We get asked this one a lot, usually by a business owner who’s had three different agencies give them three different numbers and none of them explained why. So let’s actually answer it properly, rather than doing the classic agency dodge of “it depends” and leaving you none the wiser.
It does depend, but there’s a proper way to work it out rather than plucking a figure from thin air.
Start with what a lead is worth to you
Before you think about a monthly budget, work out what a new customer or enquiry is actually worth to your business. A joiner picking up a £3,000 kitchen fit-out can afford a very different cost per lead to a café hoping for a tenner at the till. Get this number sorted first, everything else follows from it.
Once you know that, you can work backwards. If a lead’s worth £50 to you and you’re comfortable spending £15 to get one, you know roughly what you can afford to pay per click, and from there what kind of monthly budget makes sense.
What we typically see work for small Wakefield and Leeds businesses
For most small to medium local businesses we work with, a starting budget somewhere between £500 and £1,500 a month tends to be the sweet spot. Enough to gather proper data and let the campaign learn, not so much that you’re burning cash before you know what’s working.
Go too low, under £300 or so, and you’ll struggle to get enough clicks to learn anything useful. The account never really gets out of the testing phase. Go in too high without a proper strategy behind it and you’ll just be paying more for the same mistakes.
Industry matters more than most people think
Trade and home services businesses (plumbers, roofers, electricians) tend to see decent results from smaller budgets because the searches are so clearly commercial, someone typing “emergency plumber Wakefield” wants a plumber today. B2B and higher-consideration purchases, legal services, bigger equipment, that sort of thing, generally need more budget and more patience because the buying decision takes longer and the clicks cost more.
The bit nobody tells you: management matters as much as budget
Here’s the honest truth. A well-managed £600 a month account will usually outperform a badly managed £2,000 a month one. We’ve taken over accounts where the previous agency had barely touched the settings in months, broad match keywords burning through budget on searches with nowt to do with the business, no negative keywords, no real testing. Fixing the account often does more good than doubling the spend.
So before you ask “how much should I spend”, it’s worth asking “is my account actually set up to spend that money well”. That’s the bit we’d want to check first with any new client, budget’s only half the conversation.
Our take
If you’re starting from scratch, we’d generally say start conservative, get 60 to 90 days of proper data, then scale up what’s working. Don’t let anyone talk you into a huge spend on day one before you know what converts. And don’t accept a budget number from an agency that hasn’t asked what a lead’s actually worth to you first, if they haven’t asked, they’re guessing.
