The questions people actually ask before hiring us.

It comes down to one number: what a new customer is worth to you in gross profit, meaning what is left after the cost of actually doing the work.

A Starter client spends about $2,750 a month all in, $750 to us and $2,000 to the platforms. On that budget you can expect somewhere between five and twenty new customers a month, depending on your market and how fast you follow up. So the question is whether five to twenty customers clears $2,750 in profit for you.

A roofer whose average job is $12,000 needs less than one. A dentist needs about three. A restaurant with a $40 ticket would need several hundred, which is not going to happen. That is not a comment on the business; it is arithmetic, and it is why some businesses should spend their money on something else.

Anything where one customer is worth four figures, or where a customer stays for a year. In practice that means home services and contractors, roofing, HVAC, electrical, plumbing, remodeling, windows, solar, waterproofing, paving, fencing, tree work, restoration and moving; recurring-contract services like pest control, lawn care, cleaning and pool service; professional services such as law, accounting, insurance, mortgage, real estate and IT managed services; medical and wellness including dental, orthodontics, med spas, chiropractic, physical therapy, vision and veterinary; education and memberships like daycare, private schools, tutoring, driving schools and martial arts; and high-ticket consumer work such as wedding venues, catering, custom jewelry, auto dealers and collision repair.

You will be told so on the first call rather than six months in. If the numbers do not work, there are three honest options: the Launch package, which builds the foundation once and hands it to you; social media management and local search presence, which is in development and is usually the better answer for lower-ticket businesses; or a referral to someone better suited to what you need. Taking money for advertising that cannot pay for itself is how agencies get their reputation, and it is not worth it to either of us.

Yes. B2B software, coaching and consulting programs, online courses, membership communities, professional services sold remotely, and ecommerce brands with an average order value above roughly $60 or a subscription model. Below that price point the same arithmetic problem shows up that a coffee shop has. Ecommerce is a genuinely different discipline from local lead generation, so expect the first conversation to cover product margins and repeat purchase rates rather than service areas.

A flat monthly fee: $750 for Starter, $1,600 for Growth, $3,000 for Scale, and from $6,000 for Partner. Launch is $1,800 one time. Each plan covers a range of ad spend, and the ad creative, tracking, and reporting are included rather than billed separately. The full breakdown is on the pricing page.

Because a percentage pays an agency for spending your money rather than for getting results, and it quietly punishes you for growing. It also means the agency earns less the more efficient your campaigns get, which is exactly the wrong incentive. A flat fee means we are paid for the work, you know your invoice before it arrives, and nobody has a reason to talk you into a bigger budget than your business needs.

No, and it should never be. Ad spend is billed by Meta and Google directly to accounts in your name, on your own card. Sparkplug does not touch it and does not mark it up. Our fee covers the work: strategy, building, creative, optimization, and reporting.

Nothing, the first time. If you are over two months running, you move up to the next plan at the following billing cycle. It is in the agreement from day one so it is never a surprise or a renegotiation. Bigger budgets genuinely mean more campaigns and closer monitoring, and pretending otherwise just leads to a worse-managed account.

Included, every month, in every plan. Four creatives on Starter, ten on Growth, twenty on Scale. Almost no small business arrives with ads ready to run, so charging separately for something every client needs would make the advertised price fiction. Production work like an on-site photo shoot or a landing page build is quoted separately, because those are genuinely occasional.

About $1,500 a month in ad spend for a monthly plan to make sense. Below that, the campaign cannot gather enough data to learn from and the fee eats too much of the total. If your budget is smaller, the Launch package or a Google Business Profile, a decent landing page, and asking customers for reviews will do more for you. We will tell you that rather than take the work.

Three months to start if you want the setup fee waived, then month to month with 30 days notice. You can skip the commitment and pay the setup fee instead. The notice period exists so campaigns are not shut off mid-flight, not to trap you.

The person who plans your campaign builds it and answers your email. Sparkplug is deliberately small, with the administrative layer automated so the hours you pay for go into campaigns rather than paperwork.

Partly, and openly. Your own photos and footage are the base; AI handles variations, layouts, and copy volume; a person approves everything before it goes live. That is how you get ten or twenty creative variations a month at this price instead of two. It also matters for results: for a local business, a real photo of the actual shop or the actual truck consistently outperforms polished generated imagery, so we do not generate from nothing.

Roughly fifteen minutes for the intake form, access to any existing ad accounts and analytics, your logo and any photos or footage you already have, and an honest answer about what a good month looks like for your business. You will get a checklist, and a folder to upload into. If you have none of it, we can start from scratch; it just takes a little longer.

Faster than feels reasonable. Leads called back within five minutes convert several times better than leads called back the next day, and this is the single most common reason good campaigns look like bad ones. Lead response time is set up during onboarding and reported every month, because it is the part of the result that is genuinely in your hands.

Two to four weeks before the data means anything, and roughly 60 to 90 days before you can judge the channel fairly. Month one often loses money on purpose; early spend is buying information about which audience and which creative work. Anyone promising leads in week one is either lucky or lying.

No. Results depend on your offer, your market, your pricing, and how fast you follow up on leads, and most of that sits outside our control. What we guarantee is the work: campaigns built properly, tracking that actually fires, honest reporting, and a reply within one business day.

You do. Accounts are created in your name with Sparkplug added as a partner, never the reverse. If we part ways, you keep the accounts, the pixel data, the creative, and the campaign history. Nothing has to be rebuilt.

You do, once they are delivered. Sparkplug keeps the right to show the finished work as portfolio examples, and nothing else. Photos and footage you upload stay yours; we use them in your ads and nowhere else.

Your Drive folder set is yours; we remove our access rather than delete it. Reports stay in it. There is no exit fee and no hostage situation over assets.

Not in the same service area and the same category at the same time. Ask before signing if you want that in writing.

A report in plain language covering spend, results, cost per result, what changed since last time, and what changes next. Every plan includes a live dashboard you can open any time. Reports are generated on a schedule, not whenever someone remembers.

They never do, for anyone. Ad blockers, people leaving before the page loads, and cross-device behavior mean a 10 to 30 percent gap is normal. We show both numbers and label them rather than quietly reporting whichever one looks better.

For clicks and form fills, yes. For phone calls, only with call tracking, which is a $300 setup and $50 a month and is worth it for any business where the phone is how customers actually arrive. Without it, reporting shows clicks while you are counting calls, and the two numbers never line up.

Yes. Ask for a call in your first message and you will get times back rather than more questions. Nothing has to be written down before that call, and there is no form to complete until there is a plan and a price you have already agreed to.

A reply within one business day, then a short back-and-forth about what you sell, your budget, and what a good month looks like. From that you get a written plan and a flat monthly price. Only if you say yes does the onboarding form come to you, and that is the point where your account, folders, and tracking get built. If the numbers do not work, you get told so plainly and pointed somewhere better.

Yes. The work is remote and the tools are the same anywhere. Maryland and the wider DMV is simply where we know the local market best, which matters for local search and for picking placements. Online and ecommerce clients can be anywhere.

Yes. This site is available in Spanish, and campaigns, ad creative, and reports can be delivered in Spanish or as bilingual sets. Use the language switch at the top of any page.

Not yet, but it is the next service being built: posting, short-form video, Google Business Profile, and review responses, starting at $450 a month. It is aimed squarely at the businesses where paid advertising does not clear the math. Mention it in your inquiry and you will hear first when it opens.

Sparkplug is focused on digital advertising right now. A billboard marketplace is in development for later; if offline placement is the main thing you need today, say so and we will point you somewhere that can do it now.