Uplumb Plumbing & Drainage started trading in Brisbane in 2026 with no website, no ad account and no history for Google to go on. Its first month of Google Ads brought in 63 leads. The three weeks after that brought 87 more, at a quarter of the early cost per lead. Here’s how it was built.
| The short version | |
|---|---|
| Starting point | A new business. No website, no ad account, no history |
| First three weeks (28 Sep to 18 Oct) | 8 leads at $403 each |
| Next three weeks (19 Oct to 6 Nov) | 87 leads at $107 each |
| October | 63 leads from 211 clicks, a 30% conversion rate |
The situation
Jordan Shay got in touch in August 2026, not long after starting his own plumbing business. He needed work coming in, and it had to come from people who’d never heard of Uplumb.
Brisbane plumbing is a market we know well. We’ve run Google Ads for S&J Plumbing and Gasfitting and SEQ Blocked Drains, both Brisbane businesses, so we knew what a click costs there, which suburbs convert and how the bigger players bid.
A start-up is a different job from a rescue. There’s no broken account to fix. There’s a blank slate, which is the easier position to be in, as long as you don’t pay Google to learn what someone else already knows.
The goal was to get the foundations right on day one, so the first dollar of ad spend was measured.
What was going wrong
Nothing yet. But two things make Google Ads expensive for a new plumber, and both were waiting.
The first is price. Brisbane plumbing clicks are dear. In October the average click in this account cost $44. At that price you can’t afford a page that turns one visitor in fifty into a call.
The second is trust. People search “plumber near me”, see a name they’ve never heard of, and keep scrolling. A new business has to show its licence, its insurance and its service area before it asks for the phone call.
What we did
1. One page, built for the ads
A single mobile-first landing page at uplumb.au. Click to call at the top, a short enquiry form, and the trust signals a homeowner looks for from a plumber they’ve never used. The form was tested on 22 September and the page went live with the ads on 28 September.
2. Tracking before spending
Calls and form submissions counted as leads from the first day. Every decision after that was made on cost per lead, not on clicks or impressions.
3. Google Business Profile managed alongside the ads
A new plumbing business’s free lead source, and the thing most start-ups skip or set up wrong. We manage it with the ads so the business shows up on the map as well as at the top of the page.
4. Start narrow, read the data, then widen
One general plumbing campaign ran for the first three weeks on a $110 daily budget. It bought 51 clicks and 8 leads at $403 each. Expensive, but by mid October the page was turning about one visitor in five into an enquiry, which told us the page was fine and the budget was the limit.
So on 14 October the budget went to $300 a day, then $500. On 20 October blocked drains got its own campaign, and on 22 October so did hot water. Blocked drains are urgent, the job is clear, and the click is cheaper: about $17 against about $66 for a general plumbing click.
The results
| 28 Sep to 18 Oct | 19 Oct to 6 Nov | |
|---|---|---|
| Campaigns | 1 | 3 |
| Daily budget | $110 | $300, then $500 |
| Ad spend | $3,222 | $9,267 |
| Clicks | 51 | 232 |
| Leads | 8 | 87 |
| Cost per lead | $403 | $107 |
October as a whole: $9,331 spent, 211 clicks, 63 leads. Three in every ten clicks turned into an enquiry.
The blocked drains campaign did the heavy lifting. From 20 October to 6 November it brought in 55 leads at about $33 each, while general plumbing leads in October cost about $340.
A lead is a call or a form from the ads, counted once. Numbers are from the Google Ads account, pulled 7 November 2026.
What Jordan said
“Highly recommend Performance marketer! Hatim knows his stuff and is very professional and responsive.”
Jordan Shay, Uplumb Plumbing & Drainage. Google review, 31 October 2026.
Three weeks in, after the blocked drains campaign went live, his email said it more plainly: “There has been an increase in calls last few days.”
What any new business can take from this
For a new business, the first three weeks of Google Ads are tuition. You’re paying to learn which searches turn into jobs. The mistake is paying that tuition without tracking, because then you learn nothing.
The second mistake is spreading a small budget across every service you offer. Uplumb’s cheapest leads came from its narrowest campaign.
Build the page first. Track from day one. Spend where the leads are.
Starting out, or starting again?
Book a call with me. We’ll look at what a click costs in your market, what your page needs before it earns a call, and what a sensible first budget looks like. See how we run Google Ads, and what Google Ads costs in Australia right now.
