Tradie marketing pricing
Every True Blue service with its price published. Ad spend is always separate and paid directly to Google or Meta from your own account. No lock-in contracts.
Website design
$0 build · $79/month
A fast, mobile-first site built to turn a 'near me' search into a booked job.
Included:
- Free build, live in days
- Hosting, SSL, security & daily backups
- Up to 1 hour of updates a month
- Extra work $120/hour, quoted first
- GA4, Search Console & call tracking included
- You own the domain and the site
Google Ads
$235 /week management
Search campaigns for people looking for your trade right now.
Included:
- Account built by job type and intent
- Negative keywords from week one
- Call & form tracking on every campaign
- Ad spend from $30/day, paid direct to Google
- Monthly plain-English report
- You own the ad account
Meta Ads
$235 /week management
Facebook & Instagram campaigns for jobs that sell on photos and reputation.
Included:
- Conversion-goal campaigns, not boosted posts
- Pixel & conversions API installed
- Creative from your real work, tested
- Ad spend from $30/day, paid direct to Meta
- Retargeting of site visitors
- You own the ad account
SEO
$2,200 /month, typically from
Technical, local and content SEO scoped to your actual market and competition.
Included:
- Technical audit and fixes
- Job-type pages and cost guides, written properly
- Google Business Profile management
- No spun suburb pages
- Rankings and tracked enquiries reported monthly
- No ranking guarantees, ever
How tradie marketing pricing works at True Blue
Website and ad management are the same fee for every trade because the work involved does not change from trade to trade: build a fast, converting site, or build and run a campaign properly. A solo sparky and a six-van plumbing outfit need the same discipline in the ad account, so they pay the same management fee — the difference is in how much ad spend makes sense, and that's paid to Google or Meta, not to us.
SEO is different. How much work it takes to rank depends entirely on your market. A trade with light local competition needs far less than one fighting for space in a capital city; a business with five services across three regions needs more content than one doing one thing in one town. That is why there is no single flat number for SEO. We look at your competition before quoting, and the quote states what you are getting. Our guide to what SEO really costs a tradie explains the variables.
Ad spend is always separate
Ad spend. It's paid directly to the platform from an ad account in your name. We'll recommend a daily budget — usually from $30 a day per channel — but you can see every dollar Google or Meta charged, and our fee never moves with your spend. That removes the incentive to push spend up for its own sake.
Management fees do not change with business size
Website and ad management fees are the same rate whether you're a solo operator or running a small crew. The work itself doesn't scale with your business size. What scales is the budget you choose to put behind it, and that's your call.
How to work out your monthly cost
Add the services you'd start with. Most clients begin with the free website and one channel — Google Ads for urgent trades, Meta or local SEO for visual or planned ones — and add the next once the first is paying for itself. The marketing calculator puts a mix together for your trade and gives you a monthly estimate in about two minutes, no call required.
Tradie marketing costs: three realistic first-quarter examples
Three common starting points, using the published prices above and typical starting ad budgets. These are arithmetic on our fees, not predictions of results. What the money produces depends on your market, and the free marketing plan sets that out before you spend.
Free website only
Build: $0. Then $79/month. Over three months that's $237 total, and you own a fast, tracked, converting site with a matching Google Business Profile. Right for a business that's never had a proper site, or has one that's slow and doesn't convert, and wants the foundation before spending on ads.
Free website + Google Ads
Management $235/week (about $1,018/month), plus ad spend from $30/day (about $913/month) paid to Google. With 50% off the first month's management fee, three months is roughly $2,545 in fees + $2,739 in ad spend + $237 for the site. Right for urgent, search-driven trades — plumbing, electrical, roofing, air-con — where people search at the moment of need.
Free website + SEO
SEO typically from $2,200/month, scoped to your market; 50% off the first month. Three months is roughly $5,500 in fees + $237 for the site, and the work compounds — month four costs the same as month three but starts from a higher base. Right for businesses in a competitive market who want enquiries that keep arriving after the spend stops.
What ad spend should I start with?
$30 a day per channel is the floor where a campaign can gather enough data to be optimised properly; below that, Google and Meta don't get enough signal and the account never settles. The right number above that depends on three things: how competitive the searches are in your area (cost per click varies enormously between a regional town and a capital city), how many jobs you can take on, and the value of the jobs you're targeting. A business targeting $15,000 renovations can justify more spend per lead than one targeting $150 call-outs. We'll recommend a starting budget for your trade and area, and the monthly report will show whether it's producing leads at a cost that makes sense — and if it isn't, we'll say so.
Why "fees separate from spend" matters
Some agencies charge a percentage of ad spend, which quietly rewards them for recommending you spend more. Others bundle spend into a single "package" price so you can't see what went to Google. Our fee is flat and your spend is paid to the platform from your own account, so the incentive to inflate the budget doesn't exist and the number on your Google or Meta invoice is the number that was spent.
True Blue pricing vs paying per lead on a marketplace
Lead marketplaces and pay-per-lead services look cheaper on paper. This is what the money buys in each case; the full comparison is in hipages vs your own marketing.
Marketing you own (True Blue)
- Enquiries come to you and only you
- The website, rankings, ad accounts and data are yours — they leave with you
- Rankings keep producing enquiries after you stop paying for clicks
- Cost per lead falls over time as the account and the site mature
- Reporting shows exactly what each channel produced
Shared leads (marketplaces)
- The same enquiry is typically sold to several businesses at once
- You pay per lead whether it's a real job or a tyre-kicker
- Nothing builds — stop paying and the leads stop instantly
- The platform owns the customer relationship, not you
- Prices per lead tend to rise as more tradies join the same pool
Tradie marketing pricing: common questions
Website and ad management fees are flat as shown. SEO is case-by-case because competition varies so much by market — the figure shown is a typical starting point, not a fixed number. Ad spend for Google and Meta is always separate from our management fee, paid directly to the platform from your own account.
No. Terms are confirmed in writing before you commit to anything, and services run month to month. You can scale services up or down as the business changes.
Yes — most clients run more than one service together, usually starting with the free website and one channel. The marketing calculator gives an estimated combined monthly cost for your mix.
Because the amount of work genuinely varies. A regional trade with little competition might need a fraction of the effort a metro trade fighting for the same rankings does. We assess your specific market before quoting rather than guessing with a one-size number.
No. Website builds are $0 to start, and ad campaign builds are included in the first week of management. What you see here is what you pay.
New clients get 50% off the first month's management fee on Google Ads, Meta Ads or SEO. It excludes ad spend, hosting and additional development work, and it's subject to final approval when we confirm your plan.
They're yours. The domain, the site files, the ad accounts, the Business Profile and the analytics all stay with you. We'd rather earn the ongoing fee by being useful than by making it hard to leave.
Get a monthly figure for your trade
Tell us your trade and where you work. You will get a recommended mix, a realistic cost per enquiry for your market and a monthly figure, and we will say plainly if part of it is not worth doing yet.
- No lock-in contracts
- Fees separate from ad spend
- All-Australian team
