How much should a home service company spend on marketing?

Growing contractors commonly run somewhere between five and ten percent of revenue, higher when entering a new market or a new trade. The useful check is not the percentage. It is whether cost per booked job is comfortably below the gross profit on that job.

Local Services Ads or Google Ads?

Local Services Ads for urgent, screened, pay per lead work. Google Ads for the searches where you want control of the landing page, such as replacement, install and cost research. Most contractors run both.

How many reviews do we need?

Enough to sit near the other top map results in your city, with the newest one from this month. Recency does more work than raw count.

How long before this pays off?

Profile and answering fixes can change the week. Ranking takes months. If someone promises page one in thirty days in a metro like Dallas, they are selling you something.

Trades and contractors

Marketing for home service companies.

HVAC, plumbing, roofing, electrical, pest, restoration, garage doors, landscaping, remodeling and handyman work. Different trades, one buying pattern: urgent search, fast answer, local proof.

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What marketing works best for home service businesses?

Local search first, because most home service jobs start with a map result and end with a phone call. Complete your Google Business Profile, build a page for each service and each city you serve, collect reviews every week, then use Local Services Ads and Google Ads to buy the demand you cannot rank for yet. Measure booked jobs, not clicks.

Home service buying looks the same across trades. Something breaks, the homeowner searches on a phone, and they call one of the first three results that looks open and legitimate.

That sequence decides where the money should go. Visibility on the map, a phone somebody answers, and enough recent proof that the choice feels safe. Ads come after those three, not before.

Pick your corner of home services.

HVAC

Two weeks of demand pay for the year. Everything else is keeping the crew busy in April and October.

HVAC marketing

Plumbing

Nobody shops around with water on the floor. They call whoever looks closest, open and legitimate.

Plumbing marketing

Roofing

Storms bring out of state crews and door knockers. Being the local company people already trust is the entire advantage.

Roofing marketing

Electrical

Small repairs keep the lights on. Panels, generators and EV chargers are where the year is made.

Electrical marketing

Pest control

One treatment is a transaction. A quarterly plan is a business you can sell one day.

Pest control marketing

Restoration

Emergency demand, insurance paperwork and referral relationships. Marketing has to serve all three.

Restoration marketing

Garage doors

A stuck door is an emergency. A new door is a decision. Both start with the same search.

Garage doors marketing

Landscaping

Recurring maintenance funds the year. Design and install is where the profit lives.

Landscaping marketing

Remodeling

Nobody signs a kitchen contract off one visit. The follow up is the marketing.

Remodeling marketing

Handyman

Small jobs, tight margins, and a customer list worth more than any ad you will run.

Handyman marketing

The playbook.

Five stages, in order. Skipping ahead is the most common and most expensive mistake in home services marketing.

Get found

Be in the map pack for the searches that produce calls, in every area you dispatch to.

Google Business Profile: Correct categories, every service listed, service areas that match your trucks, fifty real photos, hours that hold up on holidays, and the Q and A section answered by you.
Local SEO: A page per service and a page per city you serve, with consistent name, address and phone everywhere Google reads it.
Maps: Reviews, photos and posts on a schedule, because map ranking rewards recency more than most owners expect.
AI search: Short factual answers near the top of every page, structured data, and consistent business details so assistants can repeat them without guessing.

Convert

Turn the visit into a call. Home service sites lose most people to slow loading and hidden phone numbers.

Website: Fast on a phone, phone number tappable in the header, service area obvious, licensing and insurance visible.
Service pages: One real page per job with pricing ranges, process and finished work. Not a bulleted list on the homepage.
Landing pages: Ads land on a page about the exact search, not the homepage. This alone often halves cost per lead.
Reviews: Recent, specific, and shown near the call to action where the decision happens.

Capture

Most home service companies do not have a lead problem. They have an answering problem.

Call tracking: Separate numbers per channel so you know which spend produced the call, plus recordings to hear how they get handled.
Forms: Short, mobile first, and honest about what happens next. Long forms cost you emergency work.
SMS: Missed call text back, appointment confirmations and on the way messages. Cheap, and it recovers leads you already paid for.
Lead routing: Every lead lands in one place with an owner and a timestamp, so nothing sits until Tuesday.

Grow

Buy demand once the basics hold. Ads on a broken funnel just cost more per failure.

Google Ads: Tight service and location targeting, negative keywords maintained weekly, budgets weighted to the hours you can answer.
Local Services Ads: Google Guaranteed placement above the map, paid per lead. Screening takes weeks, so start before your season.
Retargeting: For considered work like replacement, remodel and install, where the decision takes weeks.
Content: Cost questions, process explanations and repair versus replace. It ranks, and it answers what your phone gets asked all day.

Prove

Leads are not the scoreboard. Booked jobs and what they cost you are.

Qualified leads: Split real prospects from wrong numbers and out of area calls, by channel.
Booked jobs: Tie each booked job back to the search, the ad or the profile that produced it.
Cost per booked job: The single number that tells you where the next dollar goes.
Revenue optimization: Average ticket, close rate and repeat work, so growth does not depend only on buying more leads.

What it costs to compete

In competitive metros, home service clicks are among the most expensive in local search. Emergency terms in Dallas, Houston, Atlanta and Los Angeles regularly clear thirty dollars a click, which is why profile and review work comes first.

Local Services Ads charge per lead rather than per click, and disputes for wrong numbers or out of area calls are worth filing every week.

Expect three to six months for local SEO to move in a large metro, faster in Knoxville than in Los Angeles. Ads produce calls immediately and stop the day you pause them. Most contractors need both running at once.

What we report back

Booked jobs by channel
Cost per booked job
Calls answered versus missed
Average ticket and close rate
Review volume and recency

Questions people ask

How much should a home service company spend on marketing?: Growing contractors commonly run somewhere between five and ten percent of revenue, higher when entering a new market or a new trade. The useful check is not the percentage. It is whether cost per booked job is comfortably below the gross profit on that job.
Local Services Ads or Google Ads?: Local Services Ads for urgent, screened, pay per lead work. Google Ads for the searches where you want control of the landing page, such as replacement, install and cost research. Most contractors run both.
How many reviews do we need?: Enough to sit near the other top map results in your city, with the newest one from this month. Recency does more work than raw count.
How long before this pays off?: Profile and answering fixes can change the week. Ranking takes months. If someone promises page one in thirty days in a metro like Dallas, they are selling you something.

Want this run properly?

Thirty minutes, plain answers, no pitch deck. Bring your numbers and we will tell you where the leak is.