The Beacon System
How it works
You do the job. We get you found. The Beacon System runs five parts of your trades marketing for you, every month. We write down exactly what you get each month, which is what makes a fixed fee possible.
Most agencies sell you time and then decide later what to spend it on. That is where the cost goes up and the work goes down.
This runs the other way round. Five things are named, each one has a stated monthly amount, and the fee covers exactly that. Because nothing is open-ended, the fee can stay the same every month.
From one WhatsApp message to a phone call
- You send
Photos from the job on WhatsApp, and your customer's details through a short form on your phone.
- We make
A change to your website, a post for your Google listing, a review request to that customer and a social post. When the job comes round again, a service reminder.
- Your next customer
Finds you online, checks your reviews, which now include the last customer's, and rings you.
- Your last customer, a year on
Gets a reminder in your name when their next service is due, and rings you to book again.
What actually gets done
- Mains
Your website
The supply everything else runs off, and feeds back to. Built on our own system, hosted and maintained, with the service, brand and area pages a local search actually needs, for a set number of service areas per plan, plus a blog or local-content article on a set schedule.
What is included in Mains, your website - Reputation
Your reviews
Your hard-fought reputation, kept visible. A review request goes to every customer you send us, after the job, by text or email.
What is included in Reputation, your reviews - Visibility
Your Google listing
Your Google Business Profile. Claimed, completed, kept accurate, and posted to a set number of times each month.
What is included in Visibility, your Google Business Profile - Range
Your social posts
Your social content. A set number of posts a month, on a set number of platforms, built from the photos you send.
What is included in Range, your social content - Return
Your repeat customers
The easiest work you will win: customers you have already served. When a boiler service or a safety check comes round again, they get a reminder in your name, so the job comes back to you, not to whoever they find in a search.
What is included in Return, your service reminders
None of this is written for one search engine. It is written so it reads correctly whether someone finds you through an ordinary Google search, the map listing, or one of the AI tools that now answer questions directly, such as ChatGPT or Google's AI overviews. Everywhere it could be picked up, the same accurate information is checked and kept current.
Listed in the order they get built. In delivery they all run at once, except Return: its first reminders go out about a year in, when the first jobs come round again.
Week one, then every month after
- Free visibility snapshot
Before anything is agreed, we look at what a customer searching for your trade in your area finds today, and talk you through it.
- One onboarding call
30 to 40 minutes of your time completing your business fact file: your services, areas and accreditations, in your own words. Everything we write for you starts from it, so nothing is guessed.
- We build
Website and listing set up, review system connected, first content scheduled.
- Then it runs
Posts, review requests and listing updates on schedule, every month, with a simple monthly summary of what went out.
- A year in, the work comes back
As each job comes round again, the customer gets a service reminder in your name, and any reply asking to book comes straight to you.
How long each part takes
- Quick wins
- Your Google Business Profile set up properly, and review requests going to every customer. Usually live within two to four weeks of signing.
- Building momentum
- The new website, with the first draft usually within six to eight weeks, and the first monthly posts and articles.
- Longer term
- Reviews building up, your listing gaining history, and where you appear in search. Months rather than weeks, which is why the minimum term is twelve months.
- About a year in
- The first service reminders, as the jobs from your first months come round again.
These are typical timings from our onboarding plan, not promises, and they depend on how quickly we get access to your listing and your domain.
How you will know it is working
Website visits on their own tell you very little. The numbers that matter to a trade business like yours are calls, enquiries and reviews, so those are what we report.
- Calls and direction requests
- From your Google listing, reported directly by Google.
- Enquiries
- Through your website.
- Reviews
- Received, and how recent they are.
- The work itself
- Everything we published that month, each with a link to it.
What you receive, and when:
- Spark
- A written summary every quarter.
- Beam
- A monthly report, and a call every quarter.
Both show the same figures, alongside the reviews total and average, and at most three things we need from you.
We cannot see which enquiries you won, so booked jobs and revenue stay with you. If you tell us which calls turned into work, the report gets more useful.
What is included, and what is not
Included every month
- Your website, hosted and maintained
- Google Business Profile management and posts
- Automated review requests to every customer you send us
- Social content, a set number of posts
- A blog or local-content article, on a stated schedule
- A monthly summary and a named person to call
Not included. Some can be added.
- Paid advertising management
- Professional photography or video
- Custom software or app development
- Content reused between different clients
- Directory listings beyond the agreed set
- Link building
- Review removal or disputes with platforms
Paid advertising, photography, directory listings and link building can be added. Before any work starts, they are quoted separately, so they never turn up on an invoice as a surprise. Custom software, reused content, review removal, call tracking and missed-call systems are not something we do.
Monthly amounts reset each month. They do not roll up indefinitely, because a year of unused posts is not a thing anyone can deliver in December.
Everything goes out under your name
It is written in your voice, taken from your business fact file, and you can stop any of it before it goes out.
We never pay for reviews, never choose which of the customers you send us to ask, and never claim a qualification you do not hold.
And it is built for where you want the business to go: the work you want more of, and the areas you want to reach next.
What we need from you
Not much, and we have built it that way because the alternative does not survive a busy month.
- One WhatsApp number, and one short form. Photos from jobs you are already doing go to WhatsApp, sent when you think of it. The customer’s name, number and email go through a short form saved to your phone’s home screen, so we can ask them for a review. A few fields, no portal, no login.
- An address on your own domain for review requests (Beam). Something like reviews@yourbusiness.co.uk, on your own email account. We set it up with you before any email requests go out.
- Three working days to look at drafts. If we hear nothing, it publishes. A website launch is the exception: it always needs your yes. That is deliberate. Waiting for approval on every post is what makes these accounts stall.
- A shout when something changes. New prices, new hours, a new accreditation, an area you have stopped covering.
Anything we publish can be changed or taken down at any time. Tell us on the same WhatsApp number and it changes.
If you go quiet, we keep going
After two months with nothing new from you, we carry on using photos, reviews and content you have already sent, plus seasonal material that fits your trade.
We keep going because you run a trade business, and there will be months where sending photos is the last thing on your mind. The account should not go dark because of it.
Your photos are still the part that matters most. They are what make your posts, your listing and your pages specific to you. Without new ones we are working from older material, which is harder for us and less useful to you. One photo at the end of a job is enough.
Questions about the arrangement
What is the Beacon System?
It is the name for how airstad local runs your marketing. Five parts, each with a set amount every month: Mains, your website; Reputation, your reviews; Visibility, your Google Business Profile; Range, your social posts; and Return, your service reminders.
Both plans, Spark and Beam, run all five. The plans differ in how much of each, not in which parts you get.
Who actually does the work?
If you are one of our founding clients, the founder runs your account directly, with no account manager in between. Clients who join once the founding places are filled have a named account executive running their account month to month, and have their details.
Will my website look like a template?
No. The system underneath every client site is what keeps the fee fixed and the work reliable.
It is not there to make the job easier for us at the expense of what you get. The design, the words and the structure are built around your business, treated as its own brand exercise rather than an account processed through a system.
The aim is a site that looks like you have invested in it properly, not a generic listing with your name swapped in. Content is never reused between different clients either.
Our two case studies, Kelvin Home Climate and Valo Property Services, were built by the same team, on the same system, and look nothing alike.
Why is everything capped? It sounds like a limit.
Posts, review requests, articles and service areas are what repeats every month. With no cap on those, the work can get thinner or the bill bigger, and you would only find out when you checked. So we write down how many of each you get.
The website itself is a one-off build, not a monthly commitment. It is sized to what your business and its service areas actually need, rather than capped at a page count.
What happens at the end of twelve months?
It continues month to month until you stop it. We want you to stay while it is working, not because you are tied in.
Your price is fixed for the first twelve months. If it changes after that, you hear in writing 30 days before. Founding clients keep today's price regardless.
We will remind you before that point, and again while it is running, with how to cancel in the reminder.
Can I add another trade or another area later?
An extra service area gets quoted separately, since it brings its own Google Business Profile and ongoing content with it. If you need several at once, moving up a plan is the usual route. A service or brand page that belongs inside an area you already have is just part of building the site properly, not an extra.
Related guides
- Website for plumbers, heating engineers and electricians: what to put on each service page
- How to add your business to Google Maps: a complete Google Business Profile for plumbers, heating engineers and electricians
- How to get more Google reviews: a guide for plumbers, heating engineers and electricians