How to Get More Work as a Tradesman: A Local Plan Written With AI

Get more local work in 90 days by doing four things in order: fix your Google Business Profile, message past customers, ask every customer for a review after each job, and publish a few honest local pages. AI drafts the wording; you do the asking and keep a simple log of where each enquiry came from.

Most tradespeople who try marketing start with a logo or a new website, skip the record-keeping, and three months later cannot say what brought in work. The order below puts the free, high-trust sources first and measures each one. Budget about three hours a week, and treat everything AI writes as a first draft to check against jobs you have really done.

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Before day 1: put numbers on the work you want

An AI plan comes out generic when the brief is generic. Before you open a chat, spend half an hour on five numbers.

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1. The jobs you want more of, ranked by what you earn per day on them rather than by how often people ask.
2. The smallest job you will accept, in dollars. Anything below it gets a polite no or a call-out fee.
3. How many extra jobs a month you can take without hiring anyone or working weekends.
4. The towns or districts you will really drive to, in order of preference.
5. A baseline from your invoices: jobs completed and average job value over the last 90 days.

If you have not yet worked out what an hour of your time must earn, do that first with the hourly rate calculator for a tradesman. A plan that fills the diary with work below your rate is worse than a quiet week.

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The example that runs through this tutorial is an illustration, not a client: an electrician with one employee, doing mostly domestic work. Invoices for the last 90 days show 15 jobs averaging $780, which is $11,700. The owner wants more rewires, lighting upgrades and EV charger installs over $600, has a $120 minimum, can handle four extra jobs a month, and works across eight towns. The goal is 20 jobs in the next 90 days.

Here is the brief to paste into ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini. Swap in your own trade and figures.

I'm a self-employed electrician with one employee. I want a 90-day plan to get more local work without paid advertising.

Facts:
- Last 90 days: 15 jobs, average value $780.
- Target: 20 jobs in the next 90 days. I can handle 4 extra jobs a month.
- Jobs I want more of: rewires, lighting upgrades, EV charger installs over $600.
- Minimum job: $120.
- I work in these eight towns: [list them].
- I have 3 hours a week. No paid ads, no new logo, no new website in the first 90 days.
- I have a Google Business Profile I have not touched for a year, about 60 past customers in my phone, and no record of where jobs come from.

Give me a table with the columns: week, task, minutes, what to measure.
Put the stages in this order: profile and log, past customers and reviews, local pages, review of results.
Do not invent statistics, awards or customer quotes.

This is a sample of what comes back (illustrative; the first rows of a longer table):

Week | Task                                              | Min | Measure
1    | Check profile name, categories, areas, hours      | 60  | Profile matches real business
1    | Add 10 real photos of finished jobs               | 60  | Photos live
2    | Create enquiry log with a "source" column         | 30  | Log exists
2    | List past customers from invoices and phone       | 90  | 60 names with last job
3    | Message 10 past customers (check-in text)         | 60  | Replies logged
3    | Ask every finished job for a review               | 20  | Requests sent
8    | Launch new website with a blog                    | 300 | Site live
9    | Aim for top three map results by day 90           | 0   | Ranking
10   | Post on four platforms daily                      | 420 | Posts published

Now the editing. The week 8 line breaks the brief, so it goes. The week 9 line is a target nobody can promise, and the week 10 line costs seven hours a week against a three-hour budget. Delete anything without a time estimate and a measure, and anything that depends on a ranking. Ask the AI to redo the table without those rows rather than patching it by hand, so the hours still add up to your budget.

Days 1 to 14: fix the profile and start the log

The Google Business Profile is the one free listing that puts your phone number beside a map when someone searches for your trade. Google's guidelines decide most of what you can do with it, so read them before an AI writes anything for it. The points that trip up tradespeople most often:

• Name. Use the name on your van and invoices. The guidelines say the name should reflect your real-world name and must not carry service descriptions or location details, so an AI suggestion such as "Smith Electrical | Emergency Electrician in [Town]" risks a suspension.
• Categories. Google asks for the fewest categories that describe your core business. Pick one primary category and add a second only if it is a genuine second line of work.
• Service area. If customers never visit you, hide your address and set service areas instead. You can set up to 20 areas, you cannot set a radius, and the whole area should not stretch beyond about two hours' driving from where you are based. In the profile it is Edit profile, then Location, then Service area. Menu labels change now and then, so follow the current help page if yours differs.
• Photos. JPG or PNG, between 10 KB and 5 MB, with 720 by 720 pixels recommended. Google's guidance says an image should represent reality, with no significant alterations or excessive filters, so an AI-generated picture of a finished job has no place here. Use real before-and-after shots, with the customer's permission and without house numbers or faces.

The description box is where AI saves the most time. Here is a typical first attempt written in a hurry: "Electrician covering all areas. Domestic and commercial. Call anytime. Best prices." It claims work the owner does not do, promises availability that is not real and says nothing a searcher can use. This prompt fixes that by feeding the AI facts and banning claims:

Write a Google Business Profile description of up to 600 characters for a self-employed electrician with one employee.
Use only these facts: domestic work only; rewires, lighting upgrades, EV charger installs, fault finding; towns: [list]; fixed written quotes after a site visit; messages answered the same working day, Monday to Friday.
No claims about awards, accreditations or years of experience. Plain words, no exclamation marks.

Domestic electrical work in [Town], [Town] and six nearby towns: rewires, lighting upgrades, EV charger installs and fault finding. We visit, measure and give a fixed quote in writing. Messages are answered the same working day, Monday to Friday. Call or message with a short description and a photo of the job.

That is usable. The line to check hardest is the reply promise: keep it only if you can meet it every week, because a missed promise is worse than none.

The log is the part nearly everyone skips, and it is the part that tells you where to spend the next 80 days. One row per enquiry, filled in at first contact, takes about 20 seconds. A shared spreadsheet or a notes app both work.

Decide the source tags once and keep to them: past customer, referral, Google profile, local page, community group, van or leaflet, other, unknown. Ask "How did you hear about us?" on the first call and write down their words as well as your tag, because people say "Google" when they mean a friend's review. Use "unknown" honestly rather than guessing; a clean unknown is more useful than a wrong tag.

The profile's own Performance section shows calls (clicks on the call button), messages, direction requests and website clicks. Open it from your profile in Search, or in the Maps app through Business and then See more beside Performance. It counts actions, not jobs, so it cannot tell you which calls turned into work. Your log does that.

Allow about six hours across the first two weeks: roughly three on the profile and photos, one on the log, two on the customer list.

Days 15 to 45: ask the people who already know your work

Past customers are the cheapest enquiries you will get. They know your work, they have your number, and many have a small job waiting that they have not got round to. Pull everyone from the last three years out of your invoices, phone contacts and message history into one sheet, with columns for name, last job, date and a note on what might plausibly come next.

Message ten people a week, one at a time, from your own phone. Sixty messages fit into six weeks and inside the three-hour budget. Bulk tools and automations can wait until you know the plain version works. Here are two messages to start from; replace the bracketed parts and make them sound like you.

Hi [first name], it's [your name], the electrician who did your [job] in [month]. Hope it's all still working well. I have room for a few jobs next month. If there's anything on your list, even a small one, send me a photo and I'll tell you what it would cost. No problem at all if not.

Hi [first name], thanks again for having us in last week. If you know a neighbour or friend who needs electrical work, I'd be glad to look at it. A text with their first name and what they need is enough, and I'll say you suggested it.

The first AI draft of the check-in read: "I hope this message finds you well! As a valued customer, we are excited to offer exclusive services this season." It sounded like a mailshot, so I would tell the AI exactly what is wrong: "Write as one tradesperson texting a past customer. Maximum 60 words, no greeting phrases, no exclamation marks, one question." Short instructions like that fix tone better than adjectives such as "friendly".

A few rules to hold to. Message only people who have dealt with you. Stop at the first no. If someone has asked you not to contact them, do not. Rules on marketing messages differ from place to place, and between one-to-one texts and bulk campaigns, so check the rules that apply to you before you automate anything. For the wording and timing of the referral ask, how to ask for referrals goes further than the single message above.

Log every reply with the source tag "past customer". In the example, 60 messages brought 11 enquiries and eight jobs, which is the best return on time in the whole plan. The example owner also spent about an hour a week posting in a local community group, logged under its own tag, to see how it compared; the day-90 table shows how that went.

Review requests that follow Google's rules

Reviews feed your profile and also persuade the person comparing three tradespeople who all look the same on paper. Google's content policy is specific about what you may not do. You may not offer payment, discounts or free goods or services in exchange for a review. You may not selectively solicit positive reviews, which means asking only the customers who seem pleased. You may not ask staff to collect a set number of reviews, or reviews that include specific content. You may ask customers for an honest review of a real experience, without rewards and without trying to steer the rating. Google's help page suggests giving customers a link or a QR code to make it easy.

The routine is short:

1. At handover, say it aloud: "An honest review on Google would really help, whatever you make of the job, and I'll text you the link." Leave out "if you're happy": it invites only the pleased customers, which drifts towards the selective asking the policy bans.
2. Text the link within an hour, while the job is fresh.
3. Do it for every customer, not just the pleasant ones.
4. Reply to every review within a few days, good or bad.

The wording is where tradespeople slip. Compare these two messages.

Not allowed: "Leave us a 5-star review and get 10% off your next job!"

Allowed: "Thanks for having us today, [first name]. If you have two minutes, an honest review on Google helps other people see what the work was like: [link]. Thank you either way."

The first offers a reward and steers the rating. The second asks for honesty and expects nothing. AI is useful for producing three variants of the second for different jobs (a small repair, a big install, a commercial visit); just keep every rating and every reward out of the instruction.

AI also helps with replies. Give it the review and your facts and ask for two or three sentences. A reply to a lukewarm review might read: "Thank you for the feedback, and sorry the cable cover was not as tidy as you wanted. I have asked my colleague to call you tomorrow to put it right." Check that it promises only what you will do, repeats no private details such as an address, and never argues. More on the follow-up side is in getting more reviews after every job with AI follow-ups.

Days 46 to 75: three local pages with real jobs on them

A local page earns its place when it describes work you have actually done in that town. Google's spam policies treat near-identical pages aimed at different places as doorway abuse, and treat many pages produced without adding value for readers, by AI or otherwise, as scaled content abuse. So write three pages, not thirty, and give each a different job. The practical test: could a stranger tell your pages apart if the town names were removed?

Pick the three towns where you have done the most jobs and, for each, a different type of work. A fourth page can wait until you have enough finished jobs in a new town to write something specific.

This prompt keeps the AI to what you give it. The job notes are illustrative.

Write an outline for a web page titled "EV charger installation in [Town]". Use only the notes below. Do not add experience, awards, customer quotes or prices I have not given.

Notes: wall-mounted home charger on a detached house; cable run of about 14 metres through the garage; survey took 20 minutes; installed in one day; customer asked about scheduling charging for cheaper tariff times; photos available of the finished wall box and the cable route; similar jobs have cost $1,100 to $1,500 depending on the cable run.

A sample of the reply, trimmed:

1. The job in [Town]: what the customer wanted and what the survey found
2. How the cable was routed and why
3. What the day looked like (one day, one visit)
4. Questions people ask: scheduling, cable length, what to prepare
5. Typical cost: $1,100 to $1,500, depending on the cable run
6. Over 20 years of experience; "A brilliant job" - [customer name]
7. Call or message with a photo of where the charger would go

Line 6 is the AI inventing a credential and a customer quote, despite the instruction. Cut it, and cut anything else you did not supply. A page with one real job, three real photos and honest cost guidance beats five pages of fluent filler. For the wider method, service-area pages without duplicate content covers how to avoid pages that repeat each other.

No website yet? A one-page site on a website builder is enough to hold three pages, and the plan does not need more. Link it from your Business Profile once it is live. Allow about 12 hours for the three pages, spread across weeks 7 to 11 alongside the review requests and the log.

Days 76 to 90: read the log and cut what failed

At the end of 13 weeks, add up each source: enquiries, quotes, jobs won, value won and hours spent. Then work out the win rate (won divided by quotes, not by enquiries), the average job value, and hours of effort per job won. This is the table for the example electrician, again illustrative.

Add five hours for the log and the weekly check and the plan took 42 hours. Against the baseline of 15 jobs and $11,700, the quarter produced 19 logged jobs and $13,460: four more jobs and $1,760 more work, one job short of the goal. That is a modest, believable result, and it is not a forecast for your trade.

Paste the log into an AI chat to do the sums, but check them, because language models slip on arithmetic. This prompt names the traps:

Here is my enquiry log as a table. Summarise by source: enquiries, quotes, jobs won, win rate (won divided by quotes), average value of won jobs, and hours spent (the hours per source are listed under the log). Do not estimate any missing figure. Flag any source with fewer than 5 enquiries as too small to judge. Do not treat "unknown" as a channel.

The first reply to a prompt like this often calculates win rate from enquiries instead of quotes, which makes every source look weaker, and recommends dropping the local pages. Both need fixing. The pages went live between weeks 8 and 11, so they have had a few weeks, not 13, and five enquiries sits right on the line the prompt itself set. Spot-check two rows against the table yourself before you trust the rest.

The decisions the example owner makes from the table:

• Keep and repeat: past-customer messages, every three to six months for each customer, because eight jobs from nine hours is the cheapest work in the log.
• Make permanent: the referral ask on every finished job. Two hours produced four jobs worth $4,600, though referrals are the harvest of earlier good work, so they will not scale on their own.
• Keep the routine: profile checks, photos and review requests. Fifteen enquiries is the largest single source by volume.
• Hold, do not add: the three local pages. Judge them at day 180 and write no more until then.
• Stop: the community group. Six hours for one $300 job is the weakest return in the plan.

Once these free sources are running, the next question is whether paid leads would add anything. Comparing paid lead sites on cost per booked job gives you a method for that, and your log supplies the numbers to compare against. Replies matter too: enquiries that wait a day are often gone, and replying to every enquiry in under five minutes covers how to avoid that.

Five things an AI draft will tell you to do that you should not

1. Put keywords or towns in your business name. It looks like a shortcut and it is exactly what Google's naming guidance rules out. Use your real name.
2. Create a page for every town on the map. That is the pattern the spam policies describe. Three pages with real jobs beat thirty clones.
3. Offer a discount for a review. It is prohibited, and a profile that breaks the rule can be restricted. Offer a thank-you for a referral if you like, but keep it away from the review.
4. Claim credentials, years in trade or response times you cannot prove. AI fills gaps with confident filler. Read every claim and ask whether you could show evidence on request.
5. Post everywhere every day. A plan that needs seven hours a week fails in week three. Fewer actions done on schedule beat a perfect plan abandoned.

None of these is hard to avoid once you know to look for it. Keep the brief tight, check each claim against the jobs you have really done, and let the log, not the AI, decide what earns the next hour.

Questions tradespeople ask before starting the plan

How many hours a week does the 90-day plan take?

About three hours a week on average: roughly six hours across the first two weeks, three a week while you message customers and ask for reviews, four a week while you write the local pages, and two in the final fortnight. If you only have two hours, drop the local pages first and keep the customer messages, the review requests and the log.

Do I need a website to follow it?

Not for the first 45 days. The Google Business Profile, the past-customer messages and the review requests all work without one. The local pages need somewhere to live, so a one-page site from a website builder is enough for three pages. If you have none by day 46, put the plan on hold at that step rather than rushing a site.

Can AI write my Google reviews or testimonials?

No. Reviews have to come from real customers describing a real job, and Google's policy bans fake engagement and rewards offered for reviews. AI can draft your request message and your replies to reviews. It should never write the review itself, and it should never invent a customer quote for a page or a post.

What if the log shows a source is not working?

Check the sample size first: fewer than five enquiries from a source tells you very little. If a source has had enough time and enough enquiries and still costs many hours per job won, stop it and move those hours to the sources that convert. Slow sources such as new local pages deserve a second look at day 180 rather than day 90.

Further reads

• How to Write Google Business Profile Posts With AI Every Week — Weekly profile post ideas once the profile itself is tidy.
• Best AI for Tradesmen: Seven Phone Apps for Quotes, Notes and Receipts — Phone apps for quotes, notes and receipts between jobs.
• Appliance Repair Marketing: Local Pages and Review Requests With AI — Local pages and review requests worked through for another trade.
• Can AI Price a Job Accurately? What Tradespeople Should Check — What AI can and cannot do when it prices a job.
• What Tradespeople Actually Use AI For: 12 Real Jobs It Handles — Twelve other jobs AI handles for tradespeople.
• Seven AI Mistakes That Cost Tradespeople Jobs — Seven AI slips that lose tradespeople work.
• How to Get More Google Reviews With Automated Review Requests — Automate review requests once the manual routine works.
• How to Get Window Cleaning Customers: Leaflets, Local Search and AI — A street-by-street leaflet test, a Google profile for a van with no shop, and review and referral wording, with the minutes AI really saves.
• AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.

Sources: Google Business Profile Help (guidelines for representing your business, service areas, photos, performance, tips to get more reviews); Google Maps user-generated content policy (fake engagement, rating manipulation); Google Search Central spam policies (doorway abuse, scaled content abuse). All worked figures are illustrative.