Ad campaign brief

About the offer

• What exactly do you want to advertise: one service, a product range, an event, hiring?
• What makes your offer worth choosing over the competitor in the next search result?
• What is a typical order or job worth, and what is a new customer worth over a year?
• Is there seasonality? When are your busiest and quietest months?

About the area and audience

• Where should the ads run: a few postal codes, a city, a province, all of Canada?
• Who is the customer: homeowners, businesses, parents, a specific age group?
• Do you advertise in Quebec or to French-speaking customers? (I run campaigns in English only.)
• Are there rules in your industry that limit advertising, for example in health care, finance or real estate?

About budget and history

• How much can you spend per month on ads? The budget is paid by you directly to Google or Meta; I recommend at least about $1,000 a month to get meaningful data.
• Have you advertised before? With what spend, which results and who managed it?
• Do you have access to your ad accounts, Google Analytics and Google Business Profile?
• How are leads tracked today: calls, forms, a CRM, a notebook?

What happens next

From your answers I'll suggest where to start: Google Ads for people already searching for your service, Meta ads to reach people on Facebook and Instagram before they search, or both. Setup is $650 per platform and management starts from $750 a month for Google or $700 for Meta; both together are $1,200 to set up and $1,200 a month. Prices are final, in Canadian dollars, with no minimum term. If campaigns are already running, I usually begin with a Google Ads audit to see what to keep. To check whether the numbers can work for your business, try the ad ROI calculator.