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Tradie Marketing Statistics Australia: the Annual Report
Tradie marketing statistics Australia: the annual report on direct marketing gaps, search ad costs, new competitors and demand, using official 2025-26 data.
Australian tradies use direct marketing far less than other small businesses, and being found online keeps getting more expensive. An ACMA survey found that only 25% of construction-and-utilities SMEs had ever sent direct electronic marketing to consumers. Across all small businesses in the study, the figure was 42%. Meanwhile, IAB Australia reports that Australian search advertising reached $8.0 billion in 2025. Put those two numbers side by side and you get the main idea of this report. The cheapest leads a tradie can get sit in their own customer list, and most tradies never touch it.
This report pulls together the latest Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, ACMA, the ACCC, Jobs and Skills Australia, NCVER, the QBCC and IAB Australia. No official dataset counts tradies as one group. So construction industry figures and trade occupation figures sit side by side here, and each one keeps its own limits.
How far behind are tradies on direct marketing?
About 17 percentage points behind the small business average. The ACMA interviews ran from 30 November 2023 to 19 January 2024, and the report came out in 2024. Two details matter when you read the 25% figure. Construction was grouped with utilities. And direct marketing meant email, SMS or direct messages only. Public social media posts and paid social ads did not count.
So a sparky who posts job photos on Facebook every week, but never emails or texts a past customer, counts as a non-user. That is how the survey's definition works: public posts were not measured.
The 42% benchmark came from a screening base of 2,593 SMEs. Some sectors, such as agriculture and mining, were left out.
In practice, the gap often looks like this. The job gets finished and the customer's details sit in the invoicing app. Nobody sends a follow-up. Nobody asks for a review. The tradesperson then pays for new leads to replace customers who might have happily booked again.
Which channels do small business marketers actually use?
Email leads by a long way. Among the 1,101 SME e-marketers ACMA surveyed, 84% had used email. Direct or instant messaging came in at 44%, SMS at 40% and phone calls at 37%. People could pick more than one, and these results cover all industries, not construction alone.
Among those who used direct or instant messaging, 83% used Facebook and 51% used Instagram. WhatsApp sat further back at 32%. Again, these figures are not specific to construction, and the survey did not measure public posts or paid social ads.
For a Trade business, the useful takeaway is that SMS sits well below email in the wider market. A short text from the person who actually did the job is personal in a way a bulk email is not. A text that says the hot water system you installed is due for a check can work because the customer knows who sent it.
Who should a tradesperson market to first?
Past customers. ACMA found that 79% of SME e-marketers typically targeted people who had already used the business. Only 6% had bought a third-party contact list. This applies across industries, not tradies alone, but the logic holds for any service business.
Here is how this plays out in real life. Picture a plumber with a few hundred past customers in the accounting software. One message each winter about blocked drains or hot water checks costs almost nothing to send. If a handful of people book, that message pays for itself many times over. Some of those customers will also pass the plumber's name to a neighbour.
That is the part most articles on tradie marketing miss. Word of mouth is usually treated as luck. It is not. A past customer who heard from you last month is far more likely to recommend you than one who has not heard from you in three years. Contacting past customers is word of mouth you can schedule.
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Why is getting found on Google costing more each year?
Because Google is the only search engine that really matters here, and more money is chasing the same searches every year. The ACCC reported that Google held nearly 94% of Australia's general search market in August 2024, while Bing held 4.7%. Those are search engine market shares, not tradie advertising shares, and the ACCC published them in December 2024.
IAB Australia's figures show Australian search advertising grew 11.5% to $8.0 billion in calendar 2025, a new annual high. The whole internet advertising market reached $18.4 billion, also up 11.5% on 2024. Both figures cover every advertiser industry. The series is compiled by PwC and is unaudited.
For Pay-per-click ads, that growth has a direct effect. When more businesses bid on the same local searches, the Cost of each click tends to rise. A new tradie competing with established firms for the same suburb searches feels this first.
For a tradie's ad account, the first fix is often tracking rather than a bigger budget. Measure Return on investment by jobs booked and paid, not by clicks or form fills. Many Lead generation platforms report leads, but a lead that never answers the phone has a cost and no return. Once you know your cost per paid job, you can see whether search ads, lead sites or a message to past customers is doing the real work.
Is video worth the effort for a tradie?
Yes, and phone video is enough. Video is the fastest growing format in the IAB data. Australian video advertising reached $5.4 billion in calendar 2025, up 19.8%, and made up 29% of all internet advertising. That is total market spending, not tradie spending.
The angle most tradies miss is that video does not need to be an ad. A 30 second clip walking through a finished bathroom or a switchboard upgrade can go on your Google Business Profile, your website and your socials. It also answers the question every customer has before they call: does this person actually know what they are doing?
How crowded is the construction market getting?
More crowded every year. The Australian Bureau of Statistics recorded 76,414 entries into the construction industry in 2024-25, the highest of any industry. An entry is an actively trading business joining the ABS business count. It is not necessarily a newly qualified tradesperson.
After exits are counted, the number of actively trading construction businesses still grew 2.2% in 2024-25, according to the ABS business counts. Construction here is the broad ANZSIC division, which covers more than consumer-facing trades.
Jobs and Skills Australia reports that construction employed 1,371,500 people in February 2026, or 9.3% of the national workforce. Employment grew by 22,000 workers, or 1.6%, over the year. Those figures include managers, professionals, labourers and office staff as well as tradespeople, and they are not a count of self-employed tradies.
New businesses usually buy visibility first, because they have no past customers yet. An established tradie's real edge is the customer list and the reviews they already have. Every year you leave that list unused, the newcomers close the gap.
Does the revenue data justify spending on marketing?
The demand is there. The ABS Australian Industry release shows construction sales and service income grew by $42.3 billion, or 6.8%, in 2024-25. The ABS links that growth to rising service fees. It does not split out individual trades, and it says nothing about Revenue that came from marketing.
Earnings tell a different story. Jobs and Skills Australia reports that full-time construction employees had median weekly earnings of $1,600 in August 2025, against $1,741 across all industries. That figure is before tax and covers employees in their main job. It is not business revenue or a contractor's charge-out rate.
So the goal of tradie marketing is not more jobs at any price. It is better paid jobs. Marketing that brings in tyre kickers adds work without adding margin.
What do skills shortages mean for your marketing?
They mean your capacity is limited, so your marketing should pick jobs, not chase them. The 2025 Occupation Shortage List found that of the 264 occupations in shortage in both 2024 and 2025, 99, or 38%, were Technicians and Trades Workers occupations. That describes which occupations are short. It does not mean 38% of trade workers were unavailable.
The training pipeline is mixed. NCVER counted 208,950 active trade apprentice and trainee contracts at 31 December 2025, down 5.2%, or 11,510 contracts, on a year earlier. These are training contracts, not businesses. At the same time, trade apprenticeship completions rose 8.1% to 53,390 in the 12 months to December 2025, covering all trades, not only construction.
When a tradie is booked out for weeks, marketing can work in two directions. Point it at the work you want most, and use the same channels to hire. A job ad shared with past customers and local followers may reach better people than a job board.
What does one state's data show?
Queensland gives a useful snapshot of competition and demand growing together. The QBCC annual report recorded 104,183 active licensees in 2024-25, up from 100,693 the year before. Licensees are not unique businesses, since one person or company can hold several licence classes. The QBCC Brisbane service centre recorded 53,879 active licensees, up from 51,684. That service centre area does not match Brisbane City or Greater Brisbane, so it is not a Brisbane business count.
Demand rose too. The ABS reports Queensland construction work done was $16.2669 billion in the December quarter of 2025, 6.4% higher than a year earlier. This is a seasonally adjusted chain volume measure, not revenue at current prices. Queensland also commenced 11,460 dwellings in that quarter while 7,872 were completed. These are workflow indicators, not a measure of tradie leads.
Where do small business marketers break the rules?
On unsubscribe links. ACMA found only 64% of SME email marketers said their marketing emails always included an unsubscribe option. For SMS the figure was 56%. For direct or instant messages it was 51%. The samples were 942 email marketers, 475 SMS marketers and 483 message marketers, across all industries.
This matters most for tradies who start texting past customers. A friendly text about a service reminder is still a marketing message. Add a simple way to opt out, such as reply STOP, every time. It costs nothing and keeps your customer list safe to use.
What should you do with these numbers?
Export every past customer from your invoicing or job software this week.
Send one useful message to that list, with an opt-out, about a seasonal check or common follow-up job.
Ask every customer from the last six months for a Google review, since Google handles nearly all Australian searches.
Work out your cost per paid job for each lead source, then cut the worst one.
Film one short video of a finished job and post it to your Google Business Profile.
If you only do one thing, message your past customers before you spend another dollar on ads. The ACMA data suggests most construction-and-utilities small businesses have never sent direct electronic marketing, so this step is still open to most of your competitors.
Related guides: How Australians Find and Hire Tradies: Consumer Search Behaviour Study.
