The main cost for Google Adwords is usually the cost you pay to Google which is known as you Ad Spend. There are a couple of other costs typically associated with campaigns:
If you are paying an agency or a freelancer to manage the campaign for you then that will be another cost. However a good agency will provide you with a much better return on your ad spend so they should pay for themselves many times over.
You may also pay for call tracking software that makes it easier to track calls and then use that data to improve the campaign.
There may also be other paid software that you or your agency are using to manage your campaign like wordstream
How Much Ad Spend?
You can set your own Google Adwords daily budget and that is the most you will pay per day. Google aims to average this out over a month so you may pay up to twice this amount in one day but then less on weekends or quiet days.
The higher your ad spend the more clicks you will get and the more business you will get.
There will be a certain number of searches for your services each day, and your competitors will be bidding to come up when someone makes one of those searches. The more you bid the higher you come up and the more of the clicks you will get. Being lower down means less clicks but it also means you pay less for each click.
So the cost you end up paying per new customer will be roughly equal to what your competitors are willing to pay for a customer. If your campaign is better then you will pay less than they are.
How Much Does Adwords Management Cost?
Anyone can start their own business managing adwords for businesses. Google has a qualification but you aren’t required to pass it. As a result there are a wide range of prices charged and a wide range in the quality of management provided. The performance of the adwords manager is more important than the price they charge.
I’ve personally taken over campaigns from other agencies and improved their performance many times over, one client I managed to get 8x more business. As the management fee is a lot less than the ad spend I could have charged 30x more than the previous agency in that instance and it still would have been better value for money. Of course I’d never charge that much, but that is why I say the ability of the agency is more important than the fee.
Some agencies charge a fixed fee from £100 per month (usually a freelancer) to £5,000+ per month (big agencies) depending on the campaign they are managing and the size of the agencies. Some agencies charge a percentage model 25% for smaller campaigns down to 10% for large campaigns.
Lastly, some agencies deal with the whole process including paying the Google Ad Spend and you pay them based on results, for instance you pay them an agreed amount for each enquiry you receive or a percentage of the sales generated.
What Other Adwords Costs?
Call tracking specifically for Adwords will depend on the call volume but is available from £50 per month.
How To Choose An Adwords Management Agency
I’ve seen campaigns, typically in large companies where they don’t really track where their business comes from, and the companies have wasted tens of thousands of pounds with almost no enquiries generated. So I always recommend hiring someone to manage your campaign. A poor campaign will cause you to waste a lot more money than what an agency will charge.
Here is an article I wrote on how to chose an Adwords Agency.