See Every Call Your Google Ads Bring In, and What Each One Cost
Your ad budget becomes a transparent plan you can read through, not a monthly surprise you have to hope works out.
5.0★ · 29 Google Reviews · Serving Columbia, SC since 2017 · Google Partner
See what your leads should cost in Columbia, and how many of them your budget should bring in, before you spend a dollar with us.
(803) 470-6557 · You’ll talk to a real person in Columbia.
Why Google Ads in Columbia, SC Pays Off for Some Companies and Burns Money for Others
You can have a Google Ads campaign live by this afternoon. Google makes that part simple. What Google doesn’t make simple is seeing whether any of that spend actually brought in a customer.
Out of the box, a new account counts everything as a conversion: directions clicks, website visits, phone number taps from people who never actually rang through. Google treats all of that as “results” and optimizes your budget to produce more of it. Your spend goes up. Your reports look busy. Your phone still isn’t ringing with anyone ready to book.
That’s not a bug. Google’s default settings are built to maximize activity, not to make sure what you’re spending is producing verifiable results. More “conversions” in the dashboard means the algorithm asks for more budget, and the cycle continues.
When the account is rebuilt to count only phone calls and form submissions, the system starts optimizing for those instead of chasing whatever is cheapest to produce. Same platform. Different results.
How We Launch Your Campaign
We don’t spend a dollar of your budget until we’ve proven the tracking works.
Build it right.
We research the searches your customers regularly type into Google, write ads that match, and build a page designed to turn those clicks into calls. We block the keywords that waste money, turn off the default settings that drain budget, and lock the campaign to your service area.
Prove the tracking works.
Before anything goes live, we place a real test call and submit a test form. If either one doesn’t register as a tracked lead, the campaign stays off until it does. This is the step most setups skip, and it’s why most accounts can’t tell you which ad made the phone ring.
Turn it on.
Once tracking is confirmed, ads go live. You’ll typically see your first leads within a couple of days.
Watch it closely for the first month.
We check the account every day during the first week and review search terms to block anything wasting money. No bidding changes, no targeting changes. We let the system learn from incoming data before we touch it. We listen to call recordings and review form submissions to filter out spam and sales calls from your lead count.
Keep tuning every month after that.
We point the budget at the keywords and ads producing verified leads: phone calls and form submissions from people asking about your service, and cut the ones producing clicks that never turn into either. You get a monthly review and a live dashboard you can check anytime.
What Real Leads Cost Across Our Accounts
Every number below is a cost per genuine lead, a phone call or a form submission from someone asking about a service. Not a click. Not a website visit. Not a directions tap Google counted as a conversion. When you strip out everything that isn’t someone actually reaching out, this is what leads cost.
The range depends on the industry, the market, and the competition. What doesn’t change is how we count: phone calls and form submissions only.
What Comes With Every Campaign
Before we recommend changing a single campaign, we show you what your marketing is doing right now.
One client per trade, per market.
If we ran ads for two HVAC companies in the same city, both clients would be bidding against each other in Google’s auction, and both would pay more per click because of it. We don’t do that. No one would benefit from us pitting our clients against each other. One client per trade, per market. Your budget goes toward getting you customers, not outbidding another client of ours. And everything we learn from your campaign, the keyword data, the search terms, the insights, stays yours. None of it gets shared with anyone in your market.
100% US-based team.
Every person who writes your ads, builds your landing pages, and manages your account is based in the United States. Marketing is communication, and your ad copy needs to read like it was written by someone who thinks in your customers’ language. When an ad sounds like something a real person in your market would say, people trust it and call. When it reads like it was translated or templated, they scroll past.
Month-to-month. No contracts.
We don’t lock you into a six-month or twelve-month contract. If the leads stop coming, you should leave. We keep clients by producing results every month, not by making it expensive to walk away. Stay as long as the numbers work. Leave if they don’t.
You own your account and your data.
Everything we build lives in your name. The ad account, the campaigns, the keyword lists, the conversion history, the landing page. If you ever leave, all of it goes with you. We don’t build in our own accounts and we don’t hold your data to keep you around. You hired us to run your ads, not to hold them hostage.
Built for businesses that book customers from local search.
Our ad structures, landing pages, tracking, and keyword strategy are built for one type of business: the kind where a customer finds you on Google, calls or fills out a form, and books. HVAC, roofing, electrical, fencing, auto glass, auto body, med spa. Not e-commerce, not national brands, not SaaS. We have a particular strategy, which we have mastered. The narrower the focus, the faster the campaign produces.
How We Set Your Ad Budget
Say you want 4 new customers a week. That’s roughly 16 a month. If about 1 in 3 leads turns into a customer, you need around 48 leads a month. If a lead in your market costs around $50, that’s roughly $2,400 a month in ad spend to hit your target.
A brand-new campaign doesn’t start at full efficiency, though. Google’s system needs 60 to 90 days of real data before it learns what works in your specific market. Leads cost more in that window. We plan for it by setting the launch budget higher, closer to $3,500 in this example, so the campaign has room to learn without running dry before the data kicks in.
Once the system has enough history, the cost per lead comes down. From there you have two options. Keep the launch budget in place and the lower cost per lead means more leads for the same spend. Or scale the budget back to match your original lead target, and your monthly ad cost drops. Either way, the campaign gets more efficient the longer it runs.
The free review includes this math for your specific business. Your industry, your market, your close rate, your numbers. Everything is drawn up custom, not from a template.
See What Your Google Ads Should Produce
The free review gives you three numbers before you spend a dollar with us: what a lead should cost in your market, how many leads your budget should produce, and the full investment breakdown, including setup, management, and ad spend. If you’re already running Google Ads, we’ll also show you what your account is counting as conversion data and where the budget is actually going.
No commitment. No credit card. Just the math for your specific business.
Month-to-month, no contracts. You own your account and everything in it. If you leave, it all goes with you.
Rather just call? (803) 470-6557 · You’ll talk to a real person in Columbia.
Common Questions
How much does Google Ads management cost?
Setup starts at $1,000 per campaign. Monthly management is $1,500 for ad budgets up to $5,000, and scales from there for larger budgets. If your campaign needs a dedicated landing page or website work, that's scoped separately. The free review includes the full cost breakdown for your specific situation so you see the complete investment before you commit.
How much should I spend on ads?
It depends on your industry, your market, and how many customers you want per month. We work backward from a target: how many jobs you want per week, what your close rate is, and what a lead costs in your market. That math gives us a budget number. The free review includes this calculation for your specific business.
How long before I start getting leads?
Most campaigns start producing leads within the first few days of going live. The cost per lead will be higher in the first 60 to 90 days while Google's system learns what works in your market. We plan for that upfront, and the cost typically comes down as relevant data builds. This isn't a problem with the campaign. It's how every new account works, and we budget for it instead of pretending day-one numbers are permanent.
What if I've never run Google Ads before?
A new account has some advantages. There's no bad data to clean up and no history of misconfigured tracking teaching the algorithm the wrong things. We build everything from scratch: keyword research, ad copy, a dedicated landing page, tracking setup, and the full campaign configuration.
What if I'm already running Google Ads and it's not working?
We start with a review of what you have. We'll show you what your account is currently set up to count, where the budget is actually going, and what needs to change. If the tracking is broken or the defaults are draining your budget, we'll find it. If the campaign is sound and just needs tuning, we'll tell you that too. And if the account isn't worth salvaging, we'll say so and build a new one from scratch.
Do I need a new website?
Not necessarily. We build a dedicated landing page for your ads, separate from your main site. That page has one job: turn the click into a call or a form submission. It can run alongside your current website. If your existing site has issues that would hurt the campaign, we'll flag those in the review.