INDUSTRY / HOME SERVICE TRADES
Nobody answers the phone from a crawlspace.
Marketing for HVAC, plumbing, electrical, roofing, and the trades where the ticket is big and the crew is never near a desk.
The trades have the best economics of any business I work with. One replacement can be worth more than a month of a salon's bookings. That size cuts both ways, because one missed call is not a small loss, it is a five figure job that went to whoever picked up. When your whole team is in attics, trucks, and crawlspaces, the phone is the weakest part of an otherwise strong business.
STRAIGHT WITH YOU
I don't have a trades client yet. I'm telling you that up front.
Every other industry page on this site points at a real client with a real system running. This one does not, and I am not going to invent one or dress a moving company up as a plumber to make this page look better.
What I have is three service businesses I built with my own hands, an auto detail shop that went six figures, a moving company with a seven figure best year, and a TV mounting business I still run in Colorado Springs and Denver. Every one of them lives on the same mechanics the trades live on. Dispatch, crews, tickets, callbacks, reviews, and a phone that rings while everybody is busy.
The system on this site was proven in those businesses and in the clients running it now. It is not tuned to your specific trade yet, and the first trades client I take will get that tuning done with them, honestly, in the open. If you would rather hire somebody with fifty HVAC logos on their wall, that is a completely reasonable decision and I will not pretend otherwise.
WHAT ACTUALLY COSTS YOU
Four leaks that get expensive fast at trade ticket sizes.
01
The missed call is a five figure job
In a salon a missed call costs a couple hundred dollars. In a trade it can be a system replacement, a repipe, or a roof. Same mechanical failure, an order of magnitude more expensive. And the homeowner with water coming through a ceiling is calling everybody until somebody answers.
02
Emergency work goes to whoever responds
Half of trade demand is urgent and none of it is patient. The customer is not comparing three quotes when the heat is out in February. Response speed is not a nice-to-have in this industry, it is most of the sale.
03
Shared leads sold to five competitors
Trades are the most heavily farmed industry in local lead generation, which is exactly why so many trade owners are cynical about marketing. Buying a lead sold simultaneously to five contractors means you win on price or not at all, and you build nothing you own.
04
Big quotes with no follow-up
The bigger the ticket, the longer the decision, and the more follow-up it needs. A $12,000 quote that goes quiet is not a no, it is a customer waiting on a spouse or a paycheck. Almost nobody follows up more than once, and the contractor who does gets the job.
WHAT I'D BUILD
Speed first, because your tickets are big.
Response and follow-up go in before anything else, because at trade ticket sizes recovering one job pays for the year. Then the profile and search work, which is where emergency demand actually gets captured. Then reviews, which in the trades are the difference between being called and being skipped.
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STRIKE
Missed Call Text-Back
Missed call to text in 30 seconds.
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STRIKE
Lead Follow-Up
Runs while your hands are full.
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SPOT
Google Business Profile
The map pack is the whole ballgame.
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GRIP
Review Generation
Reviews without annoying anybody.
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SPOT
Local SEO
Search, voice, and AI answers.
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COMMAND
Command
All three phases, one system.
TRADE QUESTIONS
Trade questions, answered.
- Why would I hire somebody with no trades clients?
- You might not, and that is fair. The argument for me is that I have run service businesses with crews, dispatch, and tickets rather than only marketed for them, and that the mechanics that lose you money are not trade-specific. The argument against me is that a specialist knows your trade's seasonality and vocabulary cold. Weigh it honestly. I would rather you decide with the real information than find out in month two.
- Do you do Google Local Services Ads?
- Yes, and I run them on my own business at $500 to $1,000 a month. LSAs work in the trades. My position is that a paid channel should sit on top of assets you own, not be the entire business. If your lead flow disappears the day you stop paying, you do not have a marketing system, you have a subscription.
- We already have a call center. Do we still need text-back?
- Probably, for overflow and after hours. A call center catches the calls it can answer. Text-back catches what falls through when everyone is on the line at 4:45 on a Friday, which in the trades is exactly when the expensive calls arrive.
- How fast can this be running?
- Response and follow-up in the first week or two. Profile work over the first month. Search compounds over three to six months. In the trades the early pieces usually pay for the whole engagement before the search side has even started producing.
- What size company do you work with?
- The filter is whether two or three extra jobs a month would comfortably cover a real retainer, and whether you have the capacity to take that work. Most established trades clear that easily on ticket size alone. If you are one truck and booked six weeks out, you need another truck before you need marketing.
READY TO TALK?
One recovered job pays for the year.
30 minutes. We'll figure out how many calls you're missing and what they were worth.
Or call 720-902-9409