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Education
Guides for contractors and home service businesses
Plain-English guides for owners of local service businesses: answering and booking more calls, AI phone agents, local SEO and Google Business Profile, and running the business. Every figure links to the study it came from.
By Adam Brewer, founder of Local Voice.
All guides
Every guide, newest first
New guides show up here as soon as they're published. Search a topic, like reviews, after-hours calls or Google Business Profile.
How Much Should a Service Business Spend on Marketing?
Skip the percent-of-revenue rule of thumb and build a marketing budget backward from the jobs you need, using your booking rate, close rate and cost per lead.
Read the guideIs an AI Receptionist Worth It for a Small Service Business?
A decision guide with break-even math for an AI phone agent, a cost comparison with a staff receptionist and a plain list of who it doesn’t fit.
Read the guideGoogle Business Profile Optimization Checklist
A 15-item Google Business Profile checklist for service businesses, from categories and services to photos, posts, reviews and the features Google has limited or shut down.
Read the guideHow to Rank Higher on Google Maps as a Service Area Business
Google ranks local results on relevance, distance and prominence, so a service area business climbs by matching its profile to the right searches and earning reviews and local links.
Read the guideHow to Get More Google Reviews Without Breaking Google’s Rules
Ask every customer after every job, send your Google review link the same day, and stay inside Google’s review policies and the FTC’s fake review rule.
Read the guideGoogle Business Profile Verification: Your Options and What to Expect
How Google Business Profile verification works, the methods Google may offer, what a service area business has to show on video, and how to fix a failed verification or a suspension.
Read the guide
How we write these guides
Guides built on sources you can check.
Each guide is written for the owner of a local service business, not a marketing department. If a figure can't be traced to the study it came from, it stays out.
We read the original study, not a blog post that quotes it.
We name the organization, report, date and sample next to every figure.
Numbers we work out ourselves are labeled as Local Voice calculations.
Each guide shows the date its figures were last checked.
Who are these guides for?
Owners and managers of local service businesses: HVAC, plumbing, electrical, roofing, contractors and other trades that book work over the phone. They're written for a shop that serves its own towns, not a national brand.
Are the guides free?
Yes. Every guide is free to read, and you don't need to be a Local Voice client.
Where do the numbers in the guides come from?
From published studies, surveys and pricing pages, and each one links to the original. Numbers we work out ourselves are labeled as Local Voice calculations. Every guide lists its sources and the date they were checked.
How are the guides different from the call data?
Each call data post takes apart one study on how customers call local businesses. The guides are how-tos, like covering after-hours calls, getting more Google reviews or setting a marketing budget.
What is Local Voice?
Local Voice builds AI phone agents for local service businesses. The agent answers in your business name, books jobs on your calendar and sends urgent calls to your on-call number. Plans start at $397 a month for 500 minutes, plus a $500 setup fee.
Stop missing calls
Answer every call, even after hours.
Local Voice answers your phone and books callers onto your calendar. Plans start at $397 a month for 500 minutes, plus a $500 setup fee. Call the demo line to hear it work.