What happens in the first thirty days of working with us

It starts with the jobs you want

Every engagement begins with a conversation, and it is not about marketing channels. It is about the work. Which jobs do you want more of? Which ones keep the crew busy but barely pay? Where do you want to work, and where would you rather not drive? How many new jobs could you actually take on next month without things slipping?

We also ask how enquiries reach you today. Who answers the phone? What happens to a voicemail left at six in the evening? Where do website forms land, and who replies to them? How do you know, right now, whether last month was a good month?

These answers shape everything after. A business that wants more large planned projects needs a different plan from one that wants to fill the schedule with quick, local calls. A business that misses half its calls needs that fixed before it needs more traffic.

We take notes in plain language and send them back to you, so you can correct anything we misunderstood. If the picture we hold of your business is wrong, every decision built on it will be wrong too. This step is short, but it is the one we are least willing to skip.

We review what is already in place

Next we look at what already exists, because most local businesses have more marketing in place than they think, and some of it is quietly working against them.

• Your website. Can a customer on a phone see what you do, where you work and how to reach you within a few seconds? Does the call button work? Do the forms actually arrive somewhere?
• Your Google Business Profile. Categories, service area, hours, photos, and whether the details match your website and other listings.
• Your reviews. How many, how recent, how they are answered, and whether there is any routine for asking happy customers.
• Your ad accounts. Who owns them, what is running, what is being counted as a conversion, and whether the settings match the jobs you told us you want.
• Your call handling. How calls are answered, missed, returned and recorded.

We write down what we find and separate it clearly. Some things are facts we can see. Some are observations. Some are our recommendations. We do not dress up an opinion as a finding, and we do not invent problems to justify the work.

We fix tracking before we spend

If there is one rule we hold to in the first month, it is this. We would rather spend nothing on new advertising until we can see what it does.

That means getting the measurement right first. In practice it usually involves a few things.

• Call tracking that records which channel a call came from, while keeping your main number on your profile and signage.
• Website forms that are tagged by source and arrive somewhere a person checks every day.
• Conversions in the ad accounts that count real enquiries, rather than page visits or button hovers.
• A simple place to record whether each enquiry became a booked job, whether that is your existing CRM or a basic shared log we set up with you.

This is unglamorous work, and it is the most valuable thing we do early on. Without it, any report we send you later would be built on platform numbers alone, and those cannot tell you whether the phone calls turned into paying jobs. Our approach to CRM and reporting explains how these pieces fit together once they are running.

A written plan for your approval

Once we understand the business and can trust the measurement, we put a written plan in front of you. It is a plain document, not a slide deck.

The plan sets out the scope, meaning exactly which parts of your marketing we will look after and which we will not. It sets out the budget, separating our fee from any money that goes to Google, Meta or other platforms. It names the jobs and areas we are aiming at, the channels we intend to use first, and the order in which we intend to work.

It also says what we expect to learn, and when we will report back. It does not promise a number of leads or a return, because nobody honest can promise that before the work has been tested in your market.

Nothing moves until you approve it. If something in the plan does not sit right with you, we change it or explain our thinking until it does. You are the one who knows your business, your crew and your cash flow. Our job is to bring the marketing judgement and do the work, inside a scope we have both agreed in writing. You can read more about how we think about this on our approach page.

First changes and the first report

With the plan approved, we start on the changes that matter most. Often that means fixing the basics we found in the review, such as profile details, a broken form, a confusing page or ad settings that do not match the work you want. Where the plan includes advertising, we launch carefully and at a budget you have agreed.

All accounts stay in your business's name. If we ever part ways, your website, profile, ad accounts and data stay with you.

At the end of the first month you receive a first report. It puts the platform numbers beside your own records of calls, forms and booked jobs, for the same dates. Where the two disagree, we say so and explain why. Where it is too early to tell, we say that too, rather than filling the space with estimates.

The first report is a starting line, not a verdict. It shows what changed, what we learned and what we plan to do next, so the following month is decided on evidence rather than guesswork.