How SearchPod works
Most agencies operate like a black box. We don’t.
Every engagement follows a documented 4-phase method you can see, challenge, and track in real time. We never take a percentage of your ad spend. No contracts. And one guarantee: if you’re not satisfied in your first 30 days, you don’t pay.
- Month-to-month
- 30-day guarantee
- Real-time dashboards
- No % of ad spend
Why you’ve been burned before
You’ve probably already fired an agency. Here’s why.
Most businesses we talk to have already switched agencies at least once — and the same four failures show up every time.
You never see the real data
Monthly PDFsCurated screenshots showing vanity metrics. No access to the ad accounts. You can’t verify anything independently.
They bill a % of ad spend
15–25%The more they convince you to spend, the more they earn. Their financial incentive is directly opposed to your efficiency.
You’re locked into 12 months
12 moBy the time you realize nothing is working, you’ve burned $30–$100K and can’t leave without paying out the contract.
A junior does the actual work
Yr 1–2You met the senior strategist in the pitch. After signing, a first-year analyst is running your account with a template checklist.
Every part of the SearchPod process is designed to make those four failures structurally impossible.
The 4-phase method
A documented process. Not vibes.
Every client moves through the same four phases. Each phase ends with specific, auditable deliverables you sign off on before we move forward.
01
Audit & Diagnose
Before we promise anything, we run a full diagnostic on your ad accounts, analytics, and website. We find exactly where budget is being wasted and why — documented line by line, so you can verify every finding yourself.
- Account-level audit (Google Ads, GA4, GTM)
- Wasted-spend analysis with line-item proof
- Competitor gap analysis (rankings, ad copy, landing pages)
- Conversion tracking verification
End of phase deliverable
Written audit report — yours to keep, even if you don’t hire us.
02
Strategy & Commit
You get a written 90-day roadmap with specific KPI targets — not aspirational ranges. If we don’t believe we can hit the numbers, we tell you upfront and we don’t take the engagement. That protects both of us.
- 90-day KPI targets (CPA, ROAS, lead volume)
- Channel prioritization with budget split
- Weekly milestone timeline with named owners
- Written assumptions — what has to be true for this to work
End of phase deliverable
Signed SOW with the full 90-day roadmap — nothing launches until you approve it.
03
Build & Launch
Week one of the engagement is build week. Campaigns get rebuilt from scratch, tracking is re-implemented with server-side events, landing pages are deployed on our Next.js stack — and everything passes a recorded QA check before it goes live.
- Campaign rebuild (ad groups, keywords, bidding)
- Server-side GA4 + enhanced conversions setup
- Landing page build on Next.js + Vercel
- QA checklist with screen recording before go-live
End of phase deliverable
Live campaigns + you get admin access to everything we build.
04
Optimize & Scale
Every day we’re in the accounts — negative keywords, bid adjustments, A/B tests, landing page iterations. Every Friday you get a written update on what we changed and what we learned. Every month you get a deep-dive review call.
- Daily optimization (not monthly)
- Friday written updates (what changed, what was learned)
- Monthly strategy call with revenue attribution review
- Quarterly roadmap replan based on what worked
End of phase deliverable
Documented change log of every edit — you can audit the history anytime.
The timeline
First measurable results in 30 days. Scaled wins by day 90.
Marketing isn’t instant. But if you can’t see movement in the first 30 days, something is wrong. Here’s the honest timeline.
Days 1–14
Audit & Build
Full diagnostic, strategy signed, campaigns rebuilt, tracking deployed. You see the full roadmap and commit to specific targets.
✓ Go-live by day 14
Days 15–30
Early Signal
Wasted spend comes out, search terms get cleaner, and Quality Scores start to move. You can see every change in the dashboard daily.
✓ First efficiency wins visible
Days 31–60
Optimization
Winners identified, losers paused, landing pages iterated. Monthly strategy review with attribution-based budget reallocation.
✓ Winners scaled, losers cut
Days 61–90
Scale Wins
Profitable campaigns get more budget. New channels layered in where the data supports them. Revenue-attributed reporting in place.
✓ Revenue-attributed reporting live
Communication built in
You’ll never wonder what we’re doing.
Silence is the #1 complaint about agencies. We solved it with a documented cadence of written updates, live calls, and real-time dashboards that make silence impossible.
Named strategist
One senior strategist owns your account. You have their email, phone, and Slack — not a ticket queue.
Friday written updates
Every Friday by 5pm: a written update covering what we changed this week, what we learned, and what’s queued for next week.
Monthly strategy call
60 minutes with your strategist to review attribution, surface surprises, and rebalance priorities. Recorded and transcribed for you.
Live dashboards
Looker Studio + GA4 dashboards updated in real time. No curated PDFs. You see the same numbers we do, all the time.
The guarantee
If you’re not satisfied in your first 30 days, you don’t pay.
It works exactly the way it sounds: work with us for 30 days, and if you’re not satisfied with the work, you don’t pay — no clawback clauses, no hidden conditions, no “circumstances beyond our control” excuses. After the first 30 days you’re on a normal month-to-month plan you can cancel anytime. It’s the simplest way we know to prove we believe in the work.
Questions before signing
Things most people want to know.
If yours isn’t here, email info@searchpod.com and we’ll answer it honestly.
Most of our clients have. The structural differences — we never mark up your ad spend, month-to-month contracts, real-time dashboards, and a documented change log — exist specifically to prevent the failures that got you here. We built the company around not being the kind of agency you fire.
Yes, one: if you’re not satisfied in your first 30 days, you don’t pay. No clawback clauses. No fine print. After the first 30 days, every plan runs month-to-month and you can cancel anytime — the guarantee removes the risk of starting, and the month-to-month terms remove the risk of staying.
A senior strategist owns your account from day one. You know their name, you have their direct email and Slack. We don’t do the bait-and-switch where the pitch team hands you off to a junior after signing. The person who sold you the strategy is the person executing it.
Most clients see meaningful CPL improvements within 30 days — cutting wasted spend is usually the fastest win in the first couple of weeks. Full optimization and scaled wins usually happen by day 60-90. If you don’t see movement in the first 30 days, something is structurally wrong and we want to know.
No. Every plan is month-to-month. If we’re not delivering, you can leave on 30 days notice. We believe results should earn retention, not contracts — clients stay because the work is working, not because they can’t leave.
No. We never mark up your ad spend, regardless of how much you spend on ads. This matters because percentage-of-spend creates an incentive for the agency to increase your spend. A fixed fee aligns us with efficiency instead.
You keep everything. We built it all in your accounts — your ad accounts, your GA4, your GTM, your Next.js code. You’ll have admin access from day one. If you leave, nothing breaks, nothing gets revoked. You just stop paying us.
Yes. Your first strategy call is with the senior strategist who would own your account — not a sales person. If they can’t tell you specifically what they’d do, we’re not ready for you.