Paid ads that stop when you stop paying.
That is not a criticism, it is the deal. Ads buy you this month and nothing after it. For a tint shop, used deliberately on the jobs worth buying (ceramic tint, PPF, ceramic coating), that is exactly the right tool: fast, controllable, and honest about what it is. The mistake is treating it as the whole strategy forever, because the price only goes one way.
Paid ads for window tint, PPF and ceramic coating
A $250 dyed-film job and a $2,000 PPF front end cannot carry the same cost per lead, so each service gets its own campaign and its own ceiling. Tint Guy LLC paid about $8.50 a lead across calls and forms over 30 days, against a typical $50 to $90.
Lead costs roughly doubled in four years.
From a paid media vendor’s own data across 3,211 US home services campaigns:
| Trade | Median cost per lead | 4-year change |
|---|---|---|
| Roofing | $228 | +125% |
| Plumbing | $129 | +164% |
| Heating | $129 | +107% |
| Air conditioning | $128 | +132% |
| Landscaping | $118 | +207% |
| Electrical | $94 |
A $128 lead against a multi-thousand-dollar job is still good arithmetic. It is just less good every year, which is the argument for running paid alongside visibility you own rather than instead of it.
Search captures demand. Social creates it.
This is the decision that matters most, and it is decided by your service, not by which platform is fashionable.
Google Ads
- Reaches people actively searching right now
- Best for urgent and emergency services
- Higher intent, higher click cost
- Works without photography
- Local Services Ads often belong here first
Facebook and Instagram
- Reaches people who were not looking at all
- Best for visual, planned, discretionary work
- Lower intent, much lower click cost
- Needs real photos of finished jobs
- Creative volume is the lever, not targeting
Burst pipe at midnight: Google. Custom kitchen somebody has been dreaming about for a year: Meta. Most established businesses eventually run both, with search capturing existing demand and social creating new demand.
Predictions written down before the change.
Every structural change to a campaign logs a specific, measurable prediction at 72 hours and 30 days before we make it, cites where any expected number comes from, and gets graded right, partial, wrong or inconclusive afterward. If we get the same category of change wrong twice on your account, that lever is off limits until we have new evidence.
This exists because we did it badly. In June 2026 we changed budgets, geo and bid strategies on five to seven days of data with no auction insights and no written predictions. Two of four structural changes were wrong and had to be reverted. The discipline is the direct result, and you get to see the grades including the bad ones.
Three things that will waste your budget.
A landing page that does not convert. We found this on our own funnel: 460 landing page views produced 4 leads, under one percent, while the ads themselves were fine. More spend would have bought more of the same. Fix the page first and the same budget produces several times the leads.
A phone nobody answers. Across more than 70 million analyzed calls, only 52% of inbound calls to home services businesses are answered by a person, and 55% of businesses never ask for the booking. Paying for clicks that reach voicemail is the most expensive way to lose a job.
A budget too small to learn from. Both platforms need conversion volume to optimize. Below a certain threshold the algorithm is guessing and you fund the guessing. We would rather tell you that than take a fee to run a campaign that cannot work.
What owners ask about paid ads.
Should I do ads or SEO?
If you need work this month, ads. SEO will not fill next week’s schedule and anyone promising it will is selling.
If you are planning past this quarter, visibility you own compounds while ad costs climb. Most established businesses run both and shift the mix toward owned over time.
Who owns the ad accounts?
You do. We work inside your accounts rather than routing you through ours, so if you leave you keep the account, the history and the conversion data. That accumulated data is what makes future campaigns cheaper, and starting over means starting over.
Can you guarantee a cost per lead?
No. Auction prices move, competitors change budgets, and seasonality is real. What we can do is state the benchmark for your trade, predict in writing what we expect a change to do, and show you afterward whether we were right.
What does management cost?
All our pricing is published, including what is included at each level. Look without talking to anybody.
Start with where you actually stand.
Free 30-second check across Google, the map pack and the AI tools. If ads are not what you need right now, we will say so. No sales call.
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