A good contractor is usually paying for leads a good profile would bring for free.
The trade runs on referrals and repeat work, and it always will. But the homeowner with a leak on a Sunday does not have a referral. They search, they get a map with three names, they read the reviews, they check the licence, and they call the one that answers.
Most contractors are not one of the three names. So they buy the homeowner back from a lead marketplace — the same homeowner, sold to two competitors at the same time — and the marketplace sets the price. It works, in the way that renting works.
The groundwork that changes it is not complicated. A profile set up the way Google expects a service-area business to be set up. A licence that matches. Reviews asked for on the afternoon the job is done. A site that answers the first three questions on the first screen. None of it is fast, all of it is permanent.
Six things, in the order they usually matter.
A service-area profile that actually ranks
A contractor has no storefront, and Google treats a business without one differently: the address is hidden and the service area does the work. Set wrong — too wide, or with the address still showing — the profile is either invisible or suspended. Set right, it ranks across every town you actually drive to.
Licence and record, where people check them
Before they call, Florida homeowners look up the licence on the state portal, and increasingly read the permit history. A licence number on the site and the profile, matched to the record, settles the question before it is asked. A mismatch — a different business name, an expired entry — ends the enquiry.
A review link that goes out when the job is done
The best moment to ask is the afternoon the work is finished, and it is the moment most crews drive away from. One text with one link, sent as the truck leaves, is how a company with twenty jobs a month ends the year with two hundred recent reviews and the one down the road has nine.
Leads you own instead of leads you rent
Angi, Thumbtack and the rest sell the same homeowner to three contractors and charge all three. The alternative is slower and permanent: a profile and a site that bring the call directly, so the lead costs nothing the second time and the price is not set by a marketplace.
Local Services Ads, run properly
The Google Screened badge still moves the phone, and the auction is cheaper than it looks when the profile behind it is complete. Run on the wrong categories or the wrong zip codes it burns a budget on calls for work you do not do.
A site that answers the first three questions
Do you do this. Do you come to my town. Are you licensed and insured. Most contractor sites bury all three under a slideshow. They belong on the first screen of a phone, with a number that gets answered — a missed call in this trade is the whole job gone to whoever picked up.
Underneath all of it sit the Google Business Profile, local search and reviews — the same three jobs as for any local business, with a service area instead of a shop door.
Tools you can use today, before anyone calls you back.
Roof — measure before anybody climbs it
Type an address, get the roof rebuilt in 3D from public survey data: area, pitch, eave perimeter, planes — and a replacement range and gutter run from them. Three measurements free.
Try the demo →Missed call cost calculator
What the calls that ring out while the crew is on a roof are actually costing you per month, in your own job values.
Try it →Storm closing & reopening kit
Hours, profile notice and customer message for the days around a hurricane — when the phone is about to ring more than it has all year.
Try it →How we think about it, written out.
We work on how the company is found. Not on how it bids.
Estimating, scheduling, crew management, permitting and the software you run the business on are yours. We will connect the enquiries that arrive through the site and the profile to whatever you already use, and tell you where each one came from. We will not replace it.
We also do not write reviews, buy reviews, or post photographs of a customer's home without their permission.
Roofing and gutters. HVAC. Plumbing and electrical. Pool service and construction. Landscaping, tree work and irrigation. Painting, flooring, kitchens and remodelling. Pest control, pressure washing, garage doors, fencing, screens and shutters.
The common thread is a licensed trade, a truck, and a homeowner who searches first. The service area is the storefront; everything else follows from that.
We will tell you what a homeowner sees before they call.
A five-page look at the site, the Google profile, the licence record, the reviews and where the calls are leaking. Two days, no sales call, no cost.
Request a free auditOr write to hello@boostmyspot.com. We work in English, Spanish, Russian, Italian and French.