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Contractors don't have a marketing problem

Playbook 006 · 7 min

Most contractors who come to us asking about marketing don't need marketing. They have a follow-up problem, an intake problem, and no visibility into either. When the owner is on a ladder, leads go cold — and no ad budget fixes that.

LEADform, call or referral — owner on a ladder
INTAKEscoped by agent · photos requested
FOLLOW-UPday 1 · day 3 · day 7 — automatic
VISIBILITYevery job, every dollar, one board

The intake loop: lead → scoped intake → automatic follow-up → one board.

Not a marketing problem

The pattern is always the same: the website generates leads, the phone generates leads, referrals generate leads — and a meaningful share die waiting. The owner is running a crew; callbacks happen after dinner or not at all. Spending more on ads pours more water into the same leaking bucket.

Intake while on a ladder

An intake agent answers every channel — form, call, text — within a minute. It scopes the job with the questions the owner would ask, requests photos, and flags the leads worth a same-day callback. The owner comes off the ladder to a scoped, photographed, prioritized list instead of a voicemail box.

Day 1, day 3, day 7

Estimates that never get a follow-up are the quiet killer of contractor revenue. The system sends them on a schedule — polite, personal, in the owner's voice — and stops the moment the customer replies. Nobody enjoys writing those messages, which is precisely why they don't get written by humans.

One board

Every job, every estimate, every dollar, visible in one place — pulled from the inbox, the calendar and the accounting tool automatically. Visibility isn't a report the owner has to build; it's a byproduct of the intake and follow-up running on rails.

Under the hood

FormPhoneTextReferral
Intake agent · scope + photos
Follow-up schedulerOne job boardAccounting sync

system design: every channel, one intake loop

The workflow, end to end

LEAD call · form · referral INTAKE AGENT scopes job, gets photos QUALIFIED? budget · scope · area QUOTE SENT same day, not next week NURTURE monthly check-in ONE BOARD owner sees it all day 2 · 5 · 9 yes not yet

The intake loop: lead → scoped intake → automatic follow-up → one board.

The takeaway

Fix follow-up and intake first. Most "marketing budgets" are just paying for leads the operation is about to drop.

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