Plenty of tradespeople get talked into paying for ads – Google Ads, Facebook boosts, “lead generation” packages that charge per enquiry. Some of it works. A lot of it is money handed over for leads that were never that warm to begin with.
There’s a cheaper, slower, and honestly more reliable way to get more work: reviews.
Why reviews outperform ads for local trades
When someone needs a plumber, electrician, or builder, they’re not window shopping. They’re comparing 3–4 options on Google and picking based on one thing above all else: who else trusted this person with the same job.
Reviews do three things ads can’t:
- They build trust instantly, before you’ve said a word to the customer.
- They keep working for you for years – a good review from 2023 is still selling for you in 2026. An ad stops the day you stop paying.
- They improve your Google ranking, which means you show up more often for free, on top of convincing people once they see you.
An ad gets you seen once. A review count in the hundreds gets you seen and chosen, every time someone searches, for as long as it’s there.
The maths
Say an ad campaign costs €300/month and brings in 10 enquiries, of which 3 turn into jobs. That’s €100 per job, before you’ve even done the work.
Now say instead you spend that same energy asking every satisfied customer for a review. Cost: nothing but a text message. Over 6 months you go from 20 reviews to 70. Your ranking climbs. You start showing up organically for “plumber near [town]” – for free – and customers ringing you already trust you before you pick up, because they’ve read what your last 50 customers said.
That’s not a one-off cost per lead. It’s a compounding asset that gets more valuable the longer you run your business.
Why most tradespeople don’t do this well
Not because it’s hard – because it’s easy to forget. The job’s done, you’re already in the van heading to the next one, and asking for a review slips your mind. By the time you remember, the customer’s moved on and the moment’s gone.
The businesses that build up review counts fast are almost always the ones that automate the ask: a text goes out to the customer within an hour of the job being marked complete, with a direct one-tap link to leave a review. No one has to remember anything.
The honest bit
Reviews won’t fix bad work, and no system will get you 5 stars if the job wasn’ done right. But if you’re doing solid work and just not being seen for it, a steady review engine will bring in more jobs, more cheaply, and for longer, than most ad spend will.
Cloud47 builds a review system into every trade website we set up – automatic requests after every job, so your Google profile keeps climbing without you having to chase anyone.
