Advertising
Google Ads or Meta Ads: where do you start on a small budget?
· 4 min read · Oddbird
A few hundred euros a month will not buy you everything. A framework for your first advertising budget, including the scenario where you are better off not advertising at all.
What you take away
- Google captures existing demand, Meta creates demand. That difference decides your choice, not your taste.
- Below five hundred euros a month you can only do one channel seriously. Spreading is losing.
- Without working measurement, advertising is spending money without knowing on what.
The question comes up almost weekly: we want to start advertising, should we do Google or Meta? The answer depends on one thing, and it is not your sector or your audience. It is whether people are already searching for you.
The difference in one sentence
Google captures demand that already exists. Someone types in what they need and you appear. Meta, TikTok and LinkedIn create demand: they interrupt someone who was not looking for you and make them curious.
| Search network (Google) | Social networks (Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn) | |
|---|---|---|
| Works on | Existing demand | Latent demand |
| Strongest for | A problem people can name themselves | A solution people do not know yet |
| Cost per click | Higher, but visitors sit closer to a decision | Lower, but many visitors are not there yet |
| Visible results | Often within days | Usually weeks, because you build recognition first |
| Mainly demands | Good keywords and landing pages | Good imagery and video, and constantly new |
| Biggest trap | Paying for your own brand name and calling that success | Buying reach that leads nowhere |
A decision tree for your first euros
- Are people already searching for what you deliver? Check the keyword planner for monthly volume on the words a customer would use. If yes: start with Google.
- Is your offer new or hard to explain? Then nobody is searching for it and you need imagery to make it clear. Start with a social channel.
- Do you sell something people need at a moment rather than a place? Think locksmith, leak, emergency repair. Then search is almost always the answer.
- Is it a purchase with a long consideration? Then you need both, but not at once. Start with the channel where the decision falls and expand afterwards.
What a small budget really means
The hardest thing about a small budget is not that you can buy little. It is that an advertising system needs time and data to learn who your customer is. Split three hundred euros across four channels and none of the four learns anything, and you pay tuition four times.
One channel with enough budget to learn beats four channels all still guessing.
- Pick one channel and one goal. Not awareness and enquiries, but enquiries.
- Allow four to six weeks before drawing conclusions. Intervening sooner restarts the learning each time.
- Run two or three clearly different ads, not seven variations of the same one.
- Send traffic to a page that asks one thing. Your home page rarely is that page.
When you are better off not advertising
This is the part agencies rarely write down, and in a number of cases it is the most honest answer.
- You cannot measure what an enquiry is worth. Then you are buying traffic and guessing at the rest.
- Your landing page convinces nobody yet. Paid traffic does not make a weak page stronger, only more expensive.
- You cannot handle the enquiries you already get. Buying more demand while leaving existing demand unanswered costs you customers rather than winning them.
- You have no imagery at all and no budget to make it. On social channels the creative is the larger part of the result.
In those cases the advice is simple: fix what you already have first. It is less exciting, but on a small budget it almost always returns more.
Measurement first, not afterwards
The most common problem we find at companies already advertising is not a bad ad. It is that nothing is measured, so nobody can say whether the money does anything. Arrange this before the first euro:
- Decide what counts as a result. A submitted form, a phone call, a booked appointment.
- Make sure that action is measurable and that the measurement has been tested with a real submission.
- Connect that measurement to the ad platform, so the system can learn on results rather than clicks.
- Write down what an enquiry is worth to you. Without that number you cannot say whether something was expensive.
And the ad budget itself
One more thing that often causes confusion: what you pay an agency for management is separate from what you pay the platforms. The latter goes straight to Google or Meta and should never sit inside a management fee. If someone lumps the two together, ask further.