Show, don't tell

Referrals feel like the "real" way to grow a trade business — someone vouches for you, and the job practically closes itself. The problem isn't that referrals are bad. It's that they're unpredictable. A great month of referrals can be followed by three weeks of silence, and your fixed costs (the van payment, the crew's paychecks, the shop rent) don't pause just because the phone did.

The businesses that grow steadily usually treat referrals as one lane on a bigger road, not the whole road. A small, always-on ad running in your service area does something referrals can't: it works on a schedule. It doesn't care whether your last customer remembered to mention you at a barbecue. It shows up in front of new people, every day, whether or not anyone happens to be talking about you that week.

That doesn't mean spending like a national chain. It means having something small and consistent running in the background — so a slow referral month doesn't turn into a slow month, period. That's the gap a simple, well-targeted ad is built to close.

When someone searches "plumber near me" or "electrician in [your town]," Google usually shows a map with three local businesses above everything else. That's your Google Business Profile (sometimes still called your "Google listing" or "map listing") — and if it's missing, thin, or out of date, you're invisible in exactly the moment someone needs you most.

A few things move the needle more than people expect: a complete profile with accurate hours and service area, real photos of your actual work (not stock images), a primary category that matches what you do, and a steady trickle of recent reviews. Businesses with more recent, relevant reviews tend to show up more often and get clicked more, because both Google and the searcher are looking for the same signal — proof that you're active and trusted right now, not three years ago.

The good news is this is a one-time setup with ongoing light maintenance, not a full-time job. Claim it, fill it in completely, add photos after every job if you can, and ask happy customers for a review before you leave the driveway.

There's no single right number, but there is a wrong instinct: spending nothing until business slows down, then panic-spending to fix it fast. Ads work best as a steady, modest habit — not a fire extinguisher.

A useful way to think about it: start with an amount you could lose entirely without it hurting your business, run it for a defined test window (two to four weeks is usually enough to see a pattern), and judge it on one number — cost per call or message, not total spend. A $50 test that produces three real calls is telling you something. A $50 test that produces silence is telling you something too, and either way you've learned it cheaply.

From there, most owners either keep the same modest amount running every month once it's proven itself, or step it up gradually as the calls justify it. The goal isn't to outspend the competition — it's to always have something running, so you're never starting from zero when a slow week hits.