Budget planning
How Much Should a Small Business Spend on Google Ads?
Start with what you can afford to pay for a customer and what you need to learn. A useful Google Ads budget funds a defined test without putting operating cash under pressure. It is not a fixed percentage or a number every South African small business should copy.
Published 26 August 2026 · Updated 1 September 2026 · By Cadence Marketing
Set an affordable acquisition cost
Work out the contribution left after delivering a typical sale, then decide how much can support acquisition while leaving room for overheads and profit. Avoid using revenue alone: two businesses with the same selling price can have very different margins. Be conservative about repeat purchases until you have evidence that customers return.
Work backwards from customers to leads
Illustration only: if you allow R500 in media cost to acquire a customer and one in five qualified leads becomes a customer, the media allowance is R100 per qualified lead. Ten such leads imply R1,000 in media if that cost can actually be achieved. This is a planning threshold, not evidence that the market can deliver leads at R100. Include management fees when assessing total profitability.
Check whether the search market supports the plan
Compare your threshold with location-specific Keyword Planner estimates and your own landing-page performance. If clicks are costly or the page converts poorly, the planned budget may buy too little useful evidence. Narrow the offer, improve the page or reconsider the channel before committing more money.
Define the test before launching
Choose one offer, a service area and a small set of relevant searches. Agree a maximum test spend, the conversion actions to record and who qualifies enquiries. Review tracking and irrelevant traffic early; judge commercial performance using the volume and quality of evidence rather than a promised number of days.
Decide when to stop or expand
Stop and investigate broken tracking, irrelevant enquiries or an unaffordable customer cost. Expand gradually when qualified leads arrive at a sustainable total cost and the team can respond. Keep a record of changes so a better result can be connected to an actual decision.