This guide is for a licensed electrical contractor in the US who wants more booked calls and has to decide where the money goes. Two kinds of work pay the bills. Service tickets run $250 to $900. Panel upgrades, EV chargers and generators run $2,000 to $12,000. Storm season and the summer load peak bring the service calls in on their own; the larger jobs are the ones worth paying for, and they fill the quiet months.
Local Services Ads cover electricians in every US metro and are the cheapest place to start. Marketplaces charge per lead and the fee depends on the job and the location. An agency retainer for this trade typically runs $1,500 to $4,000 a month, with ad spend on top. Each step below names its main drawback.
Run Local Services Ads before PPC
Set up a Google Local Services Ads profile before you spend on regular search ads. You pay per lead, and Google screens for a state electrical license before the profile goes live. Electrical licensing is strict in most states, and that screening keeps unlicensed competitors out of the top placement. Set a weekly budget, dispute leads that were never a real job, and ask every LSA customer for a review, because rating and review count sit next to your name in the ad. The drawback: you do not choose which searches you appear for, and a smaller metro may produce only a handful of leads a month. Treat LSA as the floor and add other channels on top of it.
Pick one marketplace and measure cost per booked job
Lead marketplaces sell the same homeowner request to several contractors. Thumbtack lists you for free and charges per lead, with fees that vary by location and job type. Other marketplaces charge for every lead whether or not you win it. Choose one, run it for two months, and keep three numbers: leads bought, jobs booked, and revenue from those jobs. Compare the cost per booked job against your average ticket and decide with that number in hand. The drawback is speed. The homeowner has already sent the request to several shops, and the first to call back usually gets the visit. A marketplace only pays off if someone in your office answers within minutes, which is why call handling sits next to lead generation on this site.
Build a page for each high-ticket job
Service calls come from “electrician near me” searches, where you compete with every shop in town. The $2,000 to $12,000 jobs come from more specific searches: EV charger installation, 200 amp panel upgrade, standby generator install. Write one page on your site for each, with the local permit situation, a price range, and photos of your own work. A plain contractor website is enough; the listing page for this job includes website builders priced by the month. The drawback is time. Organic rankings take months to build, so publish these pages now and run paid channels while you wait. If you hire an agency later, these pages are the first thing it will want to rewrite, so keep the copy factual and the photos yours.
Put call tracking on every channel
Most electrical leads arrive by phone, so without tracking numbers you cannot tell which channel booked the job. CallRail is the common choice in home services. It assigns a number per channel, records calls, and connects to ServiceTitan and HubSpot. Listen to a sample of recorded calls each week. Shops that do this often find the lead problem is partly an answering problem: calls that rang out, quotes never followed up, a generator inquiry handled like a routine service call. The drawback: another monthly bill, and tracking numbers need care on your Google Business Profile so your main number stays consistent across the web. Ask the vendor how it handles that before you sign.
Hire an agency once the retainer fits your ticket mix
An agency makes sense when you have more volume than you can manage in-house and want SEO, PPC and LSA run together. Blue Corona starts around $2,500 a month, focuses on lead attribution, integrates with ServiceTitan, and clients report no long-term contracts. RYNO Strategic Solutions runs SEO, PPC, LSA, websites and review management from around $3,000 a month. At those prices, one panel upgrade or generator install a month covers the fee before ad spend. The drawback: SEO results take months to show, and at least one agency on this page asks for a 12-month commitment. Ask for the contract term, the exit terms and a sample attribution report before you sign anything.
The full list of agencies and tools for this is at electricians: get more leads.