- Judge agencies on booked estimates and signed jobs, not impressions or clicks.
- You should own your ad accounts, pages, and customer data.
- Ask for proof you can verify and contract terms in writing.
- Make sure someone clearly owns the step between the lead and your calendar.
Decide what you’re hiring for
Some contractors need one skill: a better ad buyer, a videographer, a fix to a slow website. Others need the whole path built and run. An agency that’s strong at one piece can still leave you with leads nobody books.
Write down where homeowners drop off today: not enough inquiries, the wrong inquiries, slow follow-up, or estimates that don’t close. That list tells you what kind of help to hire, and it gives you something concrete to ask every agency about.
Questions to ask every agency
Ask the same questions of every finalist and write the answers down. Vague answers are an answer.
- What will you build, what will you run each month, and what stays with my team?
- What do you report on, and how do you connect an ad to a signed job?
- Who writes and produces the creative, and is it shot on my real work?
- What happens to a new lead in the first five minutes?
- Whose name are the ad accounts, pages, and CRM in?
- What does the contract say about length, notice, and what I keep if I leave?
- Can I talk to a current client in a trade like mine?
- How is ad spend paid, and can I see the platform’s invoices?
Red flags
Any one of these deserves a hard follow-up question. Two or three together usually mean walk away.
- Guaranteed lead counts or guaranteed jobs. Nobody controls your market, your price, or your close rate
- Leads shared with other contractors, or a fuzzy answer about where leads come from
- Ad accounts or pages held by the agency with no clear way to take them with you
- Reports full of impressions and clicks with nothing about booked estimates
- Case studies with big numbers and no client you can actually contact
- Pressure to sign today, or claims about a last open spot you can’t verify
- A long contract before anyone has looked at how you handle leads now
Contracts, ownership, and money
Read the length, the cancellation notice, and any setup fee terms before you look at the monthly number. Then get in writing what you keep if you leave: ad accounts, tracking data, pages, videos, and your contact list.
Ask how ad spend is handled. Paying the platform directly gives you a clean view of exactly what was spent. If the agency pays the platform for you, ask to see the invoices and how any management fee is calculated.
Where BlueSmith fits, and where it doesn’t
BlueSmith is one option. We’re a contractor acquisition agency based in the Fresno area. We film video ads on your real jobs, run Facebook and Instagram ads, build project pages with estimate calculators, qualifying questions, and booking, set up follow-up and your pipeline, and track from ad to signed job. Ad spend is paid directly to the platform, and your team runs the estimates and closes the work.
We fit established contractors with a crew that can take on more work and project values that make paid acquisition worth it. We’re not the right fit if you want guaranteed lead counts, only need one isolated piece done, or can’t get to new leads and estimates promptly. Outside the Fresno area, filming is scheduled per project and travel is quoted.
How to compare your finalists
Put two or three agencies side by side on the same questions. The strongest answers are specific: they name the steps, the tools, and what they’ll report, and they tell you plainly what depends on you.
Before you sign, run your own numbers. Know what a booked estimate is worth to you and what you can afford to pay for one, so you judge the proposal against your economics instead of the pitch.
