Contractor marketing agency: what they charge, and a different way to pay

Whether the client is an HVAC company, a roofer, a plumber, or an electrician, most contractor marketing agencies sell the same bundle: a website, management of the Google Business Profile, a Google Ads account, and a monthly performance report. The pitch changes trade to trade but the billing rarely does, a flat retainer charged on the first of the month whether that month produced five jobs or fifty.

Some agencies layer in pay per lead pricing instead of or alongside the retainer, billing a set fee for each inquiry delivered regardless of whether it becomes a job. That shifts risk around within the same basic structure, since the contractor is still paying for calls that never book, wrong numbers, and homeowners comparing five bids at once.

A smaller group of agencies, PayOnJobs included, work on revenue share instead: no retainer, no per-lead fee, a percentage taken only when a customer has paid for a job that came through the tracked number. That is a different incentive, not just a different invoice, because the agency only earns when the contractor does.

A roofer or an HVAC company living on emergency calls needs speed above everything: someone answering on the first ring, because the caller with no heat in January or a leaking roof mid-storm is already dialing the next number. A plumber or electrician doing a mix of small service calls and larger installs (panel upgrades, water heater replacements, repipes) needs both speed on the small jobs and enough trust-building content to win the bigger, slower-decision jobs.

A flat retainer bills the same regardless of which kind of work is coming through the door that month, or how many of those calls actually got answered. A revenue share adjusts automatically: it earns more when a contractor's ticket sizes and volume are strong, and less in a slow month, without anyone renegotiating a contract.

As a hypothetical example only, a $2,700 a month retainer that produced 30 jobs in a slow month works out to $90 per job in marketing fees regardless of ticket size; at 90 jobs it drops to $30. Under a 17 percent revenue share instead, a $500 service call costs $85 and a $10,000 installation costs $1,700, and nothing is owed on the calls that never booked.

Invoca's analysis of 60 million calls found 27 percent of inbound home services calls go unanswered, and that number does not change much whether the business is HVAC, roofing, plumbing, or electrical; a homeowner with an urgent problem calls the next name the moment the first one does not pick up. Angi and ServiceTitan's figures put a missed emergency HVAC call at $500 to $900 in lost revenue, and other trades' emergency calls sit under similar pressure.

Most contractor marketing agencies have no financial stake in whether that call gets answered, because the retainer is owed either way. PayOnJobs builds a 24/7 AI receptionist into every partnership specifically because our fee is only owed when the job is paid, so picking up the phone is in our interest as much as the contractor's, trade for trade.

Ask exactly what triggers the fee: a signed contract, every month, or every lead, or a paid job. Ask who owns the website, the domain, the Google Business Profile, and the tracked phone number if the relationship ends, because in many retainer and lead-buying setups the agency owns the asset that ranks and the number that rings, and both disappear when the contractor stops paying.

Ask what the minimum commitment is and how you exit it, and ask whether the agency answers calls after hours or leaves that to your office. Those four questions sort a serious partnership from a retainer with a good pitch, whatever trade is being marketed.

There is no setup fee, no monthly fee, and no fee per lead. We build the website, manage the Google Business Profile, run the Google Ads account, answer the phone around the clock, follow up on open estimates, and send the payment link, the same stack for HVAC, roofing, plumbing, electrical, tree removal, concrete, pool, and pest control. We take 17 percent of revenue on jobs that came through the tracked number and that the customer paid for, split automatically, 83 percent to you and 17 percent to us, at the moment of payment.

You fund your own Google ad spend directly, no markup, at a $1,500 a month minimum, because that cost is not contingent on results and we say so up front. We sign one partner per trade per 25-mile radius, the initial term is 12 months, then either side can leave with 30 days notice. The domain, the website, the customer list, the Google Business Profile, and the reviews are yours the whole time.

A retainer can be the cheaper option if your call volume is already high and steady year round, your office never misses a call, and your average ticket is large. In that scenario you have effectively already solved the missed-call problem yourself, and a flat fee may land lower per job than 17 percent. Run your own numbers on a few recent months before deciding, trade by trade.

PayOnJobs is also not a fit if you cannot fund the $1,500 a month minimum ad spend, if you need something running this week (the build takes about 24 days), if you are not willing to hand call-answering to an AI receptionist, or if another contractor in your trade already holds your 25-mile area. We are a new company and do not yet publish partner results; the contract terms are all in writing so you can judge us on those.