Scorpion vs LocaliQ for home service companies

The last week of June has done what the last week of June does. The heat arrived, the AC calls stacked up, and the HVAC and plumbing owners we talk to are running flat out with a phone that will not stop. It is also when many owners start wondering whether their marketing could be doing more, and agency proposals land in the same inbox as the service requests.

Two names come up often in those conversations for home service companies: Scorpion and LocaliQ. Both are large, established and serious about local marketing. They are also quite different companies, and the differences are worth understanding before either sales call.

What a home service owner is actually buying

Strip away the proposals and a home service company buys three things from a marketing partner: more booked jobs, fewer wasted leads, and less of the owner’s time spent thinking about marketing. The questions that decide which partner delivers those are practical.

• Where do your jobs come from today? The map pack, Local Services Ads, paid search, referrals, or a mix. A partner strong where you are weak is worth more than one strong where you already win.
• Who owns the website and the ad accounts? This decides how painful it is to leave, and it is the question owners most often forget to ask.
• How will calls be measured? Recorded, tracked by source and marked booked or not. A lead report without bookings is a traffic report.
• How many locations do you have, or plan to have? Multi-location and franchise work is a specialty of its own.

Scorpion, built around home services

Scorpion is a marketing and technology company with a long-standing practice in home services, alongside law firms and franchise systems. It offers websites, SEO, paid search, social advertising and related services, and it builds much of its work on technology it develops itself, including its websites and the reporting clients see.

For a home service company, the strength is familiarity. Scorpion speaks the language of repair calls, replacement leads and seasonal swings, and it works with franchise brands where many locations need consistent sites and campaigns. If you want one company to handle a lot and bring category experience with it, that is the pitch, and it is a credible one.

The question to settle early is ownership. Because Scorpion builds on its own technology, ask in writing what you keep if you ever move on: the content, the domain, the design, the ad account and the call recordings.

LocaliQ, Gannett’s local marketing arm

LocaliQ is the marketing services business of Gannett, the newspaper publisher. It serves local businesses across many categories, home services among them, with search advertising, social advertising, display, SEO, websites and email, and it reports through its own client software that tracks the leads and calls campaigns produce.

Its strengths are reach and breadth. LocaliQ runs campaigns across a wide range of channels, has sales and service people in many local markets, and publishes guides for small business owners. For an owner who wants to be visible on several channels at once and prefers a named contact who knows the area, that model has real appeal.

Ask the same ownership questions here, especially about the ad accounts and the call tracking numbers. Numbers printed on trucks and listed on your profile are worth planning for early, since moving them later can be awkward.

The two programs in one table

	Scorpion	LocaliQ
Main focus	Home services, legal and franchise marketing	Local advertising across many channels and categories
What you get	Website, SEO, paid ads and reporting on its own technology	Search, social and display ads, SEO, websites and email
How work gets done	Category-focused teams using in-house software	Local reps and campaign specialists with a client platform
Accounts and data	Ask what transfers if you leave: site, content, domain, ad account	Ask who holds the ad accounts and the tracking numbers
Reporting	Leads and calls through Scorpion’s own reporting	Leads and calls through LocaliQ’s client software
Get in writing	Term, cancellation, what you own at the end	Term, cancellation, what you own at the end

Where each is strong, and where it strains

Scorpion

Pros

• Long experience with home service companies and their seasonality
• A strong fit for franchise and multi-location brands that need consistency
• One provider for the site, search and ads

Cons

• Proprietary technology means ownership and portability need careful checking
• A full-service program may be more than a two-truck business needs this year
• Ask who will handle your account day to day and how often you will hear from them

LocaliQ

Pros

• Broad media buying across search, social and display
• Local teams in many markets and published guides for owners
• A single client platform for leads and calls across channels

Cons

• A generalist across categories, so ask for home service examples specifically
• Many channels at once can spread a modest budget thin
• As with Scorpion, get the ownership of accounts and tracking numbers in writing

A few home service companies, and where each should look

A regional HVAC franchise with dozens of locations. Scorpion’s franchise experience and consistent platform are built for this.

A roofing company that wants to show up on social and display as well as search after storms. LocaliQ’s multi-channel buying fits that reach-first goal.

A family plumbing company with three trucks that wins on the map and on referrals. Neither is a natural first choice. That business needs its profile, reviews and phone answering in order before a large ad program, and it needs to keep what it builds.

A company burned before by losing a website at the end of a contract. Start with whoever puts ownership in writing most clearly, whatever the name on the proposal.

Another option worth considering

That three-truck plumber is the kind of company Beyaoshy is set up to serve. We have worked with local businesses since 2015, and for a home service company the job is joined up: the Google Business Profile and local SEO that win the map, Google Ads and Local Services Ads for the weeks demand spikes, review requests after every job, a site that turns visits into calls, and a GoHighLevel CRM that texts back a missed call before the customer tries the next company.

You keep all of it. Ad accounts, website, tracking and CRM are yours from the first day. The report shows calls and booked jobs by source, not clicks. And because other agencies white-label our services under their own brand, our delivery has to satisfy two sets of eyes.

Before July is out

One timing note for this summer: Google is ending chat on Business Profiles on July 31, so if customers message you there today, point them to a text line or a form on your site now, before those conversations stop arriving. Whichever agency you talk to, ask it how it will handle that change for you.

See how we run marketing for home service companies and Google Ads, or read the overview for owners.