What is actually different about marketing across Ontario
The most expensive setting in Ontario advertising is the province-wide radius. A campaign set to all of Ontario pays Toronto prices to reach customers in Sudbury, because the auction is priced by the most competitive part of the geography it covers. If you sell in more than one city here, the accounts almost always need to be split by market before anything else is worth doing.
The economics genuinely differ between those markets. A professional firm competing in the Greater Toronto Area is bidding against national brands with real budgets. The same firm competing in Kingston or Windsor is bidding against a handful of local competitors. Same service, same ad copy, completely different plan, and copying the Toronto playbook into a smaller Ontario market is how good businesses conclude that search does not work for them.
For agency owners and consultants specifically, there is a second problem. Your customers are not in one place and they are not searching for your city. They are searching for the service, sometimes with a city attached and sometimes not, and often from inside a chatbot now rather than a search box. That mix is different from what a local trades business faces, and it changes which of the three services below is worth your money first.
Three ways to grow an Ontario business, run by one accountable person
Same three services everywhere I work. What changes across Ontario is how much the geography is costing you and which market you are actually competing in.
Google Ads Management
In Ontario that starts by splitting the account by market so the expensive parts of the province stop setting the price for the cheap ones. Then account structure, then cutting spend on searches that were never going to convert. Multi-location Ontario businesses usually find most of the waste here.
$1,500/month + ad spend
SEO Consulting
The better bet outside the Greater Toronto Area, where competition is thinner and a page that genuinely answers the question can rank in months. Inside the GTA it is a longer, more expensive fight and I will say so. Technical fixes first, then the pages your customers are already searching for.
$1,200/month
AIO Consulting
Being the Ontario business ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews name when someone asks for a recommendation. This is the one where the province's size works for you rather than against you, because almost nobody in any Ontario market has started. Cheapest of the three and one-time.
$1,800 one-time
Where in Ontario I work
Ontario cities with their own page
Each of these goes into what is actually different about that market, including what it costs to compete there. If you sell in one of them, start there rather than here.
Across the province
I take on clients throughout the Greater Toronto Area, the Golden Horseshoe, the National Capital Region, Southwestern Ontario, Eastern Ontario, Central Ontario and Northern Ontario. Everything is run remotely over video and email, so where in the province you are makes no difference to the work or the price.
- the Greater Toronto Area
- the Golden Horseshoe
- the National Capital Region
- Southwestern Ontario
- Eastern Ontario
- Central Ontario
- Northern Ontario
And in the smaller centres
Plenty of good Ontario businesses are not in a city with its own page. I work with businesses in Barrie, Guelph, Peterborough, Brantford, Sarnia, Sudbury, Thunder Bay and North Bay on the same terms.
- Barrie
- Guelph
- Peterborough
- Brantford
- Sarnia
- Sudbury
- Thunder Bay
- North Bay
Questions Ontario businesses ask
Do you have an office in Ontario?
I live in Toronto and work from home, so yes I am in the province, but there is no office and no branch anywhere else in it. Everything is run remotely over video and email, which is how I run every account.
We sell across Ontario. Should we run one campaign or several?
Almost always several. One province-wide campaign lets the most competitive market in your geography set the price for all of them, which means you overpay in the smaller cities and underspend in the ones that matter. Splitting by market is usually the single biggest improvement available on a multi-city Ontario account.
I run an agency. Do you work with agencies or compete with them?
Both happen and I am straightforward about which. Some Ontario agencies bring me in on Google Ads or AIO work they do not run in-house, white labelled or not depending on what you prefer. Some agency owners hire me for their own marketing. If you are a competitor in the same lane, I will say so rather than take the call under false pretences.
Which of the three should an Ontario business start with?
It depends on the market you are in more than the industry you are in. In the Greater Toronto Area, paid search buys you attention while SEO takes a long time and costs real money. Outside it, SEO is usually the better first investment. AIO is worth doing almost everywhere right now because so few competitors have.
What does this cost?
Google Ads management is $1,500 a month plus your ad spend. SEO consulting is $1,200 a month. AIO consulting is $1,800 one time. No setup fees and no long contract, anywhere in the province.
Tell me where you are stuck in Ontario
Twenty minutes, free, no pitch. Describe the business and I will tell you what I would do first, starting with whether your geography is quietly setting your prices.
Book 20 free minutes