The honest 2026 scorecard for local services: vehicle wraps are the sleeper hit. A one-time cost delivering years of neighborhood impressions exactly where you work; every parked job site is a billboard you already paid for. EDDM (Every Door Direct Mail) works for tight-radius consumer services at ~20¢/door when the offer is concrete and the neighborhood is chosen, not sprayed.
Radio and local TV buy frequency for brand names with budgets to sustain months of it. Rarely the first dollar for an owner-operator, occasionally the fifth. Newspapers aren't dead; their READERS are specific: 55+ local homeowners, which for some trades is precisely the buyer. A niche buy, not a default.
Every one of them lives or dies by the measurement rule: unique number, QR with UTMs, named offer, and the intake question. Traditional channels fail most often not by reaching nobody but by teaching you nothing.