Renovation marketing has a problem most trades don’t have. The phone can ring all month and the bank account still looks quiet, because a kitchen enquiry in March might not sign until June, and might not start until September.
I’ve sat with builders who were convinced their ads weren’t working, when the real issue was that they were judging a six-month sales cycle at week three. So this post is about getting leads without buying them from a platform, and about surviving the gap between the enquiry and the deposit.
The short version: builders and renovators win the most work from channels they own. Google Ads split by job type, a Google profile full of real projects and reviews, and Facebook and Instagram for work that sells itself in photos. Because the big jobs take months to sign, it pays to sell smaller jobs alongside them to keep cash moving. And you judge all of it on signed contracts, not on enquiries.
Why building leads are different
A blocked drain gets fixed today. A bathroom renovation gets thought about, priced, argued over at dinner, financed, and then booked, often months later.
That changes how you market in three ways:
- The sales cycle is long, so you need enquiries coming in now for work that starts later, and you need the patience to let that happen.
- People compare, usually three quotes, so trust matters at least as much as price.
- The work is visual, which means photos and video of real jobs do a lot of the selling for you, if you let them.
Bought leads versus your own
Lead platforms are the easy option, and I understand the appeal. You pay, you get leads, you quote against whoever else was sent the same job.
They can fill a gap. But the customer found the platform, not you, and the day you stop paying, everything stops with it. We’ve gone through the trade-offs in more detail in marketing for tradies.
The alternative is leads that come to you alone, from your own ads, your own Google profile and your own website. They take more setting up at the start. The difference is that the reviews, the pages and the data keep working for your business rather than someone else’s.
Google Ads, split by job type
Renovation searches cost less per click than urgent trade searches, but they convert much more slowly. Here are the Australian averages from Semrush, checked 7 November 2026:
| Search | Searches a month | Average click |
|---|---|---|
| builders near me | 4,400 | $5.80 |
| bathroom renovation | 2,900 | $4.17 |
| kitchen renovation | 2,900 | $3.87 |
| bathroom renovations canberra | 1,300 | $5.72 |
| kitchen renovations canberra | 720 | $3.22 |
For comparison, a click on “emergency plumber” averages about $17. The cheaper clicks don’t make renovation ads easy, though. Someone searching “kitchen renovation” might be months from signing anything, and might be a renter daydreaming.
So give each type of work its own campaign, its own ads and its own page. A kitchen and a deck attract different people with different budgets and different timelines, and lumping them together hides what each one costs you to win.
The small jobs campaign
If you take one idea from this post, take this one. It’s the thing we’d push hardest for any renovation business.
Run a second campaign for the smaller work you already do: repairs, fix-ups, the jobs you can quote over the phone and finish in a day or two. It keeps money coming in while the big quotes are being decided, and it gets you through the front door of homes where the next big job might come from. Plenty of big renovation jobs start out as a small one done well.
We set this up for Highland Craft Renovations in Canberra. In the first 12 days of real spend, the small jobs campaign brought in 14 enquiries at $63 each. The renovation campaign hadn’t produced one yet, which is completely normal that early, and it’s exactly why the small jobs campaign exists. The full numbers are in the Highland Craft Renovations case study.
Facebook and Instagram: show the work
Nobody searches for a new deck until they’ve seen one they like. That’s why Facebook and Instagram suit builders and renovators so well. They put your work in front of homeowners before those homeowners start looking.
What works is real. Before and after photos from actual jobs, a 20 second walk-through of a finished kitchen filmed on a phone, you or your foreman explaining one decision you made on a job and why. Polished stock images of somebody else’s house tend to get ignored, and Meta charges you more to show them because people scroll straight past.
One thing to watch. Instant lead forms on Facebook bring cheap leads, and cheap leads for a $40,000 job are often people who tapped twice while watching TV. For big-ticket work, a page with your projects on it and a short form usually brings better people, even if there are fewer of them. We cover this in Facebook ads cost in Australia.
Your website and Google profile
For a builder, the website is a portfolio with a phone number. Make it easy for someone to see:
- Real projects, with the suburb and what was done
- Reviews with names on them, ideally mentioning the type of job
- Your licence numbers and insurance
- A clear first step, whether that’s a call or a booked measure and quote
Your Google Business Profile matters just as much, and it’s free. Add project photos every month and ask every finished client for a review while they’re still excited about the result. Melbourne Concrete Cutters went from zero to more than 50 Google reviews in three months doing just that, which is in their case study.
Follow up the quotes
A lot of renovation work isn’t lost at the enquiry stage. It’s lost after the quote goes out and nobody follows up, because everyone’s busy and it feels pushy.
Put a simple rhythm in place: a call two days after the quote goes out, a check-in a week later, and a short note at the one-month mark. It costs nothing, and it’s often the difference between winning the job and finding out three months later that someone else did.
Judge it on signed jobs
Track each enquiry from the ad through to the signed contract. Then you know what a signed kitchen actually cost you in marketing, rather than what an enquiry cost.
Vic Flooring Group is a good example of why this matters. It turned $3,500 of Google Ads spend into $60,000 of revenue in its first three months, and the only way anyone knew that was by following leads through to paid work. It’s all in the Vic Flooring Group case study, and we show the working in cost per lead vs cost per booked job.
Questions builders ask me
How do builders get leads without hipages?
Google Ads split by job type, a Google profile with real projects and reviews, and Facebook or Instagram for the visual work. All three bring leads that come to you alone, and all three keep working for you.
What’s a good cost per lead for renovations?
It depends on the job and the area. Highland Craft’s small jobs came in at $63 an enquiry in the first 12 days. Big renovation leads usually cost more and take longer to turn into anything, so judge them on cost per signed job rather than cost per enquiry.
Are Facebook ads good for builders?
Yes, for visual work and for staying in front of people while they make their minds up. Pair them with a page that shows real projects, not a homepage with a stock photo of a hard hat.
How long before renovation ads pay off?
Expect months, not weeks, for the big jobs. That’s the whole reason to run a small jobs campaign alongside them.
Want more of the jobs you actually want?
Book a time with me. We’ll look at what your big jobs cost to win, what small jobs you could be selling in the meantime, and whether Google Ads or Facebook and Instagram ads make more sense for your area and your kind of work.
