Pick the construction marketing agency model before you pick the supplier
Packaged monthly services sit at the cheap end. Designer Planning advertises a builder marketing package at $249 a month covering on-page SEO, Google Business Profile, call tracking and reporting, with ads, content and photography quoted separately. That can be a fair deal when you have a simple brief, your own photography and somebody in the office who will write. It falls apart when you were expecting interviews, real project stories and a qualification process that was never in the scope.
Campaign and lead-generation agencies sit at the other end. Veblen’s Engine programme starts at $7,500 a month plus GST with a three-month minimum, ad spend separate, covering media, content and CRM. Both prices were checked on 8 September 2026. A programme built for volume and appointment flow can work very well for a business that needs volume. It is a poor fit for a practice taking four commissions a year.
In between sits the boutique partner who joins the website, the search content and the ongoing work together. Ask who does each job and how often you will speak to them. Small does not automatically mean senior, and large does not automatically mean impersonal. The working arrangement tells you more than the size of the team.
Write the one-page brief before you take any meetings
Write down the projects you want, the suburbs you want them in, the capacity you have to build them and what is wrong with the pipeline now. Be specific. Enquiries from the wrong side of Brisbane, referred owners who cannot follow your process, no project pages to support the service you added last year: those are three different problems with three different fixes.
Then say what decision you need help making. You might need a rebuild. You might only need three better service pages and an enquiry form that asks about the block. Ask each agency which it recommends and why. An agency willing to sell you a smaller first step is showing you how it thinks, and how it thinks is the thing you are really assessing.
Send the same brief to everybody on the shortlist and ask for the same outputs. Otherwise one quote covers design only, another includes research, writing and migration, and the comparison means nothing. Give them a real budget ceiling. It costs you nothing and it stops a competent supplier writing a plan you were never going to approve.
Ten questions that expose a bad fit
Ask these in the meeting, then get the important answers into the written scope. A pleasant conversation settles nothing about ownership, delivery or what happens when an estimate is blown.
- Which part of our enquiry problem would you fix first, and what did you see that led you there? You want an observation about your business, not a slide from the standard deck.
- What counts as a qualified enquiry? Settle project type, service area and the information you need before any lead target goes into a contract.
- Who writes our service pages and project stories? Ask how they get the technical detail out of your team without you rewriting every draft.
- Can you show a comparable result with its dates and its starting point? Then ask what else was going on at the time.
- What lands in month one, and what lands in the first quarter? Name the pages, decisions or campaigns, and say who is holding up what.
- What sits outside the fee? Ad spend, photography, copywriting, hosting, software, call tracking, revisions, GST.
- Who controls the domain, the website files, the ad account and the analytics? You want business-owned access to all of it, in your name.
- Who actually works on this account, and who covers them when they are away?
- What does the monthly report show? It should tie the work done to the enquiries that fit, and finish with a decision. It also needs room to say something did not work.
- How do we leave, and what do we take with us? Notice period, final invoice, data exports, access transfer, help for the next supplier.
Read the case study like a tender
A graph needs a period, a starting point and a definition of what it counts, or it is decoration. A ranking screenshot for the client’s own business name only proves that Google can find a business by name. Ask for the evidence behind the single claim that matters to your purchase.
Our own Flascon case study is a fair one to practise on. It covers ten months, names the position the builder started from and reports a search visibility result for a boutique Brisbane business. It says nothing about that builder’s margin, and it would not help you much if what you need is a display home campaign. Match the measured outcome to your problem, or set it aside.
Be careful with anyone who sounds certain. An agency can commit to a scope, a process and a standard of reporting. It cannot commit to what Google does, or to what a homeowner decides in March. Ask what happens if the first approach does not work, and what evidence would make the team change direction. An answer that only asks you to wait longer is not an answer.
Compare the whole cost, not the monthly number
Add up the committed total for each offer. Separate the once-off build from the recurring fee and from the media spend, and say whether you are comparing figures with GST or without, because one supplier will quote each way. Put the minimum term, the review points and the notice period next to the dollar figure. A month-to-month arrangement and a twelve-month commitment at the same monthly rate are not the same price.
Then work out what the fee actually takes off your plate. If the new supplier adds a monthly meeting while the director still chases the photographer, writes the guides and tests the forms, the work has moved sideways rather than away. A narrow specialist can be excellent value when the rest of the job has a named owner. Find out whether it does.
Make the first quarter something you can judge
Write the baseline down before anyone starts: the pages you have, the rankings you know about, where enquiries come from now, and your definition of a project worth having. Settle access and content dependencies in the first week. A launch that slips because nobody could reach the photographer should not surface in the final week.
The first review looks at whether the work was done and whether it behaves as intended: enquiries arriving in a usable form, service pages describing the work you want, ads showing on searches you would pay for. Later reviews look at the pattern. Judge the sequence fairly. A page published last week cannot show months of results, and a broken form can be fixed today.
Finish every review with a decision. Continue, change one thing, or stop something that is not working. A retainer should not roll over because nobody wants an awkward phone call. Give one person in your business the authority to approve work, and give the agency a straight answer inside a week.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need a specialist marketing agency for builders? Not necessarily, but industry knowledge saves you months of explaining procurement, project budgets and the difference between custom and volume work. Judge the people, the evidence and the scope first. Construction photography on an agency website is not experience.
How much does a construction marketing agency cost? Australian offers run from about $249 a month for a packaged service to $7,500 a month and up for a managed campaign programme, and those buy completely different things. Ask for an itemised proposal, then compare the committed total, the exclusions and the work still left with you.
Should a marketing agency guarantee leads? Only if it defines the lead precisely: project type, service area, timeframe and what happens when the target is missed. A raw contact target pushes an agency towards volume, which is the opposite of what most builders and practices need. A forecast with its assumptions written down is worth more than a guarantee.
Where to start this month
- Write the one-page brief: the projects you want, the suburbs, your capacity and what is wrong with the pipeline now.
- Shortlist three suppliers by the work you need, not by who ranks first for construction marketing agency.
- Send all three the same brief and ask for itemised scope, the full committed cost and the names of the people doing the work.
- Run the ten questions in every meeting. Put unclear answers back in writing before you compare anything.
- Agree a first-quarter scope, a written baseline and a review date. Then hold the review and make the decision.