Marketing for the trades

Typical bottlenecks and solutions

1. Skilled workers and apprentices are missing

Why: In the trades, the number of installers determines how many jobs you can take on. Good journeymen are in permanent jobs and are not actively looking, and ads on job boards hardly reach them. For apprentices, you compete with industry and retail for the same school leavers, who mainly find out about careers on Instagram and TikTok.

Solution (Recruiting campaigns (part of Performance Marketing)): We run recruiting campaigns in the area around your business, with short videos from the workshop and building site instead of stock photos. Applications go through a mobile funnel with a few questions about trade, driving licence and place of residence. For apprenticeships, we build separate ads that also convince parents, and we steer on cost per qualified application.

2. Customer enquiries come in waves

Why: For solar and heat pumps, demand depends on subsidy programmes, energy prices and the news, and for roofing and heating also on the weather. Enquiry portals often sell the same enquiry to several businesses, and you end up in a price war. Many enquiries contain neither roof area nor the age of the heating system, and your sales team drives out to on-site appointments with no chance.

Solution (Performance Marketing): We build exclusive enquiries through Meta and Google campaigns in your catchment area. A configurator asks about ownership, building type, age of the heating system or roof orientation before an appointment is made. What carries over from our lead generation for a car dealership is the order: filter first, then phone. We increase budget when your installation teams have capacity.

3. Quotes disappear into a drawer

Why: A quote for a photovoltaic system or heat pump quickly runs to five figures. Customers get comparison quotes and decide over weeks, often together with an energy consultant or bank. In day-to-day business nobody follows up systematically, because master craftsmen and site managers are out on the building site. Open quotes then sit in the plan as revenue that never comes.

Solution (Email Marketing): We set up an email automation that starts with the quote: explanations of the process and the subsidy application, answers to typical objections, photos of finished installations from your region and a reminder to your sales team. After the order come maintenance appointments and referral requests. The data comes from your trade business software or your CRM.

Example calculation: cost per heat pump order (method, not a case study)

• Assumption: ad budget per month: €5,000
• Performance Marketing fee, 1 platform: €1,500
• Assumption: €50 per pre-qualified enquiry: 100 enquiries
• Assumption: 40% become an on-site appointment: 40 appointments
• Assumption: 25% of appointments become an order: 10 orders
• Cost per order (€6,500 / 10): €650

Method, not a case study: all values are assumptions. Whether €650 per order is good depends on your contribution margin per installation, which you know. In the first month we measure the real rates and recalculate. What carries over from the car dealership lead generation is the logic of pre-qualification, not its numbers.

Service mix

• Recruiting campaigns (part of Performance Marketing): Recruiting campaigns for skilled workers, installers and apprentices in the area around your business, with videos from your real working day.
• Performance Marketing: Local Meta and Google campaigns for solar, heat pumps, bathrooms or roofing, with budget matched to the capacity of your installation teams.
• Funnels & landing pages (part of Performance Marketing): A configurator as a landing page that asks about building data, ownership and time frame before your sales team drives out to an on-site appointment.
• Email Marketing: Quote follow-up, maintenance reminders and referral requests by email, triggered automatically from your trade business software or your CRM.

What we steer by (KPIs)

• Cost per on-site appointment: appointments tie up advisers or master craftsmen, and an appointment with no chance costs twice
• Quote-to-order rate: shows whether follow-up and price are right before more ad budget flows
• Cost per skilled worker hired: one hire creates capacity for many additional jobs a year
• Utilisation of installation teams: only increase the enquiry budget if teams can actually build the additional jobs

Timing: Solar and roofing enquiries rise in spring, heating enquiries before and during the heating season; changes to subsidy programmes shift both at short notice. We start apprenticeship campaigns in autumn and winter, long before apprenticeships begin in late summer.

FAQ

How much does marketing for a trade business cost? Recruiting campaigns start at €1,500 net per platform per month, plus ad budget from around €1,500. For customer enquiries we charge Performance Marketing from €1,500 per platform, plus €900 for each additional one, with a sensible ad budget from around €5,000 per month. Email automation costs from €3,000 per month. Contract term one month in each case.

Are the enquiries exclusive to our business? Yes. The enquiries come from campaigns in your name and on your own landing pages, and we don't sell them on to anyone. That way the prospect isn't comparing several businesses from the very first contact, and your sales team talks to people who deliberately got in touch with you.

Is this worthwhile for smaller businesses too? If you have capacity for additional jobs or a position stays open long term, usually yes. For applications, one platform is often enough. For customer enquiries, the effort pays off above all for high order values such as solar, heat pumps, bathrooms or roofing. We calculate this with your numbers in the intro call.

What carries over from your car dealership reference? The method: pre-qualify enquiries before the first phone call, measure cost per enquiry and per sale, and steer budget by sales capacity. We deliberately do not carry over the numbers from the dealership, because order values, decision times and catchment areas are different in the trades. We determine your values in the first month.