Contractor Marketing: DIY or Agency? What’s Actually Worth Your Time & Money

Watch Grandir CEO Christian Galvan break this down in our latest Youtube video. You can even listen to this during work!

Many contractors start by handling marketing themselves—and in some cases, that makes total sense. Here’s what’s great about doing the marketing yourself

1. Direct Involvement & Brand Control

No one knows your business better than you.

Doing marketing yourself means:

• Full control over messaging

• No “lost in translation” issues working with marketers

• Your voice stays authentic across platforms

This is especially valuable for owner-led brands where personality and trust matter. And if you’re the very hands on type, you’ll love being able to see everything that goes on.

2. Cost Control

When you DIY your marketing:

• You’re not paying agency retainers

• You control exactly how much you spend

• You can scale spend up or down month-to-month

For seasonal contractors, this flexibility can be stress relieving if you’re not that invested in it. You might increase ad spend during peak summer months and pull back during slower seasons.

3. Opportunity to Learn the Basics

If your business is still in its first 5 years, there’s so many things to learn from hiring and firing employees, taxes, generating revenue, and everything in between. Additionally, marketing is one of the most important parts of your business—it’s how you generate that revenue. 

Learning SEO fundamentals, Google Business Profile basics, and how to run your social media content is a huge asset early on. There’s real value in understanding how customers find you, even if you don’t handle marketing forever. Once you’re comfortable with the basics, not only do you know how to do it, you’ll know what to look for when you’re hiring.

Before committing to DIY marketing long-term, there are some serious tradeoffs to consider.

1. The (Huge) Time Commitment

As a contractor, your time is already split between:

• Job sites

• Estimates

• Managing crews

• Customer communication

Spending time marketing (and learning how to do it) competes with all of that. When you DIY, you’re also competing against businesses that do hire agencies—teams with systems, tools, and full-time specialists. 

2. Inconsistent Results For Long Periods of Time

Agencies use proven systems. DIY marketing often involves:

• Lots of trial and error (and efforts that seemingly lead to nothing)

• Failed campaigns that waste your time

• Learning through mistakes 

• Not knowing what to do next

That means month-to-month results can be slow, unpredictable, and frustrating—especially if leads are critical to cash flow.

At a certain point, outsourcing marketing becomes a strategic decision. Here’s where it makes sense.

1. Speed & Efficiency

A good agency already has:

• Processes

• Tools

• Playbooks for home service businesses

• People who know how to market in your industry

What can take you months can be done in weeks with the right agency who knows your vision and can execute it. Blog posts, social media ads, and a new website are all important marketing pieces that can take a single person months to develop - are you willing to do that on your own?

2. Expertise Across Multiple Marketing Channels

Marketing isn’t just one thing. It includes:

• SEO

• Google Business Profile management

• Paid ads

• Social media marketing

• Making sure your website works, looks good, and generates customers

An agency gives you specialists, not generalists—people who’ve marketed your type of business before and know what works (and what doesn’t).

3. Built-In Accountability

When you DIY, marketing usually falls to the bottom of the to-do list (don’t worry, you’re not alone, we've heard it many times before). And we get it, if you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s easy to put it off.

But with an agency that specializes in contractor marketing:

• Monthly reporting keeps things moving

• Results are tracked and communicated so that you actually know what’s going on

• Someone is accountable for your progress

That structure prevents your marketing from becoming an afterthought.

4. Massive Time Savings

Many contractors spend 20–40 hours per month trying to understand SEO, listings, ads, and updates. Hiring an agency gives you that time back that you can reinvest into training your sales team, operations, and growth plans.

Hiring an agency isn’t perfect. You should go in with your eyes open.

1. Cost

Agencies use different pricing models:

• Monthly retainers

• Performance-based pricing

• Pay-per-lead

It’s an investment, but one that often pays for itself through time savings and improved lead flow. We’ll be completely honest: If you’re just starting a business, we recommend DIY marketing to see if your services can get customers without a huge marketing budget. If it can’t, marketing is only a band-aid solution.

2. Less Day-to-Day Control

You won’t be touching every detail anymore. That’s why it’s critical to work with an agency that:

• Understands marketing, specifically in your industry

• Communicates clearly and honestly

• Treats your business like a partnership and not a transaction

3. Not All Agencies Are Created Equal

Just like in contracting, there are good and bad agencies.

Red flags include:

• Holding your website’s permissions hostage (and a thousand dollar ransom)

• Lack of communication

• No clear reporting (you can’t tell how the marketing is doing)

• No industry experience for your specific industry

Always vet agencies carefully and find out if they can deliver what they promise.

DIY Marketing Makes Sense If:

• You’re brand new to business and are still learning everything about it

• Your budget is extremely tight

• You want to experiment with your own vision before scaling

• You enjoy sales and marketing and are good at it

Some contractors thrive doing social media themselves, and that’s perfectly fine as long as it doesn’t cut into your revenue-driving tasks.

Hiring an Agency Makes Sense If:

• You’re doing $400k+ in annual revenue

• You’re too busy to market consistently

• You want predictable, scalable growth

• Growth has plateaued for 2-3 years but you want to level up

• You’ve had success with your own marketing but want to outsource your vision to a team

• You’ve made many referral/word-of-mouth sales, but other marketing efforts aren’t working

At that stage, your highest ROI often comes from focusing on what you do best and delegating the rest to a team of pros.

Before hiring, look for these non-negotiables:

✔ Industry Experience for YOUR Industry

Your agency should understand your specific industry, not just “marketing.” Many businesses make the mistake of hiring a general marketing agency – which is fine, until they realize they’ve never marketed in their industry.

✔ Clear Communication & Reporting

You should know:

• What’s being worked on

• What’s improving

• Where leads are coming from & how many

On a monthly if not, weekly basis. Whether you’re DIY-ing or hiring, you should always know what’s going on every so often.

✔ Partnership Mentality > “Just a Client”

A true partner cares about your long-term success, not just monthly invoices. Be cautious of agencies offering pure month-to-month SEO with no long-term success plan. Real growth takes time, strategy, and commitment that isn’t just shown with a contract.

DIY marketing and agency marketing both have their place. The key is knowing where your time is best spent at your current stage of business. If you’re ready to explore what professional marketing could look like for your company, a low-risk first step is a second opinion.

Grandir Solutions helps home service businesses grow through SEO, social media, and website marketing systems built specifically for contractors. We’ve helped over 200 contractors in the last 2 years double their website visitors, with more to come.

When you’re curious to plan out your next steps…

Schedule a FREE strategy call with one of our team members to see whether DIY or specialized agency support makes the most sense for you – no obligation.