How Much Should a Towing Business Spend on Google Ads? [With Examples]

How much do towing companies need to spend to get consistent phone calls from Google Ads?

In this article, I’ll walk you through the ideal budget and cost-per-click expectations and how to avoid overspending while maximizing the results.

So let’s get started.

Analyzing a Sample Google Ads Account

Now, let’s ask that question again. How Much Should a Towing Business Spend on Google Ads?

So, we’re in our Google Ads dashboard, and this is one of the local service business accounts, and they’re not a towing business.

But, this is a good example of an account with the goal of generating phone calls from Google ads.

If you’re thinking about how much you should allocate for Google Ads spend for your towing business, in this article I’m going to show you how you can know that.

For example, for this example account, we can see for the last two weeks, they have generated 25 phone calls and 49 conversions, which can also include phone call button clicks from the website and form submissions.

So a total of about 49 conversions we’ve got in two weeks, and the cost per conversion is $31, and their conversion rate is 26%.

So based on those numbers, you can estimate how much you should spend for your towing business. I’m going to show you that.

Estimating the Number of Phone Calls You Can Get with Google Ads

First thing I want to tell you is that you cannot tell any exact amount, and the spend amount cannot be random to generate phone calls.

You need to decide how many phone calls you want to get per day.

Do you want to get five phone calls per day, ten phone calls per day, or twenty phone calls per day?

Depending on that, you can estimate your metrics.

So your budget cannot be random.

Or even if you have a certain budget—let’s say $100 a day or $50 a day—you can estimate how many phone calls you can get based on your budget.

Conversion Rates and How They Impact Your Cost

So let’s imagine we want to get five phone calls.

And to get five phone calls, we need to calculate how many clicks we need.

So if you want to get five phone calls and your conversion rate is 10%, you can expect to get 50 clicks to get five phone calls.

So what does it mean? A 10% conversion rate means one out of 10 clicks you’re getting brings you one phone call.

So 10% here is the worst-case scenario. If you’re generating phone calls for your service business, you should expect to get around a 20% conversion rate.

And if you’re getting less than a 10% conversion rate, there must be something wrong.

And here in this example, we’re calculating the worst case. You should be getting at least a 10% conversion rate. And to get five phone calls with a 10% conversion rate, you need to get 50 clicks.

Let’s calculate those numbers with a 20% conversion rate.

So with a 20% conversion rate, you need to get 25 clicks, which means you need to get two times fewer clicks, and you’re going to generate the same amount of phone calls.

So you need to aim to achieve a higher percentage of conversion rate so that your cost is going to go down. Again, here we are using a 20% conversion rate.

And if your campaign is set up correctly and you’re optimizing it correctly, you can easily get 25%, 30%, or even some days, you can get a 50% conversion rate.

So on average, you can expect to get around a 20% conversion rate.

Determining Cost-Per-Click of Towing Ads Keywords

And now let’s calculate how much the cost per click is in your industry and in your location. So if we’re going to know that, we can calculate the total amount.

To know the cost per click in our industry and in our location, we can use Google Ads Keyword Planner, which can give us information directly from Google Ads.

Or if you don’t have, or if you haven’t opened your Google Ads account yet, you can use another tool. And this is the tool created by wordstream.com.

You can go to this tool by going to wordstream.com/keywords and you can put your keyword here.

Or you can use any other tool online. But if you don’t have a Google Ads account, you can use this tool.

So let’s put our keyword.

Let’s imagine our ideal customer is searching for this keyword and click on “Find my keywords”.

And as you can see, there is the keyword section. You don’t have to choose an industry. And the location.

But here, the downside is you cannot go deeper. So you cannot choose a specific location such as cities or exact locations. So here you can use countrywide targeting, and we’re going to get results from it.

Click on continue, and as you can see, you can get results from here.

They’re almost the same, but they’re different keywords. So for different keywords, you can expect different numbers.

Top of page bid low range, you can expect lower numbers, and high range, you can expect higher numbers. You can get estimated numbers from here, and your target CPC numbers should be in the middle range.

Getting More Accurate CPC Estimates with Google Keyword Planner

Let me show you how to calculate that from Google Ads Keyword Planner so we can get data directly from Google Ads.

So for that, if you’re in your Google Ads dashboard, you need to go to Tools, and under Planning, you need to go to Keyword Planner and click on Discover New Keywords.

Once we’re here, you need to choose an exact specific location. So you need to include here your target location.

So here we’re going to choose, let’s say, New York. Include, and we’re going to remove countrywide targeting and click on Save.

We’re going to put our target keyword. That’s going to be “towing service near me,” and click on Get Results.

If you’re going to scroll down, you can get an idea: top of page bid low range and top of page bid high range.

As you can see, the numbers are less than $2 and less than $7. So between $2 and $7 range.

To be eligible, let’s say we’re going to bid $3. So $3 is between these ranges, and that should be enough for us to get impressions and clicks.

But for some reason, if you’re not getting impressions and clicks, you can slightly increase from $3.

You can increase that to $4 or $5, depending on your situation and your location. You can change those numbers. Once you start getting impressions and clicks, you can start using that cost-per-click limit.

Budget Calculations for Towing Businesses for Google Ads

So in our example, we’re going to use $3 cost per click. So 50 clicks would cost us 50 × $3 CPC = $150. And 25 clicks would cost us 25 × $3 CPC = $75.

So let’s calculate how much it would cost to get one phone call.

As you can see, to get one phone call, we should be spending $30. This is with a conversion rate of 10%. To get one phone call with a 20% conversion rate, we can expect to spend $15.

If we’re going to be realistic—because we’re not going to convert each and every phone call we get, and some of the phone calls might not be high quality—let’s imagine out of every two phone calls, one is going to be a high-quality phone call.

So let’s say the numbers should be slightly higher.

To get one lead, we should be spending $60, and this is with a 10% conversion rate. To get one lead with a 20% conversion rate, we can expect to spend $30.

Let’s see how much you need to spend on Google Ads to get phone calls. So five high-quality leads would cost you $300, and 10 high-quality leads would cost you $600. Again, this is with a 10% conversion rate.

With a 20% conversion rate, you can expect to spend $150 to get five high-quality leads. And if you want to receive 10 leads, you can expect to spend $300. That’s how much your daily budget should be when using Google Ads.

The Numbers Can be Different with Different Accounts

Again, I’ve used a very safe approach because we’re calculating it with a 20% conversion rate. Your conversion rate can be 25%, 30%, and sometimes much higher than that.

Also, we’re calculating that one out of two leads we’re getting will not be qualified as a high-quality lead, and that ratio might be much higher in your case.

So in your case, two out of three phone calls you’re getting might be high quality. Then these numbers might be lower. So to get 10 leads, that might cost you $400. Or to get 10 leads, that might cost you $200.

Depending on your situation, in this article I’m trying to take a safer approach to be more realistic, but the numbers can be much better as well depending on your account optimization and keyword targeting.

That’s how you can calculate your daily budget if you are using Google Ads for your towing service business.

So guys, if you want me to help generate phone calls for your business, you can contact me as well.

Otherwise, thank you guys for reading this article.