FAQ
The questions we hear most.
Everything Alex gets asked on intro calls. Pricing, scope, which trades we serve, what we'll and won't take on. If your question isn't here, just ask.
- What does Mastodon Marketing do?
- We're a Houston-based marketing agency for home services and contractors. We build the whole machine: marketing that books the jobs you actually want (SEO, Google Ads, Meta Ads, web design, content), follow-up that answers every inquiry in minutes, 24/7 call answering, and back-office automation. One roof, one team that knows your numbers, and you own every piece of it.
- Where are you located?
- Our office is at 1853 Pearland Pkwy Ste 123 PMB 1083, Pearland TX 77581. We serve Greater Houston metro on-site and Texas-wide remote with quarterly on-site visits to Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, and San Antonio.
- What's your phone number?
- (832) 979-8426. Voice and SMS.
- Who is Mastodon Marketing's founder?
- Alex Rocha founded Mastodon Marketing in Houston in 2022. He has 15+ years of digital marketing experience across agency, in-house, and direct-to-customer. Built the firm to be operator-to-operator, not strategy-deck consulting.
- Do you work with my trade?
- We work with home services and contractors: roofing, HVAC, plumbing, electrical, remodeling and construction, restoration, and adjacent trades like garage doors, pressure washing, cleaning, and pest control. That focus is deliberate. If you run a different kind of business, we'll say so honestly and point you somewhere better suited.
- Do you work with businesses outside Houston?
- Yes. We have engagements across Texas (Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin, San Antonio) and select out-of-state work. Greater Houston gets on-site discovery; other metros get on-site discovery + training, remote build, quarterly on-site reviews.
- What's the smallest business you work with?
- Solo-operator shops if the math works (typically the owner is losing hours every week to office work, or losing after-hours calls to voicemail). The full multi-pillar system fits established shops, $1M+ a year, as laid out on /pricing/.
- What's the largest business you work with?
- We work with small and mid-sized businesses. Past that, structural fit gets weaker; our SMB-focused model overlaps less cleanly with enterprise procurement and governance.
- Will your automation replace my office staff?
- We have never recommended a staff cut as part of an engagement. We've been asked to. The systems take the busywork off your team so they can spend time on what your customers actually pay for: judgment, relationships, and trust. Teams that deploy them well keep their headcount and spend the hours on customer work.
- How much does an engagement cost?
- Single-playbook projects: $3,000 to $15,000 setup, $200 to $1,500 monthly. Single-pillar builds: $10,000 to $30,000 setup, $1,000 to $3,000 monthly. Full implementation: $40,000 to $120,000 in year one. Full pricing on /pricing/.
- What if what you sell is the wrong answer for my business?
- We tell you on the first call. We've recommended competitors more than once. If the bottleneck is something we don't fix, we'll point you at whoever does (sometimes that's just a different CRM, or a hire).
- How long does a build take?
- Single playbooks ship in 7 to 30 days. Single-pillar builds in 60 to 90 days. Full systems in 6 to 12 months phased.
- Do you sign NDAs?
- Yes. Standard mutual NDA on request, usually before the second call.
- What CRMs do you implement?
- HighLevel by default for SMBs. HubSpot, Pipedrive, Salesforce, and Zoho when the client already has them. We don't switch CRMs unless the math is obvious.
- What's your refund or guarantee policy?
- Single-playbook setups have a 60-day guarantee: if the system hasn't met its acceptance criteria by day 60 (defined in writing at scope), you get a full refund of the setup fee. Monthly fees aren't refundable but they're month-to-month, so you can stop anytime.
- Do you do SEO and AI search together?
- Yes, by default. Every SEO engagement includes Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): structured for passage-level citation in AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude. FAQPage schema on every post, llms.txt at apex, definition sentences, citable stats. The shape that gets lifted into AI answers.
- What's GEO and why does it matter?
- Generative Engine Optimization. The discipline of structuring web content so AI search engines (Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Bing Copilot) can find and cite it. Different from classic SEO: AI search rewards passage-level structure, definition sentences, lists, tables, and FAQPage schema more than long-flowing prose. For SMBs that want to be found in AI search, GEO belongs in the plan.
- Can you fix our existing website's SEO?
- Yes. We do technical audits, fix indexation gaps, deploy schema, optimize Core Web Vitals, clean up internal linking, and rewrite weak pages. We scope the audit and the implementation after the fit call.
- Do you build websites from scratch?
- Yes. 5-page sites: $8,000-$15,000. CMS sites with blog and integrations: $15,000-$25,000. Full rebuilds with content migration: $25,000-$35,000. See /services/web-design/.
- What platforms do you build on?
- WordPress for CMS. Astro for SEO + performance. Next.js for dynamic apps. Cloudflare Workers for edge-compute apps. Shopify for e-comm. Webflow for design-system-heavy brand sites. We pick by use case, not by default vendor.
- Do you run paid ads (Google + Meta)?
- Yes. Google Ads from $1,500/mo management + media. Meta Ads from $1,500/mo management + media. Both include creative iteration, conversion tracking, and monthly reports in dollars (not impressions). See /services/google-ads/ and /services/meta-ads/.
- Do you produce content (blogs, videos)?
- Blogs yes: SERP-driven briefs, drafted fast, human-edited, schema-marked, IndexNow-submitted. 4-16 posts/mo. See /services/content-marketing/. Video production not in-house; we partner for high-end work and produce founder-led talking-head video at scale.
- Do you do social media management?
- Yes. Organic social: GBP weekly cadence, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube Shorts repurposing. 2-3 platforms per client. Organic social is $1,500-$3,500/mo. See /services/social-media/.
- How do you measure success?
- Business outcomes: attributable calls and booked jobs, revenue recovered, time recovered, conversion rate, map-pack position, AI Overview citation. Not vanity metrics (impressions, sessions, follower count). Monthly reporting in plain English with the numbers that matter.
- Do you work with other agencies (co-engage)?
- Yes. We've co-engaged with IT firms (PennComp), automation specialists (Talos, The Automators), and other marketing agencies when scope dictates. Clear scope boundaries + shared CRM as source of truth makes it work.
- What's your relationship with Anthropic / OpenAI / Google?
- Implementation partner, not reseller. We deploy on whichever model fits the use case (Claude, GPT-5, Gemini, open-source via private deployment). No vendor lock-in for clients; we recommend the best tool for the job at engagement time.
- What if I want to bring this in-house eventually?
- Good. We document everything, train your team, hand over admin access, and step back. Most clients keep us on monthly tuning long after the build because the marginal cost is low and the marginal benefit is real, but we never engineer lock-in.
- Do you have a referral program?
- Informal. We pay 10 percent of first-year fees for qualified introductions that close. Reach out directly.
Related reading.
- Pricing for full transparency across all services
- Our process for how engagements actually run
- All services
- Case studies
- About Alex Rocha (founder)