Should I hire a marketing agency or do it myself?
If you can spend ten focused hours a week on marketing and you genuinely enjoy it, DIY is fine until about $2,000 a month in ad spend. Past that, the cost of mistakes usually exceeds an agency retainer. But the right answer depends less on company size and more on what you are willing to learn.
Honest signs DIY is fine for now
You have time to learn Google Ads, Meta, and basic SEO. Your monthly ad budget is under $2,000 so a single bad experiment will not sink the quarter. You enjoy the work, or at least do not actively hate it.
If all three are true, start with one channel, get it working, then add the next. Most owners can hit a reasonable cost per lead within 90 days on a single platform using free Google and Meta certification courses.
Honest signs it is time to hire
You are spending more than $2,500 a month and cannot answer what your cost per booked job was last week. You hate the work and it shows in the results. Or you tried an agency before, got burned, and have been gun-shy ever since, but the leak in your funnel is costing more than the retainer would.
If you were burned before, the fix is not to swear off agencies. It is to demand transparent reporting, weekly numbers, and a written 90-day plan up front. Any agency that resists those three things will burn you too.
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