How much should a salon spend on Google Ads?
The honest answer is a range, and it depends on one thing: what you want the ads to do. Here is the plain version, with the numbers we actually see.
The short version
- Under £100 a month — too thin to fill anything. We turn this away rather than take the money.
- £100 to £200 a month — testing the water. Roughly one colour client’s worth of spend to find out whether this fills your week.
- £200 to £500 a month — where most single-chair renters and small shops settle. Enough to show up every day in your area, not just now and then.
- £500 to £1,200 a month — a team to keep occupied. You’re competing for the higher-value work now: colour, extensions, bridal.
- £1,200 and up — two or more shops, each with its own area and its own listing.
Why “one client covers it” is the right way to think
A full head of colour is £150 to £280 in most of the country. If £250 of ads brings you two new colour clients a month, the ads have paid for themselves before you count a single rebook — and a client who found you through your own ad costs you nothing the next time she books. That is the whole difference between ads and a marketplace like Treatwell, which takes over a third of a new client’s first booking, plus VAT — and charges for her again as “new” if she’s been away a year.
A £25 fade works differently: you need volume, not one big win. That is why a proper setup prices a fade search differently to a balayage search, instead of bidding the same on everything.
Where budgets actually get wasted
Most salon ad money does not go to other salons. It goes to searches that were never going to become clients:
- hairdressing courses and NVQ qualifications
- salon jobs and apprenticeships
- free hair models
- “cut your own hair” tutorials
- clipper sets and wholesale supplies
Google’s own five-minute setup (Smart Campaigns) does not let you block these properly. Blocking them before you spend anything is the single biggest saving available — around a third of a typical self-managed budget.
The fee on top
Whatever you give Google, someone has to build and mind the thing. An agency will want a retainer in the hundreds. We charge a fixed fee by spend band — £15 a month at the bottom, £149 at the top for groups — and no commission on anything booked. The ad spend itself goes straight to Google; we never take a slice of it.
The forty-second way to size it
If you want the numbers for your own services and your own postcode — how many people nearby are searching, what an enquiry should cost, what gets blocked — the assessment on our homepage does it in three questions. No account, no card, and nothing switched on until you say so.
Questions people ask
What happens to budget I do not spend?
Nothing. Google only charges when somebody clicks, so an unspent budget is money you keep. A quiet week costs you less than a busy one. The monthly figure is a ceiling you are giving Google permission to spend, not a bill you have committed to.
Will a bigger budget put me higher up the page?
Not directly. Position comes out of the auction, which weighs your bid against how relevant your ad and your page are to what she typed. Budget decides how often and how long you appear at all. A well built small budget can outrank a careless large one.
Can I change the budget once it is running?
Yes, any month. Our fee is set by the spend band you are in, so moving up or down moves the fee with it. Nothing is locked in for a year, and you can stop entirely in a click without losing the account or the work done in it.