Built for trades. Works for anyone who sells a job.
The system is the same wherever a local business sells high-value work to people who search when they need it: get found, capture the call, answer it fast, measure what booked. The further a business sits from that shape, the less of it transfers — and we'd rather show you the map than pretend everything fits.
High-ticket, local, searched when needed.
- Med spa & aesthetics
- Dental practices
- Pest control
- Home & senior care
Same bones, different rules or timing.
- Law firms
- Restaurants
- Fitness studios
- Real estate agents
We'd point you elsewhere.
- National e-commerce
- B2B software
- Consumer brands
Sources: LocaliQ 2026 healthcare search advertising benchmarks across 16 specialties; PULSE 2026 cost per lead ranges from roughly 40 audited accounts; Practice Growth Co med spa benchmarks, July 2026; SearchLight Digital LSA benchmark, February 2026. That 24× spread is the entire point of this page. A $200 lead is excellent in personal injury law and ruinous for dental cleanings, which is why "what does a lead cost" is an unanswerable question until you know what a customer is worth.
What makes a business work like a contracting business?
Four traits, and they matter far more than the industry label. A med spa and a roofing company have almost nothing in common on the surface and are nearly identical underneath — both sell considered, high-value work to people in a defined area who go looking at the moment they need it. Where all four traits hold, the playbook transfers unchanged.
The customer is worth enough
Roughly $500 or more in first-job value, or lower with genuine repeat purchase. Below that, paid acquisition stops clearing its own cost and the business has to win on volume, referral or retail presence instead.
The market is geographic
You serve an area rather than a country. This is what unlocks Local Services Ads, map pack rankings and geographic direct mail — three of the strongest channels available, and all of them meaningless to a national business.
People search when they need it
Demand is captured rather than created. Nobody wakes up wanting a root canal or a new roof; they search at the moment the need appears. That makes intent-based channels work and makes interruption advertising secondary.
A human closes the sale
The transaction ends in a conversation, not a checkout. That makes response speed the dominant variable — the same reason a two-minute reply beats a two-day one in every trade we've measured.
Regulated categories
Healthcare, legal, financial and anything medical carry advertising restrictions the trades don't. The channels are the same; what you're allowed to say, target and track is not, and that changes the build rather than the strategy.
"It's basically the same"
It usually is, right up until it isn't. A restaurant is local and high-intent but sells at $40 a head, so the economics invert completely. Check the arithmetic before assuming the resemblance holds.
What do leads cost in industries outside contracting?
Wildly different amounts, and the spread tracks customer value almost perfectly. Personal injury legal leads run up to $450 while dermatology runs under $19 — not because one is better marketed, but because a signed injury case is worth thousands and a mole check is not.
$100+ Google
new patient
personal injury
$18–$141 range
vertical
Sources: PULSE 2026 CPL benchmarks (~40 audited accounts); LocaliQ 2026 healthcare search benchmarks across 16 specialties; Practice Growth Co med spa benchmarks, July 2026; The Valley Marketing Group / SearchLight Digital LSA data, February 2026. Ranges are wide because market, season and execution move them.
Does the contractor playbook transfer to your business?
This isn't a question of opinion or industry label. Work out what a customer is worth, derive the most you could pay for a lead, and check which channels actually clear it. If none do, no agency can change that — and you deserve to know before you sign something rather than after.
The Transfer Test
AFC · No. 023First job or first purchase. If you have genuine repeat business, use lifetime value instead — that's what a med spa or pest control company should do.
What's left after materials and labour, before overhead. Service businesses usually sit higher than product businesses.
Home services average 7.8%. Urgent categories reach 12–16%; considered, high-value ones sit nearer 3–7%.
This decides whether half the playbook is even available to you. Local Services Ads, map rankings and geographic mail all require a service area.
Runs in your browser; nothing is stored or transmitted. Channel costs are published 2026 averages cited above, and averages hide enormous variation — your market, season and competition all move them. "Clears easily" means your break-even is at least three times the channel's typical lead cost, which is roughly the headroom you want before committing. Treat this as a filter for obviously-wrong ideas rather than a business plan.
When would you tell a business you're not the right fit?
Four situations, and we'd rather say it on the first call than six months into a retainer. An agency that claims every industry is a fit is telling you it has one playbook and applies it regardless — which is exactly the experience that made this company exist.
National e-commerce
No geography, no phone call, no human close. The three things that make our approach work are all absent, and the disciplines that matter instead — feed management, catalogue structure, marketplace strategy — are a genuinely different profession. You want somebody who does only that.
Low-ticket, high-volume
Run the transfer test with a $60 customer and watch every channel turn red. That isn't pessimism, it's arithmetic: at a break-even under $10 per lead there is no paid channel that clears. Those businesses win on foot traffic, reviews, repeat purchase and referral, none of which we'd be adding much to.
Anyone wanting guaranteed rankings
Not an industry, but the most common reason we say no. Nobody controls algorithms, and an agency guaranteeing a position is either describing a keyword nobody searches or counting on you not checking. If a guarantee is the requirement, we're the wrong call regardless of sector.
Anyone who needs it working this month with no budget
Fast channels cost money and slow channels cost time; there is no version that costs neither. If the schedule is empty and the budget is nothing, the honest advice is to spend the next fortnight on reviews, response speed and your Google profile — free, and more effective than anything we could sell you at that budget.
The industry label matters less
than the arithmetic underneath it.
Where a business does fit, the work is genuinely the same as the trades: find out where the leads actually come from, make the site convert, capture the call, answer it faster than the competition, and report it in booked jobs rather than rankings. Everything on this site about realistic expectations, how we price and the free audit applies unchanged.
Beyond contracting: common questions
Do you only work with contractors?
What makes a business a good fit for contractor-style marketing?
How much does a lead cost outside the trades?
Does marketing work differently for regulated industries?
Why would a restaurant not be a good fit?
Can you help a business that sells nationally?
Do you have experience outside contracting?
How do I know if my numbers work before contacting anyone?
Tell us what you sell. We'll tell you if we're the right call.
Same free audit, same one business day, whatever your industry. If your numbers don't support paid acquisition, or your category needs a specialist we're not, that will be the answer — and you'll still get the findings.
It costs us an hour to tell you honestly and it costs you months to find out the slow way. We'd rather do the hour.
Prefer to talk it through? 1-800-481-8638 reaches a person, or email info@eyetoad.com.
Is this a fit for your business?
Straight answer within one business day.
Not a contractor? Find out in one call whether that matters.
If your numbers work, the playbook is the same. If they don't, we'll tell you what would work instead — even when that's somebody else.