Plan your advertising budget before paying a management fee.
Your advertising budget needs separate lines for platform spend, management and any extra production or setup. Biaway’s current management fee is SAR 400 per month, with media spend separate. Use this worksheet to see what remains for advertising, then check the scope and spending limits before launch.
In this guide
What should your advertising budget include?
A useful budget separates money buying exposure on a platform from money paying someone to plan and manage the campaign. Biaway currently publishes a SAR 400 monthly management fee for Google and Meta advertising; the advertising budget is separate. Check the agreed scope before adding several campaigns, languages or production requirements.
Build two totals: the launch month and the following months. Record any separately quoted setup, landing-page work, photography or video production, alongside management, media spend and applicable invoice taxes. A low management fee is not a complete campaign budget. Do not assume an unlisted extra is included or that tax treatment is identical across suppliers.
Scroll the table sideways to read every column.
| Cost line | What to confirm |
|---|---|
| Platform media spend | How much may Google or Meta spend, in which account and currency? |
| Management fee | Monthly price, platforms, campaign scope, reporting and cancellation terms. |
| Setup and production | Which page, tracking, design or video tasks need a separate quotation? |
| Applicable taxes and billing | Whether each quoted amount includes tax; who issues each invoice. |
References: Biaway advertising management scope
A simple worksheet: separate SAR 400 from media spend
The examples below are arithmetic only, not recommended Saudi advertising budgets, Biaway bundles or forecasts. Each envelope covers just management and media. It excludes any separate setup, production and applicable taxes. The remaining amount might be too small for your selected audience or objectives.
Use this formula for your own complete limit: available media = total affordable budget − management − separately quoted work − applicable taxes. If the result is zero or negative, revise the scope before launching. If you split the remainder between Google and Meta, both allocations must still fit within that single remainder.
Scroll the table sideways to read every column.
| Management + media envelope | Biaway management | Remaining media allocation |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 | 400 | 600 |
| 2,500 | 400 | 2,100 |
| 5,000 | 400 | 4,600 |
References: Biaway advertising management scope
Google's average daily budget is not a hard daily cap
For most campaigns using an average daily budget, Google allows daily spend up to twice that amount and a monthly charging limit of 30.4 times the unchanged average daily budget. A SAR 20 daily average therefore corresponds to SAR 608 for a full month; an individual day can reach SAR 40.
These rules have exceptions and budget changes or a mid-month start affect the calculation. Check the campaign's budget type and Google budget report. Do not apply this formula to campaign total budgets or automatically to Meta settings.
References: Google Ads: average daily budgets · Google Ads: spending limits
Choose a test you can afford to learn from
Start with the decision you need to make: can this specific offer attract suitable enquiries at a cost your business can support? Set a spending limit that does not depend on receiving immediate sales. A campaign can spend its budget without producing a sale.
A useful first brief names one service or product group, the customer, the area you can actually serve, the landing page, the enquiry definition and the person who will respond. A hypothetical Al Ahsa home-service business might limit coverage to reachable neighbourhoods; an online supplier serving several cities needs a different delivery and qualification brief. Neither example establishes which city has cheaper clicks.
Use any reliable previous campaign and sales data you have. If you have no baseline, label assumptions explicitly and review the first test as evidence, not a promised return. Do not turn a competitor's published cost-per-click range into your forecast.
- Write the total cash limit and separate media, management and extras.
- Choose the service, geographic coverage and language you can support.
- Test the landing-page enquiry path and define a suitable lead.
- Agree a review date and a pause rule for broken tracking, irrelevant enquiries or the spending limit.
- Increase spend only after reviewing actual lead quality and your ability to fulfil the work.
Compare management proposals on the same scope
Ask each provider to show platform spend separately from its fee. Google's third-party requirements call for clear management-fee disclosure and access to cost and performance information. A combined invoice should still let you understand these different costs.
A fixed fee is easy to include in a worksheet, but price alone does not describe the work. For a percentage fee, ask which spend the percentage applies to, whether a minimum exists, and how a budget increase changes the invoice. Compare the same platforms, languages, creative requirements and reporting scope.
- Who owns the advertising account and retains access after the agreement ends?
- Who pays the platform, and where can I see the actual billed media cost?
- Which setup, tracking and creative tasks are included, and which need separate approval?
- What is the agreed spending limit, and who can approve a change?
- How are unsuitable enquiries identified and reported?
- What happens to the account, data and unused allocation if work stops?
References: Google: third-party transparency requirements
Review qualified enquiries, not just clicks
Keep a short review sheet with the reporting dates, billed media, management fee, other agreed costs, enquiries, qualified enquiries and confirmed sales. Define a qualified enquiry before the campaign starts: for example, an actual request for your service within the area you cover, with sufficient details to follow up.
Calculate media cost per qualified enquiry by dividing media spend by the number of qualified enquiries. Calculate a separate all-in figure using media, management and relevant campaign costs. State which costs and period each measure includes. When there are no qualified enquiries, report zero enquiries and the amount spent; do not manufacture a cost-per-lead result.
A form submission or WhatsApp click does not prove a sale. Reconcile enquiry records with your actual follow-up, avoiding sensitive customer details in marketing reports. If tracking is incomplete, say so rather than treating every reported conversion as a new customer.
What Biaway's management fee covers
Biaway's published SAR 400 monthly advertising management scope includes campaign planning and structure, targeting setup, ad copy and basic creatives, monitoring, basic optimisation and reporting. Conversion setup depends on what the website and platform support. The media budget remains separate.
Send the service you want to advertise, your website, the locations and languages you serve, and your proposed total budget. We can clarify the campaign scope and any additional work before you commit. This guide does not promise a number of leads, a return on spend or a search position.
References: Biaway advertising management scope
How this guide was prepared
Prepared with AI assistance, with platform and accessibility claims checked against the primary sources below at publication. The planning frameworks are Biaway’s editorial recommendations. Examples labelled illustrative are not client stories or measured results. Platform features and requirements can change.
Your questions.
01Does the SAR 400 fee include advertising spend?
No. Biaway publishes SAR 400 as the monthly management fee. Google or Meta media spend is separate; confirm any separately scoped work and applicable taxes in the quotation.
02How much should a small Saudi business spend on Google Ads?
There is no single useful amount for every business. Start with an affordable test limit, subtract fees and agreed extras, and assess the remaining media allocation against your offer, service area and available evidence. The worksheet amounts are examples, not recommendations.
03Can Google spend more than my daily budget?
For most campaigns using an average daily budget, yes. Check the current Google spending-limit documentation and your campaign's budget type; an average daily budget is not a strict cap for every day.
04Should I divide a small budget across Google and Meta?
Only if each channel has a clear job, suitable creative and a workable measurement plan. Splitting a fixed amount leaves less for each test. Scope one useful test first if the available budget cannot support both.