Hiring a marketing company as a home inspector, or doing it yourself
What marketing for a home inspection firm should cost, the red flags in inspector-specific pitches, what to keep in house, and why a trial beats a contract.
Home inspectors get a specific set of pitches. Directory memberships that promise buyer leads. Twelve-month SEO retainers. Companies that will "manage your agent relationships." And the one that should worry you most, the referral-fee arrangement dressed up as a marketing agreement.
Some of it is fine. Most of it is priced for a business with far better margins than a two-inspector firm. Here is how to tell them apart.
What to keep in house, permanently
Three things should never be outsourced, because outsourcing them removes the thing that makes them work:
The review ask. Nobody can say the sentence in the kitchen except the person who did the inspection. Software can send the link. The ask is yours. The reviews guide has the script.
Agent relationships. An agent refers a person, not a firm. A contractor calling agents on your behalf produces a list of offices you have not visited. Teach the class yourself, take the calls yourself, and let someone else handle the ads that get you into the room.
Report quality and turnaround. This is your entire product and the only durable reason an agent uses you twice.
Everything else is delegable: Google Ads, Meta ads, the website, profile maintenance, the automations, reporting, books.
What it should cost
Rough US ranges for a firm doing 30 to 60 inspections a month:
- Google Ads management: $300 to $700 a month, or 12% to 20% of spend. Ad spend is separate and paid directly to Google.
- Meta ads management: $250 to $600 a month plus spend.
- Local SEO and Google profile management: $300 to $800 a month.
- A ten to fourteen page website: $2,500 to $7,000 one time, or $150 to $300 a month bundled.
- Missed-call text-back and follow-up automation: $50 to $250 a month.
- Full-service everything: $1,200 to $2,500 a month for a firm at this size.
If a proposal for a solo inspection firm comes in at $4,000 a month, the plan is priced for a builder or a multi-office brokerage. At a $450 average fee, $4,000 a month is nine extra inspections just to break even before profit.
Red flags
"We guarantee page one" or a number of leads. Nobody controls Google's ranking. A lead guarantee usually means shared directory leads sent to four inspectors at once.
Ownership of the accounts. If the Google Ads account, the Business Profile, the domain or the website is in their name, you are renting your own marketing. Everything must be built in accounts you own, with you as primary owner and them as a manager. Ask this before anything else.
A twelve-month contract with a three-month ramp. In a trade where the average firm has 4 reviews and 35.4% have no website, the first ninety days of work should be visible almost immediately. A long ramp is a way to bill through the period where nothing is happening.
Reporting on impressions, clicks and "reach." The only report that matters lists booked inspections and what they cost. If a report has no line for booked jobs, ask for one. If they cannot produce it, they are not tracking to the outcome.
Pay-per-referral arrangements with agents or brokerages. This is the one with legal exposure, not just wasted money. Paying a real estate agent or brokerage for inspection referrals runs into RESPA Section 8 and into state real estate commission rules, and marketing agreements are a common way people try to paper over it. Talk to your own attorney before signing anything that ties payment to referrals. Practically, it also selects for the agents who leave the moment a competitor pays more.
Content in bulk. Fifty auto-generated city pages will not rank and will actively hurt you now that both Google and the AI answer engines discount duplicated templates. Ten real pages beat fifty thin ones, as covered in the AI search guide.
Seven questions to ask before you sign
- Who owns the ad account, the website and the domain when this ends?
- What is the first thing you would fix for my firm, and why that first?
- How do you track a booked inspection, not a form fill?
- Can I see a report from a current inspection client, with the numbers redacted?
- What do you need from me each week, in minutes?
- Which of your services do you think I should not buy?
- Can I try one service before committing to anything?
Question six separates a consultant from a sales rep. Anyone who says you need all of it, immediately, is selling a package.
The order of operations
For most inspection firms the correct sequence is fixed, and paying for step five before step one is how money gets wasted:
- Answer the phone. Missed-call text-back and real hours. Near-free, largest return. See the missed calls guide and the calculator.
- Reviews. One ask per inspection, tracked weekly.
- Google Business Profile, filled in completely, including services with prices.
- A site that loads fast, publishes prices and shows a sample report.
- Ancillary attach rate, which raises the value of every lead the next steps buy.
- Then paid ads, pre-listing first.
Anyone proposing to start at step six for a firm that has not done one through five is going to spend your money teaching your competitors.
Doing it yourself
Entirely reasonable for a solo inspector. Budget roughly four hours a week for the first two months, then two hours a week to maintain, and expect to handle: the review process, the profile, the site edits, one weekly Google Ads search terms check, and monthly review replies.
What most owners actually run out of is not skill but the specific hour. If your calendar is full, the honest choice is to hire the pieces, not to plan an evening you will spend writing reports instead.
Why a trial beats a contract
An inspection firm buying marketing is being asked to pay for something it cannot evaluate, from a stranger, before seeing any result. In a trade where the median firm has 4 reviews and 30.2% have none, the gap between a proposal and a result is enormous, and the proposal always looks the same either way.
A trial removes the guess. Two weeks, one service, built in your accounts, no card. At the end you have either a set of booked inspections you can count or you have not, and either way you keep what was built.
Frequently asked
Should I use an agency that only works with inspectors? Specialization helps with terminology and campaign structure. It also means they are running your competitor's ads in the next county. Ask about exclusivity in your service area, in writing.
Is a directory membership worth it? Occasionally, in markets where a particular directory has real buyer traffic. Test it for a quarter with a tracking number and count booked jobs. Most do not survive that test.
What about paying a per-lead price? Fine in principle, as long as leads are exclusive to you, and the price is under a fifth of your average booked value including ancillaries. Shared leads sent to four inspectors are not worth what they cost.
Every service here is available as a free 14-day trial, built in your own accounts, no card. Text or call (385) 832-6175, or read the benchmark report first.