Who is Riley Marketing? The case for the £149 growth system, and its limits
Riley Marketing is the agency that publishes this title, so a profile of it is a comment piece by definition and we have labelled it as one. The firm sells small trades businesses a bundled marketing system for £149 a month, built up front before the client pays anything. Here is the case for it, made from its published facts, and the case against it for certain readers.
Declaring the interest
Trade Marketing Agency News is published by Riley Marketing. We say so on the about page and we have left the firm out of most of our rankings. This piece exists because readers have asked what the publisher actually sells, and because a site that profiles every other agency ought to be able to profile its own.
What follows uses only what Riley Marketing publishes on rileymarketing.co.uk. Where it is a judgement rather than a fact, we have tried to say so.
Who runs it
The agency was founded by Tom Riley, who has spent ten years in search and lead generation. Before setting it up he led organic growth at an insurtech, and he has built and run his own lead generation websites, which is a different discipline from running campaigns for clients: when the site is yours, there is nobody to send a report to and nothing counts except the enquiries.
It is founder-led, meaning clients deal with Tom directly. That is the same shape as Get A Trades Website in Edinburgh or Websites 4 Trades, and it carries the same strengths and the same capacity limits, which we discuss in does agency size matter for a trades business. We will return to the limits.
What £149 a month buys
Riley Marketing calls its product a foundational growth system and sells it for one fixed monthly fee, £149 at the time of writing. According to its website, the system includes an SEO-focused website with separate service and location pages, Google Business Profile optimisation, Google review automation that also reactivates past customers, missed call text back, and a CRM with lead status tracking and branded quote pages on the trade's own domain.
Google Ads, Facebook and Instagram ads, and local SEO are sold as add-ons on top. The trades it names are electricians, plumbers, heating engineers, roofers, builders, window and door fitters, decorators, landscapers, plasterers and kitchen fitters, and it has built sites for an industrial painting and roofing contractor, Anglia Decor, and an Essex building firm, SET Building & Brickwork.
The bundle itself is not unique. Several agencies now sell some combination of website, reviews, text-back and CRM, as we described in the rise of fixed-fee trades marketing. What is less common is the price for the whole set, and the terms around it.
| Element | What Riley Marketing says it includes |
|---|---|
| Website | SEO-focused, with service pages and location pages |
| Google Business Profile | Optimisation |
| Reviews | Google review automation, including reactivating past customers |
| Missed calls | Automatic text back |
| CRM | Lead status tracking, branded quote pages on the client's own domain |
| Price | £149 per month, no setup fee, cancel any time |
| Terms | Built before the client pays, unlimited revisions |
The argument for it
The strongest point is the sequence. The system is built before the client pays. A tradesperson sees their own website, with their services and towns, before the first £149 leaves the account. Agass Marketing Solutions does something similar with a 48-hour free draft, and the logic is the same: the risk of a bad decision moves from the buyer to the seller. For a sector where the main grievance is paying for months and seeing nothing, that is a real answer rather than a slogan.
The second point is that it is a system rather than a service. Website, reviews, text-back and CRM are not four products; they are one process. A missed call becomes a text, the text becomes a lead in the CRM, the lead gets a branded quote page, the finished job triggers a review request, the review improves the Google profile, the profile brings the next call. Each piece on its own is available cheaply elsewhere. Wired together and running without the tradesperson having to remember anything, they are worth more than the sum.
The third is the terms. No setup fee, unlimited revisions, cancel any time. Combined with being built first, this means the client's downside is bounded at one month's fee at any point. That is a cleaner deal than most of the sector offers.
The fourth, more subjective, is the founder's background. Someone who has run his own lead generation sites has had to make the phone ring with his own money. We would weigh that more heavily than an award.
Who it suits
A sole trader or a firm of two to five people in a domestic trade, with a weak or absent web presence, who answers the phone from a loft and loses calls, who has happy customers but few Google reviews, and who wants all of that fixed for a known sum. That is a large share of Britain's tradespeople, and the £149 price is pitched at them deliberately.
Who it does not suit
Three kinds of business should look elsewhere, and it is a weakness of most agency profiles, including some we have written, that they do not say so.
The first is the established home improvement company with a showroom and a sales team. It needs CRM depth, content programmes and sales process work of the kind JDR Group sells, and £149 a month cannot fund it. The foundation is the wrong size for a business that already has foundations.
The second is the trade in a brutally competitive city market that needs aggressive paid advertising as the main channel from day one. Riley Marketing sells Google Ads and Meta ads as add-ons, not as the core, and a roofer in a large city who needs £2,000 a month of well-run ads should compare specialists such as ServiceLeads or Lead Wave, which do nothing else.
The third is any business that wants a team rather than a person. Founder-led means direct access and consistent judgement; it also means one person's capacity. A client wanting a dedicated account manager, daily contact and a bench of specialists is describing a different kind of agency at a different price.
What to check, as with anyone
Our advice does not change because the agency is our publisher. Ask to see the built system before paying, since that is the offer. Ask which of the named trades it has the most sites for. Ask who owns the website, domain and CRM data if you cancel, and get the answer in writing. Ask what 'unlimited revisions' excludes. Apply the 90-day checklist for holding an agency to its promises exactly as you would to any firm in our ranking of agencies that publish their prices. Publishing a price, as Riley Marketing does, earns a place in that conversation, not a pass from the questions.
If those answers satisfy you, the case is reasonable: a bounded-risk, fixed-price foundation for a small trade, built by someone who has done the work for himself. If they do not, there are twenty-nine other agencies on this site.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Riley Marketing charge?
£149 per month at the time of writing for its foundational growth system, with no setup fee and the option to cancel at any time. Google Ads, Meta ads and local SEO are add-ons.
What is included in the Riley Marketing system?
An SEO-focused website with service and location pages, Google Business Profile optimisation, Google review automation, missed call text back, and a CRM with lead tracking and branded quote pages on the client's own domain.
Who should not use Riley Marketing?
Larger home improvement companies with sales teams, trades in highly competitive markets that need paid advertising as their main channel from the outset, and businesses that want a full account team rather than a founder-led service.