There’s no fixed number for Google Ads budget – it depends on your industry’s competition and cost per click. We build a starting budget based on your goals during a free audit, then adjust based on real performance data.
Google Ads can be one of the fastest ways to generate leads for a South African SME, or one of the quickest ways to waste a marketing budget – the difference almost always comes down to tracking and ongoing management, not the platform itself.
Businesses that manage their own Google Ads without proper setup typically waste 20–40% of their budget on irrelevant clicks – traffic that was never going to convert. Too many small businesses have campaigns running that report clicks and impressions but can’t say how many of those clicks actually became a phone call, a form submission, or a WhatsApp message. Without that link, it’s impossible to know whether a campaign is actually working or just spending.
We build every campaign around proper conversion tracking from day one, so every rand of spend can be traced back to whether it produced a real enquiry – not just a click.
Targeting the searches that lead to real enquiries, not just traffic.
Search, Performance Max and remarketing campaigns structured around your specific goals.
Written and designed to match what your customers are actually looking for.
proper tracking of calls, form fills and WhatsApp clicks, not just clicks on ads.
Weekly monitoring and bid adjustments based on what's actually converting.
Actively excluding irrelevant searches so budget isn't wasted on the wrong traffic.
Google Ads captures people already looking for what you sell right now.
Every rand spent can be traced to a specific outcome, making budget decisions easier to justify.
Campaigns can begin small and grow as real leads come through, reducing the risk of overcommitting upfront.
Paid and organic visibility together dominate more of the search results page than either alone.
Account structure, tracking and campaigns built from scratch or audited if you already run ads.
Campaigns go live with a defined budget and clear goals from day one.
Weekly adjustments based on real conversion data, not guesswork.
A plain-language breakdown of spend, leads and cost per enquiry.
Without it, you're optimising toward clicks instead of actual leads, which often wastes significant budget.
Even a perfectly targeted ad fails if the page it lands on doesn't make the next step obvious.
Broad match without careful management frequently triggers ads for irrelevant, unrelated searches.
Campaigns often need 2–4 weeks of data before Google's algorithm has enough signal to optimise effectively.
Google Ads has two separate costs: your ad spend (paid directly to Google) and our management fee. Ad spend depends entirely on your industry’s competitiveness. As a general guide, South African SME digital marketing budgets typically run 5–12% of revenue across all channels combined, and Google Ads management fees in this market commonly range from roughly R3,000 to R15,000 a month depending on account size and complexity – we’ll recommend a realistic starting budget based on your goals and industry during a free audit, rather than a generic number that won’t reflect your actual market.
It depends on intent - Google Ads captures people actively searching for what you offer, while Facebook is stronger for awareness and visual products. Many of our clients run both.
Campaigns typically start generating traffic within days of launch, with optimisation improving lead quality over the first 4–6 weeks.
No - we work on rolling agreements so you're never locked into a service that isn't performing.
Google's automated campaign type that shows ads across Search, Display, YouTube and more from one campaign - useful for businesses with strong product feeds or broader goals, but not always the right starting point for every business.
We can work within your existing account and history - starting fresh is only recommended when the account structure is fundamentally broken.
