Flat fee. Your
spend goes to
the platform, not
through us.
Percentage of spend means your agency earns more when you spend more. We charge a flat monthly fee and your budget goes straight to Google or Meta. If a campaign should run leaner, nothing stops us saying so.
On this page
Three numbers. That’s the whole price list.
- Keyword research and structure
- Search only, no display bleed
- Weekly performance check
- Conversion tracking verified first
- Audience and creative research
- Campaign build and testing
- Weekly performance check
- Reported as inbox conversations
- Google captures demand
- Meta creates it
- One operator across both
The rules that keep small budgets from being wasted.
Page built, conversion tracking live and test verified, then campaigns. Nothing runs until measurement works.
Display expansion and search partners off. Phrase and exact match only. Small budgets can’t afford broad.
Downtown cores carry a 30 to 50% bid premium. We exclude them where your customers aren’t, and review the geo report from month two.
Price and scope in the headline, so the wrong clicks never happen. An offer should be worthless to the wrong buyer.
“$10 a day. Eighteen qualified leads in seven days, because we spoke to the homeowner’s problem, not the contractor’s service list.”
How we run paid ads for service businesses, and the rules we won’t break
Paid ads are the fastest way to put a service business in front of people who need it this week. They are also the fastest way to burn money, which is why most owners who call us have a story about an agency, a percentage of spend, and a report that never quite explained where the leads went. Our paid ads run on three rules: flat fees, tracking before spending, and one operator on the account who has run a service business himself.
Rule one: 0% of your ad spend
Google management is $400 a month. Meta is $500. Both together are $750. Those fees do not move whether you spend $300 or $3,000, because an agency that earns a percentage of your budget has every reason never to tell you to spend less. Your ad spend is paid by you, directly to Google or Meta, on your own card, in your own account. You own the account, the pixel and the history, and if you leave, all of it stays with you.
Rule two: no paid ads run until tracking works
Before a dollar of paid ads goes live we install and verify the Meta Pixel, GA4 and Google conversion tracking, then send a test lead through the form and the phone to prove it counts. Ads that cannot be measured are a donation. When the campaign is live you see conversions by day, cost per conversion and which channel produced which call, and the weekly performance check cuts whatever is not converting.
Rule three: Google paid ads are search only under $2K a month
Display expansion and search partners are off by default. A small Google budget spread across the display network produces clicks that never become jobs; the same budget on exact and phrase match search terms in your service area produces calls. Downtown cores carry a thirty to fifty percent bid premium, so we build service area campaigns around where you actually want to drive.
Meta before Google, for most trades
Google captures demand that already exists; Meta creates it. A business with no brand awareness yet usually gets more from Meta paid ads first, because the ad reaches homeowners who were not searching but do need the work, and the creative can show the actual truck and the actual crew. Our best example is a concrete cutting contractor: $10 a day, eighteen qualified leads in seven days, because the ad spoke to the homeowner’s problem instead of the contractor’s service list. Once the numbers are known, Google Search layers on top to catch the people already looking.
What is included in the paid ads fee
- Campaign build: keyword research and structure on Google, audience and creative research on Meta
- A landing page or the right page on your site, with price and scope in the headline
- Conversion tracking installed, verified and tested with a real lead
- Weekly performance check and optimisation
- Creative testing and rotation on Meta, ad copy A/B tests on Google
- A plain English report: spend, conversions, cost per lead, and what changed
What paid ads do not include
The ad spend itself, and a promise of a lead count. Anyone who guarantees you a number of leads from paid ads before seeing your market is guessing. We will tell you, from the first week’s data, what the campaign is producing and whether the answer is more budget or better structure, and because there is no contract you can act on that the same day. Platform documentation for Google Ads and Meta ads is public if you want to check any of the mechanics we describe.
Questions owners ask about paid ads
How much should I spend? Google needs about $300 a month to give the algorithm enough data; Meta starts working around $200. Most of our trades clients run between $10 and $30 a day, and we would rather you start small and scale on evidence than start big on hope.
How fast do paid ads produce leads? The first leads usually arrive inside the first week once tracking is verified. Weeks two and three are for cutting what is not converting. By week four you have a real cost per lead to make decisions with.
What if the leads are junk? Then the targeting is wrong, and that is our job to fix, not yours to pay for. Junk leads from cities you cannot drive to were the exact problem Drew had before we rebuilt his campaigns around his actual service area.
Do I need a new landing page? Sometimes. Paid ads pointed at a slow homepage waste half the budget before anyone reads a word, so if your site is slow we will say so and build a fast single page for the campaign.
Can I run paid ads without the AI Sales Agent? Yes, but we will ask how you answer the phone first. Ads generate calls at 2 pm on a Tuesday, and a call that goes to voicemail is a lead you paid for and lost.
Paid ads and the rest of the system
Ads are the multiplier, not the foundation. They work best pointed at a fast site that converts, a Google Business Profile that ranks, and a phone line that answers every call. That is why the order at Callout is always the same: fix the phone with the AI Sales Agent, make sure the site can catch a lead, and then turn the paid ads on.
Owners who follow that order get a lower cost per job from the same budget, because none of the calls they paid for are leaking, and they can see it in the same report every week. If you want a number for your market before you commit to anything, the free two minute audit runs your business through Engine and texts you what we would do first.
Meta paid ads rebuilt around his real service area: three to six local leads a day on under $1K total spend. Read the build
A concrete cutter on Meta. Strategy beats spend, and flat fees mean we can say so.
Growth and media partner. Self taught on laser clinics and dental practices before trades. Simon’s page
We’ll audit what you’re running now.
Send us the account. We’ll tell you where the spend is actually going, what the last setup is costing you, and whether more budget or better structure is the answer.