An electrical contractor asks three agencies for a proposal and gets back $1,200, $4,500, and $11,000 a month. All three mention SEO, Google Ads, Local Services Ads, and reporting. The gap is not the vocabulary. It is how much ad spend is buried in the number, whether anyone is building separate programs for service calls and project work, and whether the agency is measured on booked jobs or on clicks.
This is what electrician marketing actually costs in 2026, what each band buys, and how to read the quote in front of you.
The first question: what is inside the number?
Before comparing any two proposals, ask for three lines in writing:
- Agency fee - strategy, management, content, and reporting labor.
- Media spend - what goes to Google, LSA, and Meta, ideally billed to your own card.
- Software - call tracking, review tools, listing management, CRM add-ons.
A $3,000 quote with $2,000 of media inside it is a $1,000 service engagement. A $3,000 fee on top of your own ad budget is three times the work. If a proposal will not split those lines, assume the reporting will be just as hard to read.
Two funnels, two budgets
Electrical is unusual among the trades because one shop usually runs two very different businesses:
- Service and repair - outages, tripped breakers, flickering lights, failed outlets. Urgent, local, phone-first, and won by whoever shows up first in the map pack and LSA.
- Project work - panel upgrades, EV charger installs, whole-home generators, rewires, lighting, and small commercial jobs. Planned, researched, quoted, and often financed.
The cost of a lead, the right channel, and the content that wins are different for each. A single blended budget almost always overfunds cheap service clicks and starves the project work where the margin lives. Good agencies price and report the two funnels separately.
Budget bands for electrical contractors
Monthly, all in, agency fee plus media.
| Company profile | Total / mo | Agency fee | What it realistically covers |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1-3 vans, one city | $1,500-$3,500 | $800-$1,800 | Google Business Profile, reviews, LSA, a small emergency and branded search budget |
| 4-10 vans, metro area | $3,500-$9,000 | $1,800-$4,000 | Service page SEO, LSA plus split search campaigns, EV charger and panel upgrade pages, call tracking |
| 10-25 vans, multi-city or residential plus light commercial | $9,000-$25,000 | $4,000-$8,000 | Multi-location SEO, full paid stack, generator and EV campaigns, retargeting, CRM attribution |
| 25+ vans or rollup | $25,000-$75,000+ | $8,000-$20,000 | Brand plus demand capture, membership and maintenance programs, analytics engineering |
The planning figure most trade owners use is 5-10% of revenue on marketing, at the high end while you add vans or a specialty, at the low end when your constraint is licensed electricians rather than calls.
Electrical is less seasonal than HVAC, but it is not flat. Storm seasons drive generator demand, new EV model years and incentive changes drive charger installs, and older housing stock drives panel replacements year round. A good plan moves money toward those spikes instead of spending the same amount every month.
What a lead and a job should cost
These bands hold across most US markets. Dense metros run toward the top.
- Local Services Ads call: $25-$85 per lead, the highest intent in the mix.
- Paid search, emergency and repair: $35-$110 per call.
- Paid search, panel upgrade, EV charger, or generator intent: $60-$250 per lead, still very profitable against the ticket.
- Organic and Google Business Profile calls: close to $0 marginal, which is why local SEO usually wins on return in this niche.
- Paid social, generator and EV offers: $15-$60 per lead, needs fast follow-up and a real quoting process.
- Cost per booked job: $70-$200 for service calls, $250-$800 for a panel, charger, or generator project.
Judge every source on cost per booked job and revenue by source, not cost per lead. A $40 lead that books 20% of the time costs more than a $95 lead that books 65% of the time.
What a cheap quote leaves out
Below about $1,000 a month in agency fee, something gets cut. Usually one or more of these:
- No call tracking or call review. Nobody can tell whether the problem is lead quality or the booking rate at your front desk.
- One blended campaign. Emergency, repair, and project searches dumped into the same ad group with the same landing page.
- No project pages. Panel upgrades, EV chargers, and generators sent to the home page instead of a page that answers cost, permits, timelines, and financing.
- Unmanaged LSA. Local Services Ads need weekly dispute handling, lead review, and budget pacing.
- Media billed inside the retainer with no visibility into what actually reached Google.
- Reports that stop at clicks. See how to read an agency monthly report.
Cheap is not automatically bad. Cheap and opaque is.
Where the money should go by stage
Under 5 vans: Google Business Profile, a steady review engine, LSA, and genuinely local service pages. Skip the brand video and anything else that does not produce a phone call this month.
5 to 15 vans: split search campaigns for service and projects, dedicated EV charger, panel upgrade, and generator pages with real cost ranges, retargeting for quoted-but-not-sold jobs, and attribution that ties calls to invoices in ServiceTitan, Housecall Pro, Jobber, or whatever you run.
Past 15 vans: the constraint usually moves from lead volume to close rate, average ticket, and technician capacity. Money starts earning more in maintenance plans, past-customer marketing, commercial relationships, and brand in your best zip codes than in another 10% of paid search.
When not to hire an agency yet
- Calls are going to voicemail. Missed calls are the cheapest jobs in the trade and the most often ignored.
- Your Google Business Profile is unclaimed or thin. Fix it first. It is free and it moves more revenue than a starter retainer.
- You are not asking every customer for a review. Every channel performs better behind a strong review profile.
- You cannot staff more work. If your electricians are booked out three weeks, more demand burns money and reputation.
- Total budget is under $1,000 a month. Run LSA and reviews yourself for a season and reinvest the profit.
- You do not know your close rate or average ticket by job type. Without those numbers there is no way to judge any program.
The short version:
- Separate agency fee, media, and software before comparing any two quotes.
- Budget service calls and project work (panels, EV chargers, generators) as two programs with two sets of targets.
- Expect $1,500-$3,500/month all in for a small shop, $3,500-$9,000 for a metro contractor, and $9,000-$25,000 for a multi-city operation.
- Cost per booked job ($70-$200 service, $250-$800 projects) is the number that matters, not cost per lead.
- Local SEO, Google Business Profile, and LSA still have the best return in electrical. Buy those before anything clever.
- Compare the Top Electrician Marketing Agencies, read the electrician agency hiring guide, and see the methodology behind our rankings.