When Google Ads for builders is worth the money
Paid search suits a builder with one clearly defined service, a page that explains it properly, and someone who answers enquiries the same day. It suits a builder with capacity to fill in the next two quarters. It does not suit a builder whose website is a gallery and a contact form, because you would be paying Google to send people to a page that cannot sell.
A campaign for knock-down rebuilds in Brisbane’s inner south is a real campaign. A campaign for building can only fail. The narrow one lets you write an ad, a page and a first phone call that all say the same thing, and it gives your team a conversation they can have consistently.
Check your capacity before your budget. If you are booked to next winter, either say so in the ad and sell the wait, or pause the campaign. Promising an immediate start because it makes a better headline creates a sales problem before the owner has seen a single project.
Buy searches for work you actually do
Pick the service first, then add geography. Custom homes, knock-down rebuilds, large renovations, sloping and difficult blocks: these are the things people search with intent, and they are the searches worth paying for. Use Keyword Planner with your local settings to see what demand exists and roughly what it costs. Its forecasts come from historical search data, so treat them as a sense of scale rather than a quote.
Then read the search terms report weekly for the first month. It shows what people actually typed before they clicked, subject to Google’s reporting limits, and it is where the waste is visible. Jobs and apprenticeships, TAFE courses, free house plans, kit homes, trades touting for work: add negatives as you find them. Look at context before excluding a word, because an owner researching a real project uses a lot of the same vocabulary as somebody who will never buy anything.
This is where a builder has to ignore most of the Google Ads for tradies advice on offer. A plumber can profitably bid on an emergency search. A custom builder is buying the beginning of an eighteen-month conversation, which means the ad’s job is to start it honestly, not to close it.
Check your location settings before anything else
This is the first place a builder’s money leaks. Google’s default location option is presence or interest, which means your ads can show to people outside the area you drew on the map if they have shown interest in it. That is how you end up paying for clicks from Perth on a Brisbane campaign.
Presence targeting narrows it to people who are actually in your area. Narrower is usually right, but not always: an owner in Sydney planning a home on a block they bought in Bulimba is a genuine prospect, and presence targeting will cut them out. Make the choice deliberately, then ask where the project is during the first phone call rather than assuming the click location tells you.
Draw the service area the way you actually work, too. If you will not build past Redcliffe, do not target the whole of South East Queensland because the forecast looks healthier.
The landing page is most of the campaign
Send the traffic to a page that answers four things: what you build, where you build it, proof that you have done it, and what happens if they get in touch. One or two relevant projects beat a portfolio of everything. If your first step involves a feasibility fee, say so on the page. The ad and the page have to describe the same appointment, or you are paying for a click and then breaking the promise that earned it.
Ask for enough to qualify and no more: suburb, project type, whether they own the site, how far along the design is, and a budget range with the scope spelled out. Some owners are quoting construction only and some are including land, consultants and the pool. If you do not define it, you will compare two numbers that are not comparable.
Flascon Construction Group’s site is a good shape to copy. A free four-step feasibility check does the qualifying, and a separate eight-step process page states the deposit and construction timing plainly, so nobody arrives at the first meeting guessing. Build the page and test the whole enquiry route before you spend a dollar on media.
What it costs: four bills, not one
When an agency quotes $1,000 a month, ask which of the four bills that covers. Media spend goes to Google. On top of it sit the management fee, the one-off setup and the landing-page work. Get them itemised and confirm GST. The media spend should sit in an account in your name where you can see it, separate from anyone’s fee.
Our own pricing research puts management for Australian campaigns somewhere between $500 and $2,500 a month depending on scope. At the bottom of that band expect a tightly limited service. At the top, ask exactly what is being done each month, who does it, and what the reporting looks like. Nobody should be charging you a percentage of spend for a campaign this small.
Run the sum before you commit. Say $1,500 of media and $800 of management in a month, setup and page priced separately. If that produces ten enquiries and three of them are projects you would build, each of those cost about $767 before your own sales time. For a builder working on custom homes that can be very good value. For a builder on thin margins and long lead times it can be indefensible. Compare it against the contribution from a job you win, not the contract value.
Measure enquiries you would build
A form submission, a qualified enquiry, a signed preliminary agreement and a building contract are four different events, and only the last two pay for anything. Track them separately in your own records. Google has qualified-lead and converted-lead conversion goals for exactly this, and if someone else runs the account, make them tell you which action is driving the bidding and which is only being reported.
Strip out the noise before you judge the numbers. Spam submissions, job applicants and suppliers are not leads. A click on the phone button is not a conversation. And on a custom build the contract may be nine months behind the click, so mark the cohort and come back to it rather than declaring a verdict in week four.
Do not scale on one good month. Before you raise the budget, check that the search terms are still relevant, that there is enough real demand in your area to absorb more spend, and that your office can answer more calls properly. Most builder campaigns have a ceiling, and pushing past it just buys worse traffic.
Frequently asked questions
Are Google Ads worth it for builders? They can be, when you advertise one defined service, send traffic to a page that qualifies, and win work at a margin that covers the whole acquisition cost. Test one service with a fixed budget and a fixed review date, and judge it on suitable enquiries rather than clicks.
How much should a builder spend on Google Ads? Enough that a month produces a readable result. Below roughly $500 of media a month you will not collect enough clicks to learn anything, and the management fee will dwarf the spend. Build the number from local demand estimates, the four bills above, and what you can afford to lose while you find out.
Are Google Ads better than Facebook ads for builders? They answer different moments. Search reaches somebody already looking for a builder. Facebook ads for builders interrupt somebody who was not, which suits remarketing and showing off finished work, not capturing ready enquiries. Start with search if you have one clear offer, and do not add a second channel because the first report disappointed you.
Where to start this month
- Pick one service, one honest service area and one first appointment your team can deliver next week. Write down what makes an enquiry suitable.
- Build or fix the landing page, then submit your own enquiry form and time how long the reply takes.
- Pull local demand estimates from Keyword Planner and get an itemised quote separating media, management, setup and page work.
- Set location targeting to presence rather than presence or interest unless you have a reason not to.
- Agree a test budget, a review date and the number of suitable enquiries that would justify continuing.
- Read the search terms report every week for the first month and add negatives before you touch the budget.