Guide
How to advertise an electrical business: spend in the order that pays back fastest
Advertising money for an electrical business goes to one of five places: the map, per-lead ads, lead sites, the physical world, or social feeds. They pay back at very different speeds, and two of them cost time instead of cash. This guide ranks all five in the order to buy them, with the honest case against each one.
- Channels, ranked by payback speed
- 5
- A 30 second ad, if you film it yourself
- ~110 CR
- Credits on Lite at $19.99 a month
- 1,250
Rank by payback speed, not by what feels modern
The right order is the one where each channel funds the next. The map costs time and pays back in weeks. Per-lead ads cost money and pay back per job. Brand advertising pays back slowest of all, so it comes last, not first.
The order is also a maturity test. If the Google profile is thin and the reviews are under ten, paid clicks pour water into a leaking bucket: people click, check the stars, and call someone else.
First: the profile and the reviews, because every ad lands on them
Before buying anything, the Google Business Profile has to be complete. Categories, service area, hours, emergency availability, twenty photos of real work, and a review count that grows weekly.
Every paid channel below sends people to this profile or past it. A stranger who clicks an ad still checks the stars before dialing. That makes this the multiplier on all paid spend, which is why it is first.
The routine is one review ask per job, on the doorstep, plus a same-evening text with the direct link. Reply to all of them, because the reply is read by the next customer.
This is the whole editor
Highlight a phrase and a clip lands on those exact words. No timeline, no keyframes, no layers.
Second: per-lead search, where the emergency money is
Google's Local Services Ads put a screened badge at the top of the results, and you pay when someone contacts you, not when they click. For emergency searches this is the shortest line between a blackout and your phone. They run in the US and the UK, alongside ordinary paid search on emergency terms in your towns.
They reward the answered phone, so only run them during hours you genuinely cover.
The trap is scope. Switch off the job types you do not want, because paying for a doorbell lead at panel-upgrade prices is how these budgets leak.
Third: lead sites, priced as a bridge
Angi, Thumbtack, Checkatrade, MyBuilder and the rest sell one homeowner's request to several electricians. You pay per lead and win on response speed.
That is a fine deal exactly once: while your own review count is too small to win the map. Track cost per booked job, not per lead, and expect to share every customer with two competing quotes.
The exit test: when the profile and reviews bring more calls than the site does, the subscription has done its job. Keep the listing, drop the spend.
Fourth: the van, the yard sign, the doorstep card
The van is the cheapest impression you will ever buy. Trade and phone number readable at fifty feet, parked where the job is, every day, for years.
A yard sign for the week after a big job converts the most valuable audience there is: neighbours of a customer who just chose you.
Leave three cards on every job. Not for the customer, who already has your number, but for the neighbour, the brother-in-law, the street's group chat.
Fifth: the ad you can film yourself, and when to run it
Paid social comes last because it pays back slowest, and it only works with a video worth paying to show. Run it behind proof: a before and after with your voice over it, or the safety explainer that already did well posted normally.
Boost to a tight radius around your service area. The goal is not reach. It is that homeowners nearby half-remember your name when the breaker trips.
Making that ad is now a solved problem. Film one take about the job: what you found, what it risked, what you did. Cutroom turns the take into a finished 9:16 ad, your before footage placed on the words that describe it, captions burned in, back in about a minute. A 30 second ad is about 110 credits, batch plus export, and Lite is $19.99 a month for 1,250 credits, about 11 of them, cancel in one click.
From one job to a running local ad
The before is filmed in ten seconds. The talking take is one minute in the van.
Film the before
Ten seconds, before you fix it
Talk one take
What it was, what it risked, what you did
Edit
About 110 credits, back in about a minute
Boost locally
Tight radius, small budget, only behind proof
Questions people ask
- What is a reasonable advertising budget for a small electrical business?
- Start with the two channels that cost time: the profile and the reviews. Then put money into per-lead search, where spend maps to jobs. A budget you can measure per booked job is the only number worth setting, and it beats any percentage rule.
- Are Google Local Services Ads worth it for electricians?
- For emergency work, usually the first paid channel to try. You pay per contact rather than per click, and the screening badge answers the trust question before the call. They punish missed calls, so match the schedule to hours you actually answer.
- Should an electrician run TikTok or Instagram ads?
- Only behind a video that already earned attention unpaid, and only to a local radius. Cold social ads for a local trade mostly buy views from people who can never hire you.
- Do lead sites hurt your own brand?
- They do not hurt it, they just do not build it. The review a customer leaves on the lead site improves that site's page, not yours. Ask happy lead-site customers to also review your Google profile, which is the asset you keep.
- What should be in the ad itself?
- A real before, your voice explaining it, the licence said out loud, the town named, and one way to contact you. Thirty seconds is plenty. Skip stock footage of smiling electricians, because homeowners can smell it.
- Can I really make the video ad without an agency?
- If you can explain a job to a customer, you can film the take. The edit is the skill gap, and that is the part software now does: with Cutroom the finished 9:16 MP4 comes back in about a minute, at about 110 credits per 30 second ad.
Profile and reviews first, per-lead search second, lead sites as a bridge, the van always, and paid social last, behind an ad you filmed yourself. Each channel funds the next, and none of them needs an agency.