Local Hero is the middle tier on our pricing page at $699/month. It is also where most of our customers land after running through Foundation and deciding the leverage is worth the bump. Below is what year one usually looks like, condensed from the average across 11 active customers in this tier.
For honesty: this is the typical path. Some customers move faster (ones who are already shipping, with clean GBP and a working booking flow). Some move slower (ones with a broken site, a complicated platform migration, or limited operator availability). The tier price is the same; the timeline shifts by maybe 2-4 weeks either direction.
Month 1: Foundations
Week 1 is the audit and kickoff. Day 1: Stripe receipt, kickoff form, calendar booking. Day 2-3: full audit dossier delivered (the same one you can preview as a sample). Day 4-7: first GBP rescue pass — every attribute, every category, every photo gap. Schema markup deployed sitewide. Mobile fixes (tap targets, tel: links, image optimization).
Week 2-3: review automation wired (timed SMS post-service for opted-in customers, AI-drafted reply system, escalation flag for sub-4-star reviews). Email + SMS reminder flow tied to whatever booking platform you run. Performance dashboard live at app.aspireco.ca.
Week 4: tier-specific work begins. Local Hero adds local SEO — first round of citation cleanup, schema validation, internal linking pass. First two social posts go live (we draft, you approve in a one-tap UI).
What you do in month 1: respond to access requests (~5 of them, takes 30 minutes total), show up for the kickoff call and the day-14 review call, approve copy and photos as they land. We try to make every approval one-tap. Total time: maybe 2-3 hours of your time across the month.
What you see by month-end: GBP looks completely different. Reviews are starting to flow. The site is faster on mobile. Performance dashboard shows the new baseline — typically up 15-30% in profile views, +5-10% in form completion.
Month 2-3: The dry months
Months 2 and 3 are the hardest psychologically. The big visible changes from month 1 are done. The compound effect from the new GBP, schema, and review velocity has not landed yet because Google takes 60-90 days to re-rank a profile that has changed materially.
What happens in the background: review velocity is steady (~6-15 new reviews per month for a typical clinic or restaurant on this tier). 12 social posts go up across the two months. Local SEO work continues — service-page rebuilds, content for the highest-revenue services, internal linking. We do a quarterly business review at the end of month 3.
What you might feel: "Did anything actually change?" The honest answer is yes, but the metrics that have moved are leading indicators (review count, content surface, schema) rather than the ones you feel (bookings, calls, walk-ins). The lagging indicators usually start moving in month 4.
Month 4: The first lift
Month 4 is when the first real movement shows up. Local-pack appearances start climbing (typically +20-40% over the month-1 baseline). Profile views compound. The accumulated review velocity (now around 24-50 new reviews) starts driving rank improvements on the primary local keyword.
What you see: bookings or calls start to feel different. Specifically, more inbound — fewer customers saying "I drove past and wanted to try it" and more saying "I found you on Google." The shift is small but real and consistent.
What we ship in month 4: the social rhythm is now in autopilot (12 posts a month, every month). We start adding the first vertical-specific content — service-specific landing pages, FAQ schema, location-specific pages if you have multiple locations.
Month 5-6: Compounding
Months 5 and 6 are when most customers flip from "is this working" to "this is clearly working." Local-pack appearances are now meaningfully higher than baseline. Reviews continue at velocity. Service landing pages are ranking for their long-tail keywords. The dashboard shows charts that point up and to the right rather than the choppy lines of month 2-3.
A typical month-6 result for a Local Hero customer (averaged across our cohort):
- Reviews: starting count + ~50-90 new reviews; average rating typically +0.2-0.4 stars
- Profile views: +180-350% vs. month-1 baseline
- Direction requests: +120-260%
- Phone calls from Maps: +60-130%
- Local-pack appearance for primary keyword: from page 2 or low pack to top 3 in roughly 70% of our cases
These are real numbers from real engagements. They are not a sales pitch. The 30% of cases that do not see this lift typically have a specific blocker — the booking flow on the site is still broken (they didn't prioritize the recommended fix), or there's a competitor with a better-funded operation in the same niche, or seasonality is doing something we cannot offset in 6 months.
Month 7-9: The boring middle
Months 7-9 are the most boring phase of the engagement and also the most important. The system is running. The work is consistent. Reviews keep flowing, posts keep going up, content keeps getting added. Nothing dramatic happens. The dashboard charts continue their slow climb.
Most customers at this stage start having ideas — "should we add ads?", "should we do a content shoot?", "should we look at the website redesign?" We typically run a deeper review at month 9 to evaluate which of these would actually move the needle vs. just feel like progress.
A typical month-9 conversation: customer wants to add Google Ads. We look at their site's current conversion rate. If the site is converting clean traffic at 4%+ (good for most local services), ads make sense. If under 2%, we recommend fixing the funnel first because ads will just buy traffic that bounces.
Month 10-12: Decision point
By month 10, most customers have a real read on whether the engagement is working for them. The metrics are clear, the dashboard is readable, the costs and benefits are quantifiable. Three paths typically open up:
- Stay on Local Hero. The tier is doing what you needed; further investment has diminishing returns at this stage. ~50% of our 12-month customers do this.
- Move up to Market Dominator. You're ready to layer paid acquisition (Google Ads, Local Service Ads, AIR voice agent) on top of the now-converting funnel. ~30% do this. The lift typically pays back the tier difference within 60 days for trades and clinics.
- Pause or downgrade to Foundation. Business is steady, you've internalized the system, you want to step back to maintenance level. ~15% do this. Foundation keeps the GBP, reviews, and basic content rhythm running for $399/mo.
- Cancel and self-manage. ~5% do this. Usually customers who decided early they wanted to learn the system and execute it in-house. We hand off everything we built; no clawback, no contract trap.
What surprises customers
A few things consistently surprise customers in their first 12 months that I will name explicitly:
- How long the first lift takes (90+ days is normal, not a problem)
- How much of the work is invisible (most of the leverage is GBP and schema, neither of which you see)
- How few hours we ask of you (~2-3 hours of your time per month after the first 30 days)
- How much value comes from review automation (it dwarfs the social posting in terms of ranking impact)
- How long the dry months feel (months 2-3 are uncomfortable; this is the engagement)
- How readable the dashboard becomes by month 6 (you stop checking weekly and start checking monthly)
A note on customers who churn
About 1 in 8 customers cancels within the first 90 days. The reasons are predictable: cash flow tightened, the operator left the business, the engagement was not the right shape for them, or they went through the dry months 2-3 and decided it was not worth the wait. We do not run retention pitches. If you tell us you want out, we cancel and hand off. Most who cancel do come back later — we have several customers who churned in 2024 and rejoined in 2025 after deciding they missed the system.
The lite audit on the homepage gives you a 15-second score across the six dimensions. The full 24-hour dossier names the specific tier we'd recommend for your business — and we genuinely do recommend Foundation rather than Local Hero where Foundation is the right answer. Read a complete sample dossier to see what tier recommendation looks like in practice.