Questions people ask.
Straight answers.
The direct answer comes first — details after. Written for owners, readable by the AI assistants your customers ask.
Pricing
- How much does AdStack cost?AdStack prices every service as a flat monthly fee sized by usage tier — for example, managed websites from $300/mo, attribution from $150/mo, call tracking from $250/mo, Addie AI agents from $300/mo, PPC management from $2,000/mo, and social media from $900/mo. You only pay for the services you pick.
- What does PPC management cost?Most agencies charge a percentage of your ad spend — commonly 10–20% — so their fee grows every time your budget does, whether or not results improve. The alternative is flat-fee management: a fixed monthly price tied to the scope of work, not the size of your budget.
- Flat fee vs percentage of ad spend — which is better?A flat fee aligns your agency's incentives with performance; a percentage of spend aligns them with your budget. Under percentage pricing, the agency earns more when you spend more — even if the extra spend is wasted. Under flat pricing, the only way the relationship grows is if the results justify it.
- What does a managed website cost per month?A managed website plan bundles the build, hosting, security, maintenance, and ongoing content changes into one monthly fee — instead of a large one-time build cost plus surprise invoices for every update.
- What does social media management cost?Professionally managed social media typically runs from a few hundred to several thousand dollars a month depending on posting volume, platforms, and whether paid social is included. AdStack's plans start at $900/mo and price by tier, so the fee is flat and known before you commit.
- What does an AI phone or chat agent cost?AdStack's Addie agents start at $300/mo for web chat and $500/mo for AI voice on the phone, priced by conversation volume rather than per seat. That's typically a fraction of the cost of staffing the same coverage — especially nights and weekends.
- Does AdStack require a long-term contract?No — standard AdStack plans are month-to-month with no minimum term. You can add, drop, or resize services as your needs change.
- What discounts does AdStack offer?Three discounts, and they stack. Bundling services: run 3+ monthly services for 5% off, 10% at 5, and 15% at 7 or more. Platform products: run two or more AdStack platform products (CRM, ERP, Ecommerce) for 15% off the software. Annual billing: pay yearly for an additional 10% off the total.
- Is ad spend included in the management fee?No — ad spend is always separate from the management fee, and you pay it directly to Google, Meta, or whichever platform runs your ads. AdStack never marks up, touches, or passes through your media budget.
PPC & advertising
- How much should I spend on Google Ads?Start from the math, not a round number: your budget needs to buy enough clicks to produce enough conversions for the algorithm to learn — as a rule of thumb, enough spend for at least a few conversions per week at your industry's cost per click.
- What is Performance Max?Performance Max is Google's automated campaign type that runs your ads across every Google surface — Search, Shopping, YouTube, Display, Gmail, Maps — from one campaign, with machine learning deciding placement, bidding, and audience.
- Google Ads or Facebook ads — which should I run first?Match the platform to how your customers buy. If people search for your service when they need it — plumber, dentist, lawyer — start with Google: you're capturing demand that already exists. If your product is discovered rather than searched for, Meta's targeting and creative formats create demand Google can't.
- Why are my ads getting clicks but no leads?Clicks without leads means the problem lives after the click or in who's clicking. The usual suspects, in order: a landing page that doesn't match the ad's promise, friction (slow load, buried phone number, long forms), traffic quality (broad match and display placements harvesting cheap clicks), or conversions that happen but aren't tracked.
- What is Smart Bidding in Google Ads?Smart Bidding is Google's machine-learning bidding: instead of you setting keyword bids, strategies like Target CPA and Target ROAS set a different bid for every auction based on signals no human can act on — device, location, time, audience, query context.
- How long until Google Ads starts working?Expect clicks on day one, honest signal in weeks, and optimized performance in a few months. Ads serve immediately, but Smart Bidding needs a body of conversion data to learn from, and every major change partially resets that learning.
- Does running Google Ads help my organic rankings?No. Paying for ads does not lift your organic rankings, and Google has stated this consistently for years — the ad auction and the organic ranking systems are separate, and spending more with one does not buy position in the other.
- Should I run Google Ads myself or hire someone?Run it yourself if your budget is small and you'll genuinely invest the hours; hire management when the monthly waste from a self-run account exceeds the management fee — which happens earlier than most owners expect, because the platform's defaults are tuned for Google's revenue, not yours.
- Should my CPA or ROAS target match my actual performance?Yes — your targets should state the performance you actually require, because Smart Bidding treats them as instructions, not aspirations. A campaign beating its target isn't a bonus to admire; it's a misconfigured instruction waiting to be taken literally.
- Does ad creative matter more than targeting now?On Meta, largely yes — modern delivery systems infer who should see an ad from the creative itself, so the ad is the targeting. The platform reads what your creative is about and who engages with it, then finds more of those people; manual audience settings matter less every year.
Tracking & attribution
- What is call tracking, and is it worth it?Call tracking assigns unique phone numbers to your marketing sources so every inbound call is tied to the campaign, ad, or page that produced it. If phone calls are how you win business, it's usually the single highest-value tracking you can add.
- What is first-party data tracking?First-party data tracking means measuring visitor behavior with your own domain and infrastructure, rather than relying on third-party scripts and cookies that browsers and ad blockers increasingly strip out.
- What is server-side tracking?Server-side tracking sends measurement events from your server to analytics and ad platforms, instead of from JavaScript running in the visitor's browser. The browser talks to your domain; your server talks to Google, Meta, and the rest.
- What is conversion attribution?Conversion attribution is working out which marketing touchpoints actually produced a sale or lead — so budget flows to what works instead of what merely looks busy.
- Do I need conversion tracking to run Google Ads?Yes — running Google Ads without conversion tracking means paying for clicks with no way to know which ones become customers. Google's bidding is machine learning: it optimizes toward whatever conversions it can see, and if it sees none, it optimizes toward clicks.
- What is dynamic number insertion (DNI)?Dynamic number insertion is the technique that makes call tracking work on your website: a small script swaps the phone number a visitor sees based on how they arrived, so a caller from a Google ad sees a different tracking number than one from Facebook or organic search.
- What is offline conversion tracking?Offline conversion tracking feeds the outcomes that happen outside your website — a signed contract, a completed job, a qualified sales call — back into ad platforms, so bidding optimizes toward revenue instead of form fills.
- Why doesn't GA4 match my CRM numbers?Because they're counting different things with different rules. GA4 counts tracked events from browsers it could see, within its attribution model and lookback windows; your CRM counts actual people and deals. Ad blockers, consent banners, cross-device journeys, and phone calls all create gaps between the two.
- Can I track calls from my Google Business Profile?Yes — you set a tracking number as the primary phone number on your profile and your real number as the additional number, so Google keeps the listing verified while every call from Maps and the local pack is recorded with its source.
- Do ad blockers break my analytics?Partially, yes — ad blockers and browser privacy features block a meaningful slice of client-side tracking scripts, so a chunk of your real visitors never appear in tools like GA4 at all.
- What is a Customer Match audience?Customer Match is Google's feature for targeting (or excluding) your own customer list in ads: you upload hashed emails or phone numbers, Google matches them to signed-in users, and your campaigns can treat known customers differently from strangers.
- How long does attribution tracking take to set up?A working attribution setup typically lands in weeks, not months: core web and form tracking first, then call tracking, then CRM and offline conversion wiring — each stage useful on its own.
- Do state privacy laws apply to my small business?Often not yet — most state privacy laws set thresholds (based on how many residents' data you process or your revenue) that many small businesses don't meet. But the list of states with comprehensive laws grows every year, thresholds vary by state, and some laws reach smaller businesses than owners expect.
- What is Google Consent Mode?Consent Mode is Google's framework for adjusting its tags to each visitor's privacy choices: when someone declines cookies, the tags send limited, cookieless signals instead of going silent, and Google models the conversions it can no longer observe directly.
- Which attribution model should I use?Use data-driven attribution where it's available, and don't agonize over the choice — the model matters far less than the completeness of what you're measuring. No model can credit the phone call or closed deal it never saw.
- Are phone leads better than form leads?For most service businesses, yes — a caller is typically in-market right now, ready to talk, and often ready to book, while a form fill frequently starts a game of phone tag with someone who's still comparison shopping.
- Can AI transcribe and score my sales calls?Yes — modern call tracking transcribes every recorded call and uses AI to score it: was this a qualified lead, did it book, what service did they ask about, what objections came up. Calls stop being a black box and become structured data.
SEO & content
- How long does SEO take to work?Meaningful SEO results typically take months, not weeks — new and low-authority sites sit at the slow end, established sites fixing specific issues can move faster. Anyone promising rankings in days is describing luck or spam.
- Do blogs still matter for SEO in 2026?Yes — but the job changed. Generic "5 tips" posts written to fill a calendar are dead weight: AI answers those queries directly now. What still works is content with something only you can say: your data, your pricing, your process, real project stories, honest comparisons.
- What is duplicate content, and does it hurt my rankings?Duplicate content is pages whose main content is identical or nearly identical — and its real cost isn't a penalty, it's invisibility: Google groups the duplicates into a cluster, picks one page as canonical, and quietly stops showing the rest.
- What is local SEO?Local SEO is winning the searches with a location attached — "near me," city-plus-service, and the map results — where the competition isn't the whole internet, just the businesses that actually serve your area.
- How often should I update my website content?Update on triggers, not a timer: whenever prices, services, staff, hours, or offers change — stale facts actively cost you trust with customers and accuracy with the AI systems now summarizing your business. For core pages, an honest review a few times a year is plenty.
- Why did my rankings drop after a Google core update?Usually because Google re-scored the whole result set, not because your site was penalized. Core updates change how quality and relevance are weighed across the index, so pages can fall simply by being reassessed against competitors that now look like better answers — no rule was broken and no manual action was issued.
- Why is Google ranking the wrong page from my site?Usually it's canonicalization: Google decided two or more of your pages are near-duplicates, clustered them, and chose a different page than you intended as the one worth showing. Your preferred page isn't penalized — it's benched.
- How do I get more customers from my Google Business Profile?Treat the profile as a conversion surface, not a directory listing — for many local businesses it produces more calls and direction requests than the website does, and most profiles are running at a fraction of capacity.
AI search
- How do I get my business recommended by ChatGPT?AI assistants recommend businesses they can read, verify, and quote. That means your site needs plain-text answers to who you are, what you do, where you work, and what you charge — plus structured data that lets the model trust those facts.
- What is GEO (generative engine optimization)?GEO — generative engine optimization — is optimizing your web presence to be cited and recommended by AI answer engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews, rather than just ranked in a list of blue links.
- What is llms.txt?llms.txt is an emerging standard: a plain-markdown file at yoursite.com/llms.txt that gives AI systems a curated summary of your site — who you are, what you offer, and which pages matter most.
- Do Google's AI Overviews reduce website traffic?For many informational queries, yes — when Google answers the question directly on the results page, fewer people click through. The clicks that remain skew toward higher intent: people who need more than a summary.
- Should I block AI crawlers like GPTBot?For most businesses, no — blocking AI crawlers removes you from the answers your future customers are already reading. If ChatGPT and Perplexity can't read your site, they recommend competitors whose sites they can.
- What is AEO (answer engine optimization)?AEO — answer engine optimization — is structuring your content so it can be lifted directly into an answer: by AI assistants, featured snippets, and voice search. It's the content layer of AI search, alongside AIO (the machine-readable layer) and GEO (the citation layer).
- What's the difference between AEO, AIO, and GEO?Less than the marketing implies. There's no agreed industry standard separating the three, and most agencies use them interchangeably — one firm's GEO package is another's AEO package. Judge any pitch on the scope of work, not the acronym on the invoice.
- What is AIO (AI optimization)?AIO — AI optimization — is making your business machine-readable and verifiable: structured data, consistent entity facts, large language model instructions, clean semantic HTML, and crawler access for the bots that feed AI systems. It's the plumbing layer beneath AEO and GEO.
- How do I get my business into Google's AI Overviews?AI Overviews are built from pages Google already ranks and trusts — so the entry ticket is classic search competence: crawlable pages, real topical authority, and content that answers the query directly.
- Does schema markup help with AI search?Yes — schema markup gives AI systems machine-readable confirmation of your business facts: who you are, what you offer, where you operate, what things cost, and how you're rated. It turns claims into structured data a model can trust and reuse.
- How do I measure my visibility in AI search?Measure it in your analytics, not by asking chatbots about yourself. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot, and Gemini pass a referrer when someone clicks through, so AI-driven sessions can be split out as their own traffic source and followed like any other channel.
- Is SEO dead now that AI answers questions?No — but it has a new job description. AI assistants are built on top of search infrastructure: they crawl the same web, lean on the same authority signals, and cite the pages classic SEO makes strong. The work didn't die; the reader changed.
- What kind of content do AI assistants actually cite?AI assistants cite content they can extract an answer from: direct, self-contained passages that state a fact, a number, a definition, or a recommendation in plain text — under a heading that matches the question being asked.
- How do AI assistants like Perplexity choose their sources?Answer engines run a retrieval pipeline: they search the web for candidate pages, read the top results, and synthesize an answer citing the passages that most directly and credibly resolve the query. Selection happens at the passage level, not the site level.
- Should I pay for Reddit mentions to get cited by AI?No — buying Reddit threads and upvotes to win AI citations is the new link farm, and it will end the way paid links did: filtered, and with the sites that relied on it holding the bag. A citation surface you can buy is a citation surface that gets discounted.
- What are agentic browsers?Agentic browsers are web browsers with an AI agent built in — like Perplexity's Comet — that don't just display pages but read, summarize, compare, and act on them for the user: researching options, filling forms, even completing tasks across sites.
- Do visitors from ChatGPT and AI search convert differently?Yes — AI-referred visitors arrive pre-sold: an assistant already summarized who you are, what you cost, and why you fit before they clicked. There are fewer of them than classic search sent, but they land deeper in the journey.
AI agents
- What is an AI phone agent?An AI phone agent is software that answers your business line with a natural voice conversation — greeting callers, answering questions, booking appointments, and taking messages — without a human on your end.
- Can AI answer my business phone after hours?Yes — and after-hours is where an AI agent earns its keep, because a meaningful share of searches and calls for service businesses happen outside business hours, when an unanswered phone quietly sends the caller to a competitor.
- What is an AI web chat agent?An AI web chat agent is a conversational assistant on your website that answers visitor questions, captures lead details, and books appointments in real time — replacing both the dumb chatbot decision-tree and the "leave a message" contact form.
- Will callers know they're talking to an AI?Yes — the agent identifies itself as an AI, and that's both the ethical standard and increasingly the legal one. Disclosure requirements for AI-generated voices are tightening, and pretending to be human is a trust-destroying way to start a customer relationship.
- Can an AI agent book appointments into my calendar?Yes — booking is the core job. The agent connects to your scheduling system, offers callers and chat visitors real open slots, books the appointment, and sends the confirmation, all inside the conversation.
- How does an AI agent learn my business?The agent is trained on your actual business material — services, pricing posture, service area, hours, policies, FAQs, and the way you want things said — assembled into a knowledge base it draws on during every conversation.
- What happens when the AI can't answer a question?It hands off instead of guessing: the agent takes a detailed message, flags the conversation for human follow-up, or transfers the call live — whichever you've configured for that situation. A well-built agent is explicitly trained to not improvise answers it doesn't have.
- Can the AI agent follow up by text message?Yes — Addie can send and respond to SMS: appointment confirmations, follow-ups after a missed call, and two-way texting with leads who prefer typing to talking.
Ecommerce
- Why are my products disapproved in Google Merchant Center?The most common causes are mismatches: the price or availability in your feed doesn't match your landing page, identifiers (GTIN/MPN/brand) are missing or wrong, images violate requirements, or required attributes for your category are empty. Policy issues and website verification problems round out the list.
- Can customers buy directly inside ChatGPT?Yes — ChatGPT supports instant checkout with participating merchants, letting shoppers complete a purchase inside the conversation instead of clicking out to a website. Major retailers and ecommerce platforms have been wiring into it since it launched.
- Is competitor price tracking worth it?If you sell products competitors also sell, yes — pricing is one of the few levers you can pull weekly, and tracking turns it from guesswork into margin decisions. The wins run both directions: finding where you're uncompetitive, and finding where you're cheaper than you need to be.
Email & CRM
- Why are my marketing emails going to spam?Usually authentication and reputation: Gmail and Yahoo now enforce bulk-sender rules requiring SPF, DKIM, and DMARC authentication, one-click unsubscribe, and a spam-complaint rate under Google's published 0.3% threshold. Miss those and your mail gets filtered or rejected outright — regardless of how good the content is.
- Is email marketing still worth it?Yes — email remains one of the highest-ROI channels in marketing because it's owned: no auction, no algorithm change, no platform deciding your reach. A real opt-in list is an asset that appreciates while ad costs inflate.
- How often should I email my customer list?Often enough that people remember who you are, and only when you have something worth their attention — for most service businesses that lands around twice a month, with ecommerce running higher during buying seasons.
- Is my CRM a marketing tool?Yes — your CRM is probably the most underused marketing asset you own. It holds what no ad platform can buy: who actually became a customer, what they bought, and what they're worth.
Websites
- How many pages should a small business website have?Enough that every service you sell and every area you serve has its own real page — for most small businesses that lands between roughly five and twenty pages, not one long homepage and not fifty thin ones.
- Do I own my website on a managed plan?It depends on how the build is paid for — and AdStack publishes the terms up front. Your domain stays registered to you and your content and data are always yours, no matter what. Purchase the design up front and the code is yours outright; roll the design cost into your monthly plan and AdStack retains ownership of the build, with license or buyout options if you ever leave. The monthly fee covers the ongoing work: hosting, security, maintenance, and content changes.
- How fast should my website load?Fast enough that a phone on cellular data sees your content in about two seconds — that's the experience bar, and it's measured on mobile, because that's where most local traffic lives. Google's own Core Web Vitals thresholds (like LCP within 2.5 seconds) formalize the same idea.
- Do I need a new website, or can mine be fixed?It depends on where the problems live. Content gaps, weak calls to action, missing pages, and even most speed issues are fixable on a sound foundation. Rebuild when the foundation itself is the problem: a dying platform, a theme nobody can safely edit, no mobile experience, or a builder so heavy that performance can't be fixed within it.
- What is conversion rate optimization (CRO)?Conversion rate optimization is the discipline of turning more of your existing visitors into leads and customers — by finding where people hesitate or leave, and systematically removing the reasons.