25 Ideas To Generate Leads For Your Trades Business
from Jon Simmons
Playbook.
$0 each
You don’t have less than the guys with marketing budgets. You have more — if you spend your time on assets that compound.
This is the playbook from my talk. Twenty-five plays. Every one of them costs zero dollars to start. Every one of them works for any trade — electrical, plumbing, HVAC, restoration, painting, landscaping, cleaning, roofing.
Read it once, end to end. Then go back and pick three. Three. Put them on your calendar for this week. By next month you’ll have done nine. By the end of the year, all twenty-five.
The plays are sorted in the order I’d run them. The foundation pays for everything else, so it comes first. The compounding plays at the end take longer to ramp but they pay you forever.
If you run one and it works, send me an email. I love hearing about it.
Section 1 of 6
Foundation.
Five non-negotiable plays. Do these and you’ve already beaten 80% of the people you compete against in your zip code. Don’t skip to the fun stuff before this is done.
Claim and optimize your Google Business Profile.
Search “google business profile” and claim yours (or create one). Fill every field — services, hours, holiday hours, service area, attributes. Add 10+ real photos: your truck, the team, before/afters. This profile sits on top of every Google search for your business. It does more work than your website. If yours looks abandoned, you’re losing the call before the phone rings.
Send the review-ask after every single job.
Save the script below as a text shortcut on your phone (iPhone: Settings → General → Keyboard → Text Replacement). Send it within one hour of finishing the job, while they still feel good about you. Thirty days of this and your review count will double.
Reply to every review within 24 hours. Especially the 5-stars.
You’re writing for the next homeowner reading your page, not the one who left it. For 5-stars: thank them by name, mention something specific about the job, sign your name. For 1-stars: never argue, name them, apologize for the experience, offer your direct number, sign it. Both kinds matter equally to the next reader.
Phone number everywhere a homeowner can see it.
Pick up your phone right now and pretend you’re a homeowner who needs you. Search your business on Google. How many taps to dial you? If it’s more than two — your phone, your number, dial — you’re losing business. Put your number on: the truck (readable from across a parking lot), every invoice (top right, big), your email signature, your social bios, the top of every webpage with a click-to-call link, and the front of your business card.
Refresh your GBP photos every quarter.
Ten new photos every three months. Recent work. The truck. The team. A photo of you, smiling, no sunglasses. Set a quarterly reminder on your phone — March 1, June 1, September 1, December 1. Google measurably rewards profiles with fresh photos.
Section 2 of 6
Content & Leverage.
Every job you finish is five pieces of content. Same effort, more output. The plays below turn one paid hour into a week of free distribution.
Photograph every single job.
Before. After. Customer (with permission). Same angle on before/after when possible. Use the phone you already own. Wipe the lens first. Daylight is free and looks better than any ring light. If you skip this step, every play after it gets weaker.
Post a 30-second walkthrough on TikTok, Reels, and Shorts.
Phone in hand. Narrate one thing you fixed. The opened panel, the corroded fitting, the gas leak, the wrong-sized breaker. No editing. No music. Three videos a week for six months and local strangers will stop you at the grocery store. Your only real competition for that audience is one guy in Arizona who can’t drive to your customer’s house.
Write a customer quote on the back of every invoice.
As you’re wrapping up, ask: “Could I write down what you said about the work? I’d like to share it on our page.” Most say yes. One sentence in their words. First name + last initial. Use them in your posts, your website, your newsletters. Specific quotes beat generic five-stars every time.
Post every finished job in your neighborhood Facebook group.
Search “[your town] neighbors,” “[your town] homeowners,” “[your town] community” on Facebook. Join the active ones. One photo, two sentences, your phone number. Don’t pitch — show. “Wrapped up a panel upgrade on Oak Street today. If you’ve got flickering lights, here’s usually why.” Free distribution to your exact zip code.
Answer questions on Nextdoor, Facebook, and Reddit.
This is the play the electrician in the talk used — three booked jobs in his first week. Search your trade in local groups. Answer questions usefully. Sign with your name and number. Don’t sell. Just help. People notice the guy who shows up to be useful when nobody else does.
Pin a real introduction post on Nextdoor.
Not a sales pitch. A real introduction — who you are, what you do, what you charge (roughly), how to reach you. Pin it to your profile. Update it every six months. The pinned post tells homeowners you live here; your replies in other threads tell them you’re useful.
Section 3 of 6
Partnerships.
Three other people in your zip code can sell for you while you’re working. A handshake costs nothing and pays for years. Don’t over-engineer this — no paperwork, no referral fees, no apps.
Build a 3-person trades referral ring.
Pick two trades you’d actually recommend — quality matters here, you’re putting your name on their work. One conversation each. No paperwork, no fees. A handshake. Three trades each sending five small referrals over six months = thirty jobs in the ring that didn’t exist before.
Coffee with one realtor a week.
Every house transaction in your service area generates roughly five service jobs. Realtors are in the middle of all of it and know who needs what six weeks before you would. Find local realtors on Zillow/Redfin. Email below. I’ve seen a client build half his business on three realtors. Three.
Get on a property manager’s preferred vendor list.
Property managers run dozens of buildings and need trades they can trust to show up. One good property manager = 20 to 40 jobs a year. Search “property management [your town].” Call, don’t email. Ask for the operations manager. Offer fast response and a flat rate for emergencies.
Section 4 of 6
The Neighborhood.
Old-school plays that still work because nobody runs them anymore. Each one trades a few dollars and an hour for compounding local recognition.
Hang four door hangers after every job.
Two doors left, two doors right (or two across the street). Print 200 at Vistaprint for $40. Simple design — your photo, your phone, one line: “Just finished a job at 14 Maple. Happy to come look at yours.” Conversion is 1–2%. That sounds small until you do the math: 40 jobs × 4 hangers = 3 new jobs.
Plant a yard sign while you’re working.
Ask permission first — most homeowners say yes. The neighborhood walks past every day and sees your sign next to a truck doing real work. That association lives in their head for months. $6 each. Roll 30 in rotation. Lifespan beats any digital ad.
Sponsor one community thing per year.
Little League team, school carnival, fun run, neighborhood association. Your name on a banner. Pick one — not five. Show up to the event. Local recognition compounds slowly and quietly, and it carries credibility no ad can buy.
Truck wrap (or at minimum, magnetic signs).
A wrapped truck is a billboard everywhere you drive and park. Full wrap is $2,500–$3,500. Door magnets do 90% of the same job for $200. Either way: make the phone number the biggest thing. Bigger than the logo. Bigger than the wordmark. Bigger than feels comfortable.
Section 5 of 6
The Customer List.
Not the truck. Not the website. Not the Google ad. The list of people who have already paid you once — that is your business. These plays build it and milk it forever.
Build a real customer list. Tonight.
Open Google Sheets. Columns: First name · Last name · Phone · Email · Address · Last job · Date · Notes. Pull everyone you can find from invoices, your phone contacts, Stripe/QuickBooks, email. Back it up. Going forward, every job adds a row. This is the single most valuable file you own.
Send the quarterly reactivation text.
Every three months, every past customer gets one personal text. Not a newsletter. Not a coupon. It outperforms email by a mile because it feels like a person checking in. Set a calendar reminder for March 1, June 1, September 1, December 1.
Ask for the referral. Specifically. On the porch.
After every great job, one sentence, out loud, while you’re standing on the porch. Not in a follow-up email. Not as a survey question. One specific ask. This single sentence has out-performed every paid ad I’ve ever run for any of my clients.
Send a handwritten holiday card to your top 50 customers.
December. Plain card. Handwritten. Your name, your business, and one sincere line: “Thanks for trusting us this year — happy holidays.” Most people receive exactly zero handwritten cards anymore. You will get jobs in January from this single act.
Section 6 of 6
The Long Game.
These three take longer to start working — give them six months — but once they do, they pay you forever. The compounding moves separate a stable business from a growing one.
Monthly email newsletter. Three short paragraphs.
Mailchimp’s free tier covers your first 500 contacts. First of every month: one seasonal tip · one job story · one offer. Three short paragraphs total. Useful, never salesy. You’re building permission to land in their inbox the day they actually need you.
Pitch your local newspaper or community blog.
Local journalists are starving for useful content. Email one with a real story angle: “5 common code violations I find in [your town] homes” or “What every homeowner should check before winter.” They get content; you get a backlink and authority that Google notices for years.
Run a $300 / 30-day Google Ads landing-page test.
One single landing page. One single job type — “water heater repair [town],” “mold remediation [zip],” something narrow. Tight keywords (10 max). $10 a day for 30 days. Watch what converts. If it works, scale. If it doesn’t, you learned cheaply. This is the only paid play in the playbook — and it only earns its spot after the foundation is built.
Pick three. Start this week.
You won’t do all twenty-five.
You shouldn’t try.
Circle three plays on this page that you can run this week. Put them in your calendar. Next month, pick three more. By the end of the year you will have run all twenty-five.
The guys with budgets don’t have what you have. Start there.
If you run one of these and it works, send me an email. I love hearing about it. And if you’d rather not run any of this yourself — I’m always taking on a few service-business clients each year. Reach out.