Lead Generation For Painters Cost Calculator
Painting leads are cheap to buy and expensive to waste. This calculator estimates your monthly lead spend and the real cost of each job you win, based on the channels you use, your average job value and how often you close.
What you are willing to put into getting the phone to ring each month.
The number that matters is cost per won job, not cost per lead. A 90 dollar directory lead that closes one time in six costs you 540 dollars per job, while a 250 dollar referral that closes half the time costs 500 dollars.
Track where every enquiry came from for three months before changing anything. Most painters guess wrong about their best channel because referral work quietly rides on top of the paid channels.
💰 Ways to save
- Answer within five minutes or do not buy shared leads at all. On hipages and Oneflare the painter who calls first wins the job roughly half the time, and the fourth caller almost never does, which means a slow response converts a 70 dollar lead into a 70 dollar donation. If you cannot answer while on the tools, a 300 dollar a month answering service usually pays for itself inside a fortnight.
- Turn off broad match and cheap generic keywords in Google Ads. Terms like painter and painting near me pull in renters, hobbyists and people wanting a single door done, and they can burn 40 percent of a small budget. Narrow to intent phrases such as house painters plus your suburb, exterior repaint quote and roof painting cost, and set a tight radius so you are not paying for clicks 60km outside your run.
- Build a proper Google Business Profile before you spend a cent on ads. Fifty photos of finished jobs, honest before and after shots, weekly posts and a steady trickle of reviews will generate free map-pack enquiries that cost nothing per click. Painters with 40 or more reviews routinely report a third of their work arriving through the map pack alone.
- Ask every happy client for a referral at handover, not by email a week later. A simple line while you are packing the drop sheets, plus a 100 dollar gift card for any referral that becomes a job, gives you leads at an effective cost of well under 150 dollars with a close rate two or three times anything you can buy.
or from $17/week over 5 years , indicative finance
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## What painting leads cost in Australia in 2026
Pricing reviewed: June 2026.
Pricing reviewed June 2026. Indicative Australian costs, not a quote.
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Understanding lead generation for painters costs in Australia
What painting leads cost in Australia in 2026
Shared directory leads sit between 45 and 130 dollars each depending on job size, with a bathroom or single room enquiry at the bottom and a full exterior repaint at the top. Commercial and strata enquiries on the same platforms can be quoted at 150 to 300 dollars because the job value behind them is far larger.
Google Ads works differently. You pay per click, not per lead, and painting clicks in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane run roughly 4 to 12 dollars. At a typical landing page conversion rate of 8 to 12 percent, that puts a Google-generated enquiry somewhere between 45 and 130 dollars, which is broadly the same territory as directories but with the crucial difference that the lead is yours alone.
Cost per lead versus cost per job
Almost every painter who says leads are too expensive is measuring the wrong thing. A 60 dollar lead is only cheap if you win a reasonable share of them. Shared directory leads typically close at 12 to 20 percent, so at 60 dollars each you are paying 300 to 500 dollars for every job that actually lands on the calendar.
Exclusive leads from your own ads or website close much better, usually 25 to 40 percent, because nobody else is calling that homeowner at the same time. At 100 dollars a lead and a 30 percent close rate, your cost per job is around 333 dollars. On an average residential repaint of 6000 to 9000 dollars that is roughly 4 to 5 percent of revenue, which is a healthy marketing cost for a trade business.
Channel by channel, what to expect
Directories such as hipages, Oneflare and Airtasker are the fastest way to fill a quiet week. Membership plans start around 200 dollars a month plus lead credits, and most painters spend 600 to 1800 dollars a month once they are active. The trade off is price shopping, because the same homeowner is speaking to three other painters and often chooses on number alone.
Google Ads gives you control and exclusivity but demands management. A painter running their own account well spends 1200 to 3000 dollars a month in a capital city and gets 12 to 30 enquiries. Add an agency at 700 to 1200 dollars a month once spend passes 2500 dollars, since below that the management fee is a larger drag than the efficiency it delivers.
SEO and Google Business Profile are the slow compounding play. Expect 800 to 2000 dollars a month with a specialist for six to twelve months before ranking meaningfully, but the map pack in particular delivers enquiries at effectively zero marginal cost once you are there. Reviews and photos matter more than backlinks for local painting searches.
The jobs worth paying more to reach
Not all painting work is equal, and your lead budget should chase margin rather than volume. A one room interior repaint at 900 dollars cannot absorb a 400 dollar cost per job. A full house interior and exterior at 12000 dollars comfortably can, and it also tends to produce the photos and reviews that feed your free channels.
Builder and new build contract work is worth pursuing differently. You will not win a 40 lot townhouse contract from a Google click. That relationship comes from turning up to site meetings, pricing accurately and never holding up a handover, and the cost of winning it is mostly your own time plus perhaps 400 dollars a month in presentation material and coffee.
Strata and commercial economics
Strata repainting is the highest value work most painting businesses can realistically reach, with block repaints running 60000 to 400000 dollars. The lead cost model is completely different, because you are marketing to a few hundred strata managers rather than to hundreds of thousands of homeowners.
Budget 1500 to 3000 dollars a month for this channel and expect most of it to be spent on a presentable capability document, membership of a strata industry body, occasional sponsorship of manager events and the time cost of quoting jobs you will not win. Painters who persist typically report their first strata contract nine to fifteen months in, after which repeat work arrives without further spend.
What to spend at each stage of the business
A solo painter turning over 180000 dollars a year should be spending roughly 5 to 8 percent of revenue on lead generation, which is 750 to 1200 dollars a month. At that level, run one paid channel properly rather than three badly, and put the rest of the effort into reviews and referrals.
A three crew business turning over 900000 dollars can justify 3000 to 5000 dollars a month, split across Google Ads, a directory presence for filling gaps and a specialist doing SEO. Once you pass this size the constraint stops being leads and starts being reliable painters, so watch that you are not buying work you cannot staff.
Tracking, because guessing is expensive
Use a separate phone number for each paid channel so you can attribute calls honestly. Cheap call tracking costs 30 to 60 dollars a month and will usually reveal that one channel you were sure about is producing half of what you thought. Record the source of every enquiry, whether you quoted it, and whether you won it.
After ninety days you will have enough data to calculate cost per won job by channel, and the decision about where to move money becomes obvious rather than intuitive. Painters who do this almost always shift spend toward exclusive channels and reviews, and away from shared leads that looked cheap on a per lead basis.
Frequently asked questions
How much does a painting lead cost in Australia?
Shared directory leads run 45 to 130 dollars for residential work and 150 to 300 dollars for commercial or strata enquiries. Exclusive leads generated through your own Google Ads typically land in the same 45 to 130 dollar range but close two to three times better because you are not competing with three other painters on the same enquiry.
Are hipages and Oneflare worth it for painters?
They work if you can answer within five minutes and you have a script for beating price shoppers on trust rather than price. Most painters spend 600 to 1800 dollars a month there and close 12 to 20 percent. If you are on the tools all day and returning calls at 6pm, you will pay for leads you never had a chance at.
What should I budget for Google Ads as a painter?
Under 1000 dollars a month you will not get enough click volume to learn anything useful. Between 1200 and 3000 dollars a month in a capital city produces roughly 12 to 30 enquiries at 4 to 12 dollars a click. Add agency management at 700 to 1200 dollars a month only once you are consistently spending above 2500 dollars.
How long does SEO take to produce painting leads?
Six to twelve months for competitive suburb terms, at 800 to 2000 dollars a month with a local specialist. Your Google Business Profile moves much faster, often within eight to twelve weeks, if you upload 40 or more job photos, post weekly and collect reviews steadily. Start with the profile before paying for any link building.
What percentage of revenue should painters spend on marketing?
Five to eight percent is a healthy range for a growing painting business. A solo operator on 180000 dollars turnover is looking at 750 to 1200 dollars a month, while a three crew business on 900000 dollars can support 3000 to 5000 dollars. Established referral-heavy businesses often run at 2 to 3 percent.
How do I lower my cost per won job?
Improve close rate before cutting spend. Quoting on site within 48 hours, presenting a written scope with paint brands named and following up twice will lift a 15 percent close rate to 25 percent, which cuts cost per job by a third without touching the ad budget. That is almost always cheaper than chasing a lower lead price.
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