Advertising for contractors · Built by a contractor · Since 2012
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Contractor Marketing Plan Builder

Seven questions about your trade and your numbers. You get back a real twelve-month plan — what to fix first, which channels in what order, how to split the budget, and your break-even cost per lead measured against your trade's actual 2026 benchmarks. Nothing is gated. Print it, or email it to yourself.

Start building How it works

Build your plan

Step 1 of 7 · Your trade
0%
What trade are you in?

This sets which 2026 lead-cost benchmarks we measure you against.

Where is the business right now?

Growth stage changes the right answer more than trade does.

How big is your service area?

Radius drives how many pages, profiles and campaigns the plan needs.

What does an average job invoice at?

Your typical completed job, not your biggest one. Ballpark is fine.

$

What's your gross profit margin?

What's left after materials and labor, before overhead. Most trades run 25–45%.

%
5%70%
Out of 10 real leads, how many become jobs?

Leads that turn into signed work — not estimates given, jobs booked.

Tap a number. Most contractors land between 2 and 4.

What can you put toward marketing each month?

Be realistic. A plan you can't fund isn't a plan.

$ /mo
Now rank what matters most

Drag to reorder, or use the arrows. Your plan sequences around your top priority.

  • 1 More leads, fastI need the phone ringing sooner rather than later
  • 2 Lower cost per jobI'm getting work but paying too much for it
  • 3 Better quality leadsToo many tire-kickers and price shoppers
  • 4 Stop renting leadsI want channels I own, not marketplace fees
The method

How does the plan builder decide what to recommend?

It runs one calculation and then reads it against published 2026 lead costs for your trade. Your break-even cost per lead is your gross profit per job multiplied by your close rate. That single number determines which channels can work for you at all — everything else in the plan follows from it.

Step one

Your ceiling comes first

If your average job is $8,500 at a 30% margin, each job carries $2,550 in gross profit. At a 25% close rate you need four leads per job, so you can afford up to $638 per lead before the first job loses money. That's your ceiling, and it's the only number that decides whether a channel is viable for you.

Step two

Real benchmarks, not estimates

We compare your ceiling against published 2026 cost-per-lead data for your specific trade — Local Services Ads and Google Ads figures drawn from tracked contractor spend, with the source and date shown. Where no trade-specific benchmark has been published, the plan says so rather than inventing one.

Step three

Sequence beats selection

Knowing which channels work isn't the same as knowing what to do first. The plan orders twelve months around your stage, your budget and your ranked priorities — because a contractor spending $500 a month across five channels does worse than one spending it on the right two.

Everything runs in your browser. Nothing is sent anywhere unless you choose to email the plan to yourself. There's no account, no unlock step, and no follow-up sequence waiting for you. If you want a person to look at your actual site and market, that's the free audit — also no obligation.

The bottleneck

Why does the plan always start with your website?

Because every channel eventually sends people there. Search, ads, the map pack, a truck wrap, a referral checking you out — all of it funnels to the same page. If that page doesn't convert, everything upstream of it is paying to lose customers more efficiently.

Here's the arithmetic that makes it the first item in almost every plan we generate. Say you get 500 visitors a month. At a 1% conversion rate that's five leads. At 4% it's twenty. Same traffic, same spend, four times the work. Buying more visitors to fix a conversion problem is the single most expensive mistake in contractor marketing.

There's a second reason it comes first: phone leads convert dramatically better than form submissions. Industry data published in 2026 puts phone leads around a 46% conversion rate against 8–12% for forms, with 37% of phone leads closing on the first call. If your number isn't visible in the header of every page, tappable on mobile, you're routing your best-converting lead type into your worst-converting channel.

Source: Foundry CRO home services benchmarks, April 2026.

Want that measured rather than guessed at? The website scorecard runs 25 checks and gives you a graded fix list.

Contractor lead generation dashboard showing incoming phone calls, new leads and appointments booked
Phone leads convert several times better than forms. Make yours impossible to miss.
Questions

About this tool

Is the marketing plan builder really free?
Yes, and there is no email wall. The plan generates in your browser and you can read it, print it or save it as a PDF without giving us anything. Emailing it to yourself is optional, and if you use that option we see a copy, which is the only benefit we get from offering it.
How is my break-even cost per lead calculated?
Gross profit per job multiplied by your close rate. If your average job is $8,500 at a 30% gross margin, that job carries $2,550 in gross profit. At a 25% close rate you need four leads to book one job, so you can afford up to $638 per lead before the first job stops making money. Repeat work, referrals and maintenance agreements all raise that ceiling in practice, which is why the number is conservative.
Where do the lead cost benchmarks come from?
Published 2026 contractor advertising data, cited by source and date inside your plan. Local Services Ads and Google Ads figures come from SearchLight Digital benchmarks covering tracked spend across hundreds of contractors, with additional trade figures from LocaliQ and Estatehub 2026 data. For trades where no specific benchmark has been published, the plan tells you that instead of showing an invented number.
What if my budget is only fifty dollars a month?
Then the plan will tell you to spend it on the things that work at that level rather than pretend a small paid campaign will perform. A complete Google Business Profile, a steady review process and a website that converts are the highest-return work available to a contractor with a small budget, and they cost time rather than money. We would rather give you that plan than sell you a campaign that cannot clear your ceiling.
Does this replace hiring a marketing company?
For some contractors, honestly yes. If your service area is small and your plan comes back as profile work, reviews and response time, you can execute all of that yourself and should. The plan is most useful as a way to know what you are buying before anyone quotes you, so you can tell the difference between a real proposal and a package built for the average client.
Do you store the numbers I enter?
No. The entire calculation runs in your browser and nothing leaves your device unless you choose to email the plan to yourself. If you do use that option, we receive the plan and the inputs you entered so we can answer questions about it. We do not sell data and we do not add anyone to a mailing list.

Want someone to check the plan?

Free audit of your site, your profile, your reviews and the competitors beating you. You keep the findings either way.

Call 1-800-481-8638 Get a free audit