Most UK small businesses need at least £500 a month in ad spend for Google Ads to produce useful data, and £1,000 to £2,500 a month gives a fairer test of one service or area. Below that, the management fee can swallow most of the budget. Our minimum ad spend is £500 a month.
The right figure depends on your cost per click and how many enquiries you need to judge the results. If clicks in your trade cost £5 and one in ten clicks becomes an enquiry, £500 buys about 100 clicks and around ten enquiries. That is enough to learn from, but not much more.
Start narrow rather than thin. One service in the towns you most want work from, with a proper budget, teaches you more than ten services sharing the same money.
A good agency will tell you if your budget is too small for your market, rather than taking the fee anyway.
Useful pages
This is one part of a bigger picture. How to choose a PPC agency in the UK covers costs, pricing models, ownership, contracts, tracking and red flags in one place.