Do I need an ad budget on top of your fee?

Yes. The ad budget goes directly to Google and is not part of my fee. I charge CHF 800 once for the setup and CHF 290 or CHF 590 per month for ongoing management. Anyone starting with a CHF 500 budget is really at CHF 800 to 1,100 per month, plus CHF 800 once in the first month.

Is CHF 500 a month enough?

Enough for clicks, often not enough for reliable numbers. At the prices I measured, CHF 500 buys around 130 clicks, or closer to 90 or 100 on the terms where someone is ready to hire. That turns into a handful of enquiries at most. With numbers that small, you cannot separate luck from signal after one month. Plan for three months before you judge.

How long until enquiries come in?

Clicks come from day one, as soon as the ads are running. Enquiries depend on whether the page you send people to answers the question they clicked with. You can judge it realistically after three months, because before that the numbers are too small. Anyone selling you an evaluation after two weeks is selling you noise.

What does a click actually cost in Switzerland?

Across the eight trades and local business terms I measured in Ubersuggest on 9 August 2026 for location Switzerland and language German, the estimated click prices ran from USD 3.07 to USD 7.21, averaging USD 4.84. At the European Central Bank reference rate of 7 August 2026, USD 1 to CHF 0.8103, that is CHF 2.49 to CHF 5.84, averaging CHF 3.92. These are estimates; the real auction differs.

Can I run Google Ads myself?

Technically yes. An account is set up in an hour. The work sits elsewhere: finding the right search terms, excluding the ones that waste money, and measuring what an enquiry really costs. Doing it yourself saves my fee and costs you time and tuition. At a budget of CHF 500, that can be the right call, and I will say so.

Do ads beat a Google Business Profile?

For local demand, often not. The Google Business Profile costs nothing beyond upkeep and picks up exactly the people searching nearby. A business that has not set that profile up properly and books ads anyway is paying for clicks it could have had for free. I look at what already works without a budget before we spend one.

What CHF 500 of Google Ads budget buys in Switzerland · Guide

CHF 500 of ad budget per month buys around 130 clicks at the click prices I measured for Swiss trades. On the terms where someone actually wants to place an order, it is closer to 90 or 100. Whether that pays off is not decided by the ad. It is decided by your order value and your closing rate.

This piece runs one single figure through from front to back. Every assumption gets its own line, with a source or with a note that I cannot back it up. At the end sits what I do not know.

The result first

Item	Value
Ad budget per month	CHF 500
Click price, average of 8 measured terms	CHF 3.92
Clicks for that	around 127
Range across the individual terms	86 to 201 clicks
On ready-to-hire terms (kitchens, fitted cupboards)	86 to 134 clicks

That is the entire first half of the calculation. It holds up, because click prices are measurable. The second half, what becomes of those clicks, I cannot work out for you. The reason is further down.

The assumptions, one by one

A calculation is only as good as its assumptions. So here they are in the open, including the three I do not have.

Assumption	Value	Source
Click price	USD 3.07 to 7.21, average USD 4.84	Ubersuggest, location Switzerland, language German, retrieved 9 August 2026
Exchange rate	USD 1 = CHF 0.8103	European Central Bank reference rate, 7 August 2026
Share of clicks reaching the contact page	unknown	no measurement of my own, left open
Enquiry rate	unknown	your figure, from your website
Closing rate	unknown	your figure, from your business
Setup	CHF 800 once	my price list, /en/pricing/seo-sea/
Ongoing management	CHF 290 or CHF 590 per month	my price list

The three lines in bold are why nobody can honestly tell you what CHF 500 will bring in orders. Anyone who does it anyway has made the numbers up.

The measured Swiss click prices

Measured on 9 August 2026 with Ubersuggest, location Switzerland, language German. The tool reports click prices in US dollars, converted here at the rate named above.

Search term	Searches per month	Click price USD	Click price CHF	Clicks for CHF 500
schreiner zürich (carpenter Zurich)	1,000	5.33	4.32	116
küche planen (plan a kitchen)	320	7.21	5.84	86
küchenbau (kitchen building)	720	7.13	5.78	87
einbauschrank nach mass (fitted cupboard)	390	4.60	3.73	134
innenausbau (interior fit-out)	590	3.94	3.19	157
gartenbau zürich (landscaping Zurich)	480	4.11	3.33	150
gartengestaltung (garden design)	1,300	3.35	2.71	184
gartenpflege (garden maintenance)	720	3.07	2.49	201

These are the tool’s estimates, not amounts off an invoice. What you actually pay is settled by the auction at the moment someone searches: who else is bidding, how well your ad matches the search, what time of day the click happens. I have not checked these figures against real account statements, and I am not claiming they are exact to the rappen. For an order of magnitude they hold.

One detail sits inside that table and is easy to miss: the cheap clicks are not the good ones. “gartenpflege” costs CHF 2.49 and scores 26 out of 100 for paid competition in the same measurement. “küche planen” costs more than twice as much and sits at 97 out of 100. That gap is not an accident. In one case somebody wants instructions; in the other there is an order behind it, which is why everyone bids. Put your budget on the cheap terms and you buy plenty of clicks and few enquiries.

What comes on top

Here sits the figure missing from most sales conversations. A CHF 500 budget does not mean CHF 500 a month. The budget goes straight to Google; the management comes on top.

Item	Amount	Goes to
Ad budget	CHF 500 per month	Google
Setup, one-time	CHF 800	me
Management, Ads Basic	CHF 290 per month	me
Management, Ads Active	CHF 590 per month	me

So the running month costs CHF 790 to CHF 1’090, call it CHF 800 to 1,100. In the first month the CHF 800 setup is added, making it CHF 1’590 to 1,890.

That is the number that matters. If you want to judge whether ads are worth it, you do not weigh CHF 500 against your order value, you weigh around CHF 1’000. This is exactly where small budgets fail: not because the ad budget is too small, but because the management is large in relation to it. At a CHF 500 budget you pay more for the management than for the advertising. If you do not want that, you run it yourself or you skip it. Both are honest answers, and I give them in a first conversation.

When ads burn money

Three cases where I advise against it, even though I sell Google Ads.

When the Google Business Profile picks up the demand for free anyway. Someone searching nearby for garden maintenance lands first in the map panel with three businesses, not in an ad. That profile costs nothing beyond upkeep. A business that has not set it up properly and books ads regardless is paying for clicks it could have had for free. What belongs in there is written up in Getting found on Google Maps. That comes first.

When the search term is mostly your own name. Anyone googling your company already knows you and will find you without an ad. Bidding on your own name means paying for visits that were coming anyway. There are situations where it still makes sense, for instance when a competitor bids on your name. It is not the normal case.

When the budget is too small to evaluate. This is the underrated one. Around 100 clicks a month produces, depending on the business, a handful of enquiries. Whether that turns into one order in the month or three is, at those numbers, chance. After four weeks you cannot say whether the campaign works or whether you got lucky. Anyone starting with CHF 500 should plan three months before judging, and should have the money for those three months up front.

When they do pay off

Three conditions have to come together: a high order value, real search demand, and free capacity. If one is missing, leave it.

Order value is the lever. Let us run it through with your numbers instead of invented ones. Say you build kitchens and book Ads Basic:

Line	Value
Cost per month (budget CHF 500 plus management CHF 290)	CHF 790
Clicks for that, term “küchenbau”	87
Of those, enquiries	your figure
Of those, orders	your figure
Cost per order	CHF 790 divided by your order count

Fill it in. If those 87 clicks produce one order a month, that order cost you CHF 790. If one comes every three months, it cost CHF 2’370. And now the question that decides everything: does a kitchen leave you more than that figure, once material, wages, and your own time are paid?

For a kitchen, most businesses will answer yes, even at CHF 2’370. For a CHF 400 job the answer is no, however good the ad is. That is why this piece is headed by a calculation and not a promise. I do not know your margin. You do.

The third condition gets forgotten: free capacity. If your order book is full until spring, CHF 500 a month buys you enquiries you have to turn down. That annoys people and costs you money. The budget is better spent next winter.

What I do not know

This belongs in a calculation, otherwise it looks more certain than it is.

I have no reliable Swiss closing rates by trade. There are percentages in circulation for the path from click to enquiry, but none that I have checked for Swiss trades and none I would put in front of you as a basis for arithmetic in good conscience. So my table carries a blank instead of an invented number. That is unsatisfying, and it is more honest than a figure that sounds plausible and is worth nothing.

I cannot tell you how much the quality score lowers your price. Google rates how well ad, search term, and destination page fit together, and that feeds into what you actually pay per click. That it has an effect is not disputed. By how much depends on the individual account, and I have no series of measurements across several Swiss businesses that would carry a number.

I have no forecast for the coming months. Click prices move, and demand swings hard across the year. In the same measurement, “gartengestaltung” sat at 1,300 searches a month in April 2026 and at 590 in December 2025. Start in December and you measure something different than in April, without a thing having changed in the campaign. Which is why I promise neither a percentage nor a position.

What the same money does elsewhere

Four lines for comparison, without talking down the ads I sell myself.

Google Business Profile. Costs CHF 0 and a few hours of upkeep. Picks up exactly the local demand you would otherwise pay for through ads. In passing: the most expensive click in my whole measurement was “google unternehmensprofil” at USD 24.76. For a product that is free.
A page that answers the question being searched for. One-time cost, keeps working for years, does not stop when the budget runs out. What that costs is in What a website costs in Switzerland.
A newsletter to existing customers. With me, CHF 450 fixed for the setup. Reaches people who already know you, which is the easiest custom there is. On tool choice and privacy: Newsletter tools in Switzerland.
Google Ads. Delivers clicks from day one and stops on the day the budget runs dry. That is not a flaw, it is the nature of the channel. You buy speed, not substance.

The difference is not better or worse, it is immediate against lasting. A business that can do both takes both. A business with one budget takes the one that lasts first. I argue much the same way about AI search, see When GEO is not worth it.

Conclusion

CHF 500 buys around 130 clicks across the average of the measured terms, and around 90 to 100 on the ones where somebody is genuinely placing an order. With management, the month lands at roughly CHF 800 to 1,100. Whether that is a good investment hangs on two figures from your business that I do not have: what is left to you on an order, and how often an enquiry becomes one.

Tell me those two figures and I will work out in ten minutes, in a first conversation, whether a budget is worth it, and I will tell you when it is not. What I handle on an ongoing basis is on /en/marketing/, the prices for setup and management on /en/pricing/seo-sea/. Write to me at hello@thomasgaechter.ch or via the contact form. I reply within one working day (Mon to Fri).