How much advertising costs depends on the channel. For a local business budgeting for the first time, Google Search clicks commonly run $5 to $50, Meta typically charges $10 to $40 per 1,000 impressions, and agency management adds $1,500 to $10,000 a month. In our experience, $2,000 a month on a single channel is enough to start learning.
Below we cover each channel, the 2 costs owners mix up, how much it takes to learn anything, and how to compare channels by cost per booked job. If you want help with this, start with our advertising services.
Advertising Costs by Channel: Typical Market Ranges
Platforms charge per click, per 1,000 impressions or per lead. The ranges below are typical market ranges, not quotes, and your trade, town and ads all move them.
Google Search Ads
You pay when someone clicks your ad after searching for what you sell. For local services, a click commonly costs $5 to $50. Urgent, high-ticket trades like roofing and HVAC sit at the top, because one job is worth a lot and many businesses bid for it.
Meta Ads (Facebook and Instagram)
Meta mostly charges per 1,000 impressions, typically $10 to $40 for a local audience. In our experience, service businesses pay $20 to $150 per lead. Reach is cheaper than search, but nobody scrolling was looking for you, so the ad has to earn the stop.
LinkedIn Ads
LinkedIn targets by job title, industry and company size, and that precision is expensive. Clicks typically cost several times what they cost on Meta, so LinkedIn only fits B2B companies where one new account is worth thousands.
YouTube and Connected TV
YouTube ads are bought per view or per 1,000 impressions, and a view commonly costs a few cents. Connected TV, meaning ads on smart TVs through streaming apps, typically runs $25 to $50 per 1,000 impressions. Both need a real video, which is a cost of its own.
Local Services Ads
Google's Local Services Ads charge per lead, not per click, and show above the regular ads with a verification badge. Your trade and market set the price. In typical markets a lead commonly lands between $25 and $100, and roofing and HVAC often cost more.
Direct Mail, Radio and Billboards
Offline media is bought by the piece or by the flight (a set run of weeks). Direct mail commonly costs 50 cents to $2 per piece once printing and postage are in. A 2 to 4 week flight on local radio commonly starts at a few thousand dollars, and New York market stations charge much more. A billboard can run under $1,000 for a 4-week flight on a local road, or $15,000 or more for a highway bulletin. This ties directly into billboard advertising costs in New Jersey, which we cover in a separate post.
Ad Spend vs. Management: The 2 Costs of Advertising
The most common budgeting mistake we see is treating advertising as a single number. It is 2.
Media spend, or ad spend, is what you pay the platform, like Google, Meta or the radio station. Management is what you pay a person or agency to plan campaigns, write and test ads, set up tracking and adjust the account every week. Agencies typically charge $1,500 to $10,000 a month for management. Our published engagements run $3,500 to $6,500 a month plus ad spend.
Ask every quote which number it is. A $3,000 plan that is $1,500 of management and $1,500 of spend buys half the ads you think it does. The reverse hurts too, because $5,000 of spend with nobody watching it tends to leak money on bad keywords and tired ads. Creative, like video and printing, is often a third line.
Neither number means much until you pick your channels. For the next step, read our post on the main types of advertising.
How Much Should You Spend on Advertising to Learn Anything?
Most first budgets are split too thin: $500 on Google, $500 on Meta, $500 on a radio test and $500 on something a friend recommended.
Ad platforms learn from results, and so do you. In our experience, each channel needs about 10 leads a month to tell a weak ad from a slow week. At $25 a click, $500 on Google buys 20 clicks and maybe 2 leads. That is too little to judge.
Now put all $2,000 into Google Search for a home service business:
- At $25 per click, $2,000 buys about 80 clicks a month.
- If 1 in 10 visitors becomes a lead, that is 8 leads, or $250 per lead.
- If 1 in 3 leads books, that is 2 or 3 jobs, or roughly $750 per booked job.
- Over 90 days, $6,000 buys about 24 leads and 8 booked jobs, enough to see which keywords and ads produce work.
If your average job is worth $5,000, 8 jobs is $40,000 in sales on $6,000 of spend. If it is worth $300, the same math says Google Search is the wrong first channel. Either way, you learned something the $500 split never teaches.
Not sure if your budget is too small or spread too thin? Start with a free Growth Score. Take the free Growth Score →
How to Compare Advertising Costs by Cost per Booked Job
Every platform reports the number that makes it look best. Meta shows cheap clicks. Google shows conversions. The radio rep shows reach.
None of those is what you pay for a customer. The fair comparison is cost per booked job: a channel's spend divided by the jobs it booked. Say Meta leads cost $40 and 1 in 8 books, or $320 per booked job. Google leads cost $150 and 1 in 2 books, or $300 per booked job. The channel that looked almost 4 times more expensive is cheaper where it counts.
To get it, tag each lead by channel, mark it booked or not in your CRM, and do the division monthly.
What counts as good depends on what a customer is worth. A roofer can pay $300 per booked job, because a replacement is worth many thousands. A restaurant cannot pay $300 for a table of 4. It watches cost per reservation and counts on repeat visits to earn the ad back. The same problem looks different by vertical, as our page on marketing for restaurants and hospitality brands shows.
What Advertising Costs When the Setup Is Right
Platform prices are mostly out of your control. What you get for them is not.
When we rebuilt Google Ads for a NJ roofer, cost per lead fell from $912 to $197, and conversions went from 21 to 196 in 90 days, at a 15.62% click-through rate. Same channel, same market, and each lead cost about a fifth of what it did before. The auction did not get cheaper. The account got better.
CapYear Academy shows the same thing on Meta, where $3,729 of ad spend produced $66,176 in enrollment revenue, a 1,774% return on ad spend. That is about what the $2,000 plan above spends in 2 months, and it was judged by revenue, not clicks. For a real example, read the CapYear Academy results.
What to Fund First When You Advertise for the First Time
On a first budget, order matters more than amount.
- Tracking comes first, so every lead is tied to the channel that produced it.
- Next, fund the channel closest to the purchase, which for most service businesses is Google Search and Local Services Ads.
- If you sell products, classes or events people do not search for yet, start with Meta instead.
- Add a second channel only after the first books jobs at a cost you can live with for 60 to 90 days.
- Save YouTube, connected TV, radio and billboards for last, once the channels that capture demand are working.
Most service businesses spend 5 to 10 percent of revenue on marketing in total, with ad spend and management both inside that number.
Timing matters too. New campaigns typically need 60 to 90 days to learn, so an account that starts in April is still learning when the busy season hits. Start before you need the work. It connects to a point we made in our post on why spring is the most expensive season to skip marketing.
Need a campaign that reaches the right buyers across channels? Plan your next campaign with our NJ advertising team.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much should a small business spend on advertising?
Most service businesses spend 5 to 10 percent of revenue on marketing, and ad spend is one part of that. The floor is set by leads, not revenue. Your budget should buy at least 10 leads a month on each channel you run, at your real cost per lead. If that is more than you can spend, run fewer channels instead of smaller budgets everywhere.
What is the cheapest way to advertise?
Per impression, Meta, direct mail to a tight area and a billboard on a local road can all look cheap. Per customer, the cheapest channel is the one that books jobs for the least money, and for service businesses that is often search, where buyers are already looking. Compare channels by cost per booked job over at least 90 days before you decide which one is cheap.
Does an advertising budget include agency fees?
Usually not. Most quotes list ad spend and management separately. Ad spend goes to Google, Meta or the media outlet. The management fee pays the person or agency running the campaigns, typically $1,500 to $10,000 a month. Ask every quote to show both numbers, and check whether creative like video or printing is extra, so you know how much of your budget actually buys ads.
