How Much Should Google Ads Cost for a Small Business?
If you’re thinking about running Google Ads (or you’re already paying for clicks), you’ve probably asked the big one: how much should Google Ads cost for a small business?
It’s a fair question. You don’t want to throw money at ads and hope for the best. You want a budget that’s realistic, trackable, and tied to what you actually need: calls, leads, bookings, sales.
Google Ads doesn’t have a fixed “small business price”
Google Ads is an auction. You’re bidding against other advertisers for visibility when people search for certain terms. That’s why costs vary so much from one business to the next.
Your spend is influenced by things like:
- How competitive your industry is
- The keywords you target (and how specific they are)
- Your location
- How well your ads and landing pages perform
- How effectively your campaign is managed and optimised
One click could cost pennies. Another could cost £10+. The key isn’t chasing the cheapest click — it’s paying for clicks that are likely to turn into real enquiries.
Typical Google Ads budgets for small businesses
Budgets can start small, but they still need to be big enough to generate meaningful data. If the budget is too tight, you can end up with a campaign that never gathers enough traction to learn what’s working.
As a general starting point, many small businesses run campaigns in the range of:
- £300–£1,500 per month ad spend (paid to Google)
Some businesses can do well below this if the niche is local and low competition. Others need more because the clicks cost more, or because there are several services to promote.
Why “cheap clicks” can be a false economy
It’s tempting to focus on lowering cost per click, but cheap traffic often comes from broad, vague searches.
For example, someone searching “accountant” may be browsing. Someone searching “accountant for sole trader tax return in Wigan” is far closer to picking up the phone.
More specific searches often cost more per click — but they usually bring better leads, which is what matters.
Ad spend vs PPC management: know the difference
When you look at the cost of Google Ads, there are two separate parts:
- Ad spend – what you pay Google for clicks
- Management – the work involved in building, improving, and protecting your campaign
Management isn’t just “setting up ads”. Done properly, it covers:
- Keyword research and search intent targeting
- Ad copy testing (to attract the right people)
- Negative keywords (to block time-wasters)
- Bid and budget optimisation
- Conversion tracking and reporting
- Landing page improvements to increase enquiries
If you’re exploring Google Ads / PPC management, the goal is simple: reduce wasted spend and improve the results you get from every pound.
Your website can push costs up (or pull them down)
This part catches people out. You can have a decent campaign, but if your landing page is slow, unclear, or doesn’t make the next step obvious, users bounce. You still pay for the click, and you get nothing back.
Google also looks at relevance and user experience. Stronger landing pages can improve performance and help you get more from the same budget.
That’s why our PPC management approach includes a practical look at the pages your traffic lands on — not just the ads.
A simple way to sanity-check your Google Ads budget
If you want a quick reality check, start here:
- What is one lead worth to you?
- How many leads do you need each month?
- What happens when a lead turns into a customer (average spend / profit)?
Once you know those numbers, it’s much easier to set a sensible budget and measure success properly.
So… how much should you spend?
The right spend is the amount that gives you enough data to optimise, enough reach to generate leads, and enough control to scale up when it’s working.
If you’re unsure where to start, a quick review can save a lot of wasted budget.
Want a second opinion? Request a free Google Ads review and we’ll point out what’s working, what’s wasting spend, and what to fix first.
