The short answer
There's no minimum spend on Google Ads. We manage accounts spending anywhere from $15 a day to $15,000 a week, and both ends of that range can work.
The more useful question isn't "how much should I spend?" It's "what does each enquiry or sale cost me, and does that number work for my business?" Once you know that, setting a budget gets a lot easier.
Two costs: ad spend and management
When people talk about the cost of Google Ads, they're usually mixing two different things.
- Ad spend is what you pay Google when someone clicks your ad. You set the budget and you can change it at any time.
- Management is what you pay an agency or specialist to build, run and improve the campaigns.
Some business owners run their own ads, and for a very small budget that can be fine. Most find that once spend grows, the time it takes and the money wasted while learning cost more than having someone experienced look after it.
Look at cost per lead, not cost per click
Click prices change by industry, suburb, time of year and how many competitors are bidding. Trades and home services in Sydney are competitive, so clicks there usually cost more than in niche categories.
But a cheap click that never turns into a customer is still a waste. That's why we focus on cost per lead (or cost per sale for online stores). It tells you what you're actually paying for a real opportunity.
Real cost per lead from accounts we manage
These are real months from client accounts, shown by industry only:
- Skin clinic: 114 bookings at $9.07 each, from $1,034 in ad spend (January 2026)
- Dog daycare: 56 enquiries at $14.13 each, from $791 in ad spend (July 2026)
- Concreting business: 33 leads at $18.09 each, from $597 in ad spend (November 2025)
- Towing and vehicle transport: 22 job enquiries at $27.90 each, from $614 in ad spend (July 2026)
- Roof restoration: 64 leads at $42.13 each, from $2,696 in ad spend (April 2026)
These are strong months, not averages. They show how much cost per lead varies between industries, and how much a well-built account and landing page can bring it down. You can see the dashboards behind these numbers on our Google Ads page.
How to set your first budget
Work backwards from what a customer is worth to you.
Say a typical job brings in $2,000 in profit and you win one in every three enquiries. You could pay well over $100 per enquiry and still come out comfortably ahead. If your jobs are smaller, your target cost per lead needs to be lower, and that shapes how and where you advertise.
- Pick a budget you can commit to for a few months. Google Ads needs data to improve, and the first weeks are mostly learning.
- Start with your most profitable service and your core service area before going broad.
- Make sure calls and form enquiries are tracked properly from day one, so you know exactly what each lead costs.
What makes Google Ads cost more than it should
When we audit accounts, the same problems come up again and again:
- Broad keywords bringing in searches that have nothing to do with the business
- No negative keywords, so the account pays for searches like "jobs", "DIY" or "free"
- Every click sent to the homepage instead of a page built for that service
- Calls and forms not being tracked, so nobody knows what's working
- Targeting an area far bigger than the business actually services
Fixing these usually lowers cost per lead without spending a dollar more.
Ecommerce works a little differently
For online stores we look at sales and return on ad spend rather than leads. A women's fashion label we work with did $866.8K in online sales from $32K in ad spend in one month. A smaller fashion label did $170K from $3.6K.
But return on ad spend isn't the whole story. If most of that revenue comes from people already searching for your brand name, the real picture is different. We always look at new customers and non-branded sales too.
Get a straight answer for your business
If you want to know what Google Ads would realistically cost for your business, send us your website and what you're spending now, if anything. James will look at your market and give you an honest view, including whether Google Ads is the right fit at all.
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