How to choose a marketing agency for kitchen and bathroom fitters: test how it handles the long wait

Take Priya and Marcus, two fitters made up for this guide. Priya fits kitchens that local showrooms sell, and her work comes through three showrooms and past customers, so she hires a small local agency on a flat fee to tidy her Google Business Profile, collect reviews and build a page for each kind of job. Marcus runs a showroom (in the US, a kitchen and bath remodeling firm) where booked design appointments are the bottleneck, so he hires an agency for paid search, Meta adverts, quote follow-up and finance offers, and accepts more reporting, more rules and a larger fee. Priya trades reach for control; Marcus trades simplicity for reach. The meeting below branches where their businesses differ.

Phase one: the opening minutes

Ask how a household gets from first search to signed order in your business. Fitting units someone else sold is a different route from designing and selling the room yourself, and the agency should say which one it thinks yours is. For Priya, the route runs through a showroom's design and her fitting quote; for Marcus, through his own design appointment. Treat a reply of "we generate leads" as vague, and follow up with: "What happens to a lead in month three?"

Ask what success will be counted as. The answer should be design appointments that took place, quotes sent and orders signed, each split by source, including showroom walk-ins and phone calls. "More enquiries" is not an answer; the follow-up is: "How many were booked for a design appointment, and how many kept it?"

For a showroom, ask how the Google Business Profile will show both the showroom and the home installs. Google's Business Profile guidelines expect a business that both receives customers at its address and lists a service area to have that address staffed during the hours it shows. That matters to Marcus, whose showroom is the address; Priya, who visits homes, should ask which address the agency would show at all.

If your gap is only a thin Google profile, compare a freelancer, a lead-platform listing or doing the basics yourself against a retainer first.

Phase two: the middle, and the quiet quote

The middle of the meeting belongs to the wait. Houzz's press release on its 2026 survey of registered users gives an average of 9.5 months spent planning a kitchen project in 2025, before 5.8 months of building, and the survey drew more than 20,000 US respondents. The UK figure is older and not specific to kitchens: a 2018 PushON survey of 1,000 UK consumers, about expensive items such as a new kitchen or bathroom, found 7% took over six months to decide, and 28% spent up to a month researching. Treat both as direction, not as your numbers. During that wait the household is not forgetting you so much as doubting the design, the price and the timing, so the question is what keeps their confidence in the room you drew.

Ask the agency which doubt it expects, and what it would send for each. If the doubt is the design, the useful message is a revised drawing or a visit to a finished room nearby. If it is the price, it is a clear breakdown of what the quote includes, with a phased option if you offer one. If it is the timing, it is a fitting slot you can hold, with the date the hold lapses. If the agency answers with one sequence of emails for all three, ask: "How would you know which doubt this household has?"

At two weeks. Ask what the household receives and who sends it. For Marcus, that should be his designer, answering what the household queried at the appointment. For Priya, it is the showroom's job, so the agency should ask how she hears that a quote has gone quiet at all.

At two months. Ask what proof arrives: finished rooms like the one quoted, from the same area, with the fitter named. Retargeting everyone who visited the site is not proof; the follow-up is: "What does someone with a two-month-old quote see that a first-time visitor does not?"

At five months. Ask who rings, what they offer to revisit, such as a revised layout or a new fitting slot, and when the agency stops. A plan with no stopping rule spends money on households that have already chosen someone else.

Listen, too, for whether the agency asks you for anything. It cannot follow up a quote it cannot see, so it should ask how quotes are logged, who marks one as quiet, and what reason is recorded when a household says no. For Priya, that log may sit with each showroom, and the agency should ask whether she can see it at all. For Marcus, it sits in his own system, and the agency should ask who updates it after each appointment. If the agency never asks, its follow-up plan is a template, and the same plan would arrive whatever your quotes looked like.

Then the wording that runs alongside. Finance comes up only if you advertise it. For UK adverts, FCA rule CONC 3.5.3R requires a representative example, with some exceptions, where an advert shows an interest rate or any sum tied to the cost of credit. If you only introduce customers to a lender, a credit broker has to say in its promotions that it brokers credit and does not lend it, according to the FCA's guide for brokers. In the US, Regulation Z lists the amount of any payment among the terms that trigger further disclosures, including the annual percentage rate. Ask which of these applies to the advert the agency would write, and who approves the final wording; whether a rule reaches your arrangement is a question for the lender or a lawyer.

The ASA upheld a complaint in April 2018 about a retailer's sale billed as "half price kitchens plus an extra 20% off", reasoning that shoppers would read the headline as a genuine saving on the usual selling price. One upheld complaint does not outlaw sales, but ask to see the usual price on file before any money-off headline runs.

Reviews and deposits need only two checks here. The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 makes it a banned practice for a trader to submit or commission fake reviews, or reviews that hide an incentive (Schedule 20, paragraph 13), Google's Maps policy bars merchants from offering payment, discounts or free goods to get any review posted, and the FTC's US rule at 16 CFR 465.4 covers rewards that depend on a review taking a positive or negative line. For deposits, KBSA's scheme is available only where the member has chosen to offer it, pays out no more than the smallest of 25% of the contract price, the deposits paid or £18,750, and ends at 120 days unless the insurer agrees to stretch it to 180, or earlier on delivery or cancellation. A "deposits protected" line is a claim to check against your own cover, which matters most to a household waiting months for its fit date.

Phase three: the close

Ask who, by name, will run your account. Request the person who writes the adverts and the person who changes the budget, whether either is a freelancer or sits in a partner firm, and whether the people in the room will do the work. For Marcus, add the person who writes the five-month follow-up; for Priya, the person who updates her profile after each fit. "The team handles that" gets the follow-up: "Which two people open my account on Monday, and what else do they run?"

Ask whose name is on the ad accounts, the records and the files. The Google Ads account, the Meta ad account, the tracking tags, the call recordings, the enquiry records and the finished-job photos should all sit in accounts in your name, and the contract should say so. If the agency keeps them in its own account for efficiency, ask: "If I leave next month, what do I take, in what format and by when?" Ask the same of the creative: edited files, source files and any licence for photos you did not take yourself. What creative testing actually looks like sets out how an agency should test that work.

The finance and saving-claim rules this meeting only touches, and the made-to-order rules it leaves out, get more room on The Social Target's own page, marketing for kitchen and bathroom fitters, which describes the work it sells to showrooms and fitters.

The last question to ask

End every agency meeting with one question: "A household I quoted three months ago has gone silent. Show me the next thing they would receive from us, and tell me why it would make them more sure of the design."

The reply you want is a real piece of work: a finished room like theirs, a note from the person who drew the plan, or an offer to revisit one detail they queried. It names who sends it and what happens if the household answers. A reply about "staying top of mind" or a discount to close describes reach or pressure, not confidence. If the agency cannot show you an example from another client, ask it to write one for your last quiet quote before any contract, and judge it on whether you would send it yourself.

To talk through your own kitchen or bathroom business, tell us about your business and we will reply.