Should You Hire a Marketing Agency or Do It Yourself

A decent marketing agency charges $1,500-3,000/month for a small contractor. Mid-size operations pay $3,000-8,000/month. That feels like a lot when you’re already watching every dollar.

So you decide to do it yourself. You watch YouTube videos about Google Ads. You post on Facebook at 11pm after finishing paperwork. You try to figure out SEO between jobs.

The tools are cheap. $200-1,500/month for scheduling software, an email platform, maybe a basic ads manager. But nobody talks about what DIY marketing actually costs when you factor in your time.

The math most contractors get wrong

DIY marketing eats 16-32 hours per week when you’re doing it properly. Writing posts, managing ads, responding to comments, updating your website, tracking results, adjusting campaigns.

Your time has a value. If you’re billing $100/hour on jobs (or could be), those 16-32 hours represent $6,400-12,800/month in lost revenue. That’s money you could have earned running calls, closing estimates, or managing your crew.

A $3,000/month agency suddenly looks cheap compared to $8,000/month in opportunity cost. And the agency comes with people who already know what they’re doing.

This is the calculation that trips up most contractors. They compare the agency invoice to the tool subscription and think they’re saving money. They’re not counting the hours they’re spending on marketing instead of running their business.

What DIY marketing actually looks like

The first three months are the worst. You’re learning platforms, making mistakes, and burning budget on campaigns that don’t work yet.

Google Ads has the steepest learning curve. New advertisers typically waste 40-60% of their first few months of budget on broad match keywords, poor targeting, and landing pages that don’t convert. An experienced agency avoids those mistakes on day one because they’ve already made them with someone else’s money.

Read about the most common Google Ads mistakes contractors make to see what this looks like in practice.

SEO takes knowledge that most contractors don’t have and don’t want to learn. You need to understand technical site structure, local ranking factors, content strategy, and link building. Even if you learn it all, SEO takes 6-12 months to show results. Most contractors quit before they see returns.

Social media is the one area where DIY can actually work. Your crew photos, job site progress, and before/after shots are authentic in ways an agency can’t replicate. A contractor posting real work photos will outperform polished agency content on Facebook and Instagram almost every time.

What a good agency brings

An agency that specializes in home services already has tested systems. They know which keywords convert for plumbers in mid-size markets. They’ve built landing pages that generate leads for HVAC companies. They understand seasonal patterns and adjust campaigns before you even think about it.

Speed to results is the biggest advantage. Where DIY takes months of trial and error, an agency deploys proven campaigns from week one. They’ve spent millions of dollars across dozens of clients figuring out what works. You get the benefit of that experience without paying for the experiments.

A good agency also brings accountability. They track marketing attribution and show you which campaigns produce booked jobs, not just clicks. If something isn’t working, they catch it and adjust. Most contractors doing DIY marketing don’t have the tools or knowledge to measure what’s actually driving revenue.

The target ROI for a home service marketing agency should be 3:1 minimum. For every $3,000/month you pay, you should see at least $9,000 in attributable revenue. Good agencies hit 5:1 or higher once campaigns mature.

What a bad agency looks like

Not every agency delivers. The home service marketing space has plenty of shops that take your money and deliver vanity metrics.

Watch for these red flags:

They report on impressions and clicks instead of leads and booked jobs. You don’t care about 50,000 impressions. You care about how many estimates you ran and how many jobs you booked.

They won’t share access to your ad accounts. If an agency runs Google Ads on your behalf but won’t give you login credentials, they’re hiding something. You should own your accounts, your data, and your campaigns. If you part ways, everything stays with you.

They lock you into 12-month contracts with no performance benchmarks. Most agencies require 3-6 month commitments, which is reasonable because marketing takes time. But a 12-month contract with no exit clause based on performance is a warning sign.

They don’t ask about your close rate or capacity. An agency that just sends leads without understanding whether you can handle the volume or close the deals is doing half the job. Marketing that generates 50 leads a month is worthless if your team can only run 20 estimates.

The hybrid approach

For most contractors, especially those doing under $500K in annual revenue, the best answer is a hybrid model.

Handle social media yourself. Post job photos, respond to comments, share reviews. This takes 3-5 hours a week and your content will be more authentic than anything an agency produces.

Hire an agency for SEO and PPC. These are technical disciplines where expertise matters and mistakes are expensive. An agency managing your Google Ads and building your organic rankings will outperform DIY efforts in both speed and cost-effectiveness. Understanding how to allocate your marketing budget across channels helps you set realistic expectations for what an agency should manage.

Keep your own analytics access. Even with an agency, you should understand your numbers. Know your cost per lead, your close rate, and which channels produce the best customers. The methodology behind measuring marketing performance helps you hold any agency accountable.

When DIY makes sense

DIY marketing works in a few specific situations.

You’re under $250K in revenue and can’t afford an agency. At this stage, your marketing budget might be $500-1,000/month total. That’s not enough for a quality agency. Focus on Google Business Profile optimization, review generation, and basic social media. These are high-impact activities that don’t require deep expertise.

You have a marketing background. Some contractors came from corporate marketing before starting their trades business. If you genuinely know how to run Google Ads and build SEO campaigns, DIY can work. Just be honest about whether you’re spending time on marketing that would be better spent on billable work.

You’re in a low-competition market. In smaller markets where you’re not competing against PE-backed companies, basic marketing efforts go further. You don’t need sophisticated campaigns when there are only 3-4 competitors in your service area.

When to hire an agency

Agency marketing makes more sense as your business grows.

Over $1M in revenue, the math strongly favors an agency. You have enough volume to justify the investment, and your time is worth too much to spend on marketing tasks. The opportunity cost of DIY at this level is enormous.

When you’re ready to scale, an agency can ramp up campaigns faster than you can learn new skills. If you want to add a service area, launch a new service line, or grow from 5 trucks to 15, an agency has the playbook. Learning about scaling from solo to team marketing helps you understand when that transition point hits.

When you’re competing against PE-backed companies. If well-funded competitors are driving up your ad costs and outranking you organically, you need professional help. DIY marketing can’t compete against companies spending $30,000/month on Google Ads with dedicated marketing teams.

How to choose the right agency

Ask these questions before signing anything:

Do they specialize in home services? An agency that works with restaurants, dentists, and contractors is spreading thin. You want someone who knows your industry, your customers, and your seasonal patterns.

Can they show results from similar businesses? Ask for case studies from contractors in your trade and market size. A plumber in Phoenix has different needs than an HVAC company in Minneapolis.

What’s their reporting cadence? Monthly reports are standard. The reports should show leads generated, cost per lead, and ideally, revenue attributed to their campaigns. If they only report on rankings and traffic, they’re measuring the wrong things.

Who owns the accounts and data? Your Google Ads account, your analytics, your website. All of it should be yours. An agency that builds campaigns in their own accounts is creating a dependency that makes it painful to leave.

What does the first 90 days look like? A good agency has an onboarding process. They audit your current marketing, set benchmarks, and outline specific goals for the first quarter. If they can’t articulate a plan, they don’t have one.

When to consider your first marketing hire

As you grow past the agency model, eventually hiring your first marketing person becomes an option. An in-house marketer costs $50,000-80,000/year but gives you dedicated attention and institutional knowledge.

Most contractors aren’t ready for this until they’re past $2-3M in revenue with enough marketing budget to keep a full-time person busy. Below that threshold, the agency or hybrid model delivers better value.

The bottom line

DIY marketing looks cheap on paper but costs more than most contractors realize. An agency looks expensive but often pays for itself within the first quarter.

Pick the model that matches your revenue, your competition, and your available time. And whatever you choose, measure results by booked jobs, not clicks or impressions. That’s the only number that matters.