How Much Does Google Ads Management Cost in the UK?

Short answer: at Byter, Google Ads management starts at £500 a month plus VAT. Your ad spend is separate and is paid straight to Google from your own account, so you always see exactly what the clicks cost. Google ads management is also included in our Silver (£1,500) and Gold (£3,000) marketing packages, alongside social media, content and SEO.

There are two costs in any Google Ads campaign, and it helps to keep them apart.

The two costs

1. Ad spend. What you pay Google for clicks. You set the budget. For a local business it might be a few hundred pounds a month; for a busy restaurant group or a clinic chasing high-value treatments, much more. The price of each click depends on the search: "emergency dentist" costs more per click than "brunch near me".

2. Management fee. What you pay the agency to build, run and improve the campaigns. Ours starts at £500 a month and scales with the budget and how complicated the account is: more locations, more services and more campaign types mean more work.

Be wary of any agency that bundles the two into one figure. You cannot tell what you are paying for management, and you often do not own the ad account at the end.

What the management fee covers

• Set-up: account structure, keyword research, ad copy, location targeting, and conversion tracking so every call, form and booking is counted.
• Weekly management: search terms checked for wasted spend, negative keywords added, bids and budgets moved to what works.
• Testing: new ads and landing pages tried against the current best.
• Reporting: a monthly report in plain English on cost per enquiry or booking, not just clicks.

For hospitality clients we usually split campaigns into brand searches (people looking for you by name), "near me" searches and the area or cuisine you want to win, such as "Indian restaurant West End". Each needs a different budget and message.

How to judge whether it is working

Work out what a new customer is worth to you, then compare it with what each enquiry or booking costs through Google. If a new patient is worth £800 over a year and Google brings them in at £60 each, the fee pays for itself many times over. If nobody can tell you what a booking costs, the tracking is the first thing to fix.

Questions to ask any agency:

1. Who owns the ad account? It should be in your name, with the agency given access.
2. Is conversion tracking set up and tested? Calls, forms and online bookings should all be counted.
3. What is the cost per enquiry or booking, by campaign?
4. Can I see the search terms report? It shows exactly which searches you paid for.
5. What is the minimum term? Ours is six months, then month to month.

Next step

If you already run Google Ads and want a second opinion on where the budget goes, get in touch or see our pay per click service.