Quick results, without breaking the bank

Quick results, without breaking the bank

Advertising that really pays off. We make decisions based on figures, not on vague promises that never materialise.

Online advertising puts you in front of a large audience within a day. We have extensive experience with Google Ads, Facebook Ads, LinkedIn Ads and Pinterest Ads, and prefer to use these channels to complement your SEO. This way, they reinforce each other rather than you paying twice for the same visitor.

What we do

First, we analyse the competition and search behaviour and determine which search terms you want to spend your budget on. We then build the campaigns: well-structured ad groups, copy and images that align with the search intent, and landing pages that deliver on the promise made in the advert.

Simply setting it up and leaving it to run doesn’t work. We check the keyword report every week, actively exclude keywords that don’t convert, and test different ad variations. We continue with what’s working, and adjust or stop what isn’t performing as well.

The types of campaigns you run depend on your objective. Search adverts capture existing demand and have the highest purchase intent. Shopping works well for online shops and is considerably cheaper per click. Display, video and remarketing are designed to keep your brand top of mind with people who already know you. Performance Max combines these channels, but only works effectively if your conversion tracking is set up correctly and there’s enough data in the account.

How much does a click cost?

Google Ads operates on an auction basis. You only pay when someone clicks, and the cost of that click depends on your bid, your quality score and what your competitors are doing. For the Dutch market, these are useful starting points, not guarantees:

• Most sectors range between 1.50 and 3.50 euros per click.
• Local service providers such as garages, hairdressers and cleaning companies pay roughly 3.00 to 4.50 euros.
• Legal, financial and B2B software can cost between 5 and 20 euros or more.
• Shopping adverts are consistently cheaper: around 0.45 to 0.85 euros per click.

These differences make sense. The cost per click reflects a customer’s value. A solicitor overseeing a merger can offer more than a restaurant that earns thirty euros per table. A low cost per click therefore tells us very little. A ten-euro click that converts is worth more than a one-euro click that does not.

What budget do you need?

Google Ads does not have a minimum budget, but having too small a budget is a costly mistake: you won’t collect enough data to learn anything, and the bidding algorithm will have nothing to base its decisions on. As a guideline:

• Start: A media budget of 500 to 1,000 euros per month. At three euros per click, that works out at around 165 clicks. Enough to find out which search terms and pages are effective, whilst keeping a tight focus on ten to twenty keywords and your own area of expertise.
• Growth: 1,500 to 5,000 euros per month. This is where the majority of Dutch SME advertisers are found. There is scope for multiple campaigns, tests and scaling.
• Performance Max: Expect to spend at least 2,000 to 3,000 euros a month. This type of campaign requires a lot of signals before it starts to perform well.

You should also expect a learning phase of four to eight weeks during which a new campaign will perform less well than it does later on. That’s not a waste; it’s the data you’ll use to guide your strategy going forward.

How much does management cost?

Most Dutch agencies charge 15 to 20 per cent of your media budget, with a minimum of roughly 300 to 750 euros per month. With a media budget of 2,000 euros, you would then pay around 300 to 400 euros in management fees.

We prefer to work with a fixed monthly fee that is separate from your media budget. That way, nobody has any incentive to inflate your budget, and our goals align with yours: greater return on investment, not higher expenditure. As well as the media budget and management, landing pages and accurate conversion tracking are part of the equation. You should allow roughly 15 to 20 per cent on top of your media budget for this.

Where the real profit lies

Offering more is rarely the answer. In practice, these buttons are the most effective:

• Quality score. Google rates each keyword on a scale of 1 to 10, based on expected click-through rate, ad relevance and the quality of your landing page. The difference between a 4 and a 6 for the same keyword already amounts to 16 to 25 per cent per click. On a monthly budget of 1,000 euros, that’s around 250 euros you’re paying for nothing.
• Negative keywords. The low-hanging fruit that’s most often overlooked. Checking the search terms report every week and filtering out irrelevant terms puts a stop to waste straight away.
• Custom landing pages. Your homepage rarely answers a specific search query. Having a separate page for each topic boosts both your conversion rate and your quality score.
• The right bidding strategy. Only switch to conversion-based optimisation or a target CPA once you’re achieving between fifteen and thirty conversions a month. Before that, the algorithm doesn’t have enough data to learn from.
• Ad extensions. Advertisers with three or more extensions see click-through rates that are, on average, 20 per cent higher, which in turn has an impact on your quality score.

Include video in your campaigns, even without a film crew

Performance Max and Demand Gen also show your adverts on YouTube, Discover and Gmail, where moving images really grab people’s attention. If you don’t provide a video yourself, Google will create one from your photos. These automatically generated videos rarely look good, and yet in many of the accounts we take over, they are the only videos present.

You’ll get the best results with footage from a video production company. If that isn’t available, or not yet, we’ll edit short videos ourselves using what you already have: a corporate film, footage shot on a mobile phone in your own workshop or practice, or even just photos. We’ll create 15- to 30-second versions in landscape, portrait and square formats. The message is conveyed in the first few seconds and the subtitles appear on screen, as most people watch without sound.

That editing is included in our Google Ads management service; you don’t pay for it separately. You can also simply use the videos on your own social media channels.

Focus on what a customer costs, not on what a click costs

The cost per click is the wrong yardstick. What matters is your cost per enquiry or purchase. In the Netherlands, this ranges from around 22 euros in e-commerce to 120 euros in legal services, with an average of around 42 euros across all sectors. Compare that with what a customer brings in, and you can work out in a single calculation whether advertising is profitable.

To do that, your measurement needs to be accurate. Without proper conversion tracking, the bidding algorithm will be guided by the wrong signals and you’ll end up paying more for less. You can read about how we set this up at Analytics.

Advertising and SEO go hand in hand

Advertisements show you within days which search terms lead to enquiries. With SEO, it takes weeks or months to find that out. We use that data to tailor your organic content strategy. Conversely, once you’ve established a strong organic presence for a particular term, you can redirect your advertising budget to areas where you’re not yet visible.

If you’d like to know the background, please read how much Google Ads costs, what SEA actually is or how to Combining SEO and SEA. If you’re considering outsourcing management, our article on Outsourcing Google Ads the right questions.

Wondering how you could improve your campaigns?

We’ll review your account and come up with five specific improvements within three working days. If you’re not currently running any campaigns, we’ll work out a realistic starting budget for you.