Baton Rouge local marketing, once the homepage can take a message.

Buying ads for a Baton Rouge contractor before the page can take a message is paying for a phone to ring at a job site. Construction's share of jobs here is about 1.8 times the national figure, so we'd expect real competition on the search terms that matter, and we didn't measure what they cost. Before spending, count the ways in on your own homepage. On the ones we tested, tap-to-call shows on 32 of 45, 22 offer a phone link and nothing else we counted, and 12 offer no call link, lead form or booking tool. Against 61% in our 31-city sample, that 76% with no lead form or booking tool is one of the wider gaps we saw. Email links weren't in the count.

The trade groups are small, so read these as prompts. Homepage lead forms show on 1 of 7 home-service sites, 2 of 11 professional firms, 4 of 12 health sites, and a lead form can be a newsletter sign-up. After that, the free part: your Google Business Profile, with honest hours and a service area that matches the site. We didn't measure reviews, but we'd ask after every job and answer what comes back. For a roofer or an electrician, that may do more than an ad, though we'd want to test it.

Then buy traffic, narrowly. A landing page for one service in one area beats sending everyone to the homepage, in our experience. The calendar helps some trades, with the Louisiana Marathon in January, the Spanish Town Mardi Gras parade, and the Baton Rouge Blues Festival in April, and it does nothing for others. Local marketing starts at $575 a month, depending on complexity, setup and budget, and ad spend goes straight to the platform. The Baton Rouge report has the full test. Try sending yourself a message from your own homepage, and tell us what happened.