What you are actually paying for
- Ad spend. The money that goes to Google for clicks. You choose it and can change it anytime.
- Management. The fee to build, watch, and improve the account so spend turns into leads, not just traffic. Across the industry this is billed one of three ways: a percentage of your ad spend (usually 10 to 20 percent), a flat monthly fee (commonly $500 to $5,000), or a mix of the two. Worth knowing before you compare quotes: many agencies charge their percentage per platform, so running Google and Meta can mean paying it twice.
- The landing page. Where the click lands. A campaign is only as good as the page it sends people to.
A realistic starting budget
For most local businesses, $1,000 to $2,000/month in ad spend is enough to gather real data in the first month and see which keywords produce calls. Start focused on your highest-intent services, prove it works, then scale the budget on what is converting. Spreading a small budget across everything is the fastest way to waste it.
Why your cost (and your results) change month to month
Google Ads runs on a live auction, not a fixed price list. Every time someone searches, Google holds an instant auction among the businesses bidding on that keyword, and the winners get shown. You set a maximum you are willing to pay, but what you actually pay per click is set by how many competitors want the same keyword and how much they will pay for it. More competition pushes the price up, less pulls it down.
This is why the same $1,000 can buy a different number of clicks and leads from one month to the next. If more competitors enter, a rival raises their bids, or it is a busy season, your budget buys fewer clicks even though nothing changed on your end. When competition eases, it buys more. Your budget is fixed, what it buys floats with the auction.
One thing you control: relevance. Google rewards ads and landing pages that closely match the search with a better Quality Score, which lowers what you pay per click. A well-built campaign quietly pays less than a sloppy one for the exact same keyword.
Red flags to avoid
- No landing page plan. Sending paid clicks to a generic homepage wastes money.
- Locked-in contracts before anyone has proven a return.
- Reporting on clicks, not leads. You should see calls and form fills, not just impressions.
Where Fivenson sits
We charge a flat management fee and never take a percentage of your ad budget. That means we are never paid more for telling you to spend more. If we say your budget should go up, it is because the numbers say so, and if we say you are spending too much, that recommendation costs us money to make.
Management starts at $1,500 a month for a single platform. We use a flat fee rather than a percentage because percentages do not work at small-business budgets: fifteen percent of a $1,500 ad budget is $225, and $225 does not pay for a person to actually watch an account. Agencies that bill this way either need much larger budgets than yours, or they are not really watching.
Below roughly $1,000 a month in ad spend, we will usually tell you not to hire anyone yet, including us, and to put the money into the ads themselves or into your website first.
Your ad budget stays yours and stays in your own account. Google Ads, Meta Business Manager, Analytics and Search Console are all in your name with you as the owner. We are added as a user. If we part ways you keep the accounts, the history and the data, and nothing stops working.
Fivenson Studios has worked from Ann Arbor since 2012. Expertise.com, Clutch, ThreeBest Rated, Top Design Firms and the Better Business Bureau have all recognized the work, the BBB with an A+, and we have a 5.0 rating from 132 five-star reviews you can read yourself.
Common questions
Do I pay Google and the agency separately?
Yes, and you should. Your media should be billed to your own account and card. An agency that wants to sit between you and Google is also sitting between you and your data.
Is a percentage of ad spend a bad model?
It is common and it is not dishonest, but it creates an incentive worth understanding: the more you spend, the more your agency earns. We chose a flat fee for that reason.
What is a good monthly budget for Google Ads?
For a local small business, $1,000 to $2,000/month in ad spend is a realistic start. It gathers enough data to see which keywords produce leads, so you can scale what works.
Why is the cost per click so different between businesses?
It is a bidding auction. A click can be $1 to $2 in a quiet niche, $5 to $30 for competitive local services, and $50 to several hundred dollars in legal, insurance, or medical, where the priciest single terms have hit $900 or more. The more businesses bidding on a keyword, the higher the price.
Why did I get fewer leads this month for the same spend?
Because the price per click is set by a live auction, not a fixed rate. If more competitors started bidding, a rival raised their budget, or it is a busier season, your same budget buys fewer clicks and leads. When competition eases, the same money goes further. It is normal for this to move month to month, and it is why we watch the account and adjust.
Do Google Ads work better than SEO?
They do different jobs. Ads buy visibility today and stop when the budget stops. SEO builds an asset that keeps working. Most small businesses do best running a focused ad campaign while SEO ramps up.