The problem with national agencies dabbling in trades
Every full-service agency now has a page for tradespeople. Few have built their business around them. The difference shows up in account structure, in the questions asked at the first meeting and in what the monthly report measures. This piece argues that a generalist with a trades page is usually the wrong choice for a trade, and says why.
The trades page is a sector landing page, not a specialism
Open a generalist agency's site and you will find a row of sectors: legal, dental, ecommerce, property, trades. Each has a page with the same structure and a stock photo swapped in. The trades page exists because the sector searches well, not because the agency has done a hundred plumbers' accounts.
Compare that with the agencies in this directory. One Base Media lists 15 trades by name and has built a library of client results across them since 2012. Roofing SEO Services serves roofers only. Landscape Marketers serves landscapers, garden designers, driveway firms and tree surgeons, and nobody else. These are businesses whose entire operation is tuned to one kind of client. That tuning is what you are paying for.
Five ways the generalist model breaks
The problems are structural, not a matter of effort.
- Account size. A generalist's typical client spends thousands a month. A sole trader spends hundreds. The small account gets the junior, the template and the least attention, because the agency's economics demand it.
- The wrong questions. A generalist opens with brand, audience and positioning. A trades specialist opens with: which jobs make you money, where do you want them, and can you answer the phone at 2pm on a Tuesday? The second set produces a campaign. The first produces a deck.
- The wrong metrics. Generalist reports lead with impressions, sessions and engagement. A roofer needs calls, enquiries and booked jobs. Several specialists in this directory make this explicit: Local Leads Accelerator's line is 'clicks don't pay the bills, jobs do', and Roofing SEO Services says it reports on booked jobs not traffic. That framing comes from doing the work for trades. It does not come from a sector page.
- No follow-up layer. Trades lose jobs by missing calls, not by lacking traffic. Specialists build missed-call text back, review automation and quote follow-up into the offer because they have watched leads evaporate. Generalists treat those as somebody else's problem.
- Local competition is invisible from head office. A specialist knows that ranking a plumber in Darlington is a different job from ranking one in Leeds, and prices for it. Roofing SEO Services scales its fee from £499 to £2,599 by local competition. A national agency with a rate card does not see the difference until the campaign underperforms.
The exceptions prove the rule
Some larger agencies do serve the top end of the home improvement sector well. JDR Group in Derby works with kitchen and bathroom showrooms, window companies and garden room providers using inbound marketing and HubSpot. Nivoro Marketing places a fractional marketing director inside glazing firms turning over £10 million or more.
Notice what those clients have in common: showrooms, sales teams, considered purchases, marketing budgets in five or six figures. They are home improvement companies, not tradespeople in the sense this directory mostly uses. The larger-agency model works for them because their accounts are large enough to get senior attention and their sales cycle is long enough for content and nurture to matter.
That is not the plumber, the electrician or the two-van roofer. For them the model inverts: the account is small, the sale is fast and the job is to be found and to answer the phone.
Why it keeps happening
Tradespeople are a large market with weak marketing and recurring budgets. From a generalist's spreadsheet it looks attractive. The agency adds a page, runs some ads for 'marketing for plumbers' and signs a few.
Twelve months later the accounts have churned, because the economics never worked, and the agency quietly deprioritises the sector. The tradespeople are left with a site they may not own and a year of fees. Then they search for an agency again, warier, and find the specialists. Several specialists in this directory position themselves explicitly as the agency you come to after a bad experience elsewhere. TradesGrow's 'no sales pressure, just results' line is written for that reader.
What to look for instead
The test is not size. Some excellent trades agencies are one or two people. Some are twenty. The test is whether the business was built for trades or extended to them.
Signs it was built for trades: the trade list is specific and long, or specific and short. The case studies are for your trade, with towns named. The first call is about jobs, areas and phones. The offer includes a follow-up layer. The report measures enquiries. The price fits a trade's budget, and the terms let you leave. Our piece on what the best trades agencies have in common expands on these.
Signs it was extended to trades: a sector menu, a rate card that does not vary by location, a report that leads with impressions, and a 'trades' page whose stock photo shows a hard hat on a building site that no plumber has ever visited.
The honest caveat
Specialism is not a guarantee of quality. A trades-only agency can still be bad at the work. The point is narrower: specialism removes a set of structural problems that a generalist cannot remove by trying harder, because they come from who else the agency serves.
Run the same checks on a specialist that you would on anyone else. Our guide to checking an agency is legitimate applies regardless of how many trades are on the website. Then start your shortlist from the full comparison of UK trades marketing agencies, where every listing is a business that chose this sector rather than adding it.
Frequently asked questions
Is a bigger agency safer for a tradesperson?
Not usually. A small account at a large agency gets the least senior attention. Specialists whose whole client base is trades are structured for small accounts.
Are there trades businesses that suit a larger agency?
Yes: home improvement companies with showrooms, sales teams and large budgets, such as kitchen retailers or multi-branch glazing firms. The model breaks for sole traders and small firms.
How can I tell if an agency really specialises in trades?
Look for case studies in your trade with towns named, a first conversation about jobs and areas rather than brand, and reports that measure enquiries rather than impressions.