How Much Should a Tradesman Spend on Marketing in Ireland? (2026)

Most established Irish trades should put somewhere between 5% and 10% of turnover into marketing. For a business turning over €150,000 a year, that's roughly €625 to €1,250 a month. But that's the ceiling, not the starting point — because the marketing that actually makes a trade's phone ring costs a fraction of what most people fear. Spend it in the wrong order and €1,250 a month is wasted. Spend it in the right order and you can start for the price of a tank of diesel a week.

What trades actually spend

Marketing budgets are usually set as a percentage of turnover. Here's what that works out to in real euros, so you can find your own number rather than guess.

If you're just starting out or actively trying to grow, push toward the higher end. If you're booked solid on word of mouth and only want to top up the pipeline, the lower end is plenty. Either way, the number matters far less than where it goes.

Work out your own number

The percentages are a starting point, not a straitjacket. Move the sliders below to see what your own turnover and ambition translate to in real euros a month — and how much is left for the growth channels once the essentials are covered.

Whatever number you landed on, the far more important question is where it goes. Spend it from the bottom of the stack up, because the layers return wildly different amounts.

Where the money should actually go

Marketing for a trade is not one thing — it's a stack, and the layers have wildly different returns. Here's the honest order, cheapest and highest-return first.

The stack, layer by layer

The website (essential). Everything else on this list sends people to your website to make a decision. If it loads slowly, hides your phone number, or looks like it was built in 2011, every euro you spend driving traffic to it is diluted. It doesn't need to be expensive — it needs to load fast on a phone, show your work and your reviews, and make calling or messaging you effortless. This is the foundation the whole stack rests on.

Google Business Profile (essential, free). For a local trade, your Google Business Profile is often more valuable than your website — it's what puts you in the "map pack," the three businesses Google shows at the top for "electrician near me" or "plumber Cork." It costs nothing but an hour to claim and fill out properly: correct category, service areas, opening hours, photos, and a steady trickle of posts. Most trades leave it half-finished, which is exactly why the ones who don't win the map.

Reviews (essential). Reviews do two jobs at once. They lift your map-pack ranking (Google favours businesses with more, fresher reviews), and they're the single biggest thing that turns a stranger who found you into a booked job. A business with 40 recent five-star reviews beats one with three, every time. The trick is simply asking — every happy customer, every time, with a direct link. Done consistently, this is the highest-return marketing activity a trade has, and it's nearly free.

Local SEO (high). This is the work that gets you ranking for "[your trade] [your town]" across all the towns you cover — a page for each service, a page for each area, the technical basics done right. It's slower than ads, but the leads are free once they land, and they compound. For most trades this is the difference between showing up on page one and being invisible.

Google Ads (growth). Paid search buys you the top of the results page instantly, which is genuinely useful while your SEO is still building or when you want more work this week. The catch is that it only pays off if the website and reviews it sends people to already convert — otherwise you're renting clicks that go nowhere. Budget €300–€1,500 a month depending on your area's competitiveness, and treat it as an amplifier, not a foundation.

Meta ads (growth). Facebook and Instagram ads are weaker for "I need it now" trades (nobody scrolls Instagram looking for an emergency plumber) but strong for visual, considered work — landscaping, renovations, salons — where before-and-after photos do the selling and retargeting keeps you in mind. €200–€1,000 a month is a sensible range.

Content (growth). Articles that answer the questions your customers Google — what things cost, how to choose, what to watch for — pull in people at the research stage and feed both traditional SEO and the newer AI search engines. It's the slowest-burning channel, but it builds an asset that keeps working for years, and it's increasingly how you get cited in AI answers.

The mistake that wastes most trade marketing budgets

It's paying for the top of the stack before the bottom is solid. A garage that spends €800 a month on Google Ads while its website is a one-page Wix draft with no reviews is setting money on fire — the clicks land somewhere that doesn't convince anyone. Build the foundation first (site, profile, reviews), then turn on ads to pour more people onto something that already works.

What good looks like at three budget levels

Abstract percentages are hard to act on, so here's what a sensible plan actually looks like at three common monthly budgets. Each one assumes the level below it is already handled.

Around €150 a month — the foundation. Your entire focus is the essentials: a proper website that's kept live, your Google Business Profile fully optimised and posted to, and a system for gathering reviews after every job. No paid ads yet. This alone gets most trades into the local map pack and converting the people who find them — and it's enough to keep a one- or two-van operation busy in a normal year.

Around €600 a month — foundation plus reach. Everything above, plus active local SEO (service and area pages so you rank across every town you cover) and a modest Google Ads budget of €300–€400 for the high-intent searches you can't yet rank for organically. This is the level where you stop waiting for work to find you and start actively pulling it in.

Around €1,500 a month — the growth engine. Everything above, plus a fuller ads budget across Google and Meta, regular content that answers buyer questions and feeds AI search, and the tracking to know which euro brings which job. This is a genuine growth setup — appropriate when you've the capacity to take on the extra work it will generate, and not a euro before.

The pattern is the same at every level: never fund a higher layer while a lower one is weak. A €1,500 plan on top of a broken website is worse value than a €150 plan on top of a solid one.

How to tell if your marketing is actually working

Spending is easy to measure; results are the part most trades never track, which is how budgets get wasted for years. You don't need anything fancy — just watch four numbers:

• Calls and enquiries per month. The blunt one. Is the phone ringing more than it was three months ago? Google Business Profile and most call-tracking will show you call volume over time.
• Where they came from. Ask every new customer "how did you find us?" and keep a tally. Within a month you'll know whether it's Google, referrals, or the ads — and where to put more.
• Cost per lead. Total marketing spend divided by the number of enquiries it produced. For Irish trades this typically lands between €20 and €80 a lead once things are working; if it's far higher, something in the foundation isn't converting.
• Reviews gained. A number that should only ever go up. Stalled reviews are the earliest sign your follow-up has slipped.

Spending less than the agency wants you to

Here's the part agencies don't lead with: the essential layer — the website, the Google Business Profile, the reviews, the basic local SEO — is exactly the layer that costs the least and returns the most. You don't need a four-figure retainer to get it working.

That's the layer Webnua's €99/month marketing system covers: your site built and kept live, review capture running after every job, and the basic local SEO that gets you found for "[trade] [town]". The growth layer — managed Google and Meta ads, the full local SEO programme, the content that feeds AI search — is there as clear upgrades (up to €799/month) for when the budget and the ambition are there. You start with the essentials working, and add firepower when it pays to.

Want the full picture on what a website itself should cost before you commit to anything? Read how much a website costs in Ireland.

Frequently asked questions

Set your number as a percentage of turnover, then spend it from the bottom of the stack up: foundation first, amplifiers second. Do that and even a modest budget beats a big one spent in the wrong order.