A promotion in a paid ad will raise your click-through rate almost regardless of what it offers. Whether it makes you money depends on which service it is attached to, and on whether it discounts the work or removes a barrier to the call.
Do not discount emergency work
Someone standing in four inches of water is not comparison shopping. They will ring the first firm that looks capable of arriving today, and they will pay the going rate.
Put ten percent off on that ad and you have not won a job you would otherwise have lost. You have given a discount to a customer who was going to book anyway, on every call the ad produces. The click-through rate rises, the reporting looks encouraging, and the margin quietly leaves.
Promotions belong on deferrable work: the jobs a homeowner can put off until next year, where the offer changes the timing of a decision rather than the price of an inevitable one.
Waive a fee rather than cut a price
The most reliable contractor promotion removes an obstacle instead of lowering the value of the work.
A waived diagnostic fee, a free estimate on a replacement, a no-charge second opinion: each removes the reason somebody hesitates to make the call, without suggesting your labour is worth less than you charge. And the fee waiver has a second effect a discount does not: it gets a technician to the property, where the conversation is completely different from the one on the phone.
Cutting the price of the job itself does the reverse. It anchors a lower number, invites negotiation on the next visit, and attracts the customers most likely to leave a poor review over something unrelated.
Financing is the offer for big-ticket work
On a replacement running into thousands, the obstacle is rarely that the price is too high in principle. It is that the household cannot produce that sum this month.
A monthly figure in the ad addresses that directly and costs you no margin. It also reframes the comparison: against a repair bill or a heating bill, rather than against a competitor’s headline number. For deferrable big-ticket work this outperforms a percentage discount consistently.
Run promotions against your calendar, not the retail one
The instinct is to promote around holidays. The better instinct is to promote when your own diary is empty.
A discount on air conditioning in July buys work you would have had regardless. The same discount in October fills days that would otherwise be dead, and keeps technicians employed through a slow stretch. The question is not what time of year it is, but which weeks you cannot fill.
Seasonal tune-ups are the clearest case. Nobody urgently needs a maintenance visit, so demand for it has to be created: which is exactly the situation an offer is for, and it is scheduled work, so it lands where you want it.
Offers that work, and offers that do not
- Worth running: waived diagnostic or call-out fee; free replacement estimate; financing stated as a monthly figure; a pre-season tune-up at a set price; maintenance plan enrolment, which turns one job into a relationship; off-season scheduling on deferrable work.
- Rarely worth it: percentage off an emergency call; discounts on work with no price the customer can anchor to, where the number means nothing to them; loyalty points and coupon mechanics borrowed from retail; anything requiring a code the caller has to remember.
The one that quietly damages you
A limited-time offer that never ends. If the same “this month only” special has run for two years, the customers who notice conclude the deadline is a fiction, and they are right. It costs you the urgency the mechanism was for, and some of your credibility with it.
Give an offer a real end date, then end it. Run a different one afterwards if you like.
Make the ad and the page say the same thing
Somebody clicking an ad for a waived call-out fee needs to see that offer at the top of the page they land on, in the same words. A general services page fails the check they are making in their first second there, and you have paid for the click.
The same goes for the phone. If the office does not know the offer is running, the caller will find out that it is not quite what the ad said, which is worse than never having advertised it. More on that mismatch in how ad copy filters who calls you.
Frequently asked questions
Do discounts attract bad customers?
Price-led discounts on the job itself tend to, yes. Fee waivers and financing do not carry the same effect, because they remove a barrier rather than signalling that your rate is negotiable.
Should I advertise promotions on emergency services?
Generally no. That customer is not choosing on price, so the discount comes off jobs you would have booked anyway.
When is the best time to run a promotion?
When your schedule has gaps, not when the calendar has a holiday. The purpose is to fill weeks you cannot otherwise fill.
How long should an offer run?
Long enough to book the work and short enough that the deadline is true. A permanent limited-time offer teaches customers to disbelieve you.
Where to start
Look at which weeks in the last year your technicians were underused, then design one offer aimed at filling those weeks, on a service people can postpone. That is a promotion doing work. Anything attached to a job the customer already needs today is a discount you did not have to give.
Real Time Marketing has worked with home service contractors since 2016: plumbing, HVAC, roofing, electrical and other trades, nationwide, from our office in Bradenton, Florida. Agreements are month-to-month. See our pay-per-click management or book a strategy call.
