“How much should I spend on Google Ads?” is the first question almost every business owner asks me on a discovery call. Fair enough. Nobody wants to guess at Google Ads cost without knowing what comes back.
The honest answer is that Google Ads costs whatever you let it cost. There’s no minimum spend and no contract with Google. But that doesn’t help you plan a budget, so here’s how the money actually breaks down in the UK, with real numbers from campaigns I’ve run.
How Google Ads cost is calculated
You pay when someone clicks your ad, not when they see it. Every time someone searches, Google runs a quick auction between the advertisers bidding on that search. Where you land and what you pay depends on your bid, how relevant your ad is, how good your landing page is and how many others want the same click.
So there’s no price list. A click on “emergency locksmith London” costs a lot more than a click on “vintage teapot shop”, because far more businesses are fighting for it and each job is worth more to them.
On top of the click costs, your Google Ads cost includes a fee Google adds: a small regulatory operating cost on UK ads. VAT applies to your invoice. Check your billing summary so the total doesn’t catch you out.
What a click costs in the UK
Cost per click (CPC) swings hugely by industry and location. From the accounts I manage, a rough feel looks like this:
Local trades and home services often sit somewhere between £2 and £8 a click, with urgent searches at the top end.
E-commerce clicks are usually cheaper per click, but you need a lot more of them, and margins decide everything.
Legal, insurance and finance can run into double figures per click, because one client can be worth thousands.
B2B and SaaS vary the most. Niche software terms can be cheap; anything with “CRM” in it is not.
A real example: my London car locksmith campaign averaged about £5.48 a click across roughly 5,900 clicks. That sounds steep until you see what those clicks turned into.
Cost per lead matters more than cost per click
When people ask about Google Ads cost, they usually mean cost per click. I’d stop worrying about that. A £1 click that never converts is far more expensive than a £6 click that books a job.
The number that matters is what you pay for each lead or sale, and how that compares with what a customer is worth. That locksmith campaign brought in 948 leads at £34.10 each, with a 16.08% conversion rate. A single lockout or key job pays well above £34, so every lead had margin built in.
Same story for an independent garage in Leeds: 500 car repair leads at £36.38 each. Higher CPCs, still very profitable, because the landing page and tracking were doing their job.
Add your own: one line on a client whose CPC looked scary but whose cost per lead was excellent.
How to work out your starting budget
Here’s the quick maths I use to estimate Google Ads cost with new clients.
Decide how many leads you want a month. Say 30.
Estimate a realistic conversion rate for your landing page. For a decent service page, 8% to 15% is a fair starting guess.
Estimate your CPC from Google’s Keyword Planner, then add a bit, because Keyword Planner tends to be optimistic.
If you want 30 leads, convert at 10% and pay £4 a click, you need 300 clicks. That’s £1,200 a month, or about £40 a day.
If that number makes you wince, narrow down. Fewer services, a tighter area or peak hours only. A small budget spread across every keyword and every postcode learns nothing and wins nothing.
One more thing. Google’s automated bidding needs data to work well. As a rough guide, I like to see around 30 conversions a month before I trust a target cost-per-lead strategy. Below that, I keep things simpler and more manual.
What management costs
If someone runs the account for you, their fee sits on top of your Google Ads cost. In the UK you’ll usually see one of three models:
A flat monthly fee, which is what I prefer because it doesn’t reward spending more
A percentage of ad spend, commonly somewhere around 10% to 20%
A one-off setup fee, sometimes added to either of the above
Cheap management usually means set-and-forget. Expensive doesn’t guarantee better. Ask who will actually be in your account each week and what they’ll change. I’ve written more about that in Google Ads consultant vs agency.
Hidden costs nobody mentions
The biggest Google Ads cost in most accounts I audit isn’t the clicks. It’s waste.
Broad match keywords pulling in job seekers and DIY searches. Ads running at 2am when nobody answers the phone. Spam calls being counted as conversions, so Google happily buys more spam. In one locksmith account, simply counting only answered calls over 60 seconds changed what the bidding chased.
None of this shows up on an invoice, but it’s money gone. If you want to see where yours is leaking, my Google Ads audit checklist is a good place to start.
Is the Google Ads cost worth it for you?
It is if three things are true: people actively search for what you sell, a customer is worth comfortably more than your likely cost per lead, and you can track which clicks turn into money. If any of those is shaky, fix it first.
If you’d like a second pair of eyes on your numbers, I’ll do a free Google Ads audit and tell you honestly what a sensible budget looks like for your business. You can also see how I run accounts on my Google Ads management services page.
FAQs
Is there a minimum spend on Google Ads in the UK?
No. You control your Google Ads cost with a daily budget, and you can set any amount. In practice, very small budgets struggle to collect enough data to improve.
Do I pay for impressions?
For Search campaigns, you normally pay per click. Some display and video campaign types can charge differently.
How long until I see results?
You can get leads in the first week. Expect the first month to be about learning what converts and cutting waste.