The First 90 Days

What the first ninety days actually look like.

Every engagement opens the same way, whichever service it ends up being. The first month is diagnosis; the plan it produces is what the months after it work through.

Month one
The Conversion Tracking Audit. Ten business days from the day access is granted, read-only throughout — nothing is changed and nothing is published. It ends in a written report and a 90-day plan.
Days 1–14
Stop the bleeding. Triggers re-pointed to real submission events, soft conversions demoted, counting settings corrected, internal traffic excluded, campaign tagging applied across every owned surface. Fast, and none of it needs your developer.
Days 15–45
Make it true. Duplicate and spam filtering, call-duration thresholds, cross-domain and iframe forms, campaign data captured into the CRM. Some of this does need your developer, and it is specified in writing, not assumed.
Days 46–90
Make it useful. Offline conversion import, the CRM closed back to the ad platform, bidding against real revenue rather than raw lead count. This horizon is billed separately at $150 an hour — it is roadmap work, not retainer work.

Expect the numbers to look worse before they look better. Fixing measurement makes them accurate, not flattering, and month two is when that lands. It is said here, not after the invoice.

Questions

The questions that come up before anyone signs.

Why isn’t the first month cheaper?

Because the first month is the audit — $1,500, or one month’s retainer if that’s higher. Ten days of read-only work, a written report and a 90-day plan. No separate onboarding fee, and nothing to credit back.

Will this lower my cost per lead?

No promise either way, and be wary of anyone who makes one. Accurate usually means higher than what you were looking at before — what changes is that you can act on it.

Is there a minimum ad spend?

$2,000 a month for ads management, and it is a limit on the data rather than on the budget: below that a search account does not produce enough conversions to optimize against. Local SEO has no such floor, and on a smaller budget it usually does more. The Conversion Tracking Audit has no floor either.

Who owns the accounts?

You do — every account in your name, not an agency’s, with administrator and owner roles transferred in writing and with screenshots. If the engagement ends, access is handed back the same week rather than at the end of a notice period, and nothing is held back to buy back.

Can I just buy the audit?

Yes. It is sold on its own, and it is written so another vendor could carry out the plan — that is what makes it worth the fee, not a sales document. If you decide later that you want the retainer, there is nothing to reconcile: you have already done month one, so month two simply starts.

What isn’t included?

Anything that needs your developer becomes a written specification rather than a promise I am not in a position to keep. The days 46–90 roadmap work — offline conversion import, closing the CRM loop — is billed separately at $150 an hour. Both are named in the agreement rather than discovered later.