How much does a local services ad audit cost?
A local services ad audit cost has three lines — the audit fee, the LSA ad spend, and the cost of unqualified leads. Buyers who compare only the first line miss the second and third.
· 5 min read
01
The three numbers hiding behind "LSA audit cost"
Audit fee + LSA spend + bad-lead cost = real cost of an LSA audit. Most buyers only price the first.
Ask a service business what an LSA audit costs and the answer usually lands on one of three numbers. The audit fee — the monthly price you pay the agency or consultant. The LSA spend — the ad budget you pass through to Google every month, which is multiple of the audit fee. And the hidden cost of bad leads — the screen-out rate, the disputed-lead refund rate, and the calls routed to the wrong trade or service area.
The three numbers are not the same number. Conflating them is how a buyer signs up for an audit at $1,200/mo and discovers mid-month that the spend is $3,800 and the screen rate is 22%, which is the real story. The audit fee is the cheapest part of the engagement. It is also the easiest line to compare, which is why it gets all the attention.
02
What "$790/mo for a local services ad audit" covers, line by line
$790/mo covers five monthly deliverables. The LSA spend at-cost is separate, and is what most buyers forget to budget for.
The Slatelock Local Services Ad Audit tier at $790/mo bundles five deliverables into one monthly artifact. LSA account review — categories, service-area polygons, and budget pacing across trades. Geo and bid-budget adjustments — moving LSA spend between trades and service areas based on the previous month's screen rate. Lead-quality tweaks — changes to the screen form, the dispute queue, and the second-pass write-up to Google.
A competitor benchmark — what the same trade is paying per lead in the same service area, against your LSA spend and the screen rate. And a written findings report — the same shape every month, one paragraph per line, so the trend lines compare cleanly. The full scope rows are listed on the package page under the section anchor.
03
When "$790/mo" is the wrong envelope for the buyer
Below 20 LSA leads/month, or with no defined trade and area, the $790 tier is the wrong shape. Define the inputs first.
A fixed-scope monthly retainer at $790 is not the right shape for every buyer. If a service business is taking fewer than 20 LSA leads per month, the audit artifact does not have enough rows to read against — the screen rate, the geo split, and the competitor benchmark all read thin. The deliverable is the shape, not the price; buying the tier too early costs more than not buying it at all.
The other wrong fit is the buyer with no defined trade or no defined service area. LSA bids on the wrong trade, GBP points at the wrong buyer, and the audit reports bad numbers for inputs the buyer has not set up cleanly. In that case the right move is to define the trade and the service area first; then buy the tier. A fixed-scope package rewards a defined situation — that situation has to exist before the package is worth the spend.
The artifact is the contract
Same tier, same price, same shipped artifact every month.
Slatelock ships a fixed-scope monthly retainer. Cancel before the next renewal. No discovery call, no scope creep, no surprise invoice.