Google Ads for tradesmen, measured in booked jobs
Google Ads for tradesmen means running paid search so that job-intent searches — boiler repair, rewiring, roof leak, "emergency electrician near me" — become tracked phone calls and quote requests, priced per trade and per job type. GrowthLine is a Google Ads agency for UK lead-generation businesses, and the trades are one of the industries we build for; lead generation for tradesmen is the same discipline: paid search that ends in a ringing phone, not a report about clicks. Below: what trade clicks cost, the three faults we find in trades accounts, where the fees are published, and the Local Services Ads question answered for the UK.
The economics of Google Ads for the trades
Click prices track job value — an emergency call-out and a quoted installation are different businesses at the click level, so the same daily budget behaves completely differently depending on the trade and the job type a campaign chases. That is why every figure below is stated per trade — and every one carries its source.
| Trade | Monthly UK searches | Avg CPC |
|---|---|---|
| Plumbers | 113,400 | £4.67 |
| Electricians | 98,380 | £2.31 |
| Builders & extensions | 43,600 | £1.68 |
| Roofers | 40,420 | £4.14 |
| Landscapers & gardeners | 15,000 | £1.10 |
| Heating & boiler engineers | 33,400 | £4.72 |
Source: UK Google Ads data (DataForSEO), July 2026. CPCs shown are low top-of-page bids — what a well-optimised account pays per click, not the inflated headline averages.
Plumbing and heating is the trade we cover in the most depth — see Google Ads for plumbers. Electricians, builders, roofers and landscapers run under the same per-trade method, and each gets its own page as verified data for that trade lands.
A free audit gets your own trade's numbers, not industry averages.
Results, published and sourced
£120k/mo
Recurring contracted work won for a steel fabricator in the first 30 days
Client-reported
£19.97
Cost per lead for a DPF specialist, down from £86.50
Client Google Ads account
~70/mo
Enquiries for a new-start London clinic, from a standing start
Client CRM, 90-day ramp
Every figure is signed off by the client it belongs to. See the case studies
Trades reporting is against cost per answered call and, where the business's systems allow, cost per booked job — never clicks.
The three faults we find in trades accounts
Trades accounts fail in patterns, and the patterns are structural, not budgetary.
One campaign for every job type
Emergency call-outs, small repairs and quoted installations have completely different job values and completely different searches, but the account runs them through one generic campaign with one budget — so the cheap clicks eat the spend and the valuable jobs starve. Fix: one campaign per trade and per job line, so each one's economics are visible.
Counting clicks instead of answered calls
Trades enquiries arrive by phone, but the account reports clicks and "conversions" that turn out to be page views — nobody can say what a booked job costs. Fix: call tracking and form tracking verified against real enquiries before any optimisation starts.
Paying for jobs you can't do
Budget leaks to searches that were never a job — DIY and how-to searches, clicks from outside the radius you actually cover, and trades you don't offer. Fix: negative keywords, tight location targeting and search-term review as standing weekly work.
This is standing scope inside our PPC management service, not a one-off fix.
Who we're not for
If there is no one to answer the phone during working hours, or the diary is already booked out for months, Google Ads will buy calls that ring out — we will say so in the audit rather than take the account.
Trades businesses are one of eight lead-generation industries we build for — see every industry we cover, whether you're tradespeople whose website's job is the phone ringing or run a different kind of enquiry-led business.
What it costs
The management fee is separate from the media spend paid to Google; our fees are published in full on the pricing page — most agencies hide them. What a trades business should spend depends on the trade, the radius and the job types targeted, which is an audit output, not a guess. See our published fees.
Want a quick estimate before you commit? The trades PPC calculator shows what a budget could bring in, using live UK click costs.
Google Ads for tradesmen: FAQs
Do Google Ads work for tradesmen?
Yes — and the sceptics have a point worth answering: the top result for this very search is a Reddit thread telling tradesmen not to bother. The usual reasons it goes wrong are real and structural — no call tracking, one campaign for every job type, and clicks sent to a homepage. Built per trade and per job type, with calls tracked, paid search reaches people whose boiler has failed today, which is the highest-intent enquiry a trades business can buy. We publish results for the trades on this page only as they are verified, rather than quoting figures we cannot source.
Is £100 a day good for Google Ads as a tradesman?
It depends on what a job is worth in your trade: £100 a day is a serious budget for a single-van local business and can be too little for a firm quoting large installations. The test is arithmetic, not opinion — what a click costs in your trade and area, how many clicks become calls, and how many calls become booked jobs. Start with one trade, one area and one job type, prove what a booked job costs, then scale spend into what works. Our guide to how much Google Ads costs in the UK explains each part of the sum.
Where do tradesmen advertise?
Word of mouth, directories and lead marketplaces, social media, and paid search. The structural difference is ownership: lead marketplaces commonly sell the same enquiry to several competing trades and the flow stops when you stop paying the platform, while Google Ads enquiries come from your own ad, land on your own site and phone number, and build account data you keep. For lead generation for tradesmen with job-now intent — the burst pipe, the dead socket — paid search meets the customer at the moment they need you, and Local Services Ads sit alongside it where available.
What are Google Local Services Ads, and can UK tradesmen use them?
Local Services Ads are Google's pay-per-lead format: you pay for the enquiry rather than the click, the listings appear above the normal search ads, and businesses are screened by Google before they can show. UK availability and trade coverage have been limited, and most of what ranks about them is written for the US market — which is why we keep a UK-specific guide covering Google Local Services Ads in the UK — what is available, what they cost and who qualifies. Where a trade qualifies, we run Local Services Ads alongside search campaigns rather than instead of them.
Do you run Google Ads for plumbers, electricians and builders?
Yes. Plumbing and heating is the trade we cover in the most depth, and it has its own page: Google Ads for plumbers. Electricians, builders, roofers and landscapers run under the same per-trade method described here, and each gets a dedicated page as verified data for that trade lands. If your trade is not named, the free audit works the same way — the method is per job type, not per label.
Why am I getting clicks but no phone calls?
The three causes we check first: call and form tracking that is broken or missing, so enquiries happen but never register against the ads; a landing page that loses the click — slow, generic, or with no tap-to-call number; and search terms that were never a job, such as DIY and how-to searches or clicks from outside the area you cover. A free Google Ads audit will identify which of these applies to your account, in writing.
Start with the audit, not the contract.
The first step is a free audit of your current account — what your clicks really cost per job type and where the waste is, findings in writing, whether or not an engagement follows.