What A Real Local Ads Budget Looks Like

A real Google Ads budget for a local painter isn’t as big as you’d think, but the dashboard numbers can be seriously misleading if you’re not tracking calls yourself.

A modest budget was doing far more than the report showed, because Google never counts the Liam who just types your number in.

The quick rundown

• Painting accounts typically run on just $600 to $1,300 a month.
• The ads dashboard reported a cost per lead of $78, but manual call checking told a different story.
• One month’s spend of about $1,000 actually generated 36 real contacts once calls and form fills were counted.
• Google never counts customers who see the ad but type your number in by hand.
• The true cost per contact was closer to $29 to $43, less than half what the dashboard showed.

Want to go deeper? Read stop losing leads from missed calls and why ad clicks aren’t turning into leads.

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