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What a click costs
Cost per click in the UK trades varies enormously by intent and by area. As a working guide, from accounts we run and have audited:
| Search type | Typical UK cost per click | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Emergency / urgent local | £3–£9 | High intent, high competition, and everyone wants the caller who needs someone today. |
| Planned domestic, competitive city | £2.50–£7 | Multiple established firms bidding, decent volume. |
| Planned domestic, smaller town | £0.80–£3 | Fewer bidders. We have run accounts at £0.95 average. |
| Commercial / specialist | £5–£20 | Very low volume, very high contract value, so bidders can afford a lot. |
| Informational (“how much does X cost”) | £0.40–£1.50 | Cheap because it converts poorly — usually better won organically. |
Two things move these more than anything else. Ad relevance — a tightly matched ad on a tight ad group genuinely pays less per click than a vague one for the same position. And geography — the same search can cost three times more in a large city than in a market town twenty miles away.
What to budget monthly
The honest floor is around £400–£500 a month of ad spend. Below that, in a trade where clicks cost £3–£5, you are buying roughly a hundred clicks a month, which will produce perhaps five to ten enquiries. That is not enough data to optimise on, so you spend three months learning very little and conclude that Google Ads does not work.
| Monthly ad spend | Realistic for | What to expect |
|---|---|---|
| £400–£600 | One town, one service, testing | 5–15 enquiries. Enough to prove or disprove the concept. |
| £600–£1,200 | Most local trade firms | 15–40 enquiries. The sensible working range. |
| £1,200–£2,500 | Multi-town coverage or several services | Enough volume to run separate campaigns properly. |
| £2,500+ | Regional coverage or commercial | Beyond this in a single town you usually exhaust genuine high-intent search and start paying for marginal traffic. |
That last row matters and is rarely said: search advertising has a ceiling. You cannot sell to more people than are searching. Once you own the high-intent searches in your area, more budget buys worse traffic, and the right move is either to widen geography or to add a demand-creation channel.
What a good cost per lead looks like
There is no universal figure, which is why anyone quoting one should be treated carefully. Actual numbers from accounts we run:
- £10.79 per conversion at a 12.76% click-through rate on a Google Ads account.
- £0.95 average cost per click at an 11.48% click-through rate — the result of relevance, not luck.
- 354 conversions in 30 days at a 21.08% conversion rate, on a deliberately narrow campaign.
Equally, we have run accounts where £60 per enquiry was excellent, because the average contract cleared £9,000. The headline number is meaningless without the job value beside it.
The arithmetic that decides it
Two numbers, ten seconds:
Value per enquiry = average job value × close
rate.
If your average job is £2,400 and you win one quote in four, each enquiry
is worth £600 of revenue. At a £40 cost per enquiry that is fifteen
times return before your costs. At £300 it is marginal.
Then work backwards to a budget. If you want four extra jobs a month at a one-in-four close rate, you need sixteen enquiries. At a £40 cost per enquiry that is £640 of ad spend. Add management and you have a real, defensible monthly figure rather than a guess.
Do this before you speak to any agency. It is the fastest way to tell whether someone is quoting you a plan or a number they made up.
What management should cost
Three models in the UK market:
- Flat monthly fee. Typically £250–£600 for a local trade account, and what we use. Predictable, and the agency has no incentive to inflate your spend.
- Percentage of spend. Usually 10–20%. The obvious problem: the agency earns more when you spend more, whether or not spending more is right for you.
- Performance / per-lead. Sounds aligned, and usually is not. It creates pressure to count weak enquiries as leads, and you rarely own the account at the end.
Whatever the model, insist on two things: the account is in your name, and ad spend goes to Google on your card without markup. An agency that cannot agree to both is telling you something.
How to make it cheaper
- Negatives, weekly. The single biggest saving in every account we have ever audited.
- Location targeting on “presence”. One checkbox; stops you paying for the wrong end of the country.
- Tighter ad groups. Relevance lowers cost per click for the same position. This is free money.
- Match the landing page to the search. Raises conversion rate, which lowers cost per enquiry without touching the bid.
- Ad scheduling. If nobody answers the phone at 9pm, do not pay for 9pm clicks.
- Fix follow-up. Missed-call text-back costs nothing per enquiry and raises the number that become jobs, which lowers cost per job — the number that actually matters.
Rather have someone else do this?We run exactly this for trade and construction firms across the UK. Call and we will tell you what is realistic in your area, including when the answer is that it is not worth it.
Call 07443 392243WhatsAppCommon questions
Is Google Ads worth it for a small trade business?
It depends on average job value and close rate. Above roughly £400 average job value with a reasonable close rate, usually yes. Below that, the arithmetic gets difficult and you would often do better on Google Business Profile and reviews.
Do I pay Google or the agency?
Ad spend should go to Google directly on your own card. The agency invoices only its management fee. Any arrangement where an agency bills you a single combined figure makes it impossible to verify what was actually spent.
How long before I can judge it?
Ninety days. Month one is largely buying data, month two is cutting waste, month three is where a stable cost per enquiry appears. Judging at thirty days is judging the learning period.