Google Ads for Perth tradies: what to check first

A plumber in Joondalup puts $1,800 through Google Ads in a month. Ninety-four clicks. Two booked jobs. He switches the campaign off and tells his mate that Google Ads does not work for tradies.

The result was real. The conclusion was wrong. Ninety-four people in his service area typed a problem into Google and chose his ad over everyone else's. That part worked. What failed was everything after the click, and none of it was Google's doing.

Before we go further: we are not a Google Ads agency and we do not want your media budget. We get called in when the spend is not turning into work, and about eight times out of ten the campaign is not the thing that is broken. This is what we look at.

What a trade click actually costs

Worth knowing before you decide whether $1,800 was a lot or a little.

Run the Joondalup numbers against that. Ninety-four clicks for $1,800 is roughly $19 each, which is high but not absurd for emergency plumbing terms. Two jobs from ninety-four clicks is a 2.1% conversion rate against an all-industry average of about 7%.[1]

The four places the money leaks

1. The ad points at your homepage

Someone in Canning Vale searches "ducted air conditioning install Perth". They land on a general page about your business with no mention of ducted systems and no obvious next step. They are back on the results page in seconds, and you paid for the round trip.

The fix is a page per service and area that repeats the words the person searched for, with the phone number visible without scrolling. This is the single largest lever on the whole campaign and it costs nothing in media spend.

2. Conversion tracking is broken or missing

Open Google Ads, go to Goals then Conversions. If it shows zero conversions, or it is counting page views rather than calls and form submissions, every optimisation decision you have made was a guess. Google's bidding also needs conversion data to work. Without it, automated bidding optimises for traffic volume, which is not what you are buying.

3. Broad match with no negative keyword list

Pull the search terms report and read every query that triggered an ad in the last thirty days. Trade accounts routinely find "plumbing courses", "plumbing supplies wholesale", "HVAC certification", "aircon parts" and a long tail of job seekers. At $10 a click that adds up fast, and it is an afternoon's work to block.

4. Nothing happens when the call goes unanswered

This is the expensive one and the one nobody sees, because it leaves no trace in the Google Ads interface. The lead clicks, calls, gets no answer because you are in a ceiling cavity in Midland, and moves to the next result. There is no voicemail, no form fill, no record. You paid for the click and you will never know the enquiry happened.

The gap between the click and the callback

There is a short window where a paid lead is yours to lose. They have identified a problem, searched for a fix, and chosen you. Intent does not get higher than that.

The window is short. Someone who clicks a paid ad is comparing you against the next two results, and the wait they will tolerate is measured in minutes, not hours.

The trade-specific version is blunter. Most people who reach a voicemail hang up without leaving a message. A paid click that ends in an unanswered ring is not a warm lead sitting in a queue. It is gone, and it took $19 with it.

The fix is not hiring someone to sit by a phone. It is closing the gap automatically: when a call from an ad goes unanswered, an SMS goes out from your own business number inside a minute, asks one qualifying question, and puts a written enquiry in front of you before you have climbed down the ladder.

Two things Perth tradies keep getting sold

"We'll set up your Local Services Ads and Google Guaranteed badge"

They cannot. Local Services Ads are not available in Australia. Google's own Local Services sign-up lists eligibility for the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Spain and Switzerland. Australia is not on the list.[3]

There is no select-cities workaround and no Australian trade category. Google is folding LSAs into Google Ads as a pay-per-lead Performance Max campaign type, phased from August 2026 in the United States and reaching non-US accounts in 2027, so the position may change. It has not changed yet.[3]

"Just use hipages instead, it's pay per lead"

It is a real option and plenty of Perth operators use it, so this is not a hit piece. But it is a different purchase and the difference matters. What a lead costs in dollars on each plan is in is hipages worth it.

A marketplace is a reasonable tap to turn on when the diary is thin. It is a poor foundation, because you are renting access to someone else's customers and competing on price to get them. To see what your hipages leads cost per job you actually win, run last month's numbers through the calculator.

Ads or SEO first?

The most common question we get on this, and the answer is less either-or than people expect.

Run ads for work this month and build the organic side underneath. The useful part is that ads tell you which searches actually produce booked jobs, so you learn which suburb and service pages are worth writing before you write them. Paid buys you time. Organic is the thing you keep. The cheapest organic piece to start on is your Google Business Profile: score yours against your map pack in two minutes.

The part that decides whether the follow-up arrives

If you pair your ads with automated SMS follow-up, one thing decides whether any of it lands. A lot of Perth trade businesses have this configured already and quietly wonder why nobody replies. The dashboard reports delivered. Nothing comes back.

In our experience the cause is almost always registration. Australian commercial SMS falls under the Spam Act 2003, enforced by the Australian Communications and Media Authority. It requires consent you can evidence, clear identification of your business by legal name or ABN, and a working unsubscribe processed within five business days. ACMA also requires every alphanumeric Sender ID to be listed on the SMS Sender ID Register by 1 July 2026.[5]

An automated follow-up sent under an unregistered business name arrives with "Unverified" where your name should be, in the same pile as the scam texts, while the ad spend keeps running. Which of your texts that affects. Separately, Spam Act breaches carry penalties of up to A$3.64 million for a company and A$728,000 for an individual.[5]

How to structure Perth suburb targeting

Perth metro is roughly 120 kilometres end to end. An operator in Balcatta serves a different map to one in Rockingham, and a single campaign targeting "Perth" flattens that distinction and spends accordingly.

Cluster instead. Group your genuine service areas into separate ad groups, each with its own landing page and bid adjustment. For a northern-suburbs HVAC operator that looks like:

1. Joondalup cluster. Joondalup, Currambine, Edgewater, Beldon, Kingsley. Higher bids, because average job value in those postcodes carries them.
2. Stirling cluster. Balcatta, Osborne Park, Stirling, Karrinyup, Nollamara. Short drive times, so smaller jobs still pay.
3. Wanneroo cluster. Wanneroo, Banksia Grove, Two Rocks, Yanchep, Butler. Lower bids and a higher job minimum, because an hour each way changes the maths.

After sixty days you can see cost per booked job by cluster rather than by campaign, and move budget toward the areas that actually pay. Most trade accounts we open have never had that view.

Google Ads across Perth, region by region

The clusters change with the part of Perth you work from. What changes most is not the keyword list. It is what an unanswered click costs you, and that depends on the local job mix.

Joondalup and the northern corridor

Most of the waste up here is travel, not clicks. A radius drawn around Joondalup runs up the freeway to Yanchep, and a booked job in Two Rocks that turns out to be a tenant who cannot authorise the work costs you half a day. Run the far-north suburbs as their own ad group with a job minimum in the ad copy, and qualify every enquiry before anyone gets in the van. How we set up Joondalup trade businesses.

Osborne Park and Balcatta

These are trade-dense suburbs. The searcher sees four other trades inside two kilometres on the same results page, so an ad that lands on a slow homepage or a phone that rings out simply pays for your competitor's call. In this part of Perth, the speed of the callback matters more than your bid. See Osborne Park and Balcatta.

Malaga, Bayswater and the north-east

High call volume and a lot of air conditioning work, peaking in the first hot week of summer. Budgets capped per day run out before lunch on exactly the days that matter, so set the schedule and caps around the season rather than an even monthly spend. See Malaga and Bayswater.

Welshpool, Canning Vale and the south-east

Roofing, solar and commercial work, where the enquiry becomes a quote and the quote decides the job. Counting a form fill as the conversion flatters these campaigns. Track quotes sent and won, or you will keep funding keywords that bring in tyre-kickers. See Welshpool and Canning Vale.

Fremantle

Two different buyers search the same terms: householders in heritage homes, and cafes and pubs losing trade while the hot water or drains are down. Commercial callers want an answer inside the hour, not a quote next week, so give them their own ad group and route their calls differently. Google Ads and follow-up for Fremantle trades.

Mandurah and Peel

Do not fold Mandurah into a Perth campaign. It is its own market, with a smaller competitive set and word of mouth that travels fast, so a separate campaign with its own budget and a local landing page usually beats a Perth-wide radius that happens to reach it. How we work with Mandurah trades.

Not listed? See every area we cover in Perth and Peel.

What to check before you spend another dollar

In order. Each one is free and takes minutes. Starting from an empty account instead? The national setup guide walks the whole build step by step.

1. Conversions. Goals then Conversions in Google Ads. Zero recorded, or tracking page views instead of calls and forms? Stop and fix this before anything else.
2. Search terms. Insights and reports then Search terms. Read all of it. Everything irrelevant goes on the negative list today.
3. Landing pages. Click your own ad on your phone. If the headline does not name the service you searched for, and the phone number is not visible without scrolling, that is your biggest leak.
4. Missed call follow-up. Ring your business number from a phone it does not recognise and let it ring out. If nothing arrives within two minutes, every unanswered ad click is being discarded.
5. Bid strategy. On Maximise Clicks with fewer than about fifteen recorded conversions, you are paying Google to optimise for traffic. Get conversions tracking properly first, then move to a conversion-based strategy.

Items three and four are where we spend our time. One and two are yours or your ads manager's, and we are happy to talk to them rather than around them.

Frequently asked questions