To get more leads as a tradie, you need a system that keeps working while you're on the tools: ads that show your work to the right homeowners, instant follow-up on every enquiry, a Google Business Profile full of reviews and a website that ranks in the suburbs you service. Word of mouth is great, but it's feast or famine. A system gives you a steady pipeline you can turn up or down.
Referrals are the best leads you'll ever get, because they trust you before you've quoted. The problem is you can't control them. Three come in one week, then nothing for a month, and when you're flat out on jobs nobody is out there finding the next lot of work. Every tradie I've seen go from quiet to booked out did it by adding a few pieces that work together. Here they are, in the order I'd tackle them.
1. Get the offer and targeting right
Before any ad goes live, get clear on two things: what you're offering and who it's for.
- Pick one service to lead with. The job you want more of, with a decent margin and a result people can see.
- Make the offer specific. "Driveway and path clean, fixed price, booking this month" beats "quality pressure washing services".
- Target the suburbs you actually want to drive to. Less time in the ute, better margins.
- Show a starting price or price range. It filters out tyre-kickers who were never going to book.
A simple test: could a homeowner read your ad and know what you do, roughly what it costs and whether you come to their suburb? If not, tighten it up before you spend a dollar.
2. Use real before and after creative
On Facebook and Instagram, the photo does most of the selling. Real before and afters from your own jobs beat stock images every time, because people can see exactly what they'll get.
- Take a before and after on every job, same angle, same light.
- Short phone videos work: a surface being cleaned, a fence going up, a room being finished.
- Show your face and your ute. People hire people.
This is the core of how I run Facebook ads for tradies. Louie at Mobile Mates Detailing got 50+ leads in the first few days, and his calendar was booked out inside two weeks.
3. Reply to every lead instantly
More leads don't help if half of them go cold. The first tradie to reply usually wins the job, and you can't answer the phone with a grinder in your hand.
- Set up an instant text-back so every new lead hears from you within seconds.
- Add a missed-call text-back so nobody hits voicemail and rings the next tradie.
- Follow up quotes that go quiet, a few times over a couple of weeks.
Every lead we bring in gets an instant text-back through GHL. I've written the full breakdown in speed-to-lead and follow-up for tradies.
4. Build up your Google Business Profile and reviews
When someone searches your trade plus their suburb, your Google Business Profile is often the first thing they see. Even people who find you on Facebook will Google your name before they book.
- Fill in every field: categories, service areas, hours, services and photos.
- Add new job photos every week or two.
- Ask every happy customer for a review the day you finish. Text them the link so it takes 30 seconds.
- Reply to every review, good or bad.
Reviews feed your ads too. Screenshot a good one and run it as an ad, or quote it on your website. Real words from a local customer sell better than anything you can write about yourself.
5. Get a website with a page for every suburb
A website that ranks brings in leads month after month without paying per click. The trick is a page for each service and each area you cover, with real local content, not the same page copied with the suburb name swapped.
Lindsay Catlin Fencing on the Sunshine Coast has a page for every suburb he services, and ranks on page one for Buderim, Nambour, Caloundra and Maroochydore fencing. Wild Landscape Co brought in $110,000 in organic jobs in its first six months. More detail in what a tradie website needs to rank on Google.
6. Ask for referrals properly
Word of mouth still matters, so stop leaving it to chance. Most happy customers are glad to refer you. They just don't think to.
- Ask when they're happiest: the moment they see the finished job.
- Make it easy: "If anyone else in the street needs it done, here's my number." Leave a card or text them your details.
- Neighbours are gold. Once you've done one house, a letterbox drop in that street is cheap and makes sense.
- Thank people who refer you. A text, a discount on their next job, whatever suits your business.
7. Track cost per booked job
Leads are a vanity number. Booked jobs pay the bills. For every channel (ads, Google, referrals), track how many leads came in, how many booked, what you spent and what the jobs were worth. A spreadsheet is fine to start. If you're using a CRM, mark every lead as booked or lost and the numbers add themselves up.
Munya at All Pro Pressure Washing got 145 leads at $22 each. The number that mattered: $23,000 in jobs from $3,200 in ad spend, a 7.7x return.
Once you know which channel brings in booked jobs, you know where to put the next dollar. If you'd like help setting up the whole system, that's what I do at Webb Media: ads, websites and lead follow-up systems, all done by me, with no account managers in between.
