"What does a lead cost?" is the first question every tradie asks and the one most agencies answer with a shrug or a made-up benchmark. We'd rather show you the accounts. Every figure below is the platform's own, lifetime, as at September 2026; the full breakdown with campaign-level detail is on the results page.
Google Ads: cost per enquiry by trade
| Account | Enquiries | Ad spend | Cost per enquiry |
|---|---|---|---|
| Glazier / shower screens, Brisbane | 5,260 | $44.9K | $8.54 |
| Car detailing, Newcastle | 4,250 | $45.4K | $10.68 |
| Car detailing, Gold Coast | 1,980 | $21.5K | $10.85 |
| Concreter, Townsville | 512 | $6.2K | $12.15 |
| Landscaping / turf, Mandurah | 1,450 | $21.9K | $15.11 |
| Concreter, Central Coast | 518 | $19.4K | $37.38 |
| EV charger installer, Gold Coast | 79 | $3.05K | $38.67 |
| Roof replacement, Newcastle | 476 | $22.3K | $46.82 |
| Roof replacement, Maitland | 588 | $35.2K | $59.93 |
| All accounts, all time | 34,500 | $507K | $14.70 |
An "enquiry" here is a tracked phone call or quote form from an ad — not a click, not a page view.
Meta: cost per lead form by trade
| Campaign | Leads | Ad spend | Cost per lead |
|---|---|---|---|
| Car detailing (Wollongong, Perth) | 441 | $5.2K | $11.86 |
| Epoxy flooring (Adelaide, Melbourne) | 147 | $3.4K | $23.16 |
| Roof restoration (GC/Brisbane, Sydney, Sunshine Coast) | 407 | $13.3K | $32.56 |
| Bathroom renovation (Perth South, Hobart, Melbourne) | 242 | $8.3K | $34.45 |
| All shown | 1,237 | $30.2K | $24.43 |
Why the range is so wide — and why that's fine
A $60 roofing enquiry and an $8.54 glazing enquiry are both excellent, because the roofing job is worth $15,000 and the glazing repair is worth $400. Cost per lead on its own is meaningless. What matters is cost per lead against what a lead is worth: your average job value, times your close rate, times your margin. A roofer who closes one in four $15,000 jobs at 30% margin makes about $1,125 gross profit per enquiry on average — so $60 is cheap. A glazier at $400 a job, one in two, 45% margin makes $90 per enquiry — so $8.54 is still cheap, but $60 wouldn't be.
That's the number to carry into any conversation with any marketing company: what's a lead worth to me, and what will you charge me to get one? The lead value calculator does the maths on your own figures in about thirty seconds.
What moves cost per lead in a trade account
- The landing page. The single biggest lever. A fast, phone-first page for the exact job can halve the cost per enquiry versus a slow homepage.
- Job-type structure. One campaign for "electrician" pays the same for a $150 power point and a $6,000 switchboard. Split by job type and weight the budget toward the ones that pay.
- Negatives and location. Job-seekers, DIY searches, suppliers and out-of-area clicks are a quarter of a badly run account's spend.
- Time. Google's bidding learns from every conversion. The Brisbane glazier account didn't start at $8.54; it got there over years of data. Accounts that get reset or rebuilt every time someone new takes over never get cheap.
- Answering the phone. Nothing to do with ads, and it decides whether the $15 enquiry becomes a $1,500 job.
The honest caveat
These are our accounts, in these markets, over these periods. Your trade in your town will land somewhere in the range, not necessarily at the average — a plumber in inner Sydney and a plumber in Dubbo are different campaigns. What we can promise is that you'll see your own number, tracked, every month, and that we'll tell you before you spend if we think the maths won't work for your trade.
