Marketing for trades businesses - lead sources ranked by cost and quality, review systems, quoting speed and the numbers to track. This guide is written for Trades business owners moving off lead-marketplace dependency, and everything below comes from work we do on live accounts rather than recycled theory. Skim the sections, take the numbers as starting benchmarks for your own market, and treat the checklist items as a work plan you can hand to your team or your agency this week.
What it costs
A realistic starting mix for a single-van to ten-van trade business is $1,500-$5,000 per month across SEO, GBP, paid search and a review system. That usually beats marketplace lead fees within two quarters because owned channels do not charge per lead forever.
Treat every range above as a starting benchmark, not a quote. Competition in your specific market, the current state of your website, how much production capacity you already have in-house, and how aggressive your growth target is will all move the number. The useful exercise is to work backwards from revenue: what is one additional customer worth, how many do you need per month to justify the spend, and does the plan on the table plausibly produce them?
How long it takes
Paid search and GBP produce work in weeks. Owned organic lead flow takes 4-6 months, at which point marketplace spend can be cut back rather than eliminated overnight.
Two things reliably compress timelines. The first is production volume: more genuinely useful pages and more consistent execution per month means faster results, which is why budget and speed are linked. The second is starting condition - a site with clean technical foundations and existing authority moves much faster than a new domain. Be honest about which one you are, then set expectations accordingly with whoever signs off on the budget.
What actually works
Rank your current lead sources by cost per booked job, not cost per lead. Marketplaces usually look cheap per lead and expensive per job.
Systemise reviews: ask at job completion, follow with an SMS link, and target a steady monthly count rather than bursts.
None of these are clever. They are the boring fundamentals executed at unusual quality and consistency, which is what separates programmes that compound from programmes that plateau after one quarter.
Quote faster than competitors. In trades, the first credible quote wins a disproportionate share of jobs.
Build a simple database motion - annual service reminders, past-customer offers - because repeat work has near-zero acquisition cost.
Mistakes that cost the most
Depending on a single marketplace that can change pricing or throttle volume overnight.
Not answering the phone during working hours; trades leads rarely leave voicemails.
Spending on brand awareness before the basics - GBP, reviews, service-area pages - are done.
Every one of these is common enough that we expect to find at least two of them in any audit. Fixing them costs almost nothing compared with the spend they waste, so they belong at the top of the work plan rather than in a backlog.
Your next 90 days
Weeks 1-2: instrument everything first. Tracking, call tracking where relevant, a conversion definition that finance would accept, and a baseline you can defend later. Skipping this step is the single most expensive shortcut available, because without a baseline you cannot prove anything worked.
Weeks 3-8: ship the highest-leverage items from the 'what actually works' list above, in priority order, one at a time so each change stays attributable. Resist the urge to rebuild everything at once - it feels productive and it destroys your ability to learn.
Weeks 9-12: build the compounding layer - content cadence, review velocity, link acquisition, experimentation - and set a monthly review with a fixed agenda. Trades businesses that track cost per booked job almost always reallocate budget within one quarter, because the ranking looks nothing like the cost-per-lead ranking.
If you would like a second opinion before you commit budget, we run free 30-minute strategy calls and will walk through your current setup using the same diagnostic we use with paying clients.
Ready to put this into action?
Book a free 30-minute strategy call. We'll audit your setup and share a clear plan.