Almost nobody in this industry publishes what they charge, and we have decided that is the wrong instinct. If we tell contractors that hiding price sends buyers to whoever is willing to talk about it, we should hold ourselves to the same standard. So here is what working with us costs, what drives the number up or down, and how to judge whether it is worth it.
Watch the training: building your marketing plan and budget
Josh Nelson walks through goals, lead targets and how to set a budget that matches them.
The short version
What most clients invest: $3,500 to $5,000+ per month, and more once multiple trades or locations are in play.
Core program: $2,495/month — one trade, one location, one primary city plus ten surrounding cities.
One-time setup: $5,000 — competitive research, tooling, hosting environment and the website build.
Advertising budget: separate and paid directly to Google or Meta. Plan on 3–5% of revenue, with $2,000/month as a practical floor.
Term: 12 months, then month-to-month with 30 days' notice.
Two-thirds of what you are paying for is not the deliverable list — it is the strategy behind it and the people who own your account. Every client gets an account manager, an SEO strategist, a web developer, a paid search specialist, designers and writers. That is the honest reason this costs what it costs.
What the core program includes
The $2,495 covers one industry, one location and Google Business Profile, one primary city plus ten surrounding cities. For a single-trade contractor in one market, that is the whole organic program:
- A conversion-optimized website, built, hosted and maintained by us
- Search Everywhere Optimization — on-page, off-page, Google Business Profile, and the work that gets you surfaced in AI Overviews and assistants
- Monthly content and on-page SEO, including a syndicated blog post
- Competitive analysis and an ongoing link and authority campaign
- Reputation management — review generation, monitoring and syndication
- NAP and directory cleanup across the listings that matter
- Marketing automation and speed-to-lead follow-up, so leads get a response in minutes rather than hours
- Three hours a month of website changes
- KPI reporting, lead review with call recordings, and a monthly performance call with a real strategist
What moves the number
The base is deliberately narrow so you are not paying for coverage you do not need. Everything beyond it is modular, and this is where most contractors end up:
Google Ads management + retargeting — $1,500/month up to $10,000 in ad spend, then 15% of spend above that
Local Service Ads management — $549/month up to 75 calls, $949 up to 150, $1,549 up to 200
Meta advertising — $750/month
Additional trade (adding plumbing to an HVAC program, or electrical to both) — $750/month each
Additional location or Google Business Profile — $500/month each
Additional cities — $500/month per ten cities
Advanced ROI reporting — $395/month
A single-trade plumber in one metro sits at the base. A growing company running organic plus Google Ads and Local Service Ads is typically in the $4,500–$5,000 range, and a multi-trade, multi-location operation is higher again. The price reflects the work, not a tier name.
The question that actually matters
Not “what does it cost,” but “what does it have to produce to be worth it.” Work it with your own numbers:
- Your average ticket — call it $600 on service work, several thousand on a replacement.
- Your close rate on inbound calls — most contractors book 50–70% of the calls they actually answer.
- Your blended cost per lead — total marketing spend, fees and media together, divided by leads. Across our client base that lands around $25–$30 on plumbing and $35–$45 on HVAC before fees, higher in competitive metros.
Take a contractor running the core program plus Google Ads — roughly $4,000 in fees — with $3,000 a month in media. That is $7,000 all in. At a $50 blended cost per lead that is about 140 leads a month; book 60% at a $600 average ticket and you are near $50,000 in revenue. The model only breaks in two places: the leads do not arrive, or nobody answers the phone. We are accountable for the first. The second is the one contractors consistently underestimate, which is exactly why speed-to-lead is built into the program rather than sold as an extra.
Replacement work changes the arithmetic entirely. A single system replacement can cover a month of marketing on its own. When we model return with a client we look at revenue per lead across the whole mix — service, repair and replacement — not the service ticket alone.
Why the cheap option is usually the expensive one
There is no shortage of $500-a-month offers in this trade. What that budget buys is a few hours of junior time, an automated report and no strategy. The real cost is not the $6,000 a year — it is the twelve months of market position you did not gain while a competitor was compounding theirs, and the rebuild you pay for afterward. We inherit those situations constantly.
The reverse is also true: paying more does not guarantee anything. What you should be checking, of any agency including us, is whether they work with contractors specifically, whether they can show you named clients with real numbers, who actually touches your account, and what happens to your website if you leave.
Terms, in plain language
- Twelve-month initial term, then month-to-month. SEO does not produce in ninety days and we will not pretend otherwise; the term exists so the strategy gets long enough to work.
- Thirty days' notice to cancel after the initial term.
- You get the website. Ownership is released to you free after twelve months. Leave earlier and there is a buyout.
- No surprise invoices. Ad spend goes directly to the platform, so you see exactly what is media and what is management.
Who this is not for
We are a poor fit for a brand-new company with no trucks and no capacity to take on more calls, for anyone who needs leads this week — that is a paid advertising conversation, not an SEO one — and for owners looking for the cheapest available option. If any of those describe you, we will say so on the call rather than sell you a program that will not work.
Common questions about cost
Not ready to talk? Read the book first.
Josh Nelson's How to Triple Your Sales by Getting Your Digital Marketing Right lays out this entire system, written for plumbing, HVAC and electrical contractors. Read it online, listen to the audiobook in the truck, or download the PDF.
It comes with the Growth Training Library: 10 recorded workshops, a keyword research tool, the Marketing Plan Builder, a Google Business Profile action plan and the lead-gap calculator. Delivered by email, instantly. No call required.
Get free access to the book and the Growth Training Library →
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Bring your market and your numbers. We will show you where you stand against your real competitors, what is holding your visibility back, and what it would take to fix it — whether or not you hire us.
We work with one contractor per market.
Keep going
More frameworks in the contractor resource library, or see what this work produces in the contractor case studies.
