Paid Search for Scaffolders
One job pays for a year of advertising. Most scaffolders never run any.
The best return-per-job of any trade we work with
A chimney scaffold is £600. Domestic tube and fitting, £850. Commercial system scaffolding, £1,500. An internal birdcage, £4,000. An engineer-designed complex scaffold, £8,000.
Now put a modest ad budget beside that. Ten pounds a day is £3,650 a year. One designed scaffold covers it twice over. One commercial system job covers five months.
There’s nothing else in your business with that ratio, and it exists because of a quirk in your market: the search volume is low, so nobody bothers competing for it. Low competition means cheap clicks. Cheap clicks against £8,000 jobs is an unusually good position to be in — and it stays available precisely because most scaffolders look at the volume, decide it’s not worth it, and do nothing.
The realistic split is worth understanding. Most searchable volume is domestic — chimney scaffolds, loft conversion access, homeowners whose roofer has told them they need scaffolding. That’s steady gap-filling work at £600 to £850 a time, and gaps between contracts are where scaffolders lose money.
Commercial enquiries through search are rarer. But one arriving in a quarter can be worth more than a month of domestic work, and it costs the same to be visible for it.
What actually works
Domestic campaigns first, because that’s where the volume is. Chimney, roof access, loft conversion scaffolds.
Very tight geography. Scaffolding is heavy and local, and travel destroys the margin.
Local commercial terms on a small budget. “Scaffolding hire [town]”, “commercial scaffolding [area]”. Low volume, occasionally enormous value.
Lead times in the ad copy. It’s the thing buyers care about most and almost nobody puts it in an ad.
Negatives for jobs, training, tickets, CISRS, hire purchase and sales. Scaffolding searches are full of people looking for work or buying equipment.
Don’t chase national terms. There’s nothing there for you.
What we’d actually do
Start with a small domestic campaign — genuinely small, ten pounds a day or so — covering chimney and roof-access scaffolds in a tight radius, with lead times in the copy.
Add a low-budget commercial campaign on local terms, accepting that it may produce one or two enquiries a quarter. At £8,000 a designed scaffold, that’s still worth having.
Set up call tracking, because at this volume every single enquiry needs attributing properly. You can’t spot patterns in noise when there isn’t much of either.
Then leave it running quietly and review quarterly rather than monthly, because monthly numbers at this volume tell you nothing.
And run it alongside the credibility work, because the two compound — ads bring the enquiry, and the reviews and capability pack are what convert it into a relationship worth £36,000.
The first 90 days
Weeks one to two. Small domestic campaign live — chimney scaffolds, roof access, loft conversion access — in a genuinely tight radius, with lead times in the ad copy. Ten pounds a day or thereabouts. Call tracking from day one, because at this volume every single enquiry has to be attributed.
Week two. Negative list built out properly. Scaffolding searches are unusually polluted with people looking for CISRS tickets, training courses, equipment sales and jobs. Without a strong negative list a small budget disappears in a fortnight on traffic that will never hire you.
Month two. Low-budget commercial campaign added on local terms. We’d set the expectation clearly: this may produce nothing in month two, and that’s not a failure. At £8,000 for a designed scaffold, waiting a quarter for one enquiry is a perfectly good trade.
Month three. First meaningful review — and it will be a quarterly conversation, not a monthly one, because three enquiries a month tells you nothing about trend.
The return here is unusually good and worth stating plainly. A domestic scaffold at £850 against an £80 acquisition cost is ten to one. A commercial enquiry at £8,000 against the same cost is a hundred to one. Very little else in your business performs like that.
There is a natural ceiling — only so many people search — so we’d scale to it and then stop rather than pushing budget past the point where cost per job climbs. But get to that ceiling, because the money left on the table by scaffolders who never advertise at all is considerable, and it’s the reason those searches stay cheap.
What good looks like
Three to six domestic enquiries a month. That’s a realistic target and it fills gaps well.
One or two commercial enquiries a quarter. Rare, and worth waiting for.
Cost per booked job under £80. At £850 domestic that’s comfortable; against an £8,000 commercial job it’s a rounding error.
Reviewed quarterly, not monthly. Low-volume campaigns need longer windows to say anything meaningful.
The mistakes we see most
Judging it on volume. Three enquiries a month at £850 to £8,000 each is an excellent return. Compare it against job value, never against a plumber’s call count.
Wide radius. Travel costs kill scaffolding margins faster than most trades.
No negatives for jobs and training. Enormous amounts of career and equipment traffic in this space.
Ignoring domestic. It’s the only real volume you have.
No lead times in the copy. The single most persuasive thing you could say.
Judging monthly. At three enquiries a month, one quiet month means nothing.
What’s it worth?
Designed scaffold £8,000 · domestic scaffold £850 · cost per booked job £80
One commercial job covers a year of modest spend.
Every enquiry lands in Gaffer
Enquiries land with the site address and job type. Quote from a template. Inspections schedule on a cycle. Hire periods track against the job so extensions don’t get missed at invoicing, which is where scaffolders quietly lose money.
Questions scaffolders ask
Is it worth it at this volume?
One designed scaffold pays for two years. One commercial system job pays for five months. The volume is low and so is the cost — that’s the whole point.
Should domestic be the focus?
For paid, yes — it’s where the searches are, and filling gaps between contracts is worth real money.
How does this help commercial work?
Ads bring the occasional direct enquiry, and they keep you visible to buyers who then check you out properly. The relationships still come from reputation — the advertising makes sure more people find the reputation.
Should we advertise when we’re already busy?
Keep the domestic side ticking — it fills the gaps between contracts, and those gaps are where scaffolders lose money.
Ad spend separate?
Always, in your own account, and switchable whenever you’re full.
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