Published retainers for contractor marketing start around $1,000 a month and run past $6,000, with ad spend billed on top, and one 2026 cost guide puts whole programmes at $2,500 to $10,000. Judge an agency on booked jobs you can trace, keep every account in your own name, and avoid a first term longer than six months.
The word "AI" rarely changes the price. Scope does: SEO, Google Ads management, Local Services Ads, a website, and who builds the reports. Of the four AI marketing agency sites that rank for this search, the three I could open show at most one price (a $999 starter package), no contract length, nothing about who owns the ad accounts and no sample report. A proposal that leaves those four blank asks you to pay before you can compare.
Price points published by agencies and tool vendors
These are published figures, not quotes, and most come from agency marketing pages, so treat them as the middle of a negotiation. Hook Agency's 2026 cost guide for home-service businesses and Redefine Web's own retainer page were the most specific sources I found. The tools are priced on their vendors' pages. Everything below was checked on 29 October 2026.
| Item | Published figure | What to check |
|---|---|---|
| Whole programme | $2,500 to $10,000 a month (the guide's FAQ says $2,000 to $10,000) | Whether ad spend sits inside the number. The guide doesn't say. |
| Local SEO | $1,000 to $3,500 a month | Pages, posts and listing updates per month, in writing. |
| Google Ads management fee | $500 to $2,500 a month, on top of ad spend that starts around $1,000 | Flat fee or percentage, and who pays Google. |
| Social media management | $500 to $2,000 a month | Whether social has ever booked a job for your trade. |
| Template website | $3,000 to $5,000 once | Who owns the domain and the files if you leave. |
| Tracking and review software | $200 to $600 a month | Inside the fee, or billed to you on top. |
| Published retainer tiers | $1,499, $2,499, $3,999 and from $6,000 (Redefine Web) | Google Ads management starts at the second tier; six-month first term; ad spend billed to your card with no percentage markup. |
| Entry package on one AI-branded agency site | $999 a month for an "Essentials" starter package; the "Advanced" package has no price, and a second site using the same package names shows none | What the package contains, for how long, and what the unpriced tier costs. |
| Local Services Ads | No fee for the ads; you pay per lead through Google against a weekly lead budget | Who reviews charged leads and asks for credits. |
| Call tracking | CallRail from $50 a month; $95 with form tracking | The account must be in your name, not the agency's. |
Add a mid-tier retainer ($2,499) to $3,000 of ad spend and the cash cost is already about $5,500 a month before a website. Hook's guide suggests home-service firms spend 5% to 15% of revenue on marketing, which is a usable sanity check: a firm turning over $90,000 a month would be looking at $4,500 to $13,500. The figures are in Hook Agency's cost guide, and the tier details are on Redefine Web's retainer page. Hook's guide disagrees with itself on the bottom of the range ($2,500 in the body, $2,000 in its FAQ), so read the whole page before quoting it to a supplier.
Doing it yourself with ChatGPT: the real bill is hours
The cash cost of a do-it-yourself set-up is small. ChatGPT Plus lists at about $20 a month (confirm on OpenAI's pricing page, which doesn't always show the figure), Claude Pro is $20, and both have free tiers. A call-tracking line is $50. A Google Business Profile costs nothing. Local Services Ads cost whatever lead budget you set. The expensive part is your evenings, because an assistant drafts text but cannot see your phone log or fix a broken ad account.
AI earns its keep on the writing jobs: profile updates after a finished project, review replies, first drafts of service pages, follow-up texts to people who asked for an estimate. My own estimate is four to six hours a week for one person doing this properly, and most of that goes on checking facts and answering leads, not on prompting. An illustrative week inside that estimate: two Google Business Profile posts with project photos (45 minutes), replies to the week's reviews (20 minutes), one service page drafted, fact-checked and edited (90 minutes), answering and following up web enquiries (90 minutes), and ringing each tracking number to check it still reaches a person (15 minutes). That is a little over four hours, and the enquiry follow-up is the block you can't skip in a busy week, because it is the only one that books jobs this month. Here is the shape of a prompt that keeps the draft honest, followed by an illustrative output.
Write a Google Business Profile update of 80 to 100 words for a kitchen and bathroom remodelling company. Use only these facts: we finished a galley kitchen in three weeks; new cabinets, quartz worktop, relocated sink; a crew of three. Do not mention awards, guarantees, licences, prices or the customer's name. Plain tone, no exclamation marks, end with how to request an estimate by phone.Just finished: a galley kitchen refit in three weeks. The brief was more storage and a worktop that could take daily use, so we fitted new cabinets, a quartz worktop and moved the sink to the opposite wall to free up the cooking side. Three of our crew worked on it from first fix to final clean, supervised by the owner throughout. If you're planning a similar room, call us to book an estimate visit and we'll talk through what's realistic for your layout.
Read it against your facts and three things fail. "The opposite wall" is invented, because you said the sink was relocated, not where. The client's brief about storage and daily use is invented too. "Supervised by the owner throughout" is a claim you never supplied. Delete all three before posting. The same habit applies to every AI draft, whether you write it or an agency does: the assistant adds plausible detail, and a person must remove what isn't true. The tutorial on reviews, case studies and local posts for contractors goes further on the do-it-yourself content side.
Three set-ups priced for a five-person remodelling firm
Illustrative numbers, to be replaced with yours: an average signed job of $24,000 at a 30% gross margin leaves $7,200 of gross profit per job. The firm already signs about three jobs a month from referrals and repeat customers. It prices three ways to get more, counting the owner's time at $50 an hour.
| Set-up | Cash cost a month | Owner hours | Total with time | Extra jobs a month to cover it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Do it yourself: ChatGPT $20, call tracking $50, $1,200 Local Services Ads budget | $1,270 | 20 ($1,000) | $2,270 | 0.32 |
| Foundation-type retainer $1,499, call tracking with forms $95, $1,200 lead budget | $2,794 | 6 ($300) | $3,094 | 0.43 |
| Growth-type retainer $2,499 including ads management, call tracking $95, $3,000 ad spend | $5,594 | 4 ($200) | $5,794 | 0.80 |
The last column is the total divided by $7,200. It sets the bar, not the result. The Growth-type set-up needs just under one extra signed job a month to pay for itself on gross profit, and the do-it-yourself route needs about one every three months. What each set-up produces is the unknown that the first six to eight weeks answer, and only jobs that would not have arrived anyway count towards the bar. That is why the next two sections are about tracking: without it, a firm that keeps getting its referral jobs will credit every one to the agency.
The same arithmetic shows when a retainer is a poor fit. A $2,499 fee is 35% of one job's gross profit, which is fine when ad spend is $3,000 and the account needs steady management. It is hard to defend on a $600 monthly budget, where most of what you pay buys the agency's time rather than leads. For a firm that small, the sensible mix is the DIY row plus a one-off set-up fee for tracking and ad structure.
Ten questions for a contractor marketing agency before signing
Ask these in the sales call and again in writing. The middle column is what a good answer sounds like; the right-hand column is where I'd stop the conversation.
| Ask | A good answer | Walk away if |
|---|---|---|
| Whose name are the ad account, Google Business Profile, domain, call tracking and analytics in? | Yours. The agency has manager access you can remove at any time. | They hold the logins and say they "manage everything". |
| What is AI doing in my account, and which person checks it? | A task list: draft service pages, draft review replies, lead follow-up texts, each with a named human check before anything goes live. | "AI-driven" with no task list, or pages and replies published without review. |
| Is ad spend billed to my card by Google, and is there a markup? | Billed directly to you, with the management fee stated in dollars or as a written percentage. | Spend passes through the agency's card and the markup isn't stated. |
| How long is the first term, and how do I leave? | Three to six months, then 30 days' written notice. One published tier page uses six months then 30 days. | Twelve months with automatic renewal and no exit clause. |
| What counts as a lead in your report? | A first-time contact, in my service area, asking for work I do, with duplicates, spam and existing customers removed. | Every call and form counts, and clicks or impressions appear as results. |
| Can leads be matched to booked jobs in my job software? | Yes. Each lead gets a job number and the report shows booked jobs and revenue. | "We can't see your CRM", with no alternative proposed. |
| Who answers the tracking numbers? | They ring through to my phone or my receptionist set-up and calls are recorded so I can listen. | Calls route through a number only the agency controls. |
| What happens to numbers, pages and content if we stop? | Numbers can be ported or kept running; pages and content are mine. | Content or numbers stay with the agency. |
| Who reviews charged Local Services Ads leads? | They check each month and claim credits where Google allows them. | Nobody looks at lead quality until the invoice arrives. |
| Can I see a real report from a similar client, names removed? | A sample with spend, leads, booked jobs and cost per booked job. | Only a dashboard screenshot of clicks. |
On the AI question, the useful test is whether the answer names a task and a checker. Google's spam policy, updated on 28 August 2026, treats mass-produced AI pages that add no value as scaled content abuse, so "we publish 200 AI service pages a month" is a risk to your site, not a benefit. Compare how a vague promise reads against one you can hold them to.
Before: "We use AI to generate leads 24/7." After: "AI drafts your service pages and review replies, and a person edits every one before it goes live. Lead follow-up texts go out within two minutes of a form submission and stop the moment someone on your team replies." The second version tells you what to test, which is the whole point of asking. For the wider checklist on responsible AI use, the tutorial on choosing a marketing agency that uses AI responsibly covers the policy side.
Check the leads yourself: an afternoon with the call log
You don't need the agency's permission to audit its numbers if the accounts are in your name. This is the order I'd work in, with a spreadsheet open beside the phone.
- Get read-only access to the call-tracking account and the ad account. If the agency refuses, you have learned something before signing.
- Ring every tracking number from your own mobile. Each call should appear within minutes with the right source, be recorded, and ring through to whoever is meant to answer.
- Submit each website form once. It should reach your inbox and the tracking tool, labelled with where the visit came from.
- Export last month's leads and sort by phone number. Mark duplicates, calls under 30 seconds, your own test calls, suppliers and existing customers.
- Mark anything outside your service area or for work you don't do.
- Divide spend by what remains. That is your cost per real enquiry, usually well above the figure in the report.
- Follow ten real enquiries to a job record: estimate given, signed or lost, job number. Add the numbers to the list.
- For Local Services Ads, open the lead inbox in Google and look at charged leads marked as the wrong job type or outside your area. Google's help page says it no longer supports credits for those two reasons, so you carry the cost unless the service and area settings are tightened. Google does say poor-quality leads can be credited automatically, usually within 30 days; the details are on Google's lead credits help page.
An illustrative month shows why this matters. The agency's report claims 46 leads at a cost of $122 each on a $5,594 programme. The audit removes 5 duplicates, 4 existing customers, 3 spam or sales calls and 3 enquiries from outside the service area. That leaves 31 real enquiries at $180 each. Fourteen get an estimate visit ($400 per estimate) and four sign, which is $1,399 per signed job. Against $7,200 of gross profit per job, that is still a profitable month, but the headline number was one-eleventh of the one that matters.
A realistic mistake looks like this: six of the "form leads" share one email address because someone testing the contact form kept resubmitting it, and two of the "calls" come from your own office line forwarding to your mobile. Neither is dishonest, but both inflate the count. For a method that ties lead sources to replacement jobs rather than repairs, see the HVAC example in how AI call tags show which sources book replacements.
What the monthly report must show
A report with 20 charts and no job numbers is decoration. Ask for the table below as the first page, with the raw call and form export attached, so you can run the afternoon audit again without asking. These are the illustrative figures from the Growth-type set-up in months three and four.
| Line | Month 3 | Month 4 | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ad spend billed to your card | $3,000 | $3,000 | Match it to the card statement. |
| Agency fee and tracking | $2,594 | $2,594 | $2,499 plus $95. |
| Leads as the agency counts them | 38 | 46 | Define "lead" in the contract. |
| Real enquiries after your audit | 27 | 31 | Your number, not theirs. |
| Estimate visits given | 11 | 14 | From your job software. |
| Jobs signed from tracked leads | 3 | 4 | Each with a job number. |
| Cost per signed job | $1,865 | $1,399 | Total cash cost divided by signed jobs. |
| Calls answered within four rings | 74% | 78% | Missed calls are lost leads. |
| Changes made and planned | Bid changes, new pages, paused terms | Dated, with a reason. | |
The answered-calls line deserves attention. If a quarter of your tracked calls ring out, no ad budget fixes that, and an AI receptionist will cost less than the leads you are paying to miss. The tutorial on AI answering for contractors across five vendors prices that fix at 100 calls a month.
Contract wording you can paste into the proposal
Take these to the agency as a markup of their own paperwork. Most reasonable agencies accept the account-ownership and reporting clauses without a fight. A refusal tells you where the real risk sits. Have a lawyer read the final contract, because these are plain-language starting points, not legal advice.
1. Accounts. The Google Ads account, Google Business Profile, call-tracking account,
analytics property and domain are registered to [business name]. The agency holds
manager access only, which [business name] may remove at any time.
2. Ad spend. Google bills ad spend directly to [business name]'s card.
The agency's management fee is [amount] a month and no percentage of spend is added.
3. Term. First term [3 or 6] months; afterwards, 30 days' written notice by either side.
4. Definitions. A "lead" is a first-time contact in the service area asking for a service
listed in Schedule A, excluding duplicates, spam and existing customers.
A "booked job" is a lead matched to a job number in [job software].
5. Reporting. By the 5th of each month: the table in Schedule B plus the raw call, form and
Local Services Ads lead export, and a 30-minute review call.
6. AI use. The agency will list each task where AI drafts content or messages, and a named
person will review every item before publication or sending.
7. Exit. On termination the agency transfers or releases all numbers, content and creative
within 14 days and confirms in writing that no logins remain with third parties.Clause 6 is the one most agencies haven't seen. It costs them little if they already review AI output, and it exposes quickly those who don't. Clause 4 is the one that changes behaviour: once "lead" and "booked job" are defined, the report can't flatter itself.
Where an agency earns the fee and where it doesn't
Split the work by what needs account-level skill and what needs only your knowledge of the job. Ad account structure, conversion tracking, negative keyword lists, Local Services Ads settings and technical fixes to the site are worth paying for, because mistakes there waste ad spend quickly. Profile posts, review replies, project write-ups and seasonal offers are better drafted by you with an assistant and your real photos, because the agency cannot know what happened on site.
Three firm profiles show the split. A one-truck roofer with $1,200 a month to spend should run the DIY row, add a tracking line, and pay for a one-off ad set-up if anything. A ten-person remodeller spending $3,000 or more on ads with enough lead volume to learn from is the firm the Growth-type retainer is built for, as long as the reporting terms above are in the contract. A larger general contractor with a marketing coordinator needs an agency for the paid channels and specialist projects, not the posts. For a view on pay-per-appointment against a retainer in one trade, the roofing buying guide on AI lead generation for roofers works through the choice.
Whatever the route, keep one rule: every job gets a source in your job software the day it is booked, entered by someone on your team and not copied from a report. After three months, that column is a better judge of the agency than any pitch deck, and it is the same evidence the cost-per-job working in Angi leads for plumbers and HVAC relies on. If you'd rather talk through a specific proposal with someone, my AI implementation consultation covers exactly that, and you can reach me through the contact page.
Agency fees and contracts: the follow-up questions
Should I pay an agency a percentage of my ad spend?
Only if the percentage is written down and the ad spend is billed to your own card by Google, not passed through the agency. A flat monthly fee is easier to audit. One published retainer page states no percentage-of-spend markup, so a markup is a negotiable extra, not a fixed cost of doing business.
How long before I can judge an agency?
Judge tracking in the first month and results from about week six. Google's own guidance for Performance Max campaigns is to run them at least six weeks before comparing performance, because changes reset learning. Set a review for weeks six to eight and ask for booked jobs, not clicks.
Is an AI agency cheaper than a traditional one?
I found no published evidence that it is. The price points above sit in the same bands as ordinary home-service agencies, and the three AI-branded agency sites I could open published no prices beyond a single starter package. Ask which tasks AI replaced and whether the saving reaches your invoice.
What if I only want help with Local Services Ads?
Ask for a management fee quoted separately from the per-lead charges Google bills you. Google charges Local Services Ads per lead against a weekly lead budget you set, so the agency's job is service settings, lead review and credit requests. A small flat fee for that is easier to judge than a bundle.
Further reads
- How Much Do Missed Calls Cost a Heating and Cooling Business? — Put a price on the calls your tracking line misses.
- Free vs Paid AI Tools for a Small Trades Business — See which paid AI subscriptions a small trades firm needs.
- AI Assistant for Contractors: ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini on Real Jobs — Compare the three assistants on real contractor tasks.
- AI Marketing for Roofing Companies: A Worked Storm-Season Content Plan — A worked content plan if you do the posts yourself.
- AI Voice Agent for Contractors: What It Handles and What It Hands Off — What a voice agent on the tracking numbers handles and hands off.
- AI Automation Agency Pricing: What You Pay For and What's Extra — The same pricing questions applied to automation agencies.
- AI SEO for Roofers: Hire an Agency or Do It Yourself? — Agency or DIY for a roofer's search and AI visibility: pitch claims to check, break-even sums, a weekly rota, a ChatGPT test sheet and contract clauses.
- Interior Design Marketing: Hire an Agency or Do It Yourself With AI? — What an agency and a do-it-yourself AI routine each cost an interior design studio, the weekly hours involved, and five questions that settle the choice.
- AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.
Sources: Hook Agency cost guide for home-service marketing (published 7 July 2026, edited 1 September 2026); Redefine Web home-services retainer page; CallRail pricing page; Google Local Services Ads page and Google Ads Help on lead credits; OpenAI and Anthropic plan pages. All checked 29 October 2026.