What does Facebook advertising actually cost a Perth tradie?

Nobody will give you a straight number

Ask an agency what Facebook ads cost and you'll get "it depends." It does depend — but you can still be given ranges and a real example, which is what this page is. Every figure below is either a published benchmark or a number from an account we run.

The three numbers that actually matter

There are dozens of metrics in Ads Manager and three of them decide whether the campaign works.

Cost per thousand views (CPM) is what it costs to put your ad in front of a thousand people. In Australia this generally sits in the single-digit-to-low-teens dollar range for a local audience. You have very little control over it.

Click-through rate (CTR) is the share of people who see the ad and tap it. Around 1% is ordinary. Above 2% means the ad is speaking to the right people about the right job. This is where the creative earns its money.

Cost per lead is the only one that pays your wages. It's simply what you spent divided by how many enquiries you got.

What the benchmarks say for 2026

Across all industries in Australia, the median cost per lead on Meta lead ads sat around $50 for the year to July 2026 — with real month-to-month swing, from the mid-$20s in a quiet month to over $100 in a competitive one. Internationally, home-services categories run higher than that all-industry median: roughly USD $58 for landscaping, USD $73 for plumbing and heating, and north of USD $115 for roofing and air conditioning. Trades are not a cheap category, because the jobs are worth a lot and everyone is bidding for the same homeowner.

For the Google side of the ledger, and trade-by-trade ranges across both platforms, see the real cost per lead for Perth tradies in 2026.

A real Perth number

Squeeze 'em in Earthworks is a tight-access excavation business in Perth. Between 1 May and 20 July 2026, its Meta lead campaign spent $421 and produced 30 enquiries — $14.03 each, at a 3.07% click-through rate, on a $20-a-day budget.

That is well under the benchmark, and it's fair to ask why. Three reasons, none of them clever: the angle is specific rather than general, the enquiry takes about fifteen seconds instead of requiring someone to fill out a website form, and the service area is small enough that the budget isn't spread thin. It is also one campaign in one trade — a good result, not a law of nature. The full breakdown, including what it doesn't prove, is on the results page, and the trade itself is covered in earthworks and excavation marketing in Perth.

Cheap leads are not automatically good leads

It's easy to drive cost per lead down and make the campaign worse. Loosen the form, widen the radius, promise a free quote to anyone breathing, and you'll get $6 leads that never answer the phone. The number worth tracking isn't cost per lead, it's cost per lead you'd actually want to quote. For a one-van operator, five real enquiries beat forty tyre-kickers, because every wasted callback comes out of a working day.

What moves the number more than budget does

• The angle. "Excavation in Perth" competes with everyone. "Tight side access? We dig where the big machines can't" competes with almost no one.
• The form type. Meta lets you optimise a lead form for volume or for intent. Volume is right when you can handle the callbacks; intent is right when you're one person with a phone.
• The creative. Tradies own the most persuasive footage in their market and mostly don't use it. A machine working, dirt moving, water going in — shot vertically on a phone, with captions, because most people watch on mute. It beats a polished stock-image ad comfortably.
• Speed to lead. Call within five minutes. This one factor changes the economics of a campaign more than any targeting decision, and it costs nothing.

There's more on what to actually put in the ad in Meta Ads creative that works for Perth tradies.

So what should you actually budget?

Start at $20 a day for one trade in a defined area, and commit to four weeks — about $600 — before judging it. That's enough to get a real read on cost per lead in your market. If it works, scale the budget on the campaign that's already working rather than starting new ones. If it doesn't, the fix is almost always the angle or the follow-up, not more money.

That's the ad spend, which is separate from what it costs to have someone build and run the thing — the pricing page lays that out, and Meta ads management covers what's actually involved. If you'd rather just talk it through for your trade and suburb, get in touch.