Services
Google Ads in Cardiff
- 533businesses listed
- 52%no website
- 28%publish hours
- Price
- from £300/mo + spend
- Terms
- monthly, cancel whenever
- Turnaround
- live within a week
What the numbers say
Cardiff is a competitive auction, so the landing page decides it
48% of the 533 businesses we list in Cardiff already have a website, which is a reasonable proxy for how many could be bidding against you. In a market this developed, clicks cost more and the difference between accounts is rarely the bidding.
It is what happens after the click. An ad that promises one thing and lands on a general homepage wastes money you have already spent, and it is the most common fault we see in small accounts.
Realistically, expect to spend a month finding out what an enquiry costs here before deciding whether to scale. Anyone who quotes you that number in advance is guessing.
By trade
Where the auction in Cardiff is crowded and where it is not
Not every trade in Cardiff costs the same to advertise in. Estate agents are the most established online here, with 68% of the 37 we list holding a website. Hairdressers & beauty are the least, at 23% of 133. Whoever has a site is who can plausibly run a campaign against you.
A gap that wide usually shows up in what you pay. Expect estate agents to be the more expensive auction in Cardiff and hairdressers & beauty to be the cheaper one, though volume in the cheaper trade will be lower to match.
Either way this is an estimate from who is present, not from auction data. The only way to learn what a click actually costs in Cardiff is to run it for a month with conversion tracking on from the first day, which is why we set that up before spending anything.
- Restaurants246 listed44%no website
- Hairdressers & beauty133 listed77%no website
- Estate agents37 listed32%no website
- Pharmacies29 listed34%no website
- Car repair & MOT23 listed70%no website
- Opticians19 listed42%no website
By area
Where in Cardiff the gap is widest
Cardiff is not one market. Across the 3 areas where we hold enough listings to compare, Riverside has the most businesses with no website at 57% of 68, and Cathays the fewest at 41% of 114. Where you trade inside the city changes who you are actually competing with.
| Area | Listed | No website | Publish hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| Riverside | 68 | 57% | 21% |
| Plasnewydd | 52 | 56% | 29% |
| Cathays | 114 | 41% | 38% |
Areas are ONS ward names, which is how the underlying data records them rather than how anybody says them out loud. Only wards with at least 40 listings are shown, because below that a single business moves the percentage several points.
What we hold for Cardiff
533 businesses, of which 149 (28%) publish opening hours and 236 have a phone number recorded. The trades break down like this:
- Restaurants246
- Hairdressers & beauty133
- Estate agents37
- Pharmacies29
- Car repair & MOT23
- Opticians19
from £300/mo + spend, monthly, cancel whenever
What you get
Search campaigns on the terms people use when they are ready to buy, with tracking set up so you can see what an enquiry actually costs.
What is included
- Search campaigns on high-intent local terms, not broad awareness spend
- Negative keywords from day one, so budget stops leaking to the wrong searches
- Conversion tracking on calls and form submissions, set up before launch
- A landing page that matches the ad, rather than dropping people on a homepage
- Monthly reporting in cost per enquiry, not impressions
What is not included
- Management fee only. Your ad spend goes to Google directly, from your own account.
- The account is yours. If you leave, the history and the data stay with you.
- No minimum spend commitment from us. Below roughly £300/mo of spend, ads rarely make sense.
We reply by email and read every enquiry ourselves. Nothing is charged from this page.
Before you buy anything: if your Google Business Profile has never been set up properly, that is almost always the bigger change for the smaller invoice. We fix those for £149, one off. What that covers.
If the job is bigger than this
The prices above are where each service starts, and they cover what most small businesses need. Larger jobs get quoted properly rather than squeezed into a package: multiple locations, booking or payments, a shop, a rebuild that has to keep its existing rankings, ongoing work across more than one service, or anything where the answer depends on what you already have.
Tell us what you are trying to do and we will come back with a scope and a fixed price, or say plainly if we are not the right people for it.
Questions
Questions
How many businesses in Cardiff have a website?
Of the 533 we list in Cardiff, 256 have a website recorded and 277 do not, so 52% have none. Counted from this directory, sourced from OpenStreetMap, so treat it as a floor.
What does google ads management cost in Cardiff?
from £300/mo + spend, monthly, cancel whenever. Search campaigns on the terms people use when they are ready to buy, with tracking set up so you can see what an enquiry actually costs.
How much should I spend on Google Ads?
For a local business, meaningful testing usually starts around £300 to £500 a month of ad spend on top of the management fee. Below that there is rarely enough data to tell what is working from what is noise. If a customer is worth £40 to you and clicks cost £3, the arithmetic is difficult; if a customer is worth £400, it is straightforward.
Is Google Ads better than SEO?
They answer different questions. Ads produce traffic the day the campaign goes live and stop the day you stop paying. SEO takes months and then keeps working. If you need enquiries this month, ads. If you are building something over a year, SEO. Most businesses that can afford it run both, with ads carrying the early months.
Who owns the ads account?
You do. It is set up in your name with your billing, and we are added as a manager. If you stop working with us the account, the history and the conversion data stay with you. Agencies that run your ads inside their own account are holding your data hostage.
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