Plinth vs. a marketing agency
An agency reports clicks. Plinth proves dollars.
The agency retainer is the most common — and most quietly resented — line item in a contractor's budget. The report says impressions are up. The question you actually have is simpler: which paid jobs did this money cause? An agency structurally can't answer it, because their work ends the moment the phone rings.
Set up in minutes. No new software for your crew to learn.
What a good agency does well
Real ad management is a skill: campaign structure, creative, bid strategy. A good agency can genuinely put your name in front of more homeowners, and for companies spending heavily on paid media across many markets, that expertise matters.
The gap: clicks aren't jobs, and nobody's answering
An agency generates the inquiry and walks away — they can't answer the lead at 9 p.m., can't book it, can't collect the payment, and can't tell you which of last month's jobs their spend produced. Plinth sits in the whole job: it answers every lead in seconds, books the inspection, handles the money, asks for the review that wins the next customer, and traces every paid job back to the lead that started it. Not estimated attribution — the actual list, with dollar amounts, matching your bank statement. And the compounding get-found work agencies bill retainers for — Google Business Profile, review velocity, structured data — is built into the system.
Side by side
A marketing agency vs. Plinth
| What has to happen | A marketing agency | Plinth |
|---|---|---|
| Puts your name in front of homeowners | Yes | Yes |
| Google Business Profile, reviews, structured data | Billed as a retainer | Included |
| Answers the leads it generates — in seconds, 24/7 | Yes | |
| Books the inspection on your calendar | Yes | |
| Collects deposits and payments | Yes | |
| Grows your review base after every paid job | Yes | |
| Attribution you can verify | Claimed in a report | Proven per paid job |
| Paid only meaningfully when you get paid | Yes | |
| Typical cost | ~$1,500–3,000/mo retainer, results or not | From $199/mo + a share of jobs Plinth causes |
Costs are typical market ranges, not a Plinth quote.
Book a DemoWhen an agency is the right call
If you're spending five figures a month on paid ads across multiple markets, dedicated ad management can earn its retainer. But hear the honest sequence: ad spend without instant lead response is a leaky bucket — every click you buy that rings an unanswered phone is money burned. Fix the answering and the proof first; then any ad dollar you spend works harder, and you'll know exactly what it returned.
Fair questions
Straight answers
Does Plinth run ads for me?
No — Plinth makes every lead you get worth more, however it arrives. Plinth's get-found work is the compounding kind: your Google Business Profile, a growing review base, and a schema-rich web presence. If you run ads (yourself or through an agency), Plinth answers what they generate and shows you what it turned into — the measurement layer ad spend has always been missing.
My agency sends me reports — isn't that attribution?
It's estimation. Plinth's version is a list of paid jobs with dollar amounts. An agency infers credit from clicks and calls. Plinth sits in the booking and the payment, so attribution isn't modeled — it's recorded: this lead, answered at 9:47 p.m., became this $11,400 paid job. You can check it against your bank statement.
Can I keep my agency and add Plinth?
Yes — and it's often the right order of operations. The agency fills the funnel's top; Plinth converts and proves the bottom. Many shops discover their existing lead flow was enough once every lead gets answered — and the ones that keep spending finally know what the spend returns.
What does it cost compared to a retainer?
A flat $199/month, plus a small share of jobs Plinth causes — charged only when the job is paid. If we don't make you money, we don't make real money — the opposite of a retainer's shape. See how pricing works at joinplinth.com/pricing.
See the whole loop close on a real job.
Fifteen minutes with the founder: a lead answered live, booked, paid, and traced to the dollar.
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