What should a small business pay for local marketing in Australia?

Who publishes this: OfficeStaff.ai helps local businesses get found on Google, trusted through reviews and booked through their website and past customers.

Published 26 September 20264 minute read

By Greg Hamlyn. Part of our guide to Reach.

The short answer

Between about $150 and $1,200 a month for Google profile management, or $450 to $3,000 a month once you add broader SEO, based on what Australian agencies publish themselves.

The profile itself is free. What you are paying for is somebody doing the work every month, and the gap between the top and bottom of that range is mostly competition and location count, not quality.

What the market actually charges

Australian agencies do publish their numbers, so this is not a mystery.

For Google Business Profile work specifically, one Australian guide puts one off setup and tidy up of the profile at $300 to $1,500 per location, and ongoing management at $150 to $1,200 per location per month, covering posts, reviews, questions and reporting. Full local SEO packages that include the profile come in at $800 to $3,000 a month.

Another Australian agency's pricing guide puts entry level SEO, aimed at limited budgets and lower competition, at $450 to $1,500 a month, rising to $4,500 and beyond for competitive city markets.

So if you are a single location service business being quoted $2,000 a month, you are not being robbed, but you are buying at the level meant for someone with far more competition than you have.

Before you pay anyone for this, including us, it helps to know where you actually stand. Get your Free 3R check.

What you should actually get for it

This is the part nobody publishes, so here it is.

At the bottom of that range you should get your profile rebuilt properly once, then genuinely maintained. Hours that are right, including public holidays. Every service listed the way customers describe it. New photos. Posts going up. Someone watching for the questions Google lets strangers answer about your business.

You should get every customer asked for a review the same way every time, and every review answered.

And you should get a report that shows you where you turn up across the area you serve, not a number and a graph.

If you are paying anything at all and not getting those things, you are paying for activity rather than work.

Why so many owners have been burned

Most small business owners are flat out doing the actual job. The marketing is the thing that never gets done, so at some point they hand it to somebody.

Then it goes wrong. They get a report full of graphs they cannot read. Nothing changes on the phone. The contract runs twelve months. By the time they get out of it they have decided that marketing is a con and the next person who rings gets short shrift.

That is not stupidity. That is a completely rational response to being sold something that did not work.

The industry earned it. There is a whole tier of operators who are brilliant at selling and have no interest in delivering, and they move on before anyone notices. If someone will not tell you their price until they have you on a call, that is usually why.

The smallest sensible amount

If your budget is genuinely tiny, do not spread it across three things badly.

Fix the profile first. It is free to own and it is the single thing that decides whether you turn up on that map. If you do nothing else, do that.

Then get reviews moving, because that feeds both the map result and whether somebody rings you rather than the business next to you.

The website comes third for most local service businesses, which is the opposite of what people expect. A beautiful website that nobody finds is the most expensive thing a small business can buy.

When you should not buy anything

If your service is not good enough yet, no amount of marketing fixes it. You will just get found faster by people who then tell everyone.

If you cannot answer the phone or return a message within a day, more enquiries will not help you. They will leak out the same hole the current ones are leaking out of.

And if you are not a fit, you are not a fit. Anyone who will not say that to you is selling, not advising.

What we charge, since we are telling you to ask

Reputation, which is every customer asked for a review and every review answered, is $155 a month including GST, with setup included. Adding your Google listing takes it to Local Authority at $349 a month. Front Office, which adds a booking website and follow up, is $499 a month. All prices include GST. On those two, setup is quoted on the call.

Those sit at or under the bottom of the published Australian range. That is deliberate, and the reason is that we are early and building a track record, not that there is less in it.

Monthly

Google profile management (published range)$150 to $1,200 a month
Entry-level SEO (published range)$450 to $1,500 a month
Local SEO package including the profile (published range)$800 to $3,000 a month
Reputation$155 a month
Local Authority$349 a month
Front Office$499 a month

One-off, before the monthly work starts

Profile setup and optimisation (published range)$300 to $1,500 per location
Reputation setupIncluded
Local Authority setupQuoted on the call
Front Office setupQuoted on the call

Published ranges are what Australian agencies list on their own pricing pages (see sources below). Our prices are per location, GST included. Bars are drawn to scale within each chart.

Where to start

Before you pay anyone, including us, get someone to show you your own map. Not a score, the actual grid of where you turn up across your area, and who is ahead of you.

That one picture tells you whether you have a problem and how big it is. Everything else is a conversation about price with no facts in it.

About the author

Greg Hamlyn

Greg Hamlyn started out on the tools. He and his late wife Wendy then built their first business from $200,000 a year to well over $1 million in the first year, with no extra mechanics. He has been working with business owners since 2003. He co-founded OfficeStaff with Nick Lock to help Australian service businesses get more reviews, answer every customer and show up on Google. He will tell you if you are not a fit. Based on the Gold Coast.

Why is my business not showing up on Google Maps?

Before you pay anyone, see your own map.

Frequently asked questions

What is the cheapest thing that actually works?

Your Google Business Profile. It is free to own and it decides whether you appear on the map at all.

Are twelve month contracts normal?

Common, but not necessary. Contact us before you sign up if you have questions about how your plan works.

Why will some agencies not tell you their price?

Usually because the price only makes sense after a sales conversation. If a price cannot survive being printed, that tells you something.

Should you build a website first?

For most local service businesses, no. A website nobody can find is the most expensive thing a small business can buy.