Contractor digital marketing, compared on published evidence

Agencies with a verified published price

How to buy contractor marketing without guessing

1. Decide whether you are buying leads or building visibility. Bought leads arrive tomorrow, are often shared with competitors, and stop the day you stop paying. Local visibility takes months and then keeps producing. Both are legitimate purchases and the failure mode is buying one while believing you bought the other, so make the provider say which it is selling in plain words.
2. Filter on the disclosed minimum before anything else. The smallest engagement a provider will accept eliminates more candidates than any other question and takes one email to answer. Where an agency publishes a starting retainer, treat it as a floor rather than a likely invoice, and ask what sits above the floor in a business the size of yours.
3. Put every account in your own name. The Google Business Profile, the domain, the hosting, the analytics property, the call tracking numbers and the ad accounts should be created by you and shared with the agency. Contractors lose more value to accounts held by a previous provider than to any campaign that underperformed.
4. Define a result before the first invoice. A form fill, a tracked call and a booked job are three different numbers, and any provider will report the flattering one unless the definition is written down. Agree it, agree how it is measured, and agree the review point at ninety days where the plan can change on evidence.

What contractor focused agencies publish, and what they do not

Our index records what each provider states on its own website, with the date we checked, rather than what a survey or a sales call reports. The trades show a clearer pattern than most categories: agencies selling to owner operated businesses publish a starting figure relatively often, because a visible floor wins the buyer comparing three tabs in the evening, while firms selling multi channel programmes to larger regional contractors publish nothing, because their engagements are scoped rather than listed.

That means a shortlist built only from published prices skews toward the smaller end of the market. Read our figures as a record of what is disclosed, not as a survey of what the category charges. Where an agency publishes nothing, the smallest engagement it will accept is still available for the asking, and most answer that question in a single line of email if you ask it directly.

What actually changes the price

Service area comes first. One location working a tight radius is a much smaller job than a contractor covering a whole metro or several counties, because every additional area needs its own page, its own proof and its own reason to exist. Trade mix comes second: emergency work converts to whoever answers first and tolerates a higher cost per call, while planned high ticket work involves a longer consideration window and needs photography, project stories and reviews rather than speed.

Seniority is third and it is the variable no proposal reveals. The difference between a strategist who has taken a contractor from invisible to booked out and a coordinator working a checklist does not appear in the pricing table and accounts for most of the outcome. Ask by name who attends your monthly call, whether that person wrote the audit, and how many other accounts they carry at once.

Reviews, claims and the rules that land on you

Reviews are the strongest proof in the trades and the place contractors most often walk into trouble. The FTC's rule on consumer reviews and testimonials prohibits buying reviews, writing them yourself and suppressing negative ones, and it binds the business whose reputation benefits, not only the agency that arranged them. If a provider offers to seed reviews or to screen customers by how happy they seem before asking, end the conversation there.

Advertising claims carry the same exposure. Licence and insurance statements, response time promises, warranty language and pricing claims all have to be true and substantiated, and the liability remains with the contractor long after the agency has moved on. Ask to approve ad copy before it runs, and keep a copy of everything published on your behalf.

Questions people actually ask

Are shared leads worth buying?

Sometimes, as a supplement. They arrive quickly and they are genuinely useful when the schedule has a gap, but they reach several contractors at once and compete on speed to answer. Treat them as rented demand rather than an asset, and never let them become the only source you have.

How long does an organic programme take to produce work?

For an established business with a verified profile, easier service queries commonly move inside two to three months, with the competitive terms taking longer. Google's guidance on hiring a search provider warns that anyone promising a fixed position by a fixed date is describing something they do not control.

Should one agency run both my ads and my organic work?

It can, but price them separately. A single blended retainer makes it impossible to see which half is producing booked jobs, and that is the only question your budget review will ask. Ask for a split even where one firm delivers everything.

What should I be tracking?

Tracked calls answered, calls that became booked jobs, and revenue per booked job by source. Form fills alone flatter every report in the trades because most buyers phone. Insist on call duration or recording by source so a wrong number does not count the same as a scheduled visit.

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