Services, paid social
Paid social run in the order that works, which is rarely the order that sells.
Meta, LinkedIn, and TikTok, managed as one program. We start with the people who already know you: your customer list and your site visitors. Lookalikes and cold prospecting wait until that layer converts. Every account is wired to server-side signals so the platform learns from leads and sales rather than from clicks.
- Billing
- Priced per scope
- Terms
- Monthly · defined scope · flat fee
Audience ladder
Order of operations
- 01Customer list
Retargeting your own customer list
On first. The list is uploaded and matched, so the platform starts from people who already bought.
- 02Site visitors
People who reached the site and left
On first. Warm, cheap, and it tells us whether the creative can carry an offer at all.
- 03Lookalikes
Lookalikes built from real customers
On once 01 and 02 convert. The seed is the customer list, not a page audience.
- 04Cold
Cold prospecting by interest and geography
On last, and only if the layers above are producing. Turned on early, it spends the fastest and teaches the least.
Rungs 03 and 04 stay off until 01 and 02 convert.
For most owner-led companies, paid social is not the first dollar.
Search captures demand that already exists. Somebody types the thing they need and you answer. Social creates demand, or at least interrupts a person who was not thinking about you at all. Both work. The order matters, and most agencies get paid to ignore that.
So the honest sequence looks like this. Retargeting comes first: your customer list, uploaded and matched, and the people who reached your site and left. Those audiences are small, warm, and cheap enough that you learn quickly whether your creative and your offer can carry a sale at all. Lookalikes come next, and they are seeded from real buyers rather than from anyone who ever watched three seconds of a video.
Cold prospecting comes last. It is the layer that eats budget fastest, it takes the longest to read, and it is the first thing a bad social program turns on. We turn it on once the retargeting layer is converting, because that is the evidence that the message works on people who are inclined to like you. If it does not work on them, it will not work on strangers.
LinkedIn is a different building. It earns budget when you sell to businesses and can name the buyer by job title, and it stops making sense when the deal size cannot carry its click prices. TikTok earns budget where the product is visual, the work shows well on video, and the buyer is actually on the platform. We run it where that is defensible and decline it where it is not.
Five things run every month, and you get a written record of each.
This is the whole scope. Nothing here is a bonus tier or an upsell, and nothing outside it gets billed without a conversation first.
Scope of work · paid social management
05 lines · fixed monthly fee
- 01
Creative system
Refreshed on a set cadence
A small set of angles, each written against one real objection a buyer says out loud. Every angle gets its own thumbnail, hook, and offer. Angles that stop working get retired and replaced on a schedule, so the account never runs on a single ad until it burns out, and nobody is writing to a content calendar.
- 02
Audience architecture
Rebuilt as the list grows
Customer lists uploaded and refreshed, site retargeting windows set by how long your buying cycle actually is, lookalikes seeded from customers rather than clickers, and exclusions so you are not paying to advertise to people already on your books.
- 03
Server-side conversion signals
Wired once, verified monthly
Conversion API events sent from the server, with lead and sale outcomes fed back in. The platform then learns from what closed instead of guessing from a browser pixel that half your traffic blocks. Without this, the campaign optimizes toward whoever clicks.
- 04
QA sweeps
Weekly
Agents sweep the accounts every week for the failures that cost money quietly: a disapproved ad nobody noticed, a broken landing page, an audience overlapping itself, spend drifting to a placement you never picked. A human reads every finding and approves every change before it lands.
- 05
The report
Monthly
What was spent, what it bought, what we changed and why, and what we got wrong. Same grammar as the rest of this site. If a test failed, it is in the report with the date on it.
Billing: a fixed monthly fee for a defined scope, published before work starts, not a percentage of spend. An agency paid on a percentage has one quiet reason to recommend a larger budget. We would rather not have that reason.
Three platforms, and the case for saying no to each one.
- Who it is for
- Consumer and local services with a customer list worth retargeting, and anything where the work photographs well.
- What we run there
- Retargeting and customer-list audiences first, lookalikes off real buyers, Advantage placements held on a short leash, conversion API events tied to leads and sales.
- When we say no
- When there is no customer list, no site traffic, and no tracking. We fix one of those first rather than spend into the dark.
Meta: Facebook and Instagram
- Who it is for
- B2B services selling to a buyer you can name by job title, at companies you can name by size and industry.
- What we run there
- Tight title and company targeting, document and single-image ads carrying a real point of view, lead forms only where the form is genuinely faster than the site.
- When we say no
- When the buyer title is fuzzy, or the deal size cannot carry LinkedIn's click costs. It is the most expensive room in the building and it is priced that way for a reason.
- Who it is for
- Visual products and visible work, where the buyer is actually on the platform. We say yes where it is defensible and no where it is not.
- What we run there
- Native vertical video built from real footage of your work, a small number of hooks tested against each other, spark ads off your own posts where the account has any.
- When we say no
- When the product is not visual, when the buyer is not there, or when there is no way to shoot real footage. A repurposed square photo ad is a waste of the impression.
TikTok
Social does not stand on its own, and we do not sell it that way.
A social campaign without server-side signals optimizes to whoever clicks, not whoever buys. The platform can only learn from what it is told, and a browser pixel misses a large share of the outcomes that matter to you. Feed it verified leads and closed jobs and it goes hunting for people who look like your customers. Feed it clicks and it goes hunting for people who click.
That is why tracking comes first. It is also why search usually runs alongside: demand capture and demand creation are two different jobs, and the record of what each one produced lives in the same ledger.
On the record
- Does paid social work for a plumbing company?
- Sometimes, and rarely first. Search catches people who already have a problem. Social interrupts people who do not. For a trade with steady search demand, we spend the first dollars on search, then use social to retarget site visitors and reach the customer list you already have. Cold prospecting comes last, if at all.
- How is this different from boosting posts?
- Boosting sends a post to a broad audience with no exclusions, no offer, and no measurement past likes. We build audiences in a set order, write ads against a specific objection, exclude current customers, and read results against leads and sales instead of engagement.
- What does it cost?
- A fixed monthly fee for a defined scope, published before work starts, not a percentage of spend. Ad spend goes to the platform and is yours, separate from the fee.
- How much should I spend?
- Enough that a single audience can gather data in weeks rather than months. If the budget only supports one small retargeting audience, we say so and start there instead of splitting it across three platforms. We will tell you on the triage call if the number does not support the plan.
- Do you do TikTok?
- Where it is defensible. TikTok earns a place when the product is visual, the work shows well on video, and your buyer is on the platform. For a business selling to facility managers, it usually is not, and we say that rather than sell a fourth channel.
- What do you need from me to start?
- Admin access to the ad accounts and business manager, your customer list export, whatever footage or photos of real work you already have, and one person who can answer questions about which leads turned into jobs.
- Will this work without conversion tracking in place?
- Not well. Without server-side signals the platform optimizes toward whoever clicks, because clicks are the only thing it can see. We either install tracking first or scope the social work around a signal we can verify.
- Do you write the ads and make the creative?
- We write the angles and the copy, and we direct and assemble creative from your real work: job footage, product shots, staff on site. We do not license stock actors or invent testimonials.