Services
By type of work
Programs
About
Resources
S5 By stage of business
In year one you have no reviews, no profile history and nothing much to show, so the order you do things in matters more than the budget. Verify the Google Business Profile first, get a real site up, earn the first reviews from real jobs, then buy attention. Doing it in that order costs less and works sooner.
It is not the pouring. Most people who start a concrete company are good at the work, because that is why they started. What holds year one back is that every system a customer uses to judge you rewards age, and you do not have any.
The map pack prefers profiles with history and reviews, and you have neither. Search results prefer sites that have existed for a while and been linked to, and yours is three weeks old. Local Services Ads want licences, insurance and background checks cleared before you can spend a dollar. Homeowners comparing three quotes use reviews as the tiebreak, and yours says nothing at all. Every one of these is solvable. None of them is solvable quickly, which is why the order matters so much.
The other thing nobody says out loud: the work you take in year one sets the marketing you can do in year two. Twenty small repair jobs produce twenty chances at a review and twenty sets of photographs. Two big jobs produce two. If you are starting from nothing, volume of finished jobs is worth more than the margin on any one of them, because it is the raw material everything else is built from.
This is the part that is worth more than anything else on the page. Do these in this sequence, not in parallel and not in the order that feels urgent.
Free, and the slowest to start working, which is exactly why it goes first. Verification can take days or weeks. Set the primary category to concrete contractor, list your services individually, set service areas to where you really work, and add photographs of real jobs as you finish them.
Five honest pages beat fifty thin ones. Who you are, what you pour, where you work, what it roughly costs, and how to reach you. It has to load fast on a phone, because that is where the comparison happens.
Ask every satisfied customer, the day the job finishes, while they are still standing on it. The first five change your profile from empty to real. Steady beats a burst, and every one has to be genuine.
Licences, insurance and the background checks that some categories require. It is the slowest approval you will deal with, so begin it in month one whether or not you are ready to spend. It cannot be rushed later.
Search ads on the specific jobs you want, pointed at the pages you built in step two, with a negative keyword list from day one. Below roughly $1,500 a month there are too few clicks to learn from, and you end up guessing with real money.
Most new companies do this backwards. They buy ads first because ads feel like action, land them on a page that cannot convert, get expensive leads, and conclude that marketing does not work. It worked. It was just pointed at nothing.
| Channel | What it does here | When it pays | When it does not |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Business Profile | The only free route into the highest intent traffic there is | Immediately, and it compounds all year | Never. This is the first thing, always |
| Reviews | Turns an empty profile into a company people will phone | From the first job onwards | If they arrive in one burst, or are not genuine |
| A small honest website | Somewhere for a paid click to land and a builder to check you | Before you spend anything on ads | If it is fifty thin pages instead of five real ones |
| Google Search ads | Buys work now, while everything else is still warming up | Once there is a page to land on and a budget that can learn | Under about $1,500 a month, or pointed at a homepage |
| Local Services Ads | Above everything, per lead rather than per click | Once screening clears, which is why you start it in month one | Before the paperwork is done. There is no shortcut |
| Local SEO | The compounding half that makes year two cheaper than year one | Start now, expect 60 to 90 days before it shows | As your only plan when you need work this month |
One mark, delivered in every format you will actually need, including a version that works on a truck door and on a shirt. Done once, properly, instead of three times badly.
What you pour, where you work, what it roughly costs, what your work looks like, and how to reach you. Fast on a phone, because that is where you are being compared with two other quotes.
Correct primary category, services listed one by one, service areas that match reality, and a review request system that runs without you having to remember.
Call tracking and form tracking on the first day, so by month three you have real numbers instead of an impression. A new company that can prove where its work comes from can make decisions nobody else in year one can.
The first-year owner who was somebody else\'s foreman. The most common version. You know the work cold, you have contacts who will give you jobs, and you have never had to make a phone ring. The fastest wins here are the profile and the reviews, because your work already justifies them.
A crew splitting off from a bigger company. You have skill and probably some relationships, but no brand of your own and a real risk of being compared to the company you left. This one needs identity work first.
An established company that never marketed. Ten years of work, all of it from word of mouth, and a profile that was never claimed. Not a new company, but the same starting position, with the advantage that you have a decade of finished jobs to photograph and a list of customers to ask.
A second location or a new city. An existing company opening a market where nobody knows the name. Everything in the order of operations applies again, except that you already know what your numbers should look like.
The Foundation Package is built for exactly this position: $3,500 one time for the logo, the website, the Google Business Profile, the review system and the tracking, in 21 days. Credits come off for anything you already own that is worth keeping, and the floor is $1,200. Keeping your logo takes $600 off. A verified Google profile takes $300 off. Photography you have already had shot takes $400 off. The calculator on that page works out your own number, and payment is half to start and half on launch.
The 60-Day Booked Jobs Program is the next step rather than the first one, at $2,500 a month plus a minimum $4,000 a month of ad budget. Being straight about it: most companies in month one should not sign that. Build the foundation, do the free work, get the first reviews, and come back when there is something for the ad spend to land on. If you do sign both, the build drops to $2,000.
Pick the kind of work you want more of and go after it properly: driveways, decorative, foundations or coatings. Each has a different buyer and a different season, and choosing one is how a second-year company stops competing with everybody.
Claim and verify the Google Business Profile, before the website, before anything. Verification can take days or weeks and nothing else gets you into the map pack. It is free, it is the highest intent traffic you will ever get, and the clock only starts once you begin.
Fewer than you think, and they matter more than the count suggests. The first five change the page from empty to real. Getting them steadily beats getting them in one burst, and every one should come from a customer who was genuinely happy. The review guide has eight templates you can copy.
You can, and it will cost you more per lead than it should. Paid clicks landing on a page that does not answer the question convert badly, and Google charges you more for the privilege through a lower quality score. A small, honest five-page site beats a big one, but no site beats neither.
Possibly, and it is worth starting the paperwork early because it is the slowest step. In Canada, Local Services Ads require the applicable licences, insurance, and background checks in the categories that need them, covering the business, the owner and the field workers. Google publishes the requirements. Begin it in month one and it may be ready when you need it.
Then photograph the next job, and the one after that. Do not use supplier stock or images of somebody else's work, which is both obvious and a straightforward misrepresentation. Three honest photographs of a real job you poured beat twenty perfect ones that are not yours.
Less than you have been told, and more consistently than you expect. Below roughly $1,500 a month in ad budget there are too few clicks to learn anything, so the spend becomes a guess. The other honest answer is that the free work comes first: the profile, the reviews and the site do not need an ad budget at all. The budget guide has the benchmarks.
Different buyer, different season, different channel mix.
Tell us where you work and we come back inside one business day with what your market looks like, what the first steps cost, and whether the territory is still open.
