How much does Google Ads management cost for a local business in Houston?
Google Ads has two separate costs: the ad spend, which goes to Google from your own account, and the management fee, which pays whoever runs it. Insist a proposal quotes both separately. At BayouEdge the conversion side — landing pages, tracking and follow-up — is built into packages running $750 to $3,500 a month, with setup from $2,500.
The two numbers
Ad spend. Paid to Google, from an account in your business name. You set the budget, you can see every dollar of it, and it should never pass through an agency's account without being visible to you.
Management. What you pay for keyword selection, ad writing, negative keywords, landing pages, bid strategy and — most importantly — the ongoing work of cutting what does not convert.
Blended quotes hide which is which. If you cannot tell from a proposal how much reaches Google, ask before anything else.
Common management fee structures
Percentage of spend. Simple, and it has an obvious conflict: the fee rises with spend whether or not the spend is working.
Flat monthly. Predictable and easier to compare. The incentive is cleaner.
Performance-based. Sounds ideal, usually complicated. What counts as a lead, who decides, and what happens to disputed ones all need defining before you sign anything.
None is inherently right. What matters is that the structure is stated plainly and that you can leave.
Where Google Ads fits at BayouEdge
The conversion side — the landing pages, the tracking, the follow-up that decides whether a click becomes a job — is built into the packages, $750 to $3,500 a month with setup from $2,500.
That is deliberate. Ads amplify whatever happens after the click. Sending paid traffic to a page that does not convert and a phone nobody answers is buying an expensive way to disappoint people.
Whether you should run ads at all
Ads are right when:
- You need work now and cannot wait for search rankings
- The job value is high enough to absorb a click cost
- You can answer the phone quickly during the hours the ads run
Ads are wrong when:
- Nobody is available to answer
- The landing page does not say what you do and where
- You have no way of knowing which calls came from ads
The last one is the most common and the most expensive. Running ads without call tracking means judging a channel by feel.
The minimum honest budget
Too small a budget cannot produce enough data to learn from, so it never improves and you conclude ads do not work. Rather than a fixed floor, the test is whether the budget can buy enough clicks in your trade to see a pattern within a few weeks. In competitive Houston trades, that is a real constraint worth discussing before starting.
Before you spend anything
Check that calls are tracked and answered. Ads make an existing system busier; they do not fix one.
Frequently asked questions
Should my ad spend go through the agency's account?
No. The Google Ads account should be in your business name so you can see every dollar and keep the history if you change providers.
Is percentage-of-spend or flat fee better?
Flat fee has the cleaner incentive — a percentage rises with spend whether or not the spend is working. What matters most is that the structure is stated plainly and you are not locked in.
What is the minimum budget worth starting with?
Enough to buy sufficient clicks in your trade to see a pattern within a few weeks. Too small and the campaign never gathers enough data to improve, which looks like ads not working.
When should I not run Google Ads?
When nobody can answer the phone during ad hours, when the landing page does not clearly say what you do and where, or when you have no call tracking — because then you are judging the channel by feel.