If you’re comparing us to Marketing Director vs Local Lead Launcher, here’s the honest take.

You need someone to book jobs and fill your calendar. You can hire a $150K marketing director or pay us $96K a year. One sits in your office. One works across your account from day one. Let’s stop the guessing and talk numbers.

The $150K Marketing Director (Full-Time Employee)

A marketing director in the home-service space costs $110K–$180K base salary plus benefits. Call it $150K all-in (salary, taxes, health insurance, workers comp, payroll overhead). You get a person. A salaried presence. Someone who answers to you.

On day one, they know nothing about your operation. They’ve never dispatched a crew, chased a follow-up, or felt the sting of a cancelled job. Most home-service operators have hired one before. Most regret it by month six.

What a marketing director typically does

• Owns your Google Business Profile (if they know how to actually optimize it, not just claim it)
• Manages Facebook and Instagram posts (usually at 2x the cost per click of a professional campaign)
• Builds a website (often bloated, rarely conversion-focused, usually needs redesign in 18 months)
• Coordinates with whoever’s running your PPC if you have one
• Attends meetings. Many meetings.
• Leaves. This is important. Home-service marketing directors turn over 18–24 months on average

The hiring problem cuts both ways. They don’t know home service. You don’t know marketing. They’re defensive about their experience. You’re frustrated about your results. By month four, you’re both wondering why they’re there.

The real cost structure of an FTE

$150K salary is not your total cost. Add 25–30% for benefits, payroll tax, equipment, software subscriptions they request, training, and finally the 3–4 months of ramp time where you’re paying but they’re learning. Actual landed cost: $185K–$195K in year one. Year two, it’s $160K–$170K if they stay.

Turnover is the knife. If they leave in month 18, you’ve spent $225K, have no continuity, and now you’re hiring again.

Local Lead Launcher at $96K/Year

Flat rate. No surprises. No ramp time. No learning curve on your business because we already know home service (we’ve built this for HVAC shops, plumbers, roofing crews, and pool companies). We cost less and we show up with a playbook.

You don’t get an employee. You get a focused service with one job: move the needle on your cost-per-booked-job.

What you’re actually paying for

• Account audit (your current calendar, pipeline, cost per booking, seasonal patterns)
• Campaign setup and management (Google Local Services Ads, PPC, organic search optimization)
• Landing pages that close (not vanity pages, actual conversion machines)
• Lead qualification (filtering out the tire-kickers before your crew sees them)
• Continuous optimization (we kill what doesn’t work within 4–6 weeks)
• Reporting (actual numbers: bookings, cost-per-booking, pipeline velocity, forecast)
• Scaling (if it’s working, we know how to spend more and keep your unit economics intact)

We’re not in your office. We’re in your Google account, your ad account, your landing pages, and your data. We don’t attend meetings. We send reports.

The accountability piece

A marketing director is paid to exist. You pay them if bookings go up or down. We’re paid to move the number. If we don’t hit the targets we set with you in month one, the conversation changes in month two. That’s the difference.

Head-to-Head: The Numbers That Matter

Your $5M–$20M operation is booking 200–500 jobs per month depending on your vertical. Cost-per-booking right now? Probably $180–$350 if you’re tracking it (most aren’t).

Scenario: HVAC company, $8M revenue, 280 jobs/month booked

Current pipeline: 280 bookings at $240 cost-per-booking = $67,200/month in customer acquisition spend (or lost opportunity if you’re not spending that much).

Marketing director path: Hire at $150K. Best case in year one: 10–15% improvement in cost-per-booking ($240 → $210). New cost: $58,800/month. You’ve “saved” $8,400/month = $100,800 per year. Hire cost: $195K. Break-even month seven. Seems fine. Then they leave in month 18.

Local Lead Launcher path: Contract at $96K/year. Audit shows you’re overspending on cold Facebook traffic and underutilizing Local Services Ads. Reoptimize in month two. By month four, cost-per-booking is $205. New cost: $57,400/month = $68,800/month savings = $82,560/year. Your net after our fee: $82,560 − $96,000 = paying $13,440/year more in year one, but you’re not hiring. Year two: You save $82,560 and pay $96K. Your actual savings: negative $13,440 year one, positive $68,560 year two, and you don’t need to rehire.

But here’s the move: if we improve cost-per-booking by 20% ($240 → $192) instead of 10%, your savings are $134,400/year, minus $96K fee = $38,400 net win in year one alone. That’s the range we see. 10–25% improvement in cost-per-booking within 120 days, depending on where you’re starting.

The hiring director hits 10%. We hit 15–20%. That spread is $60K–$80K per year in your pocket.

When You Should Hire a Marketing Director

You’ve hit $15M+ revenue and you’re opening a second location. You need someone who breathes your brand, manages a team, and owns brand strategy as a continuous function. You also need to be willing to spend $18–24 months finding the right person and accept 12 months of underperformance while they learn your operation.

You have an operations background and you want to build a marketing department (not just run campaigns). You’re comfortable with turnover risk and the cost of rehiring every 18–24 months. You value the luxury of having someone in-house even if the ROI is murky.

That’s honest. It’s not wrong. It’s just expensive and slower than the alternative.

When Local Lead Launcher is the Right Call

You’re $5M–$20M and you’re stuck on bookings. You hit a ceiling and you know it’s a lead-gen problem, not an operations problem. You’ve tried an agency before and they took your money and disappeared. You want someone who knows your business model and speaks your language, not jargon.

You need results in 120 days, not quarterly reviews where everyone says “it’s working but we need more time.” You want someone to own the cost-per-booking number and get fired if they don’t move it. You don’t have the appetite to hire an FTE and wait 6–12 months for them to contribute.

You want predictable cost. $96K/year. No surprises. No scope creep. No “we need a new tool” at month four. No paying someone to be learning on your dime.

The Accountability Trap Nobody Mentions

A marketing director owns your brand. That’s healthy. But they also own their job security. Watch how fast they pivot to “brand awareness” and “thought leadership” when the booking numbers don’t move. It’s not malicious. It’s self-preservation.

We own one metric: bookings and cost-per-booking. If we’re not moving it, we don’t get to redefine success. You don’t pay for reach, impressions, or engagement. You pay for a result. That accountability is alien to most agencies and most FTEs.

That’s why operators usually prefer us. Not because we’re cheaper (we’re sometimes more expensive year one). Because we can’t hide behind activity.

The Continuity Advantage

Your marketing director takes two weeks off. Their replacement covers their email but doesn’t know the strategy. Your director leaves. You’re starting over. Your director goes on parental leave (congratulations to them, real problem for you).

We don’t have those gaps. Your account runs on systems and documented strategy, not tribal knowledge inside one person’s head. If your point of contact changes, the work doesn’t stop. That sounds boring until you’ve lived through hiring a third marketing director in 30 months.

What to Do This Week

Pull your last 12 months of booking data. Specifically: how many jobs booked, from what source, and what you spent on customer acquisition. If you don’t have that number, that’s your real problem (and why a marketing director probably won’t fix it either).

Calculate your current cost-per-booking. If you’re below $150, you’re probably doing fine and you can hire or contract based on preference. If you’re $200+, you have a leverage point. A 15–20% improvement is real money, and that’s our target window.

Then: Are you hiring because you want a team to manage, or because you want your bookings to move? If it’s the second one, let’s talk. If it’s the first, hire a director and budget $200K+ and accept 18-month payback.

Both paths work. Only one path is honest about what you’re buying.