Key takeaways
- The symptom an owner brings, such as "not enough leads", is rarely the cause. The diagnosis looks one layer down.
- For contractors the leak is often after the bid goes out, not before the phone rings.
- You leave with five moves, each with an owner and a date, and you keep them whether or not you hire us.
- Bring your lead sources, your bid log and your backlog, so the read is based on your numbers.
A marketing consultant for a contractor should work out why good projects slip away before recommending anything to buy. Our free growth consultation traces your path from the first inquiry to the signed contract: the Google profile, the website, the ads, bid follow-up and referral sources. You leave with five moves, ranked, each with an owner and a date.
What a growth consultation covers
It covers every step between someone planning a project and your signature on the contract, and it looks one layer below the problem you walk in with. Owners usually arrive with a symptom. The fix sits under it.
"We need more leads" : Often the inquiries exist but go to the firm that replied first. We check how long a web inquiry waits while you are on a jobsite, and how many sit unanswered overnight.
"Plenty of leads, not many real projects" : The website and ads may be pulling small repairs and budgets far below your minimum. We read the inquiries themselves and the search terms behind them.
"We bid a lot and win too few" : Sometimes it is price. More often it is what happens after the proposal goes out: no follow-up call, no examples of similar projects, a bid that arrives a week after the site walk.
"Spring is packed, winter is empty" : Buyers choose a builder months before ground breaks. We check whether you are visible and following up while they plan, not only when they are ready to dig.
"Most commercial work comes from two relationships" : Build-out work that depends on one broker or one developer is a risk. We look at your presence on bid lists and with property managers.
We also look at capacity: how many projects your superintendents can run at once and how far out your schedule is booked. More inquiries only help if you can bid and build them.
What happens in the session
- Confirm your goal For example revenue growth or new locations
- Review what you run now Google profile, website, ads and follow-up, live
- Your five next moves In order, with rough timelines
- Decide what happens next If we are a fit we say so. If not, you keep the plan.
What you leave with
The output is five moves, ranked by how many qualified bids each is likely to add, with a named owner and a deadline on every one. The plan is yours to run with us, alone or with someone else.
Here is the shape, written for a hypothetical firm with two superintendents doing additions and light commercial work, not a client:
| Move | Owner | By when |
|---|---|---|
| Reply to every web inquiry within the hour with a text and a link to book a short call | Office manager | This month |
| Add project type, timeline and budget band to the inquiry form | Web vendor | Two weeks |
| Publish three addition case studies with scope, duration and real photos | Owner and project manager | Before spring planning starts |
| Set a follow-up sequence in the CRM for every open bid | Estimator | This month |
| Ask the architects who referred work last year for a standing introduction | Owner | This quarter |
Why five? An owner with two or three active jobs can act on five things in a quarter. A forty-item audit gets filed, and most contractors already have a drawer of those.
Who runs it
Trevor Shirk, the founder of VETS Growth Marketing, leads the diagnosis. He is a U.S. Army veteran and a former Ranger-qualified engineer officer with more than ten years in digital marketing and business strategy.
The session follows the order the firm always works in: Assess, Prioritize, Execute, Measure. When the real constraint turns out to be estimating capacity or a backlog that already runs into next season, you will hear that rather than a pitch for more leads.
How to prepare
- Export leads with their source. Pull the last twelve months of leads or opportunities from Buildertrend, JobTread or your CRM, with the source column. A mostly blank source column is a finding, so bring it anyway.
- Bring your bid log. How many bids went out, how many you won, and the reason for each loss when you know it. Commercial firms can pull this from Procore or the spreadsheet you track bids in.
- Know your contract values. Average signed contract by project type, so we can work out what one qualified bid is worth.
- Know your backlog. How many months of signed work you have, and when the schedule opens.
- List your referral sources. Architects, designers, realtors, property managers and past clients who have sent work.
- Give us access ahead of time. Manager access on your Google Business Profile, and read access to Google Ads and Analytics if you run them. We look at what your ad account counts as a conversion (Google's conversion help), since a contractor's form fill and a qualified bid are very different things.
How VETS Growth Marketing helps
Should you want us to carry out the five moves, each one is scoped on its own with an outcome and a finish date, and you decide after each one whether to continue. Your profile, ad accounts, website and CRM stay in your name. We report qualified bids and signed projects, checked against your own records. Book a growth consultation, or read our marketing overview for contractors and how to judge a marketing agency for contractors.
Sources
- About conversion measurement, Google Ads Help
- Set up Analytics for a website and/or app, Google Analytics Help