Hiring Your First Marketing Person: A Contractor's Guide

67% of home service contractors handle their own marketing. They run ads, post on social media, ask for reviews, and manage their Google Business Profile between calls and quotes.

At some point, this stops working. The business grows. Time runs short. Marketing becomes the thing that should get done but doesn’t.

Hiring a marketing person seems like the obvious answer. Sometimes it is. Often it isn’t, or the timing is wrong, or the role is wrong, or the expectations are impossible.

This guide covers when to hire, what to look for, what to pay, and how to set your first marketing person up to succeed.

When to hire

Revenue matters more than feeling overwhelmed. A contractor doing $500K who feels stretched on marketing probably has an efficiency problem, not a staffing problem. A contractor doing $2M with zero marketing bandwidth probably has a real hiring need.

The general threshold: consider hiring marketing support when you cross $1-1.5M in annual revenue. Below that, you’re often better served by agencies, contractors, or tools that don’t require a full-time salary.

But revenue alone isn’t enough. You also need these conditions:

Systems exist to optimize. A marketing person needs something to work with. If you have no CRM, no website, no review process, no email list, you’re asking them to build from zero. That’s a different (much harder) job than optimizing what exists.

Lead volume justifies the investment. If you’re getting 50 leads a month and converting 10, a marketing person might improve that to 60 leads or 12 conversions. That incremental gain has to exceed their fully-loaded cost. At 150+ leads per month, the math changes significantly.

You can define success. What specifically will this person accomplish? More leads? Better close rates? Faster follow-up? Higher average ticket? If you can’t articulate what success looks like, you can’t hire someone to achieve it.

The alternatives to a full-time hire

Before committing $50K+ per year, consider what else that money buys.

Marketing agencies charge $2,000-5,000/month for comprehensive service. They bring expertise you can’t afford to hire and bandwidth that’s instantly available. The downside: they serve multiple clients and may not understand your business deeply.

Freelance specialists handle specific functions. Someone for Google Ads, someone for content, someone for social media. You pay for output rather than hours. The challenge is coordination and quality control.

Part-time marketing coordinator works 15-25 hours weekly. You get dedicated attention without full-time cost. Many contractors start here before expanding to full-time.

Tools that automate reduce the need for human bandwidth. Review automation, email sequences, social scheduling, and call tracking can handle work that used to require manual effort.

Most contractors should exhaust these options before hiring full-time. When you’ve systematized what can be systematized and still need more, then hire.

What role to hire first

Contractors often hire the wrong marketing role first. They hire a strategist when they need an executor. They hire a generalist when they need a specialist. They hire for what sounds impressive rather than what moves the needle.

For most home service companies, the right first hire is a marketing coordinator or specialist, not a manager or director.

This person handles:

• Posting and optimizing Google Business Profile
• Managing review requests and responses
• Running basic paid ads (Google, Facebook)
• Creating and scheduling social content
• Sending email campaigns
• Updating the website
• Pulling and organizing marketing reports

They don’t typically handle:

• Strategic planning
• Brand development
• Complex multi-channel campaigns
• Managing vendors or agencies
• Building systems from scratch

If you need strategy, hire an agency or consultant. If you need execution, hire a coordinator.

What to look for

Experience level

For a coordinator role, you don’t need 10 years of experience. You need someone who can execute reliably, learn quickly, and communicate clearly.

Look for 2-5 years of marketing experience, ideally with some exposure to small business or local marketing. A candidate who ran marketing for a single-location retail store understands your reality better than someone from a Fortune 500 marketing department.

Previous home service experience is a plus but not essential. The skills transfer from other local business categories. What matters is understanding that marketing exists to make the phone ring, not to win awards.

Skills that matter

Google Ads competence. They don’t need to be a certified specialist, but they should understand how local service ads and search ads work. Can they set up conversion tracking? Can they explain quality score?

Facebook/Instagram basics. They should know how to run ads, build simple audiences, and read performance data. Organic social is easy to learn. Paid social has more nuance.

Content creation. Can they write copy that sounds like a human? Can they take a decent photo? Can they edit a simple video? You’re not hiring a creative director, but basic content skills matter.

Analytical thinking. Can they look at a report and tell you what’s working versus what’s wasting money? If they’ve never used analytics tools, they’ll struggle to prove their impact.

CRM familiarity. They’ll work in your CRM daily. Experience with ServiceTitan, Housecall Pro, Jobber, or similar platforms accelerates onboarding.

Traits that predict success

Self-direction matters more than credentials. You won’t have time to manage this person closely. They need to identify what needs doing and do it without constant oversight.

Bias toward action beats perfectionism. You want someone who ships a B+ campaign today rather than perfecting an A+ campaign that launches next month.

Comfort with ambiguity is essential. Small business marketing doesn’t have playbooks. They’ll need to figure things out as they go.

What to pay

Salary ranges

For a marketing coordinator/specialist in most markets:

Entry level (1-2 years experience): $40,000-50,000

Mid-level (3-5 years experience): $50,000-65,000

Senior (5+ years experience): $60,000-80,000

Major metros pay 15-25% more. Rural areas pay 10-20% less. Remote roles can access talent at various price points.

Add 20-30% for benefits, payroll taxes, and tools. A $55K salary becomes $65-70K fully loaded.

The agency comparison

A good marketing agency charges $3,000-5,000/month. That’s $36,000-60,000/year for a team of specialists working on your account.

An in-house hire at $55K salary costs $65-70K fully loaded, and you get one person doing everything. The value comparison isn’t obvious.

In-house makes more sense when volume justifies a dedicated person, when you need faster turnaround than agency timelines allow, or when deep business knowledge matters for execution.

Setting them up to succeed

Clear priorities

Your marketing hire can’t do everything. The job description probably lists 15 responsibilities. In practice, they’ll focus on 3-4 things that matter most.

Rank your priorities explicitly. Is the primary goal more leads, better lead quality, improved close rate, or higher average ticket? If they’re optimizing for the wrong outcome, everyone loses.

Tool access

On day one, they need access to:

• Google Business Profile
• Google Ads and Analytics accounts
• Facebook Business Manager
• Your CRM
• Website backend
• Email marketing platform
• Call tracking dashboard
• Review management tools

If these tools don’t exist yet, that’s a red flag about your readiness to hire.

Realistic timelines

Marketing doesn’t deliver instant results. SEO takes 6-12 months. Brand awareness builds over years. Even paid ads need 2-4 weeks of optimization before performance stabilizes.

A new hire needs at least 90 days to learn your business, audit existing efforts, and implement improvements. Meaningful results often take 6 months.

If you expect a turnaround in 30 days, you’ll fire a good person before they can deliver.

Decision-making authority

They need ability to execute without approval on every decision. Define the boundaries. They can spend up to $X on a campaign without asking. They can change ad copy but not landing pages. They can post to social but major messaging changes need review.

Micromanagement kills marketing hires faster than anything else. If you don’t trust them to make decisions, you hired the wrong person or you’re not ready to have this role.

Red flags in hiring

They can’t explain past results. Every marketer should know what they accomplished. “I increased leads by 40% by improving Google Ads quality scores and adding service-specific landing pages” is good. “I handled the marketing” is bad.

They focus on tactics, not outcomes. “I know Facebook Ads” matters less than “I used Facebook Ads to generate 200 leads per month at $18 cost per lead.” Outcomes over activities.

They’ve only worked for big companies. The skills don’t transfer cleanly. Big company marketers have support staff, approved budgets, and established processes. Your hire will have none of that.

They interview in buzzwords. If they talk about “synergies” and “brand positioning” but can’t explain how they’d get your phone to ring more, they’re the wrong fit.

They want to change everything immediately. Some things need changing. A hire who wants to rebuild from scratch before understanding what already works will waste your money learning lessons you’ve already learned.

The cost of getting it wrong

A bad marketing hire costs more than their salary. You lose 6-12 months of progress while they underperform. You pay severance or deal with awkward termination. You restart the hiring process. You might become gun-shy about making the next hire.

Conservative estimate: a failed marketing hire costs $50,000-75,000 in direct costs and lost opportunity. Be picky.

Better to wait another year with agencies and contractors than to rush a hire that doesn’t work out.

When to expand

Your first marketing hire works out. Now you have a coordinator producing results. When do you add another person?

The same principles apply. Measure bandwidth against output. When your coordinator is maxed out and you have clear work for another person, hire. When you need a skill your coordinator doesn’t have, hire for that skill specifically.

Most contractors operate effectively with 1-2 marketing staff until they cross $5M in revenue. Beyond that, you might build a small team or layer in specialized agencies.

Start with the right first hire. Everything else follows from there.