Marketing Monthly · for the trades
Marketing you could describe to your accountant.
One ad channel, your Google Business Profile and reviews, one email to your customers and one test, every month, with a note from us every Friday that says what we did and why. $2,500 a month, plus the ad spend you pay the platform directly. If you ever can’t say what we did in a month, that month’s fee comes back.
- $2,500 a month
- Three months, then 30 days’ notice
- Everything in your name
Sample · Friday note
Friday, November 14
Local Services Ads live since Tuesday. 9 leads, 4 booked.
The water heater page. Draft to you by Wednesday.
Approve the November email by Thursday.
40+
years of paid media between us
+⅓
media revenue, on half the budget
3×
the conversion rate for an online store, 0.9% to 3.0%
What the last agency sent
The month you couldn’t describe.
You paid an agency for a year. You got a dashboard, a monthly PDF and a call where someone said “impressions are up.” Then a friend asked what the agency did for you, and you couldn’t answer. Not because you weren’t paying attention. Because nothing you were sent described the work, or the impact.
It’s the story we hear most often from owners who’ve had an agency, and it’s usually why they’re talking to us. What they did about it before they called is where it gets interesting.
- A login to the agency’s dashboardNumbers, with no line about what anyone didSent
- A monthly PDFWhat happened to a number, never whySent
- A call where someone said “impressions are up”Thirty minutes, once a monthSent
- The workWhat was done, why, what it cost, and what they decided not to doNot included
At a typical trade retainer of $1,500 a month, that’s $18,000 a year nobody can audit.
What people try next
Three fixes, all aimed at the wrong thing.
More reporting.
You ask for more detail about the month.
You get a bigger dashboard.A different agency.
You switch, hoping the next one shows its work.
You get a different dashboard.Run it yourself.
You take the ads back and run them at nine at night.
It works until the first busy month.Reports describe results. None of them describe the work.
You can read a year of reports and still not know what you bought. There is a document that would tell you, and almost no agency produces it. So we send four.
What you get
Four documents. Every one of them yours.
01 · The Friday note
Every Friday, a note. Done, doing, blocked, and what we need from you.
So that’s what Marketing Monthly is built around. Every Friday you get a note in the same format: done, doing, blocked, and what we need from you. Every task sits in a log you can open any time, with the reason next to it. Every month ends with a review in plain words, including what failed and what we’d stop. When a friend asks what we did this month, you forward the last four Fridays.
Sample · Marketing Monthly, month 1
Friday note, November 14
Done
- Service area tightened and 23 negative keywords added on November 10. Out-of-area clicks this week: 1, down from 6.
- Local Services Ads live since Tuesday. 9 leads at $41 each. You booked 4. Google refunded 1 as spam when we disputed it.
- Review request cards delivered to both trucks. First week: 11 handed out, 3 reviews posted. The text-message version we tried in week 1 got 1 reply from 14 sends, so the cards replace it.
- November email drafted and in your inbox for approval. Subject: “Before the first freeze, two things to check.” It goes to 412 past customers.
Doing
- Watching the after-hours routing. 6 calls after 5 p.m. this week, 5 answered. The one miss was Wednesday at 9:40 p.m.
- Building the landing page for water heater replacement, which is now your highest-value search. Draft to you by Wednesday.
Blocked
- The email can’t send until you approve it. Thursday is the latest for it to land before the weekend.
- The Business Profile photos. Two phone pictures of the trucks with the logo visible is all it takes.
Decisions needed from you
- Email approval, by Thursday.
- The water heater page will quote a starting price. Your invoices show $1,350 to $2,100 installed. Do you want the page to say “from $1,350,” or no number?
Search: $590 spent, 19 clicks, 5 contacts, 3 jobs. Running cost per booked job since November 1: $372. LSA: $369 spent, 9 leads, 4 jobs. Calls answered within 10 minutes: 15 of 17, 88%. New reviews: 3 (month to date: 3 of 6).
A sample note for a fictional plumbing company, with figures built from real Kansas City click costs. Yours has your numbers in it.
02 · The log
Every task, in a log you can open any day.
The note is the summary. The log is the record underneath it: every change to your account, who made it, when, and why. Every “doing” comes back the next Friday as done, or with the reason it isn’t.
From the week’s log
Every change, who, when and why
9:12 a.m.
David
Removed 14 search terms that brought no calls in 30 days, including “plumbing jobs,” “plumber salary” and “free plumbing estimate.”
$212 of October’s spend went to them.
9:40 a.m.
David
Set the service area to Lee’s Summit, Blue Springs, Raytown and Grain Valley. Independence and Kansas City excluded.
6 clicks from outside the area in October, no jobs.
2:05 p.m.
David
Local Services Ads approved by Google and turned on, weekly budget $400.
Emergency searches cost $34 a click on Search and about $41 a lead on LSA, and an LSA lead is a phone call.
11:30 a.m.
David
Replaced the review-request text with a printed card for the trucks.
1 review from 14 texts in week 1. The card is handed over at the invoice, when the job is fresh.
4:15 p.m.
David
Listened to the 17 tracked calls from the week and tagged each one.
2 went to voicemail, 1 was returned. That’s the 88% answered figure in Friday’s note.
03 · The scope and its stop lines
Every number has a stop line, written before the work starts.
When a number is reached, we say stop, even when it ends the engagement. The line is written before the work starts, so neither of us has to argue about it later.
From the sample scope
One page, before you pay
Cost per booked job from search ads under $350 by December 2; if it’s still above that after the day-30 changes, we recommend stopping Search and keeping Local Services Ads only.
04 · The refund
If you can’t say what we did, that month’s fee comes back.
If a Friday note doesn’t arrive, or a week goes by with nothing in the log, a quarter of that month’s fee is credited back. No claim needed; we do it.
If we miss
What comes back
It covers our fee, never your ad spend. You keep the month’s work, and a refunded month ends the minimum.
Every month
What a month contains.
One ad channel, managed
Google or Meta, the one we recommend for your trade and town. Up to $5,000 a month of your spend at this price.
Your Business Profile and reviews
Kept current, with a review request process we test until it works.
One email to your customers
Written from a short conversation with you, sent only after you approve it.
One test or page change
Each with a named number and a date we check it.
A new landing page each quarter
Researched and written to the job you most want more of.
The Friday note, the log and the review
And if we built your website, Tend: unlimited changes to the pages you already have.
Built from the sample note and log above. Every Friday is a note; the last one carries the review.
Not in it: your ad spend, which goes to Google or Meta. Monthly SEO as a separate service; we don’t sell one. Social media posting. Photo or video shoots. A second ad channel, which we’d quote.
The price
The price, the term, and what others ask.
$2,500 a month, plus your ad spend. Three months to start, then 30 days’ notice. If we recommend stopping, or a month is refunded, the three months end right there.
- One ad channel, managedIncluded
- Your Business Profile and reviewsIncluded
- One email to your customersIncluded
- One test or page changeIncluded
- A new landing page each quarterIncluded
- The Friday note, the log and the reviewIncluded
Can’t say what we did? This line goes to $0.
| Who | What it covers | Price | Term |
|---|---|---|---|
| Moss Marketing Group | One ad channel | $1,500 a month | Month to month |
| Hook Agency | Google Ads with Local Services Ads | From $2,000 a month | — |
| WebFX | SEO plans | From $2,900 a month | Six months |
| Wabbit | The channel, the profile and reviews, the email, the test and the quarterly page, with the Friday note on top | $2,500 a month | Three months, then 30 days’ notice |
From each company’s own pricing page, read November 4, 2026. A dash is a term we didn’t record.
$1,500
once, two weeksNot sure yet? Start with the Marketing Plan.
A written plan built from how work reaches you today: three ranked moves, each with its cost, its number and its stop line. Yours to act on with or without us, and credited if you start Monthly, an Ads Launch or Fractional CMO within 60 days.
Three months to start
The first 90 days.
Why three months? The first month is mostly setup: tracking, the account in your name, the first campaign live. A test needs two more months to be read fairly.
Month one
Setup
Tracking in your name, the ad account yours, the first campaign live, the review process running, the first email out.
Month two
The first read
The first test read and reported. Spend moves to what’s working. The water heater page in the sample above was built in this month.
Month three
The first review
The first landing page, and a review that answers whether a fourth month is worth it.
Then
Month to month
On 30 days’ notice, for as long as the numbers say it’s worth it.
The method, in their hands
We taught a store our method. Conversion tripled.
- Mentorship sprint
- Two months · 2026
An online store for licensed collectibles
A two-month mentorship sprint: we diagnosed the store’s marketing, then taught the team our method and coached them through using it. Conversion went from 0.9% to 3.0% across 18,459 sessions, and one email produced the store’s second-highest sales day on record.
We don’t publish what a client spends, and the store isn’t named for the same reason. We make one exception here because the number is zero: there was no ad spend during the sprint. The method is the one you’d get every month: the diagnosis first, and a number on every move before it’s made.
the store’s conversion rate, from 0.9% to 3.0% across 18,459 sessions
highest sales day on record
during the sprint
Common questions.
No. You pay Google or Meta directly, from your own account. Our fee is for the work.
Add 5% of the spend over $5,000 to the monthly fee. At $10,000 of spend, that’s $250.
You do. Ad accounts, tracking, the email list and every file are in your name from day one, and they stay with you if you leave.
Say so at the monthly review, or within seven days of it. The month’s fee comes back, you keep the work, and the three-month minimum ends.
Three months to start, then 30 days’ notice. If we recommend stopping, or a month is refunded, you can leave without notice.
Yes, where your trade qualifies. Google’s screening is yours to complete; we’ll send the link and walk you through it.
Yes. Every tracked call is listened to and tagged, which is how the “answered within 10 minutes” number exists.
Your Business Profile, your reviews and the pages we build all help you show up. We don’t sell a monthly SEO retainer, and ranking isn’t ours to promise, so we don’t.
Nobody can promise you a mention in an AI answer, and we don’t sell one. What we do is make sure your site and your profile say the facts in plain text, which is what those systems read.
Fifteen minutes about your business and how jobs come in today. We’ll tell you whether Marketing Monthly fits, whether a Plan should come first, or whether you don’t need us yet.
Which rung? That’s what the call is for.
Fifteen minutes about your business and how jobs come in today. We’ll tell you whether Marketing Monthly fits, whether a Plan should come first, or whether you don’t need us yet.
Book the call