Home services is the most competitive local paid media category in the country, and the most winnable. Demand is urgent, intent is explicit, and most of your competitors are running two channels badly.
You run an emergency business and a planned-work business, and they need different marketing. The emergency side is won in the ten minutes between a problem appearing and a phone call: top-of-results position, a visible rating, one-tap calling, and someone answering. Nothing else is inside that window.
The planned side — replacements, remodels, system upgrades, roofs — takes weeks. It is won on shortlists, which are built from reviews, examples of work, and clear pricing.
Most home services accounts are built entirely for one of these and then judged on the other. That single mismatch explains most disappointing results in the category.
Paid search and local service ads take the majority at any budget under about $8,000 a month. In urgent trades, position is the campaign — being third on the page in an emergency category is close to being invisible.
Add retargeting immediately; the planned-work buyer visits three or four times before calling, and retargeting is the cheapest way to be there for all of them.
Demand creation — streaming TV, social video, audio — earns its place once you are capturing most of the available search demand. Before that it is early. After that it is the only way to grow, because search volume in a county is finite.
HVAC has two peaks and two troughs, and the money is made in the four weeks before each peak, not during it. Roofing spikes after weather events and then collapses. Plumbing is steadiest but peaks in cold snaps and holidays.
The pattern that works: sell the next season during the current one. Maintenance and tune-up offers in the shoulder months keep technicians busy and produce the customer list you monetize during the peak.
And when a weather event hits, speed matters more than budget. Businesses that can change creative and raise spend the same afternoon capture the entire window.
Missed calls. This is the largest and cheapest problem in the category — in urgent trades an unanswered call is a lost job, immediately, to the next number down. Fix answering before you touch bids.
Radius targeting centered on the office rather than the service area, so budget goes to jobs you will not drive to.
No negative keyword list, which is how a plumbing account pays for DIY tutorials and salary searches.
And a rating below about 4.2 stars, which gets you filtered during the twenty-second check between your ad and the call.
We run the emergency and planned sides as separate campaigns with different creative, different pacing, and different measurement. We schedule delivery around when your phones are actually answered. And we hold a creative reserve so a weather event or a competitor promotion can be answered the same day.
Every channel runs from one place, so when search maxes out in July we can move money into streaming and audio without adding a vendor or renegotiating anything.
Within days of launch on paid search. Month one will be your worst cost per lead; month three is the number to judge against.
No — they sit above it and usually convert better, but volume is capped. Run both.
Once you are capturing most available search demand, yes. It reliably lifts brand search and call volume. Before that, fund capture first.
No. Reduce and shift toward planned-work messaging and maintenance offers. Going dark costs you the following peak.
Same execution layer, different mechanics. Twelve categories, every channel.
We run Home Services campaigns in every county in the country. A few of the markets we work in:
Tell us what you run today and what you pay for it. We'll show you the difference in one call.