Digital marketing for tradies: what to do first, second and never

Tradies get sold marketing in the wrong order. A social media package before the website has a page per job. Google Ads sent to a home page that does not say what a call-out costs. A marketplace subscription while the Google profile still shows a home address. Each one costs money, and each one works worse because the thing underneath it is missing. This is the order we use on the tradie sites we run ourselves in Australian cities, and the order we recommend to tradies who ask where to start.

First: the two things that cost nothing or once

The Google Business Profile, in service-area mode

It is free, it is where “plumber near me” is answered, and most tradie profiles are half finished. Set it to service-area mode so your home address is hidden and the suburbs you serve are listed; Google’s own help explains how a service-area business shows areas instead of an address. Same business name, same phone and same categories as the website. Add real photos of your work. The profile is yours and only you can verify it; what the website does is give the profile real pages to link to.

A website with a page per job and a page per suburb

The one-off cost, and the one that keeps paying. One page per job you want more of, with the price and what to do first. One real page per suburb you drive to. Your Google reviews shown live. Tap to call, tap to text, a quote form that reaches your phone at 2 am. Light enough to load on 4G. The tradie website article lists the eight parts; the point here is that every paid channel below sends people to this site, so if the site cannot convert them, the channel cannot either.

Second: reviews from every job, as a habit

Reviews are the ranking factor you control most directly and the trust signal customers read first. Ask at the end of every job, in person, then send the link by text that evening. One sentence, no script. Reply to every review, including the bad ones, in plain words. Never buy reviews, never ask staff or family to post them, never offer a discount for a five-star rating: the ACCC treats fake or incentivised reviews as misleading conduct, and the platforms remove them. A tradie who collects two or three real reviews a week outranks one with a hundred old ones within a year.

Third: one paid channel while the organic positions build

SEO takes months. A new job page ranks for easier suburb searches in two to three months in a regional city; a competitive metro trade takes four to six months to show clearly. In the meantime you need work, and there are three ways to buy it. Pick one.

Google Ads, with a tight budget. Fast, measurable, and expensive in metro trades where a click can cost more than a lead is worth. It works when the ad goes to the job page (not the home page), the keywords are exact (“blocked drain Parramatta”, not “plumber”), negative keywords are set from day one and the budget is capped. The Google Ads for tradies article covers when it pays and when it burns.

Marketplaces (hipages, Airtasker, ServiceSeeking). The customer’s request is sold to several tradies and you compete on price and speed of reply. They fill a quiet week; they build nothing you own. Useful in the first months, dropped when the diary fills.

Exclusive enquiries from sites that already rank. The customer calls or texts a local site for one trade in one area and the enquiry goes to one business. You pay per real enquiry, with no monthly fee, and stop when you want. It is our Leads for tradies model, and it is the option that costs nothing until the phone rings.

Then: SEO, so the paid channel can be wound down

Once the site exists, SEO for tradies is the monthly work that keeps adding suburb pages, answers and local links until the city is covered. The cost per job falls every month because the positions compound; ads do the opposite. Most tradies we work with run one paid channel at the start, watch the organic enquiries climb in the monthly report, and wind the paid channel down over six to twelve months. The SEO for tradies page explains what the plan includes and what it costs by city.

Never, or not yet

Social media ads before the above is done. Facebook and Instagram reach people who are not looking for a tradie right now. They work for showing your jobs to past customers and their friends, which is referrals, and that is worth doing for free when you have ten minutes. Paying for reach before the profile and the website are right is paying to send people to a site that will not convert them.

Five channels at once. You cannot tell which one brought the job, so you cannot stop the ones that did not. One channel, three months, measured in enquiries.

A fake address, bought reviews, a “licensed and insured” line without the licence number. Each one is a short-term lift and a long-term loss: Google removes the profile, the ACCC treats the claim as misleading, and the customer who checks finds out.

How to tell what is working

Count enquiries, not clicks, likes or impressions. Where did each call, text and form come from, and did it become a job? A website with call and form tracking tells you; a Google profile tells you its own calls; an ads account tells you its clicks and you match them to jobs. After three months you know which channel is paying per job, and that is the only number that decides what to do next.

If you want to know where your business stands today, the free audit looks at the profile, the site and where you rank for your top five jobs by suburb, in writing, within two business days.