Hiring a marketing agency for siding and gutter work

February is when siding and gutter owners get pitched. Crews are patching winter damage, spring re-side estimates are trickling in, and every agency with a home services package knows the owner has an afternoon free before hail season. Many of those agencies will set you up the way they set up a pest control firm, and an exterior company fits that template badly for two reasons.

You run two businesses under one name: siding, a large job a homeowner buys rarely, and gutters, a smaller ticket that comes back every fall with the leaves. And Google treats the two differently, so an agency that has not noticed will build half your account on something that does not exist.

Here is what we would want an owner to ask any agency, including us, before signing.

The question that sorts agencies fastest

Ask: “Which Local Services Ads category will you put us in, and how will you handle the gutter work?”

Google’s Local Services Ads list includes Siding services, for companies that install, repair, maintain, remodel and remove siding. There is no gutter category. Gutters appear only inside the Roofing description, which mentions “shingles, gutters, and venting”, and the Window cleaning one. A roofer that hangs gutters can catch some of that work through its roofing listing; a siding company or a gutter-only shop cannot.

So the right answer has two parts: siding goes into Local Services Ads, and gutters get their own plan built from search ads, the Business Profile and a page for each gutter service. An agency promising “Local Services Ads for everything you do” has not opened the category list.

Questions about screening, licenses and claims

The rest of the meeting should test whether the agency knows the rules your ads live under.

• “What will Google check before our siding ads run?” Google asks Siding services advertisers for general and professional liability insurance, state business and owner licenses where local law requires them, and a verified Business Profile, and says screening averages three to four weeks after documents are in. Since October 2025 approved advertisers carry the single Google Verified badge. An agency promising ads live next week is guessing.
• “Where does our license number go?” In California, Business and Professions Code 7030.5 requires a contractor’s license number in all forms of advertising. The state files siding under D-41 and metal gutters under D-24 or C-43, so a good agency checks that your license covers every service an ad names.
• “What will our storm ads offer?” Minnesota prohibits contractors from offering to pay a homeowner’s insurance deductible, or offering anything of value to win a contract for damage covered by an insurance claim, with fines up to $10,000 per violation. “Free gutter guards with your storm repair” is an offer of value tied to a claim. Ask to see the storm ads before they run.
• “How will you handle older houses?” EPA’s lead paint rule requires certification for anyone paid to disturb painted surfaces in a home built before 1978, past a minor-repair line of 20 square feet outside, and EPA runs a public search for certified firms. An agency that knows this will want your certification on the site and the profile.
• “What happens after an in-home estimate?” The FTC’s Cooling-Off Rule gives buyers until midnight of the third business day to cancel a sale of $25 or more made in their home, including when they invited the salesperson, and the seller owes them two copies of a cancellation form. Confirmations and follow-up should respect that window.

Ask how they treat lead sites

An agency should have a view on Angi, HomeAdvisor and Thumbtack. Ours is that shared leads can fill a thin schedule while your reviews build, judged on signed jobs rather than volume. It is worth knowing that in 2023 the FTC finalized an order making HomeAdvisor pay up to $7.2 million in redress over claims about the quality and source of the leads it sold that the FTC called false, misleading or unsubstantiated. An agency that cannot say how it would measure a lead site against your own profile will leave you buying on faith.

What the first ninety days should look like

For a company selling both, a plan we would sign off on runs in this order:

• Weeks 1 to 2: measurement. Call tracking by source, every lead tagged siding or gutter, storm or planned. Without that split, a busy gutter month makes every channel look cheap.
• Weeks 3 to 6: being found. The Siding services application filed, profile categories set with your main work as the primary (Whitespark’s 2026 survey ranks the primary category first among map-pack factors), and a search campaign for gutter work.
• Weeks 7 to 10: reasons to choose you. Before-and-after photos by material, the license number everywhere, a lead-safe page and a review request after every job.
• Weeks 10 to 13: keeping customers. Fall gutter reminders to past siding customers and a referral ask to the neighbors.

Started now, tracking and screening finish before April, when hail usually starts to fill the phones.

What a monthly report should show you

A report worth paying for follows each lead to a signed job, with siding and gutters in separate columns.

• Cost per signed job, not just cost per lead. LocaliQ’s 2025 home services benchmarks, covering April 2024 to March 2025, have no siding line. The nearest, Roofing & Gutters, put the median search cost per lead at $228.15 with a 3.70% conversion rate, and Doors & Windows Sales came in at $200.34. At those prices, a report that stops at leads hides the number that matters.
• Calls missed. CallRail’s January 2025 report found home services businesses missed 14% of calls, and a crew working from ladders is rarely in a position to pick up.
• Review count and recency. BrightLocal’s 2026 Local Consumer Review Survey, published this week, found 47% of consumers will not use a business with fewer than 20 reviews and 74% only care about reviews from the last three months.

What we are telling clients

• Ask every agency which Local Services Ads category it would use and how it would cover gutters, and treat a vague answer as a no.
• File the Siding services application this month so the three to four weeks of screening finish before April.
• Pull last year’s storm ads and flyers and check each one for deductible offers, free add-ons tied to claims and a missing license number.
• Request reviews from every customer you served since September, while the job is fresh.
• If you work on houses built before 1978, find your lead-safe certificate and plan where it will appear online.
• Ask for a sample report that shows signed jobs by service, not a dashboard of clicks.

An agency that answers these plainly, and splits siding from gutters without being asked, is worth a second meeting. Our page for siding and gutter companies sets out the plan we would follow, and our Google Ads and Local Services Ads work shows how the paid side runs alongside your Business Profile.