Tradies Are Wasting Ad Spend on the Wrong Customers — Here's Why

If you're a service-based business owner looking to stop wasting ad spend and start scaling with confidence, book a call with my team NOW: https://eastbound.digital/book-now/

🔗 Grab our FREE training here: https://tradies.eastbound.digital/free-training


In this episode of Marketing for Tradies, Shannon breaks down a real client case study a cabinetry business getting flooded with the wrong enquiries, every single call a dead end. No extra ad spend was needed to fix it.

This episode covers:
◼️ Why your messaging, not your ads, is attracting the wrong customers
◼️ The cabinetry business case study: 38 qualified leads per week at under $90 each
◼️ How vague website copy creates a vicious cycle of bad leads and rising ad costs
◼️ Why a 7.3-second page load time was costing this business more than half its traffic
◼️ The three questions to ask about your website right now (takes five minutes on your phone )

00:00:00  Introduction: Your Marketing Isn't Broken, Your Messaging Is
00:00:45  Welcome to Marketing for Tradies
00:01:15  The Cabinetry Business Getting All the Wrong Calls
00:02:00  How Wrong Messaging Creates a Google Quality Score Death Spiral
00:02:45  The Fix: Rewriting Messaging to Filter Out the Wrong Leads
00:03:30  What Happens When You Clearly State What You Do and Don't Do
00:04:15  The Hidden Problem: Page Speed
00:05:00  What 7.3 Seconds Means in Real Terms (Google's Own Data)
00:05:45  What a Customer Experiences on a Slow-Loading Page
00:06:30  From 7.3 Seconds to 1.3 Seconds: The Impact Was Immediate
00:07:15  Three Questions to Ask About Your Website Right Now
00:08:00  Question 1: Would a Stranger Know Exactly What You Do in 5 Seconds?
00:08:30  Question 2: Is There Anything That Could Be Misinterpreted?
00:09:00  Question 3: Does Your Page Load Fast Enough?
00:09:20  Three Takeaways From This Episode
00:09:44  What to Do Next

Follow Eastbound Digital:
Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/eastbounddigital_/ 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shannon-bain-2a18b2105/ 
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eastbounddigitalagency
YouTube: https://youtu.be/O8HeDI3ss9I 

Stay Connected:

• Eastbound Digital Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eastbounddigital_/
• Shannon's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shannonbain1/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shannon-bain-2a18b2105/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eastbounddigitalagency

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Your website, your landing page, your social media, these things don't exist just to look good. They actually exist to set expectations and every word on each page, each post is telling each customer who you are, what you do, and whether you're the right fit for them. Google rewards relevance. What that means is if someone clicks on your ad and then immediately bounces, what happens is Google notices this and your quality score drops. The website took 7.3 seconds to load. Seven. Google's own data says 53% of mobile users abandon a page that takes longer than three seconds to load. So at seven seconds, you're losing the majority of your traffic before they even see your page. Welcome to Marketing for Trading, the podcast where we help trades and service-based businesses with straight-up marketing advice to get more leads and put more jobs. I'm your host, Shannon, and my agency has helped over a hundred businesses go from inconsistent work and relying on word of mouth to getting a steady flow of jobs coming in every single week. In this podcast, I'm walking you through simple, practical strategies that actually help you grow your business without the guest ball. So let's get into it. So a business recently came to me thinking about cancelling their Google ads with another provider because they were getting leads, but every single one of them was for a service which they didn't even want to do. Every call was a dead end, every click was wasted money. And we fixed something that completely changed their campaigns in just two weeks without spending an extra cent on ads. And today they get 38 high-value qualified leads every single week at less than $90 each, and they're actually the right customers. If we haven't met, my name's Shannon. I'm the owner of Eastbound Digital. And if you're getting tie kickers or people asking for the wrong service, your marketing isn't broken, your messaging is. So today I'm going to show you the two things you need to fix on your website in order to change that overnight. So you start getting the right leads coming through and more jobs booked. So here's what most tradies don't realize your website, your landing page, your social media, these things don't exist just to look good. They actually exist to set expectations. And every word on each page, each post is telling each customer who you are, what you do, and whether you're the right fit for them. If the words are wrong, you end up attracting the wrong people. It's as simple as that. So with this business in particular, we pulled up their landing page, their website, and their social media, and the problem was obvious within 30 seconds. The headlines, the images, the messaging, the copy all talked about full kitchen renovations. Nowhere did it clearly say we do custom cabinetry. This business didn't do full kitchen renovations, they were a cabinetry business. So what happened was someone searches Kitchen Renovations Brisbane. They click on the ad, they land on a page that's covered in kitchen renovation imagery, their brain fills with a gap and assumes this business does full kitchen rentos. They call up, they ask for a full reno quote, and the business has to say, sorry, we don't do that. We only provide the cabinetry. So both sides lose. And here's the sneaky part Google rewards relevance. What that means is if someone clicks on your ad and then immediately bounces, or you keep getting leads from people that are unqualified, what happens is Google notices this and your quality score drops. Your cost per lead will go up and you end up paying more for even worse leads. It's actually this vicious cycle that a lot of businesses get stuck in. The fix that we applied to this business was to completely rewrite their entire website, their landing pages, social media, and Facebook ad campaigns to clearly headline that they're custom cabinetry, not full kitchen renovations. We recreated all the images of the actual work that they did. So it was clear they did cabinet builds, joinery, and custom storage. Copy that explicitly stated what they do and don't do. And we also made it clear that while they could provide cabinetry for kitchen renovations, they didn't organize and manage all trades involved in the kitchen renovation project. That one change filtered out the wrong leads before they even picked up the phone or filled out a form on their website. But messaging wasn't the only issue. There was a second problem hiding underneath, and this one is killing more tradies than they probably even realize. The website took 7.3 seconds to load. 7. On a mobile in 2026, here's what seven seconds means in real terms. Google's own data says 53% of mobile users abandon a page that takes longer than three seconds to load. So at seven seconds, you're losing the majority of your traffic before they even see your page. So even if someone clicks on your ad, even if the ad copy is perfect, even if the landing page has the right messaging, if the page takes seven seconds to load, more than half of those people are gone anyway. They click the back button, they click on your competitor's ad instead, and you're still paying for that click. So it's wasted ad spend. Think about it from the customer's perspective. So a homeowner is sitting on the couch, browsing on their phone, looking for a tradie. They tap on your ad, the page starts loading, spinning, waiting. Three seconds feels like forever on a phone. Even on a desktop, too. But at five seconds, they're already thinking about hitting back. And at seven seconds, they're on your competitor's page, which loaded in two. With this particular overhaul, we rebuilt the entire landing page and website messaging, but we also compressed the images, cleaned up the code, stripped back the unnecessary plugins on the website, and we got the load time down from 7.3 seconds to 1.3 seconds. 1.3 seconds, same page, same content, just faster. And the impact of this combined with the messaging changes was immediate. More people stayed on the page, more people read the messaging, more people called, and because the messaging was now right, the people calling were actually the right customers. Now, here's something that you can do right now, today, in the next five minutes. Pull up your website on your phone, not your desktop, your phone, because that's how most people are seeing it now. Ask yourself these three questions. Question one. If a stranger landed on this page, would they know exactly what I do within five seconds? Not vaguely, exactly. If you're a painter, does it say residential painting? Or does it say something vague like quality solutions for your home? If you build decks, does it say custom deck building or just outdoor living? Vague messaging is going to attract vague leads, and your cost per lead is gonna be astronomical and you're gonna get low quality. Question two, is there anything on this page that could be misinterpreted? So the cabinetry business had kitchen renovation images everywhere that made people think they do renovations. What's on your page that might give people the wrong impressions? If you do commercial work only, are there residential photos? If you only do a specific type of service area, is that clearly stated? Every ambiguity is a potential unqualified lead that you're paying for. And the third question: Does the page load fast? Here's a quick test. So open your phone, clear your browser cache, type in your website address, count to three. If the page isn't fully loaded by three text, images, everything, you have a page speed problem. Google's Page Speed Insights tool will help you get the exact numbers if you want to be precise. Just search Google Page Speed Insights and paste your URL there and it'll it will score you. But if the answer to any of these questions is no, you've probably found at least part of why your leads aren't great. And if you are spending your money on ads right now, you may have found one of the reasons why your leads aren't great. So three things to take away from this episode is firstly, bad lead quality isn't always a marketing problem. It can be, but before jumping to blaming Google or Facebook, look at your messaging. Check whether your website is actually telling customers the right thing. The words on your pages and on your posts are the biggest filter between the right customers and the wrong ones. Number two is page speed matters more than you think. If your site takes more than three seconds to load on a phone, you're losing leads because they can't even see your message. This is the easiest, most impactful fix most tradies can do right now. Seven seconds to 1.3 seconds changed everything for this business. And it'll change things for yours too. And the third thing I want you to take away from this episode is that specificity wins. The more clearly you can define what you do in the fastest way possible and what you don't do for that matter, the better your leads will be. Don't try to be everything for everyone. If you do one thing well, say that one thing clearly and let the wrong customers filter themselves out. You'll spend less time on dead-end phone calls and more time quoting actual quality jobs. If you want us to audit your website messaging and page speed, or you want us to fix your lead quality without spending more on ads, head over to our website or go to the show description, book a call with me and my team, and we can have a look over everything and see how we can get you better results. Or if you know a tradeie who is complaining about getting bad leads, share this episode with them because there is a chance it's not the leads, it's not the marketing, it's the messaging and the way the landing page and the website is set up right now. So I hope this was helpful and I'll see you in the next episode. Thank you for tuning in to the Marketing for Tradies podcast. If you got something out of this episode, don't forget to like, follow, and subscribe, or leave us a review on whatever platform you're listening on. And if you're a service based business owner who'd rather have someone handle your marketing for you, call with my team using the link below. Let's see how we can happen.