Plenty of builders don’t have a marketing plan. They have a referral network, a website that hasn’t changed since the day it went up, and a habit of buying ads when the calendar looks thin. That works until a slow season hits and nobody knows which dollar brought in which job.
A one-page marketing plan fixes that, whether you run a two-truck remodeling crew or a construction business with three project managers. It needs a goal, a budget and a way to see which jobs came from where. Below is the plan we’d write for a builder, step by step, plus a free template you can fill in this week.
The short answer: start with how many signed jobs you need from marketing, then work back to the calls and the budget that takes. Pick the two or three channels your buyer uses. Fix your Google profile, pages and reviews before you buy ads. Answer leads fast, and track every lead to a signed contract so you know what to keep.
Key takeaways
- Work backward from signed jobs: in our example, $1.2M of work at $60,000 a job means about 17 inquiries a month. The jobs math
- A remodeler and a concrete sub need very different channels, so start with the two or three your buyer uses. Channels by company type
- Fix your Google profile, job pages and reviews before ads, and never reward reviews. Proof checklist
- In a 2011 HBR study, firms that tried to reach a lead within an hour were nearly seven times as likely to qualify it. Speed and scripts
- Judge every channel by cost per signed job, not cost per click. What to track
What goes in a marketing plan for a construction business
A marketing plan for a construction business fits on one page. If it takes ten, nobody reads it after week two.
Ours has seven boxes. Each box answers one question:
- Goal. How many signed jobs, at what average size, do you want from marketing this year?
- Buyer. Who signs the contract, and what jobs will you turn down?
- Channels. Where does that buyer look for someone like you?
- Proof. What will they see when they check you out?
- Budget. What can you pay to win one job?
- Response. Who answers new leads, and how fast?
- Tracking. How will you know which channel brought in signed work?
No SWOT chart, no mission statement, no 40-page binder that sits in the truck. A bank might want those. They don’t book estimates.
The rest of this guide walks through each box in order, starting with the goal, because every other box gets easier once you know how many jobs you’re really chasing. If you want ideas for the tactics themselves, our list of contractor marketing ideas has 25 of them. This page puts them in order and does the math.
We also built a fill-in version you can print or type into. It has the seven boxes, a budget worksheet, a 90-day calendar and a monthly scorecard.
Start with the jobs you need, not the budget
Most owners start with “what should I spend?” Flip it. Start with how many signed jobs you want from marketing this year. Then work backward to how many calls that takes. The budget falls out of the math.
Here’s an example calculation. Say you run a remodeling company. Referrals already fill most of your calendar, but you want another $1.2 million of work from marketing. Your average job is $60,000.
- Jobs needed: $1,200,000 divided by $60,000 is 20 jobs.
- Estimates needed: you sign about 1 in 4 estimates, so you need 80 estimates.
- Good leads needed: about 4 in 5 good leads turn into an estimate, so you need 100 good leads.
- Inquiries needed: about half of all calls and forms are a fit (right area, right size, real budget). So you need 200 inquiries a year. That’s about 17 a month.
Use your own numbers, not ours. Pull last year’s estimates and signed jobs out of your CRM, your estimating software or the folder on the office desk, and do the division. If you don’t track it yet, guess, then fix the guess after 90 days. Brand new company with no history at all? Pick careful guesses, like signing 1 in 5 estimates, and swap in real numbers after your first 20 leads.
Now the budget. Ask one question: what would you pay to win one $60,000 job? If you’re not sure, start from your gross profit. Say you keep $18,000 on that job after materials, labor and subs. Spending $3,000 to win it, which is 5% of the price, still leaves $15,000. Twenty jobs times $3,000 is $60,000 a year, or $5,000 a month. Spread across 100 good leads, that’s $600 per good lead, or $300 per inquiry.
Those last two numbers are your guardrails. Using the example, if a channel brings inquiries at $150 each and half are a fit, keep it. If it brings them at $700 and most are tire kickers, cut it.
One more check before you go further: can your crews take 20 more jobs? If not, marketing just pushes your start dates back and makes customers angry. Plan the hires or the subs first, or lower the goal.
Two quick notes. Leave referral jobs out of this goal, since they’d come in anyway, but still log them so you know where work comes from. And if you win work by bid, swap “estimates” for “bids submitted” and use your bid-win rate. The math works the same way.
Decide who you’re marketing to (and who you’re not)
“Homeowners and businesses” isn’t a target. A kitchen remodeler, a custom home builder and a concrete sub all build things, but they sell to different people who look in different places.
Write down who signs the contract. Then write down who steers that person to you. For most construction companies it looks like one of these:
- Remodelers and repair contractors: the homeowner signs. Realtors, designers and past customers send them.
- Custom home builders: the owner signs, often a year after the first call. Architects, lenders and lot brokers send them.
- Specialty subs (concrete, framing, drywall, electrical on new builds): a GC’s estimator or project manager picks you. Other subs and suppliers know who’s bidding what.
- Small commercial GCs: a property manager, tenant or owner’s rep signs. Brokers and architects often decide who gets asked to bid.
Next, list the jobs you’ll turn down: too small, too far, wrong type. Every bad-fit lead costs a phone call, maybe a site visit, and sometimes a full takeoff before you figure out it was never going to work. That’s a Saturday you don’t get back.
Then fill in one sentence. It becomes the headline on your site, the first line of your Google profile and the thing you say at a networking lunch:
We build [type of job] for [buyer] in [area], and we’re known for [one real thing you can prove].
“Known for quality” doesn’t count, since everyone says it. Something like “we finish basements in 6 weeks and keep the house livable the whole time” is a promise a buyer can picture. Only write it if your last ten jobs back it up.
Pick channels that fit your kind of construction company
You don’t need every channel. You need the two or three where your buyer already looks. Here’s how we’d split it by type of company:
| Type of company | Start here | Add next | Usually skip at first |
|---|---|---|---|
| Remodeler or repair contractor | Google Business Profile, reviews, service pages for each job type | Google Ads on job-specific searches, Local Services Ads, past-customer emails | Paid lead sites with shared leads, broad Facebook boosts |
| Custom home builder | Project pages with photos, budget range and timeline; architect and lender relationships | SEO for “custom home builder [area]”, small retargeting budget | Cheap lead lists, daily social posting |
| Specialty sub selling to GCs | A target list of GCs, a prequal packet, a simple capabilities page | Supplier and other-sub referrals, LinkedIn for estimators | Consumer ads and homeowner SEO |
| Small commercial GC | Case pages by building type, broker and property manager relationships | Search ads on commercial terms, public bid notices | Homeowner-focused channels |
For homeowner work, start with Google. In the accounts we manage, the homeowner with a cracked foundation or a kitchen budget tends to search before they call anyone. That’s why your Google profile and your service pages come before anything paid. Our guide to SEO for contractors covers the setup.
Local Services Ads can work for residential builders and remodelers. Google lists “General contractor” and “Bathroom remodeling” as categories in the US. For both, its screening page lists background check, insurance and license requirements. Bathroom remodeling also lists business registration. The details depend on your state, so check your category before you plan around it. Here’s how Local Services Ads work and what they cost.
Paid lead sites are a test, not a plan. They can fill gaps while your own channels grow. Track them the same way you track everything else, and look at the lead sources besides Angi before you sign a contract.
Subs win work with a prequal packet, not ads. Keep a one or two page sheet ready to email: license numbers, your insurance certificate, bonding capacity if you have it, safety info, three GC references and photos of similar work. Send it to the estimators on your target list, then call each one every quarter to ask what they’re bidding.
Public work runs on its own system. Federal notices are posted on SAM.gov, and anyone can search them without an account. State, county and city jobs use their own bid portals, so add the ones in your area to your plan.
Build proof before you buy clicks
Ads send people to your site and your Google profile. If what they find is three photos and two reviews from 2021, you paid for a click that went nowhere. Fix the proof first.
Here’s what we’d check before turning on a single ad:
- Google Business Profile is right. Pick the primary category that fits your main work. Google says the categories you choose affect your local ranking, and it also says not to pick a category for every service you offer.
- Service area is set the way Google wants it. If customers don’t come to your shop, remove the address and list your area by city or ZIP code. Google doesn’t let you set a radius.
- One page per job type. Kitchens, additions, basements, decks. Each page shows that kind of work, the area you cover and a clear next step.
- Project pages that tell a story. What the owner wanted, what got in the way, how long it took. Caption every photo with what you did, so nobody wonders if you did the whole house or just the gutters.
- A steady flow of honest reviews. Ask every customer at the walkthrough, not just the happy ones.
Reviews come with legal rules now. The FTC’s rule on reviews and testimonials took effect on October 21, 2024. It bars any reward that depends, openly or by hint, on what the review says.
Google goes further. Its own help page says offering incentives for reviews, like discounts or free services, “is strictly prohibited.” So don’t offer anything for a review. Not a discount, not a gift card.
What about only asking the customers you think are happy? The rule doesn’t ban that outright, but the FTC says it “could violate the FTC Act.” Fake or bought reviews are the bigger risk. In a December 2025 warning letter template, the FTC said a court could impose civil penalties of up to $53,088 per violation.
Ads don’t fix a thin profile. They just let more people see that it’s thin.
Our Google Business Profile setup guide walks through the profile step by step.
How much to spend on construction marketing
There’s no magic percent of revenue that fits every builder. The jobs math in step one gives you your real number. Still, it helps to see what a monthly budget buys, so here’s what we’d do at three levels. These are our starting points, not price quotes. They include ad spend and any outside help.
| Monthly budget | What we’d fund | What we’d hold off on |
|---|---|---|
| $1,500 | Google profile cleanup, a review request after every job, two or three strong service pages, a tracking number for each channel you use | Paid ads (too little to learn from in most markets), new website builds |
| $5,000 | Everything above, plus one Google Ads campaign on your best job type, Local Services Ads if your category qualifies, monthly project pages | Social ads, more than one paid lead site |
| $15,000 | Everything above, plus campaigns for each main job type, ongoing SEO for every service and town you serve, retargeting, a past-customer email list | Anything you can’t track to a signed job |
The first dollars go to things you own. Your Google profile, your pages and your reviews keep working when you stop paying. Ads stop the day the card does.
If your jobs math says $5,000 a month and your bank account says $1,500, start with $1,500 and the free work. Fill the gaps with time instead of money: ask for referrals at every walkthrough, call your last 50 customers, and take good photos on every job. Then raise the budget as signed work comes in.
One rule we’d hold to: split the budget into fixed costs (website, tracking, tools) and test money (ads, lead sites, sponsorships). Test money has to earn its spot every 90 days, or it moves somewhere else.
Answer fast, then follow up
You already paid for that lead. Don’t lose it by calling back tomorrow.
A Harvard Business Review study from 2011 looked at 1.25 million sales leads at 42 US companies. Firms that tried to reach a lead within an hour were nearly seven times as likely to qualify it as firms that tried even an hour later. That study wasn’t about construction, and it’s old. Still, it matches what we see in the accounts we manage: when a homeowner fills out forms with a few builders, the first one to call back often gets the site visit.
Put a name in this box of your plan. Who answers the phone during the day? Who checks web forms at night and on Saturday? If the answer is “me, when I get to it,” that’s the first problem to fix.
Here’s a text you can send the minute a form comes in, before the call back:
“Hi [name], this is [your name] with [company]. Got your note about the [project]. I’ll call you in the next hour. Is this a good number?”
When you call, ask the three questions that tell you if it’s a fit:
“Thanks for reaching out about the [project]. So I don’t waste your time, can I ask three quick things? Where’s the house, when are you hoping to start, and do you have a budget range in mind?”
And a follow-up plan for estimates that go quiet:
- Day 2: “Any questions on the estimate? Happy to walk through it on the phone.”
- Day 7: Send one photo of a similar job you finished, with a line about how it went.
- Day 21: “Still planning to move ahead this season? If the timing changed, no problem. I’ll check back in a couple of months.”
When we look at how contractors handle leads, the same thing keeps coming up: estimates that never got a second call. That’s a cheap problem to fix with a reminder on your calendar. If calls slip through while you’re on a roof or under a house, an answering service or an AI receptionist can catch them. Our system, Restoral, answers calls and chats and books the visit right onto your calendar.
Track every lead to a signed contract
If you can’t say which channel brought last month’s signed jobs, you don’t have a plan yet. Every lead gets a source, and every source gets judged by signed work, not clicks.
Add a “lead source” field to your CRM, and fill it in on every call. No CRM? A shared spreadsheet works. Give it these columns: date, name, job type, town, source, fit (yes or no), estimate date, estimate amount, signed (yes or no) and signed amount. Use a tracking number on each channel so the phone does part of the work. Then watch these numbers once a month:
| Number | How to figure it | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Inquiries by source | Count of calls and forms from each channel | Which channels make the phone ring |
| Fit rate | Good leads divided by all inquiries | Whether you’re reaching the right buyer |
| Cost per good lead | Channel spend divided by good leads | Whether a channel is under your guardrail |
| Close rate | Signed jobs divided by estimates | How well you sell once you’re in the door |
| Average job size | Signed dollars divided by signed jobs | Whether marketing brings the jobs you want |
| Cost per signed job | Channel spend divided by signed jobs | The number that decides where money goes |
If you run Google Ads, connect them to signed work too. With auto-tagging on, Google gives each ad click that lands on your site an ID called a GCLID. Save it with the lead. When the contract is signed, you can send that sale back to Google Ads, and you’ll see which clicks turned into jobs, not just form fills.
Two catches: your web form needs a hidden field that grabs the GCLID, and calls made straight from an ad don’t carry one. Call tracking covers those, so phone leads get a source too.
Block 30 minutes on the first Monday of each month. Look at the table, move test money toward the channel with the lowest cost per signed job, and write down one change. For builders with long sales cycles, judge on 90 days or more. A custom home lead from March might sign in October.
Your construction marketing plan for the first 90 days
Here’s the order we’d do it in. Month one is setup, month two is proof, and month three is turning on paid traffic and watching it closely. Roofers can see a season by season version on our marketing page for roofing companies.
Days 1 to 30: setup
- Fill in the seven boxes and the jobs math.
- Add a lead source field and tracking numbers.
- Fix the Google profile: category, service area, hours, photos.
- Decide who answers leads, and set up the instant text.
Days 31 to 60: proof
- Build or rewrite the pages for your top two or three job types.
- Publish two project pages with captioned photos.
- Start asking every customer for a review at the walkthrough.
- Reach out to five people who can send you work.
Days 61 to 90: paid traffic and review
- Turn on one ad campaign for your best job type, if the budget allows.
- Read the search terms every week and block the junk.
- Run your first full monthly review with the tracking table.
- Update the jobs math with real numbers instead of guesses.
Expect the full payoff to take longer than 90 days, because jobs take time to sign and build. What 90 days will show is whether the right people are calling. If they are, keep going. If they aren’t, the tracking will tell you which box to fix.
Mistakes we see when we audit contractor marketing
Here’s what we find most often. Each one costs money every month.
- No lead source on anything. The owner says “Google works” or “Facebook doesn’t,” but nobody can show which calls turned into contracts.
- Ads pointed at the home page. A search for “basement finishing” lands on a page about everything. The visitor has to hunt, and most won’t.
- The agency owns the accounts. If your ad account, website or Google profile is in someone else’s name, you don’t fully own your marketing. Make sure you’re listed as an owner on your Google profile and an admin on your ad accounts, whoever runs them.
- Judging by cost per lead alone. For example, a $90 lead that never signs is money gone. A $400 lead that turns into a $70,000 addition paid for itself many times over.
- Starting and stopping. Ads run in a slow month, then get shut off the minute the calendar fills. SEO and reviews never get the steady months they need.
- Photos with no story. A gallery of hundreds of photos with no captions doesn’t tell a buyer what you built, how long it took or who it was for.
None of these need more money. They need one person who owns the plan and looks at it once a month.
Construction marketing plan FAQ
How much should a construction company spend on marketing?
There’s no single right percent. Work it out from your jobs. Decide how many signed jobs you need from marketing, then decide what you’d pay to win one. Multiply the two and you have a yearly budget. In our example, 20 jobs at $3,000 each is $60,000 a year, or $5,000 a month.
How do I market my construction business with no money?
Spend time instead of cash. Set up your Google Business Profile the right way, ask every customer for a review, and post captioned photos of each job. Call past customers and ask who they know. Have coffee with a kitchen designer or a lumberyard rep. None of it needs an ad budget.
What should a construction marketing plan include?
Seven boxes on one page: your goal in signed jobs, your buyer, your channels, your proof, your budget, who answers leads, and how you’ll track each lead to a contract. Our free Word template has all seven, plus a 90-day calendar.
How long before a marketing plan brings in jobs?
Ads can bring calls soon after they go live. SEO and reviews take longer, often months. Signed work takes longer still, because construction jobs have long sales cycles. Judge the first 90 days on whether the right people are calling, not on final revenue.
Should a construction company use Local Services Ads?
It’s worth a look for residential work. In the US, Google lists general contractor and bathroom remodeling as Local Services Ads categories, with background check, license and insurance requirements. License rules depend on your state and trade. Get your profile and reviews in shape first, since buyers see your rating on the ad. Then track the leads like any other channel.
What to do this week
Here are five things you can knock out before Friday:
- Download the template and fill in the goal and the jobs math with last year’s numbers.
- Write your one-sentence positioning line and the list of jobs you’ll turn down.
- Add a lead source field to wherever you log calls.
- Check your Google profile’s category and service area.
- Ask your last five customers for a review.
Not sure where your Google profile stands? Start with our free local SEO audit. For more on getting found in your market, see our guide to home services SEO.
