Google Ads
Capture demand that already exists, someone searches, you appear, and there's only as much of it as your market searches.
Converts faster
Search ads catch customers already looking. Social ads create the customers, putting your business in front of exactly the right people in your service area while they scroll, weeks before they'd have typed anything into Google. It's the difference between fishing where the fish are and stocking the pond.
Most local businesses' paid-social experience is the blue Boost button: $50, some likes, no calls, conclusion drawn. But boosting is to social advertising what a yard sign is to a billboard contract, same family, different machine.
Real social advertising runs in the ads platform underneath: audiences built from your actual customers and service area, campaign objectives set to leads and calls, not likes, creative tested in variants, and a pixel measuring what came back.
The businesses saying "Facebook ads don't work" almost always mean "boosting didn't work." They're right about the second thing.
Boost button
A yard sign
Ads platform
A billboard contract
Customers + service area
Leads and calls
Tested in variants
Pixel, what came back
↳ same family, different machine
The paid stack's two jobs, plainly: capture converts faster; generation scales further; run together, each makes the other cheaper. That's the system, and it's why "which platform is best" is the wrong question.
Capture demand that already exists, someone searches, you appear, and there's only as much of it as your market searches.
Converts faster
Introduces your business to people who match your customer profile before the need is urgent, so when the water heater finally dies, yours is the name they already know.
Scales further
The budget that runs both feeds its own retargeting pool, the audience that accrues whether or not anyone clicks today.
Fed by both
Audiences built like they matter: your service area drawn tight, your customer list matched and modeled into lookalikes, and interest layers that describe your actual buyer, not "people who like pages."
Campaigns built for lead forms, calls, and site conversions, because the platform optimizes toward whatever you ask for, and most DIY campaigns accidentally ask for applause. We ask for customers.
Ad creative built on your brand system and, where you run our content program, drawn from your real jobs and team, the content that already outperforms stock. Multiple variants tested, losers cut, winners funded.
The measurement layer wired first: pixel and conversion events on your site, lead tracking through to your inbox or CRM, and the monthly ledger reporting spend, leads, and cost per lead, same standard as the whole paid practice.
Paid social settles arguments the way the rest of our work does: with tracked outcomes. Every campaign's variants compete in public, spend follows the winners, and the report says what a lead cost, this month versus last.
It's the same anti-vanity stance as our social management reporting, applied where the dollars make it sharpest.
Variant A · Real job photo
$18↳ budget scales here
Variant B · Team on site
$26↳ cut
Variant C · Stock image
$71↳ cut
spend follows the winners · this month vs. last
The same method as every engagement, at paid speed: the audit defines your customer and draws the audiences, launch runs multiple creative variants at modest spend, the first weeks are a tournament, and budget scales into what's proven. What never happens: launching one ad, one audience, full budget, and hoping. That's not a strategy; that's a coin with your logo on it.
Defines your customer
Drawn before anything runs
Multiple variants, modest spend
The first weeks decide
Budget into what's proven
Boosting promotes an existing post for reach and engagement, the platform's simplest (and most profitable-for-them) option. Social advertising runs in the full ads platform: precise audiences, lead-and-call objectives, creative variants, and pixel measurement. Boosting buys attention; advertising buys customers. If your paid-social verdict came from the Boost button, the jury heard the wrong case.
Where your customers are, which for most local businesses means Meta (Facebook and Instagram) first, with LinkedIn for B2B and other platforms only when your specific audience justifies them. The platform serves the audience, never the other way around, same discipline as our organic recommendation.
Down to your service area's zip codes, layered with demographics and interests that describe your buyer, and, most powerfully, audiences built from your own data: your customer list matched to profiles, your site visitors, and lookalikes modeled on your best customers. Platform privacy changes have tightened some levers, which is exactly why first-party data (your list, your traffic) now does the heavy lifting, and why we build on it.
They work differently, and yes. Products sell in-feed; services get introduced there. A roofer's ad doesn't close a roof in the scroll, it makes the name familiar, feeds the retargeting pool, and captures the storm-week lead form when the moment comes. Paired with search capture, it's how service businesses stop depending on being found and start being known.
We do, from your brand system, and from your real business wherever possible, jobs, team, reviews, because authentic creative outperforms stock in feeds and costs less per result. If you're on our content program, ads and organic draw from one well and one look.
The audit defines your buyer, sizes the local audience, and prices what reaching them costs, before you spend anything. Bring your boosting receipts if you want the comparison to sting properly.