Marketing has changed dramatically over the last few decades.
For contractors, it can be difficult to know where to put your marketing dollars, especially as competition increases and artificial intelligence changes how people search for businesses.
But according to Jason Rhodes of Rhodes Creative, one thing has not changed: marketing should ultimately be measured by the money it produces.
In a recent episode of Business Success Tips, Paul Sanneman sat down with Jason Rhoads of Rhoads Creative Inc. to talk about digital marketing for contractors, AI search, rising advertising costs, marketing budgets, and why contractors need to stop focusing on vanity metrics and start focusing on return on investment.
The Biggest Change in Marketing: AI Search
Jason has spent nearly 33 years working in digital marketing, primarily with businesses in the home building and home services industries.
Today, one of the biggest changes he sees is the rise of artificial intelligence.
People are no longer relying exclusively on traditional search engines to find information. Tools such as ChatGPT and Google’s AI-powered search features are becoming part of the way consumers research businesses and make decisions.
That is creating a new challenge for contractors.
Traditionally, contractors have focused on search engine optimization, or SEO, to help their businesses appear when someone searches Google.
Now, businesses need to think more broadly about being visible wherever potential customers are searching.
Jason refers to this concept as Everywhere Search Optimization, or ESO.
The terminology may continue to change, but the underlying idea is simple:
Be visible where your customers are looking.
What Does AI Search Mean for Contractors?
AI does not necessarily mean contractors need to completely throw out everything they have been doing with SEO.
In many ways, the fundamentals are still important.
Jason points to things such as having a clean website, using proper headings, making information easy to understand, and ensuring pages load properly.
If a website is easy for people to read and navigate, it is generally easier for search engines and AI systems to understand as well.
That means contractors should not assume that AI requires an entirely new marketing strategy.
Instead, it may require them to build on the fundamentals they already have.
And the fundamentals start with the website.
Your Website Is Still the Foundation
Before investing in every new marketing channel, contractors should take a hard look at their website.
Does it clearly explain what you do?
Does it explain who you serve?
Does it give people a reason to choose you over another contractor?
Can someone quickly understand what makes your company different?
These questions become even more important as search behavior changes.
A website should not simply exist because every business is expected to have one. It should help communicate your value and turn attention into action.
But there is another piece that comes before all of that.
Your unique selling position, or USP.
Know Why Customers Should Choose You
One of Jason’s core recommendations is to clearly define why your company is better or different.
You can spend money on SEO, Google Ads, social media, direct mail, or other marketing channels.
But if your message does not give customers a reason to choose you, more traffic will not necessarily solve the problem.
Contractors need to be able to answer a simple question:
Why should someone hire you instead of your competitor?
That answer should influence everything from your website to your advertising to your sales process.
Marketing can get someone to your business.
Your message helps convince them to stay.
Smaller Contractors Can Still Compete
Another challenge facing contractors is the growing presence of larger companies and private equity-backed businesses.
A smaller contractor may look at a competitor with a much larger marketing budget and wonder how they can possibly compete.
Jason’s answer is not necessarily to spend more.
Instead, find the opportunities where you can compete effectively.
Rather than trying to dominate an entire market, a contractor might focus on a specific geographic area, service, customer type, or niche.
For example, a plumbing company may not need to dominate every search in an entire metropolitan area.
It may be more valuable to become highly visible in a particular community or for a specific service where the company already has a strong reputation and closing rate.
The goal is not always to get the most traffic.
The goal is to get the right traffic.
More Traffic Doesn’t Always Mean More Business
This is one of the most important distinctions contractors should understand.
Imagine one marketing campaign generates 5,000 visitors but only 1% become customers.
Another generates 50 highly targeted prospects and most of them become customers.
The second campaign may produce far more business despite generating dramatically less traffic.
That is why Jason emphasizes ROI over vanity metrics.
Clicks can be interesting.
Impressions can be interesting.
Website traffic can be interesting.
Awards can be interesting.
But contractors ultimately need to ask:
How much money did this marketing produce?
Stop Measuring Marketing by Clicks
Paul and Jason discussed a common frustration contractors experience with marketing companies.
An agency may report thousands of clicks, impressive website traffic, or awards the agency has won.
But those numbers don’t necessarily tell a contractor whether the marketing worked.
A contractor does not pay the bills with clicks.
They pay the bills with revenue.
That means marketing agencies should be able to connect their activity to business results as closely as possible.
If an advertising campaign generates leads, contractors should know where those leads came from.
If those leads become customers, that should be tracked too.
The further you can connect the dots, the better decisions you can make about where to spend your next marketing dollar.
Track Where Your Leads Come From
Tracking does not have to be complicated.
A small contractor may not have an elaborate marketing analytics system, but they can still start asking basic questions.
When a new customer contacts you, ask:
- How did you hear about us?
- Did you find us through Google?
- Did someone refer you?
- Did you see our truck?
- Did you receive a mailer?
- Did you see an advertisement?
- Did you find us through social media?
Different marketing channels can also be tracked with different phone numbers, landing pages, forms, or other tools.
The goal is to understand which activities actually produce customers.
Once you know that, you can invest more heavily in what works.
Fill the Bucket Before Moving On
One of Jason’s strongest recommendations is what he calls the digital marketing ladder.
The basic principle is simple:
Get really good at one thing before moving on to the next.
Contractors often jump from one marketing tactic to another.
They try Google Ads.
Then Facebook.
Then Instagram.
Then direct mail.
Then SEO.
Then another agency recommends something else.
Instead of constantly adding new tactics, contractors should determine what is already producing the strongest return and maximize it first.
If referrals are your best source of customers, find ways to generate more referrals.
If a particular service area is highly profitable, look for ways to increase demand there.
If a particular advertising campaign consistently produces profitable customers, determine whether you can scale it.
Don’t abandon something that works just because something new appears.
Your Marketing Budget Should Follow the Numbers
There is no universal marketing budget that works for every contractor.
Jason mentioned that the commonly cited number is around 3% of revenue, but he believes the real-world number for many companies may be closer to 1% to 1.5%, with a portion allocated to digital marketing.
The exact percentage matters less than understanding what the investment produces.
A contractor should be able to look at a marketing expense and ask:
What did I get back?
If you spend $10,000 on marketing and generate $50,000 in profitable business, that gives you useful information.
If you spend $10,000 and cannot determine what happened to the money, you have a much bigger problem.
Don’t Ignore Offline Marketing
Despite running a digital marketing agency, Jason does not believe every contractor needs to put all of their marketing dollars into digital channels.
In fact, he believes some traditional marketing tactics may be becoming more noticeable because there is simply less competition for people’s attention.
Direct mail, sponsorships, vehicle graphics, yard signs, billboards, and community involvement can still play a role.
The question is not whether something is “digital.”
The question is whether it works.
If sponsoring a local basketball team consistently produces customers, that may be a better investment than an online campaign that produces thousands of clicks but no sales.
What Happens When the Leads Are Good but Sales Are Bad?
There is another side of the marketing equation that contractors sometimes overlook.
What happens when the marketing is actually generating quality leads, but the company isn’t closing them?
At that point, the problem may not be marketing.
It could be sales.
Jason recommends looking at the entire process.
Are leads being contacted quickly?
Are salespeople following up?
Are prospects receiving proposals?
Are second appointments being scheduled?
Is there a consistent sales process?
Are opportunities falling through because of one broken step?
Marketing and sales are connected, but they are not the same thing.
Marketing can help make the phone ring.
After the phone rings, the sales process has to take over.
People and Process Both Matter
A contractor can have talented salespeople and still have a weak sales process.
Likewise, a great sales process cannot completely compensate for the wrong person.
Jason points out that sometimes the problem is not simply the salesperson or the marketing.
There may be one broken part of the process.
Maybe follow-up is inconsistent.
Maybe proposals take too long.
Maybe leads aren’t being contacted quickly enough.
Maybe the company isn’t asking for the second appointment.
The solution is to track what happens after the lead arrives and identify where the process breaks down.
A Marketing Success Story: From 10 Projects to More Than 100
Jason shared a success story involving a remodeling company in Pennsylvania.
When the company began working with Rhodes Creative, it was completing roughly seven to ten projects a year.
Over the following years, the company grew to more than 100 projects annually.
Jason emphasized that the growth did not come from simply launching one campaign and expecting immediate results.
Instead, the agency worked with the company over time to identify what was producing the strongest return, then continued to build on those opportunities.
The company now invests roughly $60,000 per year in marketing and, according to Jason, can track tens of millions of dollars in revenue back to those marketing efforts.
The important part of the story is not simply the size of the numbers.
It is the tracking.
Jason says they can identify where projects came from, allowing the company to make decisions based on actual performance.
A Marketing Failure: Going Too Fast
Jason also shared a marketing failure from earlier in his career.
The company was a plumbing and HVAC business that did not yet have a strong digital presence.
Instead of starting with the fundamentals, Jason’s team initially went into the engagement with too many tactics.
They were focused on driving traffic and generating activity before establishing the company’s core message.
The business did not have a clearly defined USP or a strong answer to the question:
Why should someone choose us?
The result was a lot of activity without enough conversion.
That experience helped reinforce the importance of the digital marketing ladder.
Before trying to maximize traffic, make sure the foundation is ready.
Marketing and Sales Need to Work Together
One of the biggest lessons from the conversation is that marketing does not exist in isolation.
A marketing campaign can generate leads.
A website can generate inquiries.
An advertisement can make the phone ring.
But the business still needs people and processes that turn those opportunities into customers.
Contractors should therefore look at marketing as part of a larger system.
Marketing → Lead → Follow-Up → Sales → Customer → Revenue
If something breaks along the way, more leads may not fix the problem.
Sometimes the answer is better marketing.
Sometimes it is a better sales process.
Sometimes it is better follow-up.
And sometimes it is simply getting the right people in the right roles.
The Future of Contractor Marketing
AI is changing how consumers search, how businesses appear in search results, and how marketing agencies approach visibility.
But the fundamentals remain remarkably consistent.
Contractors still need:
- A clear message
- A strong value proposition
- A useful website
- The right audience
- Effective follow-up
- A measurable sales process
- Reliable tracking
- A focus on profitable results
The tools may change.
The platforms may change.
The terminology may change.
But the question remains the same:
Is your marketing making you money?
That’s the question contractors should ask before chasing the newest marketing trend.
Final Takeaway
For contractors, effective marketing is not about winning awards, generating the most clicks, or having the biggest advertising budget.
It is about finding the marketing activities that consistently produce profitable customers and then figuring out how to get more from them.
AI search is changing the marketing landscape, but it does not eliminate the fundamentals.
Know your market.
Know why customers should choose you.
Build a strong foundation.
Track your results.
Fix the gaps between marketing and sales.
And most importantly, measure the money coming back.
As Jason put it during the conversation, the goal is not simply to generate activity.
It’s about finding what works and getting more out of it.
Listen to the full Business Success Tips episode with Jason Rhodes of Rhodes Creative for more insights on AI search, digital marketing, marketing ROI, and growing a home services business.
