Agency, freelancer or do it yourself: how a kitchen remodeler should buy marketing
What marketing fairly costs for a design-build firm, the red flags in a pitch aimed at remodelers, what you can realistically do in-house, and why a trial should come before a contract.
Every kitchen remodeler with a showroom gets the same call twice a week. Someone has looked at your website, noticed you are "not ranking," and has a package. The package is usually $2,500 to $6,000 a month on a twelve-month agreement, and the proof is a case study from a roofer in another state. Here is how to decide what to do yourself, what to hire out, what to pay, and how to avoid the contracts that do not work.
What you can realistically do in-house
A firm under $3 million with an owner who designs and sells has about four hours a week for marketing, and that is optimistic. Those four hours should go to the things only you can do:
- The review ask at the final walkthrough. Nobody else can do this; see the reviews guide.
- Phone footage from every project: before, during, after, same angle.
- Talking to referral partners: agents, designers, architects.
- Reading the monthly report and deciding where the budget goes.
Everything else, Google Ads management, Meta creative and campaigns, the website, the question pages, the listings cleanup, the email sequences, is work that a trained person does better and faster, and that an owner does badly at 10 p.m.
What a fair price looks like
Rough ranges from what firms in this trade actually pay, 2026:
- Google Ads management: $500 to $1,500 a month on top of ad spend, or 10 to 20 percent of spend. Above 20 percent is high unless spend is under $2,000.
- Meta ads with creative cut from your footage: $600 to $1,800 a month plus spend.
- Google Business Profile and local SEO: $300 to $1,000 a month. Anyone quoting $2,500 for "SEO" with no page-level deliverables is selling a report.
- A website rebuild for a design-build firm: $6,000 to $18,000 one time, plus $50 to $200 a month hosting and upkeep.
- Email and follow-up automation setup: $800 to $2,500 one time, then $100 to $400 a month.
- A freelancer who does several of these part-time: $1,500 to $4,000 a month.
A full-service agency doing most of the list for a single-showroom firm lands around $2,500 to $5,000 a month plus ad spend. Below $1,500 for "everything," nobody is actually doing the work.
Red flags in a pitch aimed at remodelers
The twelve-month contract before any results. The agency's risk should not be zero while yours is $40,000.
A guarantee of leads or rankings. Google does not sell rankings and nobody can guarantee a homeowner's behavior. A fair pitch talks about what they will build and what it typically costs per consultation in this trade.
No mention of your close rate or average project. An agency that does not ask what a signed kitchen is worth to you cannot tell you whether $300 per consultation is good.
Ownership of your accounts. The Google Ads account, the Meta ad account, the website and the domain must be in your name, with the agency as a user. If they leave, the history and the data stay with you. Firms that lose a three-year-old ad account when they fire an agency start from zero.
Case studies from emergency trades. A plumber's "50 calls a week" has nothing to do with a design-build firm doing 40 projects a year. Ask for a remodeler, a cabinet showroom or a design-build firm.
A report that shows impressions and clicks. The report you want shows consultation requests by source, cost per consultation, and, as the data builds, signed contracts by source. Nothing else matters.
The questions to ask before signing anything
- Who exactly will work on my account, and how many other clients do they have?
- What will you build in the first 30 days, specifically?
- What does a consultation request cost in this trade in my metro, in your experience?
- What is in the monthly report and can I see one from a current client with the name removed?
- What happens to the accounts and the website if we stop?
- Can we start with one service and one month before committing to more?
The answers to the last one tell you most of what you need to know.
Doing it yourself: the honest version
You can run Google Ads yourself if someone logs in twice a week to prune search terms and check tracking. You can run Meta yourself if you will cut a reel a week. You can write the question pages if you will sit down for an hour every Sunday. The failure mode is not ability. It is the January rush, when consultations double and marketing stops for eight weeks and the account degrades.
If you go in-house, hire a part-time coordinator rather than asking the office manager to add it. Fifteen hours a week at $25 to $35 an hour is $1,600 to $2,300 a month, in the same range as a freelancer, and the person is in your showroom.
Why trial first
The right order is proof, then payment. Any provider confident in their work for kitchen remodelers can set up one service in your accounts and run it for two weeks with no card. At the end you see the consultation requests, the search terms, the reels, the pages, and you decide. If they will not do that, ask what they are protecting.
That is how this site's own offer works: one service, 14 days, in your accounts, no card. Details are on the free trial page. Compare it to the twelve-month pitch and decide which one respects your risk.
Frequently asked
Should we hire a specialist in remodeling marketing or a general local agency? A specialist understands the sales cycle, the price range question and Houzz. A general agency with strong Google Ads skills can learn it in a month if they listen. What matters more is that they ask about your close rate and average project in the first call.
Is Houzz Pro an agency? No. It is a lead platform with a profile tool. It can be part of the mix, but it does not manage your Google Ads, your site or your follow-up, and its leads need the same speed and sequence as any other. Track it to signed contracts before renewing.
What about marketing from our cabinet manufacturer? Co-op funds and dealer programs are worth taking for photography and showroom events. They are not a strategy. The manufacturer's goal is cabinet volume, not your margin.
If you want to see what two weeks of one service looks like before deciding anything, start with the free 14-day trial.
Steven has spent the last several years running growth campaigns for local service businesses, kitchen remodeling companies among them, and builds the benchmark datasets on this site from public Google listings. About the editor