Most agencies won't put a price on their website. We do, so this guide uses real numbers: what we charge, what the money buys, and what we've seen go wrong in the audits we run on small businesses in Florida and Colombia.
The short answer: a small business doing marketing properly spends $600 to $3,000 a month on management, plus ad spend if it advertises. Below that range you're usually paying for posting, not marketing. Above it you're paying for a bigger company's overhead.
The two numbers on every marketing quote
Every quote has two parts. Ask for them separately.
Management fee. What you pay a person or agency to plan, build and run the work. This is labor.
Ad spend. Money that goes straight to Google or Meta to show your ads. It shouldn't pass through anyone's margin.
When someone quotes "$1,500 a month," ask: does that include ad spend, and how much of it actually reaches Google? Some agencies mark up ad spend without saying so. A good one shows you the ad account itself, in your name.
What each budget level actually buys
These are our own published plans, so you can see exactly what sits behind each number.
| Plan | Price | What you get each month |
|---|---|---|
| Starter | $600/month | Google Business Profile managed (weekly posts, review replies, photos), 3 social posts a week, basic local SEO, a monthly report |
| Growth | $1,500/month | Everything in Starter, plus Google and Meta ads management, 5 posts a week, full SEO, website updates, a call every two weeks |
| Full Stack | $3,000/month | Everything in Growth, plus a custom website, blog content, email and SMS, landing pages, a weekly strategy call |
Ad spend is separate on every plan. No long-term contract on any of them.
One-time work, for comparison: a one-page website runs $400, a 5 to 8 page website $2,500 to $5,000, a landing page $500 to $800, a Google Business Profile setup $200, and Google Analytics 4 plus Tag Manager setup $300.
In Colombia we price in pesos because the market is different: Starter $1.500.000, Growth $3.000.000 and Full Stack $6.000.000 a month, plus IVA. A one-page website is $600.000. Copying US prices into a Medellín proposal is how agencies lose Colombian clients.
What each channel costs on its own
If you're buying one channel instead of a plan, here's what the market charges in 2026.
Google Business Profile and local SEO: $200 to $800 a month
This is the cheapest channel that reliably produces phone calls for a local business, and the one most often skipped. A one-time setup runs about $200. Ongoing management (weekly posts, review replies, photos, keeping hours and services current) runs $250 to $500 a month, more if it includes local landing pages and citation cleanup.
Google Ads: $500 a month to manage, plus at least $500 to $1,500 in spend
Google Ads puts you in front of people searching right now. Local service clicks usually cost $3 to $25 depending on the trade. Below about $500 a month in ad spend there's rarely enough data to optimize, so the management fee eats most of the budget.
Meta (Facebook and Instagram) Ads: $500 a month to manage, plus $300 to $1,500 in spend
Better for businesses where the picture sells: restaurants, med spas, gyms, retail, events. Weaker for urgent needs. Nobody scrolls Instagram to find a plumber when a pipe bursts.
Social media management: $400 to $2,000 a month
Organic posting builds trust with people who already know you. On its own, it rarely brings new customers quickly. Pay for it once your Google presence works, not before.
SEO beyond the basics: $500 to $3,000 a month
Content, technical fixes and links for businesses that compete statewide or nationally. Expect three to six months before the results are clear.
The costs that don't show up on the quote
These are the expensive mistakes we find again and again when we audit small businesses. None of them appear on an invoice.
A website you don't own. One broker we audited had a site where the listings, the blog posts and even the homepage video all lived on the vendor's servers. The homepage weighed 46 MB. Leaving that vendor would mean starting from zero. Before you pay for a website, get in writing that you own the domain, the files and every account.
Ads before tracking. A design studio asked us to start Google and Meta ads. They had no conversion tracking, no Meta Pixel and no landing page for the ads to land on. We told them not to spend for 30 days while we built those, because every dollar spent before tracking works is a dollar you can't learn from.
Tracking that quietly died. An engineering firm we audited was still running a Universal Analytics tag. Google shut that product down in 2023, so the firm had been collecting nothing for years without knowing. It happens to agencies too: our own site's Google Analytics tag silently broke in August 2026, and we only caught it because Search Console showed people clicking through from Google while Analytics showed zero visitors. Ask any agency how they check that tracking still works.
Paying for advice nobody acts on. We audited one company twice, months apart. Not one finding from the first report had been fixed. A report has no value until someone implements it.
Auto-renewing contracts. Read the cancellation clause before you sign. Twelve-month terms that renew themselves are common, and they protect the agency, not you.
How much should you spend?
A rough guide by monthly revenue. Your industry and competition move these numbers a lot.
| Your monthly revenue | Sensible monthly budget | Where to put it first |
|---|---|---|
| Under $10K | $300 to $600 | Google Business Profile, reviews, a simple fast website |
| $10K to $30K | $600 to $1,500 | Add consistent social media and local SEO |
| $30K to $75K | $1,500 to $3,000 | Add Google or Meta ads with proper tracking |
| Over $75K | $3,000 and up | Full-service: content, email, ads, reporting |
The order matters more than the amount. Ads sent to a profile with three reviews and a slow website waste money that the same budget would have earned once the basics were fixed.
Is it worth it? Do the math in two minutes
- What is a new customer worth? Average spend per year times how many years they stay. A gym member at $800 a year for 3 years is worth $2,400.
- What can you pay to win one? Usually 10% to 20% of that value. For the gym, $240 to $480.
- Compare. If $1,500 a month in management and ad spend brings 8 new members, each cost $187. That's well inside the range.
If your agency can't tell you how many customers came from the money you spent, that's the first thing to fix.
The bottom line
For most small businesses the right first $600 a month goes to the things people see before they call: the Google profile, reviews, and a fast website. Add ads once those work and tracking is in place. Pay month to month, own every account, and judge the agency by calls, bookings and sales, not impressions.
Want to know where your budget would do the most good? Request a free audit. We review your website, Google profile and social media and send a written report with a score out of 10 and what to fix first. Free, no obligation.
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