PPC Is Not a Growth Strategy

In Brief

AI is moving up the funnel in home services: homeowners now research equipment, pricing, and repair-versus-replace decisions with AI tools before ever contacting a contractor, so the buying decision starts before the first call.

On the deal front: Greenwood Industries acquired Central New York's Diamond Roofing; the RFE-backed home-inspection roll-up, “LaunchPad Home Group,” acquired Pro-Spect Inspection Services; and Watsco declared a $3.30 quarterly dividend payable July 31, extending its streak to 52 consecutive years

The View from Jay Street

PPC Is Not a Growth Strategy

Your PPC strategy is not going to grow your business.

It might sustain it. It will generate leads. It is, without question, a necessary part of operating a home services company in a digital-first world. But it’s not a growth strategy. If PPC is the entirety of your marketing plan, the best you can hope for is modest volume gains, and rising customer acquisition cost.

The Commodity Trap

Like it or not, the home services sector is a commodity market. Whatever you do, there are dozens of other companies, contractors, and tradesmen in your area that provide basically the same service. Some are faster. Most are willing to undercut you.

From a digital standpoint, nearly everyone is running a version of the same playbook. Same keywords. Same geos. Same lead aggregators. Same hassles over Google Business, Yelp, and BBB profiles.

You absolutely should optimize your campaigns for a better cost per lead. You absolutely should optimize your landing pages for higher conversion rates. You absolutely should spend more to increase lead flow.

But if you think your competitors aren't doing the exact same thing, you're mistaken. Everyone’s fishing in the same pond, for the same fish, with the same bait.

In the home services sector, PPC is the cost of doing business. It is NOT a path to sustainable growth.

The Power of Brand Strategy

If you want to actually expand your market share—not just optimize your position on the search engine results page—you need a strategy that goes well beyond PPC.

That’s where brand strategy comes in.

If you’re really committed to expanding your market share and putting pressure on the competition, you need to be invested in making your brand a household name. Your objective is to develop mindshare in your market. You want what I call "brand customers."

When a homeowner's basement floods, their garage door falls off the track, or their A/C blows a fuse, a brand customer doesn’t waste any time. They grab their phone and search for your company by name. Instead of "repair company near me," they ask Google or their chatbot of choice, "get me the number for Acme Home Services!"

In most cases, the customer taps on your Google Business Profile. $0! Worst-case, you pay for a branded click (pennies on the dollar compared to a generic search term!).

These customers already know who they want to come to their house. And they convert at a dramatically higher rate than someone who found you sandwiched between nine competitors.

The Attribution Problem

So why is brand strategy chronically underinvested in this sector?

No one knows how to measure it.

Brand spend does not tie cleanly to a monthly lead report. You cannot expect to measure ROAS on a billboard, TV spot, or a Little League sponsorship the way you would with PPC. Operators managing quarterly performance—especially PE-backed portcos operating on 4-6 year horizons—avoid what they cannot measure precisely.

Brand requires a longer time horizon and a broader view than most firms are comfortable with. But the longer they avoid it, the more permanently they trap themselves in the commodity game, and stunt their potential growth.

The Brand Multiplier Effect

Here is the irony: a well-executed brand campaign actually makes your entire marketing operation more efficient. And it can happen much faster than people think. And it can be measurable. I've seen results in 3-6 months.

When more customers search your name instead of the category, your entire marketing operation becomes more efficient:

• CPL stabilizes and improves over time.
• Lead quality goes up because customers specifically sought you out.
• Customer complaints go down because they already trust you.
• Referrals increase because your name is seared in their memory.

Brand investment does not compete with your PPC budget. It amplifies it.

Conclusion

The operators winning at scale in home services are not the ones obsessing over driving down cost per lead. They’re the ones with an effective strategy to be first in the mind of their target customer.

Investing in PPC will get your business off the ground. Investing in your brand will get you market dominance.

This week: Work with your search engine marketing team to pull a brand search report. How many of your inbound customers are searching your company by name? Any business serious about market share should target a minimum of 10% of their inbound volume coming through branded search. I have helped companies increase that number to as high as one-in-four customers. The path to growth runs directly through that metric.

Daniel Egan

Daniel Egan is the founder of Jay Street Consulting. He has over a decade of experience in the home services sector. As part of a fast-growing, institutionally-run platform, he helped lead the business into a nine-figure exit. He has built teams, managed agencies, and learned firsthand what drives enterprise value–and what quietly erodes it.

Operator’s Edge

The competitive advantage isn't just HVAC technical expertise.
Communication skills, not technical mastery, separate top technicians from the rest. With federal projections showing roughly 40,000 HVAC openings per year through 2034 and no consistent national training model, the answer is structured programs that pair hands-on technical instruction with role-playing, scenario training, and paid onboarding. As AI and smart diagnostics automate more troubleshooting, the ability to build trust in the home becomes the durable differentiator.

Speak with my agent: How AI is changing the HVAC sales conversation.
Homeowners now use AI tools to research equipment, pricing, financing, and repair-versus-replace decisions before ever contacting a contractor. The sales conversation starts before the contractor knows the customer exists, and search engines, AI assistants, and marketplaces are all competing to own the transaction layer for local services. Contractors who add pricing ranges, good-better-best options, and financing to their own websites capture buyers early, before Google or an AI assistant steers them somewhere else.

Inside the 2026 Trades State of the Industry
Revenue per technician, gross margin, callback rate, and membership renewal are the metrics trades businesses should benchmark heading into 2026. Technology adoption keeps accelerating and labor shortages remain the biggest operational constraint.

The Deal Sheet

Greenwood Industries, a Worcester, Massachusetts commercial roofing and building-envelope contractor acquired Diamond Roofing, a Central New York firm founded in 1947. Diamond Roofing will keep its name and leadership. The deal extends Greenwood's New York footprint and adds waterproofing, masonry, and specialty roofing capacity; terms were not disclosed. This is at least Greenwood's second New York roofing tuck-in, following Hudson Valley Roofing.

LaunchPad Home Group, an RFE Investment Partners-backed platform rolling up residential home-inspection companies, acquired Pro-Spect Inspection Services, which serves Delaware, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, establishing LaunchPad's Mid-Atlantic presence. Pro-Spect's founders will remain involved. Terms were undisclosed.

Watsco, the large HVAC/R distributor, declared a regular quarterly cash dividend of $3.30 per share on its Common and Class B stock, payable July 31 to shareholders of record as of July 16. The company noted it has paid dividends for 52 consecutive years and frames its policy as returning cash flow while keeping a conservative balance sheet.