How Much Does Paid Advertising Cost?
There are two numbers, and conflating them is the most expensive mistake in this category: what you pay the platforms, and what you pay to have it run properly.
Ad spend for a local business typically starts around $1,000 a month to gather usable data and runs to $10,000 or more in competitive categories. Management is charged either as a percentage of spend — commonly 10% to 20% — or as a flat monthly fee, usually $500 to $2,500 for a local account. Those are separate costs and any quote that blurs them is worth questioning.
The spend figure is set by your market, not by your agency. A cost per click of $4 and a close rate of one in five booked jobs means roughly $100 in clicks per job before anything else. Work that backwards from the number of jobs you actually want and you have your floor — which is a far better way to set a budget than picking a round number.
Below about $1,000 a month in most local categories the account cannot gather enough conversion data to optimize against, so you pay for learning that never completes. That is the real argument against very small budgets: not that they are too small to work, but that they are too small to improve.
What each level buys
These are market ranges — what local businesses across the US typically pay, not a quote. Our own plans are further down and are priced as bundles rather than per service.
One location, one or two services, a tightly drawn service area.
Enough to run search campaigns on your highest-intent terms and accumulate meaningful data within a couple of months. Management on top, typically a flat fee at this level rather than a percentage.
Businesses in a contested category, or covering a real metro service area.
Search plus retargeting and usually a social channel, with campaigns split by intent and geography. This is where separating emergency from considered demand starts paying for itself.
Legal, medical, restoration, multi-location home services, expensive metros.
Categories where a single customer is worth thousands and clicks cost accordingly. Management typically moves to a percentage of spend at this level because the work scales with the account.
Six things that decide where you land
What a click costs in your category
This varies by an order of magnitude. Legal and restoration terms can run $30 to $100 a click; many retail and service categories sit under $5. Your category sets your floor before anyone touches the account.
Where you are
The same keyword costs several times more in Seattle than in Lufkin. Expensive metros need larger budgets to generate the same number of leads, and cheap markets reach the ceiling of available demand sooner.
How wide you target
The most common source of waste in local paid advertising is geography — paying for clicks from people who will never travel to you. Narrowing the target usually lowers cost per booked job without lowering spend.
How seasonal your demand is
Categories with sharp seasons need budget concentrated into the months that matter. A flat monthly budget overspends in the quiet weeks and runs out in the ones that decide the year.
What happens after the click
A landing page that loads slowly or hides the price wastes a proportion of every click you buy. Conversion rate is a direct multiplier on your effective cost per lead, and it is usually the cheapest thing to fix.
Whether the phone gets answered
In urgent categories, unanswered calls are the single largest hidden cost in a paid account. Buying emergency clicks and letting them go to voicemail is the most expensive way to run advertising there is.
What the number does not cover
- Creative productionVideo, photography and design for social campaigns are usually quoted separately from management. Search campaigns need much less of it; social campaigns can need a lot.
- Landing pagesMany accounts underperform because they point at a homepage. Purpose-built landing pages are a distinct piece of work and are worth their cost quickly in a paid account.
- Call tracking and analyticsTracking numbers and conversion reporting carry small monthly tool costs. They are not optional if anyone intends to know what the advertising did.
Where this sits in our plans
Paid advertising sits in the Viral tier, which is quoted rather than listed — because the management fee depends on the spend and the spend depends on your category and market, and publishing a single number for it would be fiction.
The rest of the plan ladder starts at $497 a month and is listed in full on the pricing page. If you want a figure for your own category and service area rather than a range, the growth proposal produces one.
Visionary
Vantage Plan +
- Your CMO
A Chief Marketing Officer who does the work with you.
- AI Assistant
Centralize web chat, Messenger and SMS lead capture.
*Plus a one-time setup fee. Multi-location and franchise pricing available on request.
Viral
Velocity Plan +
Everything in Velocity, plus the channels and custom work that come with scale. Priced against what you actually need.
Contact Us- Paid Advertising
Targeted ads that reach new local audiences.
- Vizible Leads
Identify site visitors, even without a form fill.
- Custom Integrations
Seamless, secure connections between your tools.
- Website Development
A site built to showcase your business in search.
Questions about paid advertising pricing
Ask for it in writing before you sign anything. The common structures are a flat management fee or a percentage of spend, typically 10% to 20%. What you should not accept is a single blended number with no breakdown — you cannot tell whether your spend went up or your fee did.
In most local categories, around $1,000 a month of ad spend. Below that the account rarely accumulates enough conversions to optimize against, so you are paying for a learning period that never ends. Cheaper markets and narrow categories can work on less.
Traffic within days, leads usually within the first two weeks, and a stable cost per lead after about two to three months. It is the fastest channel to produce something and the slowest to become efficient, which is why judging it at thirty days is misleading in both directions.
In fee terms yes, and often more expensive in total. The platforms are built to make spending easy and efficiency hard, and most self-run local accounts lose more to loose targeting and untracked calls than a management fee would have cost. It is genuinely worth doing yourself if someone will own it weekly.
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