I get this every week. A plumber, roofer or electrician sits on a call with me and says: "Right — how much is this actually going to cost me, and what's the catch?"
Fair enough. Most tradesmen I speak to have been burned at least once — £2k a month on a "brand refresh" that produced zero jobs, or £500 to a freelancer who ghosted them in month two. So they want a straight answer before they'll entertain the conversation.
This is that straight answer. What UK marketing agencies actually charge tradesmen in 2026, what's hidden in the invoice, and what a fair price looks like if you're a plumber, roofer or electrician doing £150k–£500k a year.
1. What UK Agencies Actually Charge Tradesmen
Here's the real market right now. Not the "starting from" prices on their websites — the numbers that actually leave your bank account every month.
Cheap freelancers — £200 to £600 per month. One person, often offshored, sometimes a lad in his bedroom up in Manchester. You get a basic WordPress site, a few social posts, maybe a Google Business Profile update once a quarter. No strategy. No follow-up on the leads that do trickle in. Sometimes it works. Usually it doesn't.
Mid-tier "trade specialist" agencies — £800 to £2,500 per month. This is where most tradesmen end up. Website build, a bit of SEO, maybe Google Ads managed on top. The work is usually decent. The catch? The price hides a 6–12 month contract, ad spend sitting on top of the retainer, and a "senior account manager" you'll speak to twice a year while a 22-year-old junior does the actual work.
Boutique or high-end trade agencies — £2,500 to £5,000+ per month. The ones running Facebook ads showing off Range Rover keys and £30k months. Proper team behind them, aggressive paid ads, lead-gen funnels. If you're doing £500k+ a year with capacity to double, they can work. If you're a £900/wk plumber trying to grow, you're paying for a service built for someone twice your size.
Full-service London agencies — £5,000+ per month. These don't work with tradesmen. If one is quoting you at this level, walk. You're not their target client, you're a fee.
2. The Hidden Costs Nobody Quotes You
The retainer is half the story. Here's what almost never lands in the first email but always shows up on the invoice.
Ad spend on top. Almost every agency quotes the management fee and forgets to mention that Google or Meta ads sit on top. A £1,500/mo agency retainer with £1,500/mo ad spend is actually a £3,000/mo commitment. Read the small print before you sign.
Setup fees — £500 to £2,000. Website builds, "onboarding", strategy days, brand audits. Some won't even take you on without a five-figure setup. That's the agency covering its build cost upfront in case you walk in month three.
Minimum contracts — usually 6 or 12 months. If they're locking you in, it's because they know most clients would walk after 90 days once the honeymoon ends. A contract that long is a red flag, not a commitment. Good agencies earn month 13 by making month 12 obviously worth paying for.
"Results-based" retainers. Sounds great — low base plus a cut of every lead. In practice they define "lead" so loosely (anyone who half-fills a form and never picks up) that the invoice quietly climbs to £3k a month for the same 15 enquiries a normal £600/mo campaign would produce.
Revision limits. Two content changes a month. Want a new service page? That's a £250 change request. Every tradesman I've onboarded from a previous agency says the same thing: "I stopped asking for changes because everything cost extra."
Cancellation fees and 90-day notice periods. Buried in the T&Cs. You decide you're done, and it's another three months at £1,500 before you can actually leave.
Quick maths: That "£997 a month" agency, with a £1,500 setup, £1,500/mo ad spend on top, a 12-month lock-in and two revisions a month, is really a £30,000+ commitment before you've booked a single job. Get the total 12-month number in writing before you sign anything.
3. Why "Cheap" And "Expensive" Both Usually Fail Tradesmen
Obvious reaction to expensive agencies? Go cheap. Wrong answer. Here's why both ends fail tradesmen.
Cheap fails because there's no strategy underneath. A £300/mo freelancer isn't running your marketing — they're doing tasks. Posting on Facebook. Updating your website when you email in. There's no plan for how a homeowner Googling "driveway installer near me" turns into a booked £12k job. And they're juggling 20 other clients on the same fee, so you get whatever spare hour they have on a Wednesday. Offshored copy makes it worse — if the person writing your Cardiff plumber blog has never been to Cardiff and doesn't know a combi swap costs £2k, homeowners can smell it and click off.
Expensive fails because you're subsidising the agency's other clients. A £3k/mo boutique needs to cover a director, two account managers, a designer, an ads specialist and an SEO lead. That's £30k+ in monthly overhead. To make the maths work, they need clients paying £3k/mo whose jobs are worth £30k+.
If you're a £900/wk plumber on the entry tier, you're not the client that makes their maths work — you're the tag-along. Your account gets 45 minutes a month; the £5k client gets the strategy call. You get the templated blog; they get the custom campaign. Six months in you're wondering why nothing's moving. That's why.
4. What You Should Actually Be Paying For
Here's the honest list. If your agency isn't doing these five things, you're paying for the wrong stuff.
A website that converts. Not a pretty website. A website that turns a homeowner who's Googling "emergency plumber Cardiff" at 9pm on a Tuesday into a booked call. That means fast loading, clear phone number, obvious call-to-action, real reviews visible, and pages that answer the question the homeowner actually has. If your website looks great but nobody rings, it's a brochure — not a salesman.
A review system on autopilot. Every job you finish should trigger a text asking for a Google review. Automatically. Not "when you remember". Google reviews are the biggest local ranking factor and the main reason a homeowner picks you over the next bloke on the list. If your agency isn't building this in, they're leaving money on the table every week.
Missed-call automation. When you can't answer because you're up a ladder or under a sink, the missed caller should get a text inside 30 seconds saying "Sorry I missed you — what's the job?" That one automation alone saves most sparkies and plumbers I work with £8k–£15k a year. I've written more on that in the piece on how much missed calls cost trade businesses.
Local SEO. Your Google Business Profile optimised, your postcodes covered on your website, citations built, service pages that actually target the towns you work in. Not "SEO" in the vague London-agency sense — local SEO in the "when someone in your postcode searches your trade, you show up" sense. If you're weighing paid ads against organic search, I've broken that down in Google Ads vs SEO for tradesmen.
A grown-up alternative to Checkatrade. Not another middleman skimming your leads. Your own site, your own reviews, your own brand. If you've been on lead-gen platforms and want to understand the trade-off, I covered it in Checkatrade vs your own website.
Notice what's not on that list. Logo redesigns. "Brand strategy" decks. Fancy Instagram carousels. Podcast launches. Awards submissions. If an agency's quoting you two grand a month and half of what they list is that sort of thing, they're selling you a service designed for a marketing director at a housebuilder — not a two-van plumbing firm down in Newport.
Quick jargon note. When agencies talk conversion rate, all they mean is: of every 100 people who land on your site, how many actually ring or send an enquiry. A good trade website converts 4–8%. A bad one, under 1%. That's the difference between 8 jobs a month and 1.
5. How Kopa's £197/Month Compares, Line By Line
Fair enough — you've read the anti-agency bit, now let me show you the honest comparison. Because £197 sounds too cheap and I'd rather you understood exactly why it works than have you assume it's a catch.
Like-for-like against a typical £1,500/mo trade agency:
Website that converts. Agency: £3,000–£8,000 setup plus £150/mo hosting. Kopa: included, built by me, no setup fee.
Missed-call text-back. Agency: rarely offered, or "custom quote". Kopa: included, live day one.
Review automation. Agency: £200–£400/mo add-on. Kopa: included.
Local SEO & Google Business Profile. Agency: £500–£800/mo. Kopa: included.
Follow-up sequences. Agency: rarely offered. Kopa: included.
Contract. Agency: 6–12 months. Kopa: month-to-month, cancel any time.
Setup fee. Agency: £500–£2,000. Kopa: zero.
Money-back guarantee. Agency: never. Kopa: 30 days, no questions.
Who you actually speak to. Agency: junior account manager. Kopa: me — Osian, the founder. Every time.
Total agency cost year one, before ad spend: roughly £18,000–£26,000. Total Kopa cost year one: £2,364. Not a typo.
Obvious question: how? Short answer — I lose money on you for the first six months, because a build of this scope is a huge amount of front-end work and I only make it back if you stay for years. My whole business is set up around actually delivering. Long version of that maths is in why Kopa is only £197 a month (the honest answer).
One South Wales plumber I work with told me he'd spent £14k with a previous agency in year one and booked six jobs from it. In six months with Kopa, he's booked forty-one. His words, not mine.
So What's A Fair Price For A Trade Business In 2026?
Honestly? Somewhere between £200 and £1,500 a month, depending on how hard you want to push and how much you're spending on ads on top.
Under £200/mo, you're buying tasks, not a system. Over £1,500/mo, you're either paying for stuff you don't need, or you're scaled enough to genuinely need an in-house ads team — in which case fair enough.
For most UK tradesmen doing £150k–£500k a year and already getting a handful of leads a week (but leaking them through missed calls, no follow-up and no reviews), the sweet spot is a proper Foundation system at £200–£300/mo. Loads of clients stay on that base indefinitely and let it compound — it's not a stepping-stone to a "real" product, it's a complete offering. If you want to actively force velocity on top — or you're genuinely starting from zero with no lead history and can't wait for organic ranking to build — that's when a 90-day content-and-ads sprint on top makes sense. That's exactly how Kopa is built: the £197/mo Growth Engine as the join-and-stay base, and Growth Engine Plus — a 90-day sprint with a full content day producing a batch of short-form video plus Meta ads managed for you — as the optional accelerator when you want to pull the timeline forward (see the pricing page for exact figures). Base isn't a promised number of leads per month — it's the system that gets your business into a solid state so organic calls compound over time. Short-form video is what's genuinely moving the needle for trades in 2026, which is why it sits at the heart of Plus rather than the base.
Ready For A Straight Conversation About Price?
If you've read this far, you're weighing options seriously. Get in touch — I'll walk you through what's included, what you'd pay, and tell you honestly if it's the right fit. If it's not, I'll tell you that too.
