The contractor marketing agency that counts signed jobs, not clicks

If you hired a contractor marketing agency last year and still can't say how many signed jobs came from the money you spent, you didn't buy marketing. You bought a guess with a nice PDF attached.

Most contractors we talk to have been there. The report was full of impressions, clicks and "engagement." The bank account didn't move. Meanwhile the crew needed work for next month, and the only thing that kept the schedule full was the same referral network that has carried the company since day one.

This page explains how we do marketing for contractors, piece by piece: what each channel is for, what it usually costs to turn a click into a signed contract, and how you can see all of it without waiting on anybody to send you a report.

What a contractor marketing agency should actually deliver

You don't need more leads. You need more signed jobs at a cost that makes sense for your margins. Those are different things, and the gap between them is where most agencies hide.

A lead is a name and a phone number. A signed job is a homeowner who agreed to your price. Between the two you have a booked estimate, a site visit, a proposal, a follow-up call and, sometimes, a callback from a homeowner who is also getting two other bids. If your agency stops measuring at the form fill, it has no idea whether your ads are working. Neither do you.

So here is the standard we hold ourselves to, and the one you should hold any marketing agency for contractors to:

• Every lead is tracked from the ad that brought it to the job it turned into, or the reason it didn't.
• Cost is measured per signed contract, not per click and not only per lead.
• You can see the numbers yourself, any time, in a live dashboard. No waiting, no filtered slides.
• Budget moves toward what signs, not toward what gets the most clicks.

That's the difference between knowing which ad brought the $40K kitchen and guessing.

The full system: every piece of contractor marketing and what it does for you

Contractor marketing works when the pieces talk to each other. A Google ad that brings a homeowner to a slow website loses the job. A great website nobody visits is a brochure. A CRM with no ad data can't tell you what to spend more on. Here is how each piece fits.

Google Ads: catch the homeowner who is ready to hire

Someone typing "deck builder near me" or "roof replacement cost" already has a project. Search ads put you in front of that person at the exact moment they are looking. This is usually where the fastest signed jobs come from, and also where money gets wasted fastest if the keywords, negatives and locations are loose. We cover the details on our page about Google Ads for contractors.

Local Services Ads: the Google Guaranteed spot

Local Services Ads show up above regular search ads with a Google badge, and you pay per lead instead of per click. They require background checks, license and insurance verification, which is exactly why homeowners trust them. Google explains the requirements in its Local Services Ads getting started guide. For many trades, LSA and search ads run side by side and cover each other's gaps.

Meta, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok: create demand before they search

Most homeowners don't wake up planning a new patio. They see one, on a neighbor's feed or in a video of your crew, and the idea sticks. Social ads reach people before they type anything into Google. They work best for visual trades (decks, pavers, kitchens, bathrooms, landscaping, painting) and for retargeting people who already visited your site. To send the right signal back to Meta, we connect the ads to real outcomes through the Meta Conversions API, so the algorithm learns from booked estimates instead of random clicks.

Website and SEO: the asset you own

Ads stop when the budget stops. A website that ranks keeps bringing calls. We build fast sites with one page per service and per area you actually want to work in, then write the content that gets them found. If your current site looks nice and never makes the phone ring, start with our page on contractor website design, and then read how we approach SEO for contractors. SEO is slower than ads. It is also the channel that gets cheaper every year you keep it up.

CRM: where leads become jobs (or disappear)

Leads that live in text messages, a notebook and three email inboxes get lost. We implement a CRM so every lead lands in one pipeline with its source attached: which ad, which keyword, which campaign. Then each stage gets marked as it happens: estimate booked, proposal sent, signed, lost. That's what makes it possible to calculate cost per signed contract instead of guessing. More on how that works in CRM for contractors.

Social media and video editing: proof that you do good work

Homeowners check your Instagram before they let you into their house. We manage your social profiles and edit video from your jobs: before and after, the crew working, the finished project walkthrough. The same footage becomes the best raw material for your ads, because real jobs beat stock photos every time.

Email and SMS marketing: money sitting in your old customer list

Every homeowner you ever worked for is a possible repeat job or referral. We run email and SMS campaigns to your past customers and old estimates: seasonal offers, new services, slow season pushes. It's usually the cheapest revenue in the whole system because you already paid to win those people once.

The live dashboard: the whole funnel on your phone

This is where everything comes together. Ad spend, leads, booked estimates, proposals, signed contracts and revenue, by channel and by campaign, updated live. You open it between jobs and see what your money did. No waiting for a report, no agency choosing which numbers you get to see.

The money math: what our campaigns average

Here are our averages across residential construction campaigns. Results vary by trade, region, price and sales process, so read these as a reference point, not a promise.

Funnel stage	Our average cost
Cost per lead	$166
Cost per booked estimate	$315
Cost per proposal sent	$494
Cost per signed contract	$1,714
Average ad spend	$4,300 per month

Across those campaigns, the average return is about 7x per ad dollar. When the whole funnel is mapped, from ad to lead to estimate to proposal to signed job, our experience is that these services usually return somewhere between 6x and 20x on ad spend.

Look at the gap between the first and the last line. On these averages, it takes roughly ten leads to produce one signed contract. That's why a $166 lead is cheap if your average job is $30,000 and expensive if your average job is $2,000. An agency that only reports cost per lead can't tell you which one you are.

Three trades, three results

Numbers from real campaigns, kept anonymous on purpose:

• A deck builder put about $8,000 into ads and closed more than $200,000 in signed contracts. That's roughly 25x.
• A home services company spent about $1,500 a month on ads and closed about $99,000 in two jobs.
• An electrical contractor spent about $2,500 on ads and closed about $80,000, roughly 32x.

None of them got there because of one clever ad. They got there because every lead was tracked to the end, and budget kept moving to what was actually signing.

General contractor marketing vs. specialty trades

The system stays the same. The mix changes a lot depending on what you sell.

General contractor marketing is about bigger tickets and longer decisions. A homeowner planning an addition or a full remodel may take weeks between the first call and the signed contract. Search ads and SEO bring the intent, video and social build trust, and the CRM keeps the conversation from going cold. Construction company marketing at this level lives or dies on the proposal stage, so we watch cost per proposal closely.

Home improvement marketing for specialty trades (roofing, flooring, painting, HVAC, fencing, pavers) is usually faster. Search intent is strong, jobs are smaller, and volume matters. Here Local Services Ads and tight Google Ads campaigns tend to carry most of the weight, and email to past customers fills the slow season.

Either way, you stop depending on GCs handing you work and on Angi or Thumbtack selling the same shared lead to five other contractors. Your leads come to you, with your name on them.

How working with us starts

1. Audit. We look at your current ads, website, reviews and how leads are handled today. You get a straight answer about what is wasting money.
2. Tracking first. Before we scale any budget, the CRM and conversion tracking go in, so every lead has a source and every stage gets recorded. Google explains the basics of this in its guide on conversion measurement.
3. Launch the channels that fit your trade. Usually search ads and LSA first, then Meta and retargeting, while the website and SEO work build in the background.
4. Move money toward what signs. The live dashboard shows which campaigns produce contracts. Those get more budget. The rest get fixed or cut.

How to choose a marketing agency for contractors

Whether you hire us or someone else, ask these questions before you sign anything:

• Do you report cost per signed contract? If the answer is "we report leads," the agency doesn't know if it's making you money.
• Who owns the ad accounts and the website? It should be you. Always.
• Can I see the numbers myself, live? A report you have to wait for is a report someone had time to polish.
• Do you guarantee rankings or a number of leads? If yes, walk away. Nobody controls Google.
• Who actually runs the campaigns? Our founder, Luis Gustavo Nascimento, is a Google Partner and works on the accounts every day.

If you want to see what your current marketing is really returning, ask for a free audit. We'll show you where the money goes today, where signed jobs are leaking, and what we would change first. No pressure, no fluff.