How much does a Google Ads campaign cost for a small business?

Three bills people constantly confuse

When a business owner asks what Google Ads costs, they picture a single line. There are actually three, and they do not go to the same place.

• The advertising budget goes to Google. You set it, you can change or stop it overnight. No serious provider touches it.
• Management fees go to the agency or freelancer who builds and runs the campaign. That is a service, billed separately.
• The page receiving the clicks, which almost everyone forgets. Sending paid traffic to a slow site or a generic homepage means paying for visitors who leave.

What a click actually costs in France

Cost per click depends on your trade and your area. There is no Google price list, there is an auction: you pay based on what your competitors are willing to pay for the same search.

In France the all-sector average sits around 4.50 € per click on Search in 2025. But averages say little. What matters is your niche: emergency trades where the customer buys immediately are the most expensive, project-based trades are cheaper per click but slower, and city-specific searches almost always cost less than national ones.

One thing few people anticipate: you do not pay to be seen, you pay to be clicked. An ad shown a thousand times without a click costs you nothing.

How many clicks to sign one client?

This is the calculation that decides everything. Take a building trade with a 400 € monthly media budget.

• Clicks: at 3.50 € per click, 400 € buys roughly 114 visitors.
• Enquiries: on a well-built page, 5 to 10 % of those visitors call or fill in a form. That is 6 to 11 enquiries.
• Jobs: a tradesperson typically closes a third to a half of qualified enquiries. That is 2 to 5 jobs.

If a job earns you 1,000 € of margin, the question is no longer whether 400 € is worth it. But if your average order value is 40 €, the same maths says the opposite. Your average order value decides, not your budget.

Our fees, published

Google Ads management costs 150 € one-off setup, then 350 € per month. No commitment.

Setup covers the work that decides everything else: keyword and competitor audit, account structure, ad copy, negative keywords so you stop paying for irrelevant searches, and conversion tracking. Without that last point you will know what you spend but never what it returns.

Monthly management means bid adjustments, new negatives, testing new ads, and a readable report showing what each euro produced.

What budget makes it worthwhile?

Below 300 € per month of media budget we usually advise against it. Not on principle, but because Google needs a minimum of data to learn which searches convert. The comfortable zone for a local business sits between 300 and 600 € per month.

When not to run Google Ads

• If nobody searches for your product. Ads capture existing demand, they do not create it.
• If your site does not convert. Paid traffic to a page that triggers no calls just accelerates a leak.
• If you cannot absorb the enquiries. A campaign that works fills a diary.
• If your average order value is low and your margin thin. The maths will not hold.

Google Ads or organic SEO?

It is a question of timing, not of camps. Ads are a meter running: you pay, you appear immediately, you stop paying and you disappear the same day. SEO takes three to six months but the positions keep working when you stop paying.

The most profitable combination for a local business is to start both together: Ads keep the business running while SEO settles in, then the ad budget drops as organic takes over.

Key takeaways

• Three distinct lines: media budget to Google, management fees, and the page receiving the clicks.
• The real metric is cost per signed client against your margin, not cost per click.
• Budget 300 to 600 € per month of media for a local business, plus 150 € setup and 350 € per month management with us.
• If your average order value is low, the channel probably will not pay off, and we will say so.