Google Ads has no minimum spend. You can run a campaign on a few dollars a day. Whether that’s useful depends on what each click costs in your industry and how many clicks you need before you get a customer.
The three costs
- Ad spend, paid to Google per click
- Management, if you hire help
- Setup — landing pages and tracking
For context, the WordStream/LOCALiQ 2025 benchmarks, as reported by Search Engine Land put the average cost per lead across all industries at about $70 in 2025, with average cost per click rising year over year. Home improvement was listed among the higher-cost categories, with clicks often above $7, while local, high-intent services such as home services tended to convert at above-average rates.
A simple way to set your budget
- Estimate cost per click for your service and area (Keyword Planner gives rough ranges)
- Estimate how many clicks become leads — a good landing page might turn roughly one in ten into a call or form, though this varies widely
- Estimate how many leads become customers
- Multiply back to see what one customer costs, and compare with what one customer is worth
Illustrative exampleClicks at $8, one in ten becomes a lead ($80 per lead), one in three leads books ($240 per customer). If a customer is worth $1,000 in profit, that’s a healthy return. If they’re worth $150, it isn’t — and no amount of optimization will fix the economics.
Too small to learn
If your budget only buys a handful of clicks a week, it can take months to know whether anything works. It’s usually better to focus a modest budget on one service and one area than to spread it across everything.
What we recommend
Start with a budget that can produce a meaningful number of leads each month for your most profitable service, track everything, and scale what works. We’ll help you estimate that number for your trade and market.
Cole Mello is the founder of Altura Marketing Group. He studied marketing at Washington State University and manages Google Ads, Local Services Ads and Meta campaigns for local service businesses. About Altura