The short answer
Ad spend plus management equals your monthly cost.
Google Ads for a service business costs two separate amounts: the ad spend you pay Google for clicks, and the fee you pay someone to run the account. With Lithium, management starts at $500 a month plus ad spend. A typical client spends $2,000 to $5,000 a month on ads and $500 to $1,500 a month on management.
The ad spend is the part that moves. It depends on your trade, your market, how many competitors bid against you and how many jobs you want. The management fee is the part you can compare between agencies, as long as you know what it covers. The rest of this guide explains both, and the calculator below adds them up.
| Component | What it costs |
|---|---|
| Lithium management | From $500 a month; typically $500–$1,500 a month |
| Ad spend (paid to Google) | Separate from management; typically $2,000–$5,000 a month for Lithium clients |
| Your monthly total | Your ad spend plus the management fee in your proposal |
Use the calculator to add your own numbers. If you have a proposal, enter its management fee. If not, enter the amount you’re weighing and we’ll confirm the fee on a call.
Monthly Google Ads budget calculator
Enter your monthly ad spend and management fee in dollars, with up to two decimal places. Both fields are required; enter 0 if a line item is zero. A management figure below Lithium’s $500 starting price is math only, not a Lithium quote.
How Google charges
You pay per click, priced by an auction.
Google Search ads charge per click. Every time someone searches, Google runs an auction among the businesses bidding on that search. Your position depends on your bid and on how closely your ad and landing page match the search. That second part is why a well-run account can outrank a competitor with a bigger bid and pay less per click doing it.
You rarely pay your full maximum bid. Google charges roughly what it takes to hold your position against the next advertiser. So the price of a click isn’t fixed. It shifts by the hour with who else is bidding, what the searcher typed and where they are.
Your daily budget is an average, not a hard daily ceiling. On a busy day Google can spend up to twice the daily amount, then spend less on slow days, and it keeps the month within your daily budget times the average number of days in a month. Read Google’s budget explanation
What drives your cost per click
Six things decide what a click costs you.
Your trade and how urgent the job is
Emergency plumbing, HVAC repair, roofing and restoration searches cost more than lawn care or cleaning, because the jobs are worth more and buyers decide fast.
How many competitors bid in your market
A metro area with a dozen companies bidding on “plumber near me” costs far more per click than a small town with two.
How big your service area is
A wider map reaches more searches but also more people you can’t serve well. Tight targeting keeps spend on jobs you want.
How well your ads and pages match the search
Google rewards ads that match the search and land on a page about that exact job. Better relevance can lower what you pay for the same position.
When you run ads
Click costs rise in peak season and peak hours. Running emergency ads overnight costs money only if someone answers.
Which searches you allow
Without negative keywords, you pay for job seekers, DIYers and parts shoppers. A clean search terms list lowers your cost per lead without changing a single bid.
Notice that three of the six are things you control. You can’t change your trade or your competitors, but you can tighten the map, match ads to pages and block bad searches. That’s where most of the savings in a service-business account come from.
Setting your number
Work backward from the jobs you want.
The right budget starts with your business, not a rule of thumb. Decide how many new jobs you want from ads each month. Divide by the share of leads your team closes, and you have the number of leads you need. Multiply that by what a lead costs in your account, and you have your monthly ad spend.
If you’ve never run ads, you don’t know your cost per lead yet. That’s fine. The first month or two tells you. Pick a budget that keeps your main campaign running all day in your core area, track every call and form, and use the real numbers to set month three.
- 1
Pick the jobs
Choose the one or two services you most want to sell and the area you serve best.
- 2
Fund the core
Give that campaign enough daily budget to stay live from open to close without capping out.
- 3
Track every lead
Call tracking, form tracking and booked-job imports from day one, so the math is real.
- 4
Scale what books
Add budget to campaigns with the lowest cost per booked job, then add new services.
What management covers
The management fee buys the work that lowers your ad spend.
Agencies price management a few ways: a set monthly fee, a percentage of ad spend, or a mix. Whichever model you’re quoted, ask how the fee changes as your budget grows. Lithium’s management is a monthly fee from $500, separate from ad spend, with no haggling and no hidden upsells.
Whatever the model, ask exactly what the fee covers. Lithium’s Google Ads management includes conversion tracking for calls, forms and CRM outcomes, landing pages matched to each search intent, keyword and match type work, responsive search ads, location and audience targeting, bid management, remarketing and a Looker Studio report you can read. A click alone doesn’t tell you whether the inquiry became a job, so the tracking matters most.
Watch for the costs outside the fee too: a landing page build, call tracking software or a new website. If your site can’t turn paid clicks into calls, a Lithium website is typically $5,000. Our usual agreement starts with six months, then runs month to month with 30 days’ notice.
Is it worth it?
Judge Google Ads by cost per booked job.
Cost per click tells you what Google charged. Cost per booked job tells you whether to keep paying it. Add your monthly ad spend and management fee, divide by the jobs that came from ads, and compare that number with what an average job is worth to you. If a job is worth several times what it cost to win, scale up. If not, fix the account before you spend more.
In the Sarkinen Plumbing case study , Lithium doubled leads on the same budget after rebuilding the website, SEO and Google Ads together. Their ads converted at 27.37%, against an average of about 5%. Same spend, twice the leads.
Signs you’re overpaying
- No one can tell you your cost per booked job
- Ads send clicks to your homepage
- The search terms list is full of job seekers and DIYers
- Calls ring out or go to voicemail during ad hours
- Budget caps out before noon most days
Signs the money is working
- Calls and forms tracked to the campaign
- Booked jobs imported back into Google Ads
- Each service has its own landing page
- Negatives reviewed every week or two
- A monthly report in plain dollars and jobs
