- Ad spend is one line of six. Price the whole bill before you compare options.
- One-time setup and ongoing management are different costs. Keep them apart.
- Your team’s time on leads and estimates is a real cost, even when nobody invoices it.
- Judge the total on cost per signed job, not on any single line.
The six lines on a contractor marketing bill
When contractors compare marketing options, they usually compare one figure: the monthly fee or the ad budget. The other costs turn up later. Put all six on paper before you decide anything.
- Ad spend: what Meta, Google, or another platform charges to show your ads
- Management: the people who plan, launch, and adjust the campaigns
- Creative: video, photos, and ad copy, plus the time it takes to film
- Pages and setup: landing pages, estimate calculators, forms, and the booking calendar
- Software: CRM, texting, scheduling, and reporting tools
- Your team’s time: answering leads, confirming appointments, and running estimates
Ad spend follows your goals
Ad spend goes to the platform and buys attention, nothing more. How much you need comes from the jobs you want, your booking and close rates, and what a lead costs in your area. Our marketing budget guide walks through that math step by step.
Two things to check with anyone who runs it for you. First, that the ad account is in your company’s name and you can log in. Second, how the spend is billed: charged by the platform straight to your card, or passed through someone else’s invoice. You should know which one you have.
Setup and management are two different costs
Setup is one-time work: building the pages, connecting forms to your CRM, writing the follow-up texts, and testing that a booked estimate actually lands on your calendar. Management is the ongoing work: launching new ads, cutting the ones that don’t book, reading the numbers every week, and fixing what slips.
Some providers fold setup into the monthly fee, some bill it up front, and some skip it and send traffic to whatever site you already have. Ask what gets built, who owns it if you part ways, and what the monthly fee covers after launch.
Creative is a recurring cost
Ads wear out. The same video shown to the same homeowners for months stops getting noticed, so new creative has to keep coming. That means filming days, editing, and someone writing hooks and scripts.
Footage from your own jobs costs time as well as money: a crew member willing to be on camera, a finished project worth shooting, and a homeowner who’s fine with it. Plan it on a schedule instead of scrambling once results dip.
Software, and the cost nobody invoices
Most contractors already pay for some software: a field service tool, a CRM, a texting app. Marketing can add a booking calendar, a page builder, or a reporting tool. Check what you already own before paying twice for the same job.
Then count your team’s hours. Every lead someone calls back, every appointment someone confirms, every estimate your estimator drives to. An estimate that never had a chance of closing costs an evening, and slow manual follow-up costs both hours and jobs.
How to judge whether the total is worth it
Add every line for one month: spend, fees, creative, software, and a fair figure for your team’s hours. Divide by the signed jobs that marketing produced. That’s your cost per signed job. Set it next to the gross profit on an average job.
If the cost per signed job leaves room for overhead and profit, the marketing is paying its way, whatever any single line costs. If it doesn’t, find the line or the step that’s leaking before you cut everything.
