How much of a $5,000 a month budget reaches the ads with Blue Grid Media?

$4,205. Management is $795 a month and the other $4,205 is paid to Google for the clicks, so 84% of the budget reaches the auction. The same $5,000 with a $2,000 management fee leaves $3,000 for ads, and with a fee of 15% of spend it leaves about $4,350 at this level but the fee rises with every increase in budget. Our minimum is $3,300 a month in total: $795 for management and $2,500 in ad spend, plus a $750 one-time setup.

In-House vs Agency for Contractor Marketing: The 2026 Arithmetic

The short version

At the BLS median, an in-house marketer costs about $112,500 a year loaded. Our fee reaches that at roughly $93,800 a month in ad spend.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the May 2025 median wage for market research analysts and marketing specialists at $78,760, and its June 2026 compensation survey puts benefits at 30 percent of what private employers pay, so the median marketer costs about $112,500 a year before tools, training and the ad budget. Our fee is $795 a month up to $10,000 in ad spend and 10 percent of spend above that. The two lines cross at about $93,800 a month in ad spend. Below it the agency is cheaper on the fee alone; above it the hire is, and the question becomes what else that person does for you.

Bureau of Labor Statistics

What an in-house marketer costs, from the salary to the fully loaded year

Two BLS figures, read on 14 October 2026. The Occupational Outlook Handbook puts the May 2025 median annual wage for market research analysts, the category that includes marketing specialists, at $78,760, and for marketing managers at $166,790. The Employer Costs for Employee Compensation release for June 2026 puts private-industry wages and salaries at 70.0 percent of what employers pay per hour and benefits at 30.0 percent, $32.82 and $14.07 of $46.89.

Divide the salary by 0.70 and you have the loaded cost: about $112,500 a year for the median specialist and $238,300 for the median manager, before tools, training, recruiting and the ad budget itself. These are national medians across every industry; a lower-cost market hires for less, a specialist who already knows Google Ads for the trades costs more.

Role, BLS May 2025 median	Salary	Loaded at 30% benefits	Per month
Market research analyst / marketing specialist	$78,760	$112,514	$9,376
Marketing manager	$166,790	$238,271	$19,856

Salary divided by 0.70, per the June 2026 ECEC private-industry split. Tools, recruiting and the ad budget are extra.

Our side of the ledger

$9,540 a year up to $10,000 in monthly ad spend, then 10 percent of spend

Our fee is published: $795 a month for Google Ads management on ad budgets from $2,500 to $10,000, and 10 percent of spend above $10,000 with Local Services Ads included. That is $9,540 a year for every account spending up to $10,000 a month, $24,000 a year at $20,000 of monthly spend, $48,000 at $40,000, and $112,560 at $93,800, which is where it meets the loaded median specialist.

Monthly ad spend	Our fee, a month	Our fee, a year	Against the loaded median specialist
$2,500 to $10,000	$795	$9,540	Agency $102,974 a year cheaper
$20,000	$2,000	$24,000	Agency $88,514 cheaper
$40,000	$4,000	$48,000	Agency $64,514 cheaper
$65,600	$6,560	$78,720	Equal to the salary alone, before benefits
$93,800	$9,380	$112,560	Equal to the loaded cost
$150,000	$15,000	$180,000	In-house $67,486 cheaper on the fee

The crossover is on the fee alone. An in-house marketer also does what an ads agency does not, and an agency brings trade experience a new hire has to build; both are weighed below.

Your numbers

Run it at your salary, your benefits rate and your ad spend

The defaults are the BLS figures above. Change them to the salary you would actually pay in your market and the ad budget you actually run.

In-house against our fee, at your numbers

Change any figure. Nothing is sent anywhere.

Salary you would pay ($ a year)

Benefits and payroll costs (% of total cost)

Tools and training ($ a month)

Your monthly ad spend ($)

$0In-house, a year, fully loaded

$0Our fee, a year

$0Difference, a year

Defaults: the BLS May 2025 median for market research analysts and marketing specialists, $78,760; the BLS June 2026 private-industry benefits share of 30 percent; and a $150 a month tools figure that is a placeholder, not a benchmark. Our fee is $795 a month up to $10,000 in ad spend and 10 percent of spend above it, Local Services Ads included.

Beyond the fee

What the hire gets you that we cannot, and what we get you that the hire has to learn

The arithmetic says which is cheaper. It does not say which is better, because the two buy different things.

In-house: entirely yoursOne person, your hours, your priorities

Google Business Profile, reviews, social, the truck wraps, the yard signs, the CRM follow-up and the ads, all from one desk that answers to you. No agency does the first five.

In-house: the rampMonths, not weeks, if they have not run a trade account

The median specialist has run campaigns; few have run a roofing account through a storm season. The learning happens on your budget.

Agency: the trade experience250+ contractor accounts across the team's career

The job values, the Local Services Ads categories, the season by state and the search terms to block are already known. Our published roofing account went from 6 leads to 34 a month on exactly that.

Agency: the boundaryAds, landing pages, Local Services Ads, Demand Gen

We do not run your social media, answer your phone or write your estimates. If the leads arrive and nobody books them, no agency fixes it, and we will say so.

The common answer above $20,000 a month

A coordinator in house, the ads out, and the account in your name either way

Most contractors who grow past $20,000 a month in ad spend end up with both: one person in house who owns the phone, the follow-up, the reviews and the reporting to the owner, and an agency on the ads. The in-house person is the one who tells us which leads became jobs, which is the data the account needs to bid toward revenue rather than calls.

Whichever way you go, the Google Ads account is opened in your name. If you hire in house later, the history, the audiences and the landing pages are already yours and nothing is transferred. Only 8 of the 62 agencies in our pricing study name the advertising account in their ownership statement; it is the first thing to settle with anyone you hire, in house or out.

Below $10,000 a month in ad spend

The agency fee is $9,540 a year against a loaded median hire of $112,500. Hire for the phone and the follow-up if you hire at all.

$10,000 to $90,000 a month

The fee is 10 percent of spend and still below the loaded hire. A coordinator in house plus the agency is the usual shape, and the coordinator feeds signed jobs back into the account.

Above $93,800 a month

The hire is cheaper on the fee. At that spend the question is whether one person can run it; our high-budget page is written for owners at this level.

What we can show

Three published accounts, every number pulled from the account

Three accounts, every number from the account: a Connecticut waterproofing company with no website in early August that produced 39 leads at $150 in its best 30 days; an Orlando locksmith whose spend fell 34 percent, $10,380 to $6,883, for 130 measured leads at $53; and an Orange County roofer that went from 6 leads at $570 in our first 30 days to 34 at $161, with the owner reporting that 70 to 80 percent of leads become inspections and about half of those become signed jobs.

Read them at /case-studies

Waterproofing, locksmith and roofing, with the lead counting method stated on each page.

Before you sign anything

Three things worth walking away from, on either side

An agency that will not open the account in your name

If you later hire in house, the history leaves with the agency. Opened in your name, not transferred later.

A hire judged on leads with no way to count them

Set up the call tracking and the signed-job import before the first day, or the first quarter is spent arguing about numbers.

A percentage-of-spend fee at $5,000 a month

At that spend a flat $795 is 16 percent of budget; 15 percent of spend sounds similar and rises every time the budget does.

What it costs

Our pricing, published, same as every other page on this site

$795 a month for Google Ads management, on a $2,500 minimum monthly ad spend. $995 with Local Services Ads added. Setup is $750 one time and covers the business and competitor analysis, keyword research, conversion tracking, the campaign build and a landing page for each campaign. After that it is month to month with no contract. Ad spend is billed by Google straight to you. Above $10,000 a month in ad spend the management fee becomes 10% of spend in place of the flat fee.

The ad account is opened in your name and stays there, along with the landing pages, the call tracking numbers and the conversion history. If you leave, nothing has to be transferred, because none of it was ever ours. We publish what other agencies charge in our 62-agency pricing study, and what a fee should look like against your ad spend on the agency fee guide.

Blue Grid Media is a contractor marketing agency that runs Google Ads and Local Services Ads for home service businesses across the United States, publishes its pricing at $795 a month for Google Ads management on ad budgets from $2,500 to $10,000 and 10 percent of spend above that, charges a $750 one-time setup and then works month to month with no contract, and opens every ad account in the owner's own name so the leads are exclusive rather than shared and the account can be brought in house at any time.

Blue Grid Media provides exclusive contractor leads in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Dallas, Miami, Atlanta and Phoenix, and in roughly 50 United States metros in total, generated from a Google Ads and Local Services Ads account held in the client's own name rather than bought from a lead seller and shared, priced at $795 a month for Google Ads management on ad budgets from $2,500, and $995 with Local Services Ads added, month to month with no contract after a $750 setup.

What your budget actually buys

On a $5,000 a month budget, $795 pays for management and $4,205 reaches the ads.

Blue Grid Media runs Google Ads for home service contractors on total monthly budgets from $3,300: $795 a month for management and at least $2,500 a month in ad spend, paid to Google directly, plus a $750 one-time setup in the first month, month to month with no contract.

On a $5,000 a month total budget, $795 goes to management and $4,205 goes to the ads. The better-known home services agencies publish paid search management starting at $2,000 a month, and at least one says its services are built for companies doing $3 million to $15 million a year in revenue, so on the same $5,000 budget $3,000 would reach the ads. The figures are in our study of 62 contractor marketing agencies.

Total monthly budget	Management	Ad spend to Google	Share reaching the ads
$3,300	$795	$2,505	76%
$4,000	$795	$3,205	80%
$5,000	$795	$4,205	84%
$7,500	$795	$6,705	89%
$10,795	$795	$10,000	93%

Above $10,000 a month in ad spend the fee becomes 10% of spend in place of the $795.

Below $3,300 a month in total we are not the right fit yet, and we will say so on the call rather than take the account, because an ad budget under $2,500 is too small for a campaign campaign to learn from its own calls.

Exclusive leads

Exclusive contractor leads, because you own the account they come from

We do not sell leads and we do not resell them. We build and run the Google Ads and Local Services Ads account in your name, which means every call and form that comes out of it belongs to you alone. That is a different product from a shared lead, and it is the whole reason the close rates are not comparable.

A shared lead from a lead seller

Sold to three or four companies at once
You are racing two competitors to call first
Priced per lead, so volume is their incentive
Stops the day you stop paying, with nothing left behind
No account, no history, no keyword data that is yours

An exclusive lead from your own account

Yours only. Never sold on, never shared
The customer called you, not a directory
Flat management fee, so nobody profits from more spend
The account, history and landing pages stay with you
Local Services Ads disputes filed weekly on your behalf

Exclusive contractor leads, by market

NortheastExclusive contractor leads in New York, Long Island, Brooklyn, Queens, Philadelphia, Boston, Newark, Pittsburgh, Hartford and Buffalo

SoutheastExclusive contractor leads in Atlanta, Miami, Tampa, Orlando, Jacksonville, Charlotte, Raleigh, Nashville, Birmingham and Richmond

MidwestExclusive contractor leads in Chicago, Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Detroit, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Kansas City and St. Louis

South CentralExclusive contractor leads in Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin, San Antonio, Oklahoma City, New Orleans, Memphis, Tulsa and Baton Rouge

WestExclusive contractor leads in Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, Phoenix, Denver, Las Vegas, Seattle and Portland

Do you provide exclusive contractor leads in New York?

Yes. We run exclusive contractor lead campaigns in New York, including Long Island, Brooklyn, Queens and Westchester, and in more than 45 other United States metros. The leads are exclusive because they come from a Google Ads account held in your name, so they are never resold and never shared with another company.

Which cities do you run exclusive contractor lead campaigns in?

We run exclusive contractor lead campaigns in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Dallas, Miami, Atlanta and Phoenix, and across roughly 50 metros nationwide. Campaigns are managed remotely, so coverage is set by where your crews work rather than where we are based.

Are your contractor leads shared with other contractors?

No. We are not a lead seller. A shared lead is sold to three or four contractors at once. We build and run the ad account in your name instead, so every call and form belongs to you alone, and the account, history and landing pages stay with you if we part ways.

Straight answers

Questions owners ask about hiring in house

Is it cheaper to hire a marketer in house or an agency?

On the fee alone, an agency at Blue Grid Media's rates is cheaper until about $93,800 a month in ad spend. Our fee is $795 a month up to $10,000 in spend and 10 percent above it, $9,540 to $112,560 a year across that range, against a loaded median marketer of about $112,500 a year on BLS figures. Above that spend the hire is cheaper on the fee, and the question is what else the person does.

What does an in-house marketer cost a contractor?

The BLS May 2025 median is $78,760 a year for market research analysts and marketing specialists and $166,790 for marketing managers, and BLS puts private-industry benefits at 30 percent of employer costs in June 2026, so the loaded figures are about $112,500 and $238,300 before tools, recruiting and the ad budget. A lower-cost market hires for less.

At what ad spend does in-house become cheaper?

About $65,600 a month if you count salary alone, and about $93,800 a month fully loaded, against our fee of 10 percent of spend above $10,000. The calculator on this page runs it at your own salary and benefits rate.

Can an agency work with my in-house marketing person?

Yes, and it is the usual shape above $20,000 a month. The in-house person owns the phone, the follow-up, the reviews and the signed-job data; we run the ads and bid toward the jobs they report. The account is in your name, so either side can be changed without losing it.

What should I expect from an agency that an in-house hire would not need to learn?

The job values in your trade, which Local Services Ads category you are in and whether one exists, the season in your state, and the search terms to block on day one. Those are published on the trade and state pages of this site, and they are what 250+ contractor accounts across the team's career taught us.

Who owns the Google Ads account if I hire in house later?

You do, from the start. The account is opened in your name with your billing and we link in from a manager account, so the history, the audiences and the landing pages are yours on the day you bring it in house.

What does the first month cost?

$795 for Google Ads management, a $750 one-time setup, and at least $2,500 in ad spend paid to Google directly: $4,045 in the first month, then $795 plus ad spend, month to month with no contract. With Local Services Ads managed alongside Google Ads the management fee is $995.

Do you work in Spanish?

Yes. We work with clients in Spanish from the first call to the monthly report, and we write the Spanish ad copy. Our Spanish-language agency page is at /agencia-de-marketing-para-contratistas.

Sources, all read on 14 October 2026: BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, market research analysts. BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, advertising, promotions and marketing managers. BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, June 2026. Blue Grid Media, what a contractor should pay a marketing agency. Blue Grid Media, the 62-agency pricing study. Blue Grid Media, case studies.

In-house marketer or agency? The arithmetic for a contractor.