I've Been Burned by Marketing Before - Why It Failed and What's Different Now
If you’ve tried Angi, HomeAdvisor, Thumbtack, or a marketing agency and got nothing out of it, you’re not alone. Here’s exactly why it didn’t work – and what a system that actually works looks like.
I hope you enjoy reading this blog post.
Author: Brady Carlson | Co-Founder of Dirt2Dollars
Published Date: 20 May, 2026
You're Not Bad at Marketing. You Got a Bad System.
Most contractors who say “marketing doesn’t work” have tried marketing. They’ve spent money on Angi. They’ve bought HomeAdvisor leads. They’ve paid an agency a few thousand dollars a month. And they got burned.
So they wrote it off.
That makes sense. Why would you keep paying for something that doesn’t produce results? You wouldn’t. Nobody would.
But here’s what I’ve learned after working with hundreds of land clearing and excavation contractors across the country: it wasn’t marketing that failed you. It was the specific model you were sold. There’s a big difference.
I’m going to walk you through exactly why the most common marketing approaches fail contractors. Not to talk you into anything – just so you understand what went wrong. Because once you see it clearly, you can spot the difference between something that will fail and something that will work.
Why Angi, HomeAdvisor, and Thumbtack Always Disappoint
Let’s start with the lead platforms. Angi, HomeAdvisor, and Thumbtack operate on the same basic model: a homeowner submits a project request, and that request gets sold as a “lead” to multiple contractors at the same time.
That’s the whole problem right there. One homeowner. Multiple contractors. You all get the same phone number. You all call the same person. Now it’s a race to the bottom on price, and whoever is willing to do the job the cheapest wins.
You’re not getting a qualified prospect. You’re getting entry into a bidding war you didn’t sign up for.
On top of that, many of these “leads” aren’t serious buyers. Some are people just doing research. Some are renters who don’t even own the property. Some are tire kickers looking for a ballpark number they’ll never act on. And some are flat-out fake – spam fills from bots.
You still pay for all of them.
HomeAdvisor charges anywhere from $15 to $100+ per lead depending on the job type. So you spend $200 on leads and maybe one of them turns into a real conversation. That’s not marketing. That’s a lottery ticket.
The lead platforms built a business that works great for them and poorly for contractors. They’ve already got your money whether you close the job or not.
Why Most Marketing Agencies Fail Contractors
Now let’s talk about agencies. The experience usually goes like this:
You pay $1,500 to $3,000 per month. The agency sets up some Facebook ads. Leads start coming in. The agency emails you a list of names and phone numbers. You try to call them. Half don’t answer. Of the ones that do answer, most aren’t ready to hire anyone. You close one job in three months. You cancel.
Sound familiar?
Here’s what went wrong. The agency’s job was to generate leads. That’s what you paid for. That’s all they did. The entire system after the lead – the follow-up, the qualification, the booking – that was your problem to figure out.
But here’s the reality most agencies won’t tell you: the follow-up is where 80% of the revenue comes from.
A lead that doesn’t get called back within 5 minutes has an exponentially lower chance of converting. The homeowner submitted a form, and while your agency is sending you an email about it, two other contractors already called that person. By the time you see it, the job is gone.
Most agencies don’t have a calling system. They don’t have a qualification process. They don’t track cost per closed job. They track cost per lead – which is a vanity metric that tells you almost nothing about whether the marketing is actually making you money.
So you get leads. You chase them yourself. Nothing converts. You blame marketing. And the agency blames you.
The Specific Problems Nobody Warned You About
Let me break down the failure points so you can see them clearly:
Shared leads. You’re competing against other contractors for the same homeowner’s attention. Price becomes the deciding factor because everyone is offering the same service.
No speed to lead. Leads expire fast. If you’re on a job site and you can’t call back for 3 hours, that lead is ice cold. Most contractors don’t have someone dedicated to calling leads immediately.
No qualification. Before you ever drive to a property, someone should verify the person owns the land, has a real project, has a reasonable budget, and is the decision maker. Most systems skip this entirely and send you to waste time with people who were never going to hire anyone.
No structured follow-up. The average job requires 5-7 follow-up touches before someone commits. Most contractors follow up once or twice and give up. The agency doesn’t follow up at all.
No accountability. You paid your monthly retainer whether you got 0 jobs or 10 jobs. The agency had no skin in the game. That imbalance always ends badly.
What Michael and Kyle Found After Getting Burned
I’ll give you two examples from contractors we work with at Dirt2Dollars.
Michael had tried two different agencies before talking to us. He was skeptical. Rightfully so. He’d spent money and gotten burned twice. He told us on the intro call that he didn’t believe online marketing worked for land clearing. We understood why he felt that way.
He decided to give it one more shot. Within 7 days of going live, his calendar was filling up with on-site appointments. Real appointments. Qualified homeowners who had already been vetted. Within the first 30 days, he had more work booked than he’d gotten from his previous agency in 6 months combined.
Kyle’s situation was different. He was genuinely considering shutting down. Business had dried up. He’d tried the lead platforms, tried word of mouth, tried posting on social media himself. Nothing was working at the scale he needed. He was at a breaking point.
He came to us as a last resort. Today he’s doing over $1 million in revenue. That’s not from luck. That’s from having a system that works.
The difference wasn’t the platform. Facebook worked for both of them. The difference was everything that happened after the ad.
What a System That Actually Works Looks Like
I want to be specific here because vague marketing promises are part of the problem.
A system that works does all of this:
Targeted ads with real creative. Not templates. Not stock photos. Ads that speak to the specific type of homeowner who needs land clearing or excavation in your area. Different messages for different services. Fresh creative that the algorithm can actually optimize against.
Speed to lead – measured in minutes, not hours. Every lead gets a call within minutes of submitting. Not an automated text. A real person on the phone.
Qualification before the appointment. Before any job goes on your calendar, it passes a filter. The lead center asks: Do you own this property? What kind of work do you need done? When are you looking to start? Have you gotten other quotes? Only the leads who pass this filter become appointments.
On-site appointments, not leads. This is the key distinction. You’re not getting a name and a phone number. You’re getting a booked appointment with a vetted homeowner at their property on a specific date and time. You show up, you look at the job, you close it.
Structured follow-up after the estimate. The first call you get from us is for the booking. But the system doesn’t stop there. After your estimate, there’s a follow-up sequence to help you close the job.
Tracking that actually means something. We track cost per appointment and cost per closed job – not just cost per lead. If something isn’t working, we know where the breakdown is and we fix it.
The Real Question to Ask
Here’s how I’d encourage you to think about this.
The question isn’t “does marketing work?” It clearly works for the contractors who are doing $500K, $1M, and $2M+ per year. They’re not all getting there on word of mouth.
The real question is: what kind of system are you actually buying?
Are you buying leads? Or are you buying qualified on-site appointments?
Are you buying ads that run on autopilot? Or are you buying ads plus a calling system plus qualification plus follow-up?
Are you paying a monthly fee regardless of results? Or does your marketing partner have skin in the game?
The contractors who get burned by marketing are usually buying the cheap version – the lead list, the set-it-and-forget-it agency, the platform that sells the same lead to five competitors.
The contractors who scale are buying the full system.
Ready to See What the Full System Looks Like?
At Dirt2Dollars, we’ve generated over $42 million in land clearing and excavation estimates for contractors across the country. That number comes from a system that includes ads, calling, qualification, and booked on-site appointments.
Not leads. Appointments.
If you’ve been burned before, I get it. I’d be skeptical too. But if you want to see exactly how it works and whether it makes sense for your business, let’s talk.
👉 Book a Free Intro Call: https://link.toolboxx.co/widget/bookings/intro-blogs
Brady Carlson | Co-Founder of Dirt2Dollars
About the Author
Brady Carlson is the co-founder of Dirt2Dollars, the leading marketing agency for land clearing and excavation contractors. Dirt2Dollars has helped over 250 contractors nationwide grow their businesses through exclusive lead generation, in-house appointment setting, and dedicated customer success management. Learn more at https://dirt2dollars.com/
