How Much Should You Actually Spend on Google Ads in Australia?

The honest answer is that there is no universal number — but there is a sensible starting point for almost every business. After running campaigns for trades, ecommerce brands, clinics and service businesses across Australia, we see the same patterns repeat.

Start with your cost per lead, not your budget

Most people start with "I've got $2,000 a month, what can I get?" That is backwards. Start with what a customer is worth to you, then work backwards to what you can afford to pay for a lead.

1. 1Take your average job or order value.
2. 2Multiply by your profit margin to get profit per sale.
3. 3Multiply by your close rate to get profit per lead.
4. 4Spend up to a third of that on acquiring a lead and you have a healthy, scalable account.

Realistic monthly spend by industry

• Local trades (roofing, plastering, electrical): $1,500–$4,000/month is usually enough to dominate a suburb cluster.
• Health and clinics: $2,000–$6,000/month, with strong returns once booking flow is fixed.
• Ecommerce and Shopify brands: start at $3,000/month across Shopping and Performance Max before judging results.
• High-ticket B2B and professional services: $2,500+/month with tightly matched keywords.

Why spending too little is the most expensive mistake

Under $1,000 a month, most accounts never collect enough conversion data for Google's bidding to learn. You end up paying for the education phase without ever reaching the payoff. It is better to run a focused campaign on your three highest-intent keywords with real budget than to spread $600 across ten campaigns.

A campaign that can't gather 30 conversions a month is a campaign that never gets to optimise itself.

What good actually looks like

For most Australian service businesses we manage, a healthy account lands somewhere between $40 and $120 per qualified lead, with 15–35% of those leads converting to a job. If your numbers are wildly outside that range, the issue is almost never the budget — it is match types, negative keywords, or a landing page that doesn't convert.