Doing your own marketing vs paying someone: the real cost for a trade business (2026)

Doing your own marketing costs the least cash upfront — you only pay ad spend, not a management fee — but it typically costs five to ten hours a week early on, and mistakes made while learning usually come out of your own ad budget. Paying someone removes most of that time and the learning-curve waste, at the cost of a monthly fee on top of ad spend. The right answer depends on whether your time is better spent on tools or on a keyboard.

What does "doing it yourself" actually involve, week to week?

Running your own Google or Facebook/Instagram ads isn't a one-off setup job — it's an ongoing task. Realistically it involves: learning the ad platforms well enough to avoid wasting spend (a genuine learning curve, not a one-afternoon job); writing and testing ad copy; building and maintaining a landing page that converts visitors into enquiries; checking bids, budgets and results at least weekly so spend doesn't drift onto the wrong searches; and chasing customers for reviews so your ads and page have social proof. None of this is difficult in isolation, but together it's typically a few hours a week even once things are running smoothly, and considerably more — often five to ten hours a week — in the first couple of months while you're learning what works.

What does DIY actually cost in cash?

Just your ad spend, plus whatever you pay for a landing page or website tool if you build one properly rather than relying on a single static page. There's no monthly management fee. This is DIY's real advantage: the cheapest possible cash outlay, and full control over every setting.

Where does the "hidden" cost come in?

Two places. First, your time — hours spent learning and maintaining campaigns are hours not spent on paid jobs, so it's worth being honest about what an hour of your trade is actually worth before assuming DIY is "free." Second, wasted spend during the learning period: badly targeted campaigns, weak ad copy or a landing page that doesn't convert can burn through budget before you work out what's going wrong, and that money doesn't come back.

What does paying someone actually get you?

With a done-for-you service like GetFindable, someone else builds and manages the Google, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok campaigns and the AI-search visibility work, and every lead lands in your own portal, exclusive to you. The subscription is £149/month (Starter) or £199/month (Pro, which adds a built-for-you website), monthly rolling with no fixed contract. Ad spend is still paid by you, separately, direct to the platforms — that's true whether you do it yourself or pay someone, so it's not a cost paying-for-help adds; the subscription fee is what you're paying for the time, platform knowledge and campaign management you'd otherwise be doing yourself.

Is DIY actually worth it for some businesses?

Genuinely, yes. If you enjoy this kind of work, have a quiet season where time is more available than cash, or run a small operation where you're comfortable being hands-on with everything, DIY can work well — plenty of tradespeople run profitable campaigns themselves. It typically works best when you're willing to put in the early hours to learn properly rather than setting a campaign live and leaving it unchecked for a month.

Who should pay someone instead?

A business that's busy on tools most weeks and doesn't have five to ten spare hours a week to give to learning ad platforms, or one that's already tried DIY and found spend disappearing without enough enquiries to show for it, is usually better off paying a flat monthly fee for someone else to manage it and just handling the leads that come in.

Comparison table

If your time is better spent on the tools than on a keyboard, GetFindable runs the campaigns for you and sends every lead straight to your own portal.