Almost nobody in this industry answers this question straight, because answering it means talking about money. Here is how to work it out for your own business.
This is not a price list. It is how we would want any owner to think about a marketing budget before speaking to an agency, us included: what share of turnover to put back, how to read a quote, where to start, and when to expect it back.
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Set the budget as a share of turnover, roughly 5% to 10% for a small service business, and count platform lead fees in it.
Ad spend and the management fee are two separate lines. If a quote blurs them, ask how much reaches Google.
Around £750 a month in ad spend is a sensible start for a mover covering one main area.
The cheapest fee often costs the most, through wasted ad spend and lost months.
Judge ads at ninety days and SEO at six months, on cost per booked job.
How much should a removals company spend on marketing?
There is no single right number, and anyone who gives you one without asking about your business is guessing. The useful way to think about it is as a share of turnover, not a flat monthly figure.
A common rule of thumb for small service businesses is somewhere between 5% and 10% of turnover going back into marketing. Toward the bottom of that range if you are busy and want to hold your position. Toward the top if you are trying to grow, adding vans, or moving into towns where nobody knows your name yet.
To put a number on it, take a two-van mover turning over £300,000 a year. At 6% that is £18,000 a year, or £1,500 a month on average. Removals is seasonal, so the money does not have to go out evenly. Plenty of movers run more ad spend in spring and summer, when people are booking, and use the quiet months for the work that takes longer to pay off, like the website and SEO. We wrote about that in what to do in the quiet season.
Thinking in percentages does two useful things. It keeps the budget honest about what the business can afford, and it grows with you. A flat number picked out of the air tends to stay the same for years while the business around it changes.
What counts as marketing spend?
More than most owners think. Before setting a budget, add up everything you spent on getting work last year:
Comparison site and lead platform fees. If you pay per lead, that is marketing spend, and once it is added up it is often the biggest line.
Google Ads, Facebook and any other paid advertising.
Directory and listing subscriptions.
Anything paid to an agency or freelancer for SEO, ads or the website.
Website hosting, the build itself spread over its life, and any software you use to handle enquiries.
Owners who tell us they spend nothing on marketing often turn out to be spending thousands a year on platform leads. Seeing the real total is the first step, because it shows how much is already going out and how much of it is building something you own. We cover that trade off in how removal companies win back their leads from comparison sites.
What is the difference between ad spend and a management fee?
This is the single most important thing to understand before you read any marketing quote.
Ad spend is the money that goes to Google, or Meta, to pay for clicks. Every pound of it buys a visit from someone searching for removals in your area. The management fee is what you pay a person or an agency to run the account: choosing the searches, cutting the ones that waste money, writing the ads, building the pages they point to and tracking which clicks turn into a booked survey.
They are two different lines, and they should always be shown as two different lines. If a quote offers one all-in monthly figure, ask how much of it reaches Google. If the answer is vague, that tells you something. You cannot judge what an enquiry costs you if you do not know how much was actually spent on the ads.
Two more things worth insisting on. The ads account should be in your business's name, so the history stays with you if you ever change agency. And you should be able to see the spend in Google's own billing, not only in a report someone has made for you.
What is a sensible starting Google Ads budget for a mover?
For a mover covering one main area, we usually suggest starting at around £750 a month in ad spend. That is enough to buy useful data on your best towns and services within a few weeks. Much below it, campaigns tend to run out of budget early in the day and it takes months to learn anything.
Start narrow. Put the budget on the towns that bring you the best jobs and the services you most want to sell, rather than spreading it thinly across every postcode you have ever sent a van to. You can widen it once you know what an enquiry costs you.
As a reference point, across the 23 removal companies' Google Ads accounts we manage, the average cost per enquiry over the twelve months to September 2026 was £21.69, counting forms and calls. That is an average across mostly mature accounts. A new account usually costs more per enquiry in its first months, while the wasted searches are found and cut. There is more on how we run accounts on Google Ads for removal companies.
Here is the sum to run for your own business. Say a new account produces enquiries at £30 each. £750 buys 25 enquiries. If one in five turns into a booked job and your average job is worth £1,000, that is five jobs and £5,000 of work. Put the management fee on the cost side, use your own conversion rate and job value, and you know what the budget needs to achieve before you spend a pound of it.
Where do SEO and the website fit in the budget?
Differently, because neither is paid per click.
The website is the foundation everything else lands on. Every pound of ad spend sends someone to it, so a site that is slow, has no page for the town they searched and hides the phone number wastes part of every click. If the site is not ready, fixing it comes before scaling the ads. What a removals website actually needs to do covers what ready looks like.
SEO is a fixed monthly cost that builds over time. Budget for at least six months, because that is how long it usually takes to show on the phone, and judge it on that timescale rather than week to week. How long SEO takes for a removals company has the month by month picture, and SEO for removal companies sets out what the work involves.
For most movers the order is: get the site and the tracking right, run ads on the best towns for fast enquiries, then build SEO underneath so that over time more of the work arrives without a click cost. SEO vs Google Ads for removal companies goes through when each one is the right call.
Why is the cheapest option usually the most expensive?
Because the fee is rarely where the money is lost.
A low monthly fee usually buys an account that is set up once and left. It keeps paying for searches like “removal jobs”, “cardboard boxes” or “self storage near me” from people who will never book a move with you. Nobody notices, because the tracking was never set up, so nobody can tell. Save £200 a month on the fee, lose £300 a month of ad spend to the wrong searches, and you have paid more for less.
The same is true elsewhere. Cheap SEO tends to be sold by the hour or by the number of links, rather than by what happens to your enquiries. A cheap website often needs rebuilding within a couple of years because it was never designed to book surveys. In each case the real cost is not the invoice. It is the ad spend wasted and the year spent waiting for something that was never going to work.
Paying more does not guarantee anything either. What you are looking for is someone who can show you, in your own accounts, what an enquiry costs and where the jobs came from. How to choose a marketing agency for a removals business has the questions that sort that out.
What should you expect back, and how soon?
It depends on the channel, and agreeing the timescale up front saves a lot of frustration later.
Google Ads: enquiries in the first week, useful data within a fortnight, and a cost per enquiry that settles over the first three months. Judge it at ninety days.
SEO: impressions move within weeks and positions over two to four months. The phone usually notices somewhere between month three and month six on a site with some history, later on a brand new one. Judge it at six months.
The website: the change shows in conversion rate, with the same visitors producing more enquiries. Judge it on enquiries per hundred visitors before and after.
Measure the return as cost per booked job against what a job is worth to you, not cost per click or position in Google. That needs tracking on every form, call and WhatsApp message, which is why it comes first.
When it works, the numbers compound. Essex House Removals fixed its Google Ads targeting and tracking first, then rebuilt the site with SEO running underneath. Google Ads alone brought in 658 enquiries in a year and the fleet went from six vans to twelve. Move On Removals in Bristol went from 42nd to 7th for removals Bristol over twelve months of SEO, and every page built along the way still costs nothing per click.
What should you work out before speaking to any agency?
Last year's total marketing spend, platform lead fees included.
Last year's enquiries and booked jobs by where they came from. If you cannot answer that, fix tracking before anything else.
The share of turnover you are comfortable putting back, and whether this is a hold year or a growth year.
How much of any quote goes to Google and how much pays for the work.
When you will judge it: ninety days for ads, six months for SEO.
An owner who has those five answers gets far more out of a first conversation with any agency, us included.
How do you find out what it will cost you?
We do not publish a price list, because the right budget depends on your towns, the competition in them and how soon you need the work. A number on a web page would be wrong for most of the people reading it.
What we do instead is simple: you get the price on the first call, not the third. Ad spend and our fee on separate lines, what we expect it to deliver, and when to judge whether it is working. If you would rather read the common questions first, they are on our FAQ page. When you are ready to talk numbers, get in touch.
Frequently asked questions
How much should a removals company spend on marketing?
A common rule of thumb for small service businesses is 5% to 10% of turnover. Nearer 5% to hold your position, nearer 10% to grow or move into new towns. Count everything, including comparison site lead fees.
What is a good starting Google Ads budget for a removal company?
For a mover covering one main area, around £750 a month in ad spend, focused on your best towns and services. That is enough to learn what an enquiry costs you within a few weeks.
Is ad spend included in an agency's management fee?
It should not be. Ad spend goes to Google and the management fee pays for running the account. A quote should show them as separate lines, and the ads account should be in your business's name.
How long before marketing spend pays back for a mover?
Google Ads produces enquiries in the first week and is fair to judge at ninety days. SEO usually reaches the phone between month three and month six on a site with some history, so judge it at six months.
Should a removals company choose the cheapest marketing agency?
Only if it can show you what an enquiry costs and where the jobs came from. A cheap fee on an account that wastes ad spend costs more than a higher fee on one that does not.
