> guides/google-ads-cost.txt
How Much Does Google Ads
Cost in the UK?
There are three bills hiding in that question: the clicks, the person running the account, and sometimes a setup fee. Here's how each one works, what pushes click prices up in local trades, and how to work out a budget big enough to tell you anything.
> quick_answer.txt
The Short Answer
Google Ads has no minimum spend. You pay Google for each click, at a price set by an auction every time someone searches, and your daily budget caps how much it can spend. On top of that you pay whoever runs the account, which is from £250 a month with me, or your own evenings if you do it yourself.
The number that matters is the monthly ad spend that buys enough clicks to bring in enquiries you can actually judge. That depends on what clicks cost in your trade and your area, so below I split out the costs, explain how click prices are set, and show the sum I use to work out a starting budget. If you'd rather plug your own numbers in, use my Google Ads cost calculator.
> costs.csv
The Things You're Actually Paying For
People often lump these together, then wonder why a quote looks high or low. Keep them separate.
| Who gets it | What it covers | How it's usually charged | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ad spend | The clicks on your ads. Nothing else. | Billed by Google to your own card or account, capped by your daily budget. | |
| Management | Whoever runs your account | Building the campaigns, keywords and ads, setting up tracking, then the regular work of cutting waste. | A flat monthly fee, a percentage of your ad spend, or a mix of both. |
| Setup | Sometimes the same person | Building the account, conversion tracking, and fixing the landing page before the first click. | A one-off fee, or folded into the first month. |
| Your time | Nobody, which is the catch | Learning the platform and running it yourself. | Evenings. Quite a lot of them. |
> cpc.txt
How Cost Per Click Actually Works
Every time someone searches, Google runs an auction between the advertisers who want to show for that search. Whether your ad appears, and where, comes down to something Google calls Ad Rank.
Ad Rank is worked out from your maximum bid, the quality of your ad and the page it points to, minimum thresholds an ad has to clear to show at all, how close your competitors are, the context of the search (where the person is, what device, what time of day) and the expected effect of extras like sitelinks and call buttons.
Two things follow from that. First, your bid is a ceiling, not a price. Google's own help pages say what you actually pay is often less than your maximum. Second, the highest bidder doesn't automatically win. A relevant ad pointing at a useful page can show above a competitor bidding more, and Google says higher quality ads can often lead to lower costs per click. That's a big part of why two businesses in the same trade can pay quite different amounts for the same search.
If you use automated bidding, which most accounts now do, Google sets the bid for each auction for you. You control the budget, the targets and what counts as a conversion. That's where the skill goes now.
> budget_rules.txt
Why Your Spend Wobbles Day to Day
Your Google Ads budget is an average daily budget. On a busy day Google can spend up to twice it. Across a month it won't charge you more than 30.4 times your daily budget, which is the average number of days in a month. Set £10 a day and some days you'll see nearly £20, others a few pounds, but the month won't go past about £304.
One recent change worth knowing about. Since 1 June 2026, if your ad schedule switches a campaign off on certain days of the week, Google paces towards the full monthly amount anyway, so the days you do run can spend more. If you're off at weekends and set your budget with that in mind, check it.
> what_drives_cpc.txt
What Pushes Click Prices Up in Local Trades
I can't give you a price for your clicks without looking, because it changes by trade, town and month. These are the things that move it.
What a Job Is Worth
If one customer is worth thousands, like a new roof, a kitchen or a house move, competitors can afford to pay more per click, and they do. A dog groomer and a solicitor are bidding in different worlds.
How Many Are Bidding
In a smaller North Wales town there might only be a handful of advertisers for a given trade. Around Chester or Wrexham there are usually more. More bidders, higher prices.
National Firms and Lead Sellers
Comparison sites, directories and lead-generation firms bid on local trade searches and sell the enquiry on. They're in the same auction as you, and they push prices up for everyone.
Urgency
Searches like emergency plumber or locksmith near me come from people ready to ring right now. Everyone wants those clicks, so they cost more than early research searches.
The Season
Removals, holiday lets, caravan parks, garden work. Plenty of North Wales businesses have a busy season, and so do their competitors' budgets.
Your Own Quality
A closely matched ad, a quick page that answers the search and a sensible account structure all feed into Ad Rank. Poor quality means paying more for the same spot.
> budget_sum.txt
How I'd Work Out a Starting Budget
Don't start with a number you'd be comfortable losing. Start with what an enquiry is worth to you, and work backwards.
Work Out What a Customer Is Worth
Your average job value, and how many enquiries you turn into work. If you win one in three, an enquiry is worth a third of a job, before your costs.
Check What Clicks Cost Round Here
Google's Keyword Planner, free inside any Google Ads account, shows a top-of-page bid range for each keyword, set to your location. Google describes the low end as roughly the 20th percentile of what advertisers have paid to show at the top of the page, and the high end as roughly the 80th. A guide, not a quote.
Guess Your Conversion Rate, Cautiously
What share of people who click will ring or fill in your form? You won't really know until you run it, so be cautious with the guess.
Do the Sum
Clicks needed is the enquiries you want divided by your conversion rate. Budget is clicks needed times cost per click. With made-up round numbers to show the maths: if clicks cost £3 and one visitor in ten gets in touch, each enquiry costs about £30, and twenty enquiries a month needs about 200 clicks, or roughly £600 of ad spend.
Sanity Check It
If an enquiry costs more than it's worth to you, more budget won't fix it. That points at your pricing, your website or your targeting, or it's a sign Google Ads isn't the right channel for you yet.
> minimum.txt
Too Small a Budget Is Its Own Kind of Waste
People often ask me for the minimum. The honest answer is the amount that buys enough clicks, in a month or two, to tell whether it's working. If your sums say you need 200 clicks to see a decent handful of enquiries and you can afford 40, you'll spend the money and learn very little.
The flip side is search volume. In some smaller towns there just aren't many searches for a given trade, so even a generous budget won't spend. Keyword Planner shows search volumes too, and it's better to find that out before you start.
If the sums don't work, I'll tell you. For a small trade business, your Google Business Profile, local SEO or Local Services Ads can make more sense than search ads.
> my_prices.txt
What I Charge
Management starts at £250 a month for one platform, month to month, with no contract. It's a flat fee, I don't take a percentage of your ad spend, so I've no reason to talk you into spending more than makes sense. Your ad spend goes direct to Google, from your own account. Bigger accounts and more platforms sit on higher plans, and my Google Ads page lists them all.
If you're already running ads and want to know whether they're any good, my Google Ads audit is £500, fixed. You get a written list of what's wasting money and what to fix, in order. If you only want a quick steer first, my free 15-minute review gets you the top three fixes in writing. I do five of those a month, first come first served.
> cat faq.txt
Questions People Ask
Is there a minimum spend on Google Ads?
No. Google doesn't set one. You choose a daily budget and can pause whenever you like. The practical minimum is the spend that buys enough clicks to learn whether it works, which is why I'd rather work it out from your numbers than quote a figure.
Do I pay Google for every time my ad shows?
Not on a normal Search campaign. You pay when someone clicks. Google bills you as costs build up or on a monthly cycle, depending on how your billing is set up.
Why did Google spend more than my daily budget?
Because it's an average. Google can spend up to twice your daily budget on a busy day, but won't charge more than 30.4 times it across a month. If you need a hard limit on a particular day, that has to be managed by hand.
Why are my clicks so expensive?
Usually a mix of competition, the value of jobs in your trade, and quality. Check your Quality Score columns and your search terms first. My guide to why Google Ads aren't working goes through the checks.
Should I pay someone a percentage of my ad spend?
It's common, and it isn't automatically bad, but it does mean the person advising you on budget earns more when you spend more. I charge a flat fee for that reason. Whatever the model, you should see exactly what Google charged, separate from the fee.
How long before I know if it's working?
Give the first few weeks to getting tracking right and cutting obvious waste. After that you want a steady run without big changes, long enough to collect a fair number of enquiries. A busy trade gets there sooner than a quiet one.
> ls ../guides
Related Pages
Worked out a number? These are the next useful stops.
> new_message.txt
Want a Number for Your Business?
Tell me your trade, your area and roughly what a job is worth. I'll give you an honest view of whether Google Ads stacks up, and what it would take to find out.
"Matt was really responsive throughout the whole process - no questions went unanswered and Matt was really engaged in the whole process."
Lizzie Hill · Abergele Golf Club