New to Online Marketing? Start Here

The world of online marketing can feel overwhelming when you look at it all at once. Google Ads, SEO, websites, social media, reviews, directories, email marketing — there are dozens of things you could be doing, and everyone you ask has a different opinion on what matters most. The truth is simpler than it seems. For most trades, three things generate the vast majority of online leads: your Google Business Profile, your website, and your reviews. Get those three right and you'll be ahead of most of your competitors before you even think about paid advertising.

Let's start with the absolute basics. When someone needs a tradesperson, the first thing they do — almost without exception — is search Google. "Plumber near me," "electrician in Bristol," "roofer quotes." What shows up in that search determines who gets the call. There are three types of results: paid ads at the top (Google Ads), the map pack in the middle (your Google Business Profile), and organic results below (your website). Understanding this is the foundation everything else builds on.

Your Google Business Profile is the single most important thing to set up first. It's free, it puts you on Google Maps, and for many trades it's the primary source of new enquiries. Claiming your listing, filling in every field, choosing the right category, uploading photos of your work, and starting to collect reviews — this is step one, and it's worth doing properly before anything else. Several of the articles below walk you through exactly how to do this.

Your website is step two. You don't need anything fancy — a clean, fast site that works on mobile, shows what you do, lists where you work, displays your phone number prominently, and includes some photos of your work. That's genuinely all you need to start with. A basic site like this should cost £150-500, not thousands. The most important thing is that it loads quickly and makes it easy for people to call you. Everything else is secondary.

Reviews are step three, and they're ongoing rather than a one-off task. The number and quality of your Google reviews directly affects both your map pack ranking and whether people choose to call you over a competitor. There's no shortcut here — you need to ask happy customers for reviews, consistently, and make it easy for them to leave one. A simple text message with a direct link to your Google review page, sent the day after you finish a job, is all it takes. The articles below cover how to set this up and keep it running.

Once those three foundations are solid, you can think about whether paid advertising makes sense for your business. Google Ads can accelerate things — putting you at the top of search results immediately rather than waiting for organic rankings to build. But ads work best when they send people to a good website with strong reviews backing you up. Running ads without those foundations is like paying to send people to an empty shop.

The articles below are arranged so you can read them in order if you want a structured path, or dip into whichever topic is most relevant to where you are right now. Each one is written for tradespeople, not marketing professionals — you won't find jargon, buzzwords, or theoretical fluff. Just practical advice based on what we've seen work for real UK trade businesses.

The most encouraging thing about online marketing for trades is that the bar is low. Most of your competitors aren't doing this stuff well, if at all. Just getting the basics right — a proper Business Profile, a decent website, a system for getting reviews — puts you ahead of the majority. You don't need to become a marketing expert. You just need to do the fundamentals consistently, and the results follow.