There is no flat price. Google Ads is an auction, so your cost depends on who else wants the same search and how relevant your ad and page are to it. But there are useful ranges, and there is a much better number to judge than cost per click.
The short answer
Most Australian small businesses pay somewhere between A$1 and A$15 per click on Search, with legal, finance, insurance and some trades sitting well above that. Total monthly spend for a single-service local business commonly lands between A$1,000 and A$5,000 in media, plus management.
In a Perth studio hire search campaign we ran for Concept Haus, the average CPC was A$1.26 and conversions came in at A$7.72 each across 145 conversions. In a Performance Max campaign for a creator audience-growth objective, conversions averaged A$0.07. Same platform, completely different economics — because the objective and the competition are different.
What actually drives your cost
Four things move the number more than anything else:
- Competition in your category. More advertisers bidding on the same commercial intent pushes CPC up.
- Ad and landing page relevance. Google discounts clicks for advertisers whose ad and page match the query well.
- Match types and negatives. Broad keywords with no negative list are the fastest way to inflate spend.
- Campaign type. Search costs more per click than Performance Max or Display, but the intent is far higher.
Stop judging cost per click
CPC is an input. The number that decides whether Google Ads works for you is cost per acquired customer: cost per conversion divided by your close rate, compared against average order value or customer lifetime value.
A A$12 click that converts 1 in 6 into a A$4,000 job is excellent. A A$0.80 click that converts nobody is expensive. This is why conversion tracking is not optional — without it, every conclusion about cost is unfounded.
A realistic starting budget
As a rule of thumb, you want enough monthly spend to generate at least 30 conversions so the account has data to optimise on. Work backwards: estimated cost per conversion multiplied by 30. If that number is beyond your budget, narrow the targeting to your highest-value service rather than spreading thin across everything.