A multi-state building supply distributor, across Google Ads, Meta, a website programme and a contractor event over twelve months.

Distribution is a different marketing problem from contracting. The audience is professional, the purchase is repeated rather than one-off, and the job is being the easiest supplier to buy from across a branch network rather than winning a single sale.

The problem

A branch network has a findability problem that a single location does not. Each branch serves its own radius, each needs to be found by contractors near it, and a contractor searching for a supplier close to a job site is not going to scroll.

Reach also has to be genuinely wide. The buyers are contractors across several states, they are not all in market at once, and the supplier they default to is usually the one they have seen and dealt with most recently.

What we did

  • Ran Google Ads for the searches contractors actually make — products, materials and supplier searches near a branch — rather than broad category terms.
  • Used Meta for reach and familiarity across the contractor audience, which is where the impression volume below comes from.
  • Website work to support the branch network, so a contractor searching near a location lands on something useful rather than a pin on a shared map.
  • Supported a contractor event as part of the same programme, promoted through the channels already reaching that audience.

What the numbers show

Google Ads produced more than 50,000 clicks against more than 1.3 million impressions, at a cost per click of about $0.52.

Meta reached more than 1.2 million people with more than 3 million impressions, producing more than 22,000 link clicks and more than 160 leads.

The cost per click is the number worth pausing on. At roughly half a dollar, this is traffic bought at a fraction of what contractor-facing consumer searches cost, because professional product and supplier searches are less contested than the homeowner equivalents.

Why reach is the right goal here, not leads alone

Judging distributor marketing purely on form fills misreads how the trade buys. A contractor does not fill in a lead form to place an order — they phone the branch, or they turn up, or they use an account they already have.

So the useful measures are reach, traffic and whether contractors can find and use you. The 160-plus Meta leads matter, but the 22,000 link clicks and the 1.2 million reach are doing the work of keeping the branch network the default choice.