What you are actually buying
Whoever does this work, the job is the same list, and it is worth having in front of you before you compare any two quotes.
- A baseline: the ten buyer questions for your service and city, run across the engines, with dated screenshots of who is named today.
- Website work so your pages are readable: one page per service, the answer near the top, fast on a phone.
- Structured data: LocalBusiness, Service and FAQPage, stating only true facts.
- Listings: Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Apple Maps and the directories that actually get cited for your trade, all saying the same thing.
- New pages every month answering the questions customers really ask.
- A review engine: asking every customer, every time, in a way that produces sentences rather than stars.
- Re-measurement every month, on the same fixed questions, with the screenshots to prove it.
If a quote does not cover all seven, you are not comparing like with like, whatever the monthly number says.
What we charge, and why the minimum exists
Our price is $1,000 a month. Everything above is included, and nothing is sold separately. There is no setup fee.
The 3-month minimum exists because it takes time to show results. Listing and structured data fixes can appear in answers within weeks, but being named consistently across a whole set of questions takes longer, and any honest measure of whether this worked needs several monthly readings rather than one. Three months is the shortest window in which the question can actually be answered. After that it is month to month, cancel whenever you like.
The guarantee is what the minimum buys. If your business is not named in at least 5 of the agreed 10 questions on at least 2 of the 3 engines by day 90, you get all three months back and keep everything we built. We can offer that because we run a free winnability check first and decline the markets where the answer is already locked up.
What the market typically charges
Local marketing retainers in these industries typically run $3,000 to $10,000 a month. That range usually covers a wider scope than this: paid ads, social management, general SEO, sometimes creative. It also usually comes with no guarantee about any outcome, and with reporting built on impressions and rankings rather than on whether an assistant names you.
That is not a criticism of full service agencies. It is a reason to be clear about what you want. If you want ads run, hire an ads agency. If you want to be the name in the answer, that is a narrower job and it should cost less.
The do it yourself option, priced honestly
Everything we do is documented in these guides, on purpose. You can do all of it yourself and the cash cost is close to zero. The cost is your attention, every month, indefinitely.
- One off: claiming listings, fixing your pages, adding structured data, writing your first service pages.
- Every month: new pages, review chasing, listing checks, and re-running the question set with screenshots.
- The part people quit on is the monthly part. The one off work is satisfying. The maintenance is not, and it is the part that compounds.
If you have the time and you like this work, do it yourself. Start with how to get your business recommended by ChatGPT and work down the list. If you run a med spa, the market data for your city is on our med spa pages.
Cheap options, and what they really cost
- Directory blast packages. A pile of low quality listings, often with inconsistent details, which is the opposite of what this work needs.
- Bought reviews. Against platform terms and consumer law in many places, detectable, and grounds for losing your listing.
- AI written pages published in bulk. Thin near duplicate pages compete with each other and make a site harder to trust, not easier.
- An AI visibility score with no question set behind it. If you cannot see the questions and the screenshots, there is nothing to check.
- A guaranteed placement inside ChatGPT. There is no paid slot inside a recommendation. Anyone selling one is selling a fiction.
Questions to ask before you pay anyone
- What exactly are the ten questions you will measure, and who agrees them?
- Which engines do you check, and will you send dated screenshots?
- What happens if I am not named by day 90?
- Do you work with my competitors in this city?
- Who owns the website, the pages and the listings if I leave?
- What do you need from me each month, and how long will it take me?
- Show me the current answer for my city. What do you see today?
The last one is the useful one. Anybody serious can answer it in ten minutes, in front of you, with a logged out browser.
Why the spend is defensible at all
BrightLocal found 45% of US consumers now use ChatGPT or another AI tool to find local business recommendations, up from 6% a year earlier. Bain found 60% of searches end with no click to any website. The question is no longer whether buyers ask AI. It is whether it says your name. Sources: BrightLocal, Bain & Company.