How Much Should a Vancouver Trade Business Spend on Marketing? A Budget That Pays for Itself

The most common marketing budget for a Vancouver trade is “whatever the last salesperson talked me into”. The second most common is zero, plus a truck wrap. This article gives you a number, tells you where it should go in what order, and how to know within a season whether it earned its keep.

Start from the value of a job, not a percentage of revenue

Marketing textbooks say to spend a percentage of revenue. For a trade it is more useful to work from what a job is worth and what you can afford to pay to get one. A roof replacement in Metro Vancouver is worth thousands; a drain cleaning is worth a couple of hundred but often leads to a bigger job. Decide what you would happily pay for one more of each, and the budget follows from how many more you want.

Two examples of the arithmetic, using your own numbers:

• If a booked job is worth $1,500 in gross profit to you and you would pay $150 to get one, then a channel that produces jobs at $150 each can take as much budget as it can spend.
• If your Google Ads produce leads at $80 and one in three becomes a job, your cost per job is $240. Whether that is good depends entirely on the job value, which is why the same campaign is a bargain for a roofer and a loss for a locksmith.

What Vancouver trades actually spend

Across the home-service companies we work with in Metro Vancouver, the working range is a few thousand dollars a month for a company with two or three crews that wants to grow, split roughly like this:

Those are Digital Trek’s own prices and the spend ranges our clients use; other agencies in the city charge from $1,000 to $6,000 a month for SEO. The point is not the exact figures. It is that a trade business serious about growth in Metro Vancouver is spending somewhere between $3,000 and $7,000 a month all in, and the ones spending $500 are mostly buying a report.

The order things should be paid for

1. Tracking first. Call tracking and form conversions cost almost nothing and turn every other line of the budget from a guess into a number. Our tracking setup guide explains it.
2. The Google Business Profile and reviews. Free, and the single biggest driver of calls for a local trade. Get this right before spending on anything else.
3. A website that converts. If the site loads slowly or hides the phone number, every dollar spent sending people to it leaks. Fix or rebuild before scaling ads. Ours are built around exactly this, see web design for Vancouver trades.
4. Google Ads. The fastest way to buy calls this month. Start with a budget that produces enough leads in 60 to 90 days to prove the cost per job, then scale what works.
5. SEO. Slower, but it compounds. Map rankings often move within 60 to 90 days; competitive city-wide terms take four to twelve months. Once a page ranks, the calls keep coming without a per-click bill.
6. Social and everything else. After the above is working.

How to know within 90 days

Set three numbers before you spend: cost per lead you can accept, cost per booked job you can accept, and the number of jobs you want per month. Review them monthly against the tracked data. A channel that misses its cost per job for two months in a row gets cut or fixed; a channel that beats it gets more budget. This is the whole discipline, and it is the difference between the trade that grows every year and the one that “tried Google Ads once and it didn’t work”.

What compounding looks like

Max Roofing started with a referral-only business and a budget built around local SEO and Google Ads. Over four years the company grew from $150K to $2M in annual revenue, with a 12x return on ad spend and more than 30 new roofs from search in a single season. The budget grew with the business, but it started at the scale in the table above. The numbers are in the case study.

If you want a budget built on your job values rather than a percentage, book a free strategy call. We’ll work it through with your numbers and tell you honestly whether the first dollar belongs in ads, SEO or the website.

Related guides

• The lead funnel for a Vancouver HVAC company
• The Vancouver trades marketing calendar by season
• SEO myths Vancouver contractors still pay for
• SEO services for Vancouver trades
• How much SEO costs in Vancouver
• Google Ads management cost in Vancouver

Frequently asked questions

What percentage of revenue should a trade business spend on marketing?

Growing service businesses often land between 5% and 10% of revenue, but the better method is to work from what a booked job is worth and what you will pay to get one. The percentage is a sanity check, not the plan.

Is Google Ads or SEO the better first investment?

Google Ads if you need calls this month and can measure them. SEO if you can wait a season for results that keep paying without per-click costs. Most Vancouver trades end up running both, with ads carrying the load while SEO catches up.

How much does Digital Trek charge?

SEO plans from $1,500 a month, Google Ads management from $850 a month on top of your ad spend, websites from $4,000 to $10,000. No long-term contracts; a 90-day setup period then month to month.

Can a one-truck business afford this?

Start with tracking, the Google Business Profile and reviews, which cost time rather than money, then a modest Google Ads budget once the profile is in shape. Scale when the cost per job proves out.