The Local Marketing Playbook for Contractors

Before you start

I'm Joe Deal. I'm a roofer in Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky, and in 2026 I started my own company, No Big Deal Home Solutions. I had no investors, no marketing team and no ad budget. This playbook is what I do every week to get found by homeowners anyway.

I also built NBD Pro, the CRM I use to run that company. You'll see it mentioned at the end of most chapters, in a box marked "In NBD Pro", because that's where I do the work. Everything in this guide works without it. A notebook and a calendar reminder will get you most of the way.

What this guide is, and what it isn't

It's practical advice from someone doing the work right now, in the same trade and the same season you are. It is not a promise. I'm not going to tell you that you'll hit the top three on Google Maps in 90 days, or quote you a revenue number, because I can't know that. Your market, your competition, your work and your reviews decide the results. What I can tell you is what's worth your time and what isn't, and where the rules are, because some of the "growth hacks" floating around this industry break them.

How to use it

Read it once, straight through. Then take one chapter a week and actually do the checklist at the end of it. Twelve weeks from now you'll have every system in place, and none of them takes more than about half an hour a week to keep running.

1 Get your Google Business Profile right

For a local contractor, your Google Business Profile is the most important page you own. Most homeowners will see it before they ever see your website, and most profiles in our trade are half finished.

Claim it and verify it

Search for your business on Google Maps. If a profile exists, claim it. If not, create one at business.google.com. Google will ask you to verify, often with a short video of your truck, your tools and your signage. Do it properly the first time: a profile stuck in verification can't do anything for you.

Set it up the way Google asks

• Business name: your real business name, exactly as it appears on your truck, your paperwork and your sign. Don't add "Best Roofer Cincinnati" to it. Google's guidelines forbid stuffing keywords into the name, and it's one of the fastest ways to get a profile suspended.
• Primary category: the most specific one that fits what you mostly do, like "Roofing contractor". Add a few secondary categories only for work you really do.
• Service area: if you work at customers' homes and don't take walk-ins, you're a service-area business. List the cities and areas you actually serve and hide your street address. Don't use a PO box or a virtual office to fake a location; Google's guidelines don't allow it.
• Services: list each service you offer with a short, plain description. Homeowners read these.
• Hours, phone, website: a phone you answer, hours you keep, and a link to your site.
• Description: a few honest sentences on who you are, what you do and where. Write it for a homeowner, not a search engine.

Photos: real, and often

Upload photos of your own work, your own trucks and your own crew. Never stock photos, and never another company's jobs. Before you post a job photo, crop out house numbers, license plates and faces unless the homeowner said yes. Add a few new photos every week once the profile is set up.

Keep your name, address and phone identical

Your business name, address and phone number should read the same everywhere they appear. You don't need fifty directory listings. You need a handful of accurate ones:

• Google Business Profile
• Apple Business Connect (Apple Maps and Siri)
• Bing Places for Business
• Facebook page
• Your manufacturer's contractor locator, if you hold a credential with them
• Your local BBB, chamber of commerce or trade association, if you're a member
• Any marketplace you actually buy leads from (Angi, Thumbtack, Yelp)

This week's checklist

• Profile claimed and verified
• Real business name, no added keywords
• Specific primary category, honest secondary categories
• Service area set, street address hidden if you don't take walk-ins
• Every service listed with a plain description
• At least ten real photos of your own work
• Name, address and phone checked on the listings above

2 The 30-minute week

Most contractors set up a profile once and never touch it again. A profile that shows steady, real activity looks like a business that's open and busy, to homeowners and to Google. Thirty minutes a week is enough.

The routine

That's it. If you miss a day, do it the next day. The point isn't the schedule; it's that something real happens on your profile every week.

What to post

• A finished job: town (never the street address), what you did and why. "Replaced a 22-year-old roof in Florence after the spring hail. The homeowner chose a Class 4 impact-rated shingle."
• A question homeowners ask you, and the honest answer.
• A seasonal reminder: clean the gutters before the leaves come down, check the attic after the first hard freeze.
• Something true about how you work: how long an inspection takes, what's in your estimate, how you protect the landscaping.

Measure what matters

Your Business Profile shows you how people found you and what they did next. Write down the same four numbers every Friday: calls, website clicks, direction requests and messages. Don't panic about one week. Watch the trend over a few months, and compare it with what actually matters, which is booked appointments and signed jobs.

This week's checklist

• One Business Profile post published
• Three to five new job photos uploaded
• Every new review replied to
• Friday numbers written down in the same place as last week

3 Website pages that earn their place

Your website has one job: help a homeowner who's comparing contractors decide to call you. Pages that do that tend to rank. Pages written only to rank tend not to, and some of them break Google's rules.

One strong page per real service

Give each service you actually sell its own page: roof replacement, roof repair, siding, gutters, storm damage, whatever you do. A good service page answers what the homeowner is wondering:

• What does the job involve, start to finish?
• How long does it take, and what's it like to live through?
• What affects the price? Give real ranges if you publish prices, and say what's included.
• What's the warranty, in plain words: what's covered, for how long, and by whom?
• What do you need from the homeowner?
• How do they book, and what happens next?

Use your own photos. Put your phone number and a simple way to book on every page.

Town pages, done honestly

A page for each town you serve can help, but only if each page is genuinely about that town: jobs you've done there, the local permit process, the storms that hit it, the housing stock. Fifty near-identical pages with the town name swapped is what Google calls doorway pages, and its spam policies treat them as abuse. If you can't write something true and specific about a town, don't make a page for it.

Forget word counts

You'll read that every page needs 2,000 words. It doesn't. Google says it rewards content written to help people, not content written to hit a length. Write until the homeowner's question is answered, then stop.

The technical basics

• The site loads quickly on a phone and nothing scrolls sideways
• Every page has a clear title and a one-line description
• Your name, address and phone match your Business Profile
• Local business structured data (schema.org) with your real details
• Google Search Console set up, with your sitemap submitted
• No pages you'd be embarrassed for a customer to read

4 Education that earns trust

Homeowners are nervous about contractors, and they have reasons to be. The fastest way through that is to teach them something useful before you ever ask for the job.

Give away what you know

Write down the questions you answer on every inspection, and turn the best ones into free resources:

• A checklist: what to look for after a hailstorm, or how to compare two quotes.
• A short guide: how an insurance claim works in your state, or what a warranty actually covers.
• A seasonal maintenance card you leave behind after every job.

Put them on your website, free, with no form in front of them. A homeowner who learned something from you remembers you. If you want to offer an "email me a copy" option, that's fine, as long as the guide itself stays free to read.

Email, by the rules

If you collect email addresses, the CAN-SPAM Act sets the floor for any marketing email you send:

• Honest "From" name and a subject line that matches what's inside
• Your valid physical postal address in every marketing email
• A clear way to unsubscribe that works, and you honor it within 10 business days
• Never buy or rent an email list

Only add someone to a newsletter if they asked for it. A homeowner who requested a quote didn't sign up for weekly marketing.

5 Trust you can prove

Every contractor says they're honest, insured and experienced. The ones who get the call are the ones who let homeowners check.

Show what can be checked

• Insurance: say "fully insured" only if you are, and be ready to send the certificate the same day someone asks.
• License: say "licensed" only where you hold a license that applies. Plenty of places don't license roofers at all; don't imply a license that doesn't exist.
• Manufacturer credentials: use the exact name the manufacturer gives the program, and link to its contractor locator so homeowners can look you up. Don't claim a tier you don't hold. A membership isn't a certification.
• Experience: be precise. If your company is new and you've been in the trade for years, say exactly that. "I've done roofing for seven years and started my own company this year" is more believable than a vague "decades of experience".
• Warranties: put the labor warranty in writing: how long, what it covers, and whether it transfers when the house sells. Manufacturer warranties cover materials; say who stands behind the workmanship.
• Real work: project photos from your own jobs. If some of your best work was done while you worked for someone else, say so, or leave it out.

How you handle problems

Homeowners don't expect perfect. They want to know what happens when something goes wrong. Write down, in a sentence or two, what you do if there's a leak after the job or a missed nail in the driveway, and put it on your website. Then do it.

6 A content engine sized for a working contractor

You don't need to publish every day. You need a steady habit that turns the work you're already doing into proof.

One job, three pieces

Every finished job you're proud of can become:

1. A project page on your website: town, problem, what you did, what it cost range-wise if you publish prices, and four to eight photos.
2. A Business Profile post linking to that page.
3. A social post with one before-and-after pair.

Do that once a week and in a year you have about fifty real projects online, each one proof you work in a specific town.

Answer one question a month

Once a month, write a page or post that answers a question you hear constantly: "Do I need a whole new roof or just a repair?", "What does a roof inspection include?", "Will my insurance cover hail damage?" Answer it the way you would in a homeowner's driveway.

7 Reviews that play fair

Reviews are the trust signal homeowners read most, and the one most contractors handle badly: they ask too rarely, at the wrong time, or in ways that break the rules.

The rules, in plain words

• Ask everyone. Google's review policy says businesses must not discourage negative reviews or ask only happy customers. That practice is called review gating, and it's banned. The FTC's rule on consumer reviews (16 CFR Part 465, in effect since October 2024) also makes it illegal to suppress negative reviews.
• No incentives. Don't offer a discount, a gift card or a raffle entry for a review. Google's policy forbids it outright, and the FTC rule bans paying for reviews that are meant to be positive.
• No fake reviews. Not from friends, not from family, not from employees, not from a service. The FTC rule carries civil penalties for each violation.
• Don't write your customer's review for them, and don't post reviews on their behalf.

When and how to ask

Ask when the job is done and the customer is happy with it, usually at the final walkthrough or right after final payment. Ask in person first: "If you were happy with how it went, a review on Google really helps a small company like mine." Then send the link the same day so it's one tap.

Texting customers: the consent notes

Texting is the easiest way to get a review link to someone, and it's also covered by the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) and the FCC's rules under it (47 CFR 64.1200). The safe habits:

• Get the customer's permission to text them, in writing, at intake or in your contract, and keep a record of it.
• Name your business in every text and include "Reply STOP to opt out".
• Only text between 8am and 9pm in the customer's time zone. Some states set tighter hours.
• Honor an opt-out right away, however the customer says it ("stop", "don't text me", a phone call). FCC rules require opt-outs to be honored within 10 business days.
• Send business texts from a registered number (A2P 10DLC registration through your texting provider), not your personal cell.

Reply to every review

Reply to every review within a few days. For a good one, thank them and mention the job ("Glad the gutters are keeping up with the rain"). For a bad one, stay calm, don't argue, don't share any details of their job or their insurance, and offer to talk: "I'm sorry this wasn't the experience you expected. Please call me at [phone] so I can make it right." Then call them.

8 Google Maps, without the myths

You'll see charts claiming to know exactly how much each ranking factor weighs. Nobody outside Google knows that. Google does tell you what it looks at, and that's enough to work with.

What Google says matters

Google's own help page names three things for local results:

• Relevance: how well your profile matches what someone searched. Accurate categories, complete services and a clear description help here.
• Distance: how far you are from the searcher or the place they searched. You can't change it, which is why being honest about your service area matters more than trying to game it.
• Prominence: how well known your business is, including your reviews, links to your site and mentions around the web. Chapters 5, 7 and 11 are all about this.

What to stop doing

• Stop adding keywords or city names to your business name
• Stop creating extra profiles for towns where you don't have a real office
• Stop asking for reviews in bulk from people who never hired you
• Stop changing your categories every week to chase a search

What to keep doing

The weekly routine in chapter 2, the reviews habit in chapter 7 and real photos from real jobs. It's not glamorous. It works because most of your competitors won't keep it up.

9 Video from your phone

A sixty-second video of you explaining something on a real roof builds more trust than anything else you can post. You already carry the camera.

The weekly video

1. Film (about 10 minutes): hold the phone sideways, stand where it's quiet, and answer one question a homeowner asked you this week. Keep it under two minutes.
2. Upload (about 15 minutes): YouTube, with a plain title that matches the question ("How to tell if hail damaged your roof"), a short description and the captions checked.
3. Share (about 10 minutes): a Business Profile post, a short clip on social media and, if it fits, the matching page on your website.

Respect the homeowner

Don't film a customer, their kids, their house number or their license plate without asking first. Get the yes in writing if the video will be online for good. A homeowner who sees their address on your YouTube channel won't be leaving you a review.

10 Showing up in AI answers

More homeowners now ask ChatGPT, Gemini or Google's AI Overviews "who's a good roofer near me?" There's no trick to getting mentioned. AI tools lean on the same thing search engines do: clear, consistent, checkable information.

What helps

• Your business name, phone, service area and services are identical on your website, your Business Profile and the directories in chapter 1
• Your service pages answer questions directly in the first paragraph, then explain
• Facts are stated plainly and are true: years in business, credentials, warranty terms, the towns you serve
• Your reviews describe real jobs in real towns
• Your site lets search engines crawl it, with a sitemap submitted

Check what they say about you

Once a month, ask two or three AI assistants about your trade in your town, and about your business by name. If they get a fact wrong, fix it at the source: your website and your Business Profile. Don't try to plant fake mentions or reviews to steer them. That's the same spam it always was.

11 Build a real local network

The links and mentions that matter most come from real relationships in your community. You can't buy them, and you shouldn't try: Google's spam policies treat paid links as link spam.

Where real mentions come from

• Suppliers and manufacturers: many list their contractors. Make sure you're listed correctly.
• Local organizations: sponsor a youth team, a school event or a charity build, because you want to. A mention on their site often follows.
• Local news: after a big storm, a short, useful tip ("Here's how to spot hail damage from the ground, and why you shouldn't climb up there yourself") is something a local reporter can use.
• Other trades: a plumber, a painter, an HVAC company. Trade referrals with people you trust, and write a guide together if it makes sense.
• Real estate agents and home inspectors: they need roofers who answer the phone and write clear reports.

12 Keep it running

Each system in this guide is small. What makes them work is doing them every week, for a long time, after your competitors have quit.

The monthly check

Once a month, sit down for half an hour and look at:

• Leads by source: where did this month's real leads come from?
• Booked appointments and signed jobs by source, not just clicks
• New reviews this month, and whether every one has a reply
• Business Profile performance against last month and the same month last year
• One page on your website to improve next month
• One relationship from chapter 11 to follow up on

Then drop whatever isn't producing jobs, and do more of what is.

Your first three moves

Reading this changes nothing on its own. Here's where to start, today:

1. Open your Google Business Profile and fill in every empty field with real information (chapter 1).
2. Ask your last five finished customers for an honest review, in person or with the text template in chapter 7, including the reply-STOP line.
3. Write one page on your website that answers the question homeowners ask you most (chapter 6).

Then come back next week for chapter 2.

If you'd like a place to run all of this, NBD Pro has a free plan. It's the same software I use for my own roofing company, and every price is published at nobigdealwithjoedeal.com/pro/pricing. Questions? Email me at jd@nobigdealwithjoedeal.com or call (859) 420-7382.

Joe Deal, No Big Deal Home Solutions and NBD Pro