How to Evaluate and Hire a Marketing Partner for Your Contracting Business

Why Most Marketing Relationships Fail

Don't blame incompetence. Blame incentives.

Most marketing relationships are structured so that the vendor wins even when you lose. That's not malice—it's just business model design. And if you don't understand the model, you can't predict the behavior.

The retainer problem: An agency charging $5,000/month gets paid whether you get 50 leads or zero. Their incentive is to keep you happy enough to not cancel—not to maximize your results. And "keeping you happy" often means good communication and nice reports, not actual performance.

The aggregator problem: Angi, Thumbtack, and similar platforms make money by selling leads. The more contractors they sell each lead to, the more money they make. Their incentive is to maximize lead volume and distribution—not your close rate or ROI.

This isn't cynicism. It's economics. When you understand how someone makes money, you can predict how they'll behave.

The Three Models: Agencies, Aggregators, and Performance Partners

Before evaluating any specific company, understand which model they operate under.

See the full math: Exclusive vs. Shared Leads: The Real Cost Difference

What Established Contractors Actually Need

Once you're past the startup phase, you're not hoping to get some leads. You're an established business that needs predictable, scalable lead flow with real accountability.

Here's what that actually requires:

Predictability over flash. You need to know roughly what's coming in next month so you can plan crews, materials, and cash flow. Wild swings in lead volume are worse than slightly lower but consistent numbers.

Channel expertise, not generalism. A vendor who's "pretty good" at Facebook, Google, SEO, and email is worse than one who's exceptional at a single channel. Especially for paid social—Meta's algorithm changes constantly. Someone who "also does Facebook" isn't the same as someone who lives in that platform.

Real data, not dashboards. You've probably received pretty reports that don't actually tell you what's working. What you need is clarity on cost per acquisition by channel, lead quality trends, and which campaigns are worth scaling vs killing. If your vendor can't tell you this in plain English, they don't actually know.

Accountability tied to outcomes. You're too established to pay for effort. You need to pay for results. This doesn't mean vendors should work for free—setup costs and ad spend are real. But the ongoing relationship should be tied to what they deliver, not what they promise.

Ownership of assets. If you leave, do you keep anything? The pixel data, the audiences, the creative, the landing pages? If you've spent $500K on marketing over two years and walk away with nothing, you were renting, not building.

The Ownership Question: Who Keeps What When You Leave?

This is the question most contractors never think to ask—until it's too late.

When you work with a marketing partner, campaigns generate valuable assets:

• Pixel data: The code on your website that tracks visitor behavior. Over time, this data helps platforms like Meta find more people like your best customers. Months or years of pixel data is incredibly valuable.
• Custom audiences: Lists of people who've visited your site, engaged with your ads, or submitted forms. These can be retargeted for pennies compared to cold traffic.
• Lookalike audiences: Modeled audiences based on your converters. Refined over time with your data.
• Creative performance data: What headlines, images, and videos worked. What didn't. This learning is worth money.
• Landing pages: If they built pages for you, do you own them?

Here's the question: If you end the relationship tomorrow, which of these do you keep?

If campaigns ran through THEIR ad account, you keep nothing. That pixel data you paid to generate? Gone. Those audiences? Theirs. You're starting over.

If campaigns ran through YOUR ad account, you keep everything. New vendor can pick up where the old one left off. Even if you bring marketing in-house later, you're building on a foundation, not starting from scratch.

This is the difference between building equity and renting someone else's.

Ask every vendor: "Whose ad account runs the campaigns?" And if they say theirs, ask why.

Platform Specialization: Why Generalists Struggle

Ten years ago, you could be a "digital marketing agency" and do a decent job across platforms. That era is over.

Each platform—Meta, Google, YouTube, TikTok—has become its own ecosystem with constant algorithm changes, unique creative requirements, and specialized bidding strategies. What works on Google doesn't work on Facebook. What worked on Facebook in 2023 doesn't work in 2025.

Meta specifically has become dramatically more complex. The Andromeda algorithm update changed how campaigns optimize. Creative fatigue happens faster than ever—you can't run the same ad for 6 months anymore. Advantage+ campaigns require different thinking than the old manual setups.

An agency that offers "full-service digital marketing" is spreading attention across multiple platforms. That made sense when platforms were simpler. Now it means they're probably not excellent at any of them.

What to Look For

Where does most of their business come from? If they say "we do everything," that's a yellow flag. If they say "we specialize in Meta for home services contractors," that's expertise.

How often are they refreshing creative? If the answer is "we launch campaigns and optimize," they're behind. Modern Meta requires constant creative testing—new hooks, new images, new formats.

Can they explain recent platform changes? Ask them what's changed on Meta in the last 6 months. If they give you a vague answer, they're not living in the platform.

The Accountability Framework: How to Structure Relationships That Work

If you're going to work with an outside marketing partner, here's how to structure it so incentives align:

Tie Ongoing Fees to Lead Delivery, Not Time

Retainers make sense for some services (ongoing SEO, content production) where output is hard to tie directly to leads. For lead generation specifically—paid social, paid search, or any campaign designed to drive leads—paying per lead delivered creates accountability.

This doesn't mean no upfront investment. Setup costs are real. Building campaigns, landing pages, creative, and integrations takes work. A reasonable setup fee is normal.

But ongoing? You should be paying for what you get, not what they do.

Define "Qualified" Upfront

What counts as a lead you pay for? This needs to be crystal clear before you start. A qualified lead might mean:

• Valid phone number (actually rings)
• Within your service area
• Homeowner (not renter)
• Project matches your services
• Not a duplicate

Get this in writing. The clearer the definition, the fewer disputes later.

Establish a Dispute Process

Bad leads happen. Someone fills out a form with a fake number. Someone's outside your area. Someone says they never requested anything.

How do you handle this? Is there a credit process? What's the threshold? How long do you have to dispute?

The best partners have fair, transparent dispute processes. If a vendor makes credits difficult or adversarial, they're telling you something about their priorities.

Set Review Checkpoints

Don't wait 6 months to evaluate. Set a 30-day check-in, a 60-day evaluation, and a 90-day decision point. At each stage, look at:

• Cost per lead
• Lead-to-appointment rate
• Appointment-to-close rate
• Cost per closed job

If the numbers don't work by 90 days, something's wrong.

12 Questions to Ask Before Signing Anything

These separate serious vendors from those who are good at sales pitches:

Write down the answers. Compare across vendors. The differences will be obvious.

Red Flags That Should Kill the Deal

Walk away if you see any of these:

When to Bring Marketing In-House

At some point, it might make sense to hire instead of outsource. Here's how to think about it:

In-House Makes Sense When:

• You're spending $50K+/month consistently on a single channel
• You have enough work to keep a full-time person busy
• You're ready to manage a marketing employee (hiring, training, accountability)
• You want maximum control and flexibility
• You've already worked with outside vendors and understand what good looks like

In-House Is Risky When:

• You've never done the marketing yourself (you won't know if they're good)
• You can't afford to pay market rate ($70-120K+ for experienced media buyers)
• You don't have infrastructure (CRM, tracking, creative production support)
• You need results fast (hiring and onboarding takes months)

The Hybrid Approach

Many established contractors use a mix: in-house for some functions (content, CRM management) and outsourced for specialized execution (paid media buying, lead generation). This gives you control over strategy while accessing specialized expertise.

The worst outcome is hiring someone junior to "figure it out" because you're frustrated with agencies. You'll burn 6-12 months and $50K+ learning that inexperienced in-house is worse than competent outsourced.

Making Your Decision

Here's a simple framework: