How to choose a marketing agency: the remodeler’s version
Sort agencies by where their job stops, not by the services on their website.
Check four things before you sign: where the agency’s job stops, whose name is on the ad account, how fast its own form answers you, and what its clients say when you call them. The rest of the proposal is packaging.
One owner told us he’d been burned by 99% of the online marketers he’d hired. These days, he said, everybody with a phone and a GoHighLevel account is a marketer.
Itai BenistyFounder, Smarter Contractor7 min read
$2,500 to over $10,000
a month, the range one well-known contractor marketing agency quotes (Blue Corona)
23%
of companies in one audit never answered a web lead at all (Harvard Business Review, 2011)
50 to 70%
of leads from our qualifying forms book an appointment with a 30-second reply; ask any agency for its number
Where the job stops
What’s left on your desk when they’re done?
Agency websites sort themselves by service: SEO, ads, social, websites. The question that matters is where their work ends and yours begins.
Stops at clicks
Runs the ads and reports clicks, reach and cost per click.
Left on your desk
Every lead: the reply, the qualifying, the booking, the follow-up.
Stops at leads
Hands you a name and a phone number.
Left on your desk
Calling within minutes, qualifying, booking, confirming, chasing the ones who go quiet.
Stops at booked appointments
Puts a qualified, confirmed homeowner on your calendar.
Left on your desk
Show up, design, quote and close.
Nobody stops at signed jobs, and anyone who says they do is guessing about a sales call they’ll never sit in. The close is yours. Everything before it can be someone else’s.
Agencies price this in different ways: a flat retainer, a fee per lead, a fee per booked appointment, or a share of the work you close. We laid the models side by side in pay per lead vs pay per appointment.
The account test
Ask for your login before you ask for the price.
The ad account holds your history: every ad, every lead and everything the pixel has learned about who books.
On Meta, an ad account lives inside a business portfolio, and access to it is handed out from there, says Meta’s own help page. If an agency sets yours up inside its portfolio, the account and what it learned stay on their side when you part ways.
Google’s policy for agencies asks them to be open about their costs and the results you can expect, and to give you the relevant information when you ask. Asking for your own login is just asking for that.
Ask these on the first call
Is the Meta ad account, with its pixel, in my own business portfolio, with you added as a partner?
Is the Google Ads account in my name, with my own login?
Do I keep the homeowner list and the CRM if we part ways?
Can I see what Meta and Google charged, line by line, any day I want?
“I've worked with several other agencies in the past and constantly felt like I was being promised the world, only to end up disappointed. From day one, he was extremely realistic about what it would take to reach our goals.”
The secret shop
Fill out their form at 8pm and time the reply.
However long they take to text you back is how long your homeowners will wait too.
It’s the cheapest test you’ll ever run, and almost nobody runs it. In one audit of 2,241 companies, 23% never answered a web lead at all. An agency that can’t answer its own leads won’t answer yours.
More on why speed matters in speed to lead for contractors.
Your secret-shop scorecard
A reply in under five minutes
A person, or a text that reads like one
Questions about your project, your timeline and your budget
An offer of a real time to talk
A follow-up if you go quiet for a day
References
Call a client, then ask who else in your market they work with.
Case studies on a website are the agency’s highlight reel. A phone call with one of its clients isn’t.
Ask the client
How many appointments did they book you last month?
How many of those homeowners showed up?
What happens when a lead goes quiet?
Ask the agency
Do you work with another remodeler in my market?
What happens if I want to leave?
What share of your leads become qualified appointments, and what does one cost in ad spend?
What do you need from me in month one?
The market question is the one nobody asks. If the agency runs the same ads for the remodeler across town, you’re both bidding for the same homeowners, and the agency wins either way.
Want us to check what your marketing is really getting you?
We’ll look at your leads, your cost per appointment and your follow-up, and tell you straight what we’d change.
What you bring
Know what you’re bringing before you choose anyone.
Even the right agency can’t fill a calendar that nobody calls back.
Ad money for 60 to 90 days
From cash you already have, not from the first job the ads book.
Someone who calls back
The booked homeowner should hear from you before the visit.
Patience for the first month
It's the slowest one. Judge the system at 60 to 90 days, not at two weeks.
And be wary of guarantees. Google itself says no one can guarantee a #1 ranking, and nobody can guarantee a signed job from a meeting they’ll never be in.
How we score
Fair is fair: here’s how we do on our own tests.
Run every test on this page on us too.
- Where our job stops
A qualified, confirmed appointment on your calendar. We reply to every lead in 30 seconds, qualify, book, confirm, reschedule and follow up.
- Whose account
Yours: the ad account, the data and the homeowner list.
- The secret shop
Fill out our form at 8pm and time us.
- References
A named client with numbers from their own reports, in our case study.
- Your market
One remodeler per market, so you're never bidding against another client of ours.
- Leaving
No long contract, so the system has to keep earning its spot.
See the King Remodeling case study for the numbers, or how we run the whole process.
Straight answers
The questions contractors ask about hiring an agency.
How do I choose a marketing agency for my remodeling company?
Check where the agency's job stops, whose name is on the ad account, how fast its own form answers you, and what its clients say when you call them. Ask what a booked appointment costs on its other accounts too.
What questions should I ask a marketing agency?
Ask who answers your leads and how fast, who qualifies and books them, whose account the ads run in, what a booked appointment costs on its other accounts, and whether it works with another remodeler in your market.
How much does a marketing agency cost for a contractor?
One well-known contractor marketing agency quotes $2,500 to over $10,000 a month, and the ad spend is on top. Pay per appointment and performance models price the work differently.
Who should own the ad account?
You should. Keep the Meta ad account and pixel in your own business portfolio and the Google Ads account in your name, and give the agency access to them.
Should I sign a long contract with a marketing agency?
Not before you've seen results. A fair agency lets you test the system first. A long contract signed up front mostly protects the agency.
What are the red flags when hiring a marketing agency?
Guaranteed jobs or rankings, an ad account in the agency's name, no client you can call, a slow reply to its own form, and no straight answer on what a booked appointment costs.
Founder, Smarter Contractor. Runs the ads, the qualifying and the booking for kitchen and bath remodelers, one per market.
See your numbers first
Test us like you’d test anyone. Then decide.
Answer a few quick questions and I’ll tell you whether your market is open and what a full calendar of qualified homeowners looks like for your business. No setup fees, and you test the system before you pay for anything.
Read next: the 9 best lead generation companies for contractors, ranked on who qualifies the homeowner.
What type of jobs are you looking to book more of?
Sources
Every outside number and rule on this page, in the order it appears. Checked 9 October 2026. The price range is one agency’s own, and the platform rules are from Meta’s and Google’s help pages.
- Blue Corona, contractor marketing services: “from $2,500 to over $10,000 per month” (an agency's own price range)
- Harvard Business Review, “The Short Life of Online Sales Leads” (March 2011, an audit of 2,241 US companies)
- Meta Business Help Center, adding an ad account to your business portfolio
- Google Advertising Policies, third-party policy (transparency about costs and expected results)
- Google Search Central, “Do you need an SEO?” (no one can guarantee a #1 ranking)