# Is Google's 'spend £400, get £400' worth it for a salon? > The Google Ads credit is real money, but at £100 to £150 a month it asks a salon to spend faster than planned, twice. The sum, from Google's own terms. Source: https://salonadsstudio.com/blog/is-googles-spend-400-get-400-worth-it-for-a-salon/ Author: The Salon Ads Studio Published: 2026-10-09 --- Short answer: take it if you were already going to spend about £200 a month on Google Ads for the next five months. Then the credit really is free clicks. At the £100 to £150 a month most small salons can spare, it is a different deal. To earn the credit you have to spend faster than you planned, in the weeks your campaign is newest. Then you have to spend the credit at that same faster pace before it runs out. Take the offer by all means, but do not let it set your budget. First, the £400. That figure comes from forum threads and agency pages, and it is the version most people have seen. Google's own UK terms, read on 9 October 2026, do not name an amount. Google's UK advertising page invites new advertisers to choose an offer to earn ad credit, and the terms say your campaigns must spend "the required amount for the offer you've selected". So the sums below use spend £400, get £400. If the number on your screen is different, put yours into the same sums. ## What Google's terms actually say These are Google's own conditions for the UK offer, read today. Most of the trouble people have with it is in here, not in the ads. - **You have to be new.** It is only for advertisers who are new to Google Ads, with a UK billing address, and it is one offer per advertiser. - **You have to claim it early.** You apply it by clicking the button or link that comes with the offer. It has to be on your first Google Ads account within 14 days of your first ad being shown. - **Your card goes in at the start.** The offer is only applied if a payment method is added during the first sign-up. - **Only spending after that counts.** The count starts once the offer is applied. In Google's words, "Making a payment of the required amount is not sufficient." Your ads have to actually run up the costs. - **You get 60 days to do it.** - **Then you wait.** The credit typically lands within 35 days. - **Then it runs out.** It expires 60 days after it lands, and Google will not tell you when it has been used up. After that the ads carry on and your card pays. It is also offered "while supplies last", and Google's general terms for UK credits say an offer can be revoked at any time. The 14 day rule is the one that catches people. In March 2024 a new business owner started a thread on the MoneySavingExpert forum called "Google Ads - Be Warned". They had spent on ads expecting to get £400 back, and after chasing Google they were told the promo code had to be applied when the account was first opened. The terms above say much the same, and it is easy to miss when you are just trying to get an ad live. ![Timeline of the Google Ads credit offer: up to 60 days to qualify, up to 35 waiting, then 60 days to spend it](/images/blog/google-ads-spend-400-get-400-credit-for-a-salon-timeline.svg "Drawn to scale, the stretch paid with your own money can be longer than the stretch paid with Google's, and it always comes first.") Put end to end, that is up to 60 days to qualify, typically up to 35 days of waiting, and 60 days to use the credit. Up to about 155 days in all, roughly five months, from the day you claim it to the last day the credit can be spent. ## The sum at £100 to £150 a month Sixty days is roughly two months. To spend £400 in that time, your ads need to run at about £200 a month. - **At £200 a month**, two months comes to about £400. You qualify without changing anything. - **At £150 a month**, two months comes to about £300. You are £100 short, so you would spend £100 more than you planned to get the credit. - **At £100 a month**, two months comes to about £200. You would have to double your budget. ![Bars showing 60 days of Google Ads at £100, £150 and £200 a month against the £400 needed to earn the credit](/images/blog/google-ads-spend-400-get-400-credit-for-a-salon-budgets.svg "Only the £200 bar reaches the line, so the real question is whether that is a budget you were going to set anyway.") The credit has the same shape. £400 to spend in 60 days is the same pace again, about £200 a month. At £150 a month you would get through about £300 of it, and the last £100 would expire unused unless you speed up a second time. Whatever your ads cost during the wait before the credit lands is your own money too. So at £150 a month, taking the offer properly means running at about £200 a month for two months on your money, then two more on Google's. That is £800 of ads, half of it free. Whether that is a good deal comes down to one thing: whether you can take the clients that extra spend brings in. If your book is already close to full, extra clicks are people you would have to turn away. ![A stylist's hands folding foils through a client's hair, the colour work a Google Ads credit offer has to pay for](/images/blog/google-ads-spend-400-get-400-credit-for-a-salon-body-1-hero-02.jpg) ## Why your half is the expensive half The order matters more than the total. The £400 that earns the credit is your own money, and it goes through a brand new campaign in its first weeks. That is when a campaign is at its least tuned. Nobody has yet seen which searches it is paying for, and nothing has been cut out. Google's own setup spends your budget on people looking for hairdressing courses and jobs, and unless those searches were blocked before it started, a campaign a fortnight old is still paying for some of them. The free £400 arrives later, once the campaign has had time to be tidied. So the offer asks you to go fastest at exactly the point where your money is most likely to be wasted. That does not make it a trap. It means the first two months want watching more closely than usual, not less. What a new campaign should and should not have done by the end of its first fortnight is in [how long Google Ads take to work for a salon](/blog/how-long-do-google-ads-take-to-work-for-a-salon). ## When it is worth taking Take it if all three of these are true: 1. **You were going to spend about £200 a month or more anyway**, for at least the next five months. Then you are not changing your plan to suit the offer, and the credit is free clicks. 2. **You have never run Google Ads before.** The offer is for new advertisers and their first account. 3. **You can claim it before your first ad shows**, or within 14 days of it. Click the offer link, add your card when you sign up, then build the campaign. Leave it if your real budget is £100 a month or less. Doubling your spend for two months to qualify is the offer setting your budget, which is the wrong way round. Below about £100 a month we turn salons away ourselves. And if you do take it, put a date in your diary for about 60 days after the credit lands. Google will not warn you when it is gone, and you pay for subsequent clicks. ![A stylist sweeping cut hair in an empty salon on a wet afternoon, the quiet day a Google Ads credit is meant to fill](/images/blog/google-ads-spend-400-get-400-credit-for-a-salon-body-2-hero-01.jpg) ## What we do We run Google Ads for salons, barbershops and chair renters: one campaign split by service, with 536 time-wasting searches blocked before the first click, courses, jobs and free models among them. We charge £15 to £149 a month depending on your ad spend, and no commission on bookings, ever. We do not set anyone's budget to fit an offer. We would rather set it to the number of clients you can actually take. If you want to see what the money could do before you spend anything, start with the free assessment. It works out what your empty chairs cost you in a year, then roughly how many new clients a monthly budget could bring in, before you have an account or hand over a card. ## Frequently asked questions ### I ran a Smart campaign last year. Can I still get the new advertiser offer? Probably not. Google's UK terms for this offer say it is only for advertisers who are new to Google Ads, and that it is applied to your first account. Google's general terms for credits do allow other vouchers for existing customers who switch on a new feature or reactivate an inactive account, but only where Google says so in the voucher it sends you. ### Where do I see how much credit I have left? Google's terms say you can check your promotional credit balance, and the date it expires, in the Promotions tab under the Billing page of your Google Ads account, at any time. It is worth a look every week once the credit has landed, because Google does not send a message when it has run out. ### Does the tax on my Google Ads bill count towards the spend? No. Google's terms count advertising costs only, excluding any taxes or applicable fees, and its general terms for UK credits say paying taxes or other fees will not count towards earning the credit. The credit cannot be used to pay them either, so any tax on your bill is still yours to pay. ### What happens to the credit if my card payment fails? Google can take it away. Its terms say your account must be successfully billed and stay in good standing to keep using the credit, and that Google can remove the offer if a payment fails. If the credit has already been granted, Google reserves the right to cancel it. Keep the card on the account in date.