Fencing & Decking
Marketing for fencing & decking
Fencing demand does not arrive evenly. It arrives in a twenty-four hour block after a named storm, and the firm that takes it is the one whose campaign was already built. The rest of the year is a fast, price-transparent trade where the quote that lands first usually wins.
In short
Marketing for fencing & decking in the UK turns on three things that are specific to the trade. Replacing six to ten blown panels is £800 to £2,200. A full boundary refence of thirty to forty metres in closeboard with concrete posts and gravel boards is £2,500 to £6,000. Google Search wins this trade, and the reason is specifically the spike. The biggest source of wasted spend is merchant and panel supply, searches such as fence panels for sale and 6x6 panel price, which has to be negatived out before the budget means anything.
The economics that should drive the budget
Replacing six to ten blown panels is £800 to £2,200. A full boundary refence of thirty to forty metres in closeboard with concrete posts and gravel boards is £2,500 to £6,000. A timber deck of twenty square metres is £2,500 to £5,000; the same area in composite is £4,500 to £9,000. Gates run £350 to £1,500. Commercial, agricultural and security work — palisade, weldmesh, stock fencing, sports enclosures — starts around £8,000 and runs to £50,000.
Margins are thin on panel work and brutally sensitive to travel. A £1,200 job an hour away is worse than an £800 job ten minutes away once you have paid two men for the round trip and the tip run. Radius is a profitability setting, not a growth setting.
Close rates are high, generally four to six in ten, because the job is specific and easy to compare, and decisions come in days rather than weeks. On a typical £3,000 refence at a third margin, an enquiry is worth roughly £400 in gross profit. During a storm week the constraint stops being lead cost entirely and becomes capacity, which is a different problem and needs different rules.
Seasonality
No trade here is more spike-driven. A named winter storm produces a step change in fence searches within hours, peaks over roughly forty-eight hours and decays across a week to ten days. One storm week can deliver a month of enquiries, and the firms that take it are the ones with a live campaign, pre-agreed budget headroom and somebody answering the phone on the Saturday.
One practical limit. Merchant stock of panels and posts runs short after a bad storm, so there is a ceiling on how much you can honestly accept.
Outside storms, the planned peak is March to May as people prepare gardens for summer. Decking peaks earlier than owners expect: an enquiry in April is for a deck used in June, and a July enquiry is usually too late for that summer. November to January is thin for planned work, and post-holing in frozen or waterlogged ground is miserable and slow.
What we configure
- Storm-response campaign live year-round with pre-agreed budget caps
- Merchant, DIY and boundary-dispute negative lists
- Composite decking as a separate campaign with brand ad groups
- Commercial and agricultural split out with its own landing page
- Quote-from-photographs form with simple measuring instructions
- Capacity rules that pause spend when the diary is genuinely full
- Radius set on travel cost per job, reviewed each quarter
What people actually search, and what it is worth
| Intent | Typical search | Value | How we handle it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Storm and urgent replacement | fence blown down, emergency fence repair, replace fence panels [town] | Medium value, immediate | A campaign that exists year-round at low budget and can be scaled the same day. Budget caps pre-agreed so nobody is asking permission while the demand is live. |
| Planned refence | fencing contractors [town], closeboard fencing cost per metre, new garden fence | Medium value, days | Core campaign with pricing per metre in the copy. This buyer already knows the merchant price of a panel, so vagueness costs you the click and the credibility. |
| Decking, especially composite | composite decking installers [town], Millboard installer, decking cost calculator | High value, weeks | Separate campaign with brand ad groups and photo-led pages. Composite buyers research the product for weeks before choosing a fitter, so retargeting earns its place here and nowhere else. |
| Commercial and agricultural | security fencing [county], palisade fencing, stock fencing, weldmesh contractor | High value, low volume | Its own campaign, wider radius, and a landing page about specification, compliance and completed schemes rather than about gardens. |
Where the budget leaks
Every sector attracts searches that can never become a customer. These are the ones specific to fencing & decking, and they go into the negative keyword list before launch rather than after the first invoice.
| Category | Example searches | Why it costs you |
|---|---|---|
| Merchant and panel supply | fence panels for sale, 6x6 panel price, concrete posts, decking boards, wickes fencing, jacksons panels | The largest single leak, and it triples during a storm week when clicks are at their most expensive. These people are driving to a builders merchant. |
| DIY instruction | how to fit a fence post, postcrete, replacing a fence panel yourself, decking frame spacing | Weekend research traffic. It looks like fencing intent to the match algorithms and converts at nothing. |
| Boundary disputes and law | who owns which fence, boundary dispute, neighbour fence height rules, fence deeds, right hand side rule | Enormous volume and worse than useless: it also produces phone calls that eat twenty minutes of somebody's day and can never become a job. |
| Hire and adjacent trades | heras fencing hire, temporary fencing, decking cleaning, artificial grass, tree removal, garden clearance | Hire companies and other trades. Heras and temporary fencing in particular pull in site managers wanting a weekly hire rate. |
Want this checked against your own numbers?Two minutes on the phone is usually enough to say whether the arithmetic works for a fencing & decking business your size.
Call 07443 392243WhatsAppWhat the buyer is actually checking
Fencing customers are unusually well informed on price, because the components are on a merchant website with prices on them. They know what a panel costs. What they do not know is what posts, gravel boards, concrete, disposal of the old fence and two days of labour cost, and the quote that itemises those is the quote that gets believed. Hidden extras, particularly taking away the old panels and the broken concrete, are the most common complaint in the trade.
The decision is fast. Three to ten days normally, and sometimes the same day after a storm, because the garden is open, the dog is getting out and the children cannot be let outside. That urgency changes what wins: speed of quote beats portfolio, and a start date beats a discount. Firms that take four days to get someone out to measure lose to firms that quoted from photographs on the afternoon of the call.
Two complications are worth building into your process. Neighbours often split the cost, which adds a second decision maker and a couple of days. And boundary ownership questions arrive constantly; the right answer is a page explaining that deeds decide it and that you will not adjudicate, which saves an extraordinary amount of telephone time.
Which channel wins here
Google Search wins this trade, and the reason is specifically the spike. Paid search is the only channel that can be scaled within an hour of a storm and pulled back a week later. Google Business Profile supports it, because a profile showing recent photos and an answered phone gets rung first on a mobile in a windy garden.
SEO is worth having and will not help you in a storm, and it is dishonest to pretend otherwise. Rankings do not move in forty-eight hours. Organic pages on fencing cost per metre, panel types and boundary ownership earn their keep over a year; they will not capture the Tuesday after a named storm. Plan for that rather than being disappointed by it.
Meta is a poor fit for storm work. Campaign delivery needs days to settle, which is most of the spike gone, and interest targeting finds people who will buy panels themselves. Where Meta does earn its place is composite decking from February to April, where the photography is genuinely persuasive and the value is high enough to carry a longer, softer sell. Fencing lead forms on social produce enquiries for three panels, which is not a job worth driving to.
Questions from fencing & decking
How do I actually make money out of a storm?
By having everything in place before it. A live campaign, budget caps already approved so nobody needs a decision on a Saturday, ad copy written, and someone answering the phone. Demand peaks within forty-eight hours and is largely gone in a week. Building the campaign after the storm means arriving for the expensive end of it.
Should I quote fencing from photographs?
Usually yes, provided you ask for a measurement along the boundary and a photo of each end. Speed decides a large share of fencing jobs, and a same-day itemised price beats a site visit next Thursday. Keep site visits for retaining work, sloping ground, access problems and anything commercial, where guessing costs more than the trip.
What do I do about boundary dispute enquiries?
Block the search terms and answer the question once, properly, on a page. Who owns which fence is one of the highest volume searches in your market and none of it is work. A short page saying that the deeds decide, that there is no universal left or right rule, and that you quote for whoever instructs you, will save hours of phone calls.
Is composite decking worth advertising separately from fencing?
Yes. It is two or three times the job value, the buyer takes weeks rather than days, and they research the product brand before the installer. Mixed into a fencing campaign it never gets the bids or the retargeting it needs, and the urgent fence clicks take the budget every time.
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