquiry settled above the part-month launch figure — volume builds first, and efficiency comes from the work above. Our guide to how long Google Ads takes to get leads has the full ramp.
If you would rather have this run for you, our marketing for plumbing businesses page shows how we set up plumbing accounts, and our lead generation work covers the website, tracking and follow-up around the ads. When the website is the weak link, our website design team builds service and suburb pages for the campaigns to land on.
Common questions about plumbing lead costs
How much does a plumbing lead cost on Google Ads in Australia?
Across 15 Australian plumbing accounts managed by SoudCoh (Sep 2025 – 24 Sep 2026), the median cost per enquiry was A$141, and the middle half of accounts paid between A$110 and A$174. An enquiry is a recorded phone call or submitted form. Cost per enquiry is ad spend divided by enquiries, excluding GST and agency fees.
How many leads will A$5,000 a month get a plumber?
Dividing A$5,000 by the cost-per-enquiry range in our plumbing benchmark gives roughly 29 to 45 enquiries a month, and about 35 at the median. Treat it as a planning range rather than a promise, because suburbs, services, competition and how quickly calls are answered all move the result.
Why are most plumbing leads phone calls?
Much plumbing demand is urgent, such as a burst pipe or blocked drain, so people ring rather than fill in a form. In our plumbing accounts, 75% of recorded enquiries were calls. That makes call answering, ad hours and call tracking as important as the ads themselves for keeping cost per enquiry down.
Is cost per enquiry the same as cost per job?
No. Cost per enquiry counts every recorded call and form, including price shoppers and jobs outside your area. To find cost per booked job, divide ad spend by the jobs won from those enquiries. Your own enquiry-to-job rate decides that figure, so track it alongside the benchmark.
Do agency fees count in these cost-per-enquiry figures?
No. The benchmark uses advertising spend only, in Australian dollars excluding GST. Management fees are a separate cost. SoudCoh's fees are not published because every engagement is scoped around the services, areas and volume of work a business wants. The figures here are what Google charged.
Questions and answers
Should a plumber run ads outside business hours?
Only when someone can answer. Urgent plumbing searches happen at night and on weekends, but an unanswered call still costs the click. Match the ad schedule to real call cover and extend it as cover improves.
What should I bring to a plumbing cost-per-enquiry review?
Bring the services you want more of, the suburbs you cover, recent enquiry numbers and how many became jobs. Those turn the benchmark range into a realistic target for your own account.