I run a small marketing shop for contractors, mostly NJ with some PA/NY guys mixed in.
For the last year I've been doing free site audits to get my foot in the door, and I swear I'm going to lose it if I see one more roofer paying $2,500 to $3,500/mo for "full service marketing" and getting basically nothing.
Talked to a roofer in Toms River last week. He's paying $2,800/mo. I asked him to send me the last report his agency gave him.
The report had three numbers.
brand impressions: 184k
website sessions: 2,100
engagement rate: 4.7%
That was it.
No booked jobs. No call tracking. No form submissions. No lead source breakdown. Nothing tied to revenue.
So I asked, "How many of these turned into actual jobs?"
He goes, "I have no idea. My account manager changed last month and the new one hasn't set up call tracking yet."
He's paying them $33,600 a year.
And this is not a one off. I've seen some version of this probably 30 times now. Same types of agencies. Same useless reports. Same 12 month contracts. Same pitch about "ranking on Google."
The frustrating part is that most of the missing stuff is basic.
A lot of these contractor sites have no real service page structure. Roofing repair, roof replacement, gutters, siding, emergency work, all shoved onto one generic page.
Google Business Profile gets set up once and then ignored. No posts. No new photos. No Q&A. No review process.
No call tracking. No after hours plan. Phone goes to voicemail after 5pm even though a ton of homeowners search after work or on weekends.
And then the contractor gets a monthly PDF with vanity metrics and no idea whether the money is actually producing jobs.
I'm not saying every agency is bad. There are good ones. But if you're a contractor paying an agency every month, ask them a few simple questions.
What leads came in last month?
Where did they come from?
How many became estimates?
How many became jobs?
What pages are actually ranking?
When was the last time you touched my Google Business Profile?
If they can't answer clearly, that tells you a lot.
This stuff does not need to be mysterious. Contractors don't need prettier reports. They need to know whether the phone is ringing and whether those calls are turning into work.