How UK Contractors Actually Get Work

Work that comes through a recommendation is the best work most contractors get. The customer arrives already trusting you, they are rarely collecting three other quotes, and the job is less likely to be decided on price alone. There is no fee per enquiry and nothing to renew.

The limit is volume and control. Referrals arrive when they arrive. A new firm, a firm that has moved area, or one trying to grow faster than its reputation can carry won't fill a diary on word of mouth alone. And a good run of referrals can hide a quiet spell that is already on its way.

Referrals respond to effort more than people assume. The contractors who get the most are usually the ones who make it easy: they finish tidily, they say when they are coming and turn up, they send a clear written quote and a proper invoice, and they ask. A short message at the end of a job asking for a review, and whether a neighbour or relative might need anything, costs nothing. So does staying in touch with past customers about maintenance and follow-on work.

Relationships with other trades count too. A roofer who trusts a particular plasterer, or a builder who always calls the same electrician, passes work both ways. How builders win customers looks at where established firms say their best work comes from, and quoting faster and winning more covers the habits that turn a quote into a recommendation, even when the customer doesn't go ahead.

Google Ads puts you at the top of the results for the searches you choose, and you pay when someone clicks. It is the fastest of the direct routes: a campaign set up today can produce calls this week, and every enquiry it brings is yours alone.

What it costs varies too much by trade and area to quote a meaningful figure. An emergency roof repair in a city is a very different auction from a garden wall in a market town. The only reliable way to know is to test small, in a tight area, and measure.

The principles that keep it profitable don't change much. Target only the postcodes you want to travel to. Bid on searches that show a clear intention to hire, and exclude the ones that don't, such as job-seekers, training courses and DIY searches. Send each click to a page about that specific service rather than your homepage. Track calls and form enquiries so you know which searches produced them. And judge the campaign on cost per job won, not cost per click, because a cheap click that never books a survey isn't cheap.

The main risk is leaving it unattended. A campaign on broad settings can spend steadily on searches that were never going to become work. If you don't have time to check it weekly, budget for someone who will. Google Ads for contractors covers setup, targeting and measurement in more detail.

Lead platforms are the route most contractors have tried, and the one they have the strongest views on. Broadly there are two models. Pay-per-lead platforms such as MyBuilder, Rated People and Bark charge for each enquiry or connection you choose to take. Subscription directories such as Checkatrade charge a membership fee for a listing and a profile, and the enquiries come from customers who browse and contact you.

Both can work. Platforms bring enquiries quickly, including in areas where you have no reputation yet, and a strong profile with good reviews on a well-known platform carries weight with some homeowners. For a new firm, or one moving into a new area, that can be worth paying for.

The trade-offs come from how the models work, not from anyone behaving badly. On pay-per-lead platforms it is commonly reported that the same enquiry goes to several tradespeople, so you are paying to enter a contest rather than to receive a job, and the customer is often comparing on price. On subscription models the fee is paid whether or not work arrives, and the listing stops when the payments stop. Either way, the platform's part usually ends once you have the customer's details. The visit, the quote, the chasing and the payment are yours.

Before you commit, read the platform's current terms rather than last year's forum thread, because pricing and terms change. Checkatrade vs MyBuilder vs Rated People compares the main three, pay-per-lead vs subscription explains which model suits which kind of firm, and is Checkatrade worth it for tradesmen? looks at the best-known subscription in detail.

The headline price of a lead is the least useful number in this whole subject. As a worked example: if you pay £20 for each lead and win one in ten, every job has cost you £200 to win before you have bought a single material. A subscription that produces four jobs in a year has cost a quarter of its annual fee per job. The figure that tells you whether a route works is what you spent on it, divided by the jobs it actually produced.

Published analysis puts the true cost per job won through paid lead platforms at between £150 and £1,000, once the leads that don't convert are counted. Where your own figure lands depends on your trade, your win rate and the size of your jobs. Platform pricing as published by Trades Grow, One Base Media, Sleepless Tradesman and SwiftLead, 2026. Rates change, so check current pricing before relying on these figures.

Shared enquiries push that figure up, because a lead that goes to several firms is one you are less likely to win. Why shared leads don't convert explains the mechanics. To work out your own number, track three things for three months: what each route cost, how many enquiries it produced and how many became paid work. Include your own time if you can. The true cost per job won walks through the calculation step by step.

"Contractor network" gets used loosely, and it helps to separate the types. Some are directories under another name: you pay to be listed. Some are lead platforms: you pay per enquiry. And some are coordinated networks, which generate the enquiry, appoint one contractor to it and then run the commercial process around the job: booking the visit, preparing the quotation, following it up, talking to the customer and administering the payments.

The coordinated type behaves differently because of where its money comes from. Instead of charging the contractor up front, it is paid from the job itself, with its fee sitting in the customer's price. The contractor gives up some control over the sales process and quotes at a rate that leaves room for that fee. In return, there is nothing to pay to receive the work, and the administration around it is carried for them. The contractor is still the customer's main contractor, with the construction contract in their own name.

Whichever type you are looking at, ask the same questions as for any route: what you pay before work arrives, whether the enquiry is shared, how work is allocated, who writes the quote and when you get paid. What is a contractor network? explains the types, lead generation vs a contractor network compares the two models, and how contractor networks work follows one job through a network from start to finish.