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What a Digital Marketing Agency Can and Can't Do for a Home Service Business
An agency can make the phone ring more often in tune-up season, but whether those calls become booked jobs still depends on who answers, who follows up on the estimate and who shows up on time.
At a glance
- A digital marketing agency controls reach (the website, search ads, listings and the reports on them), while the home service company controls everything after the phone rings, which decides whether a call becomes a paid job.
- In an audit published in Harvard Business Review, 23% of 2,241 U.S. companies never replied to a new web inquiry, so many businesses already lose inquiries they paid to get.
- In an illustrative HVAC or plumbing company spending $3,000 a month on an agency and ads, answering nine in ten calls instead of six in ten cuts the cost per booked job from $250 to about $167.
- Before signing, ask for a monthly report in booked jobs, keep every account in the company's name and put in writing that nobody will buy or write reviews for you.
Part 1 | What an agency can do well
A good agency handles work most contractors have no time for, such as keeping service pages current, running search ads when the first cold snap sends homeowners looking for furnace repair, updating the Google profile with seasonal hours and photos, and setting up call tracking that shows how many calls came in, when and from which source.
The owner's hope at signing usually sounds like this: Once the phone is ringing, the rest takes care of itself. For a shop where the owner is on a roof most of the day, the rest is the hard part, because an agency's calls arrive when the company is least able to pick up, in the first heat wave of June or the first freeze of December.
| An agency can | The company still has to |
|---|---|
| Build and update the website, service pages and booking form | Answer calls and messages, or text back within minutes when the crew can't |
| Run search ads and manage the budget by season | Price the job, write the estimate and follow up on it |
| Keep the Google profile, hours and photos current | Show up in the promised window and clean up after the work |
| Track calls by source and report on them | Ask happy customers for honest reviews and reply to every review |
| Suggest offers for slow months | Decide which offers the schedule and margins can carry |
Part 2 | What an agency can't do, and what it legally shouldn't
The largest limit is the phone. If an agency doubles the calls in a week and half of them reach voicemail while the crew is in a crawlspace, the extra spend mostly buys calls to the next company on the list, and the arithmetic below shows how much the answer rate changes what each booked job costs.
| Input or result | Answering 6 in 10 | Answering 9 in 10 | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agency retainer plus ad spend per month | $3,000 | $3,000 | Assumption |
| Calls from marketing per month | 50 | 50 | Assumption |
| Calls answered or returned the same day | 30 | 45 | Calculated (50 × 60% or 90%) |
| Share of answered calls that book | 40% | 40% | Assumption |
| Jobs booked per month | 12 | 18 | Calculated |
| Cost per booked job | $250 | about $167 | Calculated ($3,000 ÷ jobs) |
| Revenue at a $450 average first job | $5,400 | $8,100 | Calculated (jobs × $450) |
The second limit is the estimate. A homeowner weighing a water heater replacement or a new condenser may be collecting other quotes at the same time, and the agency has no part in whether someone checks in two days later, answers the question about financing or explains the difference between the good and better options.
The third limit is reviews, where federal rules now ban the shortcuts outright. The FTC's rule on consumer reviews, in effect since October 21, 2024, bans fake reviews and reviews bought with incentives tied to a positive rating, and the FTC states that advertising agencies and reputation management firms "are not immune from liability" under it; the business can be liable too if it knew or should have known the reviews were fake, and knowing violations of FTC rules carry civil penalties of up to $53,088 each.
General information, not legal/tax/financial advice; talk to a licensed professional about your situation.
Part 3 | The monthly report a contractor should ask for
A report full of impressions and clicks shows how busy the agency was, while the numbers that pay the bills sit closer to the truck, and the checklist below turns the report into something the owner can check against the schedule board.
Checklist. Ask your agency to report these every month
- Calls and form requests by source, with the number from search ads, the Google profile and the website listed separately.
- Calls answered, missed and returned, by day and hour.
- Booked jobs by source, matched against your dispatch or scheduling software rather than estimated.
- Cost per booked job, meaning total agency fees plus ad spend divided by jobs booked.
- Average first ticket by source, since a drain-cleaning call and a system replacement call are worth very different amounts.
- Account ownership, confirming the ad, website, domain and Google accounts are in the company's name.
- Review activity, confirming every review came from a real customer and that the agency did not write, buy or filter any of them.
How you compare
- Response rate: in the HBR audit, 37% of companies replied within an hour and 23% never replied; a company that answers or returns nine in ten calls the same day is ready for more of them.
- Reaching customers: 57% of employer firms in the Federal Reserve's 2024 small business survey named reaching customers and growing sales as a challenge, so a company that finds growth hard is in the majority of firms surveyed.
- Your own baseline: one month of calls, answered calls and booked jobs, by source, is the benchmark to bring to an agency before signing and to measure them against afterward.
Questions to ask this week
What share of last month's calls did we answer or return the same day? Your phone system or carrier can usually show it.
What does each booked job cost us in marketing today? Divide everything spent on marketing last month by jobs booked from it.
Whose name is on our Google profile, ad account and domain? If it is the agency's, ask them to transfer ownership and add themselves as a user.
Who follows up on estimates, and when? If nobody does it on a schedule, that step may be worth more than any new campaign.
Pull last month's calls, answers and booked jobs, work out your cost per booked job with Exhibit 2, and take that figure to any agency conversation before you sign.
About this research: This article draws on a Harvard Business Review audit of 2,241 U.S. companies, the Federal Reserve Banks' Small Business Credit Survey of 7,653 employer firms, the FTC's Consumer Reviews and Testimonials Rule and the federal civil penalty schedule. The worked example is illustrative.
Sources
- Oldroyd, J. B., McElheran, K. and Elkington, D. The Short Life of Online Sales Leads. Harvard Business Review, March 2011. Audit of 2,241 U.S. companies.
- Federal Reserve Banks. 2025 Report on Employer Firms: Findings from the 2024 Small Business Credit Survey. 2025. 7,653 employer firms.
- Federal Trade Commission. Consumer Reviews and Testimonials Rule: Questions and Answers. 2024.
- 16 CFR § 1.98, Adjustment of civil monetary penalty amounts.
Related reading: Marketing Agency or Consultant? What a Small Business Should Fix Before Hiring One · Ten Questions to Ask a Small Business Marketing Consultant Before You Sign · Missed-Call Texts for Contractors on the Job · Angi, Thumbtack and Google Leads: What Home Service Pros Should Know Before Paying Per Lead · Why Following Up on Estimates Wins Jobs, Shown in Numbers
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