How Much Should a Local Business Spend on Google Ads?

Most local business owners ask “how much should I spend on Google Ads?” and get a useless answer: “it depends.” It does depend, but on numbers you already know. Here’s how to work it out in one sitting.

Start With the Value of a Job

Your ad budget is a math problem, not a guess. You need three numbers:

• Average job value — what a closed customer is worth to you.
• Close rate — how many leads turn into paying jobs.
• Target cost per acquisition — what you’re willing to pay to win one job.

If a plumbing job is worth $500 and you close 1 in 4 leads, each lead is worth about $125 in booked revenue. If you’re happy spending 20% of a job’s value to acquire it, you can pay up to about $25 per lead before it stops making sense.

Work Backward to a Monthly Number

Decide how many extra jobs you want per month, then multiply.

• Want 10 new jobs? At a 25% close rate, that’s 40 leads.
• 40 leads at $25 each = a $1,000 monthly ad budget.

That’s a real starting number, tied to real revenue — not a figure pulled from a competitor’s brag.

What Most Owners Get Wrong

• Starting too small to learn anything. Under ~$500/month, Google rarely gets enough data to optimize. You’ll burn cash without signal.
• Ignoring the landing page. Sending clicks to a slow homepage wastes half your budget. Send them to a focused page with a phone number and a form.
• Not tracking calls. If you can’t see which clicks became calls, you’re flying blind.

The Takeaway

Set your budget from job value and close rate, not vibes. Start where you can gather real data (usually $750–$1,500/month for most trades), track every lead, and scale the campaigns that pay for themselves. Ads should be an investment you can prove — if you can’t measure it, fix the measurement before you add a dollar.