For a client's first seller campaign, where does the money go first

Question

Running a small shop and this argument comes up internally every time we take on someone new with a modest budget, say $1,500 to $2,500 a month all in.

Search is the obvious answer because intent is already there. Someone typing sell my house fast has a problem today. The trouble is that in competitive metros the click prices on those terms have gone somewhere silly, and $1,500 buys a very small number of clicks. In a thin market the volume may not exist at all, and you spend three months proving it.

Meta gets you volume for a fraction of the click price and lets you reach people who have not started searching yet, which is a real part of the seller universe. The cost is lead quality. Form fills from an interruption channel answer the phone at a much lower rate, and a client who has never worked paid leads reads that as the agency failing.

The third option nobody votes for is putting the first two months into the boring foundation, the Google Business profile, the site speed, the tracking, before any media at all. It produces nothing to show in month one, which is a hard sell.

I would like to see how the room splits, especially from people who have been the client rather than the agency.

tonyv88 · Answer

Having been the client, the split option is the one I would argue against even though it sounds sensible. Two thousand dollars split across two channels in a mid size market gives neither one enough data to say anything after 60 days, and you end up with two inconclusive reports and a client who has lost patience. Pick the one that matches how fast the client can answer a phone. Search leads expect a callback in minutes and a client who checks messages twice a day will waste every one of them.

On the foundation question, I would sell it differently rather than skipping it. The tracking setup is not a month of work, it is a few days, and the Google Business profile pays off on its own without media. If you frame month one as media at half budget while the plumbing goes in, most clients accept it. The ones who will not accept it are usually the same ones who will blame you in month four, so it doubles as a screening question.

For a client's first seller campaign, where does the money go first

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