Yard signs or Google Ads? Choosing local advertising for a trade business

Tradies ask this one a lot: should the next few hundred dollars go on yard signs or Google Ads? The honest answer is that they do different jobs, so the better question is which job you need right now. Get that straight and the choice usually makes itself.

What each one is actually good at

Google Ads catches people at the exact moment they're looking. Someone searches "emergency plumber Coburg", your ad shows, they call. That timing is the strength, and nothing else matches it for urgent, need-it-today work. The cost is the price and the babysitting. Trade keywords are among the more expensive clicks, you pay for every click whether it books or not, and a campaign left unattended can burn through a budget on the wrong searches or the wrong suburbs. Run well, with tight keywords and a sharp landing page, it's a tap you can turn on when you need work. Run carelessly, it's a money leak.

A yard sign does the opposite. Nobody sees your sign at the moment their hot water system dies. They see it on the fence near the school, again the next morning, again on the way to the shops, and your name quietly becomes the local one they already know. It's a fixed cost for the run, it keeps working every day without extra spend, and it asks almost nothing of you once it's up. What it can't do is catch demand the instant it appears. It plants the name that surfaces later, when the need turns up.

When to pick which

If most of your work is urgent and people search the second they need you, lead with Google. Emergency trades, lockouts, breakdowns, burst pipes, anything where the job exists before the customer has even thought of who to call. The cost per click stings, but a single job often covers a week of clicks, so the maths works as long as you're tracking which clicks turn into calls.

If your work is planned, repeat, or chosen partly on familiarity, signs do more per dollar. Landscapers, painters, fencing, decking, regular home maintenance, anything people mull over for weeks before picking a name they've seen around. A fortnight on the right fences builds the recognition that makes your quote the comfortable choice when three names land in the inbox. For trades that live on a suburb's word of mouth, being the familiar local name is worth more than being top of a search result for a stranger.

The honest costs, in time and money

It's worth being clear about what each really costs, because the click price isn't the whole story. Google Ads costs money per click and time to manage: keywords to refine, a landing page to keep sharp, a budget to watch so a busy weekend doesn't blow it. If you won't manage it or pay someone who will, it tends to underperform. A yard sign costs the booking and a one-off print, and almost no ongoing time, but it's slower and harder to attribute, because you can't see who drove past and remembered. One buys measurable, immediate clicks for ongoing effort and spend. The other buys cheap, durable local presence for patience.

Measure both as best you can. For Google, watch calls and bookings against spend, not just clicks. For signs, use a dedicated number or ask new customers how they heard about you, and judge over a couple of runs rather than one. The goal is to know which channel actually rang the phone, so the next decision is based on results, not a hunch.

Most established trades run both

Once there's budget for it, most established trades end up running both, and that's the sensible answer. Google captures the people already looking, signs make sure your name is the familiar one when they start looking. The two reinforce each other: someone who's seen your fence sign for a fortnight is more likely to click your ad, and more likely to trust the name when it appears.

If you're picking one to begin with, match it to your work: urgent and searched-for goes to Google, planned and local goes to signs. Start there, track what comes back, and add the other once the first is paying its way. The trades that waste money are the ones that pick a channel by habit, or by what a competitor's doing, rather than by the kind of work they actually want more of.

A worked example

Take a painter who wants more interior jobs over winter. Google Ads for "painter near me" will catch the people already searching, but the clicks are dear and a lot of them are price-shoppers chasing the cheapest quote. So the painter splits the approach. A small Google budget covers the urgent "need it done before we move in" searches in two target suburbs. Alongside it, two fence banners go up on busy residential streets in the same suburbs for a month, building the familiar-local-name effect for the bigger, less urgent repaint jobs people plan for weeks. Each job is tracked to its source with a simple question on the first call. By the end of the month the painter can see that Google brought the rushed jobs and the signs brought the planned ones, which is exactly the split the work actually comes in, and next winter's budget gets shaped around it.

Start small, and don't set and forget

Whichever you choose, start with a small, deliberate test rather than a big commitment. A modest Google budget on a handful of tight keywords for your core suburbs, or one or two well-placed signs for a few weeks, is enough to see whether the channel suits your trade. The mistake on both sides is set and forget: a Google campaign nobody prunes drifts onto wasteful searches, and a sign left up too long stops being noticed and starts looking stale. Check in, cut what isn't working, and put more behind what is. A few hundred dollars spent attentively beats a bigger budget left on autopilot.