Guides for Toronto trades owners who'd rather understand it than outsource it blindly

Why we wrote these three

Most of what trades owners ask about marketing in this city comes down to three questions:

1. "How can I compete with the companies that are everywhere on Google?"
2. "How do I get work in condos and buildings, not just houses?"
3. "How much should I be spending on ads?"

Each guide answers one of them in depth. Together they form the core of how we plan marketing in this city, and they link to the services where we apply the same thinking for clients.

How a small trade competes in Toronto search

Read the guide: winning Toronto search as a smaller business

This guide explains why trying to rank across the whole city wastes money, and how to choose a cluster of neighbourhoods and a specialty lane you can actually lead in. It covers:

• mapping your past jobs to find your natural territory
• choosing a core area by drive time rather than by district names
• building service pages with real local proof instead of thin location pages
• a review routine with worked numbers, so you can see how quickly a steady habit adds up
• measuring rankings across a grid instead of a single "Toronto" position

It's the guide to read first if most of your work comes from homeowners searching on their phones.

Selling to condo boards and property managers

Read the guide: condo and property-manager sales

With nearly half of Toronto's occupied dwellings in buildings of five or more storeys, building-level work is a large market, but it's sold differently. This guide covers:

• who decides what in a condo or rental building, from the concierge to the board
• what goes in a vendor package and why managers care about paperwork first
• how to build a short, realistic prospect list near your base
• a first-contact approach and a follow-up schedule that respects busy managers
• worked numbers for the value of a single building relationship

Read it if you already do some suite or commercial work and want more of it.

The arithmetic of a Toronto ad budget

Read the guide: Toronto ad budget arithmetic

Competition pushes up click prices in many Toronto trades. This guide shows you how to work out what you can afford before you spend anything:

• calculating your break-even cost per lead from job value, margin and close rate
• turning that into a maximum cost per click
• adjusting for repeat customers and service agreements
• the hidden effect of missed calls on your real cost per lead
• setting a test budget large enough to give you a real answer

Read it before you raise any ad budget, or before you sign with an agency that proposes one.

What these guides won't do

They won't give you a magic number for Toronto. Any article that quotes a single "average cost per lead" or "average ranking time" for the whole city is mixing a downtown emergency plumber with a Scarborough landscaper, and the result helps neither. Instead, each guide gives you a method and asks for your own figures.

They also stay out of regulation. Where a topic touches licensing or safety, we link to the provincial body, such as ESA or TSSA, and leave the advice to them.

How to use these guides

Start with the one that matches your most pressing problem. Keep a notepad or spreadsheet open, because each guide asks you to plug in your own numbers. If a calculation shows that a channel can't pay for your business, that is useful information too; it's cheaper to learn from a guide than from three months of ad spend.

If you'd like a second opinion on your numbers, the contact page explains what to send. For costs, see pricing, and for how the city's six districts differ, see our areas page.