How Much Should a Denver Business Spend on Google Ads?

Take your average job value and your close rate on inbound leads. If a job is worth $6,000 and you close one in four leads, a lead is worth $1,500 to you. If clicks cost $12 and one in ten becomes a lead, a lead costs $120 in ad spend. That math works, and it tells you to spend more, not less.

Run the same math with a $60 ticket and it usually tells you Google Ads is the wrong channel. That is useful too.

Below roughly $1,000 a month in spend, most local campaigns cannot gather enough data to optimize. You get a trickle of clicks, no statistical signal, and a conclusion that ads don't work. $1,500 to $3,000 is where most Denver trades campaigns start behaving predictably.

Trades run about $8 to $30 a click depending on urgency — emergency terms cost the most. Dental implants and Invisalign run well past $20. Legal is higher still. Retail and restaurants are cheap by comparison but convert differently.

Expect management to be separate from spend, either a flat fee or a percentage. Be careful with percentage-of-spend deals: they reward the agency for spending more of your money. Ask for the split in writing, and keep your card on your own account.

Weeks one and two: launch tight campaigns on high-intent searches only, with call tracking on from day one. Weeks three through six: read the search terms report and block junk aggressively. Week eight: cut the campaigns that aren't producing and move that budget into the ones that are.

Most wasted ad spend in Denver isn't wasted on the wrong strategy. It is wasted on nobody reading the search terms report.