Google Ads for SMEs · March · Lake Zurich · Linth

Google Ads that bring enquiries — not just clicks

Paid search puts your business at the top tonight when someone in the region searches for your service. The only question that counts: what does a real enquiry cost you — and does that add up for your business?

Is Google Ads worth it for an SME?

Yes — under three conditions. First: people actively search for your service (“emergency plumber”, “physiotherapy Pfäffikon”). Second: the value of a job carries the cost per click — with orders from a few hundred francs upwards, it almost always does. Third: someone actually steers the campaign. If one of the three is missing, Google Ads is money burning with a pretty report — and I’ll tell you that in the first call, before you spend a franc.

Where Google Ads accounts in SMEs go wrong

• Search terms without buying intent. Budget flows to terms that have little to do with what you sell — because nobody ever reviews the search terms report.
• Conversion tracking that measures the wrong thing. When page views count as success instead of submitted forms and calls, the campaign optimizes in the wrong direction for months — the conversion rate looks fine, the phone stays quiet.
• Scatter instead of region. Targeting half of German-speaking Switzerland although you work within thirty kilometres.
• A campaign structure nobody understands anymore. Grown over years, never cleaned up — so nobody dares to change anything either.

How I set up Google Ads for a business

1. The business first, then the account. What do you sell at what margin, to whom, in which area? Without that, every keyword is a guess.
2. Search terms buying customers actually use — and an equally important list of what gets excluded.
3. A lean campaign structure with regional targeting on your actual service area.
4. Conversion tracking on what counts: forms, calls, bookings — not page views.
5. Landing pages that match the search. Someone searching “kitchen renovation” who lands on your homepage is gone.
6. A monthly report in plain language: this many enquiries, this is what one cost, this is what I’ll change next. Five minutes, not forty slides.

How much budget does Google Ads need?

There is no magic number, but there is an honest floor: from about CHF 1’000 media budget per month, a search campaign in a regional market becomes steerable and measurable. Below that, the money spreads so thin that no reliable numbers emerge — then organic visibility is usually the better first lever, see SEO for SMEs. What matters is the separation: media budget goes to Google, management is separate — if both sit in one flat fee, you don’t know what you’re buying.

And after that?

With me, Google Ads is not a standalone channel but part of marketing leadership: aligned with SEO, the website and the follow-up of enquiries — one person who owns the budget and explains once a month what happened and why. See also Marketing without a marketing department.