How to work out your budget
Start from what you want to receive, not from a round number. Three questions are enough.
- How many requests do you want each month? Calls, forms, bookings: count whatever brings you customers.
- How many clicks does one request take? Out of 100 visitors who come from an ad, a few will contact you. That share is called the conversion rate. The clicks you need are your requests divided by that rate.
- How much does a click cost on your searches? Your budget is those clicks multiplied by the price of a click.
Example. An electrician wants 10 requests a month. Say 5 visitors out of 100 send a request. The electrician then needs 200 clicks, that is 10 ÷ 5%. If a click costs CHF 5 on their searches, the budget is CHF 1,000 a month, paid directly to Google.
The calculator runs the same math with your numbers. At the start, the conversion rate is an assumption. The real one is measured after a few weeks of running the campaign, thanks to call and form tracking.
Why a budget that’s too small ends up costing more
Google’s automated bidding learns from the requests received over the last few weeks. It works out which searches, which times and which devices bring in customers. The more requests it has to study, the faster it finds the right settings. It needs several dozen. With too few requests, this fine-tuning drags on for months.
Back to the example: CHF 5 a click and 5 requests per 100 clicks. Here’s how long it takes to collect 30 requests, depending on the budget.
| Budget per month | Clicks per month | Requests per month | Time to collect 30 requests |
|---|---|---|---|
| CHF 300 | 60 | 3 | 10 months |
| CHF 1,200 | 240 | 12 | 2.5 months |
Either way, those 30 requests cost the same budget: CHF 3,000, that is 10 × 300 or 2.5 × 1,200. But with the small budget, it takes four times as long. And every extra month adds management fees, and customers lost to a competitor.
These numbers don’t promise a result. The number of requests also depends on your offer, your page and the competition. Allow a few months before you judge whether a campaign pays off.
The price of a click, in short
The price of a click is set by auction, search by search. It depends on your industry, your city and the number of advertisers on the same search. It also depends on the quality of your ad and of the page visitors arrive on: Google favors ads that answer the search well.
The gaps between industries are wide. Where a customer brings in a lot, as with lawyers, accounting firms or private healthcare, a click usually costs far more than for a restaurant or a local shop. So the same budget doesn’t buy the same number of clicks everywhere. That’s why an “average price” for a campaign doesn’t mean much: count your clicks, then your budget.
To find out what clicks cost on your own searches, Google’s Keyword Planner gives a range for each search. It’s free in your Google Ads account, and you can use it before you spend a single franc. All the details are on the Google Ads cost per click page.
What lowers the cost of a request
- Specific searches rather than broad ones, and an area limited to the one where you work.
- Excluding, every week, the searches that don’t bring in customers.
- A page that matches the ad exactly, with the phone number and the form easy to see.
- Call and form tracking, so Google knows which clicks count.
What the budget pays for, and what it doesn’t
The ad budget pays Google to show your ads, usually per click. It’s paid directly to Google, through your own account, opened in your name. It doesn’t pay for preparing the campaigns, call and form tracking, the page that receives visitors or the monthly management. With us, no commission is taken on the budget.
What management costs elsewhere
Management comes on top of the budget. Swiss providers who publish their prices fall into four types, by team size. Here’s what they usually charge each month to manage Google Ads.
| Type of provider | Team | Google Ads management, per month, ad budget extra |
|---|---|---|
| Freelancer | 1 person | CHF 390–790 |
| Small agency | 2 to 9 people | CHF 490–1,000 |
| Mid-sized agency | 10 to 29 people | CHF 990–2,000 |
| Large agency | 30 people or more | rarely published |
Published prices, surveyed in October 2026. Each range shows the middle half of the published prices. Agency prices usually exclude VAT.
- Freelancer. Low prices, flexibility, and direct contact with the person who runs your ads. But there’s only one pair of hands, and if they stop, you have to start over.
- Small agency. Several skills under one roof and a steady point of contact. But it depends on a few key people, and quality varies a lot from one agency to the next.
- Mid-sized agency. A full team and a well-tested method. But prices are higher, and you often deal with a project manager rather than the person who runs your ads.
- Large agency. The capacity for large accounts, in several languages and for several sites. But minimum budgets are high, and small requests come after big clients.
Each of our plans has one price a month, written down in advance, the way an agency does it. What a month of management includes, task by task, is on the Google Ads management cost page.