The short answer? Google Ads can cost anywhere from €1 to €50 per click, but that’s like saying a car costs between €500 and €500,000 – technically true but not super helpful.

Let’s break down what actually determines your costs and how much you should be looking to spend.

Google Ads Cost Per Click Explained

Every time someone searches on Google, there’s a mini battle royale happening behind the scenes. Different businesses are fighting for the same keywords, and just like any auction, if there’s more demand than supply the price goes up.

There’s basically 2 things that determine this supply and demand curve and pricing for keywords that you should keep in mind. 1. Keyword Industry and 2. Purchase intent.

Let’s talk about industry first.

Want to advertise for “car insurance”? Better have deep pockets because you’re looking at €10+ per click to start off with. But if you’re advertising something like “dog beds“ you will get away with paying just a quid per click.

Why is that?

Well, insurance is expensive so people are willing to pay more to acquire customers, but volume also plays a part in it. In Ireland, more people are searching up dog beds than car insurance, so even though there could be as much as 15 advertisers competing to sell dog beds their CPCs will be lower than car insurance.

Let’s talk about intent now, as it does matter.

In the “car insurance” world, “car insurance near me” is worth 10x more than “car insurance”. Car insurance, broadly could be someone looking to price shop, just checking out rates, wondering how car insurance works or any variation of intentions that are far away from intending to buy right this second.

“Car insurance near me” demonstrates an extremely high intent to get insurance in the near future. So you will see in many industries expensive keywords get even more expensive, with “car insurance near me” costing up to €30+.

Why do people pay €30 for clicks?

Well. Why should I be paying €30 per click? That depends, should you?

If you’re selling dog beds, probably not. Unless it’s an extremely fancy designer dog bed in which case go for it.

However, if you’re selling a software that costs €700 a month, you can easily do 30 a click.

So here we go into the nuanced and tricky section of needing to do a bit of math and examining our business model. How much are you getting out of the money you’re spending and how does your model work. Do you make money immediately or down the line.

Nowadays – you can’t advertise t-shirts online and turn a profit. Everyone advertising t-shirts online is at best breaking even. T-shirts are cheap, people aren’t willing to pay much for them and advertising is expensive. Instead, companies who are buying advertising space to promote t-shirts are using them as a loss leader to acquire customers which will subscribe to their email list, buy more expensive hoodies or pants and ultimately – over a longer period of time turn a profit on acquiring that new customer.

This is where various buzzwords come into play like LTC, CAC, etc required to calculate what your returns look like.

I have a video here, covering how these numbers matter and how you should calculate your budget.

Google Ads Quality Score

There are other factors that determine pricing, like quality score. Google doesn’t just give the top ad spot to the highest bidder, you can always be paying less for clicks if you have a good quality score.

Google wants good, high-quality ads on it platform that are relevant to the search query as possible. If you maximise your relevance to the search term in your ads and on your landing page, you will pay less. If people click on your ad more often than a competitors, you will pay less overtime.

I have a handy calculator here ;

https://thatecomdude.com/google-ads-quality-score-calculator/

and also a video explaining quality scores more here :

What should your Google Ad Budget be?

Here’s the deal – Google Ads isn’t about throwing money at the wall and hoping something sticks. You get to target exactly what people are looking for and tailoring your offer, copy and service to that.

Your budget should depend on what your goal is. Do you want 10 more solar panel leads a month? Well run some test campaigns, figure out what your CPC and conversion rate is, check if the leads actually convert and you’ll be able to come up with answer.

A really basic rule of thumb for most industries is spend €400 a week, Mon-Friday so you can answer phone calls and such, for 2 weeks. You’ll get a few conversions and can figure your numbers out to determine your actual budget. Most commonly for tangible results Irish SMEs run a range of €1,500-3,000 a month.

Although if you’re an e-commerce brand, or you’re looking to grow quickly then this might be too low to hit serious growth targets.

Have any questions about Google Ads? Reach out to me!