Estimates from your own website, not from a lead you share with four competitors
Home services clicks run $19 to $86 depending on the trade, and lead marketplaces resell the same homeowner to four contractors. Brainito runs the marketing loop for a crew of two or a company of forty: a weekly audit of your site, a monthly strategy, a page for every service in every town you work, reviews with photos, a seasonal email to past customers, and one report the owner can read in the truck.
Free to start. Paid actions use credits; most businesses spend $20 to $500 a month.
- Built for roofers, remodelers, HVAC, plumbing, electrical and general contractors
- License and insurance claims checked in every draft
- No retainer, cancel any time
- Plans from $20 a month, most contractors spend $20 to $500 a month
What marketing costs a contractor now
Typical US figures for a small to mid-sized contractor. Ad spend is on top of the first and third rows. Roofing and HVAC clicks cost $40 to $86, handyman and painting $19 to $30, so the management fee is rarely the biggest number.
| Option | Typical monthly cost | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Contractor marketing agency | $1,500 to $5,000 | A website on the agency's platform, SEO for one trade and one metro, Google Ads management, a monthly report, a twelve month contract. |
| Lead marketplaces (Angi, HomeAdvisor, Thumbtack) | $500 to $3,000 | $20 to $100 per lead, shared with three or four other contractors, charged whether or not the homeowner picks up. The lead belongs to the marketplace. |
| PPC and Local Services Ads management | 15% to 20% of spend | A manager for Google Ads and LSAs only. At $4,000 a month of spend that is $600 to $800 before a single click, and call tracking is often extra. |
| Brainito AI marketing manager | $20 to $500 | Weekly audit, monthly strategy, website builder, SEO, social, email, analytics, tasks and a mini CRM, paid in credits for what you run. Dashboards are free. |
Agency and lead ranges are what contractors report paying in 2026 and change by trade and market. The Brainito figure is what contractors on the platform typically spend.
What fails on contractor websites
The audit checks 77 factors. These are the ones that fail most often when we scan a contractor, and each one costs jobs, not just rankings.
- 1Internal linking and headings
One services page for roofing, siding, gutters and windows, and no page for any town
Homeowners search "roof replacement Marietta". Google ranks pages, so a contractor with one services page loses to one with a page per service per town. The fix is a page for each service you want more of in each town you will drive to.
- 2Title tags and meta descriptions
Every page is titled "Home | Smith Construction LLC"
Nobody searches your company name until they already know you. Titles need the service and the town, and the meta description needs the phone number and "free estimates" if that is true.
- 3Schema markup
No RoofingContractor or HomeAndConstructionBusiness structured data
Structured data tells Google and AI assistants the trade, the service area, the hours and the reviews. Without it the listing is a bare link while a competitor shows a star rating and "open 24 hours".
- 4Testimonials and reviews
Reviews on Google, project photos on the foreman's phone, neither on the site
The site that wins the estimate shows recent reviews and finished jobs on the page for that service. Most contractor sites show stock photos of a roof nobody on the crew built.
- 5Phone contact and lead capture
The number is in the header on desktop and gone on mobile
Homeowners with a leak call. A tap-to-call number above the fold on mobile and a three-field estimate form convert far better than a long quote questionnaire.
- 6Image alt text and mobile page speed
Forty uncompressed job photos named IMG_4021.jpg
Project galleries are the heaviest part of a contractor site and the least described. Compressed images with alt text that says "standing seam metal roof, Marietta GA" load fast and rank for the job type.
- 7AI crawler access and llms.txt
ChatGPT cannot read the site, so it recommends the contractor it can
A growing share of "who is a good roofer near me" questions go to an AI assistant. If the site blocks AI crawlers or has no llms.txt, the company is absent from those answers.
- 8Google Search Console and analytics
Nobody knows which page or ad produced the last ten jobs
Without Search Console verified and call tracking on the number and the form, the owner cannot tell whether the service pages, LSAs or the lead service brought the job, so the lead service keeps getting the budget.
Factor names match the Brainito audit report, so a contractor can run the free audit and see which of these apply to its own site.
The channels that bring jobs, in order
Ranked for a residential contractor, with the reason. Commercial work shifts toward referrals and LinkedIn, emergency trades toward paid.
Google Business Profile and Local Services Ads
The map pack and the Google Guaranteed badge above it decide who gets the call for "plumber near me". Categories, service areas, photos of real jobs, review replies and the LSA screening are the work.
Service and town pages
One page per service per town, with jobs you did there, is the asset that compounds. It is also what AI assistants quote when asked for a recommendation.
Reviews with photos
Volume, recency, replies and photos. A roofer with 120 reviews from the last year outranks one with 300 from 2018. Ask at the final walkthrough, by text, with a direct link.
Google Ads for the services that pay
Roof replacement, HVAC install and remodels justify $60 clicks when the page converts and calls are tracked. Repair and handyman terms rarely do.
Email and text to past customers
Nobody does it and it works. A gutter-cleaning reminder in October, a furnace check in September, an "ask us about your deck" note in March, to every customer from the last ten years.
Facebook, Nextdoor and referral partners
Finished-job posts in the neighborhood groups where homeowners ask for recommendations, and a monthly note to the realtors, inspectors and property managers who refer.
A sample audit: twelve-person roofing and siding contractor
A representative audit built from the factors that most often fail for contractors of this size. Names and figures are illustrative. Run the free audit to see your own.
Marketing Health Score
38/100
Twelve-person roofing and siding contractor, Georgia, 11 years, $2,500 a month on shared leads and a $1,500 agency retainer
Good reviews and a full schedule in storm season, invisible for every service and town except the company name. The site loads in 8.2 seconds on mobile under a gallery of 60 uncompressed photos, has one services page, no structured data, and no phone number in the mobile header.
Fix 1: Build service pages for four services across six towns
Highest impactRoof replacement, roof repair, siding and gutters in the six towns that produced most jobs last year, each with the town in the title, a photo of a job done there, recent reviews and a three-field estimate form.
Fix 2: Add RoofingContractor schema and allow AI crawlers
One afternoonStructured data for the company with service areas, license number and reviews, an llms.txt file, and a robots.txt that no longer blocks GPTBot and PerplexityBot.
Fix 3: Compress the gallery, add alt text and call tracking
Two daysSixty photos compressed and described bring mobile load time under 2.5 seconds. Call tracking on the number and the estimate form shows which pages and ads produce jobs, and which lead service to cancel.
What Brainito does for a contractor
Every module, in the language of a job site rather than a marketing department.
Weekly marketing audit
Your site re-checked every week across 77 factors, with the evidence behind each verdict and a fix list sorted by what brings estimates.
Monthly marketing strategy
A plan built from the audit, your trades and the season: which service pages to write, when to ask for reviews, when to email past customers, where the ad budget goes this month.
Website builder
A fast site with a page per service per town, estimate forms wired to your contacts, published to your own GitHub and Vercel so the company owns it.
SEO management
On-page fixes, technical fixes, contractor directories and citations, and a check on whether ChatGPT and Gemini recommend the company.
Social media management
Drafts for Facebook and Instagram from finished jobs, the owner approves on the post, scheduling handles the rest.
Email automation
Seasonal reminders to past customers, an estimate follow-up sequence, a note to referral partners, and review requests after the final walkthrough.
Analytics and ads reporting
Google Ads, Meta ads, organic and referrals on one page, with calls and estimate requests counted as the outcome. Local Services Ads are set up in Google's own console.
Contacts, tasks and team chat
A mini CRM for estimates, past customers and referral partners, a task board for the office manager who runs marketing on Fridays, and chat for the crew leads.
300+ marketing tools
Review response drafts, schema generators, meta tag writers, keyword research for your towns and more, free, for the jobs in between.
The first month
Week 1: audit and plan
Run the free audit, read the findings, generate the strategy. Decide which services and which towns you actually want more of.
Week 2: fix the site
Service and town pages, schema, speed, the mobile phone number and the estimate form. Send the technical fixes to whoever built the site, or rebuild it with the builder.
Week 3: reviews and profile
Set up review requests at the final walkthrough, clean the Google Business Profile and service areas, start weekly job posts.
Week 4: measure
Connect Search Console, analytics and ads. From here the weekly audit and monthly plan run on their own.
Goes with
- Contractor SEO auditThe audit with the factors that matter for a contractor.
- Local SEO auditMap pack, citations and reviews.
- General contractor directories and citationsWhere a contractor should be listed.
- Digital marketing for drywall and POP contractorsA trade-level playbook.
- Website builderA site you own, with a page per service per town.
- AI marketing agencyHow the offer works for any business.
Run the free audit on your company's site. It takes two minutes.
You get the score, the evidence and the fix list before you decide anything. If it is useful, start free and the weekly audit and monthly plan follow.