Advertising
How much do Google Ads cost for a small business
What makes up the price of Google Ads, how much budget makes sense to start with and when advertising starts to pay off.
- Author:
- Tim Blažič
- Published:
- 4 min read
- 4 min read
- Slovensko
- SL →
When a business considers Google Ads, the first question is almost always the same: how much will it cost? The answer has two parts that are worth separating from the start. The first is the ad budget, which you pay directly to Google. The second is the work needed so that budget doesn’t drain away into clicks that never turn into anything.
The ad budget: you pay per click, not per view
With search ads, Google charges for clicks. An ad can be shown a hundred times and you only pay when someone clicks it. The price of a click isn’t fixed. It’s set by an auction between all advertisers bidding on the same search term, and besides the bid, the quality of the ad and of the page it leads to also counts.
In practice, click prices vary a lot between industries. A local service in a small town might pay a few tens of cents per click, while a law firm or a lender in a capital city pays much more. So it’s fair to say there is no universal price, but it’s quick to estimate which range you’ll be in.
To start, we recommend an ad budget of at least €150 a month. Less than that means too few clicks to learn what works. A higher budget gets you to reliable data faster, but it isn’t required to begin.
Management: who sets up and runs the campaigns
The second part of the price is management. Google Ads is a tool where it’s easy to spend money and hard to spend it well. Without keyword research, excluded terms and conversion tracking, ads often end up paying for clicks from people looking for something else entirely.
Management with us starts from €100 a month and includes:
- analysis of your offer, competitors and goals,
- keyword research and the terms we exclude,
- campaign setup (Search, Performance Max, Shopping for stores),
- ads and copy,
- tracking of enquiries, calls and purchases,
- ongoing optimisation and a monthly report.
So in total you start at around €250 a month: €100 for management and €150 for ads. Details are on the Google Ads page.
When advertising pays off
The most useful question isn’t how much ads cost, but how much one new customer brings you. If an average order earns you €500, a single extra job a month already covers it. If a customer is worth €30, you need a lot more sales for the numbers to work.
A simple calculation helps:
- Estimate what one new customer is worth (profit, not revenue).
- Estimate how many out of ten enquiries become customers.
- From that, work out the most you can pay for one enquiry.
That number becomes the campaign target. Once we have the first data, we can see whether we’re below it and adjust the campaigns.
What to check when choosing
When comparing Google Ads offers, check three things. Is it clearly separated what goes to Google and what pays for the work? Is conversion tracking included, not just clicks? And will you get a report that shows how many enquiries the budget brought in?
If the page the ad leads to is weak, even the best campaign won’t help. More on that in Why ads bring clicks but no enquiries.
FAQ
Can I change the budget at any time?
Yes. The budget is set per day and you can raise or lower it whenever you like. We recommend making the first changes after a few weeks, once there’s data.
Do I pay Google even if there are no results?
With search ads you pay for clicks, whether or not the visitor sends an enquiry. That’s why good keyword choices and tracking that shows which clicks bring business matter so much.
How quickly will I see results?
Ads go live in about five working days. You see the first clicks right away, but reliable conclusions about enquiries usually take a few weeks.
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