Agency, freelancer, or do it yourself: how a bathroom remodeler should buy marketing

By Steven Von · 2026-10-07 · 6 min read

What a bathroom remodeler can do itself, what to hire out, red flags in a marketing pitch, what a fair monthly price is, and why a trial beats a contract.

Every bathroom remodeler with a Google listing gets the calls. "We noticed you are not on page one." "We have a proven system for remodelers." "We only work with one contractor per market and your competitor is about to sign." The pitch is always the same, the contract is always six or twelve months, and the proof is always a screenshot from a different trade in a different state.

This guide is about how to buy marketing without getting sold. It is written by someone who sells marketing, so take the opinion parts as opinion.

What you can do yourself

A remodeler with a phone and two hours a week can do these at a professional level, and no agency will do them better:

• Reviews. The ask happens at the walkthrough and the text goes out from your phone. The reviews guide has it. Nobody can outsource the moment.
• Photos. Doorway, daylight, clean glass. Your phone is enough. Agencies that promise "professional content" usually mean stock images.
• The Google Business Profile. Ninety minutes to set up with the profile guide, then one post a week. You know the services and prices; an agency has to ask you.
• The missed-call text-back. A $30 tool and one afternoon.

If someone wants $800 a month to "manage your Google listing", they are charging you for the weekly post.

What is usually worth hiring out

• Google Ads. It is possible to learn, and most owners who try spend $3,000 learning that broad match and the home page are a bad combination. Someone who has run accounts for remodelers before knows the negative keyword list on day one.
• The website build. Not the copy, which you should write or at least dictate, but the build, the speed work, and the structure. A page per project type, price ranges, forms that notify you. The website guide is the spec to hand them.
• Meta ads at scale. Boosting a post is easy. A leads campaign with instant forms, qualifying questions, retargeting audiences and the pixel set up right is a few hours of skilled work and then weekly attention.
• Bookkeeping. Not marketing, but it is the thing owners put off longest, and you cannot price projects well if you do not know your real job costs.

Red flags in the pitch

Any one of these is a reason to end the call politely.

1. A contract longer than a month before any results. Six-month minimums exist because the vendor knows month two is when you would leave. A month-to-month agreement after a trial is the structure that keeps them honest.
2. "Guaranteed page one" or a guaranteed lead count. Nobody controls Google's results. A guaranteed lead count is usually met with junk leads.
3. They own the ad account or the website. Your Google Ads account, your Meta ad account, your domain and your site files should be in your name with the vendor as a user. If they leave, the history leaves with them otherwise.
4. Results from a different trade. A roofing case study says nothing about remodel estimates. Ask for a remodeler reference you can call.
5. Setup fees over $1,500 for ads. Building two search campaigns for a remodeler is a day's work.
6. No call tracking or no report on cost per estimate. If the monthly report is clicks and impressions, you are paying for a report, not for leads.
7. They do not ask about your average ticket, close rate, or capacity. Someone who does not know you sell $18,000 projects at a 30% close rate cannot set a sensible budget.
8. "We only take one remodeler per market." Exclusivity is a sales technique. Ask what happens when the franchise in your market calls them.

What a fair price looks like

Ranges for a one-crew to three-crew bathroom remodeler, excluding ad spend, which always goes to Google or Meta on your own card:

• Google Ads management: $400 to $1,200 a month, or 10% to 20% of spend. Below $400 nobody is looking at the search terms report.
• Meta ads management: $400 to $1,000 a month, plus creative if you are not supplying photos and clips.
• Website, one-time: $2,500 to $7,000 for 10 to 15 pages with your photos and ranges. Hosting and upkeep $30 to $150 a month.
• Local SEO and profile management: $300 to $800 a month. Over $1,500 is a national firm's retainer, not a remodeler's.
• Review request automation: $50 to $200 a month for the tool, more if someone is managing responses.
• Missed-call text-back and lead follow-up: $30 to $300 a month depending on how much is automated.
• Full-service everything: $2,000 to $5,000 a month for a company doing $800,000 to $2 million a year. Above that, the vendor should be able to show a cost per sold project that justifies it.

Total marketing spend including ad budget for a healthy remodeler runs 5% to 10% of revenue. At $1.2 million a year, that is $60,000 to $120,000 all in, which is less than it sounds once you count that one sold project is $18,000.

Freelancer or agency

A freelancer is cheaper and usually better at one thing. If you need Google Ads only, a freelancer who has run remodeler accounts is the best value available. The risk is availability: one person, one vacation, one bigger client.

An agency costs more and covers more. The risk is the junior account manager; you were sold by the owner and are managed by someone who started last month. Ask who will be in the account weekly, by name.

Either way, judge them on cost per estimate and cost per sold project, reported monthly, with the call recordings available to you.

Why trial first

The only way to know whether a vendor can produce a remodel estimate for your company is to watch them try. A two-week trial on one service, with you seeing the campaigns, the calls and the forms as they happen, is enough to know. It will not produce a sold project in 14 days; the sales cycle is longer than that. It will show you whether the leads are homeowners with real projects, whether the setup was done properly, and whether the person on the other end answers your texts.

That is the model on this site. Pick a service, we run it for 14 days free with no card, and you decide. If you take the guides and do it yourself instead, that is a good outcome too. Check the benchmark report first to see where you stand before deciding where to spend.

Frequently asked

Should I hire a lead-gen service that sells leads per lead? Shared leads at $50 to $150 each, sold to three or four contractors, work only with a five-minute callback discipline. Exclusive leads at $200 to $400 are better and still require the callback. Compare the cost per sold project against your own ads after 60 days; most remodelers find their own campaigns win once they are set up.

What should the monthly report contain? Leads by source, cost per lead, estimates booked, projects sold, cost per sold project, and the search terms or ad creative that produced them. One page. If it needs a meeting to explain, it is hiding something.

Can I do it all myself? Reviews, photos, the profile and the text-back, yes, and you should. Ads and the site build are where paid help usually pays for itself. Start there.

Text or call (385) 452-8683 to start a free 14-day trial of any service on the site.

Steven Von, Editor
Steven has spent the last several years running growth campaigns for local service businesses, bathroom remodeling companies among them, and builds the benchmark datasets on this site from public Google listings. About the editor