If you're looking into Google Ads for the first time, this is probably the first question you want answered, and it's the one most agencies dance around. So here's a straight answer, not a wishy-washy "it depends".

Two different costs, not one

Every Google Ads bill has two parts, and mixing them up is where most of the confusion comes from.

The first is your ad spend, the money Google itself takes for the clicks. The second is the management fee, what you pay whoever is running the account for you, whether that's an agency, a freelancer, or me. These are two separate numbers, and any agency that quotes you one flat price without breaking that down isn't being straight with you.

What ad spend looks like

For most small businesses I work with around Hartlepool and Teesside, ad spend sits somewhere between £500 and £1,500 a month. That's not a made-up industry average, it's what I actually see work for businesses your size in this market. A bigger budget doesn't automatically mean better results either, a smaller budget aimed properly at the right searches usually beats a bigger one spread too thin.

What management costs

This is where it varies most, because it depends who's doing it and how. With me, management starts from £500 a month on top of your ad spend, with no long lock-in contract. That covers roughly six hours of my time a month, and it scales with what your account needs rather than being a flat number regardless of size, and you'll always know exactly what you're paying for and why.

You'll see a wide range quoted elsewhere too. It's common to see agency rates quoted anywhere from £75 to £250 an hour, or a percentage fee of 10 to 15% of your ad spend instead of a flat monthly rate. I can't vouch for what any of those get you in practice, since I haven't seen the work behind those numbers, but a lower number isn't automatically a better deal if nobody's actually watching the account properly.

What moves your number

A few things genuinely change what you should expect to pay, more than any generic industry-average figure will tell you.

  • How competitive your industry is locally. A roofer competing with six other roofers for the same searches needs a different budget than someone in a niche with almost no local competition.
  • Whether you're starting from scratch or fixing something that already exists. A new account needs time and budget to build up data before it can be optimised properly. Taking over an existing one is usually faster, assuming it was tracked properly in the first place.
  • What you're trying to achieve. More leads, higher-value leads, and brand awareness are three different goals with three different sensible budgets.

The honest bottom line

Anyone giving you a number without asking about your industry, your goals, and what, if anything, you're already running isn't giving you a real answer, they're giving you a guess dressed up as one. If you want an actual number for your specific business, that's a five-minute conversation, not a guessing game.