The guy undercutting you has not priced his own hours
There are about 32,000 pressure washing companies in the
US and roughly 42,000 technicians between them, so the average firm is one person and a van. With
startup costs under $5,000 and no licence required, the cheapest quote in your market usually
belongs to somebody who has not counted his own time. Matching it means adopting his mistake.
Flat fee, never a percentage of spend You own the account from day one Month to month, no setup fee
32,193
US pressure washing businesses, against 41,799 technicians between them
1.3
People in the average company, which is who you are bidding against
$27/hr
Reported technician wage, and the cost most quotes leave out
$0
Landing pages built per campaign. No design fee.
1 The Competition
You are not competing with companies
Jobber counts 32,193 pressure washing businesses in the United States and 41,799
technicians working in them. That is roughly 1.3 people per company. This is not an industry of
firms with overheads and pricing models. It is an industry of individuals with a trailer, and that
changes what the prices in your market actually mean.
01
The door is wide open
Startup costs are commonly reported under $5,000. No degree, no state licence, no certification. Anyone with a card and a weekend can be quoting against you by Monday, and plenty do.
02
So the competitor set never settles
You are rarely bidding against the same names twice. New entrants arrive every season and a majority do not last five years, which means the quotes circulating in your market are not a stable signal of what work is worth.
03
And the cheapest quote is usually a mistake
Not a strategy, an error. Someone who has not costed his own hours will quote a number that looks impossible to you because it is impossible. He simply has not noticed yet.
04
Matching it inherits the error
This is the trap. Price against a number produced by bad arithmetic and you adopt the arithmetic. He goes out of business in year three and you have spent three years pricing like him.
2 The Hidden Cost
Where the money in a job actually goes
Take the reported technician wage of $27 an hour and a four hour job including travel
and setup. That is $108 of labour before a drop of chemical, a mile of fuel or a dollar of equipment
wear. Here is what that does to three job prices reported across US markets.
$200 jobWhat rural markets are reported to average$92
$350 jobAround the middle of the reported US range$242
$384 jobThe reported California residential average$276
Labour at $27/hr for a four hour jobEverything else, including your margin
Wage from Jobber's pressure washing industry figures. Job prices are the reported
rural, mid range and California residential averages. Four hours is our working assumption for a job
including travel and setup, not a published figure. The value column is what remains after labour
only, so your consumables, fuel, equipment and overhead still come out of it.
At the low end, more than half the ticket is the operator's own time. That is the number a
part-timer does not put on the quote, because he is thinking of the day as something he was going to
spend anyway. It is also why he can beat you by $80 and still believe he is making money.
The question is not how to win a race against him. It is how to stop being in that
race, which is a targeting problem before it is a pricing one.
3 Your Ceiling
What you can afford to pay for a job
Your numbers. It also prices the thing owners in this trade do most often, which is
dropping the quote to match somebody. That number is usually the one that changes the conversation.
It runs entirely in your browser and nothing leaves this page.
Job economics and the cost of matching a lowball
The hourly figure should be what an hour genuinely costs you, including your own time. The
$27 default is the reported industry technician wage, so treat it as a floor rather than a target.
$
$
%
$
Labour in a job before chemicals, fuel and wear$0
What is left after labour$0
Most you can pay per lead at a 3 to 1 return$0
Effective return on an hour of your time$0
What matching that discount costs you a year$0
4 The Build
How we get you out of the price race
01
Split by surface, not by the word washing
A roof soft wash, a concrete driveway, a deck and a commercial storefront are different jobs at different values with different buyers. Run as one campaign, the cheapest of them sets your bid and the good work never gets served properly.
02
Separate residential from commercial
A homeowner is comparing three quotes on price this afternoon. A property manager is solving a recurring problem on a longer cycle. They should never share a budget, and commercial is where the price race stops mattering.
03
Filter out the people shopping the bottom
Searches with cheap, DIY, rental and how much in them are not your customer. Negatives here do more for the average job value than any bid strategy, because they change who arrives rather than what you pay.
04
Import the booked job, not the form fill
Call tracking, then offline conversion import so the account learns which enquiries became work at what value. Without it the algorithm optimizes toward the cheapest enquiry, which in this trade is reliably the worst one.
05
Move the budget with the weather
Demand is seasonal and a flat monthly budget wastes in the shoulder months and underserves the peak. We pace it against your season rather than the calendar month.
06
Build the pages, at no charge
Sending roof cleaning traffic to a general homepage puts you back in the price comparison you were trying to escape. Each campaign gets its own page. We do not charge for them.
5 The Waste
What we find in an exterior cleaning account
These turn up again and again. In a trade with this little room per job, each one
costs more than it would almost anywhere else.
Targeting
Paying for the DIY crowd
Rental prices, how to do it yourself, what a machine costs. Enormous volume, near zero jobs. Without negatives this is routinely a third of a small budget, spent on people who were never going to hire anyone.
Structure
One campaign called pressure washing
Roofs, driveways, decks, fleet and storefronts under a single bid. The result is that the cheapest surface decides what you pay for the most valuable one.
Geography
A radius that ignores drive time
A job forty minutes out is not the same job. Radius targeting set once and forgotten quietly buys work whose travel eats the margin the calculator above just showed you.
Seasonality
A flat budget through a seasonal year
The same daily spend in February as in June. One half of that is waste and the other half is a ceiling during the weeks that actually pay for the year.
Measurement
No job value coming back
The account counts calls but not what they were worth, so a $180 driveway and a $1,400 roof look identical to it. It will happily buy more of the cheaper one.
The good news
None of this needs more budget
Every item above is a structural fix. In a trade where the room per job is small, that is the whole difference between an account that pays and one that does not.
6 Where We Stop
What we will not do
Promise you a number of jobs. Your pricing, your close rate, your callback speed and the weather all sit outside our control.
Charge a percentage of your ad spend. It pays us to tell you to spend more, which is the wrong incentive to have in the room.
Hold your account. It is in your name, on your card, from the first day to the last.
Tell you to compete on price. If the only plan available is to be the cheapest, you do not need an agency, and we will say so.
Run a flat budget through your off season. Spending evenly across a seasonal year is the easiest waste in this trade to avoid.
Take on more accounts than we can run. Twenty per account manager, which is the reason we sometimes say no.
Flat Fee Pricing
Flat fee, and the landing pages are included
No setup fee, no annual contract, no commitment. Month to month, cancel any time.
LSA Management
$445/mo
Full LSA setup inside the Window Cleaning vertical, lead rating and disputes, review strategy, bid tuning. Drops to $300/mo when we also run your Google Ads.
Google Ads Management
From$695/mo
Campaign separation by surface and property type, seasonal budget pacing, call tracking, offline conversion import.
Google Ads + LSA Bundle
$995/mo
Both channels managed together. The setup most established operators run. That is $695 for Google Ads plus $300 for LSA.
Save $145 / Most Popular
Custom landing pages free on every plan, normally $500 each. Your ad spend goes to Google directly on your own card.
“ You will own your Google Ads account, Local Services Ads account, tracking systems, landing pages, and conversion data from day one. Your accounts stay in your name. Your billing stays on your card. Your data stays yours. If you decide to leave, everything stays with you. No account transfers. No hostage situations. No starting over from scratch. ”
JulianAuthor at Blue Grid Media
7 Owner Questions
The awkward ones, answered
Everyone in my market undercuts me. How does advertising fix that?
It does not fix the undercutting, it stops you having to answer it. Jobber counts 32,193 pressure washing businesses in the US against 41,799 technicians, so the average company is about 1.3 people. With startup costs commonly reported under $5,000 and no licence required, the cheapest quote in your market usually belongs to someone who has not costed his own hours. Matching that price means adopting his mistake. The job of the account is to put you in front of people who are not sorting on price alone, and to stop you paying for the ones who are.
So who am I actually bidding against on Google?
Rarely the same firms twice. That is the part people miss. In a trade with almost no barrier to entry the competitor set turns over constantly, which means the prices you see quoted are not a stable signal of what the work is worth. They are a snapshot of who happens to be new this season.
What can a pressure washing company afford to pay for a lead?
Less than most trades, which is why waste hurts here more than anywhere. At a $350 job, four hours including travel, and the $27 an hour technician wage Jobber reports, you have roughly $242 of gross profit before overhead. The calculator on this page works your own number, and the answer is usually smaller than owners expect, which changes what a sloppy account costs you.
Is Local Services Ads worth it for exterior cleaning?
It can be, and pressure washing sits inside Google's Window Cleaning vertical rather than having its own. It charges per lead instead of per click, which suits a business with a knowable job value. Whether it beats Google Ads depends on your ticket, and we would rather look at your numbers than assert it.
Do you guarantee a number of jobs?
No, and be careful with anyone who does. We do not control your pricing, your close rate, your callback speed or the weather, and all four decide whether a lead becomes a job. What we commit to is the work: campaigns split by surface and by property type, call tracking, offline conversion import so the account optimizes toward booked jobs, and an audit you can read without us in the room.
Our season is short. Does it make sense to advertise year round?
Usually not at the same level. Demand is weather led and the shoulder months are genuinely thinner, so the budget should move with the season rather than sit flat and quietly waste in January. Cutting to nothing has its own cost though, because a cold account relearns the market when you switch it back on.
Should we chase commercial contracts instead?
Often yes, and it is a different campaign, not a different keyword. Commercial work has longer cycles, higher values and buyers who are not sorting on price the way a homeowner comparing three quotes is. If you want it, it gets separated on day one rather than blended in.
What does it cost?
$445/mo for Local Services Ads management, from $695/mo for Google Ads, $995/mo for both. Flat fee, not a percentage of spend, month to month, no setup fee. Landing pages are included. Your ad spend goes to Google directly on your own card.
8 The First Season
What we do before, during and after your peak
Before the season
Build it while it is quiet
Audit and rebuild, written so you can read it without us
Campaigns split by surface and by property type
Negatives against DIY, rental and price-shopper traffic
The first audit is free. So are the landing pages.
30 minutes. We work out what a job actually leaves you, then look at whether your account is
buying the right ones. If the honest answer is that your pricing is the problem, you will get that.
