Ever had an ad enquiry from someone three hours down the highway?
You paid for that click. You were never going to do that job. Google Ads location targeting is usually the reason. Plenty of ad accounts are pointed at half a state. This guide fixes that in about 30 minutes.
What You Need Before You Start
- Your Google Ads login
- The suburbs you actually drive to
- Your last 30 days of ad spend
- Ten minutes with a map
No new tools. No extra budget.
Step 1: Write Down Your Real Service Area
Grab a pen. Write down the suburbs you would happily drive to on a Tuesday.
Not the ones you would take if the job was big enough. The ones you take every week.
That list is usually shorter than people expect. A mobile mechanic in Penrith might land on eight suburbs. A removalist in Brisbane might cover one council area. Your list is your budget map. Everything outside it is waste.
Step 2: Switch Your Targeting to Presence
This is the setting that costs Australian tradies the most money.
Google gives you two location options. They sound the same. They are not.
Presence shows your ad to people who are physically in your area. That is the one you want.
Presence or interest also shows your ad to people who show interest in your area. They could be sitting anywhere in the country. Someone in Melbourne googles "plumber Brisbane" to sort out their mum's hot water. Your Brisbane ad shows. They click. You pay. Nobody books.
New campaigns default to presence or interest. Go to Settings, then Locations, then Location options. Pick Presence. The Google Ads Help Centre backs this. It is the right call for any hands-on trade.
It takes 20 seconds. Do it today.
Step 3: Draw Suburbs or a Radius, Not a State
There are two ways to draw your patch.
A suburb list. Add each suburb by name. Best when your work follows council lines or main roads.
A radius. Draw a circle around your base. A workshop mechanic might use 10km. A mobile cleaner might use 25km.
Both beat targeting "New South Wales". A state-wide setting spreads $1,500 across millions of people. A 15km radius spends it on the few thousand who can book you.
Start tight. You can widen it later once the data shows you where the jobs are.
Step 4: Read the Location Report Every Fortnight
Open Campaigns, then Locations, then Matched locations. This shows where your clicks really came from.
Look for two things.
Suburbs that spend money and book nothing. Exclude them.
Suburbs that book well. Write them down for Step 5.
Give it 30 days first. Two clicks from a suburb tells you nothing.
Step 5: Split Your Best Postcodes Out
Once a suburb proves it books jobs, give it a bid boost. Or its own campaign.
Say Penrith brings you four jobs a month at $60 a lead. Katoomba brings one at $180. Move the budget to Penrith. Cut Katoomba back or drop it.
Check this monthly. Budget should follow the postcodes that book.
What Should You Spend Once Your Targeting Is Tight?
Here are the real numbers for Australia right now.
Cost per click. Trades and home services run about $4 to $8 AUD. General services sit closer to $2 to $4 AUD.
Monthly budget. $1,000 to $2,500 AUD is the normal starting range for a local service business. Under $500 a month is a trap. You get too few clicks to learn from, and Google's bidding never settles.
What that buys. Take $1,500 a month at $6 a click. That is 250 clicks. If your page turns 1 in 10 into an enquiry, you get 25 leads. That works out at $60 a lead.
The break-even sum. Say you close 1 in 3 of those leads. That is 8 jobs for $1,500, or about $188 per job won. If your average job is $450, the ads pay for themselves. If your average job is $150, they do not.
Do that sum before you spend a cent. Our guide to budgeting Google Ads for your trade business digs into the money side.
Your cost per click stays about the same. The difference is that more of those clicks can actually hire you.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Leaving the default on presence or interest. This one setting burns more local budget than anything else.
- Targeting a whole state because it feels bigger. It is just thinner.
- Adding suburbs you have never worked in, hoping for one big job.
- Excluding a suburb after five clicks. Wait for 30 days of data.
- Sending every click to your homepage. A page written for that job wins more of them. See our post on website copy that turns visitors into customers.
Is Tight Location Targeting Worth the Effort?
Yes, if you serve people in person. Half an hour of setup saves months of guessing.
There is one catch. Tight targeting shows your ads to fewer people. Lead volume can dip in week one. Stick with it. The leads you keep are ones you can actually service.
Worth the effort, then, but only if you answer the leads it sends you. What you do in the next five minutes decides whether a click becomes work. Your ads can feed straight into your Light Leads CRM. Every enquiry gets a reply while they are still on your page. For how ads fit with everything else, have a look at our digital marketing services.
The Bottom Line
Point your ads at the suburbs you drive to. Set your targeting to Presence. Read the location report every fortnight and cut what does not pay.
Not sure where your ad money is going right now? Let's chat about your setup.