How much should a small business spend on ads?

Enough to get a readable number of clicks in the category you are in, which varies enormously. The useful version of this question is what one customer is worth to you, because that sets what a click can be worth. We would work that out with you before proposing anything.

How long before ads work?

Ads deliver traffic immediately and useful data slowly. The first few weeks are mostly about finding out which searches are worth paying for and turning off the ones that are not.

Google, Facebook, or both?

Search ads reach people already looking for what you sell. Social ads interrupt people who were not. For most local service businesses the first is the easier place to start, because the intent is already there.

Can I run them myself?

Yes, and plenty of owners do. The parts that are worth paying somebody for are the negative keyword work, the conversion tracking, and having somebody look at it every week rather than every quarter.

What decides what I spend on ads?

Ads are the one channel where you can turn the volume up tomorrow. That is the appeal and it is the trap, because the wrong campaign spends just as fast as the right one.

Every search ad you have ever seen was placed by an auction that ran in the time it took the page to load. Understanding that auction is most of what separates a budget that works from one that quietly drains.

Nothing on this page is a promise about what you will pay or what you will get back. Those depend on your category, your area and your competition, and anybody quoting you a number before looking at all three is guessing.

You are not bidding against a price list.

Google ranks the ads for a search by combining what each advertiser is willing to pay with how good a match the ad and its landing page are for that search. A better match can beat a bigger bid, and it usually costs less per click when it wins.

That is the whole reason "just raise the budget" is bad advice. The reliable way to bring down what a click costs you is almost always to make the ad and the page it points to match the search more closely.

The three questions that decide everything

Before a campaign is worth turning on, these have to have answers. If any one of them does not, ads will spend money teaching you the answer, which is the expensive way to learn it.

What is one customer worth to you? Not one sale. One customer, including the work they come back for. That number sets the ceiling on everything else, and most owners have never written it down.
How many enquiries turn into customers? If one in three people who call become customers, a click that leads to a call is worth three times more than it looks. If you do not know this ratio, the first job is counting, not advertising.
What happens when the phone rings? Ads deliver enquiries into whatever process already exists. A business that takes two days to call back will lose most of what it buys, and no amount of campaign work fixes that.

Where small budgets get wasted

Almost always in the same four places, and all four are settings rather than strategy.

A radius far wider than you will drive The default targeting is bigger than most local businesses want. You pay for clicks from people who will never become customers because they are forty-five minutes away.
Broad keywords with no negatives "Plumber" catches people searching for plumbing jobs, plumbing courses, and how to fix a tap themselves. A negative keyword list is unglamorous and it is where the savings are.
Every ad pointing at the homepage Somebody who searched for one specific service and landed on a page listing nine has been asked to do the sorting themselves. Most of them leave.
Nothing counted at the other end If calls and form fills are not being recorded as results, the campaign is optimising toward clicks, which is the one thing you do not actually want.

When ads are the wrong first move

If the website cannot take an enquiry cleanly, or the business has no way to answer one quickly, ads amplify a leak. We will say so rather than take the work, because a campaign that spends a month proving the site does not convert is a month nobody enjoyed.

Ads also work best next to something slower. Search results, reviews and a site that reads well keep earning after the budget stops; ads stop the day you stop paying. Running one without the other is a choice, not a strategy.

The questions we get asked.

How much should a small business spend on ads?: Enough to get a readable number of clicks in the category you are in, which varies enormously. The useful version of this question is what one customer is worth to you, because that sets what a click can be worth. We would work that out with you before proposing anything.
How long before ads work?: Ads deliver traffic immediately and useful data slowly. The first few weeks are mostly about finding out which searches are worth paying for and turning off the ones that are not.
Google, Facebook, or both?: Search ads reach people already looking for what you sell. Social ads interrupt people who were not. For most local service businesses the first is the easier place to start, because the intent is already there.
Can I run them myself?: Yes, and plenty of owners do. The parts that are worth paying somebody for are the negative keyword work, the conversion tracking, and having somebody look at it every week rather than every quarter.

Not sure whether ads are your next move?

Tell us what you sell and what one customer is worth to you. If ads are the wrong answer we will say so, and tell you what we would do instead.

Hello@GeekThangs.com Start a Project

Based in St. Clair Shores, working across Metro Detroit.