How to get more leads as a tradie, in the order that works

There is no trick. There is an order, and most trades do it backwards: they buy leads first, fix the free things last, and never find out which one worked. Here is the order that does.

Every tradie has been sold a lead. Most have been sold several at once: the platform, the directory, the social media manager, the website that would "generate leads". Some of it works. Almost none of it is done in the right order, and the order is most of the result.

This is not a pitch for a website. A website is one of the levers below, and for a fair number of trades it is not the first one to pull. Read the list in order; the first three cost nothing.

First: the Google Business Profile, because that is where the map comes from

Search your trade and your suburb on a phone. Before a single website, Google shows a map with three businesses in it. That box is where most local work starts, and getting into it is decided mostly by settings you control on a free profile.

1. Set the primary category to your exact trade. Plumber, Electrician, Locksmith. Not "Contractor", not "Home services". This one field does more than the rest of the list.
2. List your service areas by suburb name, not a radius. The ten you would happily drive to.
3. Make the hours true. If you take after-hours calls, say so and answer. If you do not, do not claim it.
4. Add photos of real jobs, five to start, named after your trade and suburb before you upload them.

The full walk-through, including how to claim a profile you never set up, is in fix your Google Business Profile in five minutes. Do that before you spend a dollar with anyone, including us.

Second: reviews, asked for properly

Reviews are the strongest thing on the profile you can influence directly, and nearly every trade under-collects them, not because customers are unwilling but because nobody asks. The fix is a habit: the evening of the job, a short message with the direct review link, once. No chasing, and never anything offered in return, because in Australia an incentivised review is misleading conduct and it gets removed anyway.

The wording that works, and what to do with a bad review when it comes, is in getting Google reviews without being a pest. Ask everyone, not just the ones you think loved you.

Third: the people who already know you

Word of mouth is not luck. It is a list, and you have it in your invoices. Two things, both free, both working in days:

• Ring your last twenty customers. Not a pitch: a check that the work is holding up. Some will have a job for you on the spot, and the rest will remember you next time someone asks.
• Ask the trades you share sites with. The sparkie you were on a job with last month knows three people who need a plumber. Ask them directly, and return the favour.

Quiet months are usually not a demand problem. They are a visibility problem with the people who already know you. What to do when the work goes quiet is the same list, in the order of a slow week.

Fourth: write down where every job came from

This is the step everyone skips and the one that makes the others worth doing. For three months, every job gets a source next to it: profile, referral, platform, website, repeat. A notebook in the ute is fine. At the end of three months you will know, with your own numbers, which channel is producing and which is costing. Almost nobody does this, which is why almost nobody knows whether their advertising works.

Four columns are enough: the date, the job, where it came from, and what it was worth. At the end of the quarter, add up each column. The channel with the most dollars, not the most enquiries, is the one to feed; a platform that sends twenty enquiries and closes two is doing less for you than the profile that sends five and closes four. That arithmetic is what makes the rest of this list yours rather than ours, because it is your jobs and your numbers deciding it, not a guide.

Fifth: lead platforms, used on purpose

hipages and its kind are not a rip-off. They are rented, and the rent never stops. If you are starting out with no reputation and an empty diary, a paid enquiry today is worth more than anything on this list that takes three weeks. Take them. But know what you are buying: an enquiry that has been sent to other tradies too, so you are quoting against them before the customer has decided anything, and a phone number that belongs to the platform.

The way to use a platform well is as a tap. Keep it running while the free channels warm up, watch the notebook, and when the free channels produce more, turn it down. Not off in one go; down. The sum that tells you when is in hipages versus your own website.

Sixth: a site you own, with your suburbs and your prices on it

Here is where the website comes in, and it comes in sixth for a reason: the five things above are free or nearly free, and they work faster. The site is the structural fix. It is what turns "plumber Geelong" on a phone into your number, for the customer who did not get a referral and does not trust the platform.

What it has to do is not complicated. Your suburbs written out, one page each for the ones you want work from. A page for each job people search separately. The licence where a cautious customer looks for it. The phone number as a button on the first screen. A price, or a range, so the tyre-kickers filter themselves out before they cost you an evening. And your name on the domain, so it is yours.

If you already have a site, score it against the ten-point checklist before you replace it; a tappable phone number and a faster load fix more than a rebuild does. If you do not, the honest range for what one costs is in what a tradie website actually costs, including ours: $1,490, $2,590 or $3,590, fixed, no GST, live within 21 days of an agreed start date. The detail is on the pricing page.

Two things separate a site that finds work from one that sits there: the suburbs written out as real pages, one each, and the price in the open. Both are things you can add to a site you already own this month, and both are in every Durazno package from Standard up. A site with neither is a business card, and a business card does not ring.

What not to do

• Do not sign a twelve-month marketing contract in a quiet week. The quiet week ends; the contract does not.
• Do not drop your rate to win a job you will resent. It resets what your customers think you are worth.
• Do not buy reviews, or ask family for them. They get removed, and they are misleading conduct.
• Do not buy a website expecting it to work next week. It is the fix for next year's quiet month, not this one's.
• Do not skip the notebook. Everything else on this list is a guess without it.

The order, on one line

Profile, reviews, the people you know, the notebook, the platforms as a tap, then the site. Free things first, tracked things always, paid things on purpose. That order costs nothing to start and it is the one that tells you what to do next.

If you get to step six and want a number you can plan around, the three are on the pricing page and the quote comes back within one business day. And if you get to step three and the phone is already ringing enough, that is the right answer too.

Free things first. Tracked things always. Paid things on purpose.