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What a hundred clicks cost
What a hundred clicks costPer click price, within what Belgian campaigns see
- 0.30 euro a click30 euro
- 1 euro a click100 euro
- 2.50 euro a click250 euro
- 5 euro a click500 euro
- 8 euro a click800 euro
What you pay, and the most you can lose
Creating an account costs nothing: no subscription, no entry fee. Being shown is free too; you pay only when someone clicks, or calls the number in your ad. What a click costs depends on your sector, your market and your competitors; in Belgium campaigns see 0.30 to 8 euro a click, and the full picture per sector is in Google Ads cost.
There is no minimum budget. You set a daily budget and Google sticks to it over a month: on a busy day it may spend up to twice that, but never more than 30.4 times the daily budget in a month. Set 10 euro a day and you pay at most 304 euro a month. Which settings to check when you create the campaign, so that budget does not leak, is in how to set up Google Ads.
| Part | Do you pay? | To whom |
|---|---|---|
| Account and being shown | no | nobody |
| A click or a call | yes | Google, per click |
| Running the campaign | if you outsource it | an agency, on top of your clicks |
| A page the click lands on | if you have it built | your web developer, once |
| Showing on Google Maps without an ad | no | nobody, with a free Google Business Profile |
The credit is a discount, not a gift
Google often gives new advertisers promotional credit: spend a set amount within a set period and an amount is added to your account. The credit stays valid for 60 days and the amount differs per offer and country; you see it when you create the account. You spend first. Read the terms of your own offer before you start, as they change by country and period.
Ad Grants: truly free, with conditions
Registered nonprofits can get up to 10,000 dollars a month in search ads on Google.com through Google Ad Grants. Eligibility runs through Google for Nonprofits and follows each country's charity status; in Belgium a VZW, IVZW or foundation qualifies. Free does not mean effortless: the account must reach a 5 percent click-through rate each month, and two months below that pause it. You track conversions and use smart bidding. What a good click-through rate is, see what is a good CTR in Google Ads. Does your Belgian nonprofit invoice businesses? Check whether non-profits need Peppol.
Your first month, worked backwards
Start from what you want, not from a budget. An installer wants ten enquiries a month; his site turns 5 percent of visitors into an enquiry and a click costs 2.50 euro on average. That takes 200 clicks, 500 euro a month, or a daily budget of 16.45 euro. Work out your own case with the Google Ads budget calculator, what a customer must bring in with the ROAS calculator, and your whole marketing budget if you run more channels. How a local campaign works is in how does Google Ads work for local businesses; paying versus getting found in SEO or Google Ads.
Before you spend a first euro
- A daily budget you can sustain for thirty days.
- Every ad leads to a page about that service, not your home page.
- You track enquiries and calls, so you know what a customer costs.
- Search terms such as free, jobs or do it yourself are excluded.