How Much Does Google Ads Cost for a Small Business in Canada?
There's no single price for Google Ads. You set the budget, and the cost of each click depends on your trade and city. Here's how to work out what makes sense for your business.
Google Ads doesn't have a price list. You decide how much you're willing to spend per day, and Google runs an auction every time someone searches. What you actually pay per click depends on how many other businesses want the same searches, how relevant your ad is, and where your customers are. That's why a click for 'emergency plumber' in a large city can cost many times more than a click for 'bakery near me' in a small town.
The three numbers that matter
- Daily budget: the most you're willing to spend on a campaign per day. Google can go over it on a single busy day but, averaged over a month, keeps to roughly 30.4 times your daily budget.
- Cost per click (CPC): what each visit to your website costs. You don't set this directly on most bidding strategies; the auction does.
- Cost per lead: what you pay, on average, for a call, form or booking. This is the number that tells you whether ads are worth it.
How to set a starting budget
Work backwards from what a customer is worth to you, not forwards from what feels comfortable.
- Estimate the average value of a new customer, the first job, or what they're worth over a year if they come back.
- Estimate how many leads you need to win one customer. If you close one in three quotes, that's three.
- Decide the most you'd happily pay for a new customer. Divide it by the leads needed: that's your target cost per lead.
- Start with a daily budget that can realistically produce a few leads a week in your market, then adjust once you can see real cost per lead.
Try our ROI calculator to run these numbers for your own business. It takes about a minute.
Open the ROI calculator →Why many small businesses waste their budget
- No conversion tracking. Without it, Google optimises for clicks, and you can't tell a campaign that brings calls from one that doesn't.
- Too-wide location targeting. By default, campaigns can show to people 'interested in' your area, not only people in it.
- No negative keywords. Searches for jobs, training, DIY instructions and free options eat budget quickly.
- Broad match everywhere. Very loose keywords match searches you'd never pay for.
- Sending clicks to a homepage with no clear next step.
Management fees: flat fee or percentage?
Agencies usually charge either a percentage of ad spend or a flat monthly fee. A percentage means the agency earns more when you spend more, which isn't the same thing as you earning more. A flat fee keeps the incentive on results. Whichever you choose, make sure the Google Ads account is in your name.
A simple rule of thumb
Spend enough to learn, cap it so you can't be surprised, and judge the result on cost per lead, not clicks, impressions or 'reach'. If your cost per lead is below what a customer is worth to you after a couple of months, raise the budget. If it isn't, fix tracking, targeting and the landing page before spending more.