What marketing actually costs, how long it takes to work, and how to tell a good agency from a bad one, answered directly, with links to go deeper on anything.
There's no flat rate, because there's no one-size-fits-all package — cost depends entirely on what your business actually needs: how many pages, what it needs to integrate with, and how much conversion and SEO work goes into it. The real driver isn't a price tier, it's whether the site is hand-coded and custom-built for your specific goals or assembled from a generic template. We scope every build around your business first, then price it.
Full breakdown: website redesign signs & cost
It depends on your market, your competition, and what your business actually needs, so we don't quote a flat retainer with no visible deliverables. A single-location business in a lighter-competition category needs a different scope of work than a multi-location business in a crowded market like legal or home services. We build the plan around your specific situation first, then price the work behind it.
See what our SEO & Local Search engine includes
There's no universal percentage that fits every business, because what makes sense depends entirely on your customer lifetime value, your current pipeline gaps, and your growth goals — a business built on high-value, infrequent jobs can justify a very different spend than one built on high-volume, lower-ticket work. We build a plan around your specific numbers rather than applying a generic formula.
Full guide: how much to spend on marketing
They solve different problems, so it's rarely either/or. Paid ads (Google or Meta) turn on fast and buy you leads immediately while you have zero organic visibility. SEO takes longer to build but keeps compounding after you stop paying per click. Most businesses that scale well eventually run both: ads for immediate pipeline, SEO for the long-term asset.
Facebook Ads vs. Google Ads, compared
Local SEO movement (map pack, local search terms) is typically visible within 1–3 months. Competitive, non-local organic rankings are more of a 3–6 month strategic play, since Google needs time to trust a growing site. Anyone promising first-page rankings in days is either talking about paid ads or overselling what SEO can actually do.
That depends entirely on the build process. A templated, plugin-based site can take weeks to months once revisions and back-and-forth are factored in. Sunfield's hand-coded pipeline launches high-performance sites in 24–72 hours because there's no page-builder bloat or plugin conflicts slowing the process down.
How our web design process works
Google Ads can start driving clicks and calls within days of launch, since you're paying to appear for people actively searching. Lead quality typically improves over the first 2–4 weeks as we refine keywords, negative keywords, and landing pages based on real campaign data.
How we manage Google Ads accounts
Google Business Profile changes (categories, services, posts, review responses) can influence map-pack ranking within days, but meaningful movement against established competitors usually takes 1–3 months of consistent optimization and real review growth, the same timeframe as local SEO generally.
Google Business Profile optimization, explained
SEO is the broad discipline of ranking in organic search for any audience. Local SEO is the subset focused specifically on map-pack and "near me" visibility for businesses that serve a physical area — Google Business Profile, local citations, and location-specific content are central to it in a way they aren't for national SEO.
Yes, for most businesses. Paid ads stop the moment you stop paying, while organic SEO keeps generating visibility in the background. Running both also means you appear twice on the same results page, once as an ad and once organically, which measurably increases trust and click-through versus either alone.
If your current site is slow, isn't mobile-friendly, or genuinely doesn't work (broken forms, outdated design, confusing navigation), SEO built on top of it has a low ceiling — you can't rank a site users bounce off of. If the site is structurally fine and simply isn't visible, SEO alone can move the needle without a rebuild.
12 signs it's time for a website rebuild
AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) is optimizing content so AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews can find, understand, and cite it directly, not just rank it in a list of blue links. It relies on the same technical foundation as SEO (crawlable content, clear structure, schema markup) plus content written to directly answer specific questions.
Full AEO guide: how AI search actually works
Common signals: your growth has stalled at whatever referrals bring in, you're spending time on marketing you don't have expertise in, competitors with weaker service are outranking you online, or you've tried DIY tools (website builders, boosted posts) without a real strategy behind them and aren't seeing results.
5 signs it's time to hire an agency
Ask for specific, verifiable case studies in your industry, not just screenshots of dashboards. Be wary of long contract lock-ins before you've seen a month of real results, and of guarantees that sound absolute ("guaranteed #1 ranking") since no agency controls a search engine's algorithm. A credible agency ties its promises to a defined, benchmarked outcome and a realistic timeline.
Full guide: how to vet a lead generation agency
Sunfield is founder-led (you work directly with Kauan Da Silva and senior specialists, not a rotating junior account team), ROI-driven rather than focused on vanity metrics like impressions, and built for speed — most sites launch in 24–72 hours instead of the industry-standard weeks of onboarding.
No. Sunfield earns the relationship on a monthly basis with results-based terms rather than locking clients into a long commitment before they've seen performance.
Sunfield works in person across Deerfield Beach, Boca Raton, Fort Lauderdale, Pompano Beach, Delray Beach, and the rest of South Florida, and works remotely with clients nationwide across web design, lead generation, SEO, and growth consulting.