Industry guides

How to get more leads for your construction company

A channel-by-channel plan for construction companies: referrals, reviews, project pages, Google Ads, lead marketplaces and bid boards, with costs and timelines.

October 21, 20266 min read

A construction company gets more leads by working its cheapest channels first (past clients, referrals and reviews), making its website show the jobs it wants more of, then adding paid channels that match how its customers buy: Google search and Local Services Ads for homeowners with an urgent or planned project, lead marketplaces for volume, and bid boards and public tenders for commercial work. Whatever the channel, the deciding factor is how fast and how well you follow up on quote requests. Below is each channel with its cost model, how quickly it produces, and who it suits.

Start with the jobs you want

Before picking channels, write down the two or three job types you want more of: kitchen and bathroom renovations, roofing, additions, commercial fit-outs, concrete, design-build. Then note the average job value and your typical close rate on quotes. These numbers decide what you can afford to pay for a lead. A roofer with $15,000 jobs and a 30% close rate can pay far more per lead than a handyman with $500 jobs.

They also decide where you'll look. Homeowners search Google and ask neighbours. Property managers and general contractors use networks, bid boards and repeat relationships.

The channels, one by one

Past clients and referrals

Cost model: your time, plus a thank-you if you offer one.
Time to first lead: days.
Best for: every contractor, especially residential.

Most contractors under-use this. Keep a list of every past client with the job and the date. Contact them once or twice a year with something relevant: a seasonal check, a photo of a similar project, a reminder that you also do decks or basements. Ask for a referral at the moment the job is handed over, when satisfaction is highest.

Google reviews and Business Profile

Cost model: free.
Time to first lead: weeks to months.
Best for: residential and light commercial work in a defined area.

Homeowners read reviews before they call. Choose the most precise primary category, set your service areas, add photos of real jobs regularly, and ask every satisfied client for a review with a direct link. Google forbids paying or rewarding people for reviews and asking only happy clients, so ask everyone. Our local SEO guide has the full checklist.

Project pages on your website

Cost model: your time or your web provider's.
Time to first lead: two to four months to build search traffic, immediately useful for credibility.
Best for: any contractor whose work is visual.

A gallery of 80 photos with no words doesn't help Google or a prospect. One page per project type works far better: what the job involves, a few finished projects with the town, the scope and the timeline, photos before and after, and a quote form that asks the right questions. Update it yourself as jobs finish. If your team can't add a project without calling a developer, it won't happen.

If you work in Quebec, your RBQ licence number has to appear on your website when you advertise your services there, as well as on estimates, contracts, invoices, vehicles and job site signs, in the format "Licence RBQ : XXXX-XXXX-XX." Showing licences and insurance prominently helps everywhere, because it answers the first question a homeowner has.

Google Ads (search)

Cost model: pay per click.
Time to first lead: days.
Best for: high-value residential jobs people actively search for.

LocaliQ's 2026 benchmarks, based on US advertisers, put home and home improvement at an average of US$8.33 per click and US$90.92 per lead. Canadian costs vary with city and competition. Keep campaigns tight: one ad group per job type, your real service area only, and a long negative keyword list (DIY, jobs, salary, rental, used). Our Google Ads guide explains the setup step by step.

Google Local Services Ads

Cost model: pay per lead, not per click.
Time to first lead: after Google's screening and verification, which takes time.
Best for: eligible trades such as electricians, plumbers, HVAC, roofing and landscaping.

Your business must pass Google's screening to earn the Google Verified badge, and ads include a call or message button. Categories and availability vary by location, so check whether your trade is eligible where you work.

Meta ads (Facebook and Instagram)

Cost model: pay per impression or click.
Time to first lead: days.
Best for: visual residential work (kitchens, landscaping, outdoor living) and remarketing to people who visited your site.

People on Facebook aren't searching for a contractor, so leads are colder. LocaliQ's 2026 Facebook benchmarks show US$42.95 per lead on average for home and home improvement lead campaigns. Expect to qualify more carefully.

Lead marketplaces

Cost model: usually pay per lead or per introduction, sometimes a subscription.
Time to first lead: days.
Best for: filling gaps in the schedule, or a new company with no reviews yet.

Platforms such as HomeStars, Houzz or Bark send you requests from homeowners. Read the terms carefully. Bark, for example, charges credits to contact a customer, with the cost depending on the service and job value, and says each lead's price is shown before you respond. On many platforms, several contractors get the same request, so speed and a strong profile matter. Track your close rate on these leads separately: they often cost less per lead and more per signed job.

Bid boards, networks and public tenders

Cost model: time, association fees, and the cost of preparing bids.
Time to first lead: weeks to months.
Best for: commercial, institutional and subcontract work.

General contractors and owners post projects on construction association bid boards and plan rooms. Public bodies publish tenders on CanadaBuys at the federal level and on provincial systems such as SEAO in Quebec, which centralizes notices from ministries, health and education networks, and municipalities. These are won on compliance, price and track record. Start with projects that match your size, and build relationships with the general contractors who keep winning in your area.

Follow-up decides who gets the job

Every channel above ends the same way: someone asks for a quote and compares you with two or three others. The contractor who answers first, visits quickly and follows up clearly wins more often than the one with the lowest price.

A simple standard:

Answer within the hour during business hours. After hours, an automatic text or an AI assistant that takes the details and books a visit.
Qualify on the first call: job type, budget range, timeline, address. Don't drive across town for a job you can't win.
Send the quote within two or three days of the visit, with a clear scope and what's not included.
Follow up two days later, a week later and two weeks later, then add the prospect to a seasonal list.

Keep all of this in a CRM so that nothing depends on someone's memory. A missed callback on a $40,000 renovation is the most expensive mistake on this page.

A real example

Kaltico connects contractors with vetted trades across Quebec. Its enquiries used to sit unanswered, nothing qualified them, and the team couldn't update a service page or a project gallery without a developer. We built a website and landing pages for its services, a custom content system so the team updates galleries and service pages itself, Google Ads campaigns, an AI assistant that answers first questions and books discovery calls at any hour, and CRM automation that follows up with every lead within seconds. The project recorded three times more qualified enquiries from the first month live. See the Kaltico case study for the full picture.

Where PNE fits

Our lead generation work for contractors covers landing pages per job type, quote forms that qualify, and retargeting, connected to the follow-up systems that turn quote requests into signed jobs. We start with the channel where you're losing the most, not with the most expensive one.