Contractor Marketing Plan: A Simple 90-Day Plan and Weekly Routine You Can Actually Keep

Contractors are busy. A plan with twenty tactics, a content calendar and three new platforms usually lasts until the first busy week. Then marketing stops, the pipeline dries up a couple of months later, and the cycle repeats.

A plan that works has three parts:

1. 1A goal based on your own numbers, so you know how much marketing you actually need
2. 2Foundations that work without you, like a correct Google profile and a clear website
3. 3A short weekly routine built on the jobs you're already finishing

That's what this guide walks through, with a 90-day plan at the end.

You don't need complicated analytics. You need four numbers, even rough ones:

Then work backwards. For example:

• Revenue goal for the quarter: $150,000
• Average job value: $6,000, so you need 25 jobs
• Close rate: 35%, so you need about 72 quotes
• Quote rate: 70% of leads get a quote, so you need about 103 leads
• That's roughly 8 leads a week

Use your own numbers, not these. Once you know you need eight leads a week, you can plan realistically. And you'll notice something: improving your close rate or response time can be as powerful as finding more leads. Raise the close rate from 35% to 45% and the same 103 leads produce about 32 jobs instead of 25.

Before spending on anything new, check these five:

1. 1Google Business Profile is verified, in the right category, with real service areas, photos and hours. Google ranks local results on relevance, distance and prominence, and you can't pay to rank higher. See our Google Business Profile checklist.
2. 2Website has a clear first screen, a tappable phone number, a short quote form, one page per main service and real projects. Use our contractor website checklist.
3. 3Review system: every customer gets a request with a direct link, and one reminder. Scripts in how to ask customers for reviews.
4. 4Lead handling: every lead gets a reply within an hour during working hours, or an instant auto-reply. A Harvard Business Review study found companies that responded within an hour were nearly seven times more likely to qualify a lead.
5. 5Tracking: a simple log of every lead's source, quote and outcome.

Most contractors can fix all five in two to four weeks of evenings. It's the highest-return marketing work you'll ever do.

A routine that takes about an hour a week:

Put it on the calendar at the same time every week, like Friday afternoon or Monday morning. Assign it to one person. If you have an office manager, it's theirs; if you don't, it's yours.

Once the foundations and the weekly routine are running for a month or two, test one paid channel:

• Local Services Ads for home service trades: pay for leads rather than clicks, and Google says invalid leads aren't charged
• Google search ads for specific high-value services, sending clicks to matching service pages
• Direct mail to neighborhoods around your best jobs, using real local photos
• Facebook or Instagram ads boosting your best before-and-afters to a tight local area

Give it a fixed monthly budget and at least two to three months. Judge it on cost per booked job, not clicks or leads.

How much to spend

There's no single right number. A practical approach:

1. 1Start from your lead gap: how many more leads per week you need than your owned channels bring
2. 2Estimate what a lead costs in the paid channel, from a small test
3. 3Set a monthly budget that covers the gap, capped at what you're comfortable losing during a test
4. 4Keep what books jobs at an acceptable cost; cut what doesn't

Most trades have a busy season and a slow one. Use a simple marketing calendar:

The slow season is when you fix foundations, build project pages from the busy season's photos and plan next year. It's also the best time to call referral partners like realtors, property managers and other trades.

Each month, look at:

• Leads by source
• Average response time
• Quotes sent and won (close rate)
• Jobs booked and revenue by source
• Reviews received
• Cost per booked job for anything paid

Then make one decision: what to do more of, and what to stop. Over a year, those twelve small decisions add up to a much better plan than any template.

A simple lead log is enough:

Ask every new lead "How did you hear about us?" and write down the answer. It's the cheapest analytics there is.

Days 1 to 30: Foundations

• Work out your numbers: job value, close rate, leads needed per week
• Fix your Google Business Profile completely
• Fix your website's first screen, phone number and quote form
• Set up a review request with a direct link and one reminder
• Set up an instant auto-reply for new leads
• Start a lead log

Days 31 to 60: Routine

• Run the weekly routine every week, no exceptions
• Publish one project page per week
• Post every finished job to your Google profile
• Door hangers around every job
• Follow up on every open quote on a schedule

Days 61 to 90: Expand

• Review the first two months of lead log data
• Add one paid channel with a fixed budget
• Plan your next seasonal campaign
• Reach out to two or three referral partners
• Make one improvement to your close rate, like adding similar project links to every quote

By day 90 you'll have a correct profile, a working site, a steady stream of reviews, eight to ten new project pages, real data on your lead sources and a routine that runs without a big effort.

• Revenue goal (quarter): $_____
• Average job value: $_____
• Close rate: ____%
• Leads needed per week: _____
• Top 3 services to promote: _____
• Towns to focus on: _____
• Weekly routine owner and time: _____
• Paid channel to test (and monthly budget): _____
• Referral partners to contact: _____
• Monthly review date: _____

If you'd like the weekly routine to happen mostly on its own (page built from job photos, posted to Google and social, review request sent, door hanger ready), that's what DonePages is built for. For more ideas to plug into the plan, see 20 contractor marketing ideas and contractor lead generation.