Google Ads on £300 a month: a realistic plan for a Warwick District small business
I get asked a version of this question most weeks: “Is it even worth running Google Ads with a small budget?” The honest answer is that it depends entirely on how narrowly you aim. Spread £300 across the whole of the West Midlands and it will vanish by Wednesday. Point it at one service, in three towns, for people ready to buy, and it can be the best money you spend.
Here is the plan.
Pick one service, not the business
Do not advertise “plumbing”. Advertise “boiler repair”. Do not advertise “the salon”. Advertise “balayage”. One offer, one landing page, one set of keywords. A small budget cannot afford to learn about ten things at once.
Draw the map tight
Target Kenilworth, Leamington Spa and Warwick by town name, or by a radius of a few miles around your postcode, and exclude everywhere else. If you are a shop or café, tighter still. Then check where the clicks actually come from after two weeks and cut anywhere that spends without ringing the phone.
Only pay for intent
Use phrase and exact match keywords that contain buying language: “near me”, the town name, “price”, “book”, “same day”, “emergency”. Add a long negative keyword list on day one: “jobs”, “course”, “free”, “how to”, “DIY”, and the names of competitors you do not want to pay to be compared with. Half of a small budget is normally wasted on searches that were never going to buy.
Send them somewhere that finishes the job
Never send an ad to the homepage. Send it to a page about the one thing you advertised, with the price or a starting price, a phone number that works on a tap, and a form with three fields. Every extra step is a place to lose someone who was ready.
Measure calls, not clicks
Clicks are what Google sells. Calls and forms are what you buy. Set up conversion tracking for phone taps and form submissions before the campaign goes live, otherwise you will be making decisions on the wrong number for months. If tracking sounds like a job you would rather not do, it is the single most useful thing to pay someone for.
What good looks like on £300
For a local service business in Warwick District, a tight campaign should deliver somewhere between eight and twenty enquiries a month from that budget, depending on the trade and the season. If it is delivering fewer than five after the first full month, something in the plan above is loose, and it is almost always the keywords or the landing page. For Kenilworth Vets, a tightly aimed paid search and paid social plan brought in nearly 1,000 new customers in the first year at under £5 per sign-up.
If you would like a second pair of eyes on an account, I audit small Google Ads accounts for a flat fee and credit it back if you ask me to run it afterwards. See the paid ads services, or book a free call.