Win more contractor accounts, and keep the ones you have buying

Contractors buy differently, so supplier marketing has to as well

A contractor is not a homeowner with a bigger budget. They buy repeatedly, they buy under time pressure, and the decision is often split between the person on the job site, the person at the counter and the person who signs the cheques.

That changes what good marketing looks like:

• Availability beats persuasion. A tradesperson searching a part number wants to know whether a branch nearby has it today. A clever headline does nothing for them.
• The second order matters more than the first. Opening a trade account is the start. Most of the value comes from the next three years of purchases, so retention and reorder paths deserve as much attention as acquisition.
• Contractors sell your product for you. For manufacturers, the installer is often the one who recommends the brand to the end customer. Marketing that equips them (sell sheets, rebate explainers, locator listings) can matter more than ads aimed at homeowners.
• Relationships still close deals. Reps, counter staff and trade nights do a lot of work. Digital marketing should feed them warm conversations, not try to replace them.

Our guide to the contractor buying journey walks through each stage in detail.

What we do for suppliers

We run five services, and most clients start with one or two. The services overview explains how to choose.

1. Product and catalogue SEO. Product pages, spec sheets and installation documents that rank for the part numbers and problem searches contractors actually type.
2. Contractor acquisition campaigns. Search ads, LinkedIn and consent-based follow-up aimed at the trades and territories you want to grow.
3. Dealer and installer program marketing. Locators, co-op programs and installer tiers that contractors bother to join and that produce leads for them.
4. Branch and counter local SEO. Accurate, well-built Google listings for every branch, so a contractor searching "near me" from a job site finds your counter.
5. Product launch and rebate campaigns. When a new product ships or a utility rebate changes, contractors get the explainer, the talking points and the landing page on day one.

A worked example: what one trade account is worth

Marketing spend for a supplier only makes sense against the value of an account, so start there. Use your own figures; these are placeholders to show the arithmetic.

Say an active plumbing contractor spends $4,000 a month with you at a 22% gross margin. That is $880 a month in gross profit, or $10,560 a year. If a typical account stays active for four years, it is worth about $42,000 in gross profit over its life.

Now suppose a campaign costs $3,000 a month and produces two new active accounts a month. Your acquisition cost is $1,500 per account, against roughly $42,000 of lifetime gross profit. Even if only half of those accounts last, the sums still work. If the campaign produces two accounts a quarter instead, the same spend costs $4,500 per account, and the decision gets tighter.

Our guide to trade-account economics covers churn, share of wallet and payback periods in more depth.

Proof from our HVAC work

We don't have a stack of supplier logos to show you, and we won't invent any. What we do have are public, checkable results from our HVAC work, several of which are directly relevant to product businesses.

• With 2,000+ programmatic pages, BoilerPart.ca grew its organic traffic 180%, solving the same catalogue-scale search problem a distributor faces.
• HeatLand published 850+ SEO articles and saw a 300% lead increase in 6 months, which shows what steady technical content can do.
• CombiBoiler.ca holds 500+ page-1 rankings for combi-boiler keywords, a product category many manufacturers and wholesalers also sell into.

The results page explains what each case shows and what carries over to a supplier.

Who is behind TradeAgency.ca

TradeAgency.ca is part of the Sedighi.ca and SAZ.ca group of companies. We are Canadian, headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, and we work with suppliers across every province and territory. The work is led by Ali Sedighi, MBA in Technology Management, who has more than 17 years of digital marketing experience starting in 2007 and has built 150+ live HVAC websites. Our sister brand Trades.Agency serves the contractors themselves, which gives us a clear view of how your customers think.

Read more about us, see where we work, or check pricing. When you're ready, call, text or email. The first conversation is free and carries no obligation.