TRADIE MARKETING BUDGET: HOW MUCH SHOULD YOU ACTUALLY SPEND ON LEADS?
Most tradies should budget somewhere between 3–7% of revenue on marketing, but the right tradie marketing budget for your business depends more on your average job value and how many jobs you need to fill your schedule than on any fixed percentage. Start from your capacity and work backwards, not the other way round.
Why "Spend 5% of Revenue" Doesn't Work for Every Tradie
Ask five business coaches how much to spend on marketing and you'll get five different percentages. Most land somewhere between 3% and 10% of revenue, and honestly, none of them are wrong — they're just too generic to be useful on their own. A one-man electrical business doing $180k a year and a 12-person plumbing outfit doing $3m a year both fall inside that range, but their actual dollar spend, their channels, and their tolerance for risk look completely different.
The bigger problem with a flat percentage rule is that it ignores capacity. If you're already booked out six weeks in advance, spending more on marketing just gives you a longer queue of frustrated customers — it doesn't make you more money. A proper tradie marketing budget starts with the question "how many more jobs do I actually have room to do?" not "what percentage should I be spending?"
How to Work Out Your Marketing Budget Step by Step
Skip the generic percentage and build your budget from four numbers you already have sitting in your job records:
- Average job value — what does a typical won job actually bring in?
- Quote-to-win rate — out of 10 quotes sent, how many turn into paid work?
- Job capacity gap — how many extra jobs a month could your current team realistically take on?
- Target cost per lead — what can you afford to pay for a lead and still make good margin?
Multiply your capacity gap by your average job value to get the extra revenue you're chasing. Divide that by your quote-to-win rate to work out how many leads you need. Multiply that lead number by what you're willing to pay per lead, and you've got a defensible tradie marketing budget instead of a guess.
What Tradies Actually Spend on Marketing in Australia and NZ
In practice, most established trades businesses across Australia and New Zealand land in one of three bands:
- Lean spenders (1–3% of revenue): Usually word-of-mouth heavy businesses topping up with a bit of paid advertising during quiet months.
- Steady growers (4–7% of revenue): Actively trying to grow, running consistent Google Ads or Facebook Ads campaigns alongside an optimised Google Business Profile.
- Aggressive scalers (8–15% of revenue): Typically businesses trying to fill a second or third team fast, or entering a new suburb or region where they have no reputation yet.
None of these bands is "correct" — they reflect different goals. A business trying to hold steady at its current size should sit toward the lean end. A business trying to add a team within 12 months needs to sit further up, because new capacity has to be filled with something.
Cost Per Lead vs Cost Per Job: The Number That Actually Matters
Cost per lead gets thrown around a lot, but it's a half-finished number. A $40 lead sounds cheap until you realise your quote-to-win rate is 20%, which means your real cost per job is $200. Meanwhile a $90 lead with a 50% win rate only costs you $180 per job — and it's the cheaper option, even though the headline number looks worse.
This is exactly why marketing budget and sales follow-up can't be treated as separate problems. If you want to compare channels properly — say, deciding between Google Ads and Facebook Ads for your trade — always convert lead cost into cost per won job before deciding where the budget goes.
- Base your marketing budget on capacity and job value, not a generic revenue percentage.
- Work out how many extra jobs you actually have room for before spending a dollar on leads.
- Cost per won job matters more than cost per lead — a cheap lead with a low win rate can be the expensive option.
- Most Australian and NZ tradies sit between 3–7% of revenue, with growth-focused businesses spending more.
- Fix your follow-up and quoting process before increasing spend, or you're just funding a leakier funnel.
Where to Put Your Budget First
Before a single dollar goes into paid ads, make sure the basics are covered — they're the cheapest, highest-return part of any tradie marketing budget:
- Google Business Profile — free, and often the first thing a customer checks before calling.
- Follow-up systems — a lead that never gets chased is money already spent and lost.
- A website that captures leads properly — even a simple one, if it's set up to convert.
Only once those foundations are solid does it make sense to put real budget behind paid channels. Trying to out-spend a broken follow-up process with more ad dollars is one of the most common ways tradies burn through a marketing budget without seeing results. For a deeper look at getting the fundamentals right first, see our pillar guide on tradie marketing.
When to Increase (or Cut) Your Marketing Spend
Your budget shouldn't be set once a year and forgotten. Review it against three signals:
- Increase spend if you're consistently winning more jobs than you're quoting for, or if you've just added capacity (a new hire, a new van) that needs filling.
- Hold spend if lead volume matches your capacity and your cost per won job is stable.
- Cut spend if your quote backlog is growing faster than your team can service it, or if cost per won job has crept up without a clear reason.
Treat the budget as a lever connected to your calendar, not a fixed monthly bill.
Frequently Asked Questions
Turn Your Marketing Budget Into Booked Jobs
A bigger ad spend only pays off if every lead gets a fast, tracked follow-up. tradienet. gives you the pipeline and follow-up system to make sure the jobs you're paying to generate actually get won.
