The state of trades marketing in the UK, 2026
Ask ten tradespeople where their work comes from and you will get ten different answers, most of them starting with "word of mouth". That answer hides a lot. This report sets out how work actually reaches a UK trade business in 2026, which channels have gained ground, which are losing it, and what to expect over the next year.
Word of mouth has moved online, and that changes everything
Recommendation is still the engine of the trades. What has changed is where the recommendation gets checked. A neighbour says "use Dave, he did our roof", and the homeowner types Dave's business name into Google before ringing him.
That search returns a Google Business Profile, a star rating, a handful of photos and, increasingly, an AI-written summary. If any of those are missing or poor, the recommendation leaks. The homeowner does not ring Dave; they ring whoever appears beneath him with a fuller profile and more recent reviews.
So the first finding of this report is simple. Word of mouth has not been replaced. It has been given a verification step, and most trades have not noticed that the step exists. The detail of what a homeowner checks before calling is covered in our piece on what homeowners look for before ringing a tradesperson.
The four routes to work, and how they share the load
Every enquiry a UK trade receives arrives through one of four routes: a directory or lead marketplace, the business's own search presence, paid advertising, or direct referral. Almost nobody uses only one. The mix depends on trade, area and how long the business has been going.
The table below sets out how each route behaves. None of these are performance figures; they describe the mechanics, which is what matters when you are deciding where to spend time.
| Route | Who controls the customer relationship | Cost pattern | Speed to first enquiry | What breaks it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Directories and lead marketplaces | The platform | Subscription or per-lead fee, ongoing | Days | Price rises, shared leads, reviews locked to the platform |
| Own website and Google Business Profile | The trade | Time up front, low ongoing cost | Weeks to months | Neglect: stale reviews, no photos, wrong hours |
| Paid ads (Google, Meta) | The trade, if the landing page is theirs | Per click or per lead, stops when spend stops | Hours to days | Poor call handling, wrong areas, no follow-up |
| Referral and repeat | The trade | Nearly free | Unpredictable | Not asking, not staying in touch, no reviews to confirm the referral |
Directories: still the on-ramp, less often the destination
Directories such as Checkatrade, MyBuilder, Rated People and Bark remain the fastest way for a new trade business to get a phone ringing. That has not changed. What has changed is how long businesses stay.
The grievances are consistent across trade forums and Facebook groups: the same lead sold to several firms, price-shopping homeowners, membership fees that rise while lead quality falls. None of that is new, but the alternatives are now easier to build than they were five years ago, which is why the question "is it worth it?" gets asked louder each year.
Checkatrade itself has moved in two directions during 2026. In May it launched Checkatrade Express, a managed booking service for small jobs such as gutter cleaning and door hanging, with upfront pricing and payment taken through the platform. It has also put a Checkatrade app inside ChatGPT. Both are bets that the platform, not the trade, should own the homeowner's first interaction.
Our explainer on how lead directory pricing actually works goes into the fee structures. The short version for this report: directories are a good place to start and an expensive place to stay if you never build anything of your own.
Google: the Business Profile is the new shopfront
For most trades the Google Business Profile does more work than the website. It is what appears when someone searches the business name, it is what fills the map results for "electrician near me", and it is where the reviews live.
Google has spent 2026 tightening the rules around it. From September, owners get four days to accept or reject a suggested edit to their listing before Google may publish it anyway, provided other public sources support the change. Posts containing unverified phone numbers or email addresses can be removed. And on 5 November Google confirmed a Message button sitting beside Call on Maps, routing to WhatsApp or text messaging where the business has set one up.
Each of these is small on its own. Together they describe a platform that wants the profile to be accurate, actively managed and reachable without leaving Google. A trade that set up a profile in 2021 and has not touched it since is now working against the grain. Our news piece on Google's Business Profile changes for tradespeople covers the detail.
The website question: do trades still need one?
Yes, but not for the reason most people give. The website rarely wins the first search; the Business Profile does that. The website wins the second look.
Homeowners click through when they want to see more than Google shows: the range of work, a gallery that is clearly the trade's own, the areas covered, the accreditations, who they will actually be dealing with. A site that does that in under a minute converts a lookup into a call. A site that is a single page with a stock photo of a smiling man in a hard hat does not.
The second reason is control. Reviews on a directory belong to the directory. Photos uploaded to a marketplace are shown next to competitors. A website and a Business Profile are the only two assets a trade owns outright, and both compound over years rather than resetting each month.
Paid advertising: faster, pricier, and mostly misused
Google Ads and Meta ads both work for trades. They are also where most money gets wasted, usually for reasons that have nothing to do with the ad itself.
On Google, the common failures are targeting too wide an area, bidding on words that attract DIYers rather than buyers, and sending clicks to a homepage rather than a page about the service searched for. On Meta, the failure is almost always downstream: instant forms generate a name and number within hours, and nobody rings it back until the following evening. By then the homeowner has booked someone else.
The lead form versus landing page choice is a genuine dilemma and we have given it its own piece: instant forms or website landing pages for trades advertisers.
Google's Local Services Ads, the pay-per-lead format with a verification badge, are available to UK trades but are in flux. Google has ended the money-back guarantee that used to accompany the Google Guaranteed badge, replacing the badge family with a single Google Verified mark, and trade press has reported plans to fold the format into Performance Max campaigns, with UK accounts in a later phase.
Reviews: from nice-to-have to ranking and legal matter
Two things happened to reviews. First, Google's local results came to lean heavily on them, with recent, steady reviews doing more for visibility than a large but ageing total. Second, the law caught up.
Since April 2025 the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 has banned fake reviews and concealed incentivised reviews outright, with the Competition and Markets Authority able to fine businesses directly, up to 10 per cent of global turnover. The CMA's guidance also warns against cherry-picking, which includes only inviting customers you know are happy. A trade that asks every customer for a review is on safe ground. A trade that only asks the ones who said thank you twice is not.
We cover the mechanics in why review velocity matters more than review count and the rules in asking for reviews the legal way.
AI search arrives in the local results
AI Overviews reached UK searches in August 2024. AI Mode, the conversational search tab, followed in July 2025. Both now appear for a growing share of home improvement questions, and both draw on Business Profile data, reviews and website content to decide which trades to mention.
The practical effect so far is uneven. For informational searches ("how much does a new consumer unit cost") an AI answer often sits above everything. For "electrician near me" the map pack still dominates. But the line is moving, and the trades that appear in AI summaries are the ones with complete profiles, clear service descriptions and reviews that mention the specific work done.
This is one of the few genuinely new developments of the past two years, and our piece on what AI Overviews now show for local trade searches looks at it in detail.
Short-form video: the unexpected lead channel
A plasterer filming a 30-second skim coat, a sparky explaining why a fuse keeps tripping, a landscaper's before-and-after timelapse. These clips are everywhere on TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts, and they generate enquiries in a way that polished brand videos never did.
The mechanism is trust. A homeowner who has watched someone work for two minutes feels they already know them. The downside is reach without geography: a video can be seen by a million people, of whom a few hundred live within driving distance. The trades getting work from it are the ones who say where they are in every clip.
The skills shortage is now a marketing problem
CITB's Construction Workforce Outlook 2025 to 2029 puts the industry's recruitment need at 47,860 extra workers a year, roughly 239,300 over the period. For a small firm, that number shows up as a van sitting idle because there is nobody qualified to drive it.
The response has been to point marketing inward. Firms that spent years advertising for customers are now advertising for apprentices and experienced hands, using the same channels: Meta ads, Reels, local Facebook groups, a careers page on the website. Our news piece on how the skills shortage is turning trades marketing into recruitment marketing covers what that looks like.
What to expect in the year ahead
Three things look likely. First, Google will keep pulling interaction into the Business Profile: messaging, booking, quoting. Trades that treat the profile as a living channel rather than a listing will benefit.
Second, directories will keep moving towards managed marketplaces, where the platform sets the price and takes the payment. That suits small, repeatable jobs and suits the platform. It suits a trade with a strong reputation rather less.
Third, the review rules will start to bite. The CMA finished its grace period in mid 2025 and has already written to businesses it found wanting. Enforcement against small traders is unlikely to be the first target, but review platforms will tighten their own checks in response, and incentive schemes that were common five years ago will quietly become a liability.
The common thread is ownership. The trades in the strongest position are those whose reviews, photos, website and customer list belong to them, with directories and ads used as taps to turn on and off. That was good advice in 2016. In 2026 it is the whole game.
Frequently asked questions
Do tradespeople still need a website if they have a Google Business Profile?
Yes. The profile wins the first search, but the website handles the second look, where homeowners check range of work, areas covered and accreditations before calling.
Are directories like Checkatrade worth it in 2026?
They remain the fastest route to a first enquiry for a new business. The cost case weakens over time if nothing of your own is built alongside them.
Has the law on asking for reviews changed?
Yes. Since April 2025 the DMCC Act bans fake and concealed incentivised reviews, and CMA guidance treats only inviting happy customers as cherry-picking.
Do AI Overviews affect local trade searches?
Increasingly. Informational home improvement questions often get an AI answer first; "near me" searches are still led by the map results, but the balance is shifting.