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Your marketing stack should expand with your revenue and your ability to handle more calls. Here’s how I’d approach it.
$1M: Fill the Board
At this stage, marketing has one primary job: generate enough opportunities to keep your technicians busy.
Focus on:
- Google LSA: Turn it on and test it. In less competitive markets, it can be an incredible lead source.
- Lead aggregators: Test Angi, Thumbtack, Yelp, Modernize and whatever else is available.
- Reviews: Make review generation part of your process after every job.
- The basics: Have a functional website, CRM and a system for answering every lead.
I wouldn't rush into billboards, radio or expensive brand campaigns. Build your early brand through great service and strong reviews.
Speed-to-Lead Matters
Buying leads doesn't matter if you aren't working them effectively.
With aggregator leads especially, I want an immediate text and a call within seconds when possible. We talked about 30 seconds as the target. Even calling twice in a row can improve your chances of reaching someone who just asked for help.
Before you increase your lead budget, make sure you can handle what you're already buying.
$1M to $5M: Double Down
Once you find a channel that works, spend more on it. If LSA is profitable, increase the budget. If an aggregator produces profitable jobs, buy more leads.
The growth loop is pretty straightforward:
- Buy more leads
- Respond faster
- Book and sell more jobs
- Hire another technician
- Fill their schedule
- Repeat
And don't judge those channels by CPL alone. Track booking rate, close rate, average ticket, gross margin and ultimately ROI.
$5M+: Add More Firepower
This is where you can start layering more into the stack.
PPC gives you more control over positioning and lets you promote differentiators like same-day service, no service fee or being locally owned. SEO can become more sophisticated, additional Google Business Profiles may make sense and your growing customer database creates more opportunities for outbound and retargeting.
That database can become a serious channel. We use roughly 6,000 customers as the point where there's enough volume to keep a full-time outbound rep busy making around 100 calls per day.
Earn the Complexity
Don't build the $10M marketing department when you're doing $1M or $3M. One full-time marketer probably isn't going to be great at PPC, SEO, GBP, social, branding and analytics anyway.
At $1M, get leads. Around $5M, scale what works and add channels. As you push toward $10M, build the team and infrastructure required to manage a much bigger marketing machine.
Let the marketing stack grow with the business.
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