These guides are for the owner of a trades or home-service company who is thinking about hiring marketing help, or already paying for it and not sure it's working. Each one answers a practical question with steps, worked examples you can redo with your own numbers, and the common mistakes. They apply whether you work with us, another agency or nobody at all.
Because this is the company site for Trades.Agency, the guides focus on the relationship between a trades owner and a marketing partner: choosing one, measuring one, and getting the first months right. For marketing detail trade by trade, see Trades.Marketing.
-
How to choose a marketing agency for your trades company
Choose an agency on four things: who owns the accounts, what number they'll be judged on, how you can leave, and whether they understand how your trade wins work. Everything else is presentation.
-
Cost per booked job: the one marketing number every trades owner should know
Cost per booked job is what you spend on a marketing channel divided by the jobs it actually books. It's the clearest way for a trades owner to tell whether marketing pays, and it takes about ten minutes a month to track.
-
The first 90 days with a marketing agency: what should happen, week by week
A good first 90 days moves from access and audit, to fixing leaks, to launching one or two channels with tracking. By day 90 you should know your cost per booked job for each channel, even if the numbers aren't where you want them yet.
How to choose a marketing agency for your trades company
This guide gives you a repeatable way to vet any agency in about an hour. It starts with the numbers you need before any sales call, then covers the four questions that separate serious agencies from the rest: who owns the accounts, what number they're judged on, how you can leave, and whether they understand how your trade wins work.
You'll also find a list of red flags, from agency-owned ad accounts to review-gating schemes, and a scoring sheet you can fill in for each agency you talk to. We apply the same test to ourselves at the end.
Best for: owners about to sign with an agency, or reconsidering the one they have.
Cost per booked job
Cost per booked job is spend on a channel divided by the jobs it actually booked. This guide shows how to calculate it, how to set a monthly budget backwards from your gross profit per job, and how to compare channels that behave very differently over time, such as search ads and organic local search.
It also covers the traps that distort the number: counting quotes as jobs, ignoring missed calls, mixing repeat and new customers, and comparing different seasons. It ends with a ten-minute monthly review you can run on a spreadsheet.
Best for: owners who spend on marketing and can't say what a new job costs them.
The first 90 days with a marketing agency
A good first quarter follows a clear order: access and audit, then fixing leaks and setting up tracking, then launching one or two channels, then an honest review. This guide breaks that into week ranges with a checkpoint at each stage, so you know what to expect and when to raise concerns.
It also lists what you should gather before day one, from Google Business Profile access to job photos, and what your side of the deal looks like in hours per month.
Best for: owners who've just hired an agency, or are about to.
How to use these guides together
Read them in order if you're starting from scratch. The first helps you choose a partner, the second gives you the number to judge them by, and the third tells you what should happen once you've signed. If you're already working with someone, start with the second guide: knowing your cost per booked job answers most other questions.
Each guide links to the relevant services pages where the work itself is explained, and the FAQ covers contracts and ownership in shorter form.
A note on the numbers
Every figure in these guides is a worked example, not a benchmark or a promise. Job values, margins and click costs vary widely by trade, province and town. The point of the examples is the method; your own numbers are what matter. When we refer to real results, they come from our HVAC work and name the client and site, as on our results page.
If you'd rather talk the maths through, the free consultation is the place to do it. The contact page explains how to reach us by call, text or email.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to hire an agency to use these guides?
No. They're written so you can apply them yourself, with any agency, or to check work you already pay for.
Are the numbers in the guides real benchmarks?
No. The figures are worked examples to show the maths. Replace them with your own job values, margins and close rates.
Will you add more guides?
We add guides when owners keep asking the same question. If there's a topic you'd like covered, call, text or email and tell us.