Frequently Asked Marketing Questions

Yes — completely. You get full access to your own Google Analytics and Search Console accounts, set up under your business. They're yours to keep. Log in any time to see your traffic, where it's coming from, which pages are performing, and the calls and form fills coming in. We believe you should always be able to see exactly what your investment is doing.

Because quality is what ranks — and volume, done cheaply, can actually hurt you. Firms pushing out several posts a week are almost always mass-producing thin, templated content, and Google now actively suppresses sites that do that. Every article we publish is researched, targets a specific service and area you want to be found for, and is properly optimized and linked throughout your site. We'd rather publish one piece that ranks and brings you calls than several that just sit there. If you ever want to ramp up content for a specific push, we can — we just won't add filler for the sake of a number.

A lot more than content. Every month includes technical monitoring and fixes, on-page optimization, new optimized content, Google Business Profile management, citation and link work, rank tracking, competitor monitoring, reporting, and staying on top of Google's algorithm changes. SEO isn't a one-time project — it's ground you hold and build on. The work compounds month over month. (Ask us for the one-page breakdown of everything your monthly investment covers.)

Security, speed, and peace of mind. WordPress is the most-hacked platform on the web — not because it's bad, but because its endless plugins are a constant security and update treadmill, and someone has to be paid to keep patching it. Our platform is faster, more secure, and there's nothing for you to maintain. And to be clear: your content and your domain are always yours. You're never locked in.

Consistently, and with a real person. You'll receive a report every month, you'll have a direct point of contact — not a ticket queue — and we respond quickly when you reach out. If you've been ghosted by an agency before, that's exactly the experience we're built to be the opposite of. You'll never be left wondering what's going on.

Yes — we help with citations (over 100 industry and local directory listings) that we build and keep consistent, because matching your name, address, and phone across the web is a genuine local-ranking factor. Anyone selling a bulk pile of cheap links is setting you up for a Google penalty, and we won't put your site at that risk.

We use AI the way any good firm uses a modern tool — for research and efficiency — but your content is written and edited for your specific business, fact-checked, and in your voice. We don't publish AI-generated filler with your name on it. As for showing up in ChatGPT, Google's AI overviews, and Perplexity: that visibility comes from being genuinely authoritative — well-structured content that answers real questions, proper schema markup, strong reviews, and being cited across the web. It overlaps heavily with good SEO, and it's something we're actively building into our work.

SEO is a 3-to-6-month build before it really compounds — anyone promising leads next week is either running ads and calling it SEO, or overpromising. In the first couple of months you'll see the leading indicators move: rankings climbing, traffic growing, and the phone starting to ring more. Actual lead volume depends on your market size, competition, and how well your site converts, so we focus on realistic milestones rather than a number we can't honestly guarantee. What we can promise is steady, compounding progress you can see in your own reports.

No. We do not require any contracts to our programs or services. You can cancel at anytime. We believe that any marketing company that requires a contract does not believe in their services.

Footbridge Media focuses primarily on home services and construction industries. For more information, please visit our Who We Help page.

The main objective of our core contractor marketing program is to develop the site and get it to the point where it will generate leads through organic optimization. Even if you like the look of your website, we will have to build the site from the ground up. The cost of the website is part of the core contractor marketing program.

We have a full-time content development team, which will take care of all the writing for the website, but welcome any client-provided content as well.

Once your layout design is approved, the site should go live within 3-5 weeks, depending on the number of projects we are currently working on. We take care of all the site's content. On launch, most of our sites start with about 20-30 pages.

We build websites that look good and function on all screen sizes. The number of users viewing the web on their mobile phones is growing daily, and all of our websites are designed with this in mind. Our websites are built on a flexible framework that flows with the wide variety of devices used in today's ever-changing marketplace.

Our Contractor Marketing Program is core of what makes our sites perform. We focus on increasing your organic SEO through a variety of services to help your site thrive over time. To see all of the services that we provide with the program, visit our Contractor Marketing Program page.

Though we prefer to use your own project photos, we will use stock photography where necessary. Over time, as you complete more projects and have more of your own photos, we can replace the stock imagery.

You can view detailed reporting on some of our success stories on our Case Studies page. To view all of our current client sites, feel free to check out our Contractor Directory.

In order to get started all you really need is your company's name, address, phone number, a list of the towns you service, and a list of services you provide.

When you sign up for our core contractor marketing program you will receive an information packet that will ask you a bunch of questions about your business, which will be used to help us figure out the proper approaches to ensure your success. One of our onboarding managers will contact you and walk you through this part of the process.

Google's billing thresholds are solely within Google's control. When you set your budget, it is not charged outright. A balance is accrued per click and when that total balance hits a certain threshold, Google will make the attempt to charge the card on file. This threshold is never exact and usually comes in the following amounts: $50, $350, or $500. If no threshold is hit in each month, they will attempt to collect what has been accrued at the end of each month.

This is standard practice in Google Ads PPC management. This is a tracking number that forward calls directly to your business line. There is no in between interception to the call. The call will bounce from this tracking number right to your business. This is necessary for our systems to determine which calls are coming from your Google Ads and not from your organic leads or other sources. This information helps your Google Ads manager determine what keywords and methods are working for you which will help optimize the performance of your campaign over time.

This is normal. Google themselves have also addressed this. Your ads will not show for every single search because of multiple factors. Two primary factors are: Google is optimizing your showing times for what their algorithm determines will be the most efficient times to show your ads to get the best outcome (a lead). Additionally, Google's auction has many competitors and there are only so many spots an ad can show in for a search. The available budget for each competitor will be a factor in how often Google will show your ad for a given search at a given time of day. Typically, a campaign running with more budget has more opportunities to have their ad shown for more keyword searches.

Digital marketing is an ever-evolving marketing strategy. Due to this, every year there are more competitors. When more competitors are brought into the market then this increases the cost competition. Existing competitors will up their bids on keywords to get more clicks and more conversions, and new competition will have to compete with these prices. This competition creates a higher "baseline" cost than previous years when there was less competition and thus the price per click was cheaper.

Because Google Ads is a pay-per-click program and requires no pre-run time, it is possible you can get your first lead on the same day your Google Ads manager informs you the ads are up and running. The likelihood of getting leads increases the longer and more mature your campaign becomes.

This is a common concern that Google handles very well. The short answer is: it rarely happens. Most competing business are too focused on their own marketing to worry about sitting around and clicking ads. Even so, the most damage they can do is only one click. Google protects its advertisers very well (which is also why they are so successful) and will not charge if someone is continuously clicking ads. Their algorithm will flag this as fraudulent activity and in cases of this the Google billing summary will reflect this as a refresh for "invalid clicks". We do not recommend paying a "click protection" company as the cost almost never balances out to be worth the money.

Footbridge Media aims to utilize the available budget as efficiently as possible. The truth of the matter is that not many consumers are looking for the average contractor's services at 2:00AM. Additionally, due to Google's algorithm they will show your ads less often than they could throughout the day to stretch the budget in a manner that allows your ads to run for the entire 24/7 timeframe that has been chosen. This could take away from valuable run time at, say, 1:00PM.

Footbridge Media has been running and managing Google Ads campaigns for many years for many contractor industries. This tenure has given us troves of historical data unmatched by other agencies. When you sign up for Google Ads with Footbridge Media, your campaign will be started with thousands of useful negative keywords and the most accurate standard keywords for your campaign. We continue to monitor and pull additional, long-tail keywords as your campaigns runs for multiple sources including your website's organic search results. There is no exact, exhaustive list of keywords we use – it is constantly evolving and tailored to your campaign.

Currently, Footbridge Media runs primarily Search campaigns, but we also run Display campaigns (especially in cases of remarketing). A display campaign is not the same as a YouTube campaign. We do not run video campaigns.

As Google's algorithms for PPC shifts towards reliance on website content rather than webpage content (for Google's page experience algorithm), we are not focusing on using your entire website to send users to the most relevant web page. This not only increases the potential information the consumer is subject to, but also increases the Google Ads landing page experience equality score component which drives a lower cost-per-click.

You do not pay per lead. The Google Ads platform is a pay-per-click program (PPC). You will pay for each click on your ad. In many instances, this is cheaper than a pay-per-lead program depending on the level competition.

Yes. The online info packet you fill out upon signing up for the program will ask you which locations you would like to target. You can be as granular as zip codes or as wide as counties. We recommend you target locations that match your budget, but also have a decent enough population to be shown ads. For example, targeting a large city such as New York City with a minimum budget most likely will not provide much return due to the high cost and amount of consumers. However, targeting small locations within New York City with a decent budget (such as zip codes with a higher-than-minimum budget) will produce better results.

The short answer is: sometimes. The #1 spot in the Google Ads auction is, by majority, very expensive and competitive. We have the tools necessary to target the number one spot in the Google Ads auction for you, but the budget it requires in many locations is increasingly high. With standard budgets, you can expect to hit the top 3 spots very often, and the #1 spot a percentage of that time. Footbridge Media only bids for the first page of Google – we do not make attempts to run ads on pages such as page two, three, or further down.

When you sign up for the program, the online info packet will ask for timeframes and days of the week you'd like your ads to target; however, it does not mean they will be in the Google Ads auction for every single relevant search at every moment of that timeframe. Google will use its algorithms to determine when they should show your ad for the best performance in the timeframe chosen to best utilize the available budget.

For Search ads (the standard ads run by Footbridge Media), your ad will show on Google search results next above or below (depending on the ad's position in auction) organic results. For display campaigns, they can show on any one of Google's millions of partner websites that are relevant to your consumers.

No. Google Ads does not accept prepaid cards. Only valid credit cards and ACH payments are accepted by Google. We recommend using a credit card for the fastest and most efficient payment processing with Google.

New campaigns are reviewed more frequently than a mature, long-running campaign to ensure the best running start. All campaigns are reviewed, at minimum, bi-weekly. This is to ensure your Google Ads manager has enough data to make accurate marginal forecasts and adjustments to your campaign to increase its performance. If data is viewed too frequently, say daily, then this has a negative side effect of making short-sighted judgement calls and would affect your campaign's performance negatively.

We do not work with existing Google Ads accounts. However, we are more than happy to review any existing Google Ads account if you have access to one. We will correlate the data in the existing ads account with your new Footbridge Media Google Ads account.

In general, a $500 ad budget is a good place to start. Some areas may be more competitive than others.

You can be as involved as you want to in the ad creation process and throughout its running. However, upon signing up, your involvement will be more extensive due to the need to get your marketing consultant access to all the needed accounts.

You will need a business Facebook page, a Business Manager account, and an Ads Manager account. Once they are all created, your marketing consultant will need access to each.

Your Facebook ads will display throughout Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and the Audience Network. Placements include feeds, stories, in-stream videos, search, messages, and more.

You can be as involved as you would like. Sending original content such as photos to your marketing consultant to use in their posts is highly recommended.

We do not reply to comments or messages. We leave that responsibility to the business, as they're better equipt to deal with individual messages such as service questions, complaints, etc.

Content for Facebook posts will be pulled from your website, stock photos, blogs and articles, and content that you send in. It is highly recommended to send in as much original content as possible to keep the page authentic.

Our email newsletters include content that any average home or property owner should find interesting. The content will also include something that is more about a topic that is specific to your target industry. While sales and promotional content is important, your newsletter is not at 100% sales pitch. More engaging and entertaining content will keep your email open rate higher.

Our email newsletters include content that any average home or property owner should find interesting. The content will also include something that is more about a topic that is specific to your target industry. While sales and promotional content is important, your newsletter is not at 100% sales pitch. More engaging and entertaining content will keep your email open rate higher.

Other vendors, like Constant Contact or MailChimp, require that you develop your own content. Our managed email marketing service includes content development, which makes monthly top-of-mind awareness marketing much easier. You definitely shouldn't be manually running email newsletter campaigns from your own email accounts without the appropriate software - you risk CAN-SPAM compliance issues as well as the shut down of your email services from your email provider.

No - our email platform automatically takes care of industry required spam and unsubscribe tracking. The included email list management services means you don't have to worry about accidentally re-subscribing someone who previously opted out or marked your message as spam. That means you get into front of the best potential customers possible.

Once you are signed up for our email marketing service, we can provide you access to log-in and review your previous campaign history.

You have options! We can provide you with a specific form so that you can input new newsletter subscribers one at a time, which is popular for clients with office managers that can process that information on a daily or weekly basis. We can also accept common spreadsheet file formats (like .csv or .xls) for adding multiple subscribers at one time.