Typing this question into a search box gets you an answer to a different one. The question you asked is what businesses like yours usually spend, which is a benchmark. The question you need answered is how much you can put into ads and still learn whether they work, which is a working budget. A benchmark describes other companies' books. A working budget is built from your margins, your sales process and how much uncertainty you can afford. If you came for the second, and most owners do, skip the averages and read on.
Why the average number won't help you
Rules of thumb usually express ad spend as a share of revenue. They blur together businesses with fat margins and thin ones, brand-new companies and established ones, and firms that sell a single high-ticket job and firms that sell a hundred small ones. A share that suits a dentist with a full waiting list could sink a landscaper in a slow spring. Use a benchmark only as a sanity check after you've done your own math. If your number is wildly off from the norm, ask why. Being off doesn't automatically mean you're wrong.
Also separate advertising from everything else you spend to be found. Ad spend is the money you hand to platforms for clicks or impressions. Your website, photos, software, freelancers, agency fees and your own hours belong in the wider marketing cost. Mixing the two is how owners think they have a big ad budget when most of it is going to other things. Our guide to itemizing what marketing really costs covers the wider picture.
A small question with real money behind it
Across 5 differently worded versions of this question, the combined volume is about 60 searches a month. That's a small crowd. It also swings: the past year's high was 90 a month in 2026-05 and the low was 10 a month in 2025-09. The numbers don't tell us why, but a reasonable guess is that people ask when they're planning a season or a quarter and otherwise leave it alone. If that describes you, treat this as a planning task you return to on a schedule.
The other figure worth knowing is $27.57, the highest top-of-page bid advertisers pay on Google for this kind of search. It's a ceiling for this phrase, not a price you'll pay, and your keywords will cost something different. But it shows that clicks in a crowded, valuable category can be expensive. With a small budget, expensive clicks mean few of them, so choose narrow, specific searches over broad ones.
Work backward from what a customer is worth
The most useful budget starts at the end: what a new customer is worth to you, and how much of that you can spend to win one. Answer these in order, using your own records.
| Step | Question to answer | Where the answer comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Customer value | How much gross profit does a typical new customer bring in? | Invoices, margins and how often people come back |
| Close rate | Of the people who contact you, how many buy? | A CRM, a call log or a simple tally |
| Leads needed | How many inquiries produce the customers you want? | Your customer goal divided by your close rate |
| Price of a lead | What does an inquiry cost on the channel you're testing? | Unknown until you test; treat platform estimates as guesses |
| Ceiling | What is the most you can pay per customer and still profit? | Customer value minus the cost of serving them |
Once you have a ceiling per customer, the budget is the number of customers you'd like from ads multiplied by what you're willing to pay for each, then trimmed to what you can lose without stress. If you can't answer the close-rate question, that's the first thing to fix. Without it, every ad result is a guess.
Sizing the test for where you are now
| Your situation | How to size the budget | What to watch |
|---|---|---|
| No ads yet, unsure paid will work | A fixed amount you could lose without pain, held long enough to collect real leads | Cost per lead and whether the leads are any good |
| Ads running, results unclear | Keep spend flat while you fix how calls and forms are counted | Whether your conversions are actually being recorded |
| Ads clearly profitable | Raise spend in steps, only while cost per customer holds | How cost per customer moves as spend rises |
| Demand comes in seasons | Weight spend toward the weeks when buyers are looking | Timing against your real calendar of jobs or bookings |
Set a ceiling, a floor and a review date
Write down three things before you spend anything: the most you'll spend in a month, the least you'll spend to keep the test meaningful, and the date you'll decide whether to continue, raise or stop. Without a review date, small monthly charges turn into a habit nobody questioned. At the review, compare what you paid per customer against your ceiling, not per click or per impression. Clicks are easy to buy, and customers are the thing you want.
Where a second pair of eyes earns its keep
You can do the math above alone with a spreadsheet and an honest look at your books. Outside help pays off in narrower places: checking that leads and sales are being counted correctly, so your cost-per-customer number can be trusted; judging whether the platform's suggested spend is padded; and running the account day to day if you don't have the hours. An agency's fee is part of your marketing cost, not your ad budget, so count it separately and ask what result it should change. If someone quotes a budget before asking about your margins and close rate, be wary.