Advertising plans for any business.
The 12 industry pages on this site are examples, not limits. They exist because those categories get asked about most, so the reasoning is written down once. If yours is not among them, nothing about the work changes — the plan is built from your business, not from a page about it.
Tell us what you sell, who buys it, and where they are. A plan comes back within one business day, and you can see real numbers before you talk to anyone.
A plan is built from eight answers, and they are all about you
Industry is one input among several, and it is not the strongest one. Change the goal or the budget and the recommended mix moves further than changing the category does.
A $200 service sold twice a week and a $40,000 installation sold twice a month need different budgets, different channels, and different patience. The offer sets the arithmetic before anything else does.
Age, household, job, and above all location. The planner resolves a real audience for a real market — your town, your metro, your region, or a national footprint — instead of assuming a market it happens to have a page about.
Same-day emergency work, a two-week comparison, and an eighteen-month enterprise cycle each reward a different mix. Short cycles favour capturing demand that already exists; long cycles have to be earning attention months before the decision.
Seasonality is the most commonly ignored input and one of the most expensive. Flat monthly spend against a business that makes most of its money in four months is money spent in the wrong months.
Regulated and restricted categories carry real limits on targeting and on claims, and the ad platforms enforce them differently from each other. Where those limits apply, they belong in the plan rather than in a rejection notice after launch.
Phone calls, form fills, foot traffic, applications, bookings, event attendance, or plain awareness. The goal moves the channel ranking further than the industry label does.
A business that can trace a booked job back to the ad that produced it can be optimised toward revenue. One that can only count calls gets a plan built around calls, described honestly as such.
Budget decides which channels are reachable at all — several carry vendor minimums a small budget cannot clear. The calculator applies those minimums instead of pretending around them, which is why small budgets get concentrated plans rather than thin ones.
What a plan for a new category does and does not come with
- A specific monthly channel split with real vendor minimums applied.
- The reasoning behind each channel, in plain language.
- Every published figure traced to a source you can check on the references page.
- A straight answer when a channel is not worth it at your budget.
- Prior clients or published results in your specific category.
- Specialist or compliance standing in a regulated field.
- Any guarantee of leads, ranking, or return — no honest plan carries one.
- Local radio outside the Black Hills market, which is a real signal footprint rather than a preference.
Start from a neighbouring playbook if one is close
A category that shares your buying pattern is a useful starting point even when the label is wrong. These are the written ones; the plan adapts from there.
All 12 playbooks are listed on the industries page.
Tell us what your business does
Pick the closest category or type your own — both reach the same place. A reply comes back within one business day with what the mix would look like and what it would cost.