Online marketing for contractors, ranked by speed to booked jobs.
Every “online marketing” pitch you’ve heard sells one channel as the answer. The truth: there’s an order, and it’s the same for almost every trade. This is the full stack — what each channel costs, when it pays, the 90-day rollout — plus a calculator for what your current spend should be producing.
Where the money goes — and why.
Now: capture demand
LSA and Google search ads catch people who need work this week. Highest intent, fastest payback. If you run nothing else, run these — badly-set-up versions of them are still most contractors’ best channel.
Next: convert it
All that traffic lands on your website. Speed, click-to-call, an instant estimator, and proof decide whether a $60 click becomes a lead or a bounce. Fix the bucket before pouring more water.
Then: compound
Meta ads with real content create demand; local SEO and reviews make every lead cheaper each quarter. This is the layer that separates contractors who buy every job from ones who own their cities.
What is your ad spend producing — and what should it produce?
Drag the sliders to what you spend and pay per lead today. The right column shows the typical range after proper management — tighter targeting, weekly negative keywords, faster landing pages — plus leads recovered by missed-call text-back.
Estimate based on typical results from removing junk clicks (15–30% of unmanaged budgets), landing-page fixes, and missed-call recovery (contractors miss 20–35% of calls). Ranges, not promises — your audit shows the numbers for your actual market. Ad spend is always paid straight to Google/Meta, never marked up.
Your first 90 days, week by week.
No mystery retainer. This is the exact rollout order, the same one we run for every client — each phase starts producing before the next one starts spending:
Audit + foundations
We audit your rankings, ad accounts, tracking and competitors, then fix the free stuff first: Google Business Profile completed, review engine on, tracked numbers on everything. You get the findings in writing within 24 hours of the first call.
LSA live
Google Guaranteed screening submitted day one — it takes 1–3 weeks to approve, so it runs while everything else is built. Pay-per-call only. First calls typically land here.
Search ads launch
Campaigns split by service and intent, each with its own landing page and budget. Emergency terms and big-ticket terms never share a campaign. Weekly negative-keyword pruning starts immediately.
Website + conversion
Fast pages, click-to-call everywhere, instant estimator, proof blocks. Every channel lands here — fixing it mid-rollout means every dollar before and after works harder. Automations (missed-call text-back, review requests, reminders) go live.
Content, Meta & SEO compound
Monthly film day starts feeding Meta ads and GBP. Retargeting switches on. City/service SEO pages publish and start their climb. From here it’s weekly tuning and a Friday text with the four numbers that matter: spend, calls, cost per call, estimates booked.
Want the full channel-by-channel playbook? Read the digital marketing for contractors guide →
Straight answers.
What’s the best online marketing for a contractor starting from zero?
Finish your free Google Business Profile today, start LSA this week, and put a tracked number on everything. That combination books real jobs before you spend a dollar on clicks — then add search ads once you can answer the phone reliably.
How much should a contractor spend on online marketing?
5–10% of your revenue target, all-in. At $1M/year that’s $4,000–$8,000/month including management and ad spend. Under $2,000/month total in a competitive metro, it’s hard to buy enough data to optimize — we’ll tell you honestly on the audit.
Do I need all five channels at once?
No — that’s how budgets die. The 90-day roadmap below staggers them so each channel is producing before the next one starts spending. Most contractors are fully stacked by month four.
Get a free audit — see your market's real numbers.
One call. Within 24 hours you get it in writing: where you rank, what leads cost in your market, and what your top three competitors are running.
No card. No contract. Takes one phone call.