In-House, Agency or Freelancer: Who Should Run Your Plumbing Marketing?

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Summary: A plumber can get marketing done four ways: do it yourself, hire a freelancer, employ a marketer or use a plumbing marketing company. The work is the same in every case: pick the jobs worth paying for, run the ads, build a page per job, track every call and report in booked jobs. What changes is the cost, the speed, who covers the gaps and how much you manage yourself.

Most plumbers who ask "should I hire a marketing company?" are really asking who should do this work and what it should cost. There are four honest answers. Here they are side by side, with public pay data where it exists, compared on the one number that matters: what each booked job costs you.

The work, whoever does it

List the work before you compare people. For a plumber running Google Ads and Local Services Ads, a normal month looks like this:

• Weekly: read the search terms report and block searches that will never book, listen to a sample of calls, rate Local Services Ads leads, check tracking still works.
• Monthly: move budget towards the jobs that booked, fix the weakest landing page, add a page when you add a job to your ads.
• Monthly, on paper: spend, calls and forms, booked jobs and cost per booked job, by channel.
• Once, at the start: conversion tracking, call reporting, a page per job and Local Services Ads verification, which Google says takes three to four weeks on average.

Hold every option against that list. Any line a route leaves uncovered is yours.

Option 1: you do it yourself

Cost: your hours. Example numbers to swap for yours: 3 hours a week is about 13 hours a month. If an hour of your time earns $120 on the tools or in sales, that is about $1,560 a month you are not earning elsewhere.

What you get: total control, no fees, and nobody knows your jobs, margins and area better.

What to expect: a slow first month while you learn the account, then steady small wins if you protect the hours. The risk is timing: the weeks you are too busy to check the ads are the weeks a freeze makes them matter most.

Fits when: you run one or two vans, start with one job and one area, and will actually block out the time.

Option 2: a freelancer

Cost: an hourly or monthly fee. Upwork's May 2026 rate guide lists Google Ads experts at $15–$40 an hour and search engine marketing specialists at $20–$55 an hour on its platform. Example: 12 hours a month at $40 is $480 before ad spend. Pages and tracking setup are often quoted separately.

What you get: a specialist's hands on the account for a fraction of a salary.

What to expect: results depend on one person. Ask what happens when they are sick or away, whether they have run home-service accounts, and who edits the pages. Give them their own login to your Google Ads account rather than sharing yours, so the account stays yours if you part ways.

Fits when: you can write a clear brief, check the work monthly, and the scope is mostly one channel.

Option 3: an in-house marketer

Cost: salary plus everything that comes with an employee. The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median annual wage for market research analysts and marketing specialists at $78,760 (May 2025). Its June 2026 employer cost survey found wages and salaries were 70.0% of private-industry compensation costs. If that held for your hire, a $78,760 salary would cost about $112,500 a year all in, about $9,400 a month, before tools and ad spend. That is our arithmetic on the government figures, not a quote.

What you get: someone in the building who knows your techs and customers and can also handle reviews, the website and print.

What to expect: a ramp-up of a few months and a skills gap. One person rarely covers Google Ads, landing pages, tracking and SEO equally well, so most still buy in some of the work. And if they leave, the know-how leaves with them.

Fits when: you run several trucks or locations, several channels, and have enough work for a full-time week.

Option 4: a plumbing marketing company

Cost: ad spend, which goes to Google, plus a fee. Agencies charge flat monthly, per lead, linked to spend or a mix, sometimes with one-off setup. There is no reliable public benchmark for plumbing agency fees, so compare quotes on the same scope.

What you get: a team that has already made the common mistakes on someone else's account, with vacation and sick cover built in. A specialist sees many plumbing accounts at once, so it spots a rising cost per click or a broken call setup faster.

What to expect: the 90 days below. The catch is fit: a generalist may treat a plumber like an online shop, and an agency working for the plumber down the road may be bidding against itself in your area.

Fits when: you want the work done rather than managed, can fund ads and a fee, and want reports in booked jobs.

The four options side by side

Whichever you pick, the phone stays in-house. No marketer can book a job nobody answers.

What the first 90 days should look like

Hold a freelancer, hire or agency to this:

1. Days 1 to 30: set up and collect data. Tracking, call reporting and a page per job before much is spent. Google says most ads are reviewed within one business day, so search ads start fast; Local Services Ads wait on verification. By day 30 you should see spend, calls and forms, and the searches behind them.
2. Days 31 to 60: cut the waste. Block searches that never book, match the schedule to the hours someone answers, fix the weakest page. Google suggests judging Smart Bidding over a window with 30 or more conversions, so a small account may still be learning.
3. Days 61 to 90: decide. You should have a cost per booked job per campaign. Keep what pays, cut what does not, add the next job.

Be careful with anyone who promises a lead count before seeing your account. Nobody controls Google's auction or your phone.

How to compare the options fairly

Use one formula: (ad spend + cost of running it) ÷ booked jobs. Example numbers to swap for yours: $3,000 of ads plus $480 for a freelancer, 18 booked jobs, is about $193 a job. $3,000 of ads plus a $1,500 agency fee, 26 booked jobs, is about $173 a job. The cheaper route on paper cost more per job. For every line of the bill, see what plumber marketing costs in 2026.

Mixed setups are common: an agency on Google Ads with the office manager on reviews, or an owner on Local Services Ads with a freelancer building pages. Put a name on each line of the work list so nothing falls between two people.

Where Opus Group fits

We are a plumbing marketing company that runs Google Ads and Local Services Ads, builds a page for each job you want more of, and tracks every call. We work month to month with 30 days' notice, and send a weekly report showing what each booked job cost. Across our clients we help win more than $1M of work every month. In one plumbing account, from August 31 to September 27, 2026, $14.1K of Google Ads brought 237 calls and forms at about $60 an enquiry, mostly water heater installs, repipes and sewer work, and around $300K of work. The setup is in our Google Ads guide for plumbers.

To run it yourself, start with the free guide, How a local service business can spend $1,000 and make $60,000 in a month. Its $60,000 is worked math, not a promise.

What to do this week

1. Write the work list on one page and put a name next to every line.
2. Price the hours you spent on marketing last month.
3. Work out last month's cost per booked job, all in.
4. Ask every freelancer or agency quoting you to price the same work list.

FAQ

Should a plumber hire a marketing company or an in-house marketer?

Hire in-house when you run several channels with enough work for a full-time week. Use a marketing company for specialist Google Ads and page work with cover built in. Compare both on cost per booked job.

How much does a freelance Google Ads manager cost?

Upwork's May 2026 rate guide lists Google Ads experts at $15–$40 an hour and search engine marketing specialists at $20–$55 an hour. Pages and tracking setup are often extra.

What does an in-house marketer cost a plumbing company?

The BLS median wage for marketing specialists was $78,760 in May 2025. Wages are 70.0% of private-industry employer costs, so the all-in cost is about $112,500 a year before tools and ad spend.

What should I expect in the first month?

Tracking, call reporting and job pages first, then search ads live within days. Expect data rather than a verdict in month one, and a cost per booked job by month three.

Can I run Google Ads for my plumbing business myself?

Yes, if you protect a few hours a week and someone answers the phone. Start with one job, one area and one page, and judge it on booked jobs.

Opus Group runs Google Ads, Local Services Ads and high-converting landing pages for local service businesses. See how it works.

Opus Group is a plumbing marketing agency working with plumbers across the US, including Chicago, Sacramento, San Diego and Charlotte.

Theo Prada is the founder of Opus Group, which runs Google Local Services Ads and Google Ads for local service businesses.