There are at least two bills

Your media budget pays Meta to deliver advertising. Your management fee pays for the agreed campaign work. Landing-page, tracking, location or messaging charges may add to the total, depending on the provider. Ask for the complete monthly bill at your intended spend before comparing offers.

Mad Giant Ads costs $299/month or $2,990 paid annually. Ads + Google profile costs $399/month or $3,990 annually. You pay Meta directly for ad spend. No fee on your first $1,500/mo of ad spend; 10% above that, capped at $2,500/mo. These subscription prices do not include media. See current plan prices and billing terms.

Work backwards from contribution, not invoice value

A $900 invoice is not $900 available to buy customers. Subtract the labour, materials and other variable costs of completing the job. Then decide how much of the remaining contribution you can put toward acquisition while keeping the business worthwhile.

Here is conditional example maths, not a benchmark or forecast. Suppose a job leaves $300 before marketing and overhead, and you book one job from five qualified enquiries. The contribution per qualified enquiry is $60 before marketing and overhead. Paying $60 per qualified enquiry would consume all that contribution. A viable acquisition target needs room below it, and also needs to cover the subscription and your time.

Design a test you can afford to learn from

For example, start with water-heater replacement in the area you actually serve. Use a suitable completed-job photo, explain the service clearly and send people to a matching page with a request-an-estimate form. This gives the ad, destination and callback the same purpose. Choose one plumbing service you can fulfil profitably, a real service area and an approved spend cap. Agree a review point and what would cause a pause: incorrect destination, broken form, exhausted cap or unacceptable lead quality. Do not increase spending just to make a small sample look conclusive.

Track media spend, submissions, valid contacts, qualified opportunities and booked jobs separately. Add management costs when calculating the total acquisition cost. Record unanswered enquiries and delayed callbacks; otherwise the advertising gets blamed for a response problem. Small samples and delayed bookings need cautious interpretation.

Compare destinations and response capacity

A low-friction form may collect more enquiries without producing more jobs. A landing page can explain service limits before the form, but adds loading and navigation steps. Compare landing pages and Meta forms against the same business outcome. Our service overview explains approval and delivery scope. Costs, lead volume and booked work depend on the business and market; none are guaranteed.