Hiring a marketing agency versus doing it yourself: a flooring contractor's guide to red flags, fair prices and trial-first
What a flooring company can realistically do in-house, when to hire, what agencies and freelancers should cost, the warning signs in a pitch, and why a trial beats a contract.
Every flooring company with more than 12 reviews gets the calls. "We specialize in flooring contractors." "We can get you on page one." "We have a system that generates 40 leads a month." Some of those callers are good. Most are selling a template with your logo on it and a twelve-month contract. This guide is about telling the difference, and about what you should keep in-house no matter what.
What you should always do yourself
Three things never leave the company, because they depend on being there:
- Asking for reviews at the walkthrough. No agency can do this. The installer does it. See the reviews guide.
- Answering the phone and following up on estimates. An agency can set up text-back and the sequence, but the measure and the close are yours.
- Shooting the photos and video. Nobody else is standing in the room when the last plank goes down. Thirty seconds of phone video on every third job is the raw material for everything.
An owner with two hours a week can also maintain the Google profile, post weekly, and reply to reviews. The profile guide is written for exactly that.
What is worth paying for
Google Ads management, because a badly run account loses money faster than any other channel and a well run one takes weekly search-term pruning that an owner on job sites does not do. Website build and product pages, once, by someone who will write real copy with prices. Meta ad setup and creative editing. AI search and listing alignment, because it is tedious and technical. Bookkeeping, if you are still doing it at the kitchen table in March.
Social media management is the one to be careful with. Paying $800 a month for someone to post stock flooring images three times a week does nothing. Paying someone to edit the video you shoot into reveal clips and post them can be worth it.
What a fair price looks like
Ranges for a flooring company doing 8 to 20 jobs a month:
- Google Ads management: $400 to $1,200 a month, separate from ad spend. Above 20 percent of spend or above $1,500 for a small account, ask why.
- Meta ads management: $400 to $1,000 a month plus spend.
- Website: $2,000 to $6,000 one time for five to eight pages with real product copy, plus $30 to $100 a month hosting. A "free website" tied to a monthly contract usually means you do not own it.
- Local SEO and profile management: $300 to $800 a month.
- Review and follow-up automation: $100 to $300 a month including the software.
- Bookkeeping: $300 to $700 a month for a company this size.
A freelancer will often sit at the low end of each range and be excellent at one thing. An agency sits higher and covers more. Neither is better by default.
Red flags in a pitch
- Guaranteed rankings or a guaranteed lead count. Nobody controls Google's results, and "leads" without a definition means form fills from renters.
- A contract of six months or more before anything has run. There is no technical reason for it. The reason is that the first month is where you would have left.
- They own the ad account, the website or the phone number. When you leave, you lose the history, the site and the number homeowners have saved. Everything should be in your name from day one.
- Reporting that shows impressions, clicks and "engagement" but not tracked calls, booked measures and cost per lead.
- One case study with a suspiciously round number, and no way to call the owner.
- A price that is not on the table until the third call.
- They have never heard of a flooring nailer, do not know what acclimation is, and cannot tell LVP from laminate. They will write your product pages anyway.
Questions to ask
"What will I see in the first two weeks, and how will I know if it is working?" A good answer names a number: tracked calls, search terms, leads with town and size attached.
"Who owns the accounts?" The only acceptable answer is you.
"What happens if I want to stop after a month?" If the answer involves a fee, keep looking.
"Show me the search terms report from a flooring account you run." If they cannot, they have not run one.
"What is your cost per lead on flooring in a market like mine?" They should give a range like $35 to $120 for Google and $15 to $50 for Meta, with the caveat that it depends on the product. Compare with the Google Ads guide.
Why trial-first
A flooring company does not get paid until the floor is down and the homeowner has walked on it. Marketing can meet the same standard. A trial of two weeks on one service, inside your own accounts, with no card, tells you more than any pitch deck: whether the calls come, whether the search terms are right, whether the person on the other end understands the trade. If it works, you continue at a price that was quoted before day one. If it does not, you have lost a setup call.
That is how this site's own free 14-day trial works, and it is the standard we think you should hold every vendor to, including us.
Doing it yourself: a realistic plan
If you are going to run it in-house, run less of it well. One channel at a time. Month one: profile, hours, photos, review system. Month two: website product pages with prices. Month three: a single Google Ads search campaign on your best product with call tracking, $1,200 to $2,000 a month, pruned weekly. Month four: text-back and the estimate follow-up sequence. Measure each one against the benchmark report and the calculator before adding the next. An owner who does those four things in four months is ahead of most agencies' clients.
Frequently asked
My nephew does websites. Should I use him? If he will write product pages with real prices, put your name on the hosting account and finish in a month, yes. Most family-built sites stall at "coming soon" for a year. Set a deadline.
Is a lead-selling service a good idea? Services that sell the same lead to three or four flooring companies at $40 to $90 each produce a race to the lowest quote. They can fill a gap in a slow month. They are not a marketing plan.
How long should I give a new agency? Two weeks to see setup done right and the first tracked calls. Sixty days to judge cost per lead. If nothing is tracked at two weeks, leave.
Any service on this site can be tried free for 14 days, with no card and everything in your own accounts. Text or call.
Steven has spent the last several years running growth campaigns for local service businesses, flooring companies among them, and builds the benchmark datasets on this site from public Google listings. About the editor