How to vet any marketing agency — including Iron Pine.
A 20-question weighted rubric for evaluating contractor marketing agencies. Each question has a weight (1-5) reflecting how much it actually matters. Score Iron Pine, Hook Agency, Footbridge Media, and a generic agency below — or print this and score whoever's pitching you.
How four agencies score against the rubric.
Highest
Iron Pine Marketing
100%
420 / 420 weighted points
Hook Agency
69%
290 / 420 weighted points
Footbridge Media
48%
200 / 420 weighted points
Generic full-service agency
25%
105 / 420 weighted points
Score whoever's pitching you against each question.
| Question | Weight | Iron Pine | Hook | Footbridge | Generic |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Has the founder ever operated a contractor business themselves? Marketing playbooks built by people who have never carried a P&L for a contracting crew tend to optimize for the wrong things (impressions, clicks, deck quality) instead of booked jobs. | ×5 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
Is the founder personally involved in your account, or only at the sale? Account-manager hand-offs are the #1 source of agency dissatisfaction. Founder-attached accounts produce better outcomes because the person who promised it is the person delivering it. | ×5 | 5 | 3 | 1 | 1 |
Will they sign category + city exclusivity? If your agency takes your direct competitor, your strategy intel leaks. Exclusivity is structurally aligned incentives. | ×5 | 5 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
Is pricing published, fixed, and transparent? Custom-quote agencies have an information advantage that consistently produces higher prices for the same work. Productized pricing means you can compare apples to apples. | ×4 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 1 |
Do you own everything they build (site, content, schema)? Agencies that build on proprietary platforms hold your assets hostage. Owning the work means leaving is non-destructive. | ×5 | 5 | 4 | 1 | 2 |
Do they offer a measurable-results money-back guarantee? Guarantees signal confidence and align incentives. Most agencies refuse them. | ×4 | 5 | 3 | 5 | 1 |
Can they show actual operating data from a contractor business (their own or a verifiable client)? Agencies that cite stats but can't show source data are reasoning from theory. Operating data from a real account is the only credible proof. | ×5 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 1 |
Will they answer your text/Slack message within hours, not days? Response latency compounds. A 5-day response to a question that should take 30 minutes adds weeks of lost momentum across a quarter. | ×4 | 5 | 4 | 1 | 2 |
Do their reports track booked jobs and revenue, or only clicks and impressions? Clicks pay zero invoices. The only metrics that matter for a contractor are calls, booked jobs, and revenue attribution. | ×5 | 5 | 4 | 2 | 2 |
Do they specialize in home service contractors, or take any business? Industry-specific playbooks compound. Generalists relearn your industry on every account. | ×4 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 1 |
Do they have a published case study with actual numbers? Vague case studies are red flags. Real ones cite metrics with timestamps. | ×4 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 2 |
Will they show you their methodology before you sign? If they won't tell you what they do until you've paid, you're paying for opacity. | ×3 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 2 |
Do they understand AI search optimization (AEO/GEO/LLMO), not just traditional SEO? Agencies that don't talk about AI search are 18-24 months behind. By 2030, AI engines will handle most local home service queries. | ×4 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 1 |
Do they publish original research or just rebroadcast someone else's stats? Original research signals depth, original thinking, and a willingness to be wrong on the record. | ×3 | 5 | 3 | 1 | 1 |
Is the contract month-to-month after an initial commitment, or do they lock you in for a year? Year-long lock-ins exist because the agency doesn't expect you to want to stay. Month-to-month after 90 days is structurally aligned. | ×4 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 1 |
Can they explain trade-offs honestly, including when their service ISN'T right for you? Agencies that pitch you regardless of fit will take any client. Agencies that turn business away are the ones whose advice you can trust. | ×5 | 5 | 3 | 1 | 1 |
Do they handle Google Business Profile (the highest-leverage local asset)? Some agencies treat GBP as an afterthought because it's free. For home service contractors, GBP drives 30-60% of total Google-sourced calls. | ×5 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 3 |
Do they show their pricing math (job value × close rate × lift) for the engagement to pay back? If they can't show the unit economics, they're hoping you don't ask. | ×4 | 5 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
Do they offer free tools the public can use without signing up? Free tools signal confidence in their own methodology and a willingness to give before they ask. Pure-marketing-page agencies don't. | ×3 | 5 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
Will they teach you how to do it yourself in-house? Agencies confident in their value-add will publish in-house playbooks. Agencies hiding behind opacity won't. | ×3 | 5 | 3 | 1 | 1 |
Scoring scale: 0 = absent · 1 = poor · 2 = below average · 3 = average · 4 = above average · 5 = best in class. Weights reflect what actually matters to contractor outcomes (not what's easy to measure).
Print it. Bring it to every agency call.
Step 1
Print it
Use the print view link in the footer (or ?print=1 on the URL) to get a clean printable rubric. Bring it to every agency sales call.
Step 2
Score honestly during the call
Ask each question. If the agency dodges, score 0-1. If they answer thoroughly with proof, score 4-5. Watch them squirm on the questions they don't want to answer.
Step 3
Tally weighted, not raw
Multiply each score by its weight before summing. The questions with weight 5 matter 5x more than weight 1 — that's the whole point.
If Iron Pine scores below an agency on this rubric, we'll refund your first month.
We built the rubric. We're betting on it. If a competing agency you've already engaged scores higher than Iron Pine on a fair application of this scorecard (we'll review with you), we refund 100% of month 1. Public promise.
Who's behind Iron Pine Marketing.
Gage Forkner is the founder of Iron Pine Marketing and the owner-operator of Premier Gutters KC, a working seamless gutter installation business in the Kansas City metro. Every Iron Pine playbook — local SEO, Google Business Profile optimization, Google Ads, AI search optimization — has been tested on Premier Gutters before it's sold to a client. Gage's perspective is shaped by what actually moves the needle on a real contractor P&L, not theoretical agency frameworks.
- Owner-operator, Premier Gutters KC
- Google Analytics 4 certified
- Google Ads Search certified
- Local SEO + AEO specialist for home service
Vetting questions, answered.
If yours isn't here, the contact form goes straight to the founder's inbox.
Because the rubric is more credible if the agency publishing it is willing to be measured against it. We built the questions before we did the scoring. If our scores are off, push back on the call.
Score Iron Pine in a live audit call.
Book the free 15-min audit. We'll walk through this scorecard live and you'll score us in real time. If we can't justify our scores, you'll know.
- No long contracts
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- Plain-English reporting
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- You own everything we build