For a small or medium-sized business in French-speaking Switzerland, a serious start in online advertising usually means CHF 500 to 1,500 per month paid to the platforms, plus management fees billed separately. In plain terms: you often need at least twenty francs a day for a campaign to gather enough data to optimise itself, and a separate line for the work of running it. These two items should never be mixed together, and that is the first thing to check in any commercial proposal.
Two costs that must never be confused
1. The advertising budget: it stays with you
The media budget is the money you pay directly to Google, Meta (Facebook and Instagram), TikTok or LinkedIn to buy impressions and clicks. It is charged to your own advertising account, on your own card. A serious agency does not invoice that budget: it manages it. This matters, because it means you keep ownership of your accounts, your data and your campaign history, even if you change providers one day.
You set the daily or monthly cap yourself, and you can adjust or stop it at any time. Platforms do not impose a high minimum budget: you can technically start with a few francs a day. So the real question is not "what is the allowed minimum" but "what is the useful minimum" — and that depends on the cost of a click in your sector.
2. Management fees: what you pay the agency
Fees cover the human work: account structure, keyword research, ad writing, visuals, exclusions, conversion tracking, weekly adjustments and reporting. Depending on the provider, they take the form of a monthly retainer or a percentage of the media budget. At Digital Swiss Agency they are stated in advance, in writing, before any commitment, and the quote is free. As a reference point on our other services: a website starts from CHF 200, and social media management from CHF 50 per month.
Monthly budget benchmarks for a Swiss SME
These are cautious orders of magnitude, to be adapted to your market. They are not price lists but thresholds below which a campaign struggles to produce usable data:
- Market test (one platform, one offer): you often need CHF 300 to 600 per month in media budget. The goal is to confirm that people are searching for your service and clicking.
- Steady local acquisition (Geneva, Lausanne, the Riviera): generally CHF 600 to 1,500 per month. This is the level at which a stable flow of enquiries starts to appear.
- Growth across several platforms: from CHF 1,500 to 3,000 per month, split between search and social.
- Highly competitive sectors (legal, real estate, finance, private healthcare): clicks cost markedly more, so you often need to plan double the ranges above for a comparable volume.
- Management fees: depending on the provider, a monthly retainer or a percentage of the media budget. Ours appears in a free quote, with no hidden costs.
How to split the budget between platforms
The split depends on your objective, not on the trend of the moment. The principle is simple: search captures demand that already exists, social media creates demand that did not exist yet.
- You sell a service people actively search for (emergency repairs, clinics, tradespeople, rentals): put the bulk on Google Ads, even if it means starting with that platform alone.
- You sell a product or a visual offer (food, beauty, e-commerce, events): favour Meta Ads on Facebook and Instagram, where visibility remains cheaper.
- You target businesses: LinkedIn Ads costs more per click but avoids paying for an off-target audience.
- You want awareness among a young audience: TikTok Ads can be tested on a modest budget, provided you have video.
To arbitrate between the two main channels, our comparison of Google Ads versus Meta Ads in Switzerland sets out the use cases. And if your catchment area is small, read our guide to local advertising in Geneva and the canton of Vaud: well-set geographic targeting often does more for returns than doubling the budget.
What really moves the invoice
- Competition on your keywords: this is factor number one. The price of a click is an auction, not a fixed rate.
- The geographic area: covering the whole of Switzerland costs far more than a 15 km radius around your address.
- The number of campaigns and languages: each French, German or English version needs its own budget and its own monitoring.
- The quality of your landing page: a slow or unclear page raises the cost per enquiry whatever the budget. Our case studies show the work we put into landing pages.
- The ad format: video requires production, and therefore a creation cost up front.
Recurring costs to plan for
Beyond media and fees, plan for three recurring items: creating visuals and videos that need renewing to avoid ad fatigue, hosting and maintaining your landing pages, and conversion tracking (setting up and checking the tagging). These are modest next to the media budget, but ignoring them means paying for clicks you cannot measure.
What you can reasonably expect in the first months
Let us be direct: the first month is for collecting data, not for turning a profit. Platforms need volume before they know who to show your ads to. A realistic rhythm looks like this: a first month of learning and cleaning up (exclusions, useless keywords), a second month of stabilising the cost per enquiry, a third month of optimising what works. Anyone promising you a quantified return on investment by week two is overselling their work.
If your budget is tight, do not spread it across five platforms: concentrate it on one, and start with the visitors who have already been to your site. Our guide to retargeting on a small budget explains how to make use of a small audience, and our article on Performance Max for SMEs covers when that automated format makes sense — and when it does not.
How to get a figure for your own case
An honest budget cannot be guessed from a generic table: it is calculated from your sector, your area and what a client is worth to you. Describe your business and your objective, and you will receive a costed proposal with the recommended media budget and the fees clearly separated. Request your free quote or write to us on WhatsApp at +41 79 884 05 33: we reply quickly. Our other offerings are detailed on the services page.
