What marketing costs for a Cambridge trade, and how to choose a plan

The three plans

These are the same plans offered across the Trades.Agency family, applied to Cambridge.

None of the plans locks you in. Give us 30 days' notice whenever you want to stop, and treat annual billing as an option that buys a lower rate, never an obligation.

What drives the cost of marketing a trade

The plan fee is only part of what you'll spend. Three things decide your real monthly cost.

1. Ad spend. If paid search is part of the plan, you set a budget that goes directly to Google. For a Cambridge trade this might be anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars a month, depending on how many extra leads you want.
2. How crowded your category is. Plumbing, roofing and heating in Cambridge attract more competition than, say, window cleaning or eavestrough repair, so they need more work to stand out.
3. The state of your website. A sound site can be improved. A slow, outdated one may need rebuilding first, which is why the Elite and Enterprise plans include website discounts or a free build.

A worked example

Here's how an owner can check whether a plan makes sense before calling.

• Plan: Growth at $1,999 a month, plus $1,000 in ad spend: about $3,000 a month before HST.
• Average job: $1,500, with 30% profit after materials and labour, so $450 profit per job.
• To cover $3,000 a month you need about seven extra jobs.
• At a 40% close rate, that means roughly 17 or 18 extra leads a month.

If your crew can take seven more jobs a month and the market can supply that many leads, the plan pays for itself and then some. If your calendar is already full, more marketing isn't the answer yet; hiring or pricing might be. Our lead budget guide walks through this arithmetic step by step.

How to choose

Match the plan to your capacity, not to your ambition.

• Growth suits most Cambridge owner-run trades with one to five trucks who want steady leads in the areas they already serve.
• Elite suits businesses ready to add a second channel, such as ads plus local SEO, or a push into the industrial parks, and those whose website needs a rebuild.
• Enterprise suits larger operations with several crews, multiple service lines or ambitions across Waterloo Region, who want a dedicated team.

If you're unsure, start lower. Moving up is easy; paying for capacity you can't use isn't.

One more check before choosing: look at last winter and last summer. If your Cambridge calendar was overflowing in January and thin in May, the plan should be built to fill the slow months, not to add more work to the busy ones. We'll plan the timing of spend with you, so a Growth plan in a lumpy trade can do more than an Elite plan spent at the wrong time of year.

What every plan includes

Whatever the plan, some things don't change:

• a written plan and a cost-per-lead ceiling agreed before work starts;
• full ownership of your website, domain, profiles and ad accounts;
• monthly reporting in plain language;
• a senior strategist as your contact, by call, text or email.

We are a marketing and consulting service, not a contractor, so our fees cover marketing work only. See what each service involves, read the FAQ, or contact us for the free consultation.