Register · 175 levers · 5 stages · 22 trades
175 ways a UK small business wins its next client, each with what it is, the rule that governs it, the trades it fits, the tools, and the number that tells you it is working. They sit in five stages, in the order that pays back fastest: stop the leaks, harvest the demand that already exists, create demand, go and find people, then turn clients into advocates. The offer gate sits between the first two, and the money model decides whether paid acquisition can ever pay.
The register was written across 16 trades. The site now covers 22, so the trade chips on each lever are the current list and the original wording sits beneath them where it says more. Nobody does all 175. Use the two questions below to find the stage to start in, or filter by your trade.
Two questions settle where the next hour goes. Most owners believe they need a new channel when they are losing clients they already won.
How urgent is cash?
What shape is the business?
Answer both questions for a place to start and three levers to read first.
Cost per client is what it costs you to win the next client through that stage, counting money and hours. Stage 5 is the cheapest of all and sits last, because advocacy needs delivered work and months of compounding before it produces anything.
| Stage | What it does | Cost per client | Speed |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Stop the leaks | Keeps demand you already paid for | Near zero | Days |
| Gate. Engineer the offer | Decides what all later work is selling | Near zero | A day, plus the rewrite |
| 2. Harvest existing demand | Captures people already looking | Low | Weeks to months |
| 3. Create demand | Makes people want what they were not seeking | Medium | Months |
| 4. Go and find them | Reaches people who have never heard of you | High | Weeks, with effort |
| 5. Make advocates | Turns clients into a channel | Negative | Months, compounds |
Narrow the 175 levers to your trade, a tool you already pay for, or the rule you need to stay inside. Every lever keeps its own link.
Showing every lever
Demand the business already generated and then lost. Every lever here has a near-zero cost and a payback measured in days, which is why it goes first. This is the stage the free per-industry checklists already cover.
The arithmetic is brutal and it is why this stage is not a warm-up. A plumber taking 40 calls a week at a 65 per cent answer rate loses 14 calls. At a 50 per cent conversion and a £280 average job, that is roughly £2,000 a week walking to a competitor, recoverable with a £20 a month text-back rule.
Export a month of call logs from the mobile or the VoIP provider and count answered against total. Almost no sole trader knows this number, and everything in this subsection is judged against it.
The single largest leak in UK trades and clinics. A caller who gets voicemail rings the next business on the list, and does not ring back.
Every unanswered inbound call triggers an instant SMS with a booking link and a callback promise. The cheapest lever in this document and frequently the fastest payback.
An outsourced receptionist answers in your business name, takes details and books into your calendar. Beats voicemail comprehensively.
A voice agent answers every call at once, takes the address and the problem, recognises emergency language, escalates or books, and texts you the transcript. Setup is the work; running cost is modest at trade volumes.
plumbers, electricians, roofers, builders, cleaning companies, landscapers; less critical where booking is already online.
An after-hours flow that separates genuine emergencies (escalate to mobile) from quote enquiries (book a morning callback) captures evening demand without you living on the phone.
plumbers, electricians, roofers, commercial cleaners, urgent physio, IT support companies.
Whoever replies first wins a disproportionate share of high-intent local work. Route every form, DM and call to a notification you will actually see, and reply inside five minutes during working hours.
all 16, decisive for electricians, roofers, plumbers, cleaners.
Test it quarterly from a phone on mobile data, and confirm the email arrives. Silently broken forms are common and invisible, and the business has no idea it is losing anything.
Enquiries arriving in six places get lost in the seventh. Route phone, form, email, WhatsApp, social DMs and the platform inboxes into one place with one owner.
all 16, worst in salons, groomers and cleaners with three platform inboxes each.
Many buyers will not phone. A WhatsApp Business number with a saved greeting, quick replies and an away message captures them, and its read rates beat email comfortably.
all 16, strongest in groomers, salons, cleaners, tutors, photographers.
Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp and the platform inboxes (Checkatrade, Bark, Fresha, Booksy). Most DM enquiries only want the link and the price, and they want it at 11pm.
salons, groomers, photographers, caterers, landscapers, cleaning companies, personal trainers, cafes and restaurants.
Removes the "are they still trading" doubt that kills an enquiry before it starts, and it is ten minutes of work.
Twenty quotes, marked won or lost, with one word for why. Without this you cannot tell whether your problem is price, speed, trust or targeting, and every lever after it is guesswork.
all 16 that quote.
A quote delivered while you are standing in the room converts far better than one emailed four days later. The buyer's intent decays fast and yours is the only number they have.
builders, roofers, landscapers, electricians, plumbers, cleaners, caterers, photographers, IT support companies.
Two days, five days, twelve days, stopping the instant they reply. Most quoted work is lost to silence rather than to price: the customer got three quotes and hired whoever followed up.
all 16 that quote.
Published pricing by bedrooms, bathrooms, square metres, dog breed and coat, lesson block or guest count. Buyers who want a number get one immediately, which beats "contact us for a quote" for most domestic work.
cleaning companies, groomers, driving instructors, tutors, caterers, salons, photographers, solicitors. Poor fit for builders and bespoke work.
Same job, three specifications. The buyer's question changes from "yes or no" to "which one", and average order value rises.
builders, roofers, landscapers, electricians, photographers, caterers, coaches, accountants, IT support companies, marketing and design agencies, financial advisers, solicitors.
A £50 to £150 fee, credited against the project, converts unbillable survey hours into a first paid step and filters the people who were never going to sign.
landscapers and garden designers, builders at design stage, coaches, consultants, photographers, accountants, IT support companies, marketing and design agencies, financial advisers, solicitors. Keep it free for straightforward maintenance quotes.
Job type, budget band, timeframe and postcode, collected before you spend an evening pricing. Fewer enquiries, more of them real.
builders, roofers, landscapers, photographers, caterers, consultants, IT support companies, marketing and design agencies, financial advisers, solicitors.
A lightweight CRM, or a spreadsheet. An unrecorded enquiry cannot be followed up, cannot be counted, and cannot be swept later (L037).
Capacity now is not capacity in March. Keep the list of the jobs you could not take and go back to it when the diary opens.
all 16, worst waste in builders, landscapers and photographers with seasonal capacity.
A deposit converts a verbal yes into a commitment, funds materials, and filters the client who was still shopping.
Real-time availability the client can book without speaking to anyone. The phone stays; it stops being the only door.
salons, groomers, physios, therapists, driving instructors, tutors, cleaners, photographers, personal trainers, cafes and restaurants, financial advisers, solicitors.
A confirmation with the date, the time, the address and what to expect. It reduces the silent no-show and it is free.
every appointment business.
Confirmation at booking, a reminder 48 hours out, an SMS the day before or two hours out, each carrying a one-tap reschedule link. Clinics moving from one manual reminder to a proper ladder plus online booking commonly cut no-shows by a third to a half; measure your own rate before and after rather than promising a figure.
salons, groomers, physios, therapists, driving instructors, tutors, cleaners, photographers, caterers, personal trainers, cafes and restaurants, financial advisers, solicitors.
A moved appointment is a slot you can refill. A no-show is not. Friction in rescheduling converts cancellations into no-shows.
every appointment business.
The hardest single lever against no-shows. Apply it to new clients and known repeat offenders rather than to everyone, and frame it as holding the appointment.
salons, groomers, physios, photographers, driving instructors, caterers, personal trainers, cafes and restaurants.
24 or 48 hours' notice, stated at booking, in the confirmation and in the reminder. It changes behaviour even when rarely enforced, and enforcement matters more than the wording.
every appointment business.
A freed slot is offered automatically to the waitlist, turning a cancellation into kept revenue without a phone call.
salons, groomers, physios, therapists, driving instructors, tutors, personal trainers, cafes and restaurants.
For businesses without a formal waitlist, a same-day message to a segment ("two slots free Thursday afternoon, reply to take one") refills capacity that would otherwise be lost.
salons, groomers, physios, cleaners, driving instructors, tutors, personal trainers, cafes and restaurants.
Removes the chase and the no-show in one move, and it suits block-booked and package work naturally.
tutors, driving instructors, coaches, photographers, therapists, caterers, personal trainers, solicitors.
This subsection is where the largest untapped money usually sits. A groomer's client is worth eight or more appointments a year; losing them after one is an acquisition cost paid for a single transaction. It is also the precondition for paid acquisition working at small ticket sizes, which is the argument in the money model below.
Rebooking rate, no-show rate, average weeks between visits. A regular stretching from five weeks to eight is a quiet 30 per cent revenue drop with no cancellation to notice, and it is the most under-watched number in this document.
every repeat trade.
"Same time on the 12th?" before they stand up. At the chair, at the van, at the end of the session. Ten seconds, and the single biggest driver of a full diary in any cyclical trade.
salons, groomers, physios, driving instructors, tutors, cleaners, therapists, personal trainers.
This is the small administrative lever that makes L035, L036 and L037 lawful. PECR soft opt-in requires that the opt-out was offered at the moment the details were collected, not merely in the later message. A booking form, a quote form or a card-machine capture that never mentioned marketing has failed that condition, and the list then needs consent before any email or SMS.
Triggered on your real service interval: six weeks for a cut, eight for a groom, twelve months for a boiler service, five years for an EICR. Use the specifics, the dog's name, the room that was decorated, the service anniversary. Personal and true outperforms generic promotion.
groomers, salons, physios, plumbers, electricians, cleaners, driving instructors, tutors, photographers, financial advisers, solicitors.
An automatic message at 8 to 10 weeks past the usual gap, then again at six months with a reason to return. Cheaper than any advert, and it works on people who already know you are good.
Most of these businesses hold hundreds of past customers in a phone, a diary or a card machine and have never contacted them. A one-off structured sweep of that list is the closest thing to free money in this document, and it is a different exercise from the ongoing automation above.
Book the next six, not the next one. A standing slot removes a decision every cycle and raises retention structurally.
groomers, salons, cleaners, physios, driving instructors, tutors, landscapers on maintenance rounds, personal trainers.
Boiler service plans, electrical safety plans, garden maintenance rounds, monthly bookkeeping, a haircut membership, a physio maintenance plan, a monthly cleaning contract. Continuity smooths cashflow, raises lifetime gross profit, and is the precondition for paid acquisition working at all at small ticket sizes.
plumbers, electricians, landscapers, cleaners, accountants, physios, salons, tutors, coaches, personal trainers, IT support companies, marketing and design agencies, financial advisers, solicitors.
Recurring clients on GoCardless pay without deciding to. It removes chasing entirely and cuts involuntary churn.
cleaners, landscapers, accountants, tutors, driving instructors, clinics on plans, personal trainers, IT support companies, marketing and design agencies, financial advisers.
Where the clinically or practically correct answer is six sessions, present six. Patients who book one visit and drift never get the outcome they came for, which is worse for them and for the diary.
physios and clinics, therapists, tutors, driving instructors, coaches, personal trainers.
Sells the next six visits rather than the next one, in trades where there is no clinical judgement in the way: a term of tutoring, a ten-hour driving block, a season of garden maintenance, four seasonal family shoots.
tutors, driving instructors, landscapers, photographers, cleaners, coaches, personal trainers.
The highest-risk moment is the first two weeks. A short sequence that sets expectations, delivers a quick win and names the contact route cuts early cancellation.
accountants, cleaners, coaches, consultants, tutors, anyone on a care plan, personal trainers, IT support companies, marketing and design agencies, financial advisers, solicitors.
A short message a week after the work. It catches the small complaint that would otherwise become a silent non-return, and it is the natural moment for L088 and L154.
Without these two numbers no marketing decision is anything but a guess, and no lever in stages 2 to 4 can be evaluated at all.
Trades routinely discover that their busiest work is their least profitable. Knowing this redirects every lead lever in the later stages towards the work worth winning.
The fastest revenue lever in this document and the one most often skipped. A 10 per cent rise on a full diary at 40 per cent margins raises profit by roughly a quarter and costs nothing to implement. Test it on new enquiries only, and watch the win rate rather than guessing at it. It also changes which clients you attract.
A back book on three-year-old rates is an unpriced discount. Announce a rise with notice and a reason, and expect very few losses.
cleaners, landscapers, accountants, tutors, driving instructors, care-plan clients, IT support companies, marketing and design agencies, financial advisers.
Every full sole trader has two or three clients who consume disproportionate time at the lowest rate. Repricing them either fixes the margin or frees the capacity, and both are wins when you are the constraint.
The moment of purchase is the moment of highest willingness to buy more: the service plan offered at the install, the treatment course at the assessment, the album at the shoot, the block booking at the first lesson.
A voucher is a customer paying you to acquire a new customer for you. December voucher sales are found money for any consumer-facing business, and a meaningful share are never redeemed.
salons, groomers, photographers, caterers, therapists, driving instructors, tutors, cleaners, personal trainers, cafes and restaurants.
Card on site, or a payment link sent before you leave. Every day of delay is a day of chasing.
Three reminders on a schedule with no emotional cost to you, then a phone call. Commercial clients pay whoever chases.
electricians, builders, commercial cleaners, accountants, caterers, consultants, IT support companies, marketing and design agencies, financial advisers, solicitors.
Everything from here on amplifies whatever offer it points at. That is why this sits between the leaks and the traffic rather than inside stage 3 where it is usually filed: a stage 2 or stage 4 lever pointed at a weak offer costs the same as one pointed at a strong offer and returns less.
The value equation behind the levers below:
Value = (what they want x how likely they think you are to deliver it)
--------------------------------------------------------------
(how long it takes x how much effort and risk it costs them)Two of those four are marketing. Two are operations. Small local businesses habitually try to raise the top with adjectives ("quality", "professional", "reliable") while ignoring that the bottom is where they can actually win. A plumber who answers on the first ring and quotes on the spot has halved time delay and effort, which does more to the value of the offer than any headline.
The build order: pick one avatar (L054), list every problem they have before, during and after buying (L056), turn each problem into a named solution (L057), choose how each is delivered and cut the expensive-to-you-cheap-to-them ones (L058), stack what survives into one named offer with a price anchor (L059 to L062), reverse the risk (L065 to L069), then add scarcity and urgency that are actually true (L070 to L072).
One caveat before the levers, stated here rather than buried: at a £16 cut, a £35 tutoring hour or a £45 groom, the stack is theatre. The buyer decides in under a minute on proximity, availability, reviews and price. For those, the levers that matter are the bottom of the equation (book in ten seconds, appear when they search, be open when they need you) and not the itemised stack, the bonuses and the anchoring. The stack earns its keep from a few hundred pounds upwards.
"Anyone who needs a plumber" cannot be marketed to. "Landlords with three to ten properties in LN1 to LN6 who need EICRs and gas safety certificates on a renewal cycle" can be. Narrowing raises perceived likelihood, because the buyer recognises themselves, and it raises price, because specialists cost more than generalists. For consultants, coaches and accountants this is the single highest-leverage move available, and it makes every later channel work better.
Not "websites and local SEO" but "every emergency search in your area finds you and every call gets answered". The buyer's outcome is rarely your deliverable; it is what your deliverable causes.
For each step of getting and using your service, list what goes wrong in terms of time, effort, money and risk. A homeowner buying an extension: cannot judge who is competent, fears the builder disappearing mid-job, dreads living in a building site, fears the price doubling, does not know what planning permission needs, has no idea what "good" costs. That list is your offer's raw material and your website's section headings.
"You fear the price doubling" becomes "Fixed-Price Promise: the quote is the price unless you change the spec in writing". Naming matters because an unnamed inclusion is invisible.
For each solution, pick how it is delivered: one-to-one, one-to-many, done-for-you, done-with-you, template, tool, video, in person. Then trim. Drop anything expensive to you and low value to them; keep anything cheap to you and high value to them. This is the most useful lever in the document when you are the constraint, because it is how a full sole trader adds value without adding hours. A landscaper's "planting plan PDF you can take to any nursery" costs an hour once and is reused on every project.
all 16, most urgently coaches, consultants, therapists, tutors and accountants.
A name that carries the audience, the outcome, the interval and the container sells harder than a name that carries only the outcome. "The Never-Missed-Job System" becomes "The Plumber's 14-Day Never-Missed-Job System". The audience costs nothing to add and the interval is usually already in your delivery promise.
List every component with the price it would carry if bought alone, total it, then show your price beneath. A builder quoting a kitchen can itemise design visualisation, project management, waste removal and the ten-year workmanship guarantee rather than presenting one number.
all 16 above a few hundred pounds.
Anchor against what the buyer would otherwise spend, not against a fiction. A roofer anchors against £300 to £600 a month of resold leads. A clinic anchors a deposit policy against the revenue of one lost slot. An accountant anchors a fixed monthly fee against the client's last unexpected bill.
Good, better, best, with the middle tier designed to be chosen and the top tier designed to make the middle look sensible. The top tier must be real and occasionally sold; a decoy nobody can buy is a misleading practice.
all 16, weakest fit for emergency call-outs where there is one job to do.
"Quote within 24 hours", "same-day emergency response", "certificate in your inbox before we leave". Time delay is one of the two denominators in the value equation and usually the cheapest one to improve.
all 16, decisive in plumbing, roofing, electrical and cleaning.
Say what the client does not have to do. A cleaning company that handles keys, a builder that manages building control, an accountant that chases the client's bank for statements, a photographer that handles the album design. Every removed task is value created at no cost to the price.
"Not happy after the first session, tell me and I refund it, no questions." Highest conversion lift, highest abuse exposure, and the exposure is usually far smaller than the fear of it. Best fitted to low-ticket first steps, not to £60,000 extensions.
coaches, consultants, accountants, tutors, photographers, cleaning companies, salons on a redo. Poor fit for builders, roofers, physios.
"If you do the four things in the plan and it has not paid for itself in 90 days, I keep working free until it does." Conditional on the client's own participation, bounded in outcome, unbounded in effort. Trades can copy the structure: a landscaper's "if the planting fails in year one we replace it", an electrician's "if the certificate is rejected we rectify free".
all except therapists and physios, where outcome guarantees are ethically wrong, and financial advisers, where a promised result is left out as a precaution under the FCA's financial promotion rules.
"Non-refundable. If that is a problem, we are not a fit." Works where the buyer's commitment is the active ingredient and where a refund option would attract exactly the wrong client. This is the honest instrument for therapy and counselling, where promising an outcome would be unethical and promising a refund would distort the relationship.
therapists, counsellors, high-end coaches, wedding photography and catering where the date is the scarce good.
Fee tied to the result: a share of the uplift, a fee per booked job, a fee per recovered debt. Attractive to buyers and dangerous to deliver, because attribution arguments follow.
consultants, marketing and design agencies, debt recovery. Poor fit for most other trades.
A satisfaction guarantee on the first visit, a fixed-price promise on the quote, a workmanship warranty on the finished job, and a response-time promise on the phone. Each answers a different fear from the L056 inventory.
all 16 except financial advisers, where calling a feature guaranteed is restricted under the FCA's rules (COBS 4.2.5G).
A solo operator has real limits, and stating them is both true and persuasive. "Three build slots a month, delivered personally." A builder's "we take four extensions a year" and a groomer's "twelve Saturday slots a month" are the same lever.
The UK calendar hands small businesses genuine deadlines: 31 January self assessment, 5 April tax year end, five-year EICR renewals, gas safety anniversaries, MOT dates, the boiler service before the first cold week, wedding season booking windows, the September school year for tutors, Christmas party season for caterers, the winter clock change for driving lessons in daylight. This is urgency you do not have to invent.
all 16, richest for accountants, electricians, plumbers, tutors, caterers, photographers.
Sell in intakes rather than continuously: a tutor's term-based programme, a coach's group starting in October, a landscaper's "winter design slots, book by 30 November for spring build". The intake creates a deadline that is structurally true.
tutors, coaches, consultants, landscapers, photographers running mini-session days, personal trainers.
Each bonus should remove a problem the buyer will hit after they buy. A builder's bonus: a vetted list of the tilers, sparks and decorators they will need next. An accountant's: the bookkeeping template that makes their year end painless.
Deposit plus stages, monthly instalments, direct debit, or a finance option. Splitting a £1,800 job into three stages changes nothing about your revenue and materially changes affordability.
builders, roofers, landscapers, electricians, driving instructors on blocks, coaches, tutors.
A £97 diagnostic, a £150 design consultation, a £49 trial lesson. Cheaper to say yes to than the main offer, and it filters. A small payment buys attendance and attention in a way a free trial does not.
landscapers, coaches, consultants, accountants, driving instructors, tutors, photographers, therapists on an initial consultation, IT support companies, marketing and design agencies, financial advisers, solicitors.
People are already searching for what you do. This stage is about being the one they find. Slower than stage 1, but it compounds, and it does not stop when you stop paying.
This is also the stage the imported frameworks have no slot for. Warm outreach, content, cold outreach and paid ads are all push: you initiate. Local search is pull: the buyer has a leaking roof at 7am and types "emergency roofer near me". For a hairdresser in Lincoln, a plumber in Swindon or a physio in Leeds this is the largest single source of new clients, and most of it has a marginal acquisition cost of zero.
The highest-return hour of work available to a local business. Verification is by postcard, video or phone depending on category.
all 16 except purely remote consultants and online tutors.
Primary category is the strongest single ranking factor in the local pack. Hair Salon or Barber Shop as primary, then Beauty Salon or Waxing Service as secondaries, so each service surfaces in its own searches.
all 16 with a profile.
Each service listed is another term Google can match. Service-area businesses list towns rather than a shopfront address.
Google renders a "Book online" button. A searcher can go from search to booked without ever seeing a competitor's listing.
salons, groomers, physios, therapists, driving instructors, tutors, cleaners, photographers, personal trainers, cafes and restaurants, financial advisers, solicitors.
Active profiles are favoured, and clients choose with their eyes. Finished work, the premises, the team, the van.
Short posts with a call to action. Low ceiling per post, near-zero cost, and they occupy space on your own listing.
all 16 with a profile.
Anyone can ask and anyone can answer, including competitors. Post your own real questions and answer them: parking, price ranges, out-of-hours, whether you cover a given town.
all 16 with a profile.
Local pack ranking is heavily distance-weighted, so a business three towns away cannot rank in a town where it has no presence. The legitimate answers are a service-area profile, a genuine second premises, or accepting that paid pull (L110, L111) is the route into that town. Fake addresses and virtual offices are a suspension risk.
all service-area businesses.
Ten minutes each, small but free traffic, and increasingly what AI assistants and iPhone maps read.
all 16 with a location or service area.
Name, address and phone identical across Google, Bing, Apple, Yell, Thomson Local, FreeIndex, Scoot, Facebook and the trade bodies. Inconsistency dilutes local signals and sends buyers to a dead phone number.
all 16 with a location or service area.
Checkatrade, MyBuilder, Counselling Directory, BACP, Psychology Today, Fresha, Booksy, Tutorful. For therapists and counsellors these outrank everything else in this subsection, which is why the generic local-search advice misfires for them.
all 16 have at least one; decisive for therapists, counsellors, physios, tutors.
Worcester Bosch, Vaillant, Velux, Farrow and Ball, Marshalls and dozens of others run "find an approved installer" directories carrying real search traffic and real trust. Free to appear in once accredited.
plumbers and heating engineers, electricians, roofers, builders, landscapers.
Reviews are the strongest local ranking lever most of these businesses have, and the least systematised.
Invoice paid, job complete, appointment ended, certificate delivered. A trigger beats good intentions, and the moment of relief beats a week later.
all 16 except therapists and counsellors, where soliciting client testimonials conflicts with BACP and UKCP ethical expectations, and financial advisers, where review requests are left out as a precaution under the FCA's financial promotion rules.
"Ask for Jade, best balayage in town" and "cockapoo groom" do work that "great, five stars" cannot. Name the person, the job and the place.
salons, groomers, physios, cafes and restaurants, and trades with distinct named services.
Thirty reviews in one week followed by silence reads worse than three a month for ten months, to Google and to humans.
Two lines is enough. The reply is marketing to the next reader, not correspondence with the writer.
A measured reply to a bad review persuades more readers than the review dissuades. Answer the substance, offer the fix, and stop.
Google first, then the one your buyers actually look at: Checkatrade for trades, Fresha or Treatwell for salons, Psychology Today for therapists, Google alone for most of the rest.
all 16 except financial advisers, where review requests are left out as a precaution, as on L088.
Reviews scattered across Facebook, Checkatrade and Google do nothing for your own pages. Surface them on the site with review structured data, which can produce stars in search results.
builders, roofers, electricians, plumbers, landscapers, cleaners, photographers, caterers, cafes and restaurants.
When someone searches your business name, your site should win the result, with your prices and your booking button, not a Fresha or Checkatrade page listing your competitors underneath. Referrals and word of mouth now route through this search, which makes it a conversion asset rather than a discovery one.
Boiler repair, EICR, EV charger installation, loft conversion, flat roof repair, end-of-tenancy clean, balayage, puppy first groom. Each is a different search with different intent, and a single "Services" page ranks for none of them well.
"Loft conversion in Grantham" is a different query from "loft conversion". Genuine per-town pages with local projects, local reviews and local specifics rank; thin templated duplicates do not, and can be filtered as spam.
trades, cleaners, landscapers, mobile groomers, driving instructors, tutors, photographers, caterers.
The highest-converting local queries combine both: "emergency electrician Lincoln", "dog groomer Sleaford". Where you have genuine depth in a service and a town, the combined page beats either alone.
Most local traffic is a phone on 4G, and a slow site loses buyers before it loses rankings. LocalBusiness structured data, correct headings, working forms, HTTPS.
One thing you want the visitor to do, on every page, above the fold and at the end. Sites offering four equal options get none of them taken.
Reviews, accreditations, real photographs of your own work, years trading. The first screen decides whether the rest is read.
Gas Safe number, NICEIC or NAPIT registration, TrustMark, FMB, BACP or UKCP membership, HCPC registration, DVSA ADI badge grade, DBS check, food hygiene rating, public liability cover and its amount, years trading. These are the UK-specific proof assets, and they move perceived likelihood more than any adjective.
all 16, decisive for trades, therapists, physios, tutors, caterers.
Hidden prices do not make an expensive service feel accessible; they make buying feel like a negotiation, and a large group of good buyers will not start one. Bands preserve flexibility.
salons, groomers, cleaners, driving instructors, tutors, physios, therapists, photographers, coaches, personal trainers, cafes and restaurants, financial advisers, solicitors. Keep genuinely bespoke work quoted.
Price, area covered, availability, what happens next, who turns up, how long it takes. The unanswered question is the reason the form is not filled in.
A growing share of these questions is answered by an assistant rather than a results page. What makes you citable is what makes you rankable, plus machine-readable facts: explicit service lists, explicit areas, explicit prices, structured data, consistent naming across the web.
Otherwise you are guessing at which searches find you, which queries you nearly rank for, and whether the pages in L096 to L098 did anything.
Three numbers: visits, top pages, form completions. Checked once a month, not installed and forgotten.
Paid belongs after reviews and a working site, because ads point at whatever is already there. Sending paid traffic to a thin profile pays to lose.
Checkatrade, MyBuilder, Rated People, Bark, Fresha, Booksy, Treatwell, Psychology Today, Counselling Directory, Tutorful, Bidvine, Add to Event, Poptop. These fill diaries and they charge for it, per lead or per commission. Treat them as paid channels with a measurable cost per job, not as a strategy.
all 16 have at least one relevant platform. Tools and cost: varies widely and changes often; resold trade leads commonly run £30 to £80 each and are sold to several competitors at once, so verify current pricing per platform.
Bought leads fill the diary while the owned channel is built. Then compare cost per job across channels for three to six months and let the arithmetic decide. A roofing firm spending £300 to £600 a month on resold leads covers an entire website build in two to four months of redirected spend, and the site keeps working after the spend stops.
builders, roofers, electricians, plumbers, landscapers, cleaners, photographers, caterers.
"Emergency plumber near me" at 2am is the highest-intent traffic on the internet. Tight keyword sets, call-only campaigns for trades, and negative keywords for the searches you cannot serve.
all 16 with local demand, strongest for emergency trades.
LSAs sit above the normal ads, charge per lead rather than per click, and carry a green Google Guaranteed tick after Google verifies insurance, licences and background checks. Live in the UK for home-service categories including plumbers, heating engineers, electricians, roofers, locksmiths and cleaners; availability differs by category and city, so confirm eligibility for the specific trade and postcode before promising it.
plumbers, heating engineers, electricians, roofers, cleaning companies. Not available for salons, groomers, tutors or therapists at time of writing.
The cheapest paid audience available, because they have already shown intent. It only works once there is traffic to retarget.
all 16 with meaningful site traffic.
Boosted profiles on Checkatrade, Bark, Fresha, Treatwell and the rest. Same arithmetic as L108: measure cost per job and treat it as a channel, then audit it against what it actually returns.
Nobody is searching for you yet. This stage makes people want the thing before they were looking for it. It is the slowest work here and the most compounding.
A sole trader's content has to be produced from a van or between clients, which means formats that piggyback on the work itself are the only sustainable ones. That is why L114 and L115 come before the platform levers rather than after them.
Before and after, in decent light, thirty seconds. This is the raw material for the profile photos, the site, the case studies, the video and the referral prompt simultaneously, and it is the most valuable marketing asset a trade owns. Visual trades have an unfair advantage here that almost none of them use.
builders, roofers, landscapers, groomers, salons, cleaners, photographers, caterers, plumbers, electricians, cafes and restaurants.
One project shoot becomes a profile photo set, a case study page, a short video, a newsletter item and a review request prompt. This is how a one-person business achieves content volume without content hours.
"How much does an EICR cost", "do I need planning permission for a loft conversion", "how often should a cockapoo be groomed", "what does a first counselling session involve". High intent, low competition, and it puts you in the consideration set before anyone else is in the room.
"Three-bed semi in Newark, 1930s extension, £48,000, nine weeks, here is what we found behind the plaster." Specific beats superlative, this content ranks and converts at once, and it often earns a link back.
builders, roofers, landscapers, electricians, coaches, consultants, accountants, photographers, IT support companies, marketing and design agencies.
Satisfying-process content performs disproportionately well for visible trades: a matted coat transformed, a blocked drain cleared, a patio laid, a colour correction. The algorithm supplies the reach; consistency supplies the results.
groomers, salons, landscapers, builders, cleaners, photographers, caterers, driving instructors, personal trainers, cafes and restaurants. Weak fit for therapists and accountants.
Instagram for visual work, LinkedIn for B2B, Facebook for local consumer, TikTok for reach. One platform done weekly beats four done monthly, and the choice is decided by where your buyer already is.
Town and village groups are where "can anyone recommend a..." is asked several times a day. Answer helpfully, follow the group's promotion rules, and be the name people tag.
all 16, strongest for consumer trades and personal services.
Mumsnet for tutors, Reddit trade subs, sector Slack groups, specialist Facebook groups. Be useful for months before you sell, or do not go.
tutors, coaches, consultants, accountants, photographers, therapists (professional forums only, not client-facing), IT support companies, marketing and design agencies, financial advisers, solicitors.
Two or three well-timed emails a season, not a treadmill. A client who loved their summer planting will book a January patio if someone plants the idea in October. This is the asset that makes a seasonal business less seasonal, and owning a list you never email is the most expensive thing in marketing.
all 16, transformative for landscapers, photographers, caterers, salons, accountants.
A checklist, a calculator, a price guide: "The 12-Point Boiler Check Before Winter", "What a Loft Conversion Actually Costs in 2026", "The Puppy's First Groom Guide".
A free 15-minute call, a free roof inspection with photos, a free first lesson, a free gutter check with a boiler service, a free tax-position review. Strongest when the free thing produces evidence the buyer did not have: photographs of their own roof, a number from their own accounts.
A talk at the local business group, a workshop at the garden centre, a session at a school, a demonstration stand at the county show. Teaching is the highest-trust form of content and it does not require an algorithm.
coaches, consultants, accountants, tutors, therapists, landscapers, photographers, caterers, personal trainers, IT support companies, marketing and design agencies, financial advisers, solicitors.
A genuine story (an apprenticeship, a charity job, a village hall restoration) gets local coverage that no ad budget buys, local paper websites still rank, and reporters need stories.
Podcasts, guest slots, a column, someone else's newsletter. Borrowed attention beats built attention at the start, and it costs a morning.
coaches, consultants, accountants, therapists, photographers, builders, IT support companies, marketing and design agencies, financial advisers, solicitors.
Expensive in time, durable in return, and only worth it where the buying decision is considered and the ticket is large. A consultant's channel earns its keep; a barber's rarely does.
coaches, consultants, accountants, builders running project vlogs, photographers, marketing and design agencies.
A junior football kit reaches exactly the parents a tutor or a groomer wants. The village fete, the school programme, the club shirt. Buy it for the community relationship and the parent network, not for a tracked return.
A local Instagram account with 8,000 followers in your town is often better value than a national influencer, for a groomed dog, a garden reveal or a salon transformation.
salons, groomers, photographers, caterers, landscapers, personal trainers, cafes and restaurants.
Facebook and Instagram to a 10-mile radius with a specific offer and real photographs. This belongs in stage 3 rather than stage 2 because it interrupts rather than harvests: nobody on Facebook was looking for you.
salons, groomers, photographers, caterers, landscapers, cleaners, driving instructors, tutors, personal trainers, cafes and restaurants.
In-platform forms convert cheaply and produce colder leads, so they only work where speed to lead (L007) is already solved. A lead form without a five-minute reply rule wastes the budget.
Neighbourhood-level reach with a recommendation culture, available as both organic participation and paid placement.
consumer trades, cleaners, groomers, tutors, driving instructors, cafes and restaurants.
Reaching people who have never heard of you. The most expensive stage per client and the one with the most legal constraints, so the rules come before the levers.
The rules that decide which of these you may use at all are set out in the UK legal position further down. Read them before you send anything cold.
Phone contacts, WhatsApp, Facebook friends, the school gate, the five-a-side team, former colleagues. Not a pitch: a specific, honest message saying what you now do and who you are looking for. Free, immediate, and the highest-converting outreach there is. Most people never do it because it feels like asking for a favour.
all 16 except solicitors, where SRA Code 8.9 bars unsolicited approaches to members of the public other than current or former clients; essential for anyone starting or changing direction.
"Do you know anyone else on your street with a boiler that age?" beats "please recommend me". Specific requests get specific answers.
Everyone who asked for a quote in the last 12 months and did not buy. Some bought nothing at all, and some had a bad experience with whoever they chose. The cheapest list you will ever work.
The client whose bathroom you fitted has a boiler. The bookkeeping client needs payroll. The tutoring parent has a second child. Asking is the whole lever.
The estate agent who used to send you work, the letting agent, the interior designer, the GP practice. A relationship that produced two jobs a year and went quiet is easier to restart than a new one is to start.
BNI, Chamber of Commerce, Federation of Small Businesses, business breakfasts, the trade merchant counter, the builders' yard at 7am. Real for B2B, a time sink if the room does not contain your buyer. For most businesses no legal regime restricts it.
all 16, decisive for accountants, consultants, commercial cleaners, caterers, and trades seeking subcontract work.
For commercial cleaning, catering and office-facing services, physically visiting an industrial estate or a parade of offices with a folder is unglamorous, lawful, and converts better than email.
commercial cleaning, caterers, accountants, commercial electricians and plumbers, IT support companies.
Screen against TPS and CTPS, record the screening date, identify yourself and your company at the start, and stop on request. Still works in B2B, still hated, still cheap.
commercial cleaning, accountants, consultants, commercial catering, electricians and plumbers chasing commercial contracts, IT support companies, marketing and design agencies.
Lawful without consent, because corporate subscribers sit outside reg 22. Still bound by UK GDPR where you hold a named person's details: identify the sender, state the basis, offer an objection route, keep suppression lists.
targeting commercial buyers: offices for cleaning, companies for accountancy and consultancy, corporates for catering, landlords and letting agencies for electrical and plumbing work, businesses for IT support, businesses buying from marketing and design agencies.
Both count as electronic mail under PECR. To a consumer or a sole trader without consent this is unlawful, and the regulator has fined for it repeatedly. To a corporate mobile it is outside reg 22 but reads as intrusive, and WhatsApp's own terms restrict unsolicited messaging independently.
A connection request with a note, then a conversation. The Information Commission's guidance is that in-platform inbox messages are capable of being electronic mail for PECR purposes, which makes unsolicited sales DMs to sole traders legally grey rather than clearly safe. One-to-one conversational outreach is defensible; bulk automated DM blasts are not, and platform terms prohibit the automation independently.
coaches, consultants, accountants, commercial cleaning, corporate catering, B2B photography, IT support companies, marketing and design agencies.
Outside PECR entirely, because nothing electronic and nothing addressed is involved. A well-designed leaflet through 2,000 doors in the streets around a completed job is the UK-native cold channel for local trades. Works where the catchment is genuinely walking distance, and is wasted almost everywhere else.
plumbers, electricians, roofers, builders, landscapers, cleaners, groomers, driving instructors, tutors, cafes and restaurants.
A letter to a named householder, landlord or business needs no consent because post is outside PECR. Letters to landlords about EICR renewals, to homeowners about boiler age, or to businesses about a cleaning contract all work.
electricians targeting landlords, plumbers targeting boiler age, roofers, builders, commercial cleaners, accountants.
"We are working at number 14 this fortnight. If you would like your roof looked at while the scaffold and the van are already on the street, here is a reduced call-out." High relevance, visible proof of work, and the cheapest addressed mail there is.
roofers, builders, landscapers, driveway and rendering work, window cleaners, plumbers.
Lawful, effective for some trades, and carrying the legal trap in the rules above: a contract agreed at the doorstep is an off-premises contract, the consumer gets 14 days to cancel, and failing to give that in writing extends the window by up to 12 months. If they want work starting inside the 14 days, get the express request in writing.
roofers, builders, landscapers, driveways, window cleaners, gutter clearing.
A liveried van parked outside a job for two weeks is cold advertising with implied social proof, at a one-off cost. Site boards on extensions and scaffold banners do the same. A driving instructor's roof box is the most effective example of this lever in any trade.
all trades, cleaners, mobile groomers, driving instructors, cafes and restaurants.
Free, and genuinely effective for consumer-facing local trades. The vet's board for a groomer, the community centre for a tutor, the cafe window for a cleaner.
groomers, tutors, cleaners, driving instructors, salons, therapists, gardeners, personal trainers.
Narrow, cheap, demographically precise, and the parish magazine in particular reaches an audience no digital channel reaches well.
landscapers, cleaners, groomers, driving instructors, tutors, roofers, plumbers.
Public sector and commercial contracts. Slow, administrative, and large: a single framework place can be a year of work. Material for cleaners, builders and caterers in particular.
cleaning companies, builders, caterers, electricians, landscapers, IT support companies.
Turning clients into a channel. The cheapest acquisition there is, the slowest to build, and the only one that gets cheaper as it grows. Nearly every business treats it as something that either happens or does not.
Once a channel works, other people can run it: your customers, your staff, other firms, and partners who already own the relationship with your buyer. That last group is the single most underused lever in this document.
Most happy clients would refer and are never asked. This is a sentence, not a system, and the system is only there to make sure the sentence gets said.
The day the garden is finished, the evening the heating comes back, the moment the dog is handed over looking perfect. Referral asks work at peaks and fail in the flat middle.
Both sides, ideally: "recommend a friend, you both get £20 off". Explicit beats hoping.
all 16 except financial advisers, where a reward for an introduction is left out as a precaution under the FCA's inducement rules (COBS 2.3.1R).
A link, a card, a forwardable email. Friction kills goodwill, and the referrer will not chase you for the mechanism.
Three business cards handed over at completion, a fridge magnet, a voucher with a space for a friend's name. The physical object survives the conversation.
all 16, strongest in trades and personal services.
It is the only thing that makes a second referral likely, and it costs a message or a bottle.
Client of the month, a customer story, a featured garden. Cheap, and people share things they are in.
salons, groomers, photographers, landscapers, tutors, coaches, caterers, personal trainers.
The client shares it, which is a referral with reach. This is the distribution half of L114.
Structured so entry requires tagging a friend or joining the list. Cheap reach inside exactly the right postcode.
salons, groomers, photographers, caterers, cleaners, landscapers, personal trainers, cafes and restaurants.
A true affiliate sells for you and is paid on results: a self-employed introducer for a cleaning company, a local agent for a franchise-style service.
cleaners, consultants, accountants, tutors, driving instructors, IT support companies, marketing and design agencies.
The people delivering the work hold the relationships. Pay for the outcome and make it easy to trigger.
any business with staff: salons, clinics, cleaning companies, larger trades, tuition centres, except financial advisers, where review generation is left out as with L088.
Per-stylist profiles and galleries, per-physio specialisms, per-instructor pages. Chairs with followings stay full, and it helps recruitment as much as acquisition.
salons, barbers, clinics, tuition centres, multi-van trades, photography studios with second shooters, fitness studios with several trainers.
When the owner is the bottleneck, an apprentice, a part-time administrator or a second van converts marketing levers from dangerous to useful. An administrator answering the phone from 8am is a lead lever, not an overhead.
all 16 at capacity.
Larger builders, facilities management companies and national maintenance contractors buy trade capacity constantly. Lower margin, near-zero acquisition cost, and it fills the gaps between direct jobs.
all six trades, cleaning companies, caterers, IT support companies.
Therapists, physios, accountants, tutors and photographers all turn clients away when full. A standing overflow arrangement with two or three nearby practices is a free channel that runs on their marketing spend.
therapists, physios, accountants, coaches, tutors, photographers, driving instructors, marketing and design agencies, financial advisers, solicitors.
Deliver under someone else's brand at a trade rate. Volume without acquisition, at the cost of owning the client.
consultants, accountants, photographers, cleaners, trades, IT support companies, marketing and design agencies.
The plumber and the electrician, the accountant and the bookkeeper, the builder and the architect, the landscaper and the fencing contractor, the physio and the gym, the photographer and the florist, the caterer and the wedding venue. Formalise it: a named contact, a reason to refer, tracking, and a follow-up. Almost nobody sets these up properly, which is why they stay underused.
Somebody already owns a relationship with your exact buyer at the exact moment of need. Letting and estate agents for EICRs, gas safety and end-of-tenancy cleans. Vets and dog walkers for groomers. Wedding venues for photographers and caterers. GP surgeries and sports clubs for physios. Schools and SENCOs for tutors. Interior designers and architects for builders. Nurseries for cleaners. Accountants for consultants and back. One good gatekeeper can outperform every paid channel combined.
all 16, and the single strongest lever for electricians, groomers, photographers, caterers, physios and tutors.
Another business with your audience makes the offer to their list, framed as a benefit they arranged: a gym offering members a physio assessment, a garden centre offering a design consultation, an estate agent offering new movers a first clean. You pay in commission or reciprocity rather than in media spend.
all 16 except financial advisers, where the host's message would be a financial promotion that an unauthorised business may only send once an authorised person has approved its content (FSMA 2000 s21).
The business that can afford to spend the most to acquire a client wins, and the way to afford more is to make more gross profit per client, faster. Two numbers decide whether any lever in stages 2 to 4 is a lever or a hole:
Lifetime gross profit = average gross profit from one client over the whole relationship Cost to acquire = total acquisition spend / new clients acquired Acquisition pays for itself when: gross profit from a new client in the first 30 days > cost to acquire + cost to deliver in those 30 days
The usual target is lifetime gross profit of at least three times the cost to acquire. Below that, growth needs someone else's money.
Illustrative round numbers, to show the shape of the arithmetic rather than to quote at a client. Substitute the business's own figures from L045 and L046 before making a decision with it.
| Business | Ticket | Natural repeat | Lifetime gross profit | Verdict on paid acquisition |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Boiler install | £2,800 | Once per 12 years, plus servicing | £900 plus £120 a year on a plan | Passes comfortably |
| Driving instructor, 10-hour block | £400 | 40 to 50 hours to test | £1,200 over the pupil | Passes; the block booking is what makes it pass |
| Loft conversion | £48,000 | Once | £9,000 | Passes on ticket alone |
| Physio course of six | £330 | Plus recurring flare-ups | £600 | Passes if the course is sold (L041) |
| Barber, £16 cut | £16 | Every 4 weeks for years | £400 and up, if retained | Fails on the first transaction; passes only through retention |
| One-off tutoring hour | £35 | Termly if retained | £600 if retained | Fails unless sold as a term block |
| End-of-tenancy clean | £180 | Once, unless the agent repeats | £70 | Fails; the agent relationship (L170) is the only route |
| Dog groom | £45 | Every 6 weeks forever | £450 a year, for several years | Fails on the transaction, passes decisively on retention |
The pattern is the most useful single finding in this document: for most of the 16, paid acquisition paying for itself is not a property of the service, it is a property of the retention system. A £45 dog groom cannot fund £60 of paid acquisition. A retained grooming client at eight visits a year for three years absolutely can. Which means stage 1.4 is not merely the cheapest place to start. It is the precondition for the paid levers existing at all.
A cheap, specific, high-value front end whose job is to acquire rather than to profit: the £89 boiler service, the £19 first groom, the £25 taster lesson, the £150 tax-position review, a £29 first month of cleaning. Priced to remove hesitation, structured so the next step is obvious.
The same instrument as L039 seen from the acquisition side rather than the retention side. Continuity is what converts a failing acquisition calculation into a passing one, and it is the highest-leverage money-model lever for 12 of the 16 industries.
plumbers, electricians, landscapers, cleaners, accountants, physios, salons, groomers, tutors, driving instructors, coaches, therapists, personal trainers, IT support companies, marketing and design agencies, financial advisers, solicitors.
A no to £2,800 is often a yes to a £320 repair, a £49 kit, or a payment plan. The second offer costs nothing to make and recovers a share of every lost sale.
Once a year, in the same sitting: reprice the back book (L048), review the worst clients (L049), check profit per job type (L046), and reset the plan price (L039). Businesses that do these one at a time do none of them.
Applies to England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. A working summary for planning, not legal advice: check the current position before a campaign, since the DMCC Act's provisions and the Information Commission's guidance have both moved recently.
| Lever | To a consumer | To a sole trader or partnership | To a limited company | Governing rule |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cold email (L142) | Unlawful without consent | Unlawful without consent, except a Scottish partnership, which is corporate | No consent needed; still needs sender identification and a valid opt-out address | PECR reg 22 (consent), reg 23 (identity and opt-out), reg 2 (definitions); UK GDPR |
| Cold SMS or WhatsApp (L143) | Unlawful without consent | Unlawful without consent, except a Scottish partnership, which is corporate | Outside reg 22, but reg 23 identity and opt-out duties still apply, and platform terms restrict it | PECR reg 22 (consent), reg 23 (identity and opt-out) |
| Cold live phone call (L141) | Lawful only after TPS screening | Lawful only after TPS screening | Lawful only after CTPS screening | PECR reg 21 |
| Automated or recorded call | Unlawful without prior consent | Unlawful without prior consent | Unlawful without prior consent | PECR reg 19 |
| LinkedIn or platform DM (L144) | Grey; treat as electronic mail | Grey; treat as electronic mail | Defensible one-to-one | PECR reg 22, Information Commission guidance |
| Marketing to past customers (L030, L035, L036, L037, L122) | Lawful under soft opt-in: similar services, opt-out at collection and in every message | Same | Lawful | PECR reg 22(3) |
| Marketing to people who asked for a quote and did not buy (L136) | Soft opt-in available, because a quote is a negotiation for a sale, but only if the opt-out was offered at collection; otherwise consent | Same | Lawful with opt-out | PECR reg 22(3)(a) and (c) |
| Marketing to people who downloaded a guide or asked a general question (L123) | Needs consent; no sale or negotiation took place | Needs consent | Lawful with opt-out | PECR reg 22 |
| Marketing calls to past customers (L135) | TPS screening still required; no soft opt-in for live calls | Same | CTPS screening | PECR reg 21(1)(b) and (4) |
| Appointment reminders and quote follow-ups (L015, L025) | Lawful; service messages, not marketing | Lawful | Lawful | PECR reg 2 (direct marketing means advertising or marketing material) and reg 22(1) (unsolicited communications only) |
| Missed-call text-back (L003) | Lawful; a response to their own contact | Lawful | Lawful | PECR reg 2 and reg 22(1), as above |
| Unaddressed leaflets (L145, L151) | Lawful | Lawful | Lawful | Outside PECR |
| Addressed direct mail (L146, L147) | Lawful; honour objections and the MPS | Lawful | Lawful | UK GDPR; MPS is voluntary |
| Door knocking (L148) | Lawful; 14-day cancellation right on any contract agreed there, extending by up to 12 months if not given in writing | Lawful | Lawful | Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013, regs 29 to 31 |
| Reviews: asking everyone (L088) | Required approach | Required approach | Required approach | DMCC Act 2024; Google policy |
| Reviews: gating or incentivising for positivity | Prohibited by Google policy; publishing the gated set, or hiding an incentive, is a listed banned practice (reviews published in a misleading way); gating at the asking stage alone is not named | Same | Same | DMCC Act 2024, Sch. 20 para 13; Google policy |
| Client testimonials in therapy or counselling | Ethically restricted | Ethically restricted | n/a | BACP and UKCP ethical frameworks |
| Fake or resetting urgency (L070, L071) | Banned practice | Banned practice | Banned practice | DMCC Act 2024, Sch. 20 para 7 (false limited time) and para 20 (false availability) |
| Drip pricing or VAT-exclusive consumer prices (L016, L103) | Unlawful as an omission of material information from an invitation to purchase: the total price, with every unavoidable fee and tax, must be shown | Same | n/a; B2B prices may be ex-VAT | DMCC Act 2024, s230 |
| Retargeting pixels (L112) | Requires consent | Requires consent | Requires consent | PECR reg 6 |
| Paid creator content (L130) | Must be labelled as an ad | Must be labelled | Must be labelled | CAP Code; DMCC Act 2024 |
| Referral incentives that are publicly endorsed (L155) | Must be disclosed | Must be disclosed | Must be disclosed | DMCC Act 2024 |
| Prize draws and competitions (L161) | Lawful with a free entry route | Lawful | Lawful | Gambling Act 2005 |
| Offering or arranging consumer credit (L074) | Requires FCA authorisation or exemption | Same | n/a | FSMA 2000 s19 and the Regulated Activities Order 2001 (art 36A, credit broking); CONC is FCA Handbook, not statute |
| Photographs of identifiable people or children (L080, L114) | Lawful basis required, and consent is the one that fits; a parent's consent for children | Same | Same | UK GDPR art 6 |
| Permanent site or A-board signage (L149) | May need local authority consent | Same | Same | Advertising consent regulations |
| Public tendering (L152) | n/a | Procurement rules apply | Procurement rules apply | Procurement Act 2023 |
Four rules worth committing to memory, because they are the ones broken most often:
Sole traders are individuals, not businesses, for cold email and cold SMS. A large share of a trade's B2B prospect list is therefore off limits. The one statutory exception is a partnership in Scotland, which reg 2 makes a corporate subscriber.
Soft opt-in turns on the opt-out at collection, not on whether they bought. A quote request is a negotiation for a sale and qualifies under reg 22(3)(a); a guide download does not. Either way reg 22(3)(c) needs the opt-out to have been offered when the details were taken, and that is the condition a phone-and-diary business almost never met. L034 is the fix, and it only works forwards.
TPS applies to published numbers, and to past customers. A number on a website is not consent to call it, and neither is having bought from you before. Soft opt-in is an email and SMS rule with no equivalent for live calls.
Urgency and scarcity must be true, and the CMA can now fine directly for it.
Since 5 February 2026 the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 has amended PECR: it added a definition of direct marketing (advertising or marketing material directed to particular individuals), replaced the cookie rule in reg 6 with a short list of exceptions that still does not cover advertising, added a soft opt-in for charities only, and moved enforcement onto the Data Protection Act 2018 penalty regime, so a breach of the marketing rules from that date carries a maximum penalty of £17.5 million, or 4% of worldwide turnover where that is higher (£500,000 for conduct before it). The consent rule, the commercial soft opt-in and TPS screening read the same as before. From 30 September 2026 the regulator is the Information Commission.
General information, not legal advice. Every rule on this page was read against the text on legislation.gov.uk on 10 October 2026, after the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 amendments to PECR commenced on 5 February 2026. Next review: 10 April 2027.
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